Something I've learned about Nintendo over the years is that they've been masters of innovation since, well, the beginning. While we might occasionally despair about the eccentric way they approach online multiplayer or whatever combination of drugs and alcohol was behind the decision to name a console "the Wii U" there's no denying that they've shaken the pillars of this industry many times over in the past and present, surviving in the cutthroat business of console development for almost forty years (longer if you include their arcade cabinets and Game and Watch). Their most recent innovative strategy is perhaps the most astounding: inconveniencing the entire UK gaming audience by denying them today's Nintendo Direct because some rich lady who none of us have ever met happened to die from the tragic condition of "Being Old As Dirt". The way Nintendo's been going on you'd think HRH Queen Elizabeth II was Princess Peach's actual grandmother, and she needed to take five to mournfully bake some cakes or something.
I'm choosing to honor the Queen's memory by keeping on as I've always have: playing bad Nintendo 64 games. I know her Majesty was a big fan of both the N64 and this feature, in which I attempt to find the finest and best-preserved games in the system's library as a form of consumer-led research for the Nintendo Switch Online's premium "Expansion Pak" tier, so for her sake and ours let's crack on with another two of the system's... I won't say greatest, but I can confidently say that they are two games that were released for the console at some point in time.
Before then, though, we should go over those rules again:
- A typical episode of 64 in 64 has me playing two games for exactly sixty-four minutes each. The first is one I've pre-selected from a short list of N64 games I've enjoyed in the past or those I'm curious to finally try out. The second is determined through pure chance, and given all the best games are presently on Switch Online the selections that soulless automaton makes are usually pretty grim. Never more so than today.
- I'll spend four updates spaced sixteen minutes apart to discuss the playthrough as it happens, and then finish with my thoughts about its potential place in the Switch Online catalog: Should it be on there? And is it likely to ever be on there?
- Since the declared goal of this feature is to help Nintendo find games for the Switch Online service, we're not touching the games that are already on there. That also includes any announced games too, with today's Direct adding several more: Mario Party, Mario Party 2, Mario Party 3, Pilotwings 64, 1080 Snowboarding, Pokémon Stadium, Excitebike 64, and Goldeneye 007. I'm excluding these on principle, and not purely because I wanted an excuse to remove all the Mario Parties from the random choice pool (I am bummed I missed my shot with Pilotwings 64 though).
Previous episodes can be found here, now in a snazzy new table format:
| Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 |
| Episode 4 | Episode 5 | Episode 6 |
| Episode 7 | Episode 8 | Episode 9 |
| Episode 10 | Episode 11 | Episode 12 |
| Episode 13 | Episode 14 | Episode 15 |
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness / Akumajou Dracula Mokushiroku Gaiden: Legend of Cornell
History: Far back through the mists of time, there was this one video game company that, unlike that same company today, actually made video games. Its name was Konami. Konami traditionally made bright and colorful games with cute aesthetics during the 8-bit and 16-bit era, with one notable exception: Castlevania. Unfortunately, Castlevania was one of those franchises that didn't really take to 3D like many of its NES peers did, and the first few experiments were rough enough that the powers that be ultimately decided to stick to 2D iterations for portable systems. None of those experiments were more accursed than the two Castlevania games released for the Nintendo 64, or so I was lead to believe. I mean, I can absolutely believe that claim for the first N64 Castlevania, which is why I've put its untested (by me, anyway) sequel in this spot instead. If we get another five seasons out of this format, maybe its predecessor will find its way on here too. Or, knowing my luck, it'll be a random pick much sooner than that.
This prequel, set eight years before the first N64 Castlevania, concerns a new protagonist and story: the werewolf Cornell, who finds himself battling his fellow werewolf rival Ortega and a clan of vampires hoping to resurrect their lord, Dracula, by sacrificing Cornell's sister Ada. Rather than a whole new version of the titular fortress, Legacy of Darkness reused a lot of the previous game's assets and enhanced them, improving and streamlining many game mechanics and UI elements. One of the few new mechanics includes Cornell's werewolf mode, which temporarily increases his damage output. Legacy of Darkness was one of the few games made by Konami's Kobe branch, KCEK, which in addition to the first N64 Castlevania also made another N64 game I'd like to cover on here eventually: the squiggly graffiti fighter Rakugakids.
This is one of the few Castlevania games I've never played, so I'm... in a trepidatious but hopeful mood. The N64 Castlevania games really did not set the world alight, and though I have a fondness for the two 3D games that followed on PlayStation 2 - Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness - even they had their problems, and that was after the many lessons learned from crafting the N64 duo. I'm not anticipating this to be good by any stretch, but maybe it'll be serviceable? Encouraging stuff, right?
16 Minutes In
Oh boy. I don't think I adequately prepared myself for how not-great this game was going to be. The game starts with five minutes of intros: we see Death and the Groovy Ghoulies sacrifice a blonde that isn't Ada, we have Cornell visiting his home village and seeing it on fire and filled with skeletons with Ada missing, we have an opening crawl that tells us what Cornell's whole deal is after he's already been introduced, and then we have Cornell slowly getting rowed over to a ghost ship in the middle of nowhere despite previously looking at an ominous castle in the distance. After that, the first level - Foggy Lake - begins and we start exploring said ghost ship for... something. I'm not sure what, yet.
The controls are non-ideal. Fighting and moving around work as you'd expect, but the camera controls are limited to using the R-button to re-center the focus. The L-button, meanwhile, has you transform into wolf mode which slowly burns through your supply of red crystals (the hearts equivalent) and it's easy to mistake the two collar buttons - I'm too used to the bumpers moving the camera left and right around your character in games like these. Collecting objects requires picking up the C-Down button as opposed to, say, just automatically picking them up when you walk over them; I'm also using a controller that doesn't like the C-buttons and tends to use C-Left and C-Right a lot instead, the latter activating the active subweapon which also uses up crystals fast. I don't think I've managed to hold onto any through all these repeated misclicks. The game lets you know what you're in for with a series of awkward jumping and climbing puzzles up the ghost ship's masts: to mantle something in this game you have to jump to it, hold the jump button to hang onto the edge, and then press up on the analog stick to pull yourself up without letting go of jump until you're safely on top. It's taken some getting used to, but at least this area is relatively chill with the respawning enemies (there's a few but they're slow as hell). I'm now poised to investigate the ship's interior, hoping I'm past the worst of the on boarding process.
32 Minutes In
After reaching the interior of the ship, it was suddenly attacked by an enormous sea creature and began taking in water. Completing a relatively painless platforming sequence got me outside and close to terra firma, but before I could reach the gate that would lead towards the castle I was attacked by that same sea creature and the first boss of the game: an enormous sea serpent with two arms. I'll admit to crashing and burning on the first attempt as it took a while to figure out that, while blows to the body were registering, the damage wasn't so much and the goal was to actually aim for its head during the brief durations when it dips low enough to reach. Those moments usually come right after its attacks, such as a swipe with its claw that can pick you up for mild throwing damage or its geysers that can fling you in the air for slightly more damage. Much easier time on the second attempt, but then I tried going back to the save point prior to the fight out of habit and the camera dunked me into the lake instead for an instant game over. That meant redoing the fight again. Once inside the gate and onto the second level, Forest of Silence, I immediately met the second boss: the enormous skeleton that is something of a mascot for the N64 Castlevanias. That fight was a lot easier, but the skeleton just bailed after it took enough damage so I guess we'll be seeing it again (if only in the next game).
I'm still very not enjoying the way the game handles items. It's not so much that you have to hit a C-button every time you want to pick something up, and you always do since they're useful and there's no inventory limits to give you pause, but you also have to be right on top of the item in question for the pick-up command to register. This is sub-optimal when there are other enemies around and you want to quickly grab a sack of cash or something before its aggressive timer causes it to vanish into the ether. I've got the hang of everything else, at least.
48 Minutes In
After completing the forest - who would've guessed that giant skeleton would show up again as the boss? - I managed to reach the castle and met my ol' buddy Ortega. Ortega had to spell it out to Cornell that he'd sold his soul to the darkness and kidnapped Ada himself, torching the village on the way out, because he was pissy about losing some contest or other. Cornell seemed kinda incredulous at this development, but Ortega looked evil as heck so I can buy that he's a villain. After that reacquaintance, the third level - Castle Wall - began with a jaunt up a spiral staircase full of traps. Have to admit I've been spending quite a bit of time here so far: most of the traps are the kind that dump you down a pit, which either kills me instantly or does enough falling damage that I can barely afford to make the same mistake twice.
I'm going to clear up some of my previous misconceptions about the controls. The first is the R-button camera movement: turns out it's a bit more context-sensitive than I realized, because when you have an enemy near you it'll just lock the camera onto it for as long as the button is held. This is very useful for boss fights as you might expect, and handy for the floating enemies that are hard to target. Cornell's basic attack, which uses the B-button, isn't too strong but does have a moderate range to it making it more useful than the melee attack (mapped to C-Left) and particularly in conjunction with the camera lock-on. The other thing I wanted to mention, in case I made the mantling seem perfectly sensible earlier, is that the direction you push to pull yourself up onto the platform is also context-sensitive, relative to the direction Cornell's facing. So if it's a side-scrolling section (these usually have fixed camera perspectives) and you're holding onto a platform on the left, you have to hold left instead of up to climb up. Ditto if you're holding onto the far side of the platform away from the camera - in that case, you hold down. Super intuitive stuff. (That said, I have come to appreciate how much brainpower from the devs working in this era was spent on figuring out how to make controlling a character work in a 3D context.)
64 Minutes In
Let's quickly summarize how this last block went. I eventually made my way up the staircase, hit a switch at the top that opened one of the two portcullises that lead to the path Ortega ran down after all his taunting, and made my way back down by falling through several broken floors despite having no clear idea what was beneath my feet (took damage a few times too). The second door at the start was suddenly now open, so I took it to find another spiral staircase full of enemies and traps (though less difficult overall) and reached the top to fight a boss based on those bone snakes that are in most Castlevania games. This let me hit the switch at the top, which required a special winch lever pick-up I'd found earlier tucked away in a broken pantry. "Aha," I thought to myself, pre-emptively, "looks like I'm done with this area." This second, now repaired switch just closed the first portcullis again. I ended the session low on health, back at the start with two closed portcullises, wondering if I missed anything. You know what I won't miss? Playing this game.
Nothing much more to add here about the mechanics, except that I was acquiring a number of items in my inventory. Most items in Legacy of Darkness are the instant usage kind: subweapons, for instance, just replace whatever was in that slot (I also noticed that picking up the same type made it stronger, like Ghouls 'N' Ghosts). Healing items like wall chickens sit in your inventory until you need them, which I appreciated but was sort of expected since this game was released after Symphony of the Night, and I'd also collected things like "Purifying" and "Moon Card". Never did bother to find out what they did, the incurious soul that I am, but I could've made these bosses easier to handle if I experimented with them a little.
How Well Has It Aged?: About as well as all those skeletons I kept exploding. Ambulatory, but that's about it. Konami would be the first to tell you that their N64 Castlevanias didn't cut the mustard - the Castlevania team judged both of them non-canonical, joining Castlevania Legends for Game Boy and Circle of the Moon for GBA - and it's made all the more painful by the fact that Symphony of the Night, developed around this same time for PlayStation and Saturn, ended up being so much better despite sticking to an older 2D pixel aesthetic. I say "despite," but I'm very much of the mindset that most of the era's best games were 2D affairs that didn't look like they'd been hit with the ugly cube stick. Legacy of Darkness may be better than the first, but I'd have to try playing that first game again to be sure; what I can say is that there's barely any appreciable difference.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Whenever I cover a Konami game I put the same boilerplate answer down here: probably not happening. No-one's entirely sure what Konami is thinking at any given moment, as many of their decisions seem anathema to successfully running a video game business. It could just be that they're looking to The Producers their way out of having to make games for ungrateful Kojima fanboys so they can focus entirely on pachinko and saunas. They have other, better N64 games to consider if anyone at Nintendo can get past the front desk for a meeting - the Goemons, for example - but the Castlevanias might make more sense purely from a brand recognition standpoint.
Sesame Street: Elmo's Number Journey
- Realtime Associates / NewKidCo
- 1999-11-30 (NA)
- =277th N64 Game Released
History: Jim Henson's Sesame Street is a long-running educational show with puppets - technically not Muppets - that aims to teach its young audience their numbers and letters, along with lessons about morality and social interaction that occur between a group of kid and adult residents that occupy the eponymous neighborhood. One character that rose to prominence in the 1980s was that of Elmo, a friendly little red monster who referred to himself in the third-person and quickly eclipsed the other characters in popularity excepting perhaps the adorable, all-consuming fiend that is Cookie Monster (and we can't make video games of him or Kirby will get jealous). Naturally, video games became a major component of Sesame Street's ability to engage with its viewers outside of television alone, and many have been made over the years all with a strong educational bent befitting the show.
Based in El Segundo, California, Realtime Associates began producing games for the Intellivision - the company was founded by ex-Mattel folks, the toy company that created the system - before branching out to the many consoles to follow in the wake of the huge success of the Nintendo Entertainment System. They chiefly worked on licensed games, and their Klasky-Csupo-ass logo became almost as ubiquitous to that market as LJN's foreboding rainbow. Of their few original games, there's one for N64 that we'll no doubt encounter eventually: Charlie Blast's Territory, a re-skin of Kemco's The Bombing Islands that took their hapless harlequin mascot Kid Clown and shoved him into a 3D approximation of the puzzle game Bombuzal. More terrifying than that though is the second Gex game, Gex: Enter the Gecko, which they also ported to N64. NewKidCo has a similar background: it was created to produce games based on kids' TV show licenses, mostly Sesame Street, Winnie the Pooh, and Tom and Jerry. (And also like seven games based on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, which has to be tempting fate given its game adaptation history.) We might (but hopefully won't) see them again as well: they also put out Tom and Jerry in Fists of Furry and Tigger's Honey Hunt on N64, as well as this title's sister game Sesame Street: Elmo's Letter Adventure.
I guess it was inevitable that I'd wind up with a game I have absolutely no business playing, developed as it was for the littlest babies that could hold a N64 controller without drooling on it. Part of me wishes I could've pulled a HBO Discovery here and just deleted the Sesame Streets from my library for no ethical reason, but unlike the people running that service I still have a soul that respects Henson's educational institution. It's tiny, but it's in there somewhere (that's what she sa- Wait, nope, can't make those jokes in a Sesame Street review). On the plus side, at least this is one 64 in 64 subject where making decent progress in an hour shouldn't be difficult. Fingers crossed that squeaky red scamp won't start dropping quadratics on your boy.
16 Minutes In
All right, let's get this out of the way. Mento has other things Mento needs to do today. Mento was unsurprised that the first person Elmo meets in his number adventure was The Count: he's probably wondering why he isn't the main character, but he doesn't seem bitter about it at least. Mostly just making puns on the word "Count" as per usual. Mento's first task was to run through The Count's garden maze, collecting every instance of the number 4: this included large models of the number (surely they should have eyes and stuff, right? How did Rare manage to out-Sesame Street Sesame Street?) as well as groups of four bats. After that, Mento did the same thing again in The Count's mansion. Mento considered the irony that Mento perhaps had a better time in this vampire mansion than Mento did in the Castlevania game, but then Mento maybe doesn't want to admit that out loud. Afterwards, Elmo joined Cookie Monster in "Cookie World": surfing down a river of chocolate (that looked like something else) and snowboarding down sugar mountain to collect instances of the number 8. Mento wonders how all the denizens of Cookie World avoid diabetes, but perhaps the evolutionary process fixed that for them.
Mento has to say that this game is not exactly challenging Mento's fine mental acuity so far, but is hopeful that the gameplay will eventually evolve and start throwing some curveballs. At least the controls couldn't be any easier: every single face button has Elmo reach out and grab whatever's in front of him, which allows him to pick up numbers and talk to NPCs alike. The start button is the only way to back out of the current adventure, but you better believe Mento hammered every confirmation button there was when Cookie Monster offered to take Elmo to his homeworld. How often does a scientific opportunity like that come along?
32 Minutes In
Mento is noticing a fundamental flaw with this whole sixty-four minute format that arises when covering a game that barely has twenty minutes of content in total. After completing The Count's and Cookie Monster's challenges the only remaining Sesame Street resident to talk to was Ernie (but not Bert?). Ernie decides to take Elmo to the carnival where there are even more numbers to collect, followed by a ride on the bumper cars. However, a bug caused Ernie to crash the game after he told Elmo to go find his two balls. Mento thinks maybe the game stepped in to protect Elmo's then-puppeteer from another sexual impropriety lawsuit, but it turns out to be a known emulation problem with no other solution than to play the whole game on Easy mode, since that mode won't have you targeting anything other than the physical numbers. Mento's pride is basically non-existent at this point, so Mento started another session in a game made for Pre-K children on its easiest setting just to pad this out another half-hour at least.
Mento maybe didn't make it clear earlier but there is absolutely no challenge to be found in Elmo's Number Journey beyond basic arithmetic literacy. Areas like The Count's maze aren't actually mazes but linear routes where numbers sit on either side of the path, and you can only interact with the ones the host wants you to find. All six of the game's challenges are identical but for the NPC that gives it to you and the visual theme (spooky castle, equally spooky empty carnival, and the chocolate land from Super Mario World). Each set is followed by a bonus game seen in the screenshot above where you stick balls into a clown's mouth and hope it doesn't bite down too hard. Mento is now left to ponder how Mento's going to fill another two updates.
48 Minutes In
After completing all three challenges again on Easy mode, Mento reached the end of the game with a nice little fireworks display to celebrate this incredible feat (and what must be a 64 in 64 first). Soon as the credits were over, the game kicked Mento back to the very beginning, as if to suggest Mento's Sisyphean ordeal of getting them digits will never end. Mento thinks a circle of Hell probably resembles this, and not for the first time cursed The Count for evading Satan's grasp for so long. Mento also noticed during the staff roll that the game credits Elmo's voice actor as "Kevin Cash", which I think is either a wrestler or maybe the singer of Folsom Prison Blues but certainly not the puppeteer. Mento is very surprised that a game that plays like it was made over a weekend by unscrupulous license-peddlers could be so careless.
Mento doesn't think Mento will be able to stop talking in the third-person after this entry. Mento believes that this has become a pathological tic induced by the Pavlovian trauma of playing through the same basic math challenge multiple times in a row with absolutely no other modes in the game to distract him. Mento is trying not to think about how Mento has another sixteen minutes of this to go. Mento isn't certain why Mento does this to himself, but Mento sure has some theories.
64 Minutes In
In this final block, Mento at last found something else to occupy Mento's time: the game's set of Retro Achievements. Mento stopped including these on 64 in 64 because many times the emulator did not support them or there weren't any attached to that particular game, but Mento is happy to report that there are some souls out there as twisted as Mento's own. In fact, these achievements have easily been the most entertaining part of playing this game: Mento's favorite is the Peace Walker no-kills/no-damage game completion achievement, which Mento was able to earn with some amount of effort, persistence, and lateral thinking.
Mento is happy to report that Mento's time with the game is over. Oddly, Mento's ability to do mental arithmetic has actually lessened as a result of playing this game, which doesn't actually teach children their sums but just what numbers look like. The same numbers that already appear at the bottom of the screen next to the progress tracker. Mento is curious what educational value a game like this could possibly have, but then Mento realized this wasn't Mento's problem any more. Mento is finally three. Uh, free. Oh god. What have you done, Elmo's Number Journey?
How Well Has It Aged?: Mento thinks... Mento... Men- Me- I think this game aged itself into obsolescence seconds after it was released. I'm not going to fault the game's visuals: the puppets we all know and love, or at least the only four to feature in the game, are lovingly rendered and the game areas were pleasant enough to stroll around even if they offered very little to look at besides numbers. It has voice samples and the original show's music, which is more than you could hope for from a budget N64 game's audio quality. I also appreciated that they bothered to render the numbers you were collecting too, even if all they did was sit there and not sing or dance or anything. The presentation overall would've been sharp enough at the time to fool kids into thinking they were playing an episode of the show. However, my opinion is that this game offers very little value as education or entertainment to its intended audience except perhaps to pacify them for five minutes while the parents get in a quick smoke break or something. My hopes are not high for Elmo's Letter Adventure.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion:
Current Ranking
- Super Mario 64 (Ep. 1)
- Diddy Kong Racing (Ep. 6)
- Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Ep. 3)
- Donkey Kong 64 (Ep. 13)
- Goemon's Great Adventure (Ep. 9)
- Pokémon Snap (Ep. 11)
- Banjo-Tooie (Ep. 10)
- Mischief Makers (Ep. 5)
- Hybrid Heaven (Ep. 12)
- Blast Corps (Ep. 4)
- Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Ep. 2)
- Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (Ep. 4)
- Spider-Man (Ep. 8)
- Bomberman 64 (Ep. 8)
- Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers (Ep. 7)
- BattleTanx: Global Assault (Ep. 13)
- Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (Ep. 9)
- San Francisco Rush 2049 (Ep. 4)
- Fighter Destiny 2 (Ep. 6)
- Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness (Ep. 14)
- Tetris 64 (Ep. 1)
- NBA Live '99 (Ep. 3)
- Rampage 2: Universal Tour (Ep. 5)
- South Park Rally (Ep. 2)
- Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (Ep. 7)
- Eikou no St. Andrews (Ep. 1)
- Rally Challenge 2000 (Ep. 10)
- Monster Truck Madness 64 (Ep. 11)
- F-1 World Grand Prix II (Ep. 3)
- F1 Racing Championship (Ep. 2)
- Sesame Street: Elmo's Number Journey (Ep. 14)
- Blues Brothers 2000 (Ep. 12)
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