#140. Re-Volt
August 18, 1999
Acclaim Studios London
Acclaim Entertainment
$27.99 on Amazon
I really want to love Re-Volt. It’s a cute RC car racing game with lovely level design and some genuine passion behind it. Unfortunately, it’s also a goofy racing game with Mario Kart item boxes that decided to adhere strictly to real world R/C physics, meaning that turning is a fucking nightmare. In a game that’s about 50% turning, that’s not great.
The weapons you find are unexciting and low impact. The rush of endorphins you feel after nailing someone with a green shell just doesn’t translate to the tiny projectiles maybe hitting someone in the distance you can barely see after fucking up a tight turn.
I don’t want to clown on Re-Volt too much, it’s not awful and has a loyal fanbase that still loves and updates the stronger PC version to this day. If you’re a huge RC car fan, you’ll probably have fun with this, but it’s hard to recommend a mediocre racing game on the console famous for its phenomenal racing games.
Ultimately, Re-Volt feels like the racing minigame in a JRPG that you need to get platinum medals in to unlock the huge whopping mega ultra titty greatsword, but the controls are so frustrating that you just give up. — N. Krause
#139. Super Bowling
January 15, 2000
KID
Athena, Technōs Japan
Do you wish you could go bowling in a flooded forest? Have you ever wanted to be a penguin wearing sunglasses? Do you have a strange, inexplicable desire to pay thousands of dollars for an interesting but ultimately mediocre sports game? If you answered, “Yes,” to all of those questions, Super Bowling might be the game for you. Everything you need to know is right in the title. Bowling, check. Super? Well, if you take that to mean it’s got a decent roster of unlockable characters, surprisingly varied and well-realized stages, and a few different modes of varying quality, then sure, it’s super. But what’s really remarkable about this game is its absurdly inflated price. Super Bowling had a strangely limited release in North America, and its rarity has made it the most valuable game on the system – the Nukie of Nintendo 64 games.
Be sure to check out the unique Golf mode, where you try to knock down different arrangements of pins with as few balls as possible. The weak pin physics will have you racking up bogeys in no time. — K. Duggan
#138. Hot Wheels Turbo Racing
August 31, 1999
Stormfront Studios
Electronic Arts
$49.99 on Amazon
In the late 1990s, any loser could own Super Mario 64 or The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Talk about cliché. What really distinguished any given kid’s game library was not the classics, but the off-the-beaten-path impulse purchases that nobody else would dare to make. Occasionally, this is how you would find a hidden gem. Much more often, this is how you end up with a shitty dumb game taking up space in your collection. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. At the right sleepover, with the right group of friends, with a game that has just enough merit to be playable, and just enough broken mechanics to be hilarious, that shitty dumb game could become the highlight of the night. By these standards, Hot Wheels Turbo Racing succeeds. The graphics are bad, but in a way that charmingly emulates the slapdash plastic insanity of Hot Wheels. The cars handle terribly, but what could be funnier than lightly bumping your opponent and making their car blow up? There’s tons of vehicles, a solid variety of tracks, a stunt system the depths of which I cannot begin to understand, sick music, and a guy who yells at you if you haven’t USED YOUR TURBO. It may not be the racing game we need, but it’s the faithful adaptation Hot Wheels deserves. Invite over a buddy, order some pizza, break out a 2-liter of Mr. Pibb, and play this terrible game at 2 in the morning. — C. Dean
#137. Monopoly
Mind’s Eye Productions
Hasbro Interactive
December 18, 1999
$33.99 on Amazon
I can already hear the cynics: “What’s the point of a Monopoly video game? Why wouldn’t I just play the board game?” Well let me tell you why, strawman that I just made up in my head. Because in most casual settings, board games are little more than group projects with dice. And like any group project, one person in the group is destined to do all the heavy lifting. Oh, you suggested we play Monopoly? You’d better be ready to explain the rules, enforce the rules, and adjudicate halfway through whether we’re playing with some obscure alternative version of the rules. Monopoly for N64 has all of the addictive qualities that have made this capitalist parable a mainstay for nearly a century — but with none of the lengthy explanations, none of the potential for cheating, and none of the godforsaken math that it takes to slog through a 90-minute-plus session of analog Monopoly. You can even toggle a wide variety of rules, in case you want to immerse yourself in a fantastical world where landlords wouldn’t be allowed to collect rent from jail. The execution isn’t mind-blowing; the simplistic character design reminds us why no one has attempted to anthropomorphize a thimble before or since. But it’s classic Monopoly fun, made all the better by offloading gameplay logistics to the glorious N64 CPU. It does get dinged, though, because Mr. Monopoly doesn’t talk—I think Gilbert Gottfried could have used the work. — C. Dean
#136. Wipeout 64
November 1998
Psygnosis
Midway
$27.19 on Amazon
Wipeout 64 is a high-speed racing game which allows players to hop into a selection of hovercrafts and zoom through a very decent looking (at the time) world of power-ups, weapons, time trials, challenges, and nostalgia-inducing tracks.
Couch co-op? No problem. Hop in with 4 friends for split screen action (god DAMN do I miss couch co-op being a standard) and duke it out in your respective hovercraft racers.
But here’s the real question? Why don’t you and your friends play Mario Kart 64? I mean, it’s not like this game is a better racing game than Mario Kart 64, right?
You have 3 friends over. You have an N64. You’re trying to place some racing games… The cartridge you reach for should not be WipeOut 64. Not that it isn’t a good time, or have a good amount of replayability, or that fans of the previous games which came out on PlayStation wouldn’t enjoy this upgraded version with all new tracks… but come on.
One thing of note about Wipeout 64 is the catchy electronic soundtrack which should get any head bobbing as you weave around corners, take off via huge ramps, and speed down the straightaways as opponents try to hit you with missiles, mines, or electro-magnetic attacks.
One pet peeve: On the timed trials – which I find the most fun – the countdown warning clock (which starts at 10 seconds left) does not match the pleasing tones of the soundtrack. Each tick of a second which goes by sounds like someone punching an electronic rubber chicken or something. Just an ugly, uncomfortable sound. So watch out! That sound might be even more deadly than your fellow racers’ attacks. — Matt Saincome
#135. Gauntlet Legends
Midway, Atari
Midway
August 31, 1999
$99.99 on Amazon
Gauntlet Legends is an arcade beat-em-up that lets you play as a sword wielding barbarian, a spell-slinging magician, or several secret characters, which doesn’t matter since every player character is a tri-polygonal mess that fights by chucking their weapons across the screen. Monsters spawn endlessly from generator points as quickly as a single player can kill them, so 90% of the time as a single player you’re going to be pointlessly mowing down mooks in place until you get bored and charge directly towards the spawn point. You really want 3 other party members to enjoy Gauntlet Legends, so have fun finding three other adults with synchronized free time that are just dying to play a just-decent arcade game from the 90’s over Parsec.
What’s cool about the game is that it lets you save your character directly to the memory card, letting you bring your character over to play at a friend’s house and instantly game together without setting up a new campaign. Again, good luck pulling that off in 2023. The game also has voice overs which are incredibly hammy, in the fun, camp sort of way. If you want to shut your brain off and mash through enemies, Gauntlet Legends is a decent pick. — R. Fleishman
#134. Rayman 2: The Great Escape
October 29, 1999
Ubi Pictures
Ubisoft
$79.99 on Amazon
An absolutely rock-solid support player in the N64 library. This 3D platformer probably wasn’t your first pick at KB Toys, but it’s actually a pretty forward-thinking game. It feels more like PS2 platformers like Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter than collect-a-thons like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie. You go through structured levels collecting Yellow Lums and freeing prisoners from robot pirate, and occasionally engage in some light third person combat. It’ a remarkably well made game and deserves a second look. This was what I was going to say until I got to the level with the fucking snake jet-ski. This thing sucks! I hate this level. It’s this huge course that you have to memorize but there’s water physics so sometimes it just doesn’t work. Fuck this level. I’m docking this game a whole letter grade for this level. Fuck. — S. Finkelstein
#133. International Superstar Soccer 64
August 22, 1997
Konami
Konami
This N64 adaptation of the critically acclaimed Winning Eleven series competed with FIFA 64, with both making their initial bow on the system several months apart. ISS was generally viewed as being more fun, although less realistic due to its lack of a FIFA license, meaning players participated in generic affairs like the World League and competed for the International Cup. FIFA would go on to greater heights on the platform, but ISS definitively won the first showdown. This game has twice the pulse of FIFA 64, with a much better pace and announcers that freak out and scream about the goals the way they ought to. How much did people like this game? It was a runner up for game of the year from EGM magazine, losing only to GoldenEye. That’s a little fucked up, but it just goes to show how fun these games can be, especially if you get a group together. —M. Roebuck
#132. Hydro Thunder
March 7, 2000
Midway
Midway
$129.99 on Amazon
Hey, it’s another Midway arcade port! Which means this is a solid racing title with an announcer that shouts short phrases at you the entire game. Yeah, baby! As is the case with a lot of these titles, this version is inferior in a lot of ways to the PlayStation and arcade versions, but who cares, man? Four players! There’s not the most water racing games on the system, certainly nowhere near the amount of road racing games, so while the water effects fall short of Wave Race 64, its still all done well enough to recommend. It’s funnier than Wave Race, as well, which we’re big on around here. Unless I’ve missed it, Wave Race 64 did NOT let you drive by the Titanic post-iceberg incident. — M. Roebuck
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