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64 in 64: Episode 36

By Mento November 21, 2023 0 Comments

Welcome to another episode of 64 in 64, a self-destructive spiral masquerading as a Nintendo 64 retrospective feature. My ongoing dalliances with Nintendo's third home console have also spawned another ill-advised feature, last week's Mis-Simian: Chimpossible, even in the midst of one of the busiest years for new releases that I really ought to be paying more attention to instead. But if no-one else is going to play N64 games this year, least of all Nintendo if the slower drip of Switch Online library updates is anything to go by, I guess it falls to me. How noble.

I like to do the occasional themed list here, but this time Wikipedia already has me beat with this citation-heavy List of Cancelled N64 Games. Now, I've already included in my master list all those N64 games that were close enough to completion to have playable alphas or prototypes—the N64 version of 40 Winks, from Episode 31, was one such case—but there's evidently plenty more that never even made it that far. Poring over the list, there's some expected sights: We have games that were in development for N64 but eventually carried over to its successor the GameCube, like Eternal Darkness and Luigi's Mansion; those that pivoted so hard that they dropped the 3D entirely and went to a portable console instead, like Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade and Mother 3; we also have a bunch of PC and PS1 ports that the developers eventually gave up on, seeing as the N64 was probably more trouble than it was worth. It's the ones Wikipedia doesn't have pages for yet that are the most intriguing though. A Konami game called Battle Dancer? A new Vic Tokai Golgo 13 adaptation? A second South Park FPS? A Resident Evil clone called W.E.T. Corpse? Wall Street 64??? PC Genjin 64?! Man, the absolute trash I could've had to deal with for this feature. I guess I can consider myself lucky to some degree but there's still many of those prototypes lurking on my list, aching for the day where I lambast them on the internet in front of ~~thousands~~ tens of loyal readers. Some day, maybe, if the random chooser wills it.

Speaking of willing things into being, here are some rules that were handed down to me on a pair of stone tablets. It wasn't some holy miracle on top of a mountain business; I just found them in the trash. Found their way to me regardless though.

Every episode of 64 in 64 covers two N64 games, each played for 64 minutes each exactly. Well, except I swear the browser keeps falling asleep before the alarm app goes off, so it's however long it takes me to notice it's been suspiciously quiet for too long.
The first choice was pre-selected by me. Miraculously, even this many episodes later I still have N64 games I want to check out, though by now it's mostly out of pure morbid curiosity. The second choice comes from a robot. The robot doesn't care if I'm happy or sad, since emotions are beyond its comprehension. Or so it claims, anyway.
Each game has a rundown of its history, quarterly updates journalizing my time with it, how well it has endured after two decades and change of technological growth, and my own astute (that is to say, a complete ass toot) take on how likely it is to see renewed interest by joining the Switch Online library.
Finally, we don't truck with any games already on the Switch Online service. Nintendo has already rewarded them enough; they need no additional recognition or approbations from me and this feature, if approbations is the word I want to use (and it isn't for many of them). Incidentally, there's only two remaining announced games they haven't added yet: 1080 Snowboarding and Harvest Moon 64. Real curious if they have plans for more.

One last piece of housekeeping here, and that's the Indomitable Table of Previous Episodes. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Or, I dunno, enjoy reading them instead. I cannot control how people respond to things. Yet.

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
Episode 36	Episode 37	-	-	-

Charlie Blast's Territory (Pre-Select)

Realtime Associates / Kemco
1999-04-02 (NA), 1999-06-18 (EU)
=205th N64 Game Released

History: Charlie Blast's Territory is a foresight-dependent puzzle game in which you detonate a series of bombs across a set of destructible islands in such a way where you don't accidentally blow yourself up or leave any bombs intact. It's sort of like Bomberman from the perspective of the bomb defusal expert who has to clear up all those remote mines before someone gets hurt. (We don't really think about the repercussions of Bomberman's actions, but that's on us as a society.) It also has the curious distinction of being a reskin of a reskin: Kemco took the 1988 computer game Bombuzal, which they published in Japan on behalf of original creators Image Works, replaced its blue blob-like hero with their Kid Klown mascot character and released the game as The Bombing Islands on PlayStation. American developers Realtime Associates then took that game and inserted the titular demolitionist everyman Charlie Blast in the starring role instead, releasing it on N64 in North America and Europe.

We've met both these companies before. Realtime Associates, of El Segundo, California, were behind previous regrettable 64 in 64 random picks Gex 64: Enter the Gecko and Sesame Street: Elmo's Number Journey. I guess they're coming up in the world if they managed to get a pre-selected slot out of me too. Kemco last popped up when we looked at Shadowgate 64 (they also handled the original game's NES port back in the day) and may do so again, since they have eight other N64 credits. They're best known these days for having like a thousand identical mobile RPGs, though they're well-regarded in the visual novel fandom as well.

So, there's a recurring theme I've been exhibiting here with some of my pre-select picks which is "N64 games that are in some way linked to the British gaming industry". The Japanese Kemco and the American Realtime Associates aren't exactly the types to go out for a cheeky Nando's, but the game's original source—Bombuzal—was developed here in the UK by Anthony Crowther (a.k.a. Ratt), a major figure in the C64 gaming world who went on to work on many games old and semi-new including the neat Atari ST sci-fi dungeon-crawler Captive and (much later) Burnout Paradise. Kemco's port of Bombuzal was also one of the earliest third-party games for the SNES, so even if I don't particularly care for the game itself too much I wanted to check out how far it had come after several international rounds of the Telephone Game. Will I get stuck about six levels in, like usual? Probably! Let's find out:

16 Minutes In

You might not have thought games would still use level passwords in 1999, but here comes Charlie Blast's Territory to prove us all fools.

OK, so, first impressions. They count for a lot, after all. My first impression of Charlie Blast's Territory is that it looks extraordinarily cheap. I realize Kemco tends to develop on a budget if all those RPG Maker games of theirs are anything to go by, but I have to imagine that Realtime Associates applied their own parsimony (as ably demonstrated by our Elmo's Number Journey playthrough) on top of whatever was already there because there's a distinct lack of... well, I won't say "effort" since that's neither fair on the developers whom probably had to stick to a miniscule budget and/or probably decided to prioritize the puzzle quality over the presentation, but let's say a distinct lack of polish. I'm pretty sure this game uses a comic sans font with no drop shadows or anything and the visuals and animations are on the below-average side too, but I'm willing to blame some of that on what is perhaps iffy emulation. Wouldn't be a 64 in 64 if I didn't throw RetroArch under a bus.

As to the gameplay, well, as you can see I've already passed through most of the first dozen levels in a flash. It's way more Sokoban-y than I remember; maybe Kemco made the executive decision to lean closer to Thinking Rabbit's classic box-pushers because those have always proven more popular to Japanese puzzle game fans. For the record, I recall Bombuzal's levels do indeed involve pushing bombs into place but there was much more consideration towards an "if I set off this cluster first, I can't reach the second cluster, so I need to do this in the right order" type of planning. Conversely, every level in CBT (and yes, I'm sticking with that initialism; I imagine it'll become more apposite as we continue) just has the one bomb you can detonate and the puzzles involve pushing all the other bombs in close proximity before setting it off. I won't argue this way is any better or worse, but I have this horrible sinking feeling that the game's easier levels are behind it now. At least it looks like it might switch things up occasionally: the first ten levels had a desert theme, but the next set look to have an alpine/snowy theme instead, so maybe we'll see some new mechanics as well.

32 Minutes In

A puzzle game, much like the dating world, is the last place where you want to see two timers.

I can't dislike this game too much, I suppose. There are times where the rules seem like they can be bent, which is usually a bad sign with a precision-based puzzle game format like this, but for the most part there's a decent variety of objectives that start at "push bombs around" then diverge in intriguing ways. This level I'm currently on with its timed explosive is kinda nerve-wracking, but it just means factoring in the occasional return to the timer to reset it in my order of steps to take. The Alpine level set (I'm on level 16, I think, so I've got a few left) have introduced a number of new obstacles in addition to the bomb timers: there's also how every blue bomb has a blast radius indicated by the number on top. A blast radius of one means it can't create combos, since the blast doesn't go beyond where the bomb originally stood, so instead of a daisy chain you have to place the initial bomb (or another blue bomb with a larger radius) somewhere where it can reach all the others. Just to reiterate also that this game operates on Sokoban rules: that means no pulling objects, only pushing them, and any mistakes will necessitate a quick reset of the level. There might be an "undo last move" function (there usually is in Sokoban games made after a certain period, which I would hope includes 1999) but I've yet to find it.

When I say that certain rules can be bent, one of those involve these annoying spikes that pop out of the ground in certain spots. Sometimes the spike extrudes and retracts so quickly that you can't even get past it, though you can use bombs and other pushable objects to at least block it and jump over (where applicable). However, you can also just jump directly on it and sometimes this gives you a brief window to push the object on the other side out of the way or, if there's nothing there, walk over the gap. It makes me wonder if I'm supposed to be able to do that or if I've found some kind of sequence break. It's made the few levels in which those spikes have been a factor much more pleasant, so I won't complain. I suppose I'll consider stuff like this a problem if it makes the game harder than it should rather than easier. Speaking of the jump though, I've been able to vault over any bombs and objects throughout the initial Desert set of levels, but not so in the Alpine ones. I'm not sure what's changed, exactly, but it's probably something I should figure out: I don't want to get stuck later without realizing I could've just leapt over the stuff in my path.

48 Minutes In

This level made my head hurt, but it also made my hand hurt. That's after I punched a wall because I accidentally shoved a TNT crate into a corner instead of jumping over it for the twentieth time. Games really do make you violent.

As is often the case, the harder a game becomes the more its controls and gameplay mechanics wither under harsh scrutiny. You can't run a marathon without the right shoes or build a palace with shoddy tools, so as the demands on the player increase so too does their own demand for the accurate and precise means to accomplish what is asked of them. This is just a roundabout way of saying that CBT (the initialism now more apt than ever) is starting to test my patience with its shortcomings. The first sticking point came about from a level that has you push a timed explosive all the way from the far end of the level—just getting to it before it detonates is tricky enough, given the spike traps in the way—and it turns out the level timer, distinct from the bomb's timer (since that can be reset), is just as urgent. I'm generally not a fan of timers in puzzle games: when it's a bomb timer you need to constantly reset, that's one thing that I can roll with since it factors into the level's challenge in a meaningful and logical way, but having all these arbitrary level timers on top of that is an unnecessary strain on the player that's undoubtedly going to lead to more forced errors as they're required to think and act faster than they'd prefer. Sokoban is already one of the harshest puzzle game formats around, one that demands you take consideration of the level in full and plan your subsequent actions with an exorbitant amount of care, and so pressing the player forward for no particularly obvious reason seems vindictively cruel.

The second sticking point is how the player controls Charlie's movement. Using the Control Stick or the D-Pad (the C-Buttons are relegated to controlling the camera, as they should be) you can make Charlie move in that direction, pushing anything that happens to be front of him as long as it has somewhere to go (no pushing bombs off the level, for instance, nor can you push two bombs sitting in a row). However, those same movement controls also determine where Charlie is looking: by tapping a direction instead of pushing it, Charlie will simply turn to look that way. This is useful if, instead of pushing something in that direction, you're hoping to jump over it to the gap behind it. To do that, you'd only need to tap the direction to look the right way then hit the jump button to leap over the obstacle. You might have already realized at this point how disadvantageous it is to have the "look" and "move/push" functions be separated by only a tiny amount of button pressure instead of, say, exclusively having the D-Pad make Charlie turn and the Control Stick make him move, respectively. That would've taken extra work to program though, I imagine, and everything about this game screams that it had to be finished within a weekend. Suffice it to say, I've reset my current level quite a few times because the game hasn't always been able to distinguish "tap" and "push" to a 100% accurate degree. I will say it's making me very glad that I've only got sixteen minutes left here.

64 Minutes In

It took almost the whole duration of this segment, but I finally managed to solve the above. To think, later levels are going to be even more intensive. Not for the first time when writing this feature, I'm glad the N64 wasn't called the N128.

Well, it took almost this whole segment but I figured out level 18 and managed to pull off a chain reaction without accidentally pushing the wrong box, a scenario made doubly likely by the potent combination of oversensitive buttons and my own stupidity. The next level, which involved forming a straight line of TNT boxes (which, I learned, have an automatic blast radius of 2 and can also be jumped over; the first world had more of these than the impassable blue bombs), was easier to figure out but almost harder to execute upon because it involved blocking another timed explosive at one point in the process, preventing me from hitting its reset and so essentially giving me only fifteen seconds to complete the remaining six or seven steps to get all the boxes lined up right. Sadly, stopping at level 20 meant that I couldn't complete the full set of ten for Alpine and didn't get to see which inconsequential level dressing change followed after. That's just something I'm going to have to live with, if I can.

I won't say something as trite as "this playthrough went out on a bang" but- no, wait, I absolutely would say something like that. So this playthrough went out on a bang, demonstrating both the strengths and the foibles of a puzzle game that was already eleven years old when this came out, with not a whole lot changed. The 3D aspect is completely wasted on a game with standard cardinal-directional movement—then again, the original was isometric and that didn't help much either—and I can't help but feel like most of the puzzle games for the system had the same issue: it's only occasional bouts of innovation like Tetrisphere and Wetrix that really made full use of the N64's third-dimensional capabilities. Still, though, this is perhaps an ideal puzzle game to play for just an hour: any longer and I really would've been struggling, quickly jutting up against the limits of my perseverance and perspicacity alike.

How Well Has It Aged?: Like a Damp Squib. Let's be clear here, the Sokoban format was already ancient when Bombuzal came out in 1988, the latter saved only by its novel prioritizing between disconnected groups of explosives that this game wasn't even advanced enough to include. However, one could argue that most puzzle games tend to be evergreen due to their straightforward rules and not really needing any significant amount of visual pizzazz to get the job done. It's why low-spec portable platforms have been a suitable home for the puzzle genre since Tetris on Game Boy. With that being said, you could probably find a dozen games just like this on any given app store so it doesn't really need a revival.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Maybe as a Blast Resort. Kemco's still around and will happily rerelease their old games if that recent giant RPG bundle is any indication, but I dunno if they're in a place right now to talk to Nintendo about reviving their N64 library. Even if they were, they'd probably prioritize Shadowgate 64 over something relatively low-budget like this that could easily be reworked as a 2D game for mobile if it hasn't already (and it has: The Bombing Islands was ported to cell phones in 2003). Worth noting you can also play the SNES Bombuzal on Switch too.

Retro Achievements Earned: N/A. (Instead, I had to check GameFAQs to find out how many levels this game has. It's 60. Almost a third of the content in an hour ain't bad.)

Last Legion UX (Random)

Yuke's / Hudson
1999-05-28 (JP)
211th N64 Game Released

History: Last Legion UX is a one-on-one 3D arena fighter featuring mechs with player-determined loadouts. The weaponry and gear equipped to a mech will have a noticeable affect on its mobility, reducing its speed and jump height as the weight increases. The game features a single-player story campaign as well as multiplayer options for shorter exhibition battles against either another human player or the CPU. Plans to localize the game overseas eventually fell through after developer Yuke's failed to find an international publisher, but fortunately a fan translation from Zoinkity exists (they also did the fan translations for earlier 64 in 64 entries Eikou no Saint Andrews and Mario no Photopi).

If anyone knows Yuke's for anything it's for their endless procession of wrasslin' sims. That's more or less true for the N64 as well: Of their four developed N64 games, two were based on the Shin Nippon (New Japan) Pro Wrestling circuit. Their fourth is actually a game based on the same Japanese TV game show that spawned the PS1 curio Irritating Stick, so I'm curious enough to check that out too someday. Hudson needs no introduction: we were just talking about Bomberman a little while ago, after all. They put out just shy of twenty games for N64, the most notable of which are the four Bomberman games and the three Mario Parties, with all of the latter now out on Switch Online and thus out of my grasp. Real torn up about that.

Having a mech arena fighter dropped on me this close to GOTY discussions and the inevitable presence of Armored Core VI makes for an intriguing parallel, though I don't imagine it plays too similarly. It'll probably be closer to the Custom Robo duo or perhaps Sega's Virtual-On: a whole lot of tinkering around with equipment loadouts and hoping for the best. Mech games tend to have intimidating learning curves, squarely aimed as they are at true gearhead perverts, but if I can wrangle a few victories before this hour's over I can be satisfied with that much.