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64 in 64: Episode 25

By Mento November 29, 2022 2 Comments

All good things must come to an end, and yet so too must things like 64 in 64. I say that, but I won't be staying away for long: there's more Nintendo 64 games I'm curious to dive into if only for an hour and many, many more pieces of detritus from a bygone age I've yet to subject myself to, the reasons for doing so having long since escaped me. Expect to see more episodes in the new year sometime, just not quite with this degree of regularity. I was recently asked in the comments what type of game I would've liked to have seen more often (or, at least, that's how I chose to interpret the question) and it's the mysterious Japan-only games that have been sitting behind a language barrier for nigh on twenty years. Even when it was an endless procession of mahjong, pachislots, go, shogi, horseracing betting sims, and hanafuda games on Super Famicom it was intriguing to see another side to that console: an unseen iceberg stretching many meters below the surface, and a glimpse into how the video game release cycle and the third-party support looked so very different to Japanese audiences. A cursory glance at the big ol' spreadsheet I use to pick out these games suggests there were around 80 of the system's 388 games that were only released in Japan—about one in five—and remarkably we only ever encountered three of them: Eikou no St. Andrews, Tetris 64, and Mario no Photopi. Once the series returns for 2023, I'm determined to feature more of them in the pre-selection half of each episode: there's a few fan-translated ones I'd like to explore. I might also start incorporating the cancelled prototypes that have been showing up in mostly finished states across the internet: after all, Nintendo put Star Fox 2 on their SNES Classic Mini console so there's a precedent for polishing up some unreleased product as a means to entice more customers by presenting something no-one's ever seen before. That'll be for next year's Mento to sort out though, that schmuck: for now, let's get on with this 64 in 64 season finale.

And what a finale I have planned for you all this week: Two fighter games! Historically and demonstrably (going by the ranking) my least favorite genre for the system! I say that, but these are two of the better rated ones at least. Maybe they'll escape the bottom half of the ranking table, though as always no promises. The pre-selection is actually one I put this far down the shortlist as a joke as I never conceived of a scenario where Nintendo wouldn't have already added it to Switch Online by now, and the random selection is a name I usually hear in the same sentence as "one of the less bad of the mediocre grimdark fighters for N64". Looks like we're about to wade into the quagmire that is the '90s comic book aesthetic again, Spawn help us all.

Before all that, we have our last rules check-in for this season:

Two N64 games are selected each episode. One by me, one randomly picked from the system's entire library by a piece of software. I actually use the same piece of software to determine what Indie games I play next for my other blog feature, so it feels like I give over a lot of my time to arbitrary chaos.
Each game is played for sixty-four minutes exactly. I'll take a small break every sixteen minutes to jot down my thoughts and current mental state. Depending on the game, that small break might stretch out to an hour as I try to psyche myself up to jump back in.
Each game then receives two post-playthrough reports: the first goes into my impressions on how well it has held up over the years, while the second considers the likelihood of its inclusion on the Switch Online service. One doesn't necessarily factor into the other, though it probably should.
This series will not feature any games already on the Switch Online service, or confirmed to be on their way. The exceptions being those previously covered before they were officially added or Harvest Moon 64 that one time I wasn't paying attention. We're here to see what else deserves to be on there or, at the very least, what shouldn't.

Be sure to celebrate this quarter-centennial by checking out previous episodes below:

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
Episode 16	Episode 17	Episode 18	Episode 19	Episode 20
Episode 21	Episode 22	Episode 23	Episode 24	Episode 25

Super Smash Bros. (Pre-Selected)

HAL Laboratory / Nintendo
1999-01-21 (JP), 1999-04-26 (NA), 1999-11-19 (EU)
178th N64 Game Released

History: I wanted something big for the season finale and, hey, wouldn't you know it, Nintendo's been dragging their heels putting the first game in one of their largest and most fan-servicey franchises on the Nintendo Switch Online service. I couldn't even begin to tell you why, but I suppose I can try to unpack it in the usual post-playthrough section below. Super Smash Bros. is the brainchild of Masahiro Sakurai, the most overworked person in game development after Randy Pitchford's PR manager, and is a multiplayer "platfighter" that pits (including Pit, eventually) various Nintendo characters together in a contest of strength, speed, and perseverance. I will say that the original N64 Smash Bros. is a little on the light side features-wise having only standard and multiplayer modes (the former being the single-player mode with boss fights and bonus rounds) and just eight starting characters, with four extra to be unlocked once the right criteria are met. The Smash Bros. series are fighters, technically speaking, but have streamlined the controls and usual genre features for accessibility in much the same way the Mario Kart and Mario [Sports] titles do for their respective genres: the A button gives you three different standard attacks depending on whether down or up is also held and the B button does the same but for special attacks, with each set of specials being distinct to each character in a manner that befits their established fighting style. Beyond that you have the versatile evade/guard and the guard-ignoring grapple, both of which tend to be blind spots for novices.

Developers HAL Labs are, of course, best known for their Kirby franchise and we've encountered them twice previously on 64 in 64 with Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards and Pokémon Snap, in both cases shortly before they were officially inducted into the Switch Online library. Might explain why Kirby's one of the strongest characters in the Smash canon, especially with his recovery move options. If we meet HAL again on 64 in 64, it'll be for the first Pokémon Stadium (that is, the Japan-only one we didn't see over here): there's nothing else of theirs left to visit.

Super Smash Bros., that is to say the first one, has always had a special place in my heart because at the time it felt like the wildest notion of a fan game brought to life by Nintendo themselves (or, well, in this case a subsidiary). This was during a period when the emulation scenes for the 8-bit and 16-bit Nintendo libraries were starting to pick up steam and people were putting together the craziest ROM hacks they could conceive and build, and for as much as Nintendo hates those dirty pirates and homebrewers it sure does feel like they get inspired by them on occasion (take, for example, the experimental crossover NES Remix games or the sudden appearance of an official Metroid 2 remake (Metroid: Samus Returns) after the release of the well-received hack AM2R). This was one of those games I'd regularly play at friends' houses too, along with GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, so there's a lot of happy memories tied up with it. Of course, being the loner shut-in that I now am, I've always appreciated the not-inconsiderable single-player component of the Smash series, especially when it comes to collecting trophies or discovering new features. Curious to see how much I'll be able to remember this time: my goal is to unlock as many of the bonus fighters as possible within the time limit.

16 Minutes In

I captured Link in a rather dainty pose here. Did this game give him leg warmers?

Decided to get in a regular standard mode session with my usual main, Link. Link's a good choice for those of us wanting to focus on regular attacks instead of the more conditionally-focused specials because of those strong aerial up and down stab moves borrowed from Zelda 2, so I don't have to worry too much about the right time to throw a bomb or use the boomerang (though it's more that most of Link's specials are best suited for distance, and his standard attacks and B-Up recovery for up close). The original Smash Bros. definitely feels sluggish compared to the newer ones, but it still plays remarkably close to something like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate regardless. Not a whole lot of Link's repertoire is has changed over the years, at least, and most of the tricks I rely on still work here too.

The standard mode for original Smash is harder than I recall also: the large melees against 10+ opponents can wear you down quick, and fighting the giant DK or Metal Mario actually feel like proper boss fights that you can't take lightly. I'm about at the end of this run here, and after defeating Master Hand (I hope) I'll have a shot at one of the bonus characters you can unlock through the standard single player mode.

32 Minutes In

Break the Targets has some nice touches, like teaching you that Pikachu's Thunder Jolt can travel around platforms.

Determining that I need a refresher course in the other characters, and because I can't keep challenging the standard mode this entire time, I took a gander at everyone's "Bonus 1" mini-game (otherwise known as "Break the Targets!"). This bonus round was an enduring fan favorite, showing up in most of the sequels, because not only does it present a tough challenge it also serves doubly as a hint-free tutorial on everyone's special movesets and other distinct skills, each character having to deal with a specific arrangement of platforms and targets suited to them. Sadly, playing the bonus rounds isolated from the main mode is pretty much the only other single-player content the game offers: there's no trophies yet, none of those quests that drop you into fights with tough special rules, and no story-based adventure mode. For an N64 game it still offers a decent amount of content, but it wouldn't be until Melee and beyond that we started seeing more of the extracurricular material that makes Smash pop.

Naturally, I had an ulterior motive to play through everybody's Bonus 1 mode and that was to unlock the second character: Luigi. The first playthrough of the standard mode unlocked Captain Falcon, the middle hardest of the three characters you unlock through that mode since there's a time requirement, and now I'll be heading back in for the easier goal of unlocking Jigglypuff. Then I'll have to try for Ness, the hardest (Normal difficulty, three stock, no continues). I wonder if I can chalk this up as another game completion if I unlock everyone...?

48 Minutes In

A detail I noticed this time with the Fighting Polygon Team is that they have slightly different, more 'realistic' models compared to who they're imitating. For instance, Pikachu's Polygon equivalent just looks like a bipedal rat and Yoshi's looks like a raptor with jagged teeth.

Man, Normal is no joke. There's that easy early ramp up to the tougher challenges at the end, which coincides with the game increasing the CPU difficulty throughout. When you get to the Fighting Polygon Team, shown above, that's thirty moderately tough opponents one after the other. Three lives really don't last as long as you'd hope across some twelve battles. I blew my chance at getting Ness this time, settling for Jigglypuff once I've defeated Master Hand in a rematch (he hasn't changed much either), so I'm thinking I might next try a character that's easier to survive with. Or maybe not, since the single player takes over sixteen minutes to beat and I'll run out of time before I can do it again. I'll just stick with trying out Bonus 2 ("Board the Platforms!", which proved to be less popular) with as many characters as possible and call it a day.

The issue with Smash Bros. is one I have with most fighting games: besides the impetus to get better, there aren't a whole lot of carrots on sticks for the chronically friendless to pursue. I think I've only liked fighters that offered something more substantial in that department: the trophies and challenges of Smash Bros., the VN story modes of the Persona Arenas, or the combo mastery found in the practice mode of Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha and several others. Anything where I might unlock secret characters works too, though in most cases it's just a matter of inputting cheat codes you find off the internet (or, back in the dinosaur days, hearsay overheard in the arcades or during recess at school).

64 Minutes In

This was before they settled on DK's look for Donkey Kong 64 I guess. As the recent Super Mario Bros. movie trailer intimated, Miyamoto prefers when DK looks like a complete buffoon.

As expected, I quickly salvaged the Normal run by unlocking that useless singing orb and then played around with the Bonus modes some more. Turns out Jigglypuff has the hardest Break the Targets challenge: I spent what felt like half this block going for his set of targets, constantly missing the very last one in the sequence because his balloon jumps just lose all steam after the third one. Board the Platforms isn't that much better, since it only takes advantage of regular movement and the occasional B-Up recovery move (that is, if the character even has one: Jigglypuff just starts singing as he plummets off the map to certain doom like he was the violinist onboard the Titanic).

Given I'd almost exhausted all the game's content that didn't require some more training or a better controller to pull off (why yes, I am liable to blame everything besides my own skill level) it's almost a relief when the timer went off one last time. Not that I didn't enjoy this little revisit to Smash Bros.'s salad days, but a growing boy needs more than salads to live.

How Well Has It Aged?: Super Smashingly. The essential Smash experience is still here and since the retro games on Switch Online usually come with online functionality it would be a good fit for anyone nostalgic enough to play some blocky Smash against friends both local and distant. The one detriment is that Ultimate plays more or less the same but has like five times the features and characters and a big ol' graphical update, but you could argue the same thing about Mario Kart 64 versus Mario Kart 8 or Mario Party versus... no, wait, I guess those are all equally bad.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: It's Bizarre It's Not Already On There. I'm wracking my brain for a solid reason why they've yet to add it, or why it wasn't one of the first games available, and the only thing I can think of is that Nintendo doesn't want it cannibalizing sales of Ultimate. Yet they stopped supporting Ultimate a while ago with the last DLC character; even the Spirit Board and multiplayer events are drying up, and those used to be cute little ways Nintendo could advertise future games. Super Smash Bros. was available on both the Wii and Wii U Virtual Console too, so it's not like they lost the source code or anything. Maybe Nintendo is worried that if they start making older Smash games available on Switch, the sheer outcry from FGC weirdos to port over Melee will be too much to cope with? They're having enough trouble getting all those GameCube Zeldas and Metroids on there.

Dark Rift (Random)

Kronos Digital Entertainment / Vic Tokai
1997-06-30 (JP), 1997-07-30 (NA), 1998-03-27 (EU)
30th N64 Game Released

History: Dark Rift is set in the distant future where Earth finds itself sandwiched between two way cooler dimensions when the titular rift starts creating tears in the fabric of spacetime. A special crystal thought to convey all the secrets in the universe to its wielder is divided into three pieces and sent to Earth, the demonic Dark Dimension, and the pure energy Light Dimension. Eight warriors fight amongst themselves to recover all the crystal pieces for their own ends. At least, that's about as much of the plot as I can follow. In Japan, the game is known as Space Dynamites which I kinda prefer despite (or maybe because of) being a total non-sequitur.

Kronos Digital Entertainment got its start as a CGI animation studio contracted to video game developers looking to put together FMV for the burgeoning CD-ROM market of the early '90s. They worked on the cinematics for both King's Quest VI and Phantasmagoria on behalf of Sierra Online. After that, starting from 1995, they began developing their own original games. Their first release, Criticom (for Saturn and PlayStation), was actually the predecessor to Dark Rift: for whatever reason, they downplayed the connection when Dark Rift emerged two years later, though I'm only guessing it was because Criticom was godawful. After Dark Rift they went on to make the isometric action PC game Meat Puppet and the PS1 exclusive fighter Cardinal Syn before bowing out with the divisive Fear Effect duo of cel-shaded third-person shooters. As expected from their background, Kronos's games tended to be lauded for their presentations if not always for their gameplay. Vic Tokai was a venerable Japanese game company that is a branch of the much larger Tokai Corporation, a natural gas provider. They'd been producing games from as far back as 1986 for the NES and C64, including cult favorites like Clash at Demonhead and Decap Attack, but Dark Rift would prove to be their last project. Shortly after its release, Vic Tokai switched to developing communication technology and never looked back. Dark Rift was the only N64 game either company worked on.

Well, here we go with yet another one of these Not-Mortal Kombat fighters. I suppose it only has Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. to beat in this mini edgelord fighter bracket that's starting to develop, but I'm not hopeful I'll get a lot out of my time here. Curiously, it has the same number of fighters as Super Smash Bros. (excepting secret characters: it has two to Smash's four) but I guess that has more to do with system limitations than anything: doesn't feel like you could get away with having a fighter game with any fewer than eight combatants, but the N64 only had so much memory to work with.