#191. Top Gear Hyper Bike
March, 2000
Snowblind Studios
Kemco
If you’re a fan of Disney Channel’s original film Motocrossed, you might want to explore your gender identity and you’ll probably have a nice little bit of fun living out your bike dreams without breaking your legs. Everyone else will still probably have some fun with this extremely passable bike racer. The controls are mostly fine, the levels are fine, and getting launched off your bike is great.
There’s also a neat little map editor. As a lonely kid who grew up in a tiny town with about five total videogames, being able to create your own tracks adds at least an extra five minutes of replayability to Top Gear Hyper Bike.
Unfortunately, the game kept crashing when I tried to cross my custom motor, but we’ll always have our blueprints.
The only power ups in the game are Nitro Boosts, which bizarrely require you to press C-down to activate while holding A to keep the engine rolling. This leads to an uncomfortable Monster Hunter claw situation that leads me to believe Snowblind Studios is run by crabs. Top Gear Hyper Bike is the game your aunt got you for Easter that you kinda just have lying around and boot up when you’re bored. — N. Krause
#190. All Star Baseball ‘99
27 May 1998
Iguana Entertainment
Acclaim
$23.99 on Amazon
The transition from 2D gaming into 3D was pretty rough, but baseball was one genre primed for the change ever since the NES attempted a quasi-isometric viewpoint of a baseball diamond. All Star Baseball ‘99 knocked it out of the park (sorry!) with a solid upgrade to the experience. The graphics are decent, and there are announcer voice samples for almost every player’s name which was impressive at the time. My sister and I would fight over who got to use the Yankees, and I will never forget that their 1999 starting batting order was Chuck Knoblach, Derek Jeter, and Paul O’Neill. But ultimately, the downfall of the game is that it recreates the baseball experience a little too closely. Most of the game is silent, leaving you only to listen to the sounds of your own thoughts. Terrifying. — J. Danek
#189. Scooby-Doo! Classic Creep Capers
November 30, 2000
Terraglyph Interactive Studios
THQ
$59.99 on Amazon
Like, zoinks, Scoob! This 3D adventure game is like, giving me the heebie-jeebies! Notice how I said adventure, not action-adventure. This game is all about walking around classic Scooby-Doo environments, picking up clues, and running away from g-g-g-ghosts! It’s actually an inspired take on the property and is more faithful than another run-of-the-mill 3D platformer. The levels are inspired by actual episodes of the classic 60’s show and the game’s graphics bring the Hanna-Barbara style to life, even if the character models look kinda dead inside when they’re not moving. The big issue with this game though is the camera. The game features static camera angles that shift as you walk around the room, and it’s often unclear what direction you’ll keep running in after the camera shifts which more often than not causes you to run right into the spooky knight chasing you. A good effort, but I don’t know if I’d give it a Scooby Snack.
Oh, all right. I can’t say no to a talking dog that’s smarter than the cops. — S. Finkelstein
#188. NBA Live ‘99
November 4, 1998
NuFX
EA Sports
While not exactly ‘good’ or ‘fun’ this N64 debut for the long running EA franchise contains the foundations of a serviceable basketball game, putting it solidly ahead of NBA Jam, and not quite as fun as the Hang Time series. The first of two Live games to appear on the system, this one is just an updated port of ‘98, which was never on the system, so fuck it, right? If the Hang Time games are a slam dunk, and the NBA Jam games on the system are a flagrant foul worthy of an ejection, the NBA Live series is a couple of made free throws. Fundamentally sound, but nothing worth remembering afterwards.— M. Roebuck
#187. Wetrix
June 6, 1998
Zed Two
Ocean
$49.99 on Amazon
Ok, you know how in Roller Coaster Tycoon you pull the ground up and down and then fill the holes with water to throw guests in and watch them drown? What if they made a puzzle game out of that? This is a 3D puzzler where symbols fall from the sky that make the ground rise and fall, and then symbols fall that make water appear, and then you…get rid of the water? With meteors? I genuinely don’t know how to play this. I didn’t have an instruction book, ok? I’m not some sort of water genius with a perfect understanding of how to make the best lakes. Between the incredibly textured water, synthy music, and futuristic announcer, this is the best Dreamcast game on the N64. — S. Finkelstein
#186. Extreme-G
September 30, 1997
Probe Entertainment
Acclaim
$17.99 on Amazon
Acclaim, named after something their games rarely received, brings us Wipeout at home: Extreme-G.
In many ways, Extreme-G wants to be like Wipeout — its mechanics try to capture a similar gliding momentum, but fail to capture the precision and finesse that makes games like Wipeout feel so good. It boasts all of the speed, but less of the precision that makes riding the wind in your vehicle of choice so satisfying. The one unique mechanic that Extreme-G has going for it is the integration of shoot ’em up gameplay to its standard racer fare. Your sick ride can fire purple energy bullets at enemies along the track, which objectively rules, and is reminiscent of oldies like S.T.U.N. Runner or Mach Rider. Sadly, the enemies are fairly small and have unclear hitboxes, making them sometimes difficult to distinguish from the environments around you.
Graphically speaking, Extreme-G does feature some decent track designs, including some colorful canyons and vibrant neon overtones. However, these areas are obscured by the good ol’ fashioned fog trick, a classic N64 tactic to mask poor draw distance. Extreme-G shoots itself in the foot, hiding its fairly solid polygon detailing behind a curtain of gray. — L. Fisher
#185. Rampage: World Tour
October 21, 1997
Saffire
Midway
$79.99 on Amazon
Before Rampage was a ‘hit’ movie ‘franchise’ it was an N64 game. And before that it was an arcade game. This N64 port takes the game and faithfully adapts it to a 3D environment. Not by adding a third dimension to the game, but by giving us some polygonal models to move around in a 2D space. There’s a certain fun inherent to destroying buildings and eating every human you find. Seeing all the different animations that they’ve given your little kaiju friends is also great. There’s a lot of charm and personality in each character. However, the fun runs out after the third stage when you realize you’ve been hitting the same buttons over and over. At least you can figure that out without having to sink a hundred quarters into it. — G. Porter
#184. Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA
November 10, 1998
Atari Games
Midway
$54.99 on Amazon
Meh… it’s fine.
— J. Knapp
#183. Bomberman 64
November 30, 1997
Hudson Soft
Nintendo
They all gotta make the jump to 3D sometime, huh? An evil force has come to Planet Bomber and they’re gonna blow up the planet and now Bomberman has to bomb them before they bomb you or something like that. It’s the first Bomberman game with a really robust single-player mode and while I see what they’re going for, it’s not that great to play now. The camera isn’t quite overhead, and it’s not quite isometric. It’s this weird middle ground that never quite makes you feel like you’re seeing everything you need to. You can’t jump, but you can walk across your bombs and use them to activate switches, but that’s impossible to do unless you find the Remote Bomb powerup, which should just be the default. The multiplayer is still fun, but you can find better versions of the same basic game elsewhere. This game is not a bomb, but it’s not “da bomb.” Can you believe they paid me to write that? — S. Finkelstein
#182. Cruis’n World
September 28, 1998
Eurocom
Nintendo
$57.99 on Amazon
These console ports of games meant to wow you with their arcade technology for minutes at a time just don’t stack up very well to fuller experiences available on the system. And with the global theme, this sequel to Cruis’n USA doesn’t even have a San Francisco level, a criminal offense in racing games of the era. An average as fuck game that doesn’t do much to stand out amongst the dozens of similar titles on the system. In fact, being neither as fondly remembered as Cruis’n USA or as dangerously extreme as the later Cruis’n Exotica, this is just one of the more forgettable games you’re gonna find. Sorry, Cruise World, or whatever you were called. — M. Roebuck
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