N64 Reviews, Nintendo 64 Reviews

Insanity redefined

Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaioh (which translates as Explosive, Invincible Bangaioh — you might know it as Bangai-O) is a relatively obscure Japanese exclusive for Nintendo 64 that holds a rather interesting history. Released in 1999 and developed by Treasure — the same team that produced the Sin & Punishment games — it is...

Tour de Force

While it wasn't quite the workhorse that Rare was during the Nintendo 64 era, Factor 5 developed a handful of third-party games that arguably matched Nintendo's own efforts in terms of technical quality. The studio had a knack for getting underneath the hood of the system and exploiting its raw power to create fascinating visual...

Watto way to go

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace may have been panned by film critics and audiences alike when it released back in 1999, but not everything borne out of it was as big a disaster as Jar Jar Binks. One of these truly rare exceptions was Star Wars Episode I: Racer, a sci-fi racing game developed by by LucasArts. The game was a...

Infested with Bugs

These days, considering most of us have become accustomed to the smooth frame rates and high definition resolutions provided by modern consoles, revisiting the Nintendo 64 can sometimes be a painful experience as you may find that some of your favourite games haven’t aged very well. Fuzzy textures, choppy frame rates and limited...

Are those golden eyes wearing rose tinted specs?

Highly revered by countless N64 owners, GoldenEye 007 is often credited with kick-starting the first-person shooter craze on consoles. It not only showed that a good FPS could be crafted for a machine other than a high-spec PC, but arguably also created the multiplayer FPS phenomenon. In fact, if it...

Another kart racing game? Oh, boy!

By the end of the Nineties, UK developer Rareware had established itself as one of the most talented softcos in the world, and along with Nintendo's own in-house output, had helped to placate Nintendo 64 gamers throughout most of the console's life with a steady supply of premium software. Having delivered the...

Rage against the machine (gun)

Multiplayer has been a mainstay in first person shooters since only a few years after the genre's formal debut. Nonetheless, PC gamers had been shooting each other either in LAN setups or online for many years before console FPSes got in on the act. It wasn't until GoldenEye 007 hit the N64 that the idea of getting...

A Rare treat, or will it drive you bananas?

For fans of Nintendo kart racers, 1997 has to go down as one of the greatest years in the history of the genre. Not only did it witness the European and North American release of the iconic Mario Kart 64, but Rare also introduced their own challenger to the karting crown with Diddy Kong Racing on the same...

Bomberman flies solo

Apart from the very first game in the series, Bomberman has always been famed for its frantic, fast-paced, and, above all, fun multiplayer modes. Pretty much every single game starring the little guy has featured support for multiple players, with most of the Nintendo outings allowing four or five, and others like Saturn Bomberman even allowing up to ten. Despite this,..

It's party time!

The Mario Party series has become quite successful for Nintendo and has brought many gamers and their families together over the years. Nintendo, obviously still concerned over the taxing controls of the original Mario Party which caused more than a few blisters and hand cramps among players, have decided to skip straight to Mario...

A spectacular sidescrolling sequel

When it comes to underrepresented genres on the Nintendo 64, the humble 2D platformer is perhaps the most neglected of all. Despite forming a cornerstone of the 16-bit generation, the genre suffered a spectacular loss of popularity as the N64, Sega Saturn and PlayStation ushered in an exciting new revolution in the form of 3D gaming. It was all the more surprising..

The horror continues

Leon Kennedy's having a tough first day at work. As with every new job, there are new people to meet and new challenges to face – namely, zombies and killing said zombies. Capcom's Resident Evil 2 follows two concurrent storylines: that of Leon, a police officer, and Claire Redfield, who's in town to investigate the disappearance of her brother Chris of Resident Evil fame..

You won't get board of this one

Although Atlus is undoubtedly best known for its expertise in the field of RPGs, the Shinjuku-based company does occasionally try its hand at other genres. One such example is Snowboard Kids, released on the Nintendo 64 back in 1998 in cooperation with Japanese development studio Racdym. Best summed up as Mario Kart on snowboards, it's a cartoony arcade racer..

Ace

When Mario Golf was released back in 1999, it was already known that Camelot was working on another Mario sports title for the N64. After a decent title released for the sadly ill-fated Virtual Boy a few years before, Camelot gave Mario another go at tennis. Mario Tennis on the N64 functions a bit differently from Mario Golf in that you do not have to sit through a cumbersome (and honestly..

Go Go!! 2D Treasure Makers

With a US release in 1997 Mischief Makers, or Go Go!! Trouble Makers in Japan, was not only an early example of a N64 centric side-scrolling 2D platformer, it also successfully made its mark in gaming history by being the first Treasure game to land on a Nintendo platform. However, it would be shallow to describe Mischief Makers as a simple Treasure-developed 2D..

One of the N64's only strategy titles, but also the best

Last year, the Virtual Console brought us Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen, the "fifth" title in the Ogre Battle series (although none of the first four chapters in the story actually exist.) An incredibly rare game, it was also one of the best strategy titles on the SNES, allowing for an enormous deal of micro-management..

Suck it, Bond

From its debut in 1997, developer Rare and the terrifying digital avatar of Pierce Brosnan ruled over the console shooter space in the Nintendo 64 tie-in of a then-two-year-old Bond movie, GoldenEye 007. Not only did it justify the genre on consoles while proving that movie games don’t have to suck, it became one of the defining...

"I've lost Artoo!"

A long time ago (around 13 years to be precise) in a galaxy not so far away, and when Nintendo 64 hardware was still fresh off the factory production line, LucasArts released Shadows of the Empire. Unfortunately for Star Wars fans everywhere, it was a pretty average affair, with only the Battle of Hoth level proving to be truly...

Lurking in the shadows lies a foreboding adventure

The anticipation surrounding the launch of a new console is among the most exciting moments in a gamer's calendar, and one of the most notable hardware changeovers was between Nintendo's SNES and N64. The significance of the N64 generation is not only the enhancements afforded by an extra 48-bits of CPU power, but most of all by the transition from..