In hindsight, I probably went a little too negative on the last episode. I'm getting used to the idea that I'll go through peaks and valleys with this Nintendo 64 feature due to the fickle nature of my selection process, where half is driven by morbid curiosity and the other half by sheer chance, so what I want to escape from now on is emphasizing too strongly when I have a "good" or a "bad" time with the selections: many of the so-so games I've covered so far were at the very least interesting to explore for an hour, and if not interesting then an anodyne way to wile away that time re-discovering some long-forgotten, Y2K-adjacent product that a team of professionals nonetheless dedicated a considerable portion of their time and energy into developing. I'm certainly not always going to be one to reward that effort with kind words and a fully comprehensive retrospective, but as long as I treat every duo of N64 games featured per episode with an open mind and a critical maturity I should afford them the modicum of respect they and their creators deserve. I definitely want to drop the histrionic, hyperbolic statements about whatever manner of horrific ordeal I had to put up with this time around, if only to avoid sounding overly churlish and spiteful.
Anyway, the random choice this week is absolute trash and I was in abject agony trying to play it.
Here come the rules!
- Each episode of 64 in 64 covers two N64 games, the first of which is picked ahead of time from a shortlist of games I'm looking to highlight for a myriad of reasons while the second is picked via a random selection process that has, in truth, been pretty forgiving of late. I'm sure getting complacent is the right call to make here.
- Each game will be played for a total of sixty-four minutes each with updates after every sixteen minutes. These updates provide a rundown of what I've been doing and anything of interest I may have observed, though it's mostly just complaining. This feature was conceived to play to my strengths after all.
- To conclude, I'll offer my opinion on whether or not the game deserves to live again via the Nintendo Switch Online service's premium Expansion Pack tier, and another opinion on whether or not it'll actually happen based on publisher history and recent trends. I haven't been entirely right so far, but there's always a first time.
- Finally, no touching anything already on the service or confirmed to be on its way. After this week, Nintendo will have jimmied open the Ark of the Covenant and re-unleashed Mario Party 1 and 2 on an unprepared world. That they're holding back on the third Mario Party for now is possibly the most foreboding promise for the future the company has made since they announced the Year of Luigi.
If you're looking for previous episodes, look no further. That doesn't mean stop reading this blog however, though I guess I can't force you. Not yet, anyway. Not until my plans reach fruition. Enjoy!
Wetrix (Pre-Selected)
- Zed Two / Ocean Software (JP: Imagineer)
- 1998-06-16 (EU), 1998-06 (NA), 1998-11-27 (JP)
- 105th N64 Game Released
History: At a couple of prior points we've intimated at how unusually well-represented the N64 was for Tetris games, starting back when I covered the Japan-only Tetris 64 with the very first 64 in 64 episode to just recently discussing H2O Entertainment and their two mechanically different (T-)spins on the world's favorite non-candy, non-slime puzzle game by way of Tetrisphere and The New Tetris. However, a strong contender for the best N64 Tetris-alike might be this relatively obscure release from my neck of the woods: Wetrix, in which you assemble reservoirs in an isometric 3D landscape by funnelling wells into the floor and building up the walls around them to contain some very physics-y fluids within.
Wetrix was developed by Zed Two, which is a "sequel" company formed by industry veteran brothers Ste and John Pickford and named in honor of their original studio, Zippo Games. The two rose up in the Commodore 64 era and became renowned further still with a bunch of NES and SNES games made while part of Software Creations (later Acclaim Studios Manchester), including personal favorites Solstice, Equinox, and Plok, the last of which continues to exist as a webcomic. This is our first Ocean Software game on 64 in 64, but the UK publisher was ubiquitous over here for most of the 1980s and 1990s and perhaps most famous for their many arcade conversions to popular-only-in-Europe computer platforms like the Atari ST and the Amiga. By 1998 they had been bought by the French conglomerate Infogrames (now Atari SA) and turned into Infogrames UK, though the Wetrix box art still uses the original Ocean branding: given the game's watery theme, I suppose Infogrames figured oceans were more fitting. Wetrix debuted on the N64, but also made a splash on the Dreamcast and the Game Boy Color in modified forms (and it also saw a PS2-exclusive sequel called Aqua Aqua, which I'm only now just learning about).
After last episode's gruesome twosome I've returned to the well, so to speak, of my own personal collection of N64 highlights for this week's pre-selection. It's a similar decision behind my choosing to cover DMA Design's Space Station Silicon Valley a few episodes ago: a local product which might not have seen too much penetration in foreign markets, at least not to the extent that Rare enjoyed, but one I hold some amount of affection towards despite not necessarily being the best in its class for the system. Curious to see how much of its gameplay flow my brain was able to retain.
16 Minutes In
The difficulty in covering Wetrix in this incremental update fashion is that there's a lot of rules and mechanics you have to glean through a number of practice rounds before you can get scores beyond a mere few hundred points, and chasing high scores is really the only objective here. The goal of Wetrix, as stated previously, is to spend time building reservoirs (called "lakes" in-game) by dropping items onto an isometric grid: most of these pieces tend to be long walls that have either one, two, three, or four sides to them that, when they hit the ground, become part of the topography of the level. It's similar to the land deformation mechanic in Populous (or From Dust, as a slightly more recent example). Of course, you'll have other drops that are less helpful: there are equivalent "anti-walls" that reduce whatever topography they touch, bombs that remove a large chunk of level in a hurry and leave holes behind that will need repairing, and of course the water. Once the water drops arrive, you really need to have built something to contain them, as the game is over once enough water has escaped the level from the sides of the field. Last are the fireballs, which can destroy a part of the level like bombs do but when aimed at lakes will evaporate the water within and give you some breathing room (as well as a score bonus).
I've only now recalled a mechanic that is subtle but can quickly spell the end to early runs if the player isn't paying attention: as well as water falling in discrete quantities that the player can drop where they like, there'll occasionally be bouts of rain that fall in random spots across the playing field. While you might be focusing on a few smaller and deeper lakes in the corner of the playing area, the water draining gauge (which determines how much water has left the field and, thus, how close you are to failing) will continue to slowly rise if you don't start working on a full perimeter wall to contain the rainwater. After that, you can start building individual walls within this all-encompassing barrier and earn bonuses from having multiple lakes active simultaneously. I'm at the point now where I'm eluding the immediate game overs, but I'm still yet to find my way to the big multipliers and other larger bonuses.
32 Minutes In
Expanding on the last update, long-term survival means being able to quickly adjust and bounce back from the various calamities that the game can throw at you. The first, and easiest to weather, are the ice cubes. These will freeze any water they touch, denying you the score potential of that lake or a means to evaporate it while on the other hand holding it in place for a while in case you need to make some quick repairs to the walls containing it. The second are re-bombs, which happen when you get cocky enough to drop a bomb on an already destroyed part of the level with the inkling that it can't become more destroyed than it already is: the game takes exception to this rule-flaunting and drops several more bombs across the field, and you can't aim where they go. The third and last are the earthquakes, which randomizes the entire playing field and will likely destroy most if not all the lakes you have. There's plenty of warning for when an earthquake happens as its tied directly to how much landmass there is on top of the playing field: choosing to drop bombs or the green "reduce land" arrows in spots where they do nothing isn't necessarily beneficial in the long run, as you'll want to keep trimming excess peaks.
Yeesh, it's all coming back to me how dense this game was with its rules and hazards to avoid. I recall being somewhat competent with it by the time I lost interest, and I've already had one run with a score in excess of anything the CPU has on the high score table. However, the game's standard "Classic" mode is where it's just getting started: there's also the Pro mode that starts faster and throws more hazards at you, and the Challenge mode that gives you the highest difficulty from the outset and a specific condition to meet, e.g. survive X number of seconds or until X number of drops. I don't think I'll be hopping into those modes today though; I'm having a hard enough time over here with Baby Difficulty.
48 Minutes In
Fair to say most of my long-submerged Wetrix techniques are coming back after scoring a cool half-million on that last attempt. The fundamentals are simple enough to grasp: You get scored every time you evaporate water with a fireball, and the amount earned is the volume of water vaporized multiplied by the number of rubber ducks on the field and whether or not there's a rainbow bonus active at the time. I don't quite recall what summons rainbows, but they tend to show up if I'm doing well enough and I imagine the idea is to quickly try to drop another fireball onto a reservoir before the rainbow goes away again in order to reap its benefits. Instrumental to earning points are those rubber duck multipliers though, and that means many peripheral simultaneous deep lakes at once. Best tactic I've found is to have them share as many walls as possible with the outer perimeter and each other to reduce excess landmass: having isolated ones will probably cost me as it's unnecessarily poking the earthquake gauge up higher.
I tell ya, getting into the flow of Wetrix is one of the best feelings ever, in much the same way as it is with any puzzle game with its own sorta-subconscious "Effect" (Tetris's, of course, being the most famous). Once you have the right method down pat you go into this mental zone where you're able to rapidly adjust the field layout to mitigate risks, developing new lakes and hearing those happy little duck noises whenever one becomes sufficiently deep, and taking in the various warning sounds—one for an imminent earthquake, one for excess water loss, one for when you're about to go up another level which causes the game speed to increase—and doing whatever you can to weather the changes. Earthquakes still feel inevitable as I'm fairly sure the drops are random and you can just be unlucky with too many walls dropping consecutively, but there's some split-second risk assessment involved that becomes surprisingly second-nature in no time. Lot of plate-spinning stress involved, but very rewarding too.
64 Minutes In
Hmm, still not sure what to do about the earthquakes completely screwing me over. I guess the smart approach would to be to avoid getting too greedy with all those little duckie pools, but the higher scores are going to elude you without making as many of them as is feasible. There's only a certain depth those pools need to be, so once you reach the right wall height you're safe enough dropping excess blocks in a corner somewhere where the bombs and anti-walls can dispense with them safely.
Not a whole lot more game mechanic business to update on here, though I can't help but feel like there's even more nuance and hidden features that I'm missing. I'm sure I could find a foolproof guide to earning crazy high scores somewhere on the internet—Wetrix is a little more involved than most puzzle games, but it wouldn't take that long to master if you were really determined—but that's also around the point I start to lose interest in them too. The pursuit of ever-higher scores feels to me that one Simpsons bit where Principal Skinner makes up the lamest game based around performing tedious activities to motivate Bart ("see how much you can do in an hour, and then try to break that record!"). For me, puzzle games are at their most fascinating when they still have lessons to impart and new wrinkles to take into account, which is usually limited to the early- to mid-game. Still, though, there's a compelling aspect to Wetrix's score-chasing that most games of its type only wish they had.
How Well Has It Aged?: Like Fine... Water. A good puzzle game is evergreen, because the appeal is never in the more elaborate tech involved nor the graphical presentation. In fact, both would probably get in the way of one of the genre's more beguiling traits: a deliberate visual and interface simplicity that often belies any deeper mechanics involved. Of course, I say that, but Wetrix is also an example of the sort of game that couldn't exist without the tech of the N64 and its peers due to the realistic fluid physics involved. Games like Wetrix can doubly work as neat tech demos for their respective platforms due to pulling off what couldn't be done previously, and it's something I miss from the more iterative progression of modern consoles where the biggest changes you're likely to see are improved framerates, flashier lighting effects, and other comparatively minor improvements (the occasional Nemesis System-level feature notwithstanding).
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Moderate. Due to a bizarre set of circumstances, Atari SA sold off Ocean Software/Infogrames UK to Bandai Namco of all companies just prior to evolving into their current insane state as the owner of various Atari-branded cryptocurrencies, microconsoles, Middle Eastern hotels, and the MobyGames wiki. So I guess Wetrix possibly now belongs to the same company behind Tales, Tekken, Pac-Man, and a thousand anime tie-ins? Kind of a good fit, if you ask me. It's anyone's guess if the higher-ups at Bamco even know they own this property, let alone have plans to adapt it to Nintendo's service. (On the other hand, if Zed Two managed to hold onto the rights, they were merged into Warthog who in turn then went under shortly after being acquired by Tiger Telematics to make Gizmondo games. In that case the IP is entirely up in the ether along with another puzzle game paragon, Sticky Balls.)
Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. (Random)
- Saffire / Midway (EU: GT Interactive)
- 1998-05-31 (NA), 1998-09-01 (EU)
- =99th N64 Game Released
History: Neo-Amerika, built on the ruins of a near-future corporate dystopian vision of the United States, now settles all political disputes through arena battles to the death. The combatants? A group of genetically modified mutants built for murder that each corporation enters into the competition as their representative and champion, collectively known as Biological Flying Robotic Enhanced Armored Killing Synthoids or Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. for short. This is their very stupid, grimdark story. Also it's a fighter game, but I guess you could've picked that up from the context.
We've miraculously managed to avoid Saffire so far. The developer formerly known as Cygnus Multimedia Productions put out six Nintendo 64 games in total, none of which I've been particularly eager to encounter. Along with Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. they also include a Xena: Warrior Princess fighting game, the N64 port of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (I'm sure a very difficult tactical FPS is made much easier with N64 controls), Top Gear Rally 2, Rampage World Tour (we played its sequel), and that Cyber Tiger golf game with the perturbing box art. Midway, meanwhile, is absolutely the kind of company that would put out this edgelord nonsense given their track record—they were in fact the original developers of the game back when it was planned for an arcade release that never transpired, and Saffire were contractors that developed the N64 and PlayStation ports based on that unreleased prototype. As stated in a previous episode, a remarkable one in every ten N64 games came from Midway so don't think for a second we're anywhere near done with them yet.
For as much trepidation as I'm feeling towards playing a notoriously poor N64 fighter this almost feels like a rite of passage. Like, you can't really put together a N64-focused feature worth its salt without eventually bringing up Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. or Mace: The Dark Age or Dark Rift, or perhaps even the supposedly good War Gods. While I probably learned all I needed to about the game from watching Tres Science Boys take it on in Ranking of Fighters there's something to be said about getting your hands on it and fiddling around with it yourself. As true here as it was in sex education class. (Yes, I'm deliberately choosing to be as crass as the game. If I'm going to do this, I need to prepare myself properly by getting on its wavelength first.)
16 Minutes In
Ohhhh no. Well, it's worth stating before we begin that I've never been much of a fighter game fan largely because I lack the patience for the amount of practice they tend to demand. Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. already loses points for being from that genre, for being steeped in late-'90s vintage edgecringe, and also for all these periods I have to keep typing every time I write its title (who am I kidding? I'm copy-pasting it now) but the distinctiveness of its combat system—the one arguable silver lining—is also what's making it hard to get into. I've attempted the standard Arcade mode a few times but have yet to get past the fourth opponent (there's at least seven given there's eight playable characters, and probably a boss or two).
How it works is that the combat revolves around melee far less than it does flying around the arena like an idiot trying to shoot the other opponent while their shields are down, while avoiding the same happening to you. The two main face buttons are reserved for flying (up on the stick just makes you jump) and shooting, though if you try shooting while holding away from the opponent it activates the shield instead. The shield will greatly diminish ranged damage—which can be absolutely lethal, it's worth mentioning—but not so much against melee attacks, so it becomes this process of keeping shields on while brawling and then flying away or using the window after an opponent is knocked down to let the gauge recharge, squeezing in some gunplay whenever the opponent's shields lapse. However, you can also fire from a prone position too, which can often catch your foe (or yourself) unawares. There's a rhythm to this one, I've just gotta figure it out.
32 Minutes In
Oooofa doofa. 32 more minutes of this, huh? The chief issue is that once again the C-buttons—intended for maneuvering a roving Lakitu camera around and very little else more complex than that—have been dragooned here as the four melee buttons (left kick, right kick, left punch, right punch; and given the asymmetrical weaponry of the characters the direction does matter) to which the majority of the game's moves and special moves are assigned. I shouldn't need to repeat it at this point but the C-buttons just suck to use. They feel stiff in a way the regular A and B buttons don't, and trying to chain any manner of combo together with them is unpleasant. However, once you get to opponent level 4 and beyond in the Arcade mode you need a good grasp of your chosen character's specials, and each one has over a dozen. Might have to fall back on my standard tactic of finding a cheap move that works and spamming it until I can progress through the ranks to see what's at the end, but that's far from how you're "meant" to play a game like this.
I haven't mentioned the roster yet so here goes: there's the aforementioned Aloy stand-in, Sabotage (though she's probably more like Mira the bounty hunter from KOTOR 2, both visually and in her manner of fighting); Delta, a sultry Asian ninja lady wearing more weapons than clothes; Zipperhead, the non-union Todd McFarlane equivalent of Hellraiser's Pinhead with an actual no-foolin' racial slur for a name (and my sincerest apologies for its use here); Bullzeye, who is just post-apocalypse Duke Nukem as opposed to the usual post-relevance one; Ssapo, a burly piranha-man with grenades who may have inspired One Punch Man's Deep Sea King; Psyclown, because you need to court that enormous Juggalo demographic; Purge, who looks like a rejected enemy design from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (these damn acronyms are ganging up on me); and Minatek, who is just a big slow minotaur robot that deserves a hug. I've yet to see any boss characters, nor do I expect to.
48 Minutes In
Jeeeepers creepers. So, I embraced my inner-scrub and turned the difficulty down to Novice. Infinite continues too. Maximillian I ain't. I can now reach the fifth Arcade opponent, so there's not too much of an appreciable difference: you do still need to figure out those supers and maybe keep those shields up as much as possible. I'm also trying to use the flying feature effectively: in addition to being handy for evasion and repositioning, there's certain attacks you can only do while in the air. Since you're up there for a split second after you let go of the jetpack button, whatever commands need inputting need doing so quickly. I hit a wall with Sabotage, and now I'm going to see how further I can get with someone else.
Look, I can't fault Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. for wanting to try something a bit different. Not thematically, since every game and comic book looked like this in the late '90s, but its decision to mix it up with flight and ranged attacks in conjunction with the regular-degular melee combos and specials. The game is also naturally chasing that violent Mortal Kombat audience, with dismemberments being a common occupational hazard and slow super special moves that—if pulled off correctly and not interrupted—can instantly murder your opponent. The CPU's been very kind in not using them against me so far, nor has it really forced me into the stage hazards. I imagine once I finally progress further in the Arcade mode those kid gloves will come off (along with a limb or two).
64 Minutes In
Oiiiingo boingo. Determining I was in for a penny, in for a pound with my scrub behavior I fully embraced the way of la fromagerie and resorted to nothing but fly-and-shoot tactics that often put the CPU in a state of confusion as I used the stages' angles against them. Any time they'd warp close I'd be ready with a meteor hit to send them back down to Earth (or, ideally, a stage hazard like an acid pool) and float on over to another spot where I could slap them with another barrage of diagonal bullets, since guns can only fire at 45 degree angles in this game much like they do in real life. That I got as far as the first boss, Clonus—simply a Dural-style mirror match with an opponent with artificially higher attack and defense—was something of a surprise, even playing on Novice. Of course, it immediately managed to counter my cheesing tactics and creamed me like a high-quality brie. (I took one look at the final boss, a 20-foot-tall mech that fires homing missiles at you whose stage is a giant piranha pool, and decided I was probably better off ending things here.)
The only positive thing I can say about Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. is that it calls rounds "battles", so whenever round two starts the announcer says something that sounds like "battle to fight!" and I just think "well duh" every time I hear it. And that's... a little funny.
How Well Has It Aged?: There's a Yogurt in My Fridge That's Old Enough to Have Earned the Title "Bio Freak", so Let's Say as Well as That. I did not have a good time with Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.. I'd struggle to say anyone could have a good time with Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. today. I'd even go so far as to say someone would struggle to enjoy Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. back when it was new. Yet I can't say it's the worst fighter I've ever played—I did work on every SNES page on the GB Wiki, and you won't believe what people tried to pass off as fighting games before Street Fighter 2 codified everything—and that whole flying and shooting idea has some small spark of imagination and mechanical intrigue alike for as ridiculous as it looks. On the other hand... yo, that dude's name was a racial slur.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Minimal. Besides having to rename a guy? There's probably too many reasons it won't come to Switch. I'm not sure it jibes with Switch's family-friendly image (though plenty of Switch games don't, come to think of it), I don't think Warner Bros. cares enough to dig through the stacks of plastic containers in a warehouse somewhere that has all the leftover Midway IPs that aren't Mortal Kombat, and I'm fairly certain no-one's asking for it besides masochists with some very unusual fetishes for fish people and bull robots. I could see it showing up in a new Midway Arcade Treasures compilation though; maybe around the 12th or 13th Edition, once they've run out of everything else.
Current Ranking
- Super Mario 64 (Ep. 1)
- Diddy Kong Racing (Ep. 6)
- Perfect Dark (Ep. 19)
- Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Ep. 3)
- Donkey Kong 64 (Ep. 13)
- Space Station Silicon Valley (Ep. 17)
- Goemon's Great Adventure (Ep. 9)
- Pokémon Snap (Ep. 11)
- Rayman 2: The Great Escape (Ep. 19)
- Banjo-Tooie (Ep. 10)
- Mischief Makers (Ep. 5)
- Mega Man 64 (Ep. 18)
- Wetrix (Ep. 21)
- Harvest Moon 64 (Ep. 15)
- Hybrid Heaven (Ep. 12)
- Blast Corps (Ep. 4)
- Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Ep. 2)
- Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (Ep. 4)
- Snowboard Kids (Ep. 16)
- Spider-Man (Ep. 8)
- Bomberman 64 (Ep. 8)
- Jet Force Gemini (Ep. 16)
- Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers (Ep. 7)
- Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage (Ep. 20)
- BattleTanx: Global Assault (Ep. 13)
- Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (Ep. 9)
- San Francisco Rush 2049 (Ep. 4)
- Fighter Destiny 2 (Ep. 6)
- Big Mountain 2000 (Ep. 18)
- Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness (Ep. 14)
- Tetris 64 (Ep. 1)
- NBA Live '99 (Ep. 3)
- Rampage 2: Universal Tour (Ep. 5)
- Command & Conquer (Ep. 17)
- 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)
- Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (Ep. 15)
- Mario no Photopi (Ep. 20)
- Blues Brothers 2000 (Ep. 12)
- Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. (Ep. 21)
(Congrats Blues Brothers 2000. Ya did it.)
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