No-one's quite sure what ol' Jiminy-C was doing in that cave for the three days it took for him to resurrect, but I'd like to imagine he carved out a little "me time" away from his bro-sciples for some Nintendo 64 goodness. N64 Goodness would also be the name of this feature if it actually highlighted nothing but good times, but alas thanks to the random chooser process a double-bill of bangers has once again eluded me another week. I swear this lottery tech is broken.

That unpredictability is what we're all about here on 64 in 64: a capricious examination of the library that defined Nintendo's first serious foray into 3D gaming as we consider those games' respective legacies and any chance for their own Messiah-like comebacks on Nintendo's Switch Online service and its N64-enriched premium Expansion Pack tier.

In addition to whatever religious practices you subscribe to, please also observe the following rules:

• There are two N64 games. One has been chosen by me, the other by an angry deity that I've somehow upset. Both games are played for sixty-four minutes each exactly, with updates following every sixteen minute interval.
• Using a special industry insider source I call "making shit up," I determine how likely the game will come to the Nintendo Switch Online service any time soon. I'll also give you some idea of how well the game has aged. Those early polygons can be rough.
• Like a firstborn-murdering vengeance ghost, I have chosen to pass over the (now) fourteen N64 titles already available on the Nintendo Switch Online service. They are the chosen games, and will be spared my indignant wrath.

While I go answer to the Pope for all this blasphemy, be sure to peruse all the previous episodes of 64 in 64 over here: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6, Episode 7, Episode 8, Episode 9, and Episode 10.

Pokémon Snap (Pre-Selected)

• HAL Laboratory / Nintendo
• 1999-03-21 (JP), 1999-07-26 (NA), 2000-09-15 (EU)
• 193rd N64 Game Released

History: While Game Freak were hard at work developing the second generation of Pokémon games for Game Boy Color, Kirby-wranglers HAL Laboratory were tasked with creating this N64 spin-off that follows Todd Snap as he takes the best Pokémon photos he can for Professor Oak's research. The player is not only expected to quickly capture - in the photography sense - Pokémon as they wander by the fixed safari routes through various island habitats, but to follow Oak's rules to produce the best photographic depictions possible of these elusive beasts.

HAL Laboratory, which was still being run by Satoru Iwata in 1999 just a couple of years before he'd become Nintendo's president, is a major second-party developer that has worked closely with Nintendo ever since the NES generation, and is best known for the Kirby franchise among countless others. In addition to Pokémon Snap, they also developed all the Pokémon Stadium games for N64 (there's three of them, apparently) as well as Kirby 64, Super Smash Bros., and - perhaps most vitally - the definitive edition of Mother creator Shigesato Itoi's SFC bass fishing game, Shigesato Itoi no Bass Tsuri No. 1.

So yes, I'll come clean, this is yet another expediency pick. I'm paranoid Pokémon Snap will be announced for NSO any day now, as one of the few major universally-beloved Nintendo-published games yet to join the service. I can only surmise that Nintendo wanted to hold off on including it for a while to allow its recent sequel to have its moment in the limelight. I'm a huge fan of photography games and I played this, Beyond Good & Evil, and Dark Cloud 2 close to back-to-back in the early '00s; in the two decades since I don't think I've had the pleasure of playing another game with an equally compelling take on photography (Afrika skipped over Europe, and I've yet to pick up Umurangi Generation or the New Pokémon Snap). I think what I appreciate most about Pokémon Snap is how much it feels like a niche product, despite any game with the Pokémon brand typically being anything but.

16 Minutes In

Pokémon Snap, turns out, is a real jerk to emulate (granted, getting footage from a physical copy would be even more of a hassle) but I eventually did it by switching from RetroArch's meager selection of emulators to the Project64 one I'd been using beforehand. That means no RetroAchievements this time, and some slightly smaller screenshots, but I'll take it for a working playthrough. Speaking of which, the first sixteen minutes had me completing the first two courses and unlocking the Pokémon Food item, so I'm already off to a promising start. Pokémon Snap has some very generous milestone targets for progress, as long as you're capturing Pokémon at least somewhat competently, though the next breakthrough requires finding the first of the game's many alternative paths by throwing food at a certain Electrode to kill it. Hell, I was going to do that anyway.

I did not realize that Pokémon Snap is yet another N64 game that has inverted camera movement as its default. I've played this game so many times and yet I don't think I've ever had to tinker with the options beforehand; either this default has something to do specifically with the ROM I'm using, or it's in the US version of the game, or like so many others I became inured to inverted camera controls from the outset. None of those options are palatable. What is palatable is this delicious morsel of a game and its endless supply of murder apples, so I'm going to get back to it and keep moving forward until I get the Pester Ball and the fun can really begin.

32 Minutes In

That's the first four courses down and the fifth unlocked, with both the Pokémon Food and the Pester Balls in my inventory. Some of this alacrity can be credited to remembering most of the game's tricks, like using the Pester Ball on a Porygon that's mostly hidden inside a wall to hit the button that opens the way to the Cave, but I also recall that the game was incredibly short. Most of Pokémon Snap's secrets were a means to extend what little longevity the game has - including the next and last, which has you photographing six Pokémon "signs," which are parts of the natural landscape that happen to look like Pokémon - but if it had any extra legs beyond that it was in earning the best scores possible with your shots and comparing them to your friends'.

It's to the game's credit when it comes to its intuitiveness that not only am I able to take great shots after years without practice, but my shutter skill hasn't dipped at all in those intervening years. I'm certainly not going to claim I'm some photography savant - I recall my early attempts with the game led to many off-center shots and heartbreaks, like the Surfing Pikachu screenshot above - but it's evident those quick reflexes and an instinct of what constitutes a great shot has long settled in and now refuses to leave my brain.

48 Minutes In

As soon as I start talking milestone roadblocks, I manage to hit one: you need shots of forty different Pokémon to open the final (main) course of the game, and I was off by three. This was soon remedied with a trip to the Beach, where I now had what I needed to take previously impossible shots of Chansey, Kangaskhan, Snorlax, and others. Even though I played this game to death back in the day, there's still a few Pokémon that elude me: I forget how to take a close-up shot of Lapras, for instance, which appears sparingly in the Beach level and only at a distance too far away for Oak to be happy with. I think I have to keep taking shots whenever it appears and it would show up close enough right towards the end of the course? Even if that's the case, I don't think this playthrough is going to get that into the weeds (though speaking of which, I also snapped a pic of Scyther by throwing a Pester Ball directly into the weeds).

For as much as I like this game I think an hour is the perfect amount of time to spend with it. Without additional incentives like collectibles to unlock if you hit certain highscores with a photo - think the 3D model trophies they had in Super Smash Bros. Melee, accessible only if you score 3000 or more for that Pokémon - I'll be ready to move on by the end of this 64 minutes, provided I can reach that final stage and take a shot of you-know-what.

64 Minutes In

Well, I didn't get to the end, but I think I've provided more than a vertical slice of the game by this point. Pokémon Snap only has seven areas to explore, and the last of those is more or less a boss fight against the most elusive prey of all in Gen 1. Given the game is on-rails, each course takes about three or four minutes to conclude (faster once you get the rocket engine boost to fast-forward past the Pokémon you've already snapped) and you can retry at any time if you miss the golden opportunity you were looking for. It makes the game supremely accessible, but by eliminating most of the ways it might waste your time you can get through most of what it has to offer in a flash, or a HM05 as we say around these parts.

It's been both illuminating and slightly perturbing that I've retained so much about the game's nuances. This isn't even because of Jan's recent playthrough either: were I a little more unhinged, I could've been screaming all of these same shortcuts and best pic strategies at my monitor when those streams were live. I know Jan appreciates any and all back-seating the chat can offer.

How Well Has It Aged?: Like a sepia-toned portrait. This is going to be a case where the nostalgia goggles do me no favors, because it's hard to say what this game would be like coming into it fresh especially now that it has a more feature-rich successor. I'd argue that its novel format, accessibility, (relative) pacificity, the timeless appeal of Gen 1 Pokémon, and a significant amount of discovery and experimentation involved in figuring out the best shot opportunities have preserved it very well, and its chief detriment - a very short duration - is less an issue when it's part of a larger compilation of games, since you're likely distracted with the amount of choice available. A newcomer might well find it a little too surface-level to stick with it for long, though.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Extremely Good. It's a miracle it's not on there already. Pokémon always sells very well, and that's been especially true for the Switch between the Sword/Shield games, Let's Go, Eevee/Pikachu, and the more recent Pokémon Legends: Arceus (not to mention New Pokémon Snap). When the service was first announced, projected future additions included The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Mario Golf, Pokémon Snap, F-Zero X, Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards, Paper Mario, and Banjo-Kazooie, and now all but Snap and Kirby 64 have made the leap.

Retro Achievements Earned: None.

Monster Truck Madness 64 (Random)

• Edge of Reality / Rockstar Games
• 1999-06-30 (NA), 1999-10-29 (EU)
• 221st N64 Game Released

History: With Monster Truck Madness 64, players take on a series of challenges with some of the biggest names from the world of overly-sized vehicles including Bigfoot, Grave Digger, and even a few named after then-active WCW wrestlers. The game is actually a port of the PC game Monster Truck Madness 2 from Terminal Reality, the studio behind BloodRayne, and offers various enhancements over the PC-exclusive original. There's some real late-'90s energy with every aspect of this game; all it's missing is a Mountain Dew sponsorship and Limp Bizkit on the soundtrack.

Monster Truck Madness 64 comes to us courtesy of Edge of Reality, whom we last met in Episode 8 with the Activision Spider-Man game (another port) and will hopefully see again if we're fortunate enough to cover any of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skaters. Odder still is the Rockstar Games involvement: the eventual billion-dollar Grand Theft Auto publishers had only just started life in 1998, and Monster Truck Madness 64 was their first full game: their previous two releases were expansion packs for the original GTA. They would only publish one more N64 game after this, and it's one I pray to Monster Truck Jesus ("he is risen, up and over a schoolbus") we never encounter: Earthworm Jim 3D.

I'm not saying this random selection process is cursed, but I'm not not saying it either. Since the randomizer has reduced all choices to "serious racing game" or "fun racing game," I'm at least glad it appears to have landed on the latter persuasion this time around, even if the fun might only exist in a novelty sense and not necessarily in an "actually enjoyable to play" sense. I suppose we shall find out here, today, on Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY.

16 Minutes In

Oh, good lord. Normally, the last adjective I would use to describe monster trucks is "floaty," and yet that is exactly the effect that they've produced here. The vehicles are as sensitive to turns as Twitter is to takes about pineapple pizza, and the sudden deceleration when colliding with any object - including the massive obtrusive pillars used as checkpoint markers - could easily eliminate you from the rest of the race were it not for the CPU constantly crashing into everything too. A monster truck should never feel this squirrely, unless you're using a rare definition of that word that means "has run over enough squirrels to become, itself, part squirrel". Suffice it to say that this is a pretty bad game. In fact, this might be the first genuinely bad racing game I've covered for this feature, rather than just competently boring like most of the rest. I'll no doubt have to compensate for these turning cycles as best as I am able if there's no in-game options to adjust the turning sensitivity, which probably means feathering the acceleration rather than jamming down on it as per usual.

On the bright side, the trucks themselves look kinda cool. If you're wondering about the WCW-themed trucks, there's ones for Hollywood Hogan (I'll pass), Sting, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, and "The Outsiders" Kevin Nash and Scott Hall (RIP). I've been using the Outsiders vehicle because it's a sick skeleton car. A sick skeleton car that can't take a corner without rolling twice, granted, but I'm hoping that might change.

32 Minutes In

The game features ten courses as far as I can tell, though the last two are only available on the higher difficulties. I tried an Exhibition race just to test things out, and then jumped into the Circuit mode which has you conquer each track consecutively. It also has a few extra modes, including a proto-Rocket League soccer game clearly intended for multiplayer. It's occurred to me before that many less-serious racing games have been trying to get car soccer, or "soccar," right for a long time: it was in the SNES game Street Racer also.

I'm... actually turning around a little on this game, perhaps ironically since turning is still the pits. Don't get me wrong: it's every bit a kusoge, but that hasn't deterred it from its objective of delivering the kind of simple pleasures that monster trucks were designed to generate. An example would be the Mario Kart-like power-ups scattered across the racecourse: some, like the nitrus, are effectively useless ("why, yes, I would like even less control over my vehicle than I do already") but others like the heli-drone mode lets you fly over the course without worrying about obstacles, terrain, or cornering. I wish there was a mode where it was active all the time, since the game controls so much better when it's on. As the game has no rubber-banding and the CPU drives about as well as you do, it's been shockingly easy so far on the Beginner setting: I should've just manned up and switched to Intermediate to see what the ninth track is like (the tenth, meanwhile, is only available on Expert).

48 Minutes In

I took the liberty of noting down the commentator's interjections that aren't just the usual announcements that you've passed a checkpoint or finished the race. I'm not sure if most of them actually mean anything:

• "Here comes the big boy!"
• "Just because you have a truck, doesn't mean you can drive." (He sounds super petulant when he says this.)
• "When it's going your way, it's still going your way!" (?)
• "Looks like it's moving day for those folks!" (???)
• "What next? A triple Axel from a double Axel?" (?????)
• "Roll over, Beethoven!" (For when you roll the vehicle. I assume it's referring to the dog, since who playing a monster truck game will be familiar with the composer?)
• "This could be an Olympic event in the year 2000!" (Narrator: It wasn't.) (Though you'd think out of anyone, Australia would be down for some Olympic monster trucks.)

I'm about six courses down now out of eight, so if I have any time left over I'm thinking of going back to Exhibition mode and trying one of the track conditions that piqued my interest: there's settings for both different weather and times of day, the latter including "Pitch Black" which, according to the in-game demo, does indeed take place in total darkness. I'm curious why that is an option.

64 Minutes In

The Beginner Circuit mode gave me enough of a look at the game's range of courses to know that there's not a whole of variety here, though they do get progressively longer and more hazardous with the topography. Mercifully, the game only has you complete two laps of the longer courses, and three for the rest. They all generally fit the themes of "graveyard," "American dust bowl," and "Central American ruins we probably shouldn't be driving through with monster trucks." Sadly, I wasn't able to attempt the expert courses Alpine Track or Death Trap in the Exhibition Mode, but I did check out the first course in total darkness. Turns out they'll still let you use your headlights, and I went one further with the cherry on this police monster truck - after all, aren't cops the real monsters? - and it wasn't actually all that bad. The mini-map helped too, of course.

I dunno, this game went from "why is it like this" to "OK, it's like this and I just have to deal, I guess" and managed to transform these sixty-four minutes from the nightmare scenario it was shaping up to be. It's an extraordinarily dumb game that I'm glad to see the back of, but I'm not going to argue it was less entertaining than those dry F1 simulators. One highlight? How certain power-ups can send foes flying halfway across the map, but since they never have to deal with checkpoints you might end up helping them out. Or they could fly so far out of bounds that you never see them again. Modern racing games could benefit bringing back that level of janky chaos.

How Well Has It Aged?: Bad. Again, though, I think this was another case of being busted at launch. I'm guessing the original wasn't so hot either and Edge of Reality did the best they could; anyone knows why Rockstar would set them the task of making this barebones monster truck racing game (just to reiterate: it's all racing, no driving over shit like Blast Corps) the studio's first big full release. Gotta start somewhere, I suppose, and games that combine bad car handling and ludicrous machismo certainly have earned them a lot of money since. Also, where the hell was Robosaurus?

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Infinitesimal. I'd love to see a meeting between Nintendo and Rockstar Games discussing the rare opportunity of bringing back Monster Truck Madness 64 for a new generation of big-wheel truck fans to enjoy. A meeting that would ab-so-lutely be worth either of their time.

Retro Achievements Earned: None.

Current Ranking

1. Super Mario 64 (Ep. 1)
2. Diddy Kong Racing (Ep. 6)
3. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Ep. 3)
4. Goemon's Great Adventure (Ep. 9)
5. Pokémon Snap (Ep. 11)
6. Banjo-Tooie (Ep. 10)
7. Mischief Makers (Ep. 5)
8. Blast Corps (Ep. 4)
9. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Ep. 2)
10. Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (Ep. 4)
11. Spider-Man (Ep. 8)
12. Bomberman 64 (Ep. 8)
13. Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers (Ep. 7)
14. Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (Ep. 9)
15. San Francisco Rush 2049 (Ep. 4)
16. Fighter Destiny 2 (Ep. 6)
17. Tetris 64 (Ep. 1)
18. NBA Live '99 (Ep. 3)
19. Rampage 2: Universal Tour (Ep. 5)
20. South Park Rally (Ep. 2)
21. Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (Ep. 7)
22. Eikou no St. Andrews (Ep. 1)
23. Rally Challenge 2000 (Ep. 10)
24. Monster Truck Madness 64 (Ep. 11)
25. F-1 World Grand Prix II (Ep. 3)
26. F1 Racing Championship (Ep. 2)

Three things:

I can’t believe I remember this, but you’re right about Lapras. You have to prove your desire.

“Roll Over Beethoven” is a classic anthem from the early days of rock music, popularized by several Black American musicians ( Chuck Berry originally) and then immortalized on the first Beatles album.

I work a pretty slow bar shift and n Sunday nights, especially with the seasonal fluidity of Midwestern weather this time of year, and I really appreciate that you post these in Sunday’s. Helps me melt a half hour with a heap of nostalgia real quick. Thanks!

@nodima: Ahh, good catch re: Beethovens, and the rolling thereof. I'm sure you're right but that's quite the reference for a 1999 monster truck game to make. The in-game soundtrack certainly didn't indicate a familiarity with classic rock.

Also, the Double/Triple Axels refer to figure-skating, which I also had to check now that I've become paranoid about the game's references going over my head. Am I... am I not cultured enough to appreciate Monster Truck Madness 64?

I could've also mentioned that my high school girlfriend was a Junior Olympic figure skater but I was afraid of coming off, like, cool. Y'know?

For what it's worth, I won't do the research to see if it happened once in a lifetime in the 1998 Winter Olympics on the male side of the frame or something, but I do remember that you pretty much never advance from more spins to less spins in figure skating because it's insane to do something very hard right before something...quite hard. Also, the terms loop/cow/axel etc. refer to the takeoff and landing points of your blade, and so you usually transition from one to the other because it's practically impossible to do the same trick twice but more or less, so you change the takeoff/landing technique to keep your brain and body in motion/flow.

...And that's your skating minute, sponsored by Gravedigger™!

You are deeply cursed, but at some point you'll have to run out of bad N64 racing games, right? oh, what's that? The only good N64 racing game is Diddy Kong Racing, a game that has a non-zero chance of appearing on the NSO offering before it comes up for your feature? Well that's cool. Have fun with, um... Lego Racers. Or maybe one of those Cruisn' games. I bet those are probably still at least playable.

Don't worry, I'm sure the Chameleon Twists and Gauntlet Legends of the N64 catalog are right around the corner.

Hahaha, good lord, that intro! :D

The games might not always be bangers, but episodes of this series certainly are. Hopefully these are about as fun to write as they are to read - you'd be having a blast! (Not diminishing the effort it must take, though!)