Let's talk N64 games (that weren't made by Nintendo or Rare)

[earl_sleek]

It should have been an on rails shooter like Star Fox, because it's a chore navigating around the sandbox style levels looking for what you have to do. The sand box sections in Star Fox 64 were weak too and that was an actual good game with good controls.

I don't remember there being sandbox areas in Star Fox 64 - the boat and tank levels were still on rails. Though as I typed that I remembered there were "free range" sections, weren't there? Like the bits where you fight Star Wolf. It could certainly be a bastard to keep track of what was going on in those sections.

They've already been mentioned but Rogue Squadron, Body Harvest, Shadowman and Space Station Silicon Valley were all excellent. I never played Mystical Ninja 2 but the first one's one of the funniest games I've ever played, as well as being a decent 3D platformer. I could never get on with the Turok games, though.

Anyone ever play Hybrid Heaven? It's too long and gets boring, but it's a cool game with an interesting fighting system. Or that's how I remember it.

[Jerzy Bondov]

The controls are slow and clunky, he feels way too heavy for what should be the fun of being a bee zipping around a garden. The bee Mario suit in Mario Galaxy felt better to control and that stunk. The music and level design is bland. The game play is boring. It's such a nothingy, forgettable game, the definition of a game you might rent once and then never think about again.

I don't find it particularly slow and clunky. It could be zippier but it is an N64 game.

[colacentral]

I don't remember there being sandbox areas in Star Fox 64 - the boat and tank levels were still on rails. Though as I typed that I remembered there were "free range" sections, weren't there? Like the bits where you fight Star Wolf. It could certainly be a bastard to keep track of what was going on in those sections.

They've already been mentioned but Rogue Squadron, Body Harvest, Shadowman and Space Station Silicon Valley were all excellent. I never played Mystical Ninja 2 but the first one's one of the funniest games I've ever played, as well as being a decent 3D platformer. I could never get on with the Turok games, though.

Anyone ever play Hybrid Heaven? It's too long and gets boring, but it's a cool game with an interesting fighting system. Or that's how I remember it.

Yeah, the free roam bits, that's what I meant. It's not a 1:1 comparison, but most of the fun of a good flying game is down to the feeling of speed and lightness, which is much easier to achieve on rails than in a large 3d free roam space.

[idunnosomename]

Blast Corps!

Blast Corps was good. Apart from Backlash, which was a bad vehicle. But the game was good and I would like to play it again.

that was Rareware though! Easy to forget. Launch titles like Pilotwings snd Waverace also i thought well there was that but it was essentially in house dev.

edit: I mean well, even though it had Mario in it, Pilotwings was farmed out to Paradigm, a Texas-based sim company who then made a bunch more games for the console, and went defunct after THQ bought it a decade later. Waverace was EAD though.

[Huxleys Babkins]

I'll stand up for the N64 Cruis'n games. I'm not sure they were worth full price, but they are great arcade racers. Aside, the latest in the series, Cruis'n Blast, came out on Switch a few weeks ago and is loads of turn of the century-style arcade racing fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qfz2_Eys3I

[peanutbutter]

The cool thing about N64 is that you're able to stack up your hard drive with tons of late 90s 3D games without even having to think remotely about disc space
The lack of videos and voice acting usually means you're less likely to encounter some bullshit fmv or audio that you can't skip past too

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Obligatory mention of it having one of the worst controllers ever made. All credit to them for innovating with the analogue stick and rumble pack, but otherwise it was pretty bad effort. It looked pretty chintzy as well, which is a shame, as the console itself looked fairly classy (by games hardware standards).

[peanutbutter]

I dunno about worst ever, it just happened to be at the tail end of people not having a clue what they were at. The Jaguar controller was only a few years earlier, like.


The Dreamcast one is worse purely for having the cable come out of the bottom of the controller imo, a fundamental flaw that had no real excuse that late on

[Kelvin]

I recently bought and played through the re-releases of Turok 1 and 2 on Switch. Turns out Turok 1 is the vastly superior game once you remove all that fogging and have a better sense of where you are. The environments in it are really great, lots of impressive temples and gigantic trees alongside the alien portals and big game hunters.

I'm finding Turok 2 less enjoyable, though. It's slower moving, less intricately designed, and once you get over the body parts exploding, even the combat isn't all that much fun.

[madhair60]

Obligatory mention of it having one of the worst controllers ever made. All credit to them for innovating with the analogue stick and rumble pack, but otherwise it was pretty bad effort. It looked pretty chintzy as well, which is a shame, as the console itself looked fairly classy (by games hardware standards).

naturally one of my favourite controllers. I even bought a USB one for PC so I could emulate properly.

[Kelvin]

The controller's a mess, but I do wonder what percentage of people who really hate it try to use all three of the "prongs", rather than just the middle and right hand one. I've heard several people on podcasts say they never realised that they should hold it that way. No wonder they find it uncomfortable. 

[Jerzy Bondov]

That is insane. You'd break your thumb. It's nice that Nintendo paid homage to the N64 controller when they made the Switch by having dog shit fucked up analogue sticks.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The controller's a mess, but I do wonder what percentage of people who really hate it try to use all three of the "prongs", rather than just the middle and right hand one. I've heard several people on podcasts say they never realised that they should hold it that way. No wonder they find it uncomfortable. 

These people are clearly morons, but gripping the controller by the middle prong was no less uncomfortable. It pressed into the side of my hand.

They should have put the stick on the left and the D-pad in the middle, since almost no games used it.

[BJBMK2]

I have never had any problem with using the N64 controller, and am consistently baffled by online critiques of it. It feels fine.

Granted, I was a young sprog just entering the exciting, sexy world of videogames just as the N64 came out, so maybe that has something to do with it. I simply didn't have anything else at the time to compare it to.

[Captain Z]

The N64 controller was extremely comfortable to me, although as has already been pointed out they could have done away with the entire left prong. The Z trigger was essential in most games, I don't see how you could have played anything without holding it at the middle.

Not a big gamer but I've held a PS controller in recent years and this feels too small, making my right thumb uncomfortable after a short period of time.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I think Mortal Kombat 4 was the only game I had that favoured using the D-pad. Sinister people could play Goldeneye and Perfect Dark using the middle and left prongs.

[madhair60]

I have never had any problem with using the N64 controller, and am consistently baffled by online critiques of it. It feels fine.

Yep. To be entirely frank, I think it's just a received opinion that gets parroted relentlessly, one of many in the gaming sphere.

[buntyman]

The New Tetris on the N64 is probably the game I've pumped more hours into than any other (maybe now eclipsed by Tetris 99). Anyway, it's brilliant and has modes and features that I've never seen in a Tetris since. I played in the 1-3 prong mode.

[thecuriousorange]

I think Mortal Kombat 4 was the only game I had that favoured using the D-pad.

The THQ wrestling games on the N64 used the D-pad to move around, while the analogue was for character taunts. Many consider them the best wrestle-em-ups ever.

[evilcommiedictator]

I think Mortal Kombat 4 was the only game I had that favoured using the D-pad. Sinister people could play Goldeneye and Perfect Dark using the middle and left prongs.

I played Goldeneye (after 100%ing it) with two controllers, mirroring the fancy new PS1 controller with *gasp* two sticks, something which surely won't catch on

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Yep. To be entirely frank, I think it's just a received opinion that gets parroted relentlessly, one of many in the gaming sphere.

I hate received opinions as much as the previous man, but this one is based entirely on my own experience of the N64 pad.

[Cold Meat Platter]

So what was supposed to be wrong with it, then?

[ImmaculateClump]

Yep. To be entirely frank, I think it's just a received opinion that gets parroted relentlessly, one of many in the gaming sphere.

Oh man, gaming forums are an absolute minefield for this shit.
I know honks has a point with his whole `tiresome iconoclast` "sacred burgers for tea" bit, but by god, the dense overgrown forests of "people already thought about this and made our minds up for us" crap you have to hack through to get anywhere near an original thought from these steamed piss balloons just isn't worth the effort.

Gah, I remember you saying something about creative swearing being the ultimate self sabotage. I'm trying to say that their heads are balloons filled with warm piss vapours, but from other peoples piss.
Steamed piss balloons sounds like a recipe.

[colacentral]

I knew to hold the controller from the middle prong the second I touched it and am always staggered that it ever confused anyone. (Though I had one friend who pinched the analogue stick between his thumb and index finger and reached around to the Z button with his middle finger). The controller was fine for that era. It's not very photogenic though, and I think a lot of people who dislike it are people who decided they hated it before they actually used it.

You can't see the Z button in photos and videos, and it's not until you hold it that you realise how much space you have for your left hand going between the D pad and analogue, so I think younger people seeing it on YouTube videos might see that design and start talking out of their arse about it. It worked perfectly fine for the games it was made for.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Chalk me up as another person who never had a problem with comfort.

The analogue stick was prone to failure as it would grind away at the plastic casing and eventually go all limp and I had a faulty one where it wouldn't calibrate properly, but comfort wise, the controller was spot on.

[Blinder Data]

Overall the N64 controller was brilliant. I remember getting blisters from overuse of the tough plastic analogue stick though.

The parameters set by the thread title made me realise we didn't buy any non Nintendo/Rare games. Don't have much to add...

Diddy Kong Racing was miles better than Mario Kart 64. That's all I got.

[peanutbutter]

I hadnt a notion how the controller worked until the second I actually held one. If people are trying to use the analogue from the left handle are they just oblivious of the Z trigger entirely?


I wonder if some of the derision is due to those weird chinese retro game machines in a controller circa 2000 direction. They were modelled on the N64 controller for fuck all reason and are maybe what some people remember when they think of one

[Consignia]

I wonder if some of the derision is due to those weird chinese retro game machines in a controller circa 2000 direction. They were modelled on the N64 controller for fuck all reason and are maybe what some people remember when they think of one

All those buttons, and it only plays NES games.

[Huxleys Babkins]

I'm presuming A, B, Turbo A, Turbo B, Select and Start for starters. The extra button will either be to reset the thing back to menu or slow motion.

[amateur]

The New Tetris on the N64 is probably the game I've pumped more hours into than any other (maybe now eclipsed by Tetris 99). Anyway, it's brilliant and has modes and features that I've never seen in a Tetris since. I played in the 1-3 prong mode.

Announce goldcubing in the next Tetris, you cowards