Nintendo 64 |OT| YOU COULD ZOOM IN, ZOOM OUT, AND CHANGE ANGLES!

Video Games
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Beat Wave Race 64 from Normal through to Reverse this week for the first time on actual hardware! Despite having played through this game dozens of the times over the years it’s still as exhilarating as ever, and I think a lot of that comes down to the unpredictability that the waves add to your route through each course.

Reverse mode in particular took a few evenings’ worth of attempts to nail down, and still throws a curveball at you once you’ve come from Normal, Hard and Expert before it. It works so well compared to, say, a mirror mode, because you’re now riding with the waves instead of against them, while the ice bergs in Glacier Coast need to be tackled in a completely different way due to the change in direction.

For my money this is the finest racing game Nintendo has ever made. Yes, F-Zero X, 1080 Snowboarding, and many a Mario Kart have also proven to be extremely entertaining titles, but Wave Race 64 has an economy to it that makes me love it even more than those games. There are only eight courses, tiny by modern standards, yet each and every one of them serves up a new challenge. The physics never fail to excite while the wave simulation is spot on at providing unpredictability to proceedings. The lack of retries is also an extremely good thing, since you can’t use them to game a championship to your favour. You have to accept every bad finish and make the most of it later on.

Can’t wait to go through it once more after I track down a Shindou cartridge.

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I feel like it was one of those games modern Nintendo would never attempt. Truly a product of its time with the use of license from Kawasaki and overall “realistic” presentation, despite being rooted in arcade gameplay sensibilities.

I really dig the soundtrack.

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Couldn’t have put it better myself. Just couldn’t see Nintendo putting a new game into production that captures the same magic.

But maybe that’s for better and worse, games like this haven’t been watered down by over-exposure or by a myriad of unnecessary sequels.

On a related note I’m really looking forward to playing 1080 Snowboarding in 60hz, another cracking N64 game that was a product of its time and could have also comfortably existed at the arcades.

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N64 is my favorite console because Nintendo at that time managed to elaborate a combination of realism and fun at the higher level, Wave Race 64 is one of the best example.

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Waverace 64 is still one of the best racing games ever made, and surprisingly Sega-like for a Nintendo game. Sega’s own Waverunner was pretty disappointing.

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One thing that has been blowing my mind after using the Saturn, PlayStation and PSP a lot recently is the sheer immediacy of the N64 when starting up games. Not including an operating system in the hardware itself paid off in the long run - I love switching on the console, then switching on the CRT and seeing the title screen already be up by the time the image appears. Just not something you really expect on systems beyond the mid-90s.

I received my Japanese copy of 1080 Snowboarding this week, what a great way to follow up on Wave Race 64! Finished Expert this evening and watched the credits roll, that last Like EAD’s previous extreme sports game it demands nuanced mastery of the analogue stick, while aligning your rider’s body with the Z button is a game in itself with every jump and fall proving to be a big risk, again adding to the unpredictability of each course.

Speaking of which, while there are only six courses I returned to the game having greater appreciation of the course design. There are multiple routes through each one but there’s so much variability in snow surfaces, terrain, and shortcuts that one route isn’t necessarily the fastest in a head to head race. Dragon Cave is probably the best course in the entire game, since there are so many different ways around it, while also feeling like its own place. Mountain Village is great for that too.

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Yeah that’s awesome for sure. It’s one of the reasons nintendo decided to stay away from optical media at the time.

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Booting up the console and immediately hearing the Super Mario 64 clink still doesn’t get old.

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Yeah, for many of the best games it feels like they used the lack of system boot animation and waiting as an opportunity to make the game intros do the excitement instead. That’s definitely true for all of EAD’s titles.

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Funny you should say that as I think Wave Race 64, 1080 and Sega Rally (same with a lot of Sega arcade racers) are still the best handling models (whether it be sim-cade or pure arcade) in their respective genres imo, I still judge other snowboarding, jetski and rally games by these handling models.

The crazy thing about these games is how much they communicate through the screen and pad, there’s no rumble feedback but in 1080 for example the sound and analogue response are so perfect at describing terrain changes that you can feel the difference same goes for the water in Wave Race. Kind of mind-boggling how good Wave and 1080 are for first attempts in 3D, which could be extended to a lot of Nintendo’s N64 titles (Mario 64, Zelda etc). They just nailed it.

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I’ve never played 1080 before. Maybe I should try it.

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I agree with what you’re saying but 1080 does have rumble, and so does Wave Race if you have the Shindou version. It’s actually a bit much there though!

Though i think 1080 is a bit more finicky than it should be when sticking the landings (certain riders anyway), it definitely nailed the sensation of changing surfaces. If you watch some speedruns you can see how important it is, the board is affected by the angle of what seems like every polygon on the surface.

1080 also holds up great visually, as the N64’s blur kind of goes well with the snow and wind effects!

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Oh did it? I was aware of the Wave Shindou version but not 1080 having rumble, that’s cool. I think the point still stands about how well it communicates things to the player without physical feedback.

There’s a fun YT documentary on breaking the World Record on Deadly Falls that’s worth checking out:

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I finished my Japanese copy of Chameleon Twist today, a game I’d been meaning to play since I finished developer Japan System Supply’s wonderful Bound High! on Virtual Boy. The two games share the same lead designer and programmer: Hideyuki Nakanishi.

It’s a wonderful little platformer, one that still feels pretty fresh today thanks to its protagonist’s long, sticky tongue. You can use the analogue stick to draw a path for your tongue to unfold in, which lets you do the following:

  • Grab on to poles to cross gaps
  • Swing around poles in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction
  • Gobble up enemies to spit out as projectiles
  • Launch yourself upward from the ground

The game features just six worlds, but all of them thoroughly test your ability to platform using the Chameleon’s tongue, and the level themes are pretty unexpected, there’s ant land (lots of ant colonies to lap up and spit out), bomb land (explosive projectiles), kid’s land (desserts and gimmicks) to name a few. The boss fights are pretty cool too, and usually revolve around mastery of each world’s central theme.

Upon finishing the game I opened up the Cheats page over at GameFAQs to see what I could unlock and was pretty stumped by its suggestions, turns out the Japanese version I’ve been playing expands upon the North American release rather significantly to the extent that the North American version was probably rushed out and partly unfinished at behest of publisher Sunsoft, so if you do play the game seek out a Japanese copy, which should play on North American consoles with some PCB-case swapping.

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That’s pretty crazy! I had no idea the first Chameleon Twist released in the US ahead of Japan. By less than two weeks, but I guess they were able to use that time to make some solid improvements.

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Finally got Donkey Kong 64, almost 20 years after I first really really wanted to play it as a kid. Can’t wait to start this behemoth of a game. I know it’ll probably grate on me way more than it would have as a kid, but I’m ready.

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DK64, along with Banjo Tooie, Majora’s Mask, and Paper Mario are the biggest titles I’m looking forward to finally playing through for the very first time. I’ve heard Banjo Tooie is also pretty daunting in size.

…and aside from those, I’m excited to get into F-Zero X, Kirby 64, Ogre Battle 64, both Goemon games, Mischief Makers, Yoshi’s Story, Shadow Man, Rayman 2, Rocket: Robot on Wheels, Chameleon Twist 1/2, Glover, Sin & Punishment, Shadowgate 64, Harvest Moon 64, Mario Tennis / Golf, Rush 2049, Castlevania 64 / Legacy, Cruisin’ World, Bomberman Hero, Doom 64, Star Soldier, WWF No Mercy, World Driver Championship, ISS '98, BattleTanx: Global Assault, Tetrisphere, Wetrix, Robotron, Loderunner …etc. I could go on for a while.

It’s funny, as much as the N64 library gets derided for its lack of volume, it’s dense as hell. I’m looking at my collection of ~100 games now thinking how the fuck am I ever going to get through all this, but equally excited about playing some of these amazing titles with my kids as they grow up. I never owned more than 10-20 N64 games back in the day so I missed out on a TON of good shit, and I think that was probably common for most.

@A_Black_Falcon 's reviews and Glenn Plant’s videos on YT have been really helpful in scoping out all the cool games I missed the first time around.

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Glenn Plant’s channel is great for informative N64 reviews, and he has a relaxed vibe, which is a nice change from many YT channels.

That’s a nice list of games to get into.

Keep us posted. :+1:

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One of my favourite cutscenes from Kirby 64:
https://imgur.com/a/5NejiEt

Yeah, while it lacks the breadth of other systems there’s still a lot of variety, and the sheer uniqueness of many of the games makes them stand out on their own. I’m still surprised by how much variety there is among the racing games and platformers alone, but even the FPS genre is really well fleshed out on the system.

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It’s about time the N64 started getting some respect. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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