#81. Madden NFL Football 2001

September 7, 2000
EA Tiburon
EA Sports
$49.99 on Amazon

Madden got another year of polish that adds to the gameplay. Much more importantly, however, is the addition of Madden Cards. A fun, built-in, not gouge-y, layer to the game that rewards you for performing specific tasks by giving you collectible cards. Not only something for the completionists in a pre-achievement world, but the cards were also able to be cashed in for in-game rewards such as stat boosts, if you weren’t concerned about real world accuracy. Making this game not only a standout football game of its era, but a sad reminder how today they’ll just make you pay money to open cards that coulda just been in there. It’s way less fun, but on the bright side, the nice folks at EA make lots more money that way. — M. Roebuck

#80. California Speed

February 28, 1999
Atari Games/Midway Games
Midway Home Entertainment
$33.99 on Amazon

From the outside, everything about this game screams “I’m a completely fine and forgettable arcade port from the 90s,” but there’s enough fun shit tucked in the margins here that it’s completely worth checking out (now if I can just get it to stop screaming at me!). Each of the game’s 11 tracks hits this batshit final stretch after the last checkpoint where it shifts from a realistic California locale to something completely absurd and inspired. The end of the Mojave Desert level takes you through a UFO. The finale of Silicon Valley has you drive through a giant circuit board like you’re in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. It’s fuckin’ great. Some of the best level design in any of the five dozen racing games on the Nintendo 64. I got legitimately excited to see each track’s final stretch, and I was sad once I realized I’d seen them all. I’ve always said a good racing game should make you sad, so California Speed gets high marks for that. It got bumped down some spots for the inexplicable decision to feature a Metal Gear Solid-style radar screen where the track map should be. Finally, a second way to tell if there are several cars in front of me!

Possibly the most notable thing about this game is the creepy ass billboard someone put in as a temporary piece of artwork that accidentally got left in the shipped copy. Textural artist Morgan Godat told Popoptiq in 2016, “I plugged in a placeholder billboard texture so fucking stupid there would be no way it could possibly be confused for a real shipping asset.” Except it apparently was. And that’s why a billboard appears in the Mojave Desert level that reads:

“SoMETIMES
God TaKes MOMMIES
aNd PuPPIES AWAY…
And SoMETIMES…
Just SoMETIMES…
I do.”

That shit goes so hard. — M. Roebuck

#79. AeroGauge

May 21, 1998
Locomotive Co. Ltd.
ASCII Entertainment
$44.99 on Amazon

AeroGauge is what you get when you want to play F-Zero but your brother wants to play Cruisin’ USA. Usually compromises lead to no one being happy, but this compromise is actually pretty good. Taking general car and map designs from more traditional racers and mixing it up with some in air hovercraft gameplay leads to a fun time. With banger tunes blasting out the speakers, you fly your car through the maps not needing to be bound to the road. This leads to interesting uses of the environment, with walls you can slide up and obstacles to fly through. However, there is something left to be desired, with not many cars, and no items or boosts at all. It never quite lives up to its contemporaries, despite the fun premise. — G. Porter

#78. Conker’s Bad Fur Day

5 March 2001
Rare
Rare
$39.99 on Amazon

Ok, just hear me out before you head to the comments to complain about this game’s placement. Have you played Conker’s Bad Fur Day recently? Like, picked up a controller and actually played it? I don’t begrudge anyone for having good memories of this M-rated Rare platformer. The concept of a cute animal mascot platformer that’s full of cursing, drinking, and gratuitous violence is still novel. But the actual gameplay just isn’t up to par with a Banjo-Kazooie or Mario 64. It’s sort of got the opposite problem of Donkey Kong 64, where there’s not enough to do or collect. Most of the gameplay is walking around, occasionally hover-jumping, and standing on context-sensitive B-Buttons to watch something cool happen that you don’t control. There’s some min-games here and there to shake things up, and you eventually get to shoot things, but the majority of the game kinda feels like a point-and-click adventure game where a fucking bee won’t stop knocking you off a ladder. Go ahead and watch a let’s play of the game instead and enjoy that early 2000’s Newgrounds aesthetic without all the hassle. — S. Finkelstein

#77. WCW/nWo Revenge

October 26, 1998
Asmik Ace Entertainment/AKI Corporation
THQ
$41.86 on Amazon

There’s a lot of initials in that title that don’t make a lot of sense to a lot of people, but none of that matters anyway because both WCW and the nWo have been dead for over two decades now. Many wrestling fans cite WWF No Mercy (you’ll see that much later) as the greatest wrestling video game of all time without acknowledging this little strumpet. The team of THQ and AKI (there’s more initials, damn) made both games and they run on the same engine, but this game was the beta test version that No Mercy later perfected. It’s also probably forgotten because WCW went out of business just a few years after this game came out. A damn shame really – for the game, WCW dying was a mercy at that point – because it’s still a great title to play to this day, even if some mechanics are funky enough to make me just want to play No Mercy instead. — W. Quant

#76. Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue!

November 1999
Traveller’s Tales
Activision
$39.75 on Amazon

In the wake of Super Mario 64, we were inundated with a wash of 3D platformers, all just raring to show off exactly what 64 whole bits are capable of. But for every Banjo Kazooie, there is an equal and opposite Bubsy 3D, leaving a long, deep valley between them. This is where Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! resides, albeit a closer neighbor to the top brass than most would expect.

You play as a polygonal approximation of Buzz Lightyear, portrayed by an amalgam of stitched together dialogue clips you could generously call “Tim Allen”. It has you bounding from one iconic Toy Story locale to the next such as Andy’s house, Pizza Planet, and everyone’s favorite: Series of Looney Tunes Style Steel Girders. The platforming is surprisingly well conceived and satisfying, getting from one area to the next is occasionally difficult, but not impossible, nor the result of poor design. Combat even receives a new breath of fresh air in the form of a first person shooter mode, putting you right in the action as Buzz, quaintly turning things into what feels like a Rugrats mod of Metroid Prime from time to time.

Amongst this game’s highlights, there’s one element I never thought I would confidently point to in a branded IP platformer:

Tone.

Something about the saturated, Crayola-esque palette, the setting, and level design all feel in homage (intentional or otherwise) to what I’ll refer to here as “Little Guy Media”. Segments throughout Andy’s house feel reminiscent of The Incredible Shrinking Man, especially in the basement. Much of Al’s Toy Barn along with other later stages call to mind earlier stages of Katamari Damacy and the yard sequences from Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.

So I guess what I’m saying is if you have a deeply obscure, shrunken man/giantess fetish, lock this one in. It’s gonna do the trick. — W. MacDonald

#75. NFL Blitz

September 9, 1998
Midway
Midway
$57.13 on Amazon

I shouldn’t say too much in this entry because there are FOUR very similar Blitz games I have to write about, but this series clearly rules. Not only does it successfully translate the fun of NBA Jam, professional wrestling, and giving your friends CTE all into one game, but it skips over the boring parts of the sport/other games like extra points and kicking off. Hell, Blitz even achieves the difficult feat of making defense legitimately fun to play, by way of late hits and a truly unfair (for the offense) lack of pass interference penalties. It’s like a chess match if you were allowed to swat a few of your opponents’ pawns off of the board and then punch them in the mouth and give them a Hulk Hogan leg drop, a variation on the sport I’ve invented that the machines will never best us in. This is an impressive debut that lacks some features added in later versions. Bizarre, right? — M. Roebuck

#74. Quake II

June 20, 1999
id Software
Activision
$39.99 on Amazon

A novel effort and marked improvement from its predecessor, Quake II not only handles and looks better, it feels like it was actually made with the intention of being played on the hardware. However, while strides were made, how much closer does this truly get it to being fun? Not a lot! But close.

Environments are no longer comprised of chunky, janky blocks in varying shades of gray, but of actual cohesive structures. Enemies abandon the pseudo-Doom, flat sprite, walking cardboard standee design and have actual 3D models. Even combat feels slightly more satisfying. All the hallmarks of natural progression are accounted for. However, even if you forgo polishing a turd for pressure washing it, the shit is still there – just scattered.

We’re still stuck with the same procedural level design, the same inert, impactless shooting, and the same paint by numbers lifeless sci-fi story, fighting off the evil (ready for this?) Strogg. “Look out for the Strogg, oh no, here comes the Strogg!” You couldn’t have conjured a less intimidating name for a fictional race if you tried. It sounds like some slang for chemical runoff that’d land you jail time for illegally dumping. Not to mention the distinctly hollow feeling of finding a hidden path or item only to be met with the on-screen text: “YOU HAVE FOUND A SECRET”. Yeah buddy, nothing makes a discovery sweeter than the people that hid it going “Wow, hey! Look at that, champ! You found it, good job, pal!”

As with the first installment, unless you’ve got some depraved nostalgic craving for the N64 version, do yourself a favor and just play it on PC. This thing was not built for shooters no matter what we tell ourselves, which is especially fucked up considering the controller has an entire third prong seemingly modelled to be a gun handle. It’s a cruel world. — W. MacDonald

#73. Army Men: Air Combat

July 18, 2000
The 3DO Company
The 3DO Company
$33.99 on Amazon

It was a wise decision to switch it up a little bit for the third Army Men game. Vehicles were always present in the cut scenes (even more present in the PlayStation versions of the games that had longer and better cutscenes, if you care), but this entry finally lets the player steer the ships. And by ships I mean helicopters. You steer helicopters here. Anyway, it takes the series’ inspired settings and sense of humor (General Plastro!) and gives it a Rogue Squadron meets Twisted Metal overhaul. It’s fun! They could’ve called this game Garden Warfare, as the majority of the game’s levels take place in an outside backyard type atmosphere.

It’s not entirely dissimilar from the other two games on the system, but again, a nice change of pace flying around shooting a bunch of bees instead of running around shooting a bunch of guys. It’s also just nice to get outside once in a while, even if it’s just in a video game. Although in stark contrast to the game’s backdrop of beautiful sunshine, this is the darkest game of the series, thanks to the increased focus on killing actual living bugs. Some bugs were always present here and there in the series, but they’ve never been so prevalent and they’ve certainly never cried “We’re freeeee,” after being liberated from a tortuous roach motel, a feeble wail that has been haunting me as I try to fall asleep for weeks now.

Pretty fun game! — M. Roebuck

#72. Flying Dragon

December 18, 1997
Culture Brain
Natsume

A rare (not Rare) N64 fighting game, Flying Dragon goes a step further by adding RPG progression. It lets players use the N64 memory attachment to save and transfer fighters, so the developers must have been imagining kids meeting up to battle and trade gear, like a sweatier Pokémon game. Sadly, each of its lukewarm parts combine to form a mediocre whole. The baseline system is just a weaker Street Fighter, and the RPG progression is murky. There aren’t any visible damage values or enemy descriptions, so you can’t tell what the RPG stats are actually doing. Worse, there’s no proper campaign – it’s all grindy fights against the CPU. It includes an extra mode that gives the chibi fighters realistic dimensions, transforming its bootleg Street Fighter into a bootleg Virtua Fighter. The mode changes everyone’s playstyle and must have taken lots of effort, but it doesn’t incorporate the RPG elements that make the game interesting, so they shouldn’t have bothered. Also features an in-game shopkeeper that gets mad and raises prices if you don’t shop in between every fight. That’s funny! Unless you’re actually trying to play the game. — Michael Katz

#71. Harvest Moon 64

December 22, 1999
Victor Interactive Software
Natsume
$149.99 on Amazon

You may not like it, but this is the ideal male fantasy: planting seeds, growing crops, talking to NPCs, and finding a suitable mate. Before Animal Crossing, before Stardew Valley, before the inexplicable boom of farming simulators in recent years, there was Harvest Moon.

This game is extremely charming, and a reminder of how spritework mixed into early 3D games can work really, really well. Character models are sprites of 3D renders similar to Mario Kart 64, traditional 2D sprites are used for character portraits, and the rest of the environments are fully 3D. The music can be a little repetitive at times, but it’s comfy enough to make you want to stick around working on the farm and getting to know the townsfolk for hours on end. These kinds of games aren’t for everybody, but Harvest Moon laid the groundwork for a wholly unique gaming experience that isn’t built on beating a boss or getting to the end of a course- it’s about living a good life and abandoning your real one. — K. Podas

#70. Stunt Racer 64

October 1, 2000
Boss Game Studios
Midway

If you’re ever feeling down and questioning whether you’ve got what it takes to run a major video game publisher, remember that Midway shunted this title to the dreary realm of rental exclusives. Most games that met with such a fate were awful, and the practice served as a way to to recoup losses on games that a publisher knew wouldn’t sell. Stunt Racer 64 was one of the few standouts, relegated to the shelves of Blockbuster due to questionable corporate thinking. While the stunts promised in the title underwhelmed, the racing did not. Earning money to buy new cars and parts scratched the same itch as Star Wars Episode I: Racer, except you didn’t have to hear Watto say the same dialogue clips over and over. The game’s gorgeous graphics and smooth framerate made it easy to get invested in your racer’s climb through the ranks – that is, until the rental due date came around. It would have been nice to own it. — K. Duggan

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