Cube

Cruis’n World PAL release: 25th June 1998 NA release: 30th September 1998 JP release: N/A Developer: Midway, Eurocom Publisher: Nintendo N64 Magazine Score: 38% While still nowhere near a good game, Cruis’n World has significant improvements over Cruis’n USA. It’s still an arcade-style racing game with a lot of courses, although this time it’s based across the world instead of just the USA. This gives us a much bigger array of visual variety. The visuals of the levels are very stereotypical, but it means the locations are very easy to identify and they all stand out from each other. The track design is also much more varied and isn’t almost entirely 4-lane roads. With the amount of tracks – including one on the moon – it’s certainly one of the stronger N64 racing games when it comes to tracks. There’s also a really nice variety in cars, mostly knock-offs of real ones, but also fun ones like a double-decker. Unfortunately, it’s all let down by the handling. One slight touch of the analogue stick and you swerve wildly across the road, with a drift that makes it even harder to control your vehicle. Winning is also very difficult because the other racers are so bad – they’ll often crash and you’ll end up in the pile up (well, more a bunch of cars spinning wildly in the air) as they block the road, letting the cars up front get ahead in such a way that you can be perfect for the rest of the race and not be able to catch up. I got fed up of this pretty quickly and resorted to using cheats. Strangely, the only track I won legitimately was one of the “expert” ones. It’s a shame because with better handling, it would be a very enjoyable game. Remake or remaster? A collection of the tracks and vehicles from these games with some better gameplay and handling would be an interesting package. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Cruis’n World

Mortal Kombat 4 NA release: 23rd June 1998 PAL release: 15th September 1998 JP release: N/A Developer: Midway, Eurocom Publisher: Midway (NA), GT (PAL) N64 Magazine Score: 84% The big Mortal Kombat game for this generation of consoles, and this one brings the graphics into full 3D. After experimenting with a few styles of graphics and gameplay with their earlier N64 fighting games, Mortal Kombat 4 settles on polygon models that manage to capture the spirit of the 2D sprites pretty well. The gameplay also feels quite solid to me. It sticks to working from a 2D point of view with some slight 3D movement from dodging. One new feature is the ability to use items like rocks to throw at opponents, and each person can bring out a weapon with a special move (which the opponent can also use if dropped). There’s a few modes such as an endurance mode fighting random opponents, the standard arcade mode and some tournament options for multiplayer. The practice mode also gives you a move list, but this is only on a static screen and you can’t pin one to try. This seems like the N64’s most solid fighter so far, although it doesn’t try to do anything special either. Remake or remaster? A Mortal Kombat collection would be good. Official ways to get the game. The PC version of Mortal Kombat 4 is available on GoG.

Little Kitty, Big City looks like fun, more than any of this "Silksong" stuff.

Mike Piazza’s Strike Zone NA release: 18th June 1998 PAL release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: Devil’s Thumb Publisher: GT Interactive N64 Magazine Score: N/A Not knowing the name Mike Piazza, the name made me think of bowling. Unfortunately, this is another baseball game, and by far the worst one so far on the N64. It’s definitely not helped by the horrific and extremely ugly graphics, either. In Strike Zone, there’s no indicator for aiming the bat. I’m not entirely sure you actually able to aim as I really couldn’t tell any difference when moving the analogue stick. This doesn’t help with hitting it though, as the strange angle used makes it very difficult to judge where the ball is. Fielding is also a mess, as it doesn’t change to the closest fielder until far too late and it feels like you’re just yelling at the players rather than directly controlling them. There is a cheat where you can turn almost any hit into an instant home run, and the game can be amusing to see the unrealistic distances it produces. Remake or remaster? There’s much better baseball games. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Mike Piazza’s Strike Zone

Virtual Chess 64 NA release: 10th June 1998 PAL release: July 1998 JP release: N/A Developer: Titus Publisher: Titus N64 Magazine Score: 76% I wasn’t expecting much from Virtual Chess as it’s just chess, but at least you can’t mess up chess – or so I thought. Against all odds, Titus have managed to achieve the impossible and create a chess game that looks bad and controls poorly. The analogue stick or d-pad move the cursor, but way, way too fast so you need to perform the quickest tap or move the stick immensely slightly. With the 3D view, you expect the c-buttons to control the camera and they do – at least two of them do. c-right spins the board right while c-left spins the board up. It’s impossible to find a good camera angle and adjusting is itself a big pain. When a piece is taken, you see the pieces fighting (similar to Battle Chess), only the designs of al the characters are absolutely hideous and carry no charm whatsoever. As it doesn’t happen with the other pieces on show, it also feels completely disjointed from the main game. You can choose a 2D board. I turned it on and was presented with a really baffling design. I checked the options and found no way to change it – although I eventually figured out that c-left and c-right can change the the look of the board and pieces. Now, there is one aspect that Virtual Chess is competent in, and that’s playing chess. The problem is that it’s too good. While it’s got 17 levels of difficulty, the first beginner level will trounce most people – especially if they’re using the 3D view that makes it very difficult to judge how pieces can move. There are plenty of good chess games, but this is just trash. I’m amazed that it got good reviews Remake or remaster? You can get much better chess games on your phone for free. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Virtual Chess 64

Holy Magic Century / Quest 64 NA release: 10th June 1998 PAL release: 30th September 1998 JP release: 9th July 1999 Developer: Imagineer Publisher: THQ (NA), Konami (PAL) Imagineer (JP) N64 Magazine Score: 71% There’s a lot of curious things about the Quest series. This game was given different names in different regions. In North America, it was the very generic Quest 64. In Europe is was the rather meaningless Holy Magic Century and in Japan it was Eltale Monsters (I think Eltale Book would have worked better). Despite being a JRPG, it also came out in Japan last. Quest got a spin-off in the form of a Mr. Do clone on Game Boy Color called Quest: Fantasy Challenge in the USA and, oddly, Holy Magic Century in Europe (it wasn’t released in Japan) and then a remake of the original game on Game Boy Colour (with an expanded story) called Quest: Brian’s Journey in the USA and Elemental Tale – Jack’s Great Adventure: Satan’s Counterattack in Japan (this one wasn’t released in Europe). As for Quest 64, the game itself is also interesting as it seems like a great starting point for a game, but it feels like it isn’t finished. It works fine and isn’t glitchy, it’s just there isn’t a lot to it. The idea behind the story is interesting, but it isn’t told well. It’s very easy to lose track of what you’re supposed to be doing due to lack of context, and NPCs rarely have anything interesting to say. The combat has some interesting ideas, too. It’s turn-based but you move around in the actual game world. You can move around within a circle (which is more of a circle in the Japanese version) to position yourself and select an attack. When enemies attack you have a bit of movement to try and dodge. You collect spirits in four elements: fire, wind, water and earth (no heart) and as you get more, you unlock more abilities. There are three “levels” of attack but in each new “level” you can mix in another element for a wide variety of spells. Unfortunately, there are just a couple of attacks that are far better than others. By far the biggest issue with the combat is the random encounter system, as the amount you get is extremely overboard. You can be drawn into a new battle immediately after one ends and, other than trying to break the game by hugging walls (or using a Gameshark code), there’s no proper way to avoid battles. What doesn’t help is that a lot of battles won’t reward you with anything, as the game won’t give you an item if you already have one of them in your inventory. You’ll get tired of the random encounters before the end of the first area. There’s plenty to like about Holy Quest Monsters, but also a lot to hate about it. It feels like the developers had a lot of ambitions but had to tone it back during development. It has a lot of interesting ideas, it just doesn’t fully use them. Remake or remaster? Quest 64 definitely deserves a fresh attempt. Refine the combat system, add more context to the story and give NPCs more to do with side quests and other activities. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Quest 64

International Superstar Soccer 98 JP release: 4th June 1998 PAL release: 1st September 1998 JP release: 15th September 1998 Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami N64 Magazine Score: 92% ISS vs FIFA was a big debate for a while, with 1998 probably being the biggest year for the argument. N64 Magazine clearly preferred ISS, but for me, I enjoyed FIFA 98 more. I do think I know the main reason why people prefer each one, as while they seem the same from a distance, they both have slightly different targets. FIFA is more about casual fun, while ISS is more geared towards providing a more tactical experience. Which means that it isn’t a case of which one is better, but rather what kind of game you want. ISS 98 is a marginal improvement from ISS 64, focusing on the World Cup. In Japan, it had an official World Cup branding, but still not player names (other than the Japanese squad), but is the same game. You do get a new set of scenarios, so if you liked those, these are the main new thing in this version compared to the previous year. Remake or remaster? Other than Konami looking back to move forward, not really. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get International Superstar Soccer 98 I'm sure @Dcubed can say a lot more about this one.

Their favourite method is just throwing PC versions from the 90s onto Steam with no improvements, no compatibility fixes and no controller support. Sometimes they'll throw in a PS1 rom and a terribly configured emulator. Although they did make a new PC version of Glover, but that turned out even worse. They buy up old games and just sit on them.

Thankfully I'm not forcing myself to fully complete every single one. I'd go insane, Wetrix PAL release: 29th May 1998 NA release: 16th June 1998 JP release: 27th November 1998 Developer: Zed Two Publisher: Ocean (NA/PAL), Imagineer (JP) N64 Magazine Score: 74% As Tetris set the standard for puzzle video games, other puzzle games try to have names similar to it. A water-based puzzle game? Of course it has to be named Wetrix. Wetrix is all about keeping water from falling off your square “island”, raiding the environment to keep it contained. Different “blocks” will fall down from the screen. Most of these are upwards arrows which will raise the land in that shape, along with water to fill up the enclosed areas you make. The goal is to keep as much water contained as possible, as if to much falls off the sides, you’ll get Game Over. There are other kinds of “blocks” as well. Down arrows will reduce the level of the land, bombs will blow up holes in the island that you’ll need to repair (on that note, don’t try to launch a bomb down a hole, the game will punish you for it), ice to freeze water and fireballs to get rid of some water. I can definitely see the appeal of Wetrix, but I really could not figure out how to do well at the game. There’s a bunch of different modes, including one where you can change settings to make the game even more difficult. It’s not for me, but it’s a solidly made game. Remake or remaster? A new version would be nice, alongside a collection of the various Wetrix games on N64, Game Boy Color, Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Wetrix.

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-renewed-lower-decks-ending-1235969332/ Strange New Worlds has been renewed for season 4. Lower Decks has not been renewed and season 5 will be the last.

Pachinko 365 Days JP release: 29th May 1998 PAL release: N/A NA release: N/A Developer: Seta Publisher: Seta Original Name: Pachinko 365 Nichi N64 Magazine Score: N/A Another Pachinko game. While I still have zero interest in the Japanese hybrid of slot machines and 10p machines, this one at least seems competently made. You can properly walk around the three Pachinko parlours to find machines and they look alright. You can also talk to the guests, who have various things to say about Pachinko. The pachinko is still just pachinko, but the a and b buttons now increase/decrease the ball release lever, actually giving you control over how the balls are fired. There are five machines, one of them being an “old style” one. n this one, you manually launch the balls into the machine, instead of the standard autofire ones. It adds a bit of variety. The goal of the game is to play over the course of one year (with a day being sped up) to try and earn as much money as you can. Remake or remaster? Nothing, really. Official ways to get the game. There is no official way to get Pachinko 365 Days

Robotech: Crystal Dreams (Prototype) PAL release: N/A NA release: N/A JP release: N/A Developer: GameTek Publisher: N/A N64 Magazine Score: N/A Based on an American/Japanese sci-fi animated series, Robotech: Crystal Dreams was an extremely ambitious flight simulator game that ultimately went over budget and was cancelled when it needed another six months of development. The prototype for the game features a demo area you can fly around, there’s a large ship and you can find some of the logos from the very nifty-looking opening. You can see your character’s reflection in the cockpit window and can even look around the cockpit. It controls really well and seems like a good starting point to build a game from. The ship also has a few different transformations. You can also turn on random dialogue, and there’s a surprising amount of it in the prototype. The plans for the game was that this would be fairly open-ended. You’ll collect missions from bases that you can walk around then go out into space to complete them. A simple “crystal” enemy was designed for the console in as the specs of the N64 weren’t well known. On top of this, over 40 minutes of dialogue was already done at this point. With only three programmers, the game proved too ambitious for the company and they were unable to get the funding and publisher needed to finish. Should it be finished? With the script and many design aspects finished, it would be great to see what this could have been like.

Mobius was mentioned in some early game manuals but abandoned after Sonic Adventure. They just started calling it Earth.

He's the ultimate lifeform created by Professor Gerald Robotnik (Dr. Robotnik's granddad) and an evil alien who was setting up a long-term invasion of Earth. He then ended up in stasis for 50 or so years before Dr. Robotnik finds him. He looks like a hedgehog because the professor saw an ancient prophetic mural depicting Super Sonic.