RVG Forum

The first thing I remember about Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars) is a ridiculous piece of promotional material issued by Nintendo advertising the Rumble Pak: Sega and Sony goons kidnap Mario and attempt to hold him ransom for information about Nintendo’s new rumble accessory. There was a lot of excitement around the idea of being able to “feel” the game, and when Star Fox 64 was released alongside the Rumble Pak, gamers could get a sense of what it might feel like to be in the cockpit. This was the first console game to support the rumble feature, and it arguably hasn’t been done any better since: I distinctly remember the gentle rumble as my ship skimmed above water, and getting more violent degrees of feedback whenever I flew into an explosion. The interactivity just added an element of verisimilitude to what was already a very polished game. Most gamers were already familiar with the original Star Fox, where the goal is to gun down enemy ships as your Arwing flies a predetermined course through the levels. Star Fox 64 introduces “all-range mode,” which allows for 360 degrees of movement in certain levels and boss battles, taking advantage of the improved 3D engine. The game progresses in a nonlinear fashion: the road to the end features many branches, and you can jump between them at different points depending on how you complete the levels. You’ll pilot vehicles on land and underwater, too, so the gameplay and level design always stay fresh. Extending the replay value even more is the multiplayer, where you and three friends take your Arwings to the sky and battle for supremacy. If you’re new to the console, this should be one of the first games you pick up and one of the last you put down.

Ever wondered how Episode I would’ve turned out if Anakin Skywalker stayed on Tatooine? LucasFilms is no stranger to “alternative universe” theories, so let’s entertain that thought. Let’s say Anakin never joined the Jedi Order and became a professional pod racer instead, taking part in high-stakes races across the galaxy and living the fast life of a gambler at the salty age of nine. Well, Star Wars Episode I: Racer lets you get behind the controls of your own pod racer and live that dream. Here’s your chance to take Anakin and his signature pod racer to the professional circuit as you blaze through deserts, weave through canyons, and leave the competition in your dust. If you place well in the races, you’ll win prize money depending on the payout table for that race. As your wealth increases, you’re able to upgrade your pod racer with parts that you purchase from Watto’s junkyard. The more money you put into the machine, the better it will handle and the faster it will be, so upgrading is an absolute must. Anakin is the main character of the game, but you can choose other racers as well, some of which should be familiar to Star Wars fans. You’ll even square off against Anakin’s old rival Sebulba. Episode I: Racer is very polished, with interesting course designs, authentic soundtrack, and detailed character models. The Expansion Pak allows for enhanced textures without slowing down the gameplay, and that’s a good thing because the races themselves are incredibly fast. Though the game is designed well, it doesn’t offer much outside of the circuit mode, so it can become stale after a while. Nonetheless, it’s a very capable racing game that should appeal to Star Wars fans and anyone else who enjoys a good, fast racer.

Climb into your favorite Star Wars starfighter and join the ranks of the Alliance as you defend the galaxy from the Imperial menace in Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. An arcade-style combat sim, you’ll find no blaster skirmishes or lightsaber duels here as all of the action takes place in the air. Luckily, the Nintendo 64’s analog control is tailor-made for 360-degree combat, and that’s a good thing because you’ll need to pull off magnificent aerial moves and engage TIE Fighters in dogfights over valleys and mountains. The story mode is a series of mission-based objectives. Sometimes, you’ll need to escort a convoy of Alliance vehicles to a checkpoint, and other missions have you defending buildings. My favorite is the classic “seek and destroy all Imperial scum.” If you’re shot down during a mission, you’ll respawn in a fresh starfighter, but should you fail an objective you’ll need to restart the mission. However, the radar is always guiding you toward your objectives, so it’s generally easy to keep track of things. After each mission you’ll get a medal which reflects how well you did. Initially, you’ll be piloting the iconic X-Wing, but as the game progresses you’ll commandeer A-Wings, Y-Wings, and other vehicles. There are some tactical differences among the starfighters: the A-Wing is fast, the Y-Wing sturdy, and the X-Wing balanced. Knowing each vehicle’s strengths will be an asset as you replay the missions. Rogue Squadron was one of the first games to showcase the potential of Nintendo’s Expansion Pak: the textures are highly detailed and authentic to the movies. Though it lacks multiplayer options, the single-player mode is a lot of fun and you’ll feel as if you were recreating your favorite dogfights from the movies—the originals, of course. Just the way Ben Kenobi would’ve wanted it.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was conceived in 1996 to expand the storyline between Episodes V and VI of the film saga. As expected, the game features multiple movie tie-ins and cameo appearances by characters like Luke Skywalker and Boba Fett, but the player controls Dash Rendar, a freelance smuggler who is aiding the Alliance in their campaign against the Sith. SOTE is essentially a first- or third-person shooter—depending on which camera angle you’re using—with the occasional space combat segment thrown in. Your goal is to uncover a conspiracy involving the crime boss Prince Xizor, who has placed a bounty on Luke Skywalker’s head. To bring Xizor to justice, you’ll need to fight your way through stormtroopers, droids, wampas, and other recognizable foes from the Star Wars franchise. Most stages will have you blasting enemies on foot, picking up power-ups for your pistol, and fighting bosses like the AT-ST walker and dianoga sewer monster. Other levels have you racing through Mos Eisley on a swoop bike or taking out Imperial forces on Hoth in a snowspeeder. You’ll also have a chance to pilot Dash’s spacecraft, the Outrider, for stages involving dogfights with TIE Fighters. Whether you’re on foot or in the sky, SOTE provides an authentic Star Wars experience that is brought to life with sound effects and music sampled directly from the films. The game is well designed, but it’s unmistakably an early game in the Nintendo 64 library, which is to say that the graphics and mechanics are a little crude. Movement is very slippery; if you’re not careful, you can easily slip off a ledge and plummet to your death. Also, the Outrider stages lack the depth of games like Rogue Squadron. But overall, SOTE is a worthwhile investment for Star Wars fans.

I had the rare privilege, or perhaps misfortune, of playing Superman for the Nintendo 64 when it was new. It hadn’t even been out for a week when I pulled it off the shelf at an electronics store and took it home with me. “It’s Superman,” I thought. “What’s not to love?” My opinion changed almost immediately after booting it up, as Superman has no scruples about telegraphing its full mediocrity in the first few minutes of gameplay. The opening mission is best described as a tedious and pointless exercise in flying through rings. You’re supposed to use this time to get used to the controls, but I found it more fun to fly around the city and imagine I was fighting crime than to actually complete the tutorial. From there, you embark on a series of uninteresting missions around Metropolis, like blowing out tornadoes with your super breath. Yes, Superman can use superpowers, but they’re far too intermittent to make a difference, and even then, they provide minimal entertainment value. By the time you engage enemies in the next level, the combat controls are so stiff as to be frustrating, and your patience has already been wearied by Lex Luthor’s mad trials in the opening mission. It’s difficult to maintain an objective viewpoint when reviewing a game that is considered to be the worst of all time, but I have no problems siding with majority opinion on this one. Superman is a bunch of failures packed into one very disappointing game. The only thing that saves it from the lowest possible rating is a four-player multiplayer mode that’s playable at best, but even that’s a little generous—you simply fly around in pods and shoot opponents. It sounds more interesting than it is. Stay away from this one.

For many of us gamers, our first love affair with Super Mario 64 was a coming-of-age moment in our lives. We remember the first time we laid eyes on Bob-omb Battlefield and triple-hopped our way up a mountain while dodging Goombas and long-jumping over crevices. Mario 64 was a full-scale 3D adventure on a magnitude we’d never seen before, and it was one hell of a way to start the Nintendo 64’s life cycle. The plot is straightforward: you control Mario, who has been invited to Princess Peach’s castle to partake of a sumptuous baked delicacy. Once inside, Mario hears the sinister laugh of his old foe, Bowser, and learns that the Princess has been kidnapped. The adventure actually starts when you discover the magical paintings throughout the castle that lead to alternative worlds where there are puzzles to be solved, enemies to defeat, and stars to collect. Each world is designed with a unique theme: there are the obligatory fire, ice, and desert worlds, as well as an interesting stage in which you scamper up the mechanisms of a live, ticking grandfather clock. As you complete objectives you’ll collect stars, which unlock new areas in the castle. The controls are very responsive, and the analog stick offers degrees of sensitivity, so you can tiptoe when you need extra precision or run when you want speed. You can perform various feats of agility to reach high ledges, and take out enemies with melee attacks or stomps. The world design is beautiful, and the soundtrack is marvelous. Mario 64 is a game that excels in all areas, and to this day remains one of the best 3D action-platformer games. The fact that it is still one of the most popular Nintendo 64 games is a testament to its immaculate design.

I distinctly remember the commercial for this game: Nintendo mascots are frolicking in a field to the tune of “Happy Together,” then an all-out brawl breaks out. Get three friends to play with you and you’ll all be “happy together” as you beat the snot out of each other in this unique multiplayer fighting game. The roster features twelve of Nintendo’s most recognizable icons from Mario to Pikachu, and every character has unique attacks and attributes—Samus can catch opponents in her grapple beam, Captain Falcon is fast, Link throws bombs and boomerangs, and so forth. The goal of the game is to knock your opponents off the stage and prevent them from recovering. A percentage gauge takes the place of a health bar, and at higher percentages, it’s harder to recover from knockback. Versus mode is the main attraction here: it supports up to four players at once, and you can divide them into teams or play free-for-all. The matches can get extremely chaotic, but the game is able to maintain a stable framerate, conserving resources by using 2D sprites for certain effects and items. Speaking of the items, there’s a wide selection ranging from health pick-ups to offensive items like Bob-ombs and baseball bats. Believe me when I say that one well-placed item can change the tide of an entire match! As great as the multiplayer is, the single-player mode is somewhat lacking in variety. You simply make your way through the roster, beating everyone in your path and occasionally stumbling across a novelty match like Giant Donkey Kong mode. The final boss is an enormous disembodied hand called Master Hand, who pokes and flicks you across the stage. Ouch! Quirky and fun, Super Smash Bros. is an essential part of any Nintendo 64 collector’s library.

Though it’s easy to take it for granted nowadays, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter was a major leap forward for console-based FPS games in the 1990s. Featuring a lush environment and polygonal character models, there was simply nothing quite like Turok on the Sony PlayStation or Sega Saturn in 1997, a fact that gave Nintendo a significant push. FPS games on the Nintendo 64 come in two varieties: games that use the analog stick for movement, and games like Turok that use the C-buttons. This poses a unique challenge: the C-buttons are located on the right side of the controller, but gamers have been conditioned to believe that character movement should always be mapped to the left thumb. Acclaim had the foresight to know that the analog stick would enable better control when aiming. Now, you can shoot enemies off ledges or bull’s-eye velociraptors with ease. The goal of Turok is to collect keys and open up new parts of the world for exploration. You’re trying to assemble a dangerous relic known as the Chronoscepter before it can fall into the hands of a sinister warlord. On your travels, you’ll encounter soldiers and dinosaurs, and acquire a vast inventory of weapons from tech bows to futuristic plasma rifles. The weapons are devastating and endlessly fun to experiment with, but gunplay is only part of the experience. Turok also features platforming segments, which are quite manageable due to the responsive controls. One complaint I have is that it can be difficult to find your objectives in the huge levels, and the enemies constantly respawn, so it sometimes seems like you’re running in circles fighting the same enemies. Nevertheless, Turok is a good mid-‘90s FPS that still holds up today, so don your war paint and go hunt some dinos!

Following their highly successful Nintendo 64 debut, Acclaim created Turok 2: Seeds of Evil with the mindset of expanding the gameplay in every possible area. As such, Turok 2 is longer, more action-packed, better looking, and harder than its predecessor, featuring a dangerous new assortment of enemies with enhanced AI, a fresh multiplayer mode, and a multitude of weapons designed to crush, scorch, and gore your enemies and satisfy your inner sadist. The adventure picks up sometime after the events of the first game: the Chronoscepter has been destroyed, and a new evil called the Primagen has unleashed hordes of mutant creatures upon the land. As Joshua Fireseed, your mission is to protect the energy totems defending earth and eventually go head-to-head with the Primagen himself. You’ll make your way through six levels, each with a set of objectives that must be completed, and defeat menacing bosses. Once you finish a level, you’re taken to a central hub which grants access to all the levels you’ve unlocked, and as long as you’ve collected the requisite keys, you can complete the levels in whichever order you’d like. All of the stages are massive, so you’re encouraged to explore them freely. The enemies are aggressive, but with your new weapons, you can cut them down to size—literally, as the Turok 2 engine allows you to dismember foes at will. It’s sickeningly fun, and with the high resolution mode enabled, it’s almost sinful to revel in that much gore. The Expansion Pak enhances the textures, but on hi-res mode, you sacrifice performance for aesthetics: the game looks beautiful, but the framerate suffers pretty heavily. Should you grow tired of the single-player, you can try multiplayer deathmatch. However you choose to enjoy Turok 2, it’s a game that absolutely must be experienced.

After two successful Turok games, Acclaim sought to take the series in a new direction. Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion signals an immediate departure from the previous games by dropping you into a city under martial law: you’ve got to evade police and exterminate mutants to make it out of the city and stop the alien entity Oblivion from destroying the Turok lineage. One of the first things you’ll notice is that the game does away with the free-roaming elements that characterized previous games in the series. Now, you progress through a sequence of linear stages, completing objectives along the way. This minimizes backtracking and keeps the player on track, but I can’t help thinking Acclaim removed a large part of what made Turok unique. On the plus side, Acclaim has improved the checkpoint system. Unlike the previous game, you have unlimited lives in Turok 3, so death is nothing more than being sent back to the last checkpoint to try again. Another addition is the ability to choose from two different characters at the beginning of the game. Danielle and Joseph have different abilities, so the path you take as one won’t necessarily be the one you take as the other. As much as Acclaim packed into Turok 3, I feel they left just as much out. The animations are not as detailed as in Turok 2, the weapons not as interesting, and the voiceovers sound muffled at times. The framerate is mostly consistent throughout the game, but the hit detection is a little clumsy. At one point, my character got wedged into a crawlspace and I was unable to break him free! I had no choice but to restart from a checkpoint. For all its flaws, though, Turok 3 is certainly great fun to play.