Console of the Month (August 2023) - Nintendo 64

[Note]

Goldeneye is basically synonymous with the N64. Of course I had a lot of fun with the multiplayer, as many did, but I actually had more fun with the single player.

The single player is also great! This is one of the games I remember finishing as a kid, I recall the final level and my excitement with actually beating it. More recently, I had started up a new save file and got about halfway through the game. I've been meaning to pick it back up and finish it again. Also, when the remaster came out on Xbox and Switch, I happened to be at a friend's place that weekend and we took turns playing through levels in single player, which was a great time.

The World Is Not Enough

Ah, the lackluster follow up to Goldeneye that was still a fun game.

I appreciate your thoughts on this game, as I've actually still never played it and I never heard many people talk about it back when it was released either. I know for me, I saw that Rare didn't make the sequel, and I think that's what made me stay away from it back then. I can understand that they didn't want to keep making Bond games, but it would've been cool to see them take another crack at the franchise and do the sequel justice.

The N64 was released the fall I started college, so everyone I knew had other priorities and, in rare cases, an existing video game system (most college students at my college, my year at least, did not seem to bring consoles with them from home). So I actually interacted with the Dreamcast before I really had any time with the N64. Kinda ruined it for me.

That's interesting you experienced the Dreamcast before the N64, but it's totally understandable with college being the priority at the time. I brought my PS2 to my freshmen dorm room at college and totally regretted it. The console and controllers got pretty beat up by my roommates. Needless to say, I left all my video game stuff at home the next few years while in college.

[marurun]

That's interesting you experienced the Dreamcast before the N64, but it's totally understandable with college being the priority at the time. I brought my PS2 to my freshmen dorm room at college and totally regretted it. The console and controllers got pretty beat up by my roommates. Needless to say, I left all my video game stuff at home the next few years while in college.

Yeah, I sort of went straight from Saturn/PS1 to Dreamcast. By the time I actually encountered the N64 it looked pretty also-ran to me. Sure, it was more stable 3D than either the PS1 or Saturn, but the PS1 and Saturn had other advantages related to the CD drive and more advanced audio capabilities and better memory for textures and 2D objects. The N64 is no longer a blind spot for me as I've back-filled, but it doesn't hold much interest to me at all either. The N64 feels like the first REAL attempt at proper 3D, but it's also so very rudimentary. The Dreamcast feels like the first truly consumer-ready 3D platform. The N64's saving grace was, as is often the case, Nintendo. Even when one doesn't like a Nintendo title it's hard to argue that title wasn't lavishly developed.

[Limewater]

I have played through and beaten The World is Not Enough. I really enjoyed it, and the last level was very memorable. I never saw the movie. I also remember playing a multiplayer map that takes place on a plane so it's really easy to knock someone off.

I have only ever played the first level of Goldeneye, along with a few rounds of multiplayer. I have it. I should play it.

[Markies]

I enjoy The World Is Not Enough, but there is a first person swimming level near the end of the game that is absolutely terrible.

I really enjoyed the Multi-player as well because unlike Goldeneye, the game had bots to play against. Made playing the game with less than 4 people a blast to play. Also, one of the multi-player maps takes in a tight submarine and that was just fun to play with explosive weapons. My friend and I would do that for hours with base cranked up and it felt like his room would shake when a giant explosion would happen.

[Ziggy]

That last level is total bullshit! I was never able to beat it when I was young. I think I finally beat it once as an adult, but I had to look up a YouTube video because it's somewhat maze-like.

For those that don't know, at the end of the movie The World Is Not Enough (spoiler alert), Bond messes with a submarine and causes it to go vertical underwater (I'm sure someone somewhere is cringing right now because there's a world for this). This happens in the game as well, and you have to navigate through the sub while it's flooded. It's not easy to find your way, and you can run out of air underwater.

For Goldeneye, I always felt a drive to beat every level on every difficulty and to unlock every cheat. TWINE also has cheats that are unlocked from beating a level under a certain time. And every once in a while I think, yes, I'll finally 100% TWINE. But unlike Goldeneye, I get tired of it after a while and lose the drive to complete it.

[Limewater]

Heh.

The flooded sub level is exactly the one I'm describing positively as "very memorable," but apparently everyone else hates.

I played some Goldeneye multiplayer with my son a couple of nights ago. It went well until we tried playing with timed mines and they didn't behave the way he expected.

Then we switched to Super Smash Bros. and I used the handicap setting for the first time. That went a lot better.

I am almost done with Breath of the Wild. I might give Majora's Mask another shot as my next game.

[ZRofel]

The N64 is, sadly for this thread, one of the consoles I have the least amount of affection for. Like a lot of folks have said, I was a diehard NES and SNES fan, so when the N64 was announced, I just assumed I'd get one of those too. I really enjoyed playing Mario 64 at demo kiosks, but I was also starting to really get into RPGs. When I learned Final Fantasy VII was going to be on the PlayStation, I remember really having a debate with myself over which console to get, since I didn't have the money for both. I eventually opted for the PlayStation, and while it was an agonizing decision at the time, considering what a jRPG behemoth the PlayStation became, I think it was the right call.

For the majority of that generation I mostly played the N64 at friends' houses, although very late in the console cycle my brother bought one at a discount. I bought a used copy of Paper Mario which I absolutely loved after I managed to convince by brother to let me play it on his console, but other than that, I really don't have a lot of nostalgia for N64 games. I find Mario 64 kind of hard to go back to, and while I think Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask are both perfectly fine Zelda games, they're nowhere near my favorites in the series. I do still need to spend some time with Starfox 64, Mischief Makers, and Ogre Battle: Person of Lordly Caliber, all of which I think I'll enjoy, but I haven't had a chance to in recent years. I imported Sin and Punishment a few years back, and that's definitely a very solid game, albeit much like Ocarina, not near the top of my favorite Treasure titles. Doom 64 is also very good, with some interesting redesigns of classic foes. Other than that, there's not a lot of the N64 library that really appeals to me. Goldeneye never really felt like my cup of tea, and and I feel like a lot of Nintendo stuff, like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros., were just done so, so much better on the Gamecube.

I think a lot of it is that those early 3D games look really ugly to me, and they often have kind of janky controls (although to be fair, 3D N64 games do tend to control much better than early 3D PlayStation games). Most of my favorite PlayStation games are purely 2D, or detailed 2D sprites on simple, cartoony 3D backgrounds.

Sorry to be kind of a downer this month

[Raging Justice]

Nowadays I like Starfox on the SNES more, but Starfox 64 captivated me when I first played it at a friend's house. I pretty much ignored my buddies and become obsessed with playing more of it. This prompted me to buy my own N64 later.

Some other games I loved:

Mischief Makers
Conker's Bad Fur Day

Sin & Punishment was pretty cool, but I found it a big too tough for my skills at the time. Beyond those titles, I didn't really play anything else on the system. It didn't have an impressive library from what I recall, but like every Nintendo console there are those must play first party titles. For me that was Starfox 64. I actually thought the 3D Zelda games and Mario 64 were pretty lame at the time.

My interest in the system didn't last that long before I was wooed by a new lady called the PS 1, who seduced me with Resident Evil games, Dino Crisis, Tomb Raider, Mega Man X4, Final Fantasy 7, and plenty of other great games. The PS 1's library just destroyed what the N64 had to offer and honestly made much greater use of the 3D gameplay that was so revolutionary at the time. I feel like after the SNES, the best Nintendo had to offer for several years was not consoles, but handhelds.

[Note]

Unfortunately, I also have a negative memory associated with the N64 that I wanted to share.

Around the time the N64 came out, I traded in my Genesis Model 2 console along with almost all of the games I had at the time into a Funcoland location, for store credit. The only game I kept was Streets of Rage 2. My initial idea, was to trade the games in so I had some money to purchase another N64 game or two. I got much less credit than I had anticipated, and I think I was only able to purchase one new game.

This was a huge regret of mine! Trying to reacquire these games was pretty much how my hobby of purchasing older games started.

[Ack]

Well, to go in a different route, I had a pretty great time with the Nintendo 64. Mario Tennis was one of the big competitive games among my friends in high school, and we'd also get four people to hop in and mercilessly murder each other in Duke Nukem 64 and Hexen. Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Killer Instinct Gold were also titles we'd play almost religiously, and I spent a lot of time learning about the Nintendo 64's fighting game library. Because the console ended up so polarizing, it feels like there are still secrets to find and share.