#169. WWF War Zone
August 11, 1998
Iguana West
Acclaim
$13.45 on Amazon
WWF War Zone is an impressive start to a run of wrestling games that got a lot better. It’s hard to do justice to how big of a deal the graphics and the create-a-wrestler mode in this game felt when they came out, but it was mind blowing. After years of I-guess-this-is-sort-of-fun WWF games with great presentation and just fine gameplay, War Zone really felt like a step forward. However, the matches themselves feel more like a wrestling themed fighting game than later entries in the series would. Finishers shouldn’t require crazy Fatality-like inputs, man, come on. I just wanna Tombstone this fucker. A step forward, but miles away from the best wrestling games to be found on the system.— M. Roebuck
#168. Tonic Trouble
Ubisoft Montreal
Ubisoft
August 31, 1999
$64.90 on Amazon
Tonic Trouble feels like a fake video game that people play in the background of an episode of Malcolm in the Middle. It’s a full product, but it feels less like someone’s artistic ambition and more like the approximation of a video game in your lucid dreams. That’s because Tonic Trouble was created by Ubisoft and Michael Ancel as a tech trial of sorts before they developed the video game anyone actually gave a shit about, Rayman 2: The Great Escape. This means that Tonic Trouble doesn’t just feel like a worse Rayman; It IS a worse Rayman.
The main character, Ed, is a poor replacement for Rayman. He has all the wacky antics of Rayman but none of the charisma, which is another of way of saying Ed is a fucking loser. The entire game is extremely “zany” but without any substance to back it up. Visuals are pretty underwhelming, and the game’s wall textures are reminiscent of a modern day Pokémon game. Gameplay, however, can be decently satisfying. Ed feels good to control and gets a good enough swathe of abilities, but he’s held back by rough camera controls. I wouldn’t play this game unless you already have a nostalgic connection. — R. Fleishman
#167. Automobili Lamborghini
November 30, 1997
Titus Interactive
This is easily one of the top five most fun Nintendo 64 titles to say out loud. When you’re a racing game on a console whose library is half racing games, that kind of thing is important. That Olive Garden style title is misleading however, ‘cause there’s Porsches and stuff in here, too. But I get it. Snappy name and all that.
A unique thing about this game is it seems to want to be some sort of combination arcade racer with a light sim element to it, in the form of NASCAR style pit stops. You never know where that crazy pit crew is gonna show up, hiding in a damn mountain or something. It’s an interesting take, but the downside of it is it made me afraid to explore what could have been short cuts because I was afraid the “shortcut,” would actually be me stopping for tires and gas I didn’t need. With a completely whelming six tracks, this is a strikingly average racing game. — M. Roebuck
#166. Razor Freestyle Scooter
Titanium Studios
Crave Entertainment
November 27, 2001
When the Nintendo GameCube arrived in North America on November 18, 2001, support for the Nintendo 64 dropped fast. Only three games were released for the console in North America after that date. One, of course, was one of those football games that they make for like 12 consoles at once and everyone probably just forgot that they didn’t really need to make an N64 version. The other two were extreme sports games that owe their existence to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater: THPS3, and this baby. Truly, this is a game designed for unsuspecting grandmas who know that Timmy wants the flippy tricky game for Christmas, but have no additional context and arrive at the store after all the Pro Skater games have long since sold out. Combine that with the irresistible allure of the Blockbuster Exclusive label, and boom: that’s enough to sell 50,000 copies and recoup Crave Entertainment’s minimal investment. Anyway, it’s a complete ripoff of Tony Hawk,, but you’re on a scooter. It’s pretty fun to scoot around. Not as fun as skatin’ around. But maybe it’s worth getting a copy just because the concept of owning this game is hilarious. Look at that box art! Anytime a box has just like, a picture of a guy on it, that rules to me. I wonder if he’s still alive. — C. Dean
#165. Top Gear Rally
Boss Game Studios
Midway Games
October 1, 1997
$33.99 on Amazon
What do you want me to say? It’s just a racing game. You pick a car. You pick a track. You go vroom vroom. I guess my feeling is that when it comes to racing games whose claim to distinction is “realism,” you should only be allotted one franchise per console. Gran Turismo or bust, baby. Otherwise you just flood the library with gameplay experiences that boil down to the following sentence: “I guess if I were really trying to drive a car this fast, I would crash pretty quickly and take so long to get back on the road that I’d lose any hope of placing within the first 30 seconds of the race, so this game must be good.” Call me childish, but I need my racing game to have a gimmick. You gotta give me wacky objects to throw at the other drivers. You gotta stick me in the future and make my car into a plane and make me go really really really really fast. Or at the very least you’ve gotta put the word “Excite” somewhere in the title. The only time it’s acceptable to have a game that’s literally just cars on a road is if I’m in some sort of bar-arcade, and you have provided me with a big giant racecar chair and steering wheel. And even then, I’d probably still only play it if there’s a long line for DDR.— C. Dean
#164. StarCraft 64
Blizzard, Mass Media Inc
Nintendo
June 13, 2000
$161.49 on Amazon
Alright, we get it. StarCraft on a console. Very cool. But let’s be honest for a second: I know you’re emulating, pal. StarCraft 64 costs around triple digits to buy legitimately, and anyone chucking that much cash around buys to collect. But if you want to play StarCraft on your personal computer, why in God’s name would you emulate StarCraft 64 instead of just playing StarCraft? Do you really need to play the two exclusive tutorial missions on how to play an explicitly keyboard-and-mouse game on the wackiest gamepad to hit the mainstream? Emulating StarCraft 64 on your computer is like jailbreaking your PlayStation to run the PC port of Dark Souls while still playing with the keyboard.
I’m not saying StarCraft 64 isn’t a fascinating piece of gamer history and a surprisingly good port of a theoretically unportable game. StarCraft is one of the best video games, period. However, the port is surprisingly good in the same way the steak tartare I forgot to refrigerate surprisingly didn’t give me worms. If you want to play a multiplayer game with no online multiplayer mode in the worst control format possible, then more power to you I guess. — R. Fleishman
#163. Wheel of Fortune
December 2, 1997
GameTek
Take-Two Interactive
$29.95 on Amazon
If you were really into video games and Wheel of Fortune in 1997, this had to be the most mind blowing shit. Just a crazy jump in graphics. I tend to bemoan this wave of gaming’s reliance on primitive 3-D, but not across the board. Wheel of Fortune, for example, was able to take the flat, lifeless sprites of the SNES and Genesis games and put the player into an actual three dimensional studio. It looks and sounds 10 times more like Wheel of Fortune than any other versions up until this point. The system’s ability to play high quality short sound clips further enhanced this realism. Vanna White saying “Here’s the next puzzle,” goes a long way, and is a much better use of the Nintendo 64’s sound limitations than, say, looping the first 60 seconds of a Vandals song while you play a level in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. I think a cool mode on here would have been if a fourth player was able to control Vanna White. Also, where the hell is Sajak? — M. Roebuck
#162. Starshot: Space Circus Fever
June 22, 1999
Infogrames
Starshot: Space Circus Fever puts you in the role of the titular Starshot, a juggler in the also titular space circus. Apparently, aliens think “juggler” means “guy who can shoot balls of blue energy out of his chest.” You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of this one, as it wasn’t exactly flying off the shelves at your local video store. I know that because it was sitting there waiting for me every weekend. That might sound like a ringing endorsement, but, frankly, I was a weird kid whose opinions should not be considered an accurate barometer of quality. The bright colors and offbeat humor distracted me from the clunky controls and frustrating camera. I know camera issues are a staple of this era, but Starshot’s camera makes me think French developer Infogrames watched a bit too much avant-garde cinema. Starshot tries to be a platformer, collect-a-thon, and adventure game all at once, and ends up falling short in each category. — K. Duggan
#161. All-Star Baseball 2000
April 8, 1999
Iguana
Acclaim
$19.99 on Amazon
Surprisingly the only baseball game to receive several installments on the Nintendo 64, All-Star Baseball 2000 obviously benefits from being the only recreation of the old stickyball* that was able to polish its initial offering and offer a refined experience. Additions mostly involve pitching and batting, including an at-bat pitch counter and a clever new pitch-guessing system that works exactly the same as calling defenses in Tecmo Super Bowl did. Clearly the best baseball game on the system at the point it was released, and not just because it made me think about Tecmo Super Bowl. It was also four players, unlike the other baseball series on the system. — M. Roebuck
* Do people call baseball “the old stickyball? I’ve been locked in a room playing N64 sports games for three weeks and don’t know what’s going on anymore.
#160. Command & Conquer
Westwood, Looking Glass
Nintendo
May 31, 1999
$49.99 on Amazon
Command & Conquer on the Nintendo 64 is the worst way to play a beloved classic and one of the most influential titles in the RTS genre. Ranking this game is hard. It’s like watching Citizen Kane on a Tamagotchi; the experience is miserable, but it’s fucking CITIZEN KANE. The controls are only bad, not terrible, which is better than expected considering it’s a console port of a mouse-reliant PC game in 1999. However, Command & Conquer N64’s greatest sin is removing the FMV cutscenes. I don’t care about “console limits”, I expect my Command & Conquer games to have extremely campy video cutscenes filmed by an assistant programmer in the Westwood studio basement.
Playing Command & Conquer on the N64 is especially goofy in light of the recent Command & Conquer Remastered Collection, which does a great job refreshing the classic and comes with sister game Red Alert included. The remaster includes the 4 Special Ops missions originally exclusive to the N64, so I cannot imagine why you’d ever emulate the N64 version on your PC instead of playing the PC version. — R. Fleishman
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