I have Mischief Makers. I heard there was a Rom Hack that made the controls a little less obtuse. I should probably try that one since the original game didn’t hook me.
Now we are talking. I loved Beetle Adventure Racing. I think racing games were really the highpoint of going from 2D to 3D. I have blast corps on XBOX via the rare replay. I heard the Rare Replay actually has some pretty good emulation for a lot of those N64 games. Kind of makes me wish that Conker’s Bad Fur Day from XBOX was on the disc. Lets hope they un-sensor it back to the N64 audio for the superior looking port.
I can try those on the ED to see what I think before I got out buying N64 games. Thanks for the recommendations guys.
Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth for secretly having one of the best N64 soundtracks. It’s a pretty decent shmup too, especially for a system so lacking in the genre.
Oh, if you don’t like N64 on the OSSC or FM, I don’t think you’ll like the Ultra HDMI. It’s similar, maybe just cleaner/sharper? Agreed on S-video. N64 RGB is already a minor improvement and with a CRT softness, there’s almost no difference. Any upgrade from composite and deblur are the real standout improvements.
Here are some of my picks. Some are more under the radar than others:
Bomberman Hero: One of the best OSTs from that generation secretly exists within this random 3D action/puzzle platformer.
Bomberman 64 (J): Not to be confused with the Bomberman 64 that came out here, the Japanese Bomberman 64 is a traditional 2D Bomberman game. It’s a fitting game for the system which is synonymous with 4-player games.
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon & Goemon’s Great Adventure: Two solid Goemon games on the platform. The first is a more open 3D platformer while the latter is a 2D platformer.
Doom 64: This has gained some notoriety over the past couple years but it’s a pretty damn good original Doom game and runs surprisingly well. Be sure to max out the brightness settings in-game because it’s dark as hell in places.
Super Smash Bros. (J): Not under the radar by any means, but if you haven’t played the Japanese version, it has different fighting sound effects (more hard-hitting and less bowling alleyish, beam sword sounds like an actual lightsaber, etc) and some other differences here and there. Pretty neat to play if you’re a fan of the Western release.
Castlevania 64/Legacy of Darkness: These kind of have a meh reputation, but I don’t think they’re that bad. They pale in comparison to the Zelda games on the system camera/controls-wise, but they’re neat, atmospheric action/adventure games with quite a bit of ambition.
Harvest Moon 64: Many consider this to be one of the best Harvest Moon games. As someone who hasn’t played too many of the other games, I couldn’t tell you what makes this better than the others, but I think it’s a fun game on its own either way.
I’ve got more but I’ll just go with these for now
PS: Put me in the camp that thinks N64 on consumer CRTs via composite doesn’t look bad.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed these games when I first played them around 4 years ago. They’ve got a large amount of jank, but the level design is pretty impressive, as well as some cool ingame cutscenes.
The music is pretty good too. My favorite song is the one that plays during the Castle level:
@Rich My Raphnet GCN-N64 adapters came and they are every bit as good as you said they were. I took your advice and remapped the “Z” button right away to “L” and then I played some SM64, MK64 and Smash64 and they all felt great.
What an outstanding product and from a fellow Canadian!
I grabbed 2 because I still have a few decent N64 controllers. I personally don’t see myself ever using them again but we have a ton of friends that don’t play games, that play my N64 so I will save the normal controllers for them. I can already see trying to explain how the C stick is now the C buttons to someone who barely even knows how to hold a controller
They’re much better games for their time than the flat, boring, bland as hell PS2 games were.
They’re a true platform action adventure hybrid, like the original games were. Lots of cool ideas, my guess is they were made with love by talented people with a low budget and time constraints. Definitely memorable.
They also reviewed well at the time, so I think the reputation was built on people wanting everything to be SoTN, since it had essentially a (much less ambitious for the time)‘16-bit perfected’ aesthetic, instead of early 3D jank you get from trying new things.
I vastly prefer the original though. LOD’s Cornel quest isn’t as good, Henry’s is dumb, and the ‘remix’ of the original game included is slightly tighter but chopped up, missing bits and the music is also not as good.
Now that my games are actually organized for the first time in… well… ever, I’m rediscovering old classics that were previously buried in my closet.
This morning I played some Wave Race 64 for the first time in years and was blown away by it. It’s very clearly a product of its time considering the slowdown, but man is it a stylish and beautiful game to showcase the power of the hardware.
I remember finding it gorgeous when the N64 first came out and I do think it holds up today. The music is dope too.
Yeah, the music is awesome. It was one of the two games I got with my N64 (along with Shadows of the Empire). I actually just listened to the soundtrack a week or two ago when on the treadmill, it kept me running!
I think you are the first ive read preferring the original game, always heard that i only need to own the second one. Care to elaborate a bit on the differenes, and if i should pick up the original game?
Basically people think the second is a ‘special edition’ because it ‘contains the entire first game’ as an unlockable. But that’s only partly true. It also has two new characters, a camera system that is improved by having Mario 64 style control (but is also sometimes slightly worse), and a high res mode which is crap because the framerate goes to trash.
It does contain Reinhardt and Carrie’s quests as unlockables, but they’re a slightly cut down ‘remix’ of the original game, and in my opinion the original is better than the remix. They’re missing some bits of levels, voice samples, the odd texture, have worse alternate costumes, and the biggest sin to me is some music has been remixed to add some extra horn samples and it ruins the tunes, they’re just overworked with the extra horns.
Legacy of Darkness also of course has a whole new quest for Cornell the Werewolf and a very short quest for Henry the knight. Cornell is okay but his quest and story isn’t as good as Reinhardt’s.
So basically, the first game has the best version of the best characters’s quests, outfits, music and voice samples, the second has four characters for 3.5 quests, but worse versions of the best quests.
IMO the way to play them is play the first through with both characters first, and use the second game only for Cornell and Henry’s quests.
Thanks for the explanation! Guess i need to track down a copy of the original then. Having played all the 2d Castlevania, i still feel like i need to check out the 3d-games as well.
First time playing Snowboard Kids just recently. Started it up with a friend out of curiosity and pretty quickly the frustration grew so much we couldn’t put the game down! It took me and my friend both close to an hour to beat Night Highway and Grass Valley respectively before we decided to put the rest of the game on hold. Great game overall can’t believe I never played this one!
Quicksand Valley is probably the hardest level to master so good luck! Take the right path and save the speed fans to go through the quicksands (2 of them). If you go too slow, you’ll fall into the pit.
The right path has a shorcut as you’re about to join the main path. It saves a looooot of time and you should probably take it every time to make your life easier.
