#234. Castlevania
January 26, 1999
Konami
Konami
$49.99 on Amazon
People really hate this game, huh? I get it, man. Castlevania has a wonky camera, combat, and platforming. There’s a day-night cycle that isn’t really explained, and if you take more than 16 days you get the bad ending no matter what. But you know what this game has? It’s got that spooky shit! The first thing you fight in this game is a kooky skeleton, and then you walk 10 feet and there’s a GIANT SKELETON and you gotta whip it in the head. There’s bats and werewolves and Draculas all over this thing. We gotta get more games that aren’t horror, but do capture this sort of Universal Monster Mash. Anyway, they made a better version of this game and released it less than a year later. It’s on this list somewhere, probably above this? Maybe below. I didn’t want to play this game twice for this project. — S. Finkelstein
#233. Xena: Warrior Princess – The Talisman of Fate
December 6, 1999
Saffire
Titus Interactive
$33.99 on Amazon
If there’s one thing I know about the 90’s, it’s that people couldn’t get enough of fighting games. And if you’ve already played Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat, and Clayfighter, AND your taste in television leans toward syndicated sword-and-sandal action, well then do I have a game for you. I have never watched an episode of Xena, so maybe there are people out there who know the difference between Caeser and Ares and Autolycus. All I know is, they all play exactly the same! This is like Soul Calibur if everyone had the same sword. I know there are special moves ‘cause one guy kept spamming fireballs, but I couldn’t figure it out. If you gotta have your Xena fix, go nuts. I’m gonna go outside and play SPORTS because I’m not a NERD. — S. Finkelstein
#232. Jeremy McGrath Supercross 2000
February 28, 2000
Acclaim
Acclaim
$44.21 on Amazon
Firing this game up starts promising, as the sounds of The Offspring, The Official Band of Extremely Taking It To the Max™, welcome you to Jeremy McGrath’s Motocross Bullshit. Starting a race brought many questions, like, ‘Does this game think I’m sick?’ and ‘Why is it letting me win?’ I start a race on even the highest difficulty and half of my opponents just all fucking take each other out like they’ve never rode dirt bikes before, leaving me free to struggle through the race and crash four times and still win. They also blew their good music budget on The Offspring, I’m afraid. Everything else is bland rubbish. One of the five or six worst motocross games on the system. — M. Roebuck
#231. South Park
December 21, 1998
Iguana
Acclaim
$53.57 on Amazon
Like Chandler with South Park Rally, I was really hoping to discover a diamond in the rough here. I knew this game was known for being bad, but I thought the help of emulation tools might help me breeze through a game that featured some original 1998-era South Park content by way of the game’s cutscenes. And let’s be honest, if you’re spending some time reading a retrospective on 300 Nintendo 64 games, odds are good you understand the potential appeal of unearthing some never before heard South Park performances.
However, I found it’s really not worth trudging through this game’s big empty levels to hear Kyle say “No way, dude!” and a bunch of not-that-funny-today Season One era bits. It’s really too bad that this floaty first person shooter missed the mark, because a halfway fun four-player South Park game would have been absolutely obsessed over by a generation of youths, played in between sessions of Mario Kart and GoldenEye. Sadly, they blew it, and its legacy is merely that it’s one of three South Park games for the system that quite simply should not be. — M. Roebuck
#230. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness
December 8, 1999
Konami
$189.95 on Amazon
Legacy of Darkness started in a weird place. It’s effectively a “director’s cut” of the N64’s Castlevania; many of the stages in Legacy are remixed editions of C64’s, and the playable cast from C64 returns for Legacy as unlockable characters with their stories intact. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Legacy makes C64 obsolete, but I’d be annoyed if I’d bought them both at full launch price.
Legacy also shares its predecessor’s problem with making a bad first impression, as it opens with a couple of the most boring levels in the game. You’ve got to suffer through some dull platforming and key hunts before Legacy really hits the road. Beyond that, it’s aged poorly, but I can respect what it tried to do. Castlevania with survival horror mechanics sounds like a surefire combination, and Legacy doesn’t quite get across the finish line, but there are a couple of levels that are worth the price of admission. If you can handle the janky 3D platforming and camera controls, there’s some fun to be had here. — Thomas Wilde
#229. NASCAR ‘99
September 10, 1998
EA Sports
EA Sports
$19.08 on Amazon
What really can be said about NASCAR ‘99? If you liked Mario Kart 64 but still desperately yearn for your stepdad’s approval then this will probably do the trick for you. From the realistic as possible graphics for 1998, to the playable real drivers who likely retired later that year, to the pit crew chief who hurls abuse at you for your crappy wheel control (you big dummy), NASCAR ‘99 will really drive home (car puns!) the fact that Dennis is still willing to put in a good word for you for that job at the metal plate factory if you ever decide to stop breaking your poor mother’s heart by fucking around at art school like some kind of Communist. — J. Knapp
#228. Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2
November 13, 2000
Midway Games
$30.82 on Amazon
Since the Nintendo 64 never got its own iteration of Punch-Out!!, someone had to step in and fill the void. On second thought, maybe not, actually. Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2 is a sequel that adds a couple more mechanics and a few new characters. I mean, what did you expect, really? You use the C-buttons to punch your opponent, which is an… innovative decision, at least. They got Michael Buffer back in this game. You know, the “Let’s get ready to rumble,” guy? Don’t feel bad, I had to Google it, too. This game was also released on the PlayStation 2, so you know the N64 version got the shaft. A bunch of characters had to be cut due to space constraints, but on the plus side, how many games open with a disclaimer saying that “neither William Jefferson Clinton nor Hillary Rodham Clinton endorse this game?” Not enough, honestly! — K. Podas
#227. Buck Bumble
September 30, 1998
Argonaut Games
Ubisoft
$69.99 on Amazon
I hardly ever sell my games. Even when I was a kid. I’m a hoarder like that. But I’m glad– there’s a lot of games I could have sold that are incredibly hard to find now. However, Buck Bumble is one of the very few games that I’ve ever let go of in my entire life. I got it as a Christmas present one year, and then later sold it at the family garage sale. Was I too harsh on it? Did it just go over my head at the time? Hard Drive has given me the excuse to give this game a second chance.
Let’s just get this out of the way: the theme song is an absolute banger. It’s a bop. It slaps. We all know it. But otherwise, there is just something so profoundly depressing about this game’s environment. Well, it’s rural England, first of all. You fly around a bunch of trash, shooting at other bugs after a poison spill affects the insect population outside of an abandoned chemical plant. Oh, and this is probably the worst example of ‘N64 fog’ I’ve ever seen. The draw distance feels limited to five feet in front of your face, although you aren’t missing out on much, at least. Can’t say I regret the 25 bucks I made from selling this game in 3rd grade. — K. Podas
#226. Bottom of the 9th
April 14, 1999
Konami
Konami
With over 20 years between us and the release of all of the strikingly (pun intended) similar baseball games on the Nintendo 64, the differences are strikingly (oops mistake) marginal. Bottom of the 9th loses a lot of points for being the only one without the licensed MLB teams. They have the players, and the right cities, so it could be worse, but it’s definitely something that keeps this game from bumping elbows with the Triple Play’s and All Star Baseball’s of the world. It’s too bad, because the Scenario mode is a great idea. Most baseball games throw a home run derby at you and call it a special features menu, but Bottom of the 9th lets you recreate legendary, unforgettable moments from baseball history, picking up iconic games in progress and letting you complete them, like the pitching showdown between Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu that took place during a crosstown battle between the New York A’s and the New York N’s.
Yeah, it sucks not having the teams. — M. Roebuck
#225. Nuclear Strike 64
November 30, 1999
Electronic Arts
Pacific Coast Power & Light
$17.15 on Amazon
Nuclear Strike 64 was a game you could reliably expect to be available to rent from Blockbuster. Everyone played it once and was like, “I’m good,” and never felt the need to rent it again. It makes sense; it’s a bland game where you fly a helicopter and fire missiles at what looks like an underfunded day camp. It plays fine, doesn’t really give you much of a challenge and is a suitable distraction for when your parents are having another whisper-volume argument in the kitchen.
I actually remember playing this game as a kid (it’s why I was able to pull up that brilliant Blockbuster bit just now), but replaying it 25 years later I feel the same sense of apathy and mild contentedness I felt playing it back then because I had to stay late at school for speech therapy and every game I actually wanted to play had already been rented out by the time I got there. But clearly, those memories haven’t affected my review here in the least. — J. Knapp
#224. NFL Quarterback Club ‘98
October 24, 1997
Iguana
Acclaim
$12.30 on Amazon
This game hit the scene before Madden 64, ran smoothly at a higher resolution, and had the NFL license its competitor lacked. Things like dogshit audio presentation, bad button layout, and the football doing inexplicable things while in the air keep it from outpacing Madden too much, although it does feel like the clearly superior debut. Who cares though? There are dozens of games worth revisiting over either of them. Here’s hoping that this quarterback ‘club,’ didn’t have a collection of funds, or else Brett Favre may have allegedly tried to embezzle some of the money for him and his family’s own personal gain! — M. Roebuck
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