#275. WCW Mayhem
September 23, 1999
Kodiak Interactive
EA
$16.58 on Amazon
Alright, so you’re a professional showbiz conglomerate with a blank check for basically anything you do. You released a banger of a video game in WCW/nWo Revenge the year before. How do you follow that up? Hopefully you come up with something better than WCW Mayhem. The game can’t tell when I’m hitting someone, which is a big fuckin’ deal in a wrestling game. I can’t even appreciate that it’s supposedly the first wrestling game to feature backstage areas to fight in because a) that means nothing to my enjoyment playing it today and b) even if I get someone backstage, I can’t beat them with anything I find back there because this fighting game can’t tell when I’m fighting people. It certainly isn’t the worst wrestling game ever, but especially in comparison to the last game with WCW branding, there’s no reason to play this ever. — W. Quant
#274. Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals
July 12, 2000
Locomotive, GenAzea
Bay Area Multimedia
Like most of the other dreaded Blockbuster Exclusives, there’s not much positive to say about this game. If you thought the Beast Wars show had sufficiently built up your tolerance for shitty graphics, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise, as the game looks somehow worse. Unfortunately, there’s no more than meets the eye here. It’s a 3D fighting game from an era before anyone really knew how that should work. When you lose, it feels unfair, but it’s just as unsatisfying to win. There’s also some weird minigames to try out, including two different quickdraw dueling modes.
The worst part of the game, though? It’s not fucking lore friendly! During combat, the robot characters are affected by Energon radiation, forcing you to switch between different transformations to conserve energy. However, at this point in the canon timeline, the Energon on Earth had been stabilized, meaning that there was no penalty for a Cybertonian to remain in – wait, no, don’t go! I’ll stop.
To sum up: this game is bad. — Kyle Duggan
#273. Elmo’s Number Journey
Realtime Associates
NewKidCo
November 27, 1999
The N64 only had two games that earned the ESRB rating “eC” (Early Childhood), which designated games targeted at preschoolers. With such a limited selection, it’s a relief that Elmo’s Number Journey is such a transcendent piece of educational entertainment—especially considering its counterpart, the soulless shovelware Elmo’s Letter Adventure, so cruelly preyed upon unsuspecting parents to subject their children to complete and utter creative bankruptcy.
Elmo’s Number Journey begins on Sesame Street, but from there, players are treated to sophisticatedly nonlinear gameplay. Will you ask the Count to transport you to his castle, where you must identify all instances of the number 7? Or will you follow Ernie to a carnival, where you must identify all instances of the number 4? If you’re up for an early challenge, I recommend heading straight to Cookie Monster, who will take you to Cookie World—and if you don’t want spoilers for what happens next, I recommend you stop reading now.
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If you’re still here: in Cookie World, you must identify all instances of the number 6.
These are the storytelling twists and turns you can expect from Elmo’s Number Journey—made possible thanks to circumspect attention to detail that is woefully missing from Elmo’s Letter Adventure.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which route you choose—by playing the masterful Elmo’s Number Journey instead of the loathsome Elmo’s Letter Adventure, you’ve taken the higher path. — C. Dean
#272. Elmo’s Letter Adventure
Realtime Associates
NewKidCo
November 27, 1999
$39.95 on Amazon
Elmo’s Letter Adventure is a conundrum: how many toddlers have the fine motor control to play a video game, yet still need to learn their ABCs? Well, if you happen to possess a preschooler who was lobotomized, Elmo’s Letter Adventure is the perfect game for you.
Elmo’s Letter Adventure takes you to exciting, varied locations such as a farm or outer space, where you can go through the exact same untextured race course to find the exact same letters 10 times in a row. The game’s music faithfully inspires the same feeling of dread that parents get from hearing Baby Shark on loop for 3 hours. Despite being targeted towards literal babies, the game has a strict penalty system where you must restart the level after choosing the wrong letter a certain number of times. This pairs perfectly with the horrible hitboxes of the letters (yes, the letter A has a bad hitbox somehow) to create a never-ending hellscape of edutainment.
Playing this game makes me want to die, but at least it isn’t Elmo’s Number Journey. I would remind you that the alphabet has 26 letters, while the numbers in Elmo’s Number Snoozefest are only 1-9. Therefore, Elmo’s Letter Adventure is the gaiden version targeted towards real gamers. If you want your fetal alcohol baby to develop into an E-Sports god, Elmo’s Letter Adventure is the right choice. — R. Fleishman
#271. Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
October 1, 1997
Avalanche Software
Midway
$59.99 on Amazon
I will never forget the Christmas of 1997, because it was utterly ruined by Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. I’ve never been more excited for a video game before or since. Mere minutes into popping this bad boy into my Nintendo 64 on the morning of December 25th, my heart sank. The game sucked and I knew it. Upon starting, the game releases you into a platforming nightmare; the developers did very little to alter the control scheme of classic Mortal Kombat fighting games to adapt to this different style. Pitfall! for the Atari 2600 figured out 2D controls in 1982; how is it possible that Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero fucked up the concept so badly? If anything, the game did teach me two very important lessons: the holidays suck, and you should never get your hopes up for anything.— John Danek
#270. Top Gear Rally 2
December 3, 1999
Saffire
Kemco
$34.98 on Amazon
Top Gear Rally 2 is the Dark Souls 2 of Top Gear Rally games: a lot of ok content surrounded by dogshit game design. Typing that made me want to die.
There’s a very realistic damage system, by which I mean that making a slight turn will pop your tires instantly. You can slowly repair yourself by opening the main menu and waiting for your invisible pit crew to do their thing. Clearly an inspired game mechanic. Eat shit, Lakitu.
Admittedly, the game has a handful of positives. There are some surprisingly detailed customization options that can slightly alleviate the breakdown pains, but you’re still going to be overheating your engine and popping your tires through to the end. The physics and weather systems are also pretty well developed for a console game in the 90’s.
That being said, even for its time, the game is ugly and clunky as heck. There are at least five rally car games on the console, and this is far and away the worst I’ve played.
If you’re a sick fuck who plays D&D with heavy encumbrance rules and are desperate for a mediocre rally car racer, you might get something out of this. If not, steer clear. Wow, that’s an actual stupid review tagline. IGN hire me please, I am so poor and can’t afford to move out of my abusive family’s house. — N. Krause
#269. The Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Traction
VIS Entertainment and Asylum Entertainment
BAM! Entertainment
October 14, 2001
Christmas 2001 was a cold, cold day for any Nintendo kid whose family couldn’t—or wouldn’t—get them a GameCube. (Much love, respect, and compassion to any kids who got the “Don’t we already have a Nintendo?” excuse.) If you wanted a new title for this fading console, you basically had two choices: You could get one of those sports games that the developer forgot to stop auto-renewing until it was too late; or, you could get the N64’s final fighting game—which also happened to be its final hastily-conceived cash-grab based on a popular IP.
Look, as a Cartoon Network kid emeritus, I’m not that difficult to please. I see the villains I get to fight—Fuzzy Lumpkins, Him, Mojo Jojo, Princess Morbucks, Sedusa, and two of the five Gangreen Gang guys (evidently Snake, Lil’ Arturo, and Grubber were too expensive)—and I’m ready to love the game. I see that many of the stages and props are pulled from specific episodes of the show, and I’m downright giddy. But these elements amount to little more than a fresh coat of paint on the Townsville City Dump. The combat is predictable (in the sense that the villains always make the same moves), and unpredictable (in the sense that none of the moves I made seemed to matter). Basically, I just kept mashing buttons; I prevailed about 50% of the time; that was enough to beat the game in like 30 minutes. For your efforts, you are rewarded with a few text screens describing your glorious victory. Because as any great storyteller knows: Don’t show. Don’t tell. Make a 5-year-old read several paragraphs of exposition. — C. Dean
#268. Penny Racers
February 4, 1999
Locomotive Corporation
THQ
$50.99 on Amazon
Penny Racers plays like you’ve been drunk for four days straight, even if you haven’t. If you’ve ever wondered to yourself “what if Mario Kart 64 was joyless and generic?” then you would likely do well playing Penny Racers. Me on the other hand, well, I’m gonna go get drunk for four days because this game truly broke my spirit. I swear that until now there has been no N64 game that has made me question whether there is a just and loving God in this existence. Fuck you, Penny Racers. I hate God now because of you. — J. Knapp
#267. South Park: Chef’s Luv Shack
October 12, 1999
Acclaim Studios Austin
Acclaim Entertainment
$55.99 on Amazon
It’s not unusual that all the N64 South Park games are dogshit. What is unusual is that they’re all different types of dogshit. Over 15 months, Acclaim Entertainment released a South Park first-person shooter, a South Park kart racer, and this: a South Park trivia game. Of the three, I’d argue Chef’s Luv Shack is closest to a successful adaptation of the show, for one reason: it’s 2D. Because of South Park’s simple, iconic animation style, the graphics are nearly uncompromised. How often in 1999 could you play a game that looked exactly like its source material?
The problem is, the visuals (which are good because they’re bad) are the highlight of the game. Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and Isaac Hayes provide VO, but they cycle through a limited set of phrases, none of which capture the show’s voice. It’s obvious that the developers think South Park is just a bunch of poop jokes—when in reality, South Park is a bunch of poop jokes with an underlying theme of libertarian nihilism. The questions are wanting; you get a little South Park trivia and a lot of Snapple facts hastily rephrased as questions. The handful of minigames wouldn’t make the front page of Newgrounds. And if you go single-player (what, you couldn’t find any friends itching to play South Park: Chef’s Luv Shack?) there’s no CPUs to compete with. Instead, you play by yourself, and you’re guaranteed victory. Well, sort of. As Mr. Mackey learned when he hacked NORAD: the only winning move is not to play. — C. Dean
#266. Power Rangers: Light Speed Rescue
June 1, 2000
Mass Media Inc.
THQ
$28.86 on Amazon
I think this game is called Light Speed Rescue because you can beat its 20 levels in about 22 minutes. This breezy, stupid, licensed game calls to mind Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker, another opposite of a banger that Power Rangers actually does a lot of little things better than. There’s a variety of levels, for example. There’s first person Megazord stuff, regular Zord stuff where you drive around and collect things and shoot stuff, and your standard Power Ranger brawler stuff. You roam around these big levels looking for people to rescue. It’s like Zombies Ate My Neighbors if you had access to exactly one move, a zap from the hand. Could the power rangers even do hand zaps? I swear they couldn’t, but this is from the era where their faces got weird shapes, and I don’t think I was watching anymore by the time their faces got the weird shapes. I didn’t stop because of the weird shaped faces mind you, but I don’t think it helped. Anyway, hand zap is your only move. Your limited moveset doesn’t really matter though, as it’s pretty easy to outrun a lot of the enemies most of the time. The odd cast of colorful characters trailing behind a sprinting Power Ranger is my favorite part of this game. Picture the opening of A Hard Day’s Night portrayed by the cast of Yo Gabba Gabba! It’s okay to play this one if you don’t think anyone will find out.— M. Roebuck
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