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64 in 64: Episode 33

By Mento August 22, 2023 5 Comments

Welcome, all and sundry, to another episode of 64 in 64: a feature that navigates the peaks and valleys (so many valleys) of the Nintendo 64 library with a series of hour(ish)-long playthroughs. You know that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where HAL 9000 decides to betray his human masters and strands Dave outside the ship while cutting off the other astronauts' life support? I'm not sure why that scene suddenly sprang to mind as I put the finishing touches on this month's 64 in 64 entry but maybe things will become clearer in time.

I've talked before about how I don't have a particular interest in sports games, even though I've counted over 100 in the N64 library (approximately a quarter of all its games) which is information I really should've researched before starting this project. However, what I was momentarily curious to find out was what degree of representation each sport had on the system. For instance, how does Bakalar's beloved hockey stack up to American mainstays like football and basketball? How many baseball games are there, given that's a sport Japan loves as much as the USA does? Is the overpowering global popularity of soccer enough to push it into the top position? I've arranged them thusly, including the number of games based on that sport and their percentage of the total library:

Baseball (16, 4.12%): No surprise there, I guess. There's as many "Pro Yakyuu" games as there are MLB-affiliated ones. Baseball's not really a thing in Europe but we understand it enough to see the occasional localization filter through.
Wrestling (14, 3.6%): "Sports" in quotes, perhaps, but it's considered sports entertainment and there's no doubting the level of athleticism involved. Again, a pastime popular on both sides of the Pacific and in Europe as well.
Soccer (13, 3.35%): I expected a greater showing for soccer but somehow the system only saw three FIFA games. Most of the rest were supplied by Japan by way of their J-League and its affiliated games. Hardly any Euro-centric soccer games: the only one I know about is the N64 port of Premier Manager (it's basically a spreadsheet game if you aren't familiar).
American Football (13, 3.35%): How fitting is it that both types of football have an equal amount of representation? A little incongruous, perhaps, given only one country actually plays this sport but then it never pays to underestimate the NFL.
Basketball (12, 3.09%): Bringing up the rear for the big five is basketball, again almost entirely focused on the American NBA. In fact, the only N64 basketball game that doesn't have "NBA" in its title is Fox Sports College Hoops '99.
Hockey (7, 1.8%): Well, you can't spell "niche" without "ice", but I think seven games is enough to say it's a sport popular enough to sells stacks of games. Think you have what it takes to become a hockey master? Puck around and find out.
Skiing/Snowboarding (7, 1.8%): The other major cold weather sport is skiing/snowboarding, which is the only "racing" type of genre I've included here. Sorting out the various motorsports from the futuristic racers would've been too much work, so maybe I'll save that for a future 64 in 64.
Golf (6, 1.55%): I guess the leisurely pace of golf didn't fit the kid-centric vision folks had for the Nintendo 64, Mario Golf aside, or it might be that it struggled to approach the same level of reality as its PC brethren. Either way, not a whole lot of the King's Game to be found on N64.
Tennis (3, 0.77%): A shockingly small amount of tennis on N64 given the system was built for four-player games. Not a genre well served by Nintendo's system.
Bowling (3, 0.77%): Bowling's way more obscure than tennis, I'd have thought, yet the two sports have three games apiece. Milo's Astro Lanes is the only one we've played on here so far.
Boxing (3, 0.77%): I delineated the system's history of boxing games when I covered Ready 2 Rumble Boxing last episode, but the fact that there's only three on N64 and nothing from Nintendo highlights how rocky their relationship was with the fine art of pugilism.
Olympics (3, 0.77%): Hard to categorize these as not all of them are official Olympics branded, but this slot is specifically talking about those button-mashy mini-game collections based on Olympic events. There's two for the Summer Olympics and one for the Winter.
Sumo (2, 0.52%): There's just two sumo games, Bottom Up's 64 Oozumou and 64 Oozumou 2, of which we played the latter on here to my ultimate befuddlement. There's actually no other martial arts sims on N64 besides boxing and sumo, unless you want to start counting the slightly more technical fighters like Fighters Destiny or Flying Dragon.
Horseracing (2, 0.52%): Japan loves betting on the ponies so here we have two JP-exclusive horseracing sims. I've not played them but there's a good chance that, instead of playing as the jockeys, you're just raising the horses and trying to make ends meet with judicious gambling.

OK, with all that sweaty ball-grabbing out of the way, let's start sweating the rules instead:

Each episode of 64 in 64 looks at two (occasionally three) Nintendo 64 games and plays them for sixty-four minutes exactly. Is an hour enough to fully understand a game's nuances? I've no idea, I don't write the rules.
I picked the first game from a dwindling number of N64 games I want anything to do with. The second has been left to my AI companion, who is now an anime woman who yells a lot because I cannot find the tsundere toggle in the options menu for the life of me. I don't miss the future.
With each game, we have: one introduction to its history, including my own history with it; four quarterly progress reports as my mind shatters in real-time; one rundown of how well it has held up overall; one rundown of how likely it is that Nintendo will stick it on the premium tier of its Switch Online service; and one summation of its Retro Achievements presence, since I accidentally left that activated on RetroArch. I mean, my legitimate N64 that I'm playing all these legitimate games on. Phew, salvaged.
We are not touching any game promised to the Switch Online library or those that already belong there. That would be cheating, and I don't approve of NTR (Nintendo Territory Raiding). Nintendo finally added another N64 game this month, by the by: Pokémon Stadium 2.

Here's the big ol' box of previous episodes if you're itching for more indignant sarcasm, and what red-blooded video game fan isn't?

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
Episode 26	Episode 27	Episode 28	Episode 29	Episode 30
Episode 31	Episode 32	Episode 33	Episode 34	Episode 35

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (Pre-Select)

LucasArts / Nintendo
1996-12-03 (NA), 1997-03-01 (EU), 1997-06-14 (JP)
=10th N64 Game Released

History: Shadows of the Empire was an experiment by LucasArts to create a multimedia blitz around an original story set in the Star Wars universe between Episodes V (Empire Strikes Back) and VI (Return of the Jedi) in order to promote the Special Edition remasters of the first three movies. It follows a new character, the Rebel-aligned mercenary Dash Rendar (cousin of Blast Processing, who fell to the dark side (Sega)), as he helps familiar characters Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia Organa rescue Han Solo from his capture by Boba Fett, recover the plans for the second Death Star, and foil the ambitious noble Prince Xizor who seeks to usurp Darth Vader as the Empire's second-in-command by being the one to bring Luke to the Emperor. Along with novels, comics, and its own soundtrack, Shadows of the Empire also received a video game adaptation that was arguably the most successful of the bunch: it was one of the earliest third-party N64 exclusives for a while before eventually also receiving a PC port. LucasArts would go on to develop four more games for N64: three are Star Wars-related, while the last is an Indiana Jones game. They all have reasonably good reputations (in fact, Shadows of the Empire might be the lowest rated) so I wouldn't mind including another on here in the future.

I legit figured I'd be beaten to the punch with this one given that, as an early N64 title, it was instrumental in establishing the system's identity around launch along with the likes of Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, with EB demo kiosks showing off this game's Battle of Hoth level just as often as it might a Bowser fight or some wiener flying around in a jetpack. This was a rental for me way back when; I seemed to recall beating it over a weekend and having a so-so time, and thus was never all that inclined to buy a copy. Still, as stated, it's a game I have a hard time separating from my inchoate vision of the N64 as established by its initial promotional push even with that superior PC port hanging around (which has FMV!) and figured it deserved a highlight on here before the Switch Online library got their grubby mitts all over it. (Also, if anyone's curious, yes I picked to do this one on this day of all days: August the 22nd be with you.)

16 Minutes In

I'd love if a future Star Wars movie had someone pop out of an AT-AT with a big pair of wirecutters, because how can they keep (literally) falling for this?

Like any Star Wars game on a new generation of hardware, the first thing we have to do is recreate the Battle of Hoth. Hoth is to Star Wars games what Triple H's hair was to WWE games: a means of benchmarking what was now possible with the technology of the era. It's also just one facet of the gameplay: the game's split between these flight sim stages and the third-person shooter on-foot sections, providing two mediocre flavors instead of just one. Still, if I preferred the flight parts I guess I could've just given this slot to Rogue Squadron instead: I'm a fan of SotE's ambition if nothing else. As you might expect, the Hoth battle basically boils down to destroying Imperial Probes and AT-STs with sustained fire (real easy to forget to break away in time though) while they aren't targeting you, and take down the beefier AT-ATs with the ol' tow cable trick. I'll give credit to the music and sound design that this introduction to the game felt very Star Wars-y, giving new players a familiar hook to latch onto not unlike a tow cable wrapped around an AT-AT's legs.

It took one restart—the Empire employed a sinister weapon that caused my speeder to be magnetized to enemy craft, which is why I kept flying into them if anyone asks—but I managed to complete the initial stage just as the first segment's timer concluded. I honestly played more like Trash Rendar than Dash Rendar here but I got the job done on the medium difficulty so I guess I can pat myself on the back. There, there.

32 Minutes In

What? Nobody told the Mighty Dash Rendar that there would be platforming! Time to move these meaty, blocky calves of mine.

The game's second stage sees you trapped in Hoth's Echo Base, unable to leave via your ship the Outrider until you've restarted the generators to open the hangar doors. Since the Empire's crawling all over the base by this point in the invasion, not to mention a few loose wampas, Dash must rely on his trusty blaster more than ever. The game lets you switch between first- and third-person here (I prefer the latter given there's some platforming) as you run around shooting Imperial snow-goons and the occasional probe droid and wampa. The gun combat is... well, it feels as perfunctory as the ship combat, where you're not so much aiming but spamming the fire button in the general direction of your foe and hoping your terrible accuracy is at least marginally better than theirs. Your blaster can fire endlessly but will eventually need to recharge after too many volleys; this is shown via a percentage meter.

I didn't notice any considerable drop in accuracy or power (maybe a smidge of the second) while shooting at close to 0%, so I've just been firing wildly at anything that pops into view. The galaxy of Star Wars won't invent accurate guns for another few thousand years at minimum, so at least we're all on the same playing field. I think I'm close to done with this stage, but it's real tough to avoid getting hit due to how much time it takes to bring anything down: I've been treating this game like a brawler so far, in the sense that damage is usually unavoidable so you just have to hope to hold onto your remaining lives long enough to complete the level (there's a few well-hidden extra lives though, just in case). I've also been accruing "challenge points": proto-achievements awarded for entirely obtuse goals. I got some for bringing down AT-ATs with the tow cables earlier, and now I'm finding them in random out-the-way places while roaming these icy tunnels. They also award bonus lives in the post-level rundowns, but I'm mostly just hunting around for them because I have the brain problems when it comes to arbitrary collectibles.

48 Minutes In

You can tell by the flamboyant way they die that every stormtrooper is played by a theater kid. Nice little nod to the movies.

Well, gang, things did not end well for ol' Dash Mento over here. After making a little more progress into Echo Base, activating the generators and moving through a room that was tearing itself apart as the base continuted to deteoriate, I was thrown into a sudden boss fight with an AT-ST. I thought these things were annoying to deal with when I had a speeder with a big cannon on the front. Against the AT-ST your basic blaster might as well be a laser hair removal appliance, so the only route to victory I could see was to painstakingly (and painfully) make my way around the boss room collecting the more powerful seeker ammo that dropped from crates. However, the seeker ammo has this odd quirk where it doesn't actually seek anything and just fires in a straight line very slowly, giving even the ponderously big AT-ST plenty of time to step out of the way.

I eventually ran out of lives but I did discover one curious blindspot in the AT-ST's offensive spread: directly underneath it. If I get down there and not get stomped somehow, I might be able to whittle its health down to 0% over, say, the length of an hour. As plans go I've had better but I'm really not enthused about repeating this whole stage again (there was even a mid-mission checkpoint; why have those if they don't count for anything?). Well, time to get back to whacking the wampa. And then after that maybe I'll have relieved enough stress to focus better on this damn Star War.

64 Minutes In

I ain't reading all that, but I'm happy for you. Or sorry it happened.

Shockingly, I didn't get stomped into paste by the AT-ST and even discovered that if you shoot at its cockpit from below it does a moderate amount of damage. I guess these anti-infantry walking turrets are weak to targets that are about the height of a standard human infantry unit, who would've thought. After attesting to my AT-ST besting I managed to escape Echo Base (after shooting some interlopers in the Outrider) and took off into space. However, my liberation from Hoth would not be complete until I'd destroyed enough Imperial TIE fighters waiting for any evacuating ships in orbit. This asteroid field had more TIEs than my local haberdasher and the most annoying of which were the bombers, as they would get in close and toss powerful green balls around like they were the Hulk's boxers during a workout. Honestly, though, this is the first level where I managed to get through the thing without a scratch, let alone losing all my lives which I'd done in the previous two. It certainly felt perilous with the amount of ships flying around but I guess the Outrider is made of sterner stuff.

I know, I know, "don't get cocky kid", but this was the last big hurdle for this particular portion of the game. After that I got about a minute into some cutscenes regarding Prince Xizor, the new villain. He talks briefly with his three henchmen—Kanine, Molaar, and the diabolical Bicuspid—about his plan to kill Luke (so I got that wrong) so Darth Vader looks like a bumbling idiot who cannot abduct one teenager for a creepy old man to torture, allowing Xizor to take his spot as Chief Imperial Boy-Wrangler. None of that is any concern of mine, however, as my time here is over.

How Well Has It Aged?: What a Piece of Junk. Nah, it's not so bad, but it does feel a bit half-baked. Like it's trying to be two different things and can only be half of either. That's not a terrible approach if you consider your audience are kids who can't imagine a Star Wars game where you're not blasting both stormtroopers and TIE fighters, but it did feel surprisingly rudimentary. Maybe that's also due to its age too: it's a better console FPS and flight sim than anything a 16-bit system could handle in 1996 or earlier, and that's largely because consoles had finally caught up to the level of tech that makes those genres tick. Inverted controls aside, the relative simplicity means it's still pretty accessible too. Just ignore everything happening on PC at the time and I've no doubt it was an impressive game for its era.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: I've Got a Bad Feeling About This. There are certainly better N64 Star Wars games out there but maybe if Dave Filoni decides to base the next D+ Star Wars TV show on Shadows of the Empire—perhaps once their eerie CGI face tech has improved enough to bring back the whole original trilogy cast—I could see a rerelease (or more likely a remake) doing the rounds. As it is, though, there's already a polished version of the PC port on GOG and I could see a Nightdive type just bringing that to the Switch instead and skipping the "Waiting Room of the Damned" that is the current state of those announced to join the N64 Switch Online library.

Retro Achievements Earned: 6 out of 38. No real surprises in the bunch besides maybe a few Hard/Jedi difficulty exclusives. Most are for completing the levels and also doing so with all available challenge points.

Gex 64: Enter the Gecko (Random)

Realtime Associates / Midway (NA) & GT Interactive (EU)
1998-08-01 (NA), 1999-02-26 (EU)
=121st N64 Game Released

History: The second Gex game sees the TV-obsessed scaly hero enter the third-dimension, making the same evolution Rayman did for its sophomore incarnation. Gex jumps from TV station to TV station in order to recover the special remotes he needs to fight his nemesis Rez and save the bodacious Agent Xtra. Can Gex wisecrack his way through another adventure and make it to the end in one piece? (Do we want him to?) This would be 64 in 64's second game from Realtime Associates (they made the port instead of the original developers, Crystal Dynamics): since the first was Sesame Street: Elmo's Number Journey, Gex has much to live up to. Not to spoil too much, but I've already penciled in another of theirs for a 64 in 64 later this year. Our Midway counter is now at eight games, the seventh being last episode's Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, so they too have nowhere to go but up. Man, expectations really couldn't be higher, huh?

Well, it finally happened. I rolled the dice one too many times with this feature and ended up having to play a Gex game. There's two for N64—this, along with its sequel Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko—but that was still only around a 1-in-200 chance I'd ever be forced to contend with this sardonic salamander so I'll admit to deluding myself into a false sense of security. That said, of my rogue's gallery of Games I Really Did Not Want to Play on 64 in 64, Gex is at least better regarded than most of what's on there. It's also a 3D platformer, so even if it sucks I'm probably to find something about its spin on running around collecting trash fun because that's how my own particular lizard brain works. Besides, if I was that strongly averse to terrible humor, it'd make most of what write on Giant Bomb deeply hypocritical. So, taking the advice of one Mike Minotti and following the footsteps of one Jess O'Brien, I'm going to give Gex a fair tail shake. Hopefully I won't regret it.