13th August 2015, 6:44 PM
Update for August 2015
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26 new game summaries. 25 are games I bought since the last update in late 2013, and one is a game I overlooked somehow before, Off-Road Challenge. 17 of these games are Japanese import titles, and only 9 US releases, so this is an import-heavy list. I have only actually beaten a couple of these games, so this is as much first-impressions as it is reviews, as usual for Game Opinion Summaries -- I cover everything I have. I know they're kind of long for "short-ish" summaries, but there's quite a bit to say about each game.
As always, I list the number of players the game supports, save type, and any supported accessories after the title, and other platforms the game is available on at the end of the review. Most of these games are N64-exclusive titles, though, so few of them have other platform listings.
64 Trump Collection: Alice to Waku Waku Trump World [aka Alice's WakuWaku Trump World 64] (J) - 1 player, saves to cartridge.
This is a card game collection with 13 different card games all on one cart. In addition to being able to play any of the games individually, the main mode is a story mode, where you play as Alice from Alice in Wonderland and face off against various characters from the story, one card game at a time. As with those games or Yoshi's Story, the game has a storybook look to it, with paper-cutout sprite characters in 3d environments. Matches take place in a variety of nice 3d environments, each one one page of the storybook you are playing through made into a full 3d environment. The game has great graphics that remind me a lot of Paper Mario or Dr. Mario 64's cutscenes, but this game actually released several years before either of those.
Of course, the story and game instructions are all entirely in Japanese, which makes playing the game a little harder for those who can't read the language. I highly recommend getting a complete copy of the game, because the manual has additional instructions for each game, and mentions English-language names for each cardgame, which is very helpful; ingame it's all Japanese script. The cardgames in the manual are organized in the order you will play them in the story mode, which is also quite helpful. In order, using the names as listed in the manual first followed by names the games are better-known as in parenthesis, the card games here are Shinkeisuijyaku (aka Concentration), Babanuki (aka Old Maid), Shichinarabe (aka Sevens), Speed, Doubt, Page One (a Japanese card game), Daihugo (aka Daifugo or Daihinmin; another Japanese cardgame), Seven Bridge, Poker (video poker, I think it is), Blackjack, Klondike [classic Solitaire; wrongly spelled as "Chrondike" in the manual), Freecell ("Freesell", the manual says), and Dobon (an Uno-ish Japanese cardgame).
So, the games are definitely an interesting mix with a good amount of variety, as far as card games go. Quite a few of the games were unfamiliar to me, but I eventually figured out the rules of each one. The ingame text explaining possible winning hand scores and such in Poker and Blackjack is, for some reason, English, unlike most of the rest of the text, so that's nice. Still, there is a definite language barrier, particularly for the games I wasn't familiar with. The game does have one other issue, other than the language barrier: 64 Trump Collection is single player only. That's an understandable problem, because card games rely on each person not being able to see the others' cards, but it's still unfortunate, this kind of thing is the most fun played against others. Still, this game was a nice surprise. I got it randomly because it was really cheap, and it ended up being pretty good. The visuals are particularly nice, and the gameplay is good. For a card-game collection 64 Trump Collection is better than most, it's not just Solitaire, Poker, and/or Blackjack like most card-game videogames are. Recommended, if you find it for a good price.
Baku Bomberman 2 (J) [Bomberman 64: The Second Attack] - 4 player simultaneous (in battle mode only), saves to cartridge. Baku Bomberman 2, released in the US as Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, is the sequel to 1997's Bomberman 64, which in Japan was known as Baku Bomberman. This is an okay game that disappointed me. But first, why get the import version of a US release? Well, as with Mario Party 3, the import was cheap, while US copies are quite expensive. There is a story in this game that I can't understand, but the gameplay is not too complex, so it's quite playable in Japanese. Baku Bomberman 2 changes things from its relatively popular predecessor. While Bomberman 64 was more of an attempt at a 3d platform/adventure Bomberman game, with large worlds to explore, missions for gold cards which are the games' version of Mario 64 stars, a very unique multiplayer mode with 3d arenas and round explosions instead of the usual Bomberman cross-shaped-lines explosion, and more, it was one of a kind. This game, sadly, is not more of the same. Bomberman 64 does have some flaws -- it's too hard near the end, you don't have a jump button, and teh graphics are mediocre at best, to name a few things -- but it is a good game overall, and I really liked the attempt to make a larger 3d adventure game out of Bomberman. Sadly, Hudson never attempted it again. While there are a couple of 2d Bomberman adventure-styled games, in Bomberman Quest (GBC) and Bomberman Tournament (GBA), Bomberman 64 (1997) is the only such game on any console. I really wish they had made more, but maybe Hudson just couldn't afford it or something. Bomberman 64 was followed up by the 3d platformer Bomberman Hero, which is fun but very different from standard Bomberman.
This game came next, and it's probably less interesting than either of its predecessors, sadly. It's much more linear and just doesn't feel as interesting to play as either Bomberman 64 or Hero. This game mostly just plays as a sequence of rooms. Enter a room, viewed from a side-isometric angle, kill the enemies, figure out the puzzles for how to proceed, and continue. While explosions are still round in single player, the multiplayer sadly ditches them in favor of classic cross-shaped explosions. Along the way you collect a variety of Pokemon-styled creatures that Hudson as putting in Bomberman games at the time; they are also in several GBC/GBA Bomberman games. This game is 3d, but the side view limits things when compared to Bomberman 64, and it's not a full-on platformer like Hero. It's an okay game, but my interest in it fades quickly, apart from a few fun moments here and there; I'd much rather play a more interesting game. Sadly, Bomberman games after this one wouldn't improve things -- the last two 3d-world Bomberman games, Generation and Jetters (for GC/PS2), are even worse than this game. Hudson was great in the '90s, but after two initial interesting efforts couldn't figure out how to improve on their ideas for 3d Bomberman, and it shows. This game retreats on many things from the first game, but isn't classic 2d Bomberman either. It feels generic, as you run around, blow things up, and progress. The multiplayer is similarly okay, but disappointing. Returning from Bomberman 64 are the 3d arenas, but they now have cross-shaped explosions instead of round ones, making hitting people a bit harder. I do like that the 3d arenas are back though, the two Bomberman 64 games are the only two games ever in the series with anything like them; Generation/Jetters ditch them entirely for 2d-style multiplayer. Classic Bomberman multiplayer is pretty good, probably better overall from that in Bomberman 64, but I like having the option to try something different. It's too bad that they abandoned this style in favor of only 2d multiplayer, after this game. Overall though, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack is an average game. It's decent and can be fun at times, but for the price the US version goes for I can't recommend it. Maybe do pick up the import if you see a cheap copy of it though (and modify your system to play Japanese games).
Bomberman 64 [2001] (J) - 4 player simultaneous, saves to cartridge. Bomberman 64, the Japanese game, is the fifth and final Bomberman game on the N64, and, releasing in December 2001, the last N64 game released in Japan. Unlike its predecessors on the platform, this game is entirely 2d, and uses no polygons at all, just sprites. This game is a collection of several 'minigames', I guess it might be best to say. That is, there are several modes, none of them as full-featured as Bomberman games that focus on that mode are. It's a cool collection, but I do find the sparse featuresets within each mode disappointing. The visuals are mostly nice, though; it's solid classic 2d Bomberman and looks good.
The first mode is classic Bomberman, single-player. In this mode, you go through a series of branching levels. Gameplay is classic Bomberman, with a square grid, with posts and then breakable blocks around them that your bombs will destroy. Your goal in each stage is to kill all of the enemies walking around. Many stages do scroll, so they aren't just one screen. The gameplay is great and is plenty of fun. I like the visuals too; Bomberman games changed their art styles regularly, and this is probably one of the better-looking ones. I like the look a lot more than the SNES games, certainly. The music is good happy stuff, too. The problem here is that it's over far too soon. There are only maybe seven to ten stages per game, so the playtime is very short; most classic 2d Bomberman games have at lest 25 levels. The game does have replay value because of the branching paths, though; you can see different stages each time for a while. Still, it's short and easy to finish. When you win, the game gives you your finishing time, and saves the top times in the records section of the menu. Each stage looks different, and the visual variety is nice. Still, I'd have rather seen a longer game, this is really short. It's not hard to finish a run through the mode in half an hour. At least it's quite fun and nice-looking while it lasts, though!
There is also a classic Bomberman multiplayer mode. You've got a variety of stages to play on, but all are similar traditional grids; there are no weird stages like those in Bomberman 64 (US) in this game. Of course it's also four players max, as opposed to the five in the Turbografx games or eight in Saturn Bomberman. Still, it's a great classic Bomberman multiplayer mode.
Next is a stripped-down version of Panic Bomber. Panic Bomber is the Bomberman puzzle game, and it's basically a Tetris knockoff. As in Tetris blocks drop down a well-shaped field, and you have to place them. Making it different are the bomb blocks, which can only be destroyed by lit bombs. This gives the game an element of Puzzle Fighter's crash gems to it. This isn't nearly as great as that game, though. Panic Bomber is a decent puzzle game, but it's not one of my favorites; it's a bit too hard to destroy the bombs, sometimes. Another issue is that this version is very simplistic visually, and has no modes. All you can do is single matches against either an AI opponent or other humans. It does have support for up to four player splitscreen, but the Turbo CD and SNES (both Japan-only releases; why Nintendo brought over the Virtual Boy version in 1995 for a US release but not also the SNES one I have no idea) have five player splitscreen, so that's nothing new, and those games have actual single-player story modes which this does not have. There are no choices for backgrounds either in this version, just one very plain one. SO yeah, Panic Bomber here is okay, but not as good as I was hoping.
Last but probably not least, there is a Bomberman Land-styled minigame collection. Bomberman Land was a series of minigame Bomberman titles that lasted from the late '90s to late '00s, starting on the PS1. None of the early titles in the series released outside of Japan, but we did get some of the later ones on the DS, Wii, and PSP. In this version, you play as Bomberman and wander around an amusement park. Each 'ride' is a minigame. There are maybe ten or fifteen of them here, far fewer than there would be in a dedicated Bomberman Land game, but it is the only Bomberman Land-style game on the N64, so there is that. The main issue here is that some games do have a bit of a language barrier because the instructions are in Japanese, but fortunately none of them are too complex, and I figured them out. Wandering around the little park is also fun, though it'd be better if I knew what the people are saying of course (language barrier...). This is the only mode with much of any Japanese text, but it does have a good amount of it. Still, I like having this. It's a fun little minigame collection. The full Bomberman Land games are better, but they don't come with as many other modes as this game; they're usually just that and usually also classic Bomberman multiplayer and that's it.
Overall, Bomberman 64 (2001, Japan) is a good game, but I was hoping for more. This game has a reputation for being 'the 2d N64 Bomberman game', and it is that, but it's also a collection of games, none of which are as full-featured as similar games on other platforms. It is nice that it compiles all of them together, and on a platform that doesn't have other versions of any of the games present here, though. The visuals are also nice, or at least they are everywhere other than the somewhat plain-looking Panic Bomber, and the music is good. It's worth getting for series fans or if you find it affordably.
Custom Robo V2 (J) - 4 player, but only 2 player simultaneous (2 v 2 with only 1 active at any one time) in multiplayer mode, saves to cartridge. This game is the second in a great series of 3d robot fighting game action-RPGs. The series kind of feels like a much better version of Virtual-On, with RPG elements. It's set in a future world where people solve many conflicts with matches fought in little arenas by tiny robots they control. I covered the first game previously, but now also have the sequel. Custom Robo V2 is the second Custom Robo game, and the last one on the N64. As with the first game, it did not see a Western release because Nintendo of America was stupid and didn't think that these great games would sell. We DEFINITELY should have seen at least one of them! We did eventually get the GC and DS games, but the first three should have had US releases as well, to help fill in some of those N64 software droughts. Gameplay-wise, Custom Robo V2 is very, very similar to the first game. Gameplay is just as great as before, and again running around in the arenas fighting feels fantastic. The graphics have been slightly improved, but the framerate is just as high, which is very important for a game like this. It's absolutely key to the greatness of Custom Robo that even the N64 games run fast and smooth! The new arenas aren't too different fro the old ones, though. Each game has new arenas to fight in, but all are fairly similar in being small-ish squares with various walls and such in them. The combat system is, as always, centered around three weapon types, a gun type you shoot, a bomb type you launch at an angle, and a slower rocket or mine type. You can also do damage with your running charge move. The game controls great, and there are a lot of different weapons to try out. Of course the names are all in Japanese, but it's fun enough to try the various ones regardless of language.
However, apart from the new story, which you won't understand anyway unless you speak Japanese, four player 2v2 tag-team multiplayer mode, and additional robot parts and arenas to fight in, it's basically the same thing as the first game. The controls are the same (good, but the same), the types of weapons are the same, and the story is similar though new. The limitations on the 4 player mode are particularly disappointing. One of the most fun things in Custom Robo for Gamecube are the four-player matches, and I'd have loved to see them on the N64 as well! Maybe the hardware just can't handle it, but still it'd have been great to see, four robots going around at the same time makes things more exciting than just two. Otherwise, this feels almost like an expansion pak, it really is more of the same. In the story mode, as with all five Custom Robo games, you play as a generic anime guy, they never let you play as a different kind of character. This is a different guy from the one in the first game, so it is a new story. As with the first game, your boy hero starts out just learning about Custom Robo, but eventually will go on to do greater things with his tiny little fighting robot. You are the hero after all! As far as a language barrier here goes, Custom Robo games are sort of RPGs so I don't understand the story, but the games have simple and linear structures, so regardless of language you can't get lost or confused for too long, you'll figure out where to go quickly. Again the game starts out in school, as with the first game; in this series, the GC title is the only one to break away from the school-centric story concept so common to anime. Overall, Custom Robo V2 is a great game, but it's so similar to the first game that I don't know if having both of them is really necessary. Definitely get at lest one, though! And both, if you love this kind of game.
Doraemon 2: Nobita to Hikari no Shinden (J) - 1 player, saves to cartridge. This game is a sequel to the first N64 Doraemon game. Of course, as in all Doraemon games, you play as Doraemon the robot cat, the popular childrens' manga and anime character. Doraemon 2 is a more ambitious game than the first one, which I covered previously, but for the non-Japanese speaker it probably isn't a better game. While the first N64 Doraemon game is a fairly basic 3d platformer with some adventure elements in the overworld, this time the game is a 3d platform/adventure game. The game has a sizable world to explore, better graphics than the first game, people to talk to and (overlong) cutscenes, and plenty of puzzles of both the inventory and jumping varieties. The camera is pulled overhead so the view distance is limited, but you can go to first person by hitting R, though you can't move in first-person mode. When you go to first person you see that there is no fog, you can see to the horizon. That's nice, but the environments are average at best for the N64, and probably aren't even that. The game looks okay, nothing more. Doraemon 2 has good controls and multiple playable characters, as you will sometimes play as the children instead of Doraemon. One important thing to know about Doraemon 2 is that it isn't an action game; you do explore a world, but there are no enemies wandering around it. The few enemies I've seen are ones you "fight" with inventory puzzles, not action combat. In the game you mostly wander around, find items and try to figure out where to use them, talk to people, and jump around. You often need specific items to progress. The game does have a day-night cycle, and you gradually lose health at night because the children are scared, so you'll need to find your way to a savepoint and rest when night comes. That's a nice, touch, is one of the few ways I've found so far to actually run out of health in this game. A combat element, like most other Doraemon games have, might have been good, but it does work as an adventure/platform game. Maybe there's something later? As far as I am though there isn't any combat command, you don't shoot by hitting a button or something. So maybe not.
Because of the more ambitious design Doraemon 2 is probably a better game than its predecessor, but it also has a much higher language barrier; figuring out what to do in this game is tough right from the beginning! The far too long cutscenes are even more boring when you can't read the text, either. Some bits are voiced, but there are a lot of text boxes. The game uses no kanji though, appropriate for the young audience the game is for. But for non-Japanese speakers, there is very little on the internet to help you figure out how to play the game -- there are a couple of videos of the beginning of the game, but that's all I found, and it's not helpful for long. This is a problem in a puzzle-heavy game like this one, figuring out what to do is frustrating. I haven't gotten all this far in this game, it's hard to keep playing when I have no idea what to do. One tricky bit early on involved having to find some items, one of which was hidden on a buildings' roof, somewhere I didn't think to look. People who can read Japanese will get more out of this game for sure, but I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't more of a 3d platformer. There is platforming in this game, but exploring the world gets boring when I'm just walking around in circles because I don't know what my objective is. Just trying to interact with everything and using every item everywhere gets old after a while. And while the game looks decent, and they improved things over the fairly basic-looking first N64 Doraemon game, this isn't a great-looking game for sure; the N64 can do much better than you see here. Still, Doraemon 2 is at average overall, anyway. I probably wouldn't recommend it to people unless they really like the series or can read Japanese, though. There is also a third game, which is supposed to be somewhat similar in design to this one.
F1 Pole Position 64 - 1 player, saves to controller pak (70 pages required). F1 Pole Position 64 is a poorly-regarded racing game developed by Human Entertainment and improved for Western release by Ubisoft. This is a simple and arcadey F1 game, without the depth, complexity, challenge, or quality of an F1 World Grand Prix or Monaco Grand Prix. It is also the one and only racing game on the Nintendo 64 that does not have a multiplayer mode. On any other console single-player-only racing games are quite common, but not this one, so its absence here really stands out. Still, the game is better than I was expecting for something that seems to score between 4 and 6 out of 10. This definitely isn't a good game, but there is some amusement to be found here if you like simple and straightforward racing games instead of sims. F1 Pole Position 64 has been improved over the original Japanese version, Human Grand Prix. According to IGN's review, Ubisoft added the official F1 license, all 16 tracks from the F1 season in '97, 22 real F1 drivers to race as with their real car designs, and all the branding and advertising from the real thing. They also improved the draw distance, apparently. However, the graphics are still bland and mediocre, and there is still some popup. This game has a fairly low polygon count, with very simple environments that lack detail. The textures, particularly of the omnipresent ad banners, are fairly good, though, they look quite clear. They're all for real companies, and presumably came along with the F1 license. 16 cars are in each race, and the game can put at least most of them on screen at once, which is good. The framerate is also solid and doesn't drop, though with graphics this simple I'd hope it would be. Audio, however, is poor -- the music is weak, and car engine noise annoying and whiney.
Gameplay-wise, F1 Pole Position 64 is easy to learn. Just turn at the corners and brake when near a sharper turn, that's about it. The game defaults to Easy AI difficulty, no car damage, and automatic transmission, so simplicity is the goal. You can turn up those settings if you want. There are also car settings to modify, so there is a bit of sim here. It's nothing too complex, but the settings affect how your car handles, so they do matter. You can also pit in during races, to replace tires and fill up on gas. The game doesn't have much in the way of good physics, things just bounce off eachother in a basic fashion. I found this game much easier than most other 3d F1 games; I finished 5th in my first race, and in races after that, except for one race where I managed to take too much damage with damage turned on (there isn't a good indicator I could see that I was in danger, annoyingly), I finished well in every race, on Easy, without needing any great skill. It's fun to be able to just play the game and do okay, and I'm sure turning up the difficulty would make the game harder, though people who want that probably should just play F1 World Grand Prix. The problem is though, this is still an F1 game, so races in the season mode are 10 laps long, and you need to do qualifying before that if you want to start anywhere other than last. That's all a bit boring. There is no music ingame either, as usual in F1 games, and the bland gameplay isn't exciting. It's not too hard, but it's not too fun either, doesn't look great, controls only okay and not beyond that, and sounds kind of bad. Combine that with the absence of multiplayer, and F1 Pole Position 64 isn't very good. All you can do here is play a season, single race, or time-trial, all as one of the 22 real drivers, there is no custom racer option, on the games' 16 real-world tracks. The problem with this game is that those wanting a good F1 sim won't play this because it's a simpler, arcadey game, while those who want arcade-style racing games will play more fun games like F-Zero X, Excitebike 64, Rush, or what have you. This is in a boring middle ground along with stuff like Automobili Lamborghini, but maybe worse than that game. If you want a fun, arcadey open-world racing game on the N64, I recommend getting Indy Racing 2000; it's good. Probably skip this game unless it sounds like fun to you. Still, it IS not quite as bad as I thought it would be, so there is that.
Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko - 1 player, saves to controller pak (1 block per file). Gex 3 is the third and last console Gex game, one of the many platformer series with a Sonic-style "cool" animal mascot. Gex's character may be Sonic-inspired, though, but the gameplay is different. The basic concept of Gex is that he's a TV-watching-obsessed gecko. So, each world in each Gex game is inspired by some type of TV show. The first game is a quality 2d platformer, but the sequels are 3d platformers. I covered Gex 2 in my PS1 Game Opinion Summaries list, but to recap, both games have very similar designs. The games have Mario 64-style hubs, with themed worlds branching out from there. Each world is themed after a type of movie or TV show, of course. This time, the first world is a snow level. Fortunately, the game is okay. Gex 3 is a nice improvement over Gex 2, which I didn't like very much. It is a similar game, but the graphics, gameplay, level designs, and objectives are all better. Gex 3 is only a bit above average, but Gex 2 doesn't reach average quality, so the improvement is welcome. The first level in this game is a lot more fun to play and explore than any level I saw in Gex 2. You've got a bunch of stuff to find, missions to attempt, and more, as in most 3d platformers of the era. Unfortunately, the controls hold the game back a bit. Even though you use the analog stick, you don't really have true analog control here -- instead, you can only move in eight or so directions. Apparently they did not fix the movement to account for having an analog stick on the N64, which is a problem in a genre all about moving around in 3d. Still, Gex 3 for N64 is a much better port than Gex 64, the N64 port of Enter the Gecko, was, by all accounts; I haven't played Gex 64, but it's supposed to be not very good, with a short draw distance, poor graphics, and more. The draw distance in this game is a lot better, and the graphics are improved all around. Graphically this game is no match for the better N64 3d platformers, but at least it looks decent, and even nice at times. The gameplay is about on that level as well. Overall Gex 3 isn't great, but it is a decent, slightly above-average game. After Gex 2 I was expecting worse. Also on PS1; this is a port of the PS1 original.
Goemon Mononoke Sugoroku (J) - 4 player alternating, saves to cartridge, Transfer Pak compatible (links to the GBC version of the game). Ganbare Goemon: Mononoke Sugoroku is a Goemon-themed board game with RPG elements which Konami released only in Japan in late 1999. There is also a Game Boy Color version of the game, though I haven't played it. I love the Goemon series, so I decided to finally get the last of the three N64 games, even if it is just a boardgame. The game has fantastic boxart with clay-style art of the characters and some of the monsters in the game. It's really nice. After playing the game though, it's not too hard to see why we didn't get this game; the game is decent, but it's just a boardgame, not a more full console experience. Digital boardgames like this often seemed to be more popular in Japan than the West. Fortunately, even though the game is entirely in Japanese, it's fairly easy to understand with a little bit of practice. The "Mononoke" in the title refers to monsters, and this game is all about fighting monsters, here seen in the form of the cards in a boardgame-RPG. There are still a few things I don't get, but most of the gameplay makes sense. First you choose a board, which there are only a couple of, and a character. All four of the standard Goemon characters are playable, and some others are unlockable. This game introduced a new costume for Yae; she now has a short kimono, instead of pants. I think I like the original costume more, but this is fine. The other three characters, Goemon, Ebisumaru, and Sasuke, look the same as ever. All characters are 2d sprites in this game, not polygon models like the previous two N64 Goemon games. They're fairly well done, and the game is well-polished visually for what is here, but the budget here clearly is a lot lower than its predecessors. The music is still fantastic as usual in the series, though. I love the Goemon series' classic-Japanese-style music. Still, I really wish Konami had made a third full-scale N64 Goemon game, instead of the not-great overly-serious 3d action-adventure game on the PS2 in 2000 and then those two mediocre PS1 2.5d platformers they tossed out in 2001... too bad. This is a good game, but some more variety and choice would have been nice. Each board has a circular path on it, so there are no branches, choices about where you go, or anything -- you just travel around in a circle endlessly until someone wins. That's a bit disappointing, some more interesting board maps would have been great.
Your goal in each game is to defeat your opponent or opponents. As in an RPG, each character has a health meter, and you lose health when you lose battles. To protect yourself, you can summon monsters and place them on spaces. Monsters take the form of cards, so when you land on a space you can only play the monster cards you actually have. There are also other kinds of cards, for direct attacks, healing, and such. You can equip cards on monsters, or use them on yourself. Cards with the sword icon can be equipped before a fight for a stat boost, while other cards can be used during a fight. Each turn you'll get some new cards. Battles are simple, you or a monster you summon fight against the opponent and/or their monster. Each monster has an attack, defense, and health rating, and the attacker goes first. Damage is attack minus defense, and the defender attacks back if they survived. The battle system is super simplistic, but at least it's not just Rock-Paper-Scissors such as Dokapon Kingdom for Wii, I don't like that game much because of how random the battle system is. If a monster is killed extra damage is applied to that monsters' player character, so you want to avoid losing monsters if you can. You want to avoid landing on enemy monster spaces, while hoping that the opponent(s) land on your monsters. Of course, a lot of this is random since die-rolls determine movement. I like the monster card art, some of it's pretty nice. In addition to card boosts, you can also move monsters around from one space to spaces nearby. You can even move them onto enemy monster spaces and attack them, which can be helpful. The more skill-based RPG side to the game makes this game different from something like Monopoly where once you've built hotels and such on a space they're stuck there forever; in this game you can move your "buildings" (monsters) around. Some spaces also have special functions such as healing you or your monsters, and you get money for each time you make a circuit around the board. For the most part though it's not too complex of a game, centering around choosing good places for your monsters to be, powering them up, and hoping that luck is on your side. Overall it's a good game, but winning requires a lot of luck; I do prefer more skill-based games. More boards, and more complex board layouts, would also have been very nice. Still, Goemon Mononoke Sugoroku is a fun thing to have and play once in a while, and is well worth it for series or digital boardgame-RPG fans. That box looks great, too. Also available on Game Boy Color; I'm not sure how similar that version is.
Jikkyo Powerful Pro Baseball 5 (J) - 2 player simultaneous, saves to cartridge. Powerful Pro Baseball, or Pawapuro, was for a long time one of Konami's more popular franchises in Japan. This series of super-deformed baseball games were well known for having challenging and deep gameplay beneath their cute graphical exterior, and this one is no exception. I haven't played this game as much as maybe I should for this, but it's not my favorite kind of baseball game. The game is an interesting hybrid of classic and modern baseball game design. On the one hand the game has a top-down, somewhat zoomed-in field view like that of most 3rd or 4th-gen baseball games, but on the other hand it has a fairly modern pitching/batting cursor interface. This is the second of five N64 Pawapuro games; only two games in the series have a US release, both MLB-themed games on the PS2/Wii. The game has all 12 teams and stadiums, and all the real players, from the Japan League circa 1998. There are a lot of features, modes, and options, and it's all in Japanese so for the non-speaker just figuring out how to do anything beyond a basic single match is a bit overwhelming. There are single matches (1p vs. cpu, 1p vs. 2p, or cpu vs. cpu), an options menu just for single matches; a character-raising mode where you train up a young player, adventure game-style (I haven't played this much because of the language barrier, but it's a series staple and is interesting); season mode; the ability to save a game in progress; and more. I'm not sure what all of the main menu options do, they're all in Japanese and there is no English-language help out there for these games. The game has okay to good graphics, each field does look different and the players are big-headed and cute. Arenas are 3d, with sprite-based characters. The sound design is even better. There is a quite excitable announcer, and lots of crowd noise and chanting too. I like the sound design here, it adds to the game.
The gameplay is tough as well -- you'll lose, badly, for a while until you figure out how to play decently. That is common in baseball games, though, because pitching and batting are very hard things to do, the hardest things people commonly do in sports. Pitching and batting just use A and the stick/pad. Presuming that you turn on analog control, which is recommended (seriously, why is d-pad only even an option?), for batting you move a batting cursor around with the stick. The pitcher has no indicator, but instead the ball goes where you are pointing the stick. For some reason, maybe it's an option I don't know about or maybe it's to be realistic, but left and right are reversed, so to throw to the right side of the plate you have to hold the stick left. Admittedly when pitching you do throw from the left to go right, and vice versa, but still, it's weird and not great. I do like the idea of holding the stick in the place you want the ball to go and then just hitting a button to pitch, though, it works well. My problem with pitching so far is that if there are any alternate pitches I can't figure out how to throw them, so it's always just one pitch type, which is annoying -- how do I throw offspeed, curveballs, sliders, etc., instead of just straight pitches? Once the ball has been thrown, an indicator appears showing approximately where it's headed, and the batter has a split second to move the cursor there and swing. As with pitching, there's just one button, no choice of normal or harder swing as some baseball games have. Getting your timing right is hard, as it should be. Overall the pitching/batting interface is alright, but could use some more features, unless I'm missing something under the big language barrier.
For fielding, though, I don't like it as much. I've never liked this style of top-down field view, and this game is no exception. I much prefer actually being able to see the field, so that I don't have to guess where to move my fielder. They do have an indicator pointing towards who you are controlling off screen, but it's not nearly as good as actually seeing the player. I know I say this every time about baseball games, but give me the Hardball series' perspective every time, over this stuff! And with 3d graphics, I know you could do something better than this basic overhead view. I'm sure some people would like the game because of this, but I feel the opposite, it makes the game harder and less fun. Honestly, I don't think I'll be playing this game enough to get good; the overhead perspective isn't great, and unless I'm missing something I really miss having alternate pitch types, compared to other baseball games. Batting works well, pitching is okay, the graphics are okay and sound is good, and there are a lot of modes and options, but I'd rather play something with more pitching options and better fielding. English-language menus would be a plus too, of course, for a game loaded with menus like this one is. For me, Pawapuro 5 is okay but not great.
Jinsei Game 64 (J) [The Game of Life 64] - 4 player alternating, saves to cartridge. Made by Takara, Jinsei Game 64 is one of two Japanese Nintendo 64 versions of the boardgame The Game of Life. For some reason, The Game of Life is a very, very popular boardgame in Japan. I'm not sure why; I do remember playing the game as a kid, but never thought it was THAT great, and haven't played the board game in quite some time. I don't think we own it anymore. I got this N64 version despite that because, well, I am trying to eventually get all non-sports N64 games, so I had to get it sometime. Honestly though, this might not have been worth getting; even though they do add some features to try to make this more than just a digital boardgame, it's boring and not much fun. In addition to the board game there are also eight minigames here, but they're mostly kind of bad. There is also a significant language barrier that is a real issue due to the choices you have to make during the game. The game would be a bit better if I could read the text, but at times it's tough to play in Japanese, if you care about what choices you make during the game.
There are a good number of modes available in Jinsei Game 64. You can play a normal game, play a game on a variety of different alternate boards, modify the order of things on a custom board, create a custom character to play the game with with a good number of options for hair, clothes, and such, and play the minigames outside of the main game. You can play with any mix of up to four human or AI characters, and the AI is reasobly challenging. By default, in the main mode you play a minigame each time characters land on the same space. All eight are for four players. You play them fairly often in the game, though, they aren't very good, and there are only eight of them, so this isn't as great an option as it sounds. While on the board the graphics are 3d, and each different board looks nicely different. The graphics aren't great, but at least they put some effort in to the game. The minigames are just basic 2d stuff, though, and don't look as good. Some require skill, but too many are just pure luck; really, if you're going to add minigames to your digital boardgame, don't make them just pure chance! There are also anime-esque 2d scenes for the life decisions, choices where you try to romance someone of the opposite sex, build your career, and such. I like the art style, it's stylized and kind of cute-looking.
In the main game, minigames aside, as in the boardgame on each turn you move via a spinner. Once you land on a space a menu opens and you have five options, all in Japanese. The top is to move, others are for various stats and such. Depending on where you land, you may play a minigame, make some of those life choice, or just end your turn. Your choices will change your character's stats, which affect how successful you will be, so as I said the language barrier is a real problem. The other main problem here is that I find The Game of Life kind of boring in any form; Jinsei Game 64 is okay, but I haven't finished a game of this yet not only because of the language barrier, but also because the game gets tedious fast. The mostly-bad minigames are also a disappointment. It might be better in multiplayer, but... just play the boardgame, or some better game. I do like the boxart, though, it's nice and represents the games' art style well.
Let's Smash (J) [also released in Europe as Centre Court Tennis, but I have the Japanese version because of how hard it is to play European N64 games on a US system] - 4 player simultaneous, saves to controller pak (7 pages per character file). Let's Smash is a tennis game from Hudson. This is an okay but flawed game thanks to difficult controls. Let's Smash has a lot of features and okay to good graphics, but the timing for hitting the ball is quite tight. Otherwise the controls are fine, and you have the usual options -- regular hit or lob, on separate buttons -- but that ball timing is a problem. It took a while before I managed to win a match because of how hard it is to get used to hitting back the ball. It's particularly bad when you use the default single-screen view and are on the upper half of the screen. The very tight timing reminds me of Namco's World Court Tennis for the Turbografx. Indeed, it would be very much like that interesting but frustrating nearly-impossible-once-you-leave-the-bottom-half-of-the-screen game if not for one major addition, different camera angles (on the C buttons). The game got a lot more playable once I figured out how to switch to the third-person-behind-the-character camera, which gives you a close-in view behind your character sort of like that in Mario Tennis for the Virtual Boy. It's much, much easier to hit the ball from there than the default classic-style overhead camera. Of course, though, if you want to play the game in multiplayer you'll have to get used to that camera... or just play Mario's Tennis for the N64, that might be the better option. That game doesn't have this issue, hitting the ball is easy in that game. If you do play it multiplayer, be prepared for it to take more than a few matches before everyone manages to figure out the correct timing for hitting the ball. The AI is quite tough as well, and can be hard to defeat. Visually Let's Smash looks okay, but, like most Hudson N64 games, it doesn't look great. Hudson never managed to master N64 graphics like Nintendo, Rare, Acclaim, or such did. This game shows improvement over early Hudson N64 games like Bomberman 64, but still looks only average. The characters look fine and the arenas decent, and the framerate is thankfully good, but nothing looks great for the system, the N64 can do better, an does in games like Mario's Tennis.
For options, Let's Smash has quite a few. First, you can play Tournaments. There are four options here, based on the four major championships in pro tennis, the British, French, American, and Australian Opens. This game doesn't have any official licenses, so don't expect any real players, but there are 16 players to choose from, half male and half female, and the ball bounces differently on clay, hard, or grass courts. There is a different arena for each open, and you try to go through a single-elimination tournament to make it to the top. You can choose in the options how many games each match should last. Next, you can do a single match on any court. Next, you can create your own tennis pro, a very cool option. You can choose gender and clothing, and unlike many games (but like in the PSP Hot Shots Tennis game) it isn't gender-resticted, so you can have male characters wear 'female' tennis outfits. Nice option. You can also choose the hairstyle and color, face, skin color, clothing, and stats (made difficult by the language barrier, all stat names are in Japanese; I just guessed and chose middle settings. I sure wish it was easier to play European N64 games on US systems!). You start with only one set of tennis clothes that you choose, but character creation mode isn't just about creating characters you can play as in tournaments, though you can do that. No, you can also train in some minigames, or play matches against AI opponents. The minigames aren't as elaborate as those in Sega's great Virtua Tennis, but they are challenging and can be fun. There is one where you try to target specific points on the ground, one where you try to bounce the ball off some targets as many times as you can, and two more. Each has different difficulty levels.
The main draw for this mode, though, is playing as your custom characters against AI opponents. In these single matches, you can play on a variety of real or fantasy courts in matches where you get a clothing piece from the winner if you win, or lose one if you lose. So yeah, it's like gambling, except that you can just turn off the game if you're losing and don't need to lose anything, if you have remembered to save recently of course. It's nice to see your clothing options grow as you win matches, though actually winning is, of course, difficult. The courses, outside of the four stadiums for the major opens, include a grassy field, a lava pit, an ice level (with penguins who get in your way as obstacles, and you can hit them to the other side of the court with your racket to make them bother the other person), an urban court, a somewhat wild west-themed desert, and more. I find the ones with obstacles the most interesting; there's nothing like that in the main tournaments! There is also a different announcer for each arena, or, for some reason, no announcer in the ice arena. Overall, Let's Smash is a decent to good game. It gave me a very poor first impression thanks to the games' overly-difficult controls, but after some practice I started liking the game more. Still, compared to Virtua Tennis on Dreamcast or Mario Tennis for N64, this game isn't nearly as good thanks to the difficult controls and only average graphics. Hot Shots Tennis for PSP also probably does the custom character thing better, as it has a full 'RPG-styled' mode. This game has character-building, but it's not a full RPG as you don't explore a world, talk to people, and the like, you just choose options from menus and play matches. Still, despite its flaws, Let's Smash was definitely worth getting. It's okay.
Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness - 4 player simultaneous (in battle mode), saves to controller pak (8 blocks). Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness is one of Namco's only games for the N64. This game and Namco Museum are the only games Namco itself made for the N64; Ridge Racer 64 was a first-party Nintendo title, by NST. 5th-gen Namco were, sadly, huge Sony supporters, but at least we on the N64 did get this quality title. After the success of Pac-Man World for the Playstation, Namco decided to make a Ms. Pac-Man game. This isn't a full 3d platformer like that game is, though; instead, it's more of a classic-styled, overhead-view action/puzzle title. This game is a polygonal 3d game, but almost feels "2.5" in that you mostly just move around on a flat grid. You can travel between upper and lower areas and the like, but it all plays from a pulled-back viewpoint. This gives it a much more traditional feel than the side-view isometric 3d platforming of Pac-Man world, though it's also a lot more approachable than the frustrating isometric platforming that game is loaded with. Between the two, I probably do have more fun with this one, but both are worth a try. I wish the N^4 had gotten a version of Pac-Man World as well, too bad.
The story here is forgettable; you, as Ms. Pac-Man, have to travel through time, thanks to a machine made by Professor Pac, to rescue the princess or something stupid like that. The time-travel mechanic allows each level to have a different theme, so you go through ancient Egypt first and progress from there. Your goal is always to just reach the end of the stage, but enemies, puzzles, and many dots to collect lie along the way. Levels are linear mazes, so you progress through a level, instead of just running around one big maze as in the original Pac-Man games. Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness is definitely on the easy side, but it's fun despite that. The puzzle elements add something to the game, as you do sometimes have to figure out how to get to some dots, by pushing blocks, using jump-cannon things which toss you to another point in the level, and more. Enemies are also a threat, unless you kill them with a Power Pellet. Figuring out how to progress usually isn't too hard, but the game does get more challenging as you go along, and the adventure is plenty of fun. You can also unlock harder time-trial versions of the levels after you beat them, and can play the original Ms. Pac-Man arcade game as well. There are also three multiplayer modes, though I haven't played them yet. This is a fun little game; I wish it was harder, but otherwise it's good classic gaming fun. This is a multiplatform game also available on PS1 and Dreamcast. The three versions look very similar, with the expected graphical differences -- the DC version looks the best, N64 in the middle, and PS1 the worst. I also have the DC version and it probably is a bit better than this one, but the N64 version is more than good enough to be worth getting.
Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 2 (J) - 1 player, saves to cartridge. Shiren the Wanderer 2 is one of Chunsoft's many roguelikes that they have released over the past 20-plus years. I'm not a big fan of the genre, but got this one anyway because it's interesting and is on the N64. I'm having issues with this game (how do you save???), but that's probably just me; anyone who can read Japanese certainly won't have a problem. Once the first Shiren for SNES was a success Chunsoft obviously knew they'd hit on a popular formula, and the company continues to make fairly similar games to this day. As with most of their earlier roguelikes, Shiren 2 is a Japan-only release. The game has good graphics, good gameplay, and lots to do. It's a great title, and I'm really not sure why it isn't better-known outside of Japan. There are very few mentions of this game and isn't even one single FAQ out there in English for this game, which is a real shame! One is badly needed. Just some basic thing explaining how the menus work would be fantastic, and something for item names would be even better, either in FAQ or translation-patch form. But if you stick with the game despite the language barrier, it's great classic Chunsoft Mysterious Dungeon roguelike fun. As usual you play as Shiren, the mysterious wanderer of the title. He is an adventurer in a fantasy version of traditional Japan, and is trying to help out a town beset by monsters.
As always in Mysterious Dungeon games, Shiren 2 plays from an overhead perspective, and when in dungeons the game is turn-based and you move on a grid. The game has sprite-based characters in 3d environments, and the look works well.
Visually Shiren 2 looks pretty good. The art style is somewhat rounded and cute, and I like the look of the sprites. The polygonal environments look good to great as well, this game has good art design. This is a good-looking N64 game. The music is similarly good and fits the traditional Japanese theme quite well. Combat works just like most any other Mysterious Dungeon game. When you move or attack so do the enemies, but they can't move otherwise. You can move one space at a time with the d-pad, or use fast movement with the analog stick or by holding B or Z. The fast movement is very useful. On each floor of the dungeons in the game your goal is to find the exit while collecting as much stuff as you can (while dealing with your tight inventory limit, you can only hold about 20 items), but the enemies will make that difficult to say the least; it may be easier than its SNES predecessor, but this is a hard game, probably harder than the third game, for Wii, is; Shiren 2 doesn't have any more forgiving modes. While you stay alive it can be fun enough, but then you die an lose all your equipped items and level, as is common in this genre; you only keep things if you beat the dungeon and put them in storage. Ouch! Honestly I've never liked this kind of harsh design, I prefer having a game where you don't have to continually redo things you have done before just because you died farther in to the game. Yes, I've mostly skipped over the wave of roguelikes the game industry has made in recent years. Add on top of that that probably because of the language barrier I still can't figure out how to actually save a game, and yeah, this game is a bit hard to play. Another key game design element makes that worse -- your main task in this game is to build a castle so that the locals in the town you're in can protect themselves from the hordes of monsters. That's cool, it's nice to have a task beyond just killing stuff and gaining levels, but you need to collect certain items for the castle, and better items will hold up better against monster attacks that apparently happen later in the game. This whole system is obviously somewhat impenetrable if you don't know the language. So, overall, Shiren the Wanderer 2 is a good-looking game which is fun to play, but the language barrier is significant and a real issue.
To be clear, If I could actually save my progress in this game, I'd say that it's a pretty good game for its genre. It definitely seems fun, and isn't as hard as the first game for SNES. So please someone, tell me what I'm doing wrong... the only menu options that quit seem to either (for one option) quit without saving, or (for the other) restart the game from the beginning. I don't see anyone to talk to to save, either. So yeah, what's going on here? I want to be able to play this game, and "play it all in one sitting" is not a good answer.
Nuclear Strike 64 - 1 player, saves to controller pak, Expansion Pak supported (for higher resolution graphics). Nuclear Strike 64 is the N64 version of the fifth and sort-of-final Strike game from EA. While the previous game, Soviet Strike, didn't release on Nintendo platforms, this one returned the series to Nintendo. There's sort of a sixth, but only if you count Future Cop LAPD as a Strike game -- it started out as one, but changed to an original title during development. I'd call it a new game, so this is the last game in EA's topdown-style flight combat sim series which was quite popular particularly on the Genesis and SNES. I have never have been a fan of this series, but I got Soviet Strike, the 4th game, for Saturn a few years ago and was surprised to find it kind of fun for a while, the series' usual too-high difficulty level aside. So, I thought that maybe I'd like this one too... but I don't know. It's still a Strike game, and as with all the Strike games, it's too slow and boring to be a good action flight game, but too action-oriented to be a good sim. But also, on the N64, the live-action-video cutscenes of the original PC/PS1 game are gone. Without the super-cheesy live-action-video FMV the game loses something. Gameplay-wise, the main changes in Nuclear Strike compared to its predecessor are that you now have a variety of tanks and a hovercraft you will control at times during the game, the graphics are better, and there's an improved on-screen compass/map telling you where you need to head. That arrow is helpful, it does indeed reduce time spent on the map as the back of the box claims, but the full-screen map is still essential. And visually, the N64 version certainly looks better than the PS1 version thanks to 3d that doesn't fall apart whenever anything moves. The textures are a bit blurry as usual, but the game looks nice. Still, that cheesy FMV is good stuff. As for the gameplay, the core gameplay is the same as usual for this series. It's still very hard and kind of boring. This game plays a lot like the previous one, but maybe with a closer-in camera. The game still plays on a flat plane, so you cannot move up or down, only around at a set level over the ground. You can shoot bullets and missiles and lower a winch to pick things up. You are not only fighting the many enemies in this game, though. Fuel and ammo are both very limited, and unless you are careful, use your weapons well, and know where the pickups are, you won't finish the mission. There are a nice variety of objectives along the way, but they usually boil down to destroying or protecting things. You also need to be on the lookout for fuel and ammo to pick up, of course. It's okay, but I get frustrated when I lose far into a mission; saving is limited, and I lose interest before getting good enough to beat a mission. Each game generally has only four or so missions, or maps, each made up of a series of objectives scattered around the level. Four is more than enough in games as hard as the Strike games are, and Nuclear Strike is no exception. Even though I did kind of like Soviet Strike, I still have not yet ever beaten a full mission in a Strike game, I believe; I did get most of the way through Future Cop LAPD, but that plays quite differently. Overall Nuclear Strike 64 is a good game that just isn't really for me. Also on PC and PS1; the best version is surely the PC version, but between PS1 and N64, you have to choose between better graphics and probably also controls (N64) or cheesy FMV (PS1).
Off-Road Challenge (actually already had but forgot to cover) - 2 player simultaneous, saves to controller pak. Off-Road Challenge is a point-to-point racing game from Midway. The game is an arcade port of a Midway arcade game, developed by Avalanche Studios. They didn't do a very good job, sadly. The game runs in the Cruis'n USA engine and visually looks sort of like that series. This game is a part of the Off-Road franchise, the third (or fourth if you include the Track Pack as a game) game in a series that began with the all-time classic early '90s arcade game "Ironman" Ivan Stewart's Super Off-Road. I absolutely love the original Super Off-Road and always have, but this game, sadly, isn't nearly as good; of the six point-to-point Midway racers on the N64, this one is the one I have played least. Off-Road Challenge is pretty much just a mediocre spinoff of Cruis'n, with off-road pickup trucks instead of cars, desert-only environments, only six tracks, 3d truck graphics, ugly graphics with a sometimes-poor framerate, and a far higher difficulty level. Returning from previous Off-Road games are turbo boosts and boost powerups to refill your boost. These powerups are small and a lot harder to pick up than they were in the original Super Off-Road, and yet you really need them to be competitive. The skiddy controls don't help here, either. I don't think I've ever actually finished first in a race in this game; it's frustratingly hard right from the start, and then gets harder.
Indeed, one major issue with this game, along with the visuals and sound, is that it is way too hard! The handling is average skiddy stuff, you slide around a lot. So, memorization is key, to learn when to turn on the courses to avoid the many obstacles littering each course and to try to stay on the road. The tracks are curvy and difficult, and I do like the bumpy, obstacle-filled track designs, but I don't like how hard getting the powerups is or the super-difficult AI. Still, moments like dodging a rock knocked over by a falling UFO or learning the correct route to avoid pitfalls in the track are kind of nice. However, perhaps because of the 3d vehicles, there are only eight racers in each race, only four trucks to choose from, and only six tracks in the game. That's a lot less of all three of things than you'll find in any Cruis'n game, and the tracks are no longer than Cruis'n tracks, so there isn't much variety here. Between races, as usual in the series there's also an upgrade system where you can upgrade your truck between races with your winnings. The championship mode saves your truck upgrades, so in order to compete later on you really need to have done well earlier in the game, so don't settle for 4th in that first circuit even though finishing harder is hard. YOu need to finish in 3rd in each race in the second circuit, and do even better than that later on, so mastering the tracks is essential. I haven't done it, sadly. The dune buggy is fastest, so it might be the best of the four vehicles available, but between the AI, the controls, and the rest, the game doesn't feel fairly designed. The AI usually just beats me, even when I do better time-wise... argh. I wouldn't be surprised if the AI cheats.
Visually, the graphics are below average, with some VERY large super-blurry textures, a sometimes-iffy framerate, and distance fade-in. Midway can, and did, do so much better than this! I know the tracks are full of bumps and hills, but still, this game looks worse than the first SF Rush game on N64, but actually released after it. The music is forgettable rock, and fails to loop after finishing the first time, so many races will end in silence. Not good. There are a lot of much, much better, and better-looking, N64 racing games than this. There's not much here to make me want to spend the hours it would take to actually finish this very difficult game. There are few modes, too. You can do a single race, a circuit where you go through all the tracks, and that's it. You won't find modified versions of the tracks here, unlike Cruis'n World or Exotica, and all other Midway N64 point-to-point racers have many more tracks than this game. Overall, Off-Road Challenge is disappointing. This is a downgraded port of an average arcade game, and even I can't entirely defend it, and I find the Cruis'n series fun. The game has no new ideas, some design issues, looks ugly and sounds bad, and I get tired of always losing. Instead of playing this game more and beating it, I'd rather play a better game. Off-Road Challenge is below average. Really, stick to the original classic Super Off-Road. Or for a similar 3d game, the best polygonal 'Off-Road"-style racing game from Midway doesn't actually doesn't have the franchise name on it -- it's 4-Wheel Challenge for the Dreamcast. That's a great game, a bit like this one but better. That game is also very tough, but that's the kind of hard that keeps me coming back! I wish this game was like that too, but it isn't. Arcade port (but N64-exclusive at home).
Puyo Puyo Sun 64 (J) - 2 player simultaneous, saves to cartridge. This game is a puzzle game in the popular and long-running Puyo Puyo series, then made by Compile -- this game is from before Compile shut down and Sega bought the rights to the franchise. Puyo Puyo is a match-four block-dropping puzzle game. The "blocks" here are called...
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26 new game summaries. 25 are games I bought since the last update in late 2013, and one is a game I overlooked somehow before, Off-Road Challenge. 17 of these games are Japanese import titles, and only 9 US releases, so this is an import-heavy list. I have only actually beaten a couple of these games, so this is as much first-impressions as it is reviews, as usual for Game Opinion Summaries -- I cover everything I have. I know they're kind of long for "short-ish" summaries, but there's quite a bit to say about each game.
As always, I list the number of players the game supports, save type, and any supported accessories after the title, and other platforms the game is available on at the end of the review. Most of these games are N64-exclusive titles, though, so few of them have other platform listings.
64 Trump Collection: Alice to Waku Waku Trump World [aka Alice's WakuWaku Trump World 64] (J) - 1 player, saves to cartridge.
This is a card game collection with 13 different card games all on one cart. In addition to being able to play any of the games individually, the main mode is a story mode, where you play as Alice from Alice in Wonderland and face off against various characters from the story, one card game at a time. As with those games or Yoshi's Story, the game has a storybook look to it, with paper-cutout sprite characters in 3d environments. Matches take place in a variety of nice 3d environments, each one one page of the storybook you are playing through made into a full 3d environment. The game has great graphics that remind me a lot of Paper Mario or Dr. Mario 64's cutscenes, but this game actually released several years before either of those.
Of course, the story and game instructions are all entirely in Japanese, which makes playing the game a little harder for those who can't read the language. I highly recommend getting a complete copy of the game, because the manual has additional instructions for each game, and mentions English-language names for each cardgame, which is very helpful; ingame it's all Japanese script. The cardgames in the manual are organized in the order you will play them in the story mode, which is also quite helpful. In order, using the names as listed in the manual first followed by names the games are better-known as in parenthesis, the card games here are Shinkeisuijyaku (aka Concentration), Babanuki (aka Old Maid), Shichinarabe (aka Sevens), Speed, Doubt, Page One (a Japanese card game), Daihugo (aka Daifugo or Daihinmin; another Japanese cardgame), Seven Bridge, Poker (video poker, I think it is), Blackjack, Klondike [classic Solitaire; wrongly spelled as "Chrondike" in the manual), Freecell ("Freesell", the manual says), and Dobon (an Uno-ish Japanese cardgame).
So, the games are definitely an interesting mix with a good amount of variety, as far as card games go. Quite a few of the games were unfamiliar to me, but I eventually figured out the rules of each one. The ingame text explaining possible winning hand scores and such in Poker and Blackjack is, for some reason, English, unlike most of the rest of the text, so that's nice. Still, there is a definite language barrier, particularly for the games I wasn't familiar with. The game does have one other issue, other than the language barrier: 64 Trump Collection is single player only. That's an understandable problem, because card games rely on each person not being able to see the others' cards, but it's still unfortunate, this kind of thing is the most fun played against others. Still, this game was a nice surprise. I got it randomly because it was really cheap, and it ended up being pretty good. The visuals are particularly nice, and the gameplay is good. For a card-game collection 64 Trump Collection is better than most, it's not just Solitaire, Poker, and/or Blackjack like most card-game videogames are. Recommended, if you find it for a good price.
Baku Bomberman 2 (J) [Bomberman 64: The Second Attack] - 4 player simultaneous (in battle mode only), saves to cartridge. Baku Bomberman 2, released in the US as Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, is the sequel to 1997's Bomberman 64, which in Japan was known as Baku Bomberman. This is an okay game that disappointed me. But first, why get the import version of a US release? Well, as with Mario Party 3, the import was cheap, while US copies are quite expensive. There is a story in this game that I can't understand, but the gameplay is not too complex, so it's quite playable in Japanese. Baku Bomberman 2 changes things from its relatively popular predecessor. While Bomberman 64 was more of an attempt at a 3d platform/adventure Bomberman game, with large worlds to explore, missions for gold cards which are the games' version of Mario 64 stars, a very unique multiplayer mode with 3d arenas and round explosions instead of the usual Bomberman cross-shaped-lines explosion, and more, it was one of a kind. This game, sadly, is not more of the same. Bomberman 64 does have some flaws -- it's too hard near the end, you don't have a jump button, and teh graphics are mediocre at best, to name a few things -- but it is a good game overall, and I really liked the attempt to make a larger 3d adventure game out of Bomberman. Sadly, Hudson never attempted it again. While there are a couple of 2d Bomberman adventure-styled games, in Bomberman Quest (GBC) and Bomberman Tournament (GBA), Bomberman 64 (1997) is the only such game on any console. I really wish they had made more, but maybe Hudson just couldn't afford it or something. Bomberman 64 was followed up by the 3d platformer Bomberman Hero, which is fun but very different from standard Bomberman.
This game came next, and it's probably less interesting than either of its predecessors, sadly. It's much more linear and just doesn't feel as interesting to play as either Bomberman 64 or Hero. This game mostly just plays as a sequence of rooms. Enter a room, viewed from a side-isometric angle, kill the enemies, figure out the puzzles for how to proceed, and continue. While explosions are still round in single player, the multiplayer sadly ditches them in favor of classic cross-shaped explosions. Along the way you collect a variety of Pokemon-styled creatures that Hudson as putting in Bomberman games at the time; they are also in several GBC/GBA Bomberman games. This game is 3d, but the side view limits things when compared to Bomberman 64, and it's not a full-on platformer like Hero. It's an okay game, but my interest in it fades quickly, apart from a few fun moments here and there; I'd much rather play a more interesting game. Sadly, Bomberman games after this one wouldn't improve things -- the last two 3d-world Bomberman games, Generation and Jetters (for GC/PS2), are even worse than this game. Hudson was great in the '90s, but after two initial interesting efforts couldn't figure out how to improve on their ideas for 3d Bomberman, and it shows. This game retreats on many things from the first game, but isn't classic 2d Bomberman either. It feels generic, as you run around, blow things up, and progress. The multiplayer is similarly okay, but disappointing. Returning from Bomberman 64 are the 3d arenas, but they now have cross-shaped explosions instead of round ones, making hitting people a bit harder. I do like that the 3d arenas are back though, the two Bomberman 64 games are the only two games ever in the series with anything like them; Generation/Jetters ditch them entirely for 2d-style multiplayer. Classic Bomberman multiplayer is pretty good, probably better overall from that in Bomberman 64, but I like having the option to try something different. It's too bad that they abandoned this style in favor of only 2d multiplayer, after this game. Overall though, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack is an average game. It's decent and can be fun at times, but for the price the US version goes for I can't recommend it. Maybe do pick up the import if you see a cheap copy of it though (and modify your system to play Japanese games).
Bomberman 64 [2001] (J) - 4 player simultaneous, saves to cartridge. Bomberman 64, the Japanese game, is the fifth and final Bomberman game on the N64, and, releasing in December 2001, the last N64 game released in Japan. Unlike its predecessors on the platform, this game is entirely 2d, and uses no polygons at all, just sprites. This game is a collection of several 'minigames', I guess it might be best to say. That is, there are several modes, none of them as full-featured as Bomberman games that focus on that mode are. It's a cool collection, but I do find the sparse featuresets within each mode disappointing. The visuals are mostly nice, though; it's solid classic 2d Bomberman and looks good.
The first mode is classic Bomberman, single-player. In this mode, you go through a series of branching levels. Gameplay is classic Bomberman, with a square grid, with posts and then breakable blocks around them that your bombs will destroy. Your goal in each stage is to kill all of the enemies walking around. Many stages do scroll, so they aren't just one screen. The gameplay is great and is plenty of fun. I like the visuals too; Bomberman games changed their art styles regularly, and this is probably one of the better-looking ones. I like the look a lot more than the SNES games, certainly. The music is good happy stuff, too. The problem here is that it's over far too soon. There are only maybe seven to ten stages per game, so the playtime is very short; most classic 2d Bomberman games have at lest 25 levels. The game does have replay value because of the branching paths, though; you can see different stages each time for a while. Still, it's short and easy to finish. When you win, the game gives you your finishing time, and saves the top times in the records section of the menu. Each stage looks different, and the visual variety is nice. Still, I'd have rather seen a longer game, this is really short. It's not hard to finish a run through the mode in half an hour. At least it's quite fun and nice-looking while it lasts, though!
There is also a classic Bomberman multiplayer mode. You've got a variety of stages to play on, but all are similar traditional grids; there are no weird stages like those in Bomberman 64 (US) in this game. Of course it's also four players max, as opposed to the five in the Turbografx games or eight in Saturn Bomberman. Still, it's a great classic Bomberman multiplayer mode.
Next is a stripped-down version of Panic Bomber. Panic Bomber is the Bomberman puzzle game, and it's basically a Tetris knockoff. As in Tetris blocks drop down a well-shaped field, and you have to place them. Making it different are the bomb blocks, which can only be destroyed by lit bombs. This gives the game an element of Puzzle Fighter's crash gems to it. This isn't nearly as great as that game, though. Panic Bomber is a decent puzzle game, but it's not one of my favorites; it's a bit too hard to destroy the bombs, sometimes. Another issue is that this version is very simplistic visually, and has no modes. All you can do is single matches against either an AI opponent or other humans. It does have support for up to four player splitscreen, but the Turbo CD and SNES (both Japan-only releases; why Nintendo brought over the Virtual Boy version in 1995 for a US release but not also the SNES one I have no idea) have five player splitscreen, so that's nothing new, and those games have actual single-player story modes which this does not have. There are no choices for backgrounds either in this version, just one very plain one. SO yeah, Panic Bomber here is okay, but not as good as I was hoping.
Last but probably not least, there is a Bomberman Land-styled minigame collection. Bomberman Land was a series of minigame Bomberman titles that lasted from the late '90s to late '00s, starting on the PS1. None of the early titles in the series released outside of Japan, but we did get some of the later ones on the DS, Wii, and PSP. In this version, you play as Bomberman and wander around an amusement park. Each 'ride' is a minigame. There are maybe ten or fifteen of them here, far fewer than there would be in a dedicated Bomberman Land game, but it is the only Bomberman Land-style game on the N64, so there is that. The main issue here is that some games do have a bit of a language barrier because the instructions are in Japanese, but fortunately none of them are too complex, and I figured them out. Wandering around the little park is also fun, though it'd be better if I knew what the people are saying of course (language barrier...). This is the only mode with much of any Japanese text, but it does have a good amount of it. Still, I like having this. It's a fun little minigame collection. The full Bomberman Land games are better, but they don't come with as many other modes as this game; they're usually just that and usually also classic Bomberman multiplayer and that's it.
Overall, Bomberman 64 (2001, Japan) is a good game, but I was hoping for more. This game has a reputation for being 'the 2d N64 Bomberman game', and it is that, but it's also a collection of games, none of which are as full-featured as similar games on other platforms. It is nice that it compiles all of them together, and on a platform that doesn't have other versions of any of the games present here, though. The visuals are also nice, or at least they are everywhere other than the somewhat plain-looking Panic Bomber, and the music is good. It's worth getting for series fans or if you find it affordably.
Custom Robo V2 (J) - 4 player, but only 2 player simultaneous (2 v 2 with only 1 active at any one time) in multiplayer mode, saves to cartridge. This game is the second in a great series of 3d robot fighting game action-RPGs. The series kind of feels like a much better version of Virtual-On, with RPG elements. It's set in a future world where people solve many conflicts with matches fought in little arenas by tiny robots they control. I covered the first game previously, but now also have the sequel. Custom Robo V2 is the second Custom Robo game, and the last one on the N64. As with the first game, it did not see a Western release because Nintendo of America was stupid and didn't think that these great games would sell. We DEFINITELY should have seen at least one of them! We did eventually get the GC and DS games, but the first three should have had US releases as well, to help fill in some of those N64 software droughts. Gameplay-wise, Custom Robo V2 is very, very similar to the first game. Gameplay is just as great as before, and again running around in the arenas fighting feels fantastic. The graphics have been slightly improved, but the framerate is just as high, which is very important for a game like this. It's absolutely key to the greatness of Custom Robo that even the N64 games run fast and smooth! The new arenas aren't too different fro the old ones, though. Each game has new arenas to fight in, but all are fairly similar in being small-ish squares with various walls and such in them. The combat system is, as always, centered around three weapon types, a gun type you shoot, a bomb type you launch at an angle, and a slower rocket or mine type. You can also do damage with your running charge move. The game controls great, and there are a lot of different weapons to try out. Of course the names are all in Japanese, but it's fun enough to try the various ones regardless of language.
However, apart from the new story, which you won't understand anyway unless you speak Japanese, four player 2v2 tag-team multiplayer mode, and additional robot parts and arenas to fight in, it's basically the same thing as the first game. The controls are the same (good, but the same), the types of weapons are the same, and the story is similar though new. The limitations on the 4 player mode are particularly disappointing. One of the most fun things in Custom Robo for Gamecube are the four-player matches, and I'd have loved to see them on the N64 as well! Maybe the hardware just can't handle it, but still it'd have been great to see, four robots going around at the same time makes things more exciting than just two. Otherwise, this feels almost like an expansion pak, it really is more of the same. In the story mode, as with all five Custom Robo games, you play as a generic anime guy, they never let you play as a different kind of character. This is a different guy from the one in the first game, so it is a new story. As with the first game, your boy hero starts out just learning about Custom Robo, but eventually will go on to do greater things with his tiny little fighting robot. You are the hero after all! As far as a language barrier here goes, Custom Robo games are sort of RPGs so I don't understand the story, but the games have simple and linear structures, so regardless of language you can't get lost or confused for too long, you'll figure out where to go quickly. Again the game starts out in school, as with the first game; in this series, the GC title is the only one to break away from the school-centric story concept so common to anime. Overall, Custom Robo V2 is a great game, but it's so similar to the first game that I don't know if having both of them is really necessary. Definitely get at lest one, though! And both, if you love this kind of game.
Doraemon 2: Nobita to Hikari no Shinden (J) - 1 player, saves to cartridge. This game is a sequel to the first N64 Doraemon game. Of course, as in all Doraemon games, you play as Doraemon the robot cat, the popular childrens' manga and anime character. Doraemon 2 is a more ambitious game than the first one, which I covered previously, but for the non-Japanese speaker it probably isn't a better game. While the first N64 Doraemon game is a fairly basic 3d platformer with some adventure elements in the overworld, this time the game is a 3d platform/adventure game. The game has a sizable world to explore, better graphics than the first game, people to talk to and (overlong) cutscenes, and plenty of puzzles of both the inventory and jumping varieties. The camera is pulled overhead so the view distance is limited, but you can go to first person by hitting R, though you can't move in first-person mode. When you go to first person you see that there is no fog, you can see to the horizon. That's nice, but the environments are average at best for the N64, and probably aren't even that. The game looks okay, nothing more. Doraemon 2 has good controls and multiple playable characters, as you will sometimes play as the children instead of Doraemon. One important thing to know about Doraemon 2 is that it isn't an action game; you do explore a world, but there are no enemies wandering around it. The few enemies I've seen are ones you "fight" with inventory puzzles, not action combat. In the game you mostly wander around, find items and try to figure out where to use them, talk to people, and jump around. You often need specific items to progress. The game does have a day-night cycle, and you gradually lose health at night because the children are scared, so you'll need to find your way to a savepoint and rest when night comes. That's a nice, touch, is one of the few ways I've found so far to actually run out of health in this game. A combat element, like most other Doraemon games have, might have been good, but it does work as an adventure/platform game. Maybe there's something later? As far as I am though there isn't any combat command, you don't shoot by hitting a button or something. So maybe not.
Because of the more ambitious design Doraemon 2 is probably a better game than its predecessor, but it also has a much higher language barrier; figuring out what to do in this game is tough right from the beginning! The far too long cutscenes are even more boring when you can't read the text, either. Some bits are voiced, but there are a lot of text boxes. The game uses no kanji though, appropriate for the young audience the game is for. But for non-Japanese speakers, there is very little on the internet to help you figure out how to play the game -- there are a couple of videos of the beginning of the game, but that's all I found, and it's not helpful for long. This is a problem in a puzzle-heavy game like this one, figuring out what to do is frustrating. I haven't gotten all this far in this game, it's hard to keep playing when I have no idea what to do. One tricky bit early on involved having to find some items, one of which was hidden on a buildings' roof, somewhere I didn't think to look. People who can read Japanese will get more out of this game for sure, but I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't more of a 3d platformer. There is platforming in this game, but exploring the world gets boring when I'm just walking around in circles because I don't know what my objective is. Just trying to interact with everything and using every item everywhere gets old after a while. And while the game looks decent, and they improved things over the fairly basic-looking first N64 Doraemon game, this isn't a great-looking game for sure; the N64 can do much better than you see here. Still, Doraemon 2 is at average overall, anyway. I probably wouldn't recommend it to people unless they really like the series or can read Japanese, though. There is also a third game, which is supposed to be somewhat similar in design to this one.
F1 Pole Position 64 - 1 player, saves to controller pak (70 pages required). F1 Pole Position 64 is a poorly-regarded racing game developed by Human Entertainment and improved for Western release by Ubisoft. This is a simple and arcadey F1 game, without the depth, complexity, challenge, or quality of an F1 World Grand Prix or Monaco Grand Prix. It is also the one and only racing game on the Nintendo 64 that does not have a multiplayer mode. On any other console single-player-only racing games are quite common, but not this one, so its absence here really stands out. Still, the game is better than I was expecting for something that seems to score between 4 and 6 out of 10. This definitely isn't a good game, but there is some amusement to be found here if you like simple and straightforward racing games instead of sims. F1 Pole Position 64 has been improved over the original Japanese version, Human Grand Prix. According to IGN's review, Ubisoft added the official F1 license, all 16 tracks from the F1 season in '97, 22 real F1 drivers to race as with their real car designs, and all the branding and advertising from the real thing. They also improved the draw distance, apparently. However, the graphics are still bland and mediocre, and there is still some popup. This game has a fairly low polygon count, with very simple environments that lack detail. The textures, particularly of the omnipresent ad banners, are fairly good, though, they look quite clear. They're all for real companies, and presumably came along with the F1 license. 16 cars are in each race, and the game can put at least most of them on screen at once, which is good. The framerate is also solid and doesn't drop, though with graphics this simple I'd hope it would be. Audio, however, is poor -- the music is weak, and car engine noise annoying and whiney.
Gameplay-wise, F1 Pole Position 64 is easy to learn. Just turn at the corners and brake when near a sharper turn, that's about it. The game defaults to Easy AI difficulty, no car damage, and automatic transmission, so simplicity is the goal. You can turn up those settings if you want. There are also car settings to modify, so there is a bit of sim here. It's nothing too complex, but the settings affect how your car handles, so they do matter. You can also pit in during races, to replace tires and fill up on gas. The game doesn't have much in the way of good physics, things just bounce off eachother in a basic fashion. I found this game much easier than most other 3d F1 games; I finished 5th in my first race, and in races after that, except for one race where I managed to take too much damage with damage turned on (there isn't a good indicator I could see that I was in danger, annoyingly), I finished well in every race, on Easy, without needing any great skill. It's fun to be able to just play the game and do okay, and I'm sure turning up the difficulty would make the game harder, though people who want that probably should just play F1 World Grand Prix. The problem is though, this is still an F1 game, so races in the season mode are 10 laps long, and you need to do qualifying before that if you want to start anywhere other than last. That's all a bit boring. There is no music ingame either, as usual in F1 games, and the bland gameplay isn't exciting. It's not too hard, but it's not too fun either, doesn't look great, controls only okay and not beyond that, and sounds kind of bad. Combine that with the absence of multiplayer, and F1 Pole Position 64 isn't very good. All you can do here is play a season, single race, or time-trial, all as one of the 22 real drivers, there is no custom racer option, on the games' 16 real-world tracks. The problem with this game is that those wanting a good F1 sim won't play this because it's a simpler, arcadey game, while those who want arcade-style racing games will play more fun games like F-Zero X, Excitebike 64, Rush, or what have you. This is in a boring middle ground along with stuff like Automobili Lamborghini, but maybe worse than that game. If you want a fun, arcadey open-world racing game on the N64, I recommend getting Indy Racing 2000; it's good. Probably skip this game unless it sounds like fun to you. Still, it IS not quite as bad as I thought it would be, so there is that.
Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko - 1 player, saves to controller pak (1 block per file). Gex 3 is the third and last console Gex game, one of the many platformer series with a Sonic-style "cool" animal mascot. Gex's character may be Sonic-inspired, though, but the gameplay is different. The basic concept of Gex is that he's a TV-watching-obsessed gecko. So, each world in each Gex game is inspired by some type of TV show. The first game is a quality 2d platformer, but the sequels are 3d platformers. I covered Gex 2 in my PS1 Game Opinion Summaries list, but to recap, both games have very similar designs. The games have Mario 64-style hubs, with themed worlds branching out from there. Each world is themed after a type of movie or TV show, of course. This time, the first world is a snow level. Fortunately, the game is okay. Gex 3 is a nice improvement over Gex 2, which I didn't like very much. It is a similar game, but the graphics, gameplay, level designs, and objectives are all better. Gex 3 is only a bit above average, but Gex 2 doesn't reach average quality, so the improvement is welcome. The first level in this game is a lot more fun to play and explore than any level I saw in Gex 2. You've got a bunch of stuff to find, missions to attempt, and more, as in most 3d platformers of the era. Unfortunately, the controls hold the game back a bit. Even though you use the analog stick, you don't really have true analog control here -- instead, you can only move in eight or so directions. Apparently they did not fix the movement to account for having an analog stick on the N64, which is a problem in a genre all about moving around in 3d. Still, Gex 3 for N64 is a much better port than Gex 64, the N64 port of Enter the Gecko, was, by all accounts; I haven't played Gex 64, but it's supposed to be not very good, with a short draw distance, poor graphics, and more. The draw distance in this game is a lot better, and the graphics are improved all around. Graphically this game is no match for the better N64 3d platformers, but at least it looks decent, and even nice at times. The gameplay is about on that level as well. Overall Gex 3 isn't great, but it is a decent, slightly above-average game. After Gex 2 I was expecting worse. Also on PS1; this is a port of the PS1 original.
Goemon Mononoke Sugoroku (J) - 4 player alternating, saves to cartridge, Transfer Pak compatible (links to the GBC version of the game). Ganbare Goemon: Mononoke Sugoroku is a Goemon-themed board game with RPG elements which Konami released only in Japan in late 1999. There is also a Game Boy Color version of the game, though I haven't played it. I love the Goemon series, so I decided to finally get the last of the three N64 games, even if it is just a boardgame. The game has fantastic boxart with clay-style art of the characters and some of the monsters in the game. It's really nice. After playing the game though, it's not too hard to see why we didn't get this game; the game is decent, but it's just a boardgame, not a more full console experience. Digital boardgames like this often seemed to be more popular in Japan than the West. Fortunately, even though the game is entirely in Japanese, it's fairly easy to understand with a little bit of practice. The "Mononoke" in the title refers to monsters, and this game is all about fighting monsters, here seen in the form of the cards in a boardgame-RPG. There are still a few things I don't get, but most of the gameplay makes sense. First you choose a board, which there are only a couple of, and a character. All four of the standard Goemon characters are playable, and some others are unlockable. This game introduced a new costume for Yae; she now has a short kimono, instead of pants. I think I like the original costume more, but this is fine. The other three characters, Goemon, Ebisumaru, and Sasuke, look the same as ever. All characters are 2d sprites in this game, not polygon models like the previous two N64 Goemon games. They're fairly well done, and the game is well-polished visually for what is here, but the budget here clearly is a lot lower than its predecessors. The music is still fantastic as usual in the series, though. I love the Goemon series' classic-Japanese-style music. Still, I really wish Konami had made a third full-scale N64 Goemon game, instead of the not-great overly-serious 3d action-adventure game on the PS2 in 2000 and then those two mediocre PS1 2.5d platformers they tossed out in 2001... too bad. This is a good game, but some more variety and choice would have been nice. Each board has a circular path on it, so there are no branches, choices about where you go, or anything -- you just travel around in a circle endlessly until someone wins. That's a bit disappointing, some more interesting board maps would have been great.
Your goal in each game is to defeat your opponent or opponents. As in an RPG, each character has a health meter, and you lose health when you lose battles. To protect yourself, you can summon monsters and place them on spaces. Monsters take the form of cards, so when you land on a space you can only play the monster cards you actually have. There are also other kinds of cards, for direct attacks, healing, and such. You can equip cards on monsters, or use them on yourself. Cards with the sword icon can be equipped before a fight for a stat boost, while other cards can be used during a fight. Each turn you'll get some new cards. Battles are simple, you or a monster you summon fight against the opponent and/or their monster. Each monster has an attack, defense, and health rating, and the attacker goes first. Damage is attack minus defense, and the defender attacks back if they survived. The battle system is super simplistic, but at least it's not just Rock-Paper-Scissors such as Dokapon Kingdom for Wii, I don't like that game much because of how random the battle system is. If a monster is killed extra damage is applied to that monsters' player character, so you want to avoid losing monsters if you can. You want to avoid landing on enemy monster spaces, while hoping that the opponent(s) land on your monsters. Of course, a lot of this is random since die-rolls determine movement. I like the monster card art, some of it's pretty nice. In addition to card boosts, you can also move monsters around from one space to spaces nearby. You can even move them onto enemy monster spaces and attack them, which can be helpful. The more skill-based RPG side to the game makes this game different from something like Monopoly where once you've built hotels and such on a space they're stuck there forever; in this game you can move your "buildings" (monsters) around. Some spaces also have special functions such as healing you or your monsters, and you get money for each time you make a circuit around the board. For the most part though it's not too complex of a game, centering around choosing good places for your monsters to be, powering them up, and hoping that luck is on your side. Overall it's a good game, but winning requires a lot of luck; I do prefer more skill-based games. More boards, and more complex board layouts, would also have been very nice. Still, Goemon Mononoke Sugoroku is a fun thing to have and play once in a while, and is well worth it for series or digital boardgame-RPG fans. That box looks great, too. Also available on Game Boy Color; I'm not sure how similar that version is.
Jikkyo Powerful Pro Baseball 5 (J) - 2 player simultaneous, saves to cartridge. Powerful Pro Baseball, or Pawapuro, was for a long time one of Konami's more popular franchises in Japan. This series of super-deformed baseball games were well known for having challenging and deep gameplay beneath their cute graphical exterior, and this one is no exception. I haven't played this game as much as maybe I should for this, but it's not my favorite kind of baseball game. The game is an interesting hybrid of classic and modern baseball game design. On the one hand the game has a top-down, somewhat zoomed-in field view like that of most 3rd or 4th-gen baseball games, but on the other hand it has a fairly modern pitching/batting cursor interface. This is the second of five N64 Pawapuro games; only two games in the series have a US release, both MLB-themed games on the PS2/Wii. The game has all 12 teams and stadiums, and all the real players, from the Japan League circa 1998. There are a lot of features, modes, and options, and it's all in Japanese so for the non-speaker just figuring out how to do anything beyond a basic single match is a bit overwhelming. There are single matches (1p vs. cpu, 1p vs. 2p, or cpu vs. cpu), an options menu just for single matches; a character-raising mode where you train up a young player, adventure game-style (I haven't played this much because of the language barrier, but it's a series staple and is interesting); season mode; the ability to save a game in progress; and more. I'm not sure what all of the main menu options do, they're all in Japanese and there is no English-language help out there for these games. The game has okay to good graphics, each field does look different and the players are big-headed and cute. Arenas are 3d, with sprite-based characters. The sound design is even better. There is a quite excitable announcer, and lots of crowd noise and chanting too. I like the sound design here, it adds to the game.
The gameplay is tough as well -- you'll lose, badly, for a while until you figure out how to play decently. That is common in baseball games, though, because pitching and batting are very hard things to do, the hardest things people commonly do in sports. Pitching and batting just use A and the stick/pad. Presuming that you turn on analog control, which is recommended (seriously, why is d-pad only even an option?), for batting you move a batting cursor around with the stick. The pitcher has no indicator, but instead the ball goes where you are pointing the stick. For some reason, maybe it's an option I don't know about or maybe it's to be realistic, but left and right are reversed, so to throw to the right side of the plate you have to hold the stick left. Admittedly when pitching you do throw from the left to go right, and vice versa, but still, it's weird and not great. I do like the idea of holding the stick in the place you want the ball to go and then just hitting a button to pitch, though, it works well. My problem with pitching so far is that if there are any alternate pitches I can't figure out how to throw them, so it's always just one pitch type, which is annoying -- how do I throw offspeed, curveballs, sliders, etc., instead of just straight pitches? Once the ball has been thrown, an indicator appears showing approximately where it's headed, and the batter has a split second to move the cursor there and swing. As with pitching, there's just one button, no choice of normal or harder swing as some baseball games have. Getting your timing right is hard, as it should be. Overall the pitching/batting interface is alright, but could use some more features, unless I'm missing something under the big language barrier.
For fielding, though, I don't like it as much. I've never liked this style of top-down field view, and this game is no exception. I much prefer actually being able to see the field, so that I don't have to guess where to move my fielder. They do have an indicator pointing towards who you are controlling off screen, but it's not nearly as good as actually seeing the player. I know I say this every time about baseball games, but give me the Hardball series' perspective every time, over this stuff! And with 3d graphics, I know you could do something better than this basic overhead view. I'm sure some people would like the game because of this, but I feel the opposite, it makes the game harder and less fun. Honestly, I don't think I'll be playing this game enough to get good; the overhead perspective isn't great, and unless I'm missing something I really miss having alternate pitch types, compared to other baseball games. Batting works well, pitching is okay, the graphics are okay and sound is good, and there are a lot of modes and options, but I'd rather play something with more pitching options and better fielding. English-language menus would be a plus too, of course, for a game loaded with menus like this one is. For me, Pawapuro 5 is okay but not great.
Jinsei Game 64 (J) [The Game of Life 64] - 4 player alternating, saves to cartridge. Made by Takara, Jinsei Game 64 is one of two Japanese Nintendo 64 versions of the boardgame The Game of Life. For some reason, The Game of Life is a very, very popular boardgame in Japan. I'm not sure why; I do remember playing the game as a kid, but never thought it was THAT great, and haven't played the board game in quite some time. I don't think we own it anymore. I got this N64 version despite that because, well, I am trying to eventually get all non-sports N64 games, so I had to get it sometime. Honestly though, this might not have been worth getting; even though they do add some features to try to make this more than just a digital boardgame, it's boring and not much fun. In addition to the board game there are also eight minigames here, but they're mostly kind of bad. There is also a significant language barrier that is a real issue due to the choices you have to make during the game. The game would be a bit better if I could read the text, but at times it's tough to play in Japanese, if you care about what choices you make during the game.
There are a good number of modes available in Jinsei Game 64. You can play a normal game, play a game on a variety of different alternate boards, modify the order of things on a custom board, create a custom character to play the game with with a good number of options for hair, clothes, and such, and play the minigames outside of the main game. You can play with any mix of up to four human or AI characters, and the AI is reasobly challenging. By default, in the main mode you play a minigame each time characters land on the same space. All eight are for four players. You play them fairly often in the game, though, they aren't very good, and there are only eight of them, so this isn't as great an option as it sounds. While on the board the graphics are 3d, and each different board looks nicely different. The graphics aren't great, but at least they put some effort in to the game. The minigames are just basic 2d stuff, though, and don't look as good. Some require skill, but too many are just pure luck; really, if you're going to add minigames to your digital boardgame, don't make them just pure chance! There are also anime-esque 2d scenes for the life decisions, choices where you try to romance someone of the opposite sex, build your career, and such. I like the art style, it's stylized and kind of cute-looking.
In the main game, minigames aside, as in the boardgame on each turn you move via a spinner. Once you land on a space a menu opens and you have five options, all in Japanese. The top is to move, others are for various stats and such. Depending on where you land, you may play a minigame, make some of those life choice, or just end your turn. Your choices will change your character's stats, which affect how successful you will be, so as I said the language barrier is a real problem. The other main problem here is that I find The Game of Life kind of boring in any form; Jinsei Game 64 is okay, but I haven't finished a game of this yet not only because of the language barrier, but also because the game gets tedious fast. The mostly-bad minigames are also a disappointment. It might be better in multiplayer, but... just play the boardgame, or some better game. I do like the boxart, though, it's nice and represents the games' art style well.
Let's Smash (J) [also released in Europe as Centre Court Tennis, but I have the Japanese version because of how hard it is to play European N64 games on a US system] - 4 player simultaneous, saves to controller pak (7 pages per character file). Let's Smash is a tennis game from Hudson. This is an okay but flawed game thanks to difficult controls. Let's Smash has a lot of features and okay to good graphics, but the timing for hitting the ball is quite tight. Otherwise the controls are fine, and you have the usual options -- regular hit or lob, on separate buttons -- but that ball timing is a problem. It took a while before I managed to win a match because of how hard it is to get used to hitting back the ball. It's particularly bad when you use the default single-screen view and are on the upper half of the screen. The very tight timing reminds me of Namco's World Court Tennis for the Turbografx. Indeed, it would be very much like that interesting but frustrating nearly-impossible-once-you-leave-the-bottom-half-of-the-screen game if not for one major addition, different camera angles (on the C buttons). The game got a lot more playable once I figured out how to switch to the third-person-behind-the-character camera, which gives you a close-in view behind your character sort of like that in Mario Tennis for the Virtual Boy. It's much, much easier to hit the ball from there than the default classic-style overhead camera. Of course, though, if you want to play the game in multiplayer you'll have to get used to that camera... or just play Mario's Tennis for the N64, that might be the better option. That game doesn't have this issue, hitting the ball is easy in that game. If you do play it multiplayer, be prepared for it to take more than a few matches before everyone manages to figure out the correct timing for hitting the ball. The AI is quite tough as well, and can be hard to defeat. Visually Let's Smash looks okay, but, like most Hudson N64 games, it doesn't look great. Hudson never managed to master N64 graphics like Nintendo, Rare, Acclaim, or such did. This game shows improvement over early Hudson N64 games like Bomberman 64, but still looks only average. The characters look fine and the arenas decent, and the framerate is thankfully good, but nothing looks great for the system, the N64 can do better, an does in games like Mario's Tennis.
For options, Let's Smash has quite a few. First, you can play Tournaments. There are four options here, based on the four major championships in pro tennis, the British, French, American, and Australian Opens. This game doesn't have any official licenses, so don't expect any real players, but there are 16 players to choose from, half male and half female, and the ball bounces differently on clay, hard, or grass courts. There is a different arena for each open, and you try to go through a single-elimination tournament to make it to the top. You can choose in the options how many games each match should last. Next, you can do a single match on any court. Next, you can create your own tennis pro, a very cool option. You can choose gender and clothing, and unlike many games (but like in the PSP Hot Shots Tennis game) it isn't gender-resticted, so you can have male characters wear 'female' tennis outfits. Nice option. You can also choose the hairstyle and color, face, skin color, clothing, and stats (made difficult by the language barrier, all stat names are in Japanese; I just guessed and chose middle settings. I sure wish it was easier to play European N64 games on US systems!). You start with only one set of tennis clothes that you choose, but character creation mode isn't just about creating characters you can play as in tournaments, though you can do that. No, you can also train in some minigames, or play matches against AI opponents. The minigames aren't as elaborate as those in Sega's great Virtua Tennis, but they are challenging and can be fun. There is one where you try to target specific points on the ground, one where you try to bounce the ball off some targets as many times as you can, and two more. Each has different difficulty levels.
The main draw for this mode, though, is playing as your custom characters against AI opponents. In these single matches, you can play on a variety of real or fantasy courts in matches where you get a clothing piece from the winner if you win, or lose one if you lose. So yeah, it's like gambling, except that you can just turn off the game if you're losing and don't need to lose anything, if you have remembered to save recently of course. It's nice to see your clothing options grow as you win matches, though actually winning is, of course, difficult. The courses, outside of the four stadiums for the major opens, include a grassy field, a lava pit, an ice level (with penguins who get in your way as obstacles, and you can hit them to the other side of the court with your racket to make them bother the other person), an urban court, a somewhat wild west-themed desert, and more. I find the ones with obstacles the most interesting; there's nothing like that in the main tournaments! There is also a different announcer for each arena, or, for some reason, no announcer in the ice arena. Overall, Let's Smash is a decent to good game. It gave me a very poor first impression thanks to the games' overly-difficult controls, but after some practice I started liking the game more. Still, compared to Virtua Tennis on Dreamcast or Mario Tennis for N64, this game isn't nearly as good thanks to the difficult controls and only average graphics. Hot Shots Tennis for PSP also probably does the custom character thing better, as it has a full 'RPG-styled' mode. This game has character-building, but it's not a full RPG as you don't explore a world, talk to people, and the like, you just choose options from menus and play matches. Still, despite its flaws, Let's Smash was definitely worth getting. It's okay.
Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness - 4 player simultaneous (in battle mode), saves to controller pak (8 blocks). Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness is one of Namco's only games for the N64. This game and Namco Museum are the only games Namco itself made for the N64; Ridge Racer 64 was a first-party Nintendo title, by NST. 5th-gen Namco were, sadly, huge Sony supporters, but at least we on the N64 did get this quality title. After the success of Pac-Man World for the Playstation, Namco decided to make a Ms. Pac-Man game. This isn't a full 3d platformer like that game is, though; instead, it's more of a classic-styled, overhead-view action/puzzle title. This game is a polygonal 3d game, but almost feels "2.5" in that you mostly just move around on a flat grid. You can travel between upper and lower areas and the like, but it all plays from a pulled-back viewpoint. This gives it a much more traditional feel than the side-view isometric 3d platforming of Pac-Man world, though it's also a lot more approachable than the frustrating isometric platforming that game is loaded with. Between the two, I probably do have more fun with this one, but both are worth a try. I wish the N^4 had gotten a version of Pac-Man World as well, too bad.
The story here is forgettable; you, as Ms. Pac-Man, have to travel through time, thanks to a machine made by Professor Pac, to rescue the princess or something stupid like that. The time-travel mechanic allows each level to have a different theme, so you go through ancient Egypt first and progress from there. Your goal is always to just reach the end of the stage, but enemies, puzzles, and many dots to collect lie along the way. Levels are linear mazes, so you progress through a level, instead of just running around one big maze as in the original Pac-Man games. Ms. Pac-Man Maze Madness is definitely on the easy side, but it's fun despite that. The puzzle elements add something to the game, as you do sometimes have to figure out how to get to some dots, by pushing blocks, using jump-cannon things which toss you to another point in the level, and more. Enemies are also a threat, unless you kill them with a Power Pellet. Figuring out how to progress usually isn't too hard, but the game does get more challenging as you go along, and the adventure is plenty of fun. You can also unlock harder time-trial versions of the levels after you beat them, and can play the original Ms. Pac-Man arcade game as well. There are also three multiplayer modes, though I haven't played them yet. This is a fun little game; I wish it was harder, but otherwise it's good classic gaming fun. This is a multiplatform game also available on PS1 and Dreamcast. The three versions look very similar, with the expected graphical differences -- the DC version looks the best, N64 in the middle, and PS1 the worst. I also have the DC version and it probably is a bit better than this one, but the N64 version is more than good enough to be worth getting.
Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 2 (J) - 1 player, saves to cartridge. Shiren the Wanderer 2 is one of Chunsoft's many roguelikes that they have released over the past 20-plus years. I'm not a big fan of the genre, but got this one anyway because it's interesting and is on the N64. I'm having issues with this game (how do you save???), but that's probably just me; anyone who can read Japanese certainly won't have a problem. Once the first Shiren for SNES was a success Chunsoft obviously knew they'd hit on a popular formula, and the company continues to make fairly similar games to this day. As with most of their earlier roguelikes, Shiren 2 is a Japan-only release. The game has good graphics, good gameplay, and lots to do. It's a great title, and I'm really not sure why it isn't better-known outside of Japan. There are very few mentions of this game and isn't even one single FAQ out there in English for this game, which is a real shame! One is badly needed. Just some basic thing explaining how the menus work would be fantastic, and something for item names would be even better, either in FAQ or translation-patch form. But if you stick with the game despite the language barrier, it's great classic Chunsoft Mysterious Dungeon roguelike fun. As usual you play as Shiren, the mysterious wanderer of the title. He is an adventurer in a fantasy version of traditional Japan, and is trying to help out a town beset by monsters.
As always in Mysterious Dungeon games, Shiren 2 plays from an overhead perspective, and when in dungeons the game is turn-based and you move on a grid. The game has sprite-based characters in 3d environments, and the look works well.
Visually Shiren 2 looks pretty good. The art style is somewhat rounded and cute, and I like the look of the sprites. The polygonal environments look good to great as well, this game has good art design. This is a good-looking N64 game. The music is similarly good and fits the traditional Japanese theme quite well. Combat works just like most any other Mysterious Dungeon game. When you move or attack so do the enemies, but they can't move otherwise. You can move one space at a time with the d-pad, or use fast movement with the analog stick or by holding B or Z. The fast movement is very useful. On each floor of the dungeons in the game your goal is to find the exit while collecting as much stuff as you can (while dealing with your tight inventory limit, you can only hold about 20 items), but the enemies will make that difficult to say the least; it may be easier than its SNES predecessor, but this is a hard game, probably harder than the third game, for Wii, is; Shiren 2 doesn't have any more forgiving modes. While you stay alive it can be fun enough, but then you die an lose all your equipped items and level, as is common in this genre; you only keep things if you beat the dungeon and put them in storage. Ouch! Honestly I've never liked this kind of harsh design, I prefer having a game where you don't have to continually redo things you have done before just because you died farther in to the game. Yes, I've mostly skipped over the wave of roguelikes the game industry has made in recent years. Add on top of that that probably because of the language barrier I still can't figure out how to actually save a game, and yeah, this game is a bit hard to play. Another key game design element makes that worse -- your main task in this game is to build a castle so that the locals in the town you're in can protect themselves from the hordes of monsters. That's cool, it's nice to have a task beyond just killing stuff and gaining levels, but you need to collect certain items for the castle, and better items will hold up better against monster attacks that apparently happen later in the game. This whole system is obviously somewhat impenetrable if you don't know the language. So, overall, Shiren the Wanderer 2 is a good-looking game which is fun to play, but the language barrier is significant and a real issue.
To be clear, If I could actually save my progress in this game, I'd say that it's a pretty good game for its genre. It definitely seems fun, and isn't as hard as the first game for SNES. So please someone, tell me what I'm doing wrong... the only menu options that quit seem to either (for one option) quit without saving, or (for the other) restart the game from the beginning. I don't see anyone to talk to to save, either. So yeah, what's going on here? I want to be able to play this game, and "play it all in one sitting" is not a good answer.
Nuclear Strike 64 - 1 player, saves to controller pak, Expansion Pak supported (for higher resolution graphics). Nuclear Strike 64 is the N64 version of the fifth and sort-of-final Strike game from EA. While the previous game, Soviet Strike, didn't release on Nintendo platforms, this one returned the series to Nintendo. There's sort of a sixth, but only if you count Future Cop LAPD as a Strike game -- it started out as one, but changed to an original title during development. I'd call it a new game, so this is the last game in EA's topdown-style flight combat sim series which was quite popular particularly on the Genesis and SNES. I have never have been a fan of this series, but I got Soviet Strike, the 4th game, for Saturn a few years ago and was surprised to find it kind of fun for a while, the series' usual too-high difficulty level aside. So, I thought that maybe I'd like this one too... but I don't know. It's still a Strike game, and as with all the Strike games, it's too slow and boring to be a good action flight game, but too action-oriented to be a good sim. But also, on the N64, the live-action-video cutscenes of the original PC/PS1 game are gone. Without the super-cheesy live-action-video FMV the game loses something. Gameplay-wise, the main changes in Nuclear Strike compared to its predecessor are that you now have a variety of tanks and a hovercraft you will control at times during the game, the graphics are better, and there's an improved on-screen compass/map telling you where you need to head. That arrow is helpful, it does indeed reduce time spent on the map as the back of the box claims, but the full-screen map is still essential. And visually, the N64 version certainly looks better than the PS1 version thanks to 3d that doesn't fall apart whenever anything moves. The textures are a bit blurry as usual, but the game looks nice. Still, that cheesy FMV is good stuff. As for the gameplay, the core gameplay is the same as usual for this series. It's still very hard and kind of boring. This game plays a lot like the previous one, but maybe with a closer-in camera. The game still plays on a flat plane, so you cannot move up or down, only around at a set level over the ground. You can shoot bullets and missiles and lower a winch to pick things up. You are not only fighting the many enemies in this game, though. Fuel and ammo are both very limited, and unless you are careful, use your weapons well, and know where the pickups are, you won't finish the mission. There are a nice variety of objectives along the way, but they usually boil down to destroying or protecting things. You also need to be on the lookout for fuel and ammo to pick up, of course. It's okay, but I get frustrated when I lose far into a mission; saving is limited, and I lose interest before getting good enough to beat a mission. Each game generally has only four or so missions, or maps, each made up of a series of objectives scattered around the level. Four is more than enough in games as hard as the Strike games are, and Nuclear Strike is no exception. Even though I did kind of like Soviet Strike, I still have not yet ever beaten a full mission in a Strike game, I believe; I did get most of the way through Future Cop LAPD, but that plays quite differently. Overall Nuclear Strike 64 is a good game that just isn't really for me. Also on PC and PS1; the best version is surely the PC version, but between PS1 and N64, you have to choose between better graphics and probably also controls (N64) or cheesy FMV (PS1).
Off-Road Challenge (actually already had but forgot to cover) - 2 player simultaneous, saves to controller pak. Off-Road Challenge is a point-to-point racing game from Midway. The game is an arcade port of a Midway arcade game, developed by Avalanche Studios. They didn't do a very good job, sadly. The game runs in the Cruis'n USA engine and visually looks sort of like that series. This game is a part of the Off-Road franchise, the third (or fourth if you include the Track Pack as a game) game in a series that began with the all-time classic early '90s arcade game "Ironman" Ivan Stewart's Super Off-Road. I absolutely love the original Super Off-Road and always have, but this game, sadly, isn't nearly as good; of the six point-to-point Midway racers on the N64, this one is the one I have played least. Off-Road Challenge is pretty much just a mediocre spinoff of Cruis'n, with off-road pickup trucks instead of cars, desert-only environments, only six tracks, 3d truck graphics, ugly graphics with a sometimes-poor framerate, and a far higher difficulty level. Returning from previous Off-Road games are turbo boosts and boost powerups to refill your boost. These powerups are small and a lot harder to pick up than they were in the original Super Off-Road, and yet you really need them to be competitive. The skiddy controls don't help here, either. I don't think I've ever actually finished first in a race in this game; it's frustratingly hard right from the start, and then gets harder.
Indeed, one major issue with this game, along with the visuals and sound, is that it is way too hard! The handling is average skiddy stuff, you slide around a lot. So, memorization is key, to learn when to turn on the courses to avoid the many obstacles littering each course and to try to stay on the road. The tracks are curvy and difficult, and I do like the bumpy, obstacle-filled track designs, but I don't like how hard getting the powerups is or the super-difficult AI. Still, moments like dodging a rock knocked over by a falling UFO or learning the correct route to avoid pitfalls in the track are kind of nice. However, perhaps because of the 3d vehicles, there are only eight racers in each race, only four trucks to choose from, and only six tracks in the game. That's a lot less of all three of things than you'll find in any Cruis'n game, and the tracks are no longer than Cruis'n tracks, so there isn't much variety here. Between races, as usual in the series there's also an upgrade system where you can upgrade your truck between races with your winnings. The championship mode saves your truck upgrades, so in order to compete later on you really need to have done well earlier in the game, so don't settle for 4th in that first circuit even though finishing harder is hard. YOu need to finish in 3rd in each race in the second circuit, and do even better than that later on, so mastering the tracks is essential. I haven't done it, sadly. The dune buggy is fastest, so it might be the best of the four vehicles available, but between the AI, the controls, and the rest, the game doesn't feel fairly designed. The AI usually just beats me, even when I do better time-wise... argh. I wouldn't be surprised if the AI cheats.
Visually, the graphics are below average, with some VERY large super-blurry textures, a sometimes-iffy framerate, and distance fade-in. Midway can, and did, do so much better than this! I know the tracks are full of bumps and hills, but still, this game looks worse than the first SF Rush game on N64, but actually released after it. The music is forgettable rock, and fails to loop after finishing the first time, so many races will end in silence. Not good. There are a lot of much, much better, and better-looking, N64 racing games than this. There's not much here to make me want to spend the hours it would take to actually finish this very difficult game. There are few modes, too. You can do a single race, a circuit where you go through all the tracks, and that's it. You won't find modified versions of the tracks here, unlike Cruis'n World or Exotica, and all other Midway N64 point-to-point racers have many more tracks than this game. Overall, Off-Road Challenge is disappointing. This is a downgraded port of an average arcade game, and even I can't entirely defend it, and I find the Cruis'n series fun. The game has no new ideas, some design issues, looks ugly and sounds bad, and I get tired of always losing. Instead of playing this game more and beating it, I'd rather play a better game. Off-Road Challenge is below average. Really, stick to the original classic Super Off-Road. Or for a similar 3d game, the best polygonal 'Off-Road"-style racing game from Midway doesn't actually doesn't have the franchise name on it -- it's 4-Wheel Challenge for the Dreamcast. That's a great game, a bit like this one but better. That game is also very tough, but that's the kind of hard that keeps me coming back! I wish this game was like that too, but it isn't. Arcade port (but N64-exclusive at home).
Puyo Puyo Sun 64 (J) - 2 player simultaneous, saves to cartridge. This game is a puzzle game in the popular and long-running Puyo Puyo series, then made by Compile -- this game is from before Compile shut down and Sega bought the rights to the franchise. Puyo Puyo is a match-four block-dropping puzzle game. The "blocks" here are called...