Guys. Cyberpunk is so freaking good. Phantom Liberty is like, one of the best games I played this year. You know what's not the best game I played this year? Literally everything on the list we're gonna talk about today. That's right, awful Nintendo 64 games today on welcome everybody, to another episode of PressBy to cancel your favorite retro gaming podcast. Well, unless you hurt your feelings with one of the games we're going to talk about today, this week, it's awful, terrible, bad n 64 games. That's what we're talking about today. But I'm not alone. No. I am joined by two good friends, my fellow wardens in this prison that Nintendo has created. They store all these shitty games. Sorry, YouTube. Cesar, how are you doing this week?
I am fantastic. I've got my motorhome ready for a trip next weekend. I'm excited and I'm here, so everything's coming up mill house.
I can think of nothing better than escaping on a motorhome away from the Nintendo 64 chart. How are you doing this week?
I'm all right. We've got some new representation. Not a sponsor, almost a sponsor. My drip game is fucking hot. Sorry, YouTube, but nothing more drippy than this pile of shit we're literally going to talk about here real quick. That's called a segue.
That's masterful work, sir. Masterful work. All right, look, I'm going to start off by saying when I was a kid, Nintendo 64 was new. I saved my allowance, my Christmas money, the whole bit. It was an expensive system, especially in KDN dollars. I remember I couldn't get it for Christmas. It was sold out literally everywhere. It was like, I think it was like 27th, 20 Eigth, though. Just after Christmas. That's the one. I was able to get a tip that a certain store hadn't. So my mother said, kay, go get your damn video games. I hopped in a bus, went to the small in a shitty part of town. It was like after dark, which is Canada. So we're talking, like, 04:00 p.m.. And I found it. I got my copy of the Nintendo 64 and I got Mario 64. And I loved the Nintendo 64. Why am I telling you this? Because I love the Nintendo 64. I do like the console, so I want to start that off right off the bat. I like Nintendo 64. I like Nintendo. Now I feel when I was growing up, all my friends that had this system, we all had the same freaking four to seven games. We all had Mario 64, we all had GoldenEye. We all had. Mario kart. I mean, somebody might have had Wayne Gretzky and somebody might have had Turok.
Ocarina of Time Brothers, the new Tetris. I mean, there are a swath of very good games. There are.
But from everybody I grew up with that had the system, it's got to be the same twelve games across the board. But there's hundreds of titles for this console. It's not a small library. I mean, I know compare it to the Wi it is, but otherwise it's a decent sized library. But there's a lot of trash on this console. So we're talking about bad N 64 games this week. And we got a few selected here, some that we have personal experience with and a couple that actually pulled from a list. I wanted to see what other people considered bad for the Nintendo 64. And I'm going to start off with one title that several lists. Note this is one of the worst on the system, but I personally like this one and that's Hexen. Hexen 64 or just hexen? And this is a PC title that was ported to the N 64. It wasn't the only shooter like this that was we had Doom and Doom 64. Yeah, Doom 64. Quake. Quake. Two is on the N 64 as well as what's name not George Lucas. What's his name? Chew gum and kick ass. What's that guy?
Oh, Duke newcomb.
Duke Newcomb. Thank you.
George Lucas. I don't know what in the in.
My head it was George Lucas. I don't know why I got George Lucas Duke newcomb confused. I don't know. But Duke Newcomb was also in the Nintendo 64. Clearly career path. Been a long, long fucking week. I'm tired.
I have the video up and the Vaseline graphics from the 64 are fantastically in this.
Let's start off by saying Hexen was ported by Software Creations in 1997. It is a port of Hexen that was on the PC from I think, 95, which is Raven software, I think. And my notes say the bad was it was a cartridge format, so it didn't have the FMV or the CD quality music that was on the CD version of the Windows game, but that's expected. It's a cartridge format, but it had consistent FPS and it says here high detail and smooth filtering. So I guess for this couple of reviewers, we're saying that the Vaseline graphics were a highlight. Did you guys play Hexen at all?
I played hexen on the PC.
Same. I also played Hexen on the PC and never touched it because my thing was back then keyboard and mouse ruled all FPS. So I could not imagine at the time touching a controller for any of these games, which now when we play anything that's first person shooter on a console, it doesn't seem so odd. But back then I could not imagine playing an FBS in controller.
The difference is though is you have to remember that Nintendo 64 had a single analog stick. And the reason it feels normal is because you have movement and you have look on two different devices and this is the same device for movement and look. And it's weird. It feels weird.
It was a weird adjustment doing the Panning and the striping and the back and forward with two different controllers. I remember that transition was hard for PlayStation Two as well.
Is there strifeing in this game on the 16th?
No, there isn't. Here's what the controls are because I was playing it earlier today. There's forward and back by going up and down and then left or right on the stick will actually turn the character and then the DPAD up and down will change your view because this is one of the old school first person shooters that had that up and down movement a little bit.
There is no literally, this is a game that required the three hands that were required for the Nintendo 64 controller. I gave up my third hand in 1998, so I can't play this anymore.
Yeah, I lost my third hand and numb.
But you know what though? From this week, my research on all the N 64 games, all the first person shooters, even the ones I like, all control, absolutely shitty. And I was struggling. And that's my problem with doing the testing this week. I don't have an N 64 controller. I was available to hook up via USB. So I'm trying to finagle an Xbox controller to the PC to play these games and I found a lot of.
Well, there's your first problem.
A few other ones, I had to keep changing the inputs to make it feel right.
Well, if you played it with a PS Five controller, you probably would have had better success, but.
Really? You think so?
Yeah, I think so.
I don't know, banging my head against my desk with one hand.
Gentleman, gentlemen, we already had this discussion.
Yeah, I know that's true. Better controllers. But look, I like hexen I rented this game for the S 64. I didn't have a PC when I had the Nintendo 64. And despite the shitty controller, I actually really liked this game. I felt it controlled, okay? I like the exploring and breaking stained glass windows. I like the different classes. You have three classes to play. Like, I was never a huge fanatic.
But this you're playing medieval Doom, that's all you need. I mean, the idea of Hexen and heretic in that time was cool as hell because it was Doom, but it was all fucking medieval. So swords and magic and all that other shit.
That's fucking sick.
Okay, I'm going to call this game out for the problems that it has. And the first one is, I'm watching you now in your video that you provided me, I'm watching you literally up, down, up, down. Treat it like doom. Treat it like doom. Where you don't actually have to aim up or down. Right? Okay.
You have to because the flying enemies are in this.
But Doom treats it as you have up and down motion as far as movement. But your guns always hit whatever is aiming left to right. I mean, modify it so that it is simply that. But okay. And then the second thing is the soundtrack to Hexen is a banger. And if it doesn't have that soundtrack.
It'S a loss.
You're not wrong.
It's still not a bad port, I think. And for somebody like me who grew up without the PSE, I think this is a great exposure to it. And it's funny how for me, like Command and Conquer, Doom, Quake, all those my first exposure to those was on the Nintendo 64, which is kind of strange. So maybe it's nostalgia glasses for me, but I feel like this one is not so bad. The biggest knock against it I think I have is that it's that Sprite Billboarding style of graphics. They're not 3D models. And on the N 64, that feels weird to see the enemies that are completely 2D, but it's a 3D game. That's kind of strange. But, I mean, it's to be expected when you realize it's a port of a Windows game.
I mean, it's a successful port, honest to God. I think transferring it off of the PC into a console format, I think the 64 was the first group, the first console to kind of take those PC ports and put them into a console format. Correct me if I'm wrong, I may be wrong on that, but I don't recall playing Doom, Quake or any of those things on anything else that was powerful enough to handle it in a console format.
It unlocked the ability to do 3D perspective. Right? I mean, that was the whole premise behind the Nintendo 64. And working with Silicon Graphics was it was really the first 3D engine on a console. Right. You had 3D effects and stuff on rage cards and everything on PC and the PlayStation One, the PSX had some 3D elements, but it still was like a 2D console that had 3D tacked on.
Right, right.
The N 64. Jake, we talked about Super Mario 64. Sorry, dr. Mario 64, which is a 2D game. And you point it out, it feels weird because it feels like they're smashing 2D into a 3D rendering engine. Right, right. And it makes sense. This console for its era, really was the introduction of 3D on consoles. And so you're also going to run into all the jank. I mean, as much as I love Super Mario 64, the 3D jank is bad.
Ocarina of Time is one of the top rated, and Talk boasted about Zeldas in recent years. But if you go back and play it now, it is so freaking broken because it's so janky. But it's the same thing. I've gone back and played it and been like, what did I like in this? This is so messed up. And I've seen people rage that love this game, and like, it's been so many years since we played to.
They need to give it the treatment that Metroid Prime got, where they brought it to modern controllers, right?
Fuck yeah.
The thing that people don't realize about orcrate of Time is that there's no jump button. There's like a little auto hop and that's about it, right? The controls are kind of OD with the N 64. But I mean, first generation 3D, right? That's what it is. And to be fair, PlayStation and Saturn both had three D and they both got a couple of these games. I think HEXIM was on the Saturn and I think Doom was on I mean, Doom was on the Superintendent Node, to be honest. But I think there's something unique with the N 64 ports and how they did it. And I think they did overall well. But taking a game like this and putting on a system that is supposed to be about 3D models and 3D graphics and polygons, but this is a Sprite based first person game. I see why it got some hate, and I can see why it's on.
That list, to be fair. If I remember right, it's Sprites on the PC as well. Right. I think that that's a one to one translation. Okay, well, that was a good candidate. It's one of those if we're going to talk about I don't know that you put it on your list, but I did test battle tanks with an X. Battle tanks with an X.
We can talk about it. Yeah, tell people. This story is something else.
It's a game about the worst version of Fridging in the world ever. For those that are unaware of what Fridging is, I guess it came from a comic book or a movie or a TV show or something where a female was literally put into a refrigerator and had to be rescued. And that was the whole premise, was like, it's that whole the females can't save themselves, men have to do it. And it's called fridging. Well, in this title, in battletank's title, there is a virus or bacteria, the disease that is wiping out 99.9% of females.
Okay.
The far, far future of what year?
Of 2012.
2001.
Oh, 2001, that's right.
And they chose three years later time frame of 2001.
Well, to be fair, you're driving around M one Abrams tanks, right?
Casually, might I add, up and down streets. Going to the grocery store. I got to stop by Safeway. You better take the Abrams out now.
I'm going to give this oh, Sinstra says it was a comic book. I'm going to give this one a mixed review because the story of the exposition is so bad. It is so bad. And then for some weird reason, it has these horrendous load times for the story at the beginning. Like it goes to a black screen and you're like, did the game lock up?
It's a cartridge, for Christ's sake.
Too.
That's even the worst. Why would a cartridge have fucking load times like that? That's ridiculous. This isn't Chrono trigger on the PS one.
Come on.
Right? But once you get into the actual gameplay, it actually has elements of enjoyable gameplay. You're literally just I mean, sure, it looks like an M One Abrams, like.
A destruction derby with tanks.
It is, kind of, yeah. And it has some of the greatest jank. I love it because everything that you shoot deflates, not explodes. Walls on buildings, deflate. And then if you drive over a cop car whose lights are flashing, it goes from a 2D cop car sorry. From a 3D cop car to a 2D cop car, and the lights are still flashing.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
Well executed.
But the gameplay, once you get into the gameplay, it's a driving simulator where you can shoot things. Right. How wrong can you go?
It reminds me, there is one thing. It does derby on the PS One, but with tanks, like that's legitly. When I watched the arena esque type battle, it just felt like the game destruction derby. But you were blowing shit up instead of running into one another.
Right.
The thing with this gameplay, though, is you're a tank, but in this game, you can't control the turret. Again, this goes back to it's a single joystick game. It's a single analog stick, and you're literally driving a car that looks like.
A tank, but you have shoulder buttons. Right?
Well, one of them is fire.
Why is it the trigger? Why is it the Z trigger? Fire.
Okay, maybe it was. Hang on. Maybe it was anyway, I forget because I had to use my third hand, so I forget.
I thought you lost that in 89.
I borrowed one from a friend.
I found it.
Found it?
That's right. I dusted it off, gave it a bath.
Awful.
But, Jake, the reason I was holding up my finger is there is a second battle tanks, and this belongs on the bad game list. I don't know if you have it in the video. You have battle tanks.
I don't have in the video, but I did play it earlier.
You're right. Because this is going to be the top 100 worst games ever.
So, the very first let's see. Hang on, I got to pull up the video for battle tanks here. Okay, so the second one, the turret moves, but it's hexen like in that you turn left and it turns the thing. But if you move forward, all of a sudden, the tank starts to pull with the direction of the turret. So it's this half assed version of the turret moving. Once again, we're dealing with one stick. And I agree, charred left and right bumpers should have done it, but that would require a third wait, but that would require you to move your hand to the third position because it is controlled with a stick.
Yeah.
I don't know.
The buttons on the N 64 controller don't make a whole lot of sense unless you were to play this game with a DPAD, but very few games did that. Right. But I'm with you. The gameplay is not bad. It's kind of like a B game, but the graphics aren't the greatest. It's very gritty. The Nintendo 64 fog is legendary, and it's a great example on this, for sure. The second made it a little bit further view, but the first game, all you see is fog and the pavement directly in front of you. It's kind of OD for how little is happening on the screen, but it's got its charm. I don't think it's terrible. Listen, it's not good.
You know what has charm? Earthbound. That charming as fuck. This does not have charm. This has tanks that you can't move back and forth. It's ridiculous.
I do like how you have tank bucks, and that's basically your lives. And the first, I spin the game up, and then there's a tank in front of me, and Sinister is like, okay, you shoot that. I'm like, okay, I shoot it. And then I go forward and I bulldoze into a crate that explodes, and I die instantly. There goes my tank bucks. I spend ten tank.
How much is an Abrams worth? A tank?
$10. The economy of 2001 a dark, dark future. Tanks are only $10. Nice. Reverse inflation.
All right.
Inflation. That's all I could afford. $40 worth of coupons for tank.
I have to read this. The virus, having burned itself out, is no longer a threat. The remaining survivors of the devastation now face extinction because every thousand males, there's only one female. Oh, God, this exposition is so bad.
Wow.
What do they call it?
No. You're only a Battle Lord. You're only a Battle lord in number two.
Oh, that's right. In the sequel. In the first one, you're not yet a Battle lord. So since we said this was a.
Comic book, that makes no, she said that the fridging came from a comic book.
No, not the game. No. The term. That's ridiculous.
All right, so I've now got gameplay up, and I hope you had some good deflation here.
Griffin Spade.
That's where you drove into the exploding.
Containers and they tell you nothing, right? Why would I expect a tank to explode instantly on a crate? Loser. Really? Yeah, loser. There was later on, I got stuck in level two. I didn't know where to go. And then you're like, oh, you can destroy terrain. Like, oh, of course you can. You're a tank.
There was a deflating building. Watch for the deflating building.
But you don't think about it. This is silly. Oh, there it is.
Yeah. The graphics.
It's, like, melting into itself.
Yes.
Wow.
Literally melting when you blow.
I remember the first time I drove a tank.
I like how Jake, when you were recording this, you were avoiding driving over the vehicles. I just drove over everything.
Yeah. Jake's driving it like it's an actual car. I love the backup. I love the wait.
Nope.
Nope. Even though it's a destroyed car, I am not running over it. It's the Canadian enemy. Just can't be mean?
And the hopping suspension on a treaded.
Hydraulics on that bad boy. Is that an impala abrams okay, so.
As much as we're bashing on this, the second one is bad. The second one is genuinely bad. The first one, I'm going to give it three out of five stars. As far as the gameplay goes, I'm going to give it three. The story, I'm giving a very solid one, and it's long.
It's like a five minute.
What story are you going to come up to? To be like, all right, we're in a post apocalyptic world where tanks are trying to kill one another. Let's take all the women out. That's how we got here. So we got here by toxic masculinity. Fantastic. Super pumped.
It's very much a 90s game.
Toxic masculinity the game.
Yeah.
Actually, I think there's a lot of games that are toxic.
Wait, the fucking tank has a license plate.
You know what it says? It says, Eat me.
Oh, Jesus. God. So now I got to register my.
Tank in the dark, dark future of 2001, you must register and get a license to drive your M One aprons.
Tank, a vanity plate.
This tank does not appear to be on our record. Sir, we're going to have to pull you over. License and registration, please.
You have to go to the TMV to get your picture taken. And they're like, what's your occupation, sir? Battle Lord.
This is, I think, where I told Jake to drive over the flashing cop car lights.
Yeah, I want to see this.
Hang on. I think he turns back around and I tell him to drive over.
You can't get past the spike yet. We got to drive over.
No, but I think I tell him, here, drive over the cop car, and then why have you guys been keeping this gem secret for so long?
This is a hidden gem.
Yeah, it is. Okay, so here he goes.
But it's definitely hidden.
It's hidden and a gem.
He just drove over it. It's later on anyway. Oh, there it is. The flashing lights. Okay. All right, so we've talked battle tanks.
It's awful.
Somebody got their Adobe for the first time and got to play with lens flares.
Right.
But it was new for the N 64. This is all untreaded ground. Right?
I mean, you're right. We're looking back several years later after the release of this console, and it's hard to poo poo what was there at the time, because we're spoiled with what we have now with video cards and the cyberpunks, as you mentioned the beginning. I mean, when I played King's Quest Seven and saw the Crystal Dragon, that was the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my goddamn life. And I look back on it, and it was like two frames per fucking second. It was so bad. But it was so cool at the time. I get it. And we're definitely got nostalgia glasses for probably quite a few of these games going through the console.
So I kind of viewed it. I did my homework earlier this week and Werewolf was with me, and I kind of viewed it as they saw carmageddon on the PC and they wanted to make an analog, but they couldn't have because it's a family friendly Nintendo console. They couldn't have you driving over civilians, right? Because it kind of looks like a.
So at this time. This game came out a couple of years prior. There was a very successful arcade game and it was a tank multiplayer battler, much like this game, although it was more modern time frame, like, it was more present day time frame. And it was Japanese tanks. And that, to its credit, controlled great. But you're also an arcade machine and you had proper tank controls and the turret movable and whatnot. But this feels like that in terms of spirit of an arena tank game. So I see with that, combined with the theme of carmageddon, I see where they got to this. But that plot, that exposition is just bonkers.
I swear. It's the same thing before, where it's like, Johnson escape is coming out. We need a plot. Give me a story. And he's like.
99.9% of women die.
He looks like the guy from Fucking Diehard that he's like, Babe, I'm your white knight. I got it. 99% of the women gone. There's 1000 men for one lady. How do you get her? Fucking tanks.
Fucking tanks.
Let's get it done. Ship it.
It's done.
They're like, we ain't got time. Sure, that sounds great.
Idiot. It's wild.
Okay.
A game that was not the greatest for the N 64. But, I mean, you and I have had some fun with it, and that's fine. There's two genres on the N 64 that I want to talk about this episode. One of them is one that the N 64 is known for, and one of them is a genre that it's maybe not meant to be. So let's talk about that one first. Let's talk about fighting games on the Nintendo 64. There are some good ones. Killer Instinct is absolutely a banger on the N 64. They did an amazing job there. Merle Comet trilogy, surprisingly decent considering. I mean, the thing with the N 64 controller is you do have six face buttons, technically. And if you use them, it's cool, right? So there are some analog stick, too.
So you could do the half circle attacks and all the stuff that you couldn't do on the controller that you would be breaking your goddamn thumbs on, on either the Super Nintendo or the.
Look, we considered it a rite of passage when you broke your thumb on the DPAD.
Nintendo Boopie on the white knight.
But you could also use DPAD, too, for fighting because DPAD made sense for a lot of these games. But there's definitely a lot of fighting games on here. And a few of them were actually by Midway, the moral combat guys.
Surprising number of gems.
These were some of the gems. They were all gems.
Maybe not so hidden.
Let's start with Bio Freaks, because, Chart, I think you mentioned you had played that way back when. Midway did this back in 1998. Bio Freaks, what do you know about this?
I remember renting this game at my friend's house who had she had the Nintendo 64. So we'd go over there and hang out with her and play the stuff. She had all the Nintendo stuff. This was my friend that had all the Nintendo stuff, and I had all the Genesis Sega stuff. And I specifically remember playing this, and I remember she called me over and she's like, we got to try this fighting game out. Let's do this. And I was like, oh, okay.
Let's do this.
So we get in there and it's a fighting game. It's a 3D fighter. You're in the future. So it's again, another Dystopian world where everybody is fighting it. I don't know the story of this game at all. Of course. It's midway. So I'm like Yo, mortal Kombat, midway. Well, it's fire, I get it.
But Freaks is an acronym flying, robotic enhanced, armored killing synthanoids. Synthanoids.
Synthanoids.
Not humans.
Sorry, synthoids, but yes, whatever.
Anyway, but this game was cool because you had a dude that was like a helicopter guy. You had the dude with the machine gun arms, a fucking minotaur, butterflies, stabby lady. I mean, there was some cool creatures you could be in this game. The problem with this game is, though, you could be all these cool things and you could fly around the arenas and stuff. And it was in 3D, which we had not seen. We'd always had side scrolling. Even Mortal Kombat was a side scroller kind of thing. The problem with this game was it wasn't really it's not good for fighting up close like a fighting game should be. It's basically, how good are you with your range weapons? Because pretty much everything had something that fired. And if you could shoot more than the other person, you were the winner. You could literally skirt this entire game by using projectiles and not a single other move. And if I remember right, using the projectiles was not difficult. It didn't require a lot of different hand motion. It might have actually been a button that you just pressed, and it was like, whoever can shoot the most won the fight. But this implemented the same stuff because it is Midway, it implemented the same stuff that Mortal Kombat had. You could dismember people. You could take off their robotic arms or eliminate some things. There was blood, there was oil, there was a lot of really cool aspects and the ability to use the full arena because you basically would roll around a guy or something. You just saw it in the thing. It made it. A lot more exciting and as broken as this game is now. At the time, it was my first 3D fighter outside of Virtual Fighter and all that other stuff. I hadn't played that at the time. We played this, and this helicopter dude with the flames and the spinning claws was awesome. He's shit now, but it was a cool character. And I thought it was a cool concept coming into the Nintendo, especially, like you said, family friendly Nintendo. And we're taking people's arms off and shit. I mean, we didn't see that on Nintendo, right?
So I tried this game out, and I played the helicopter dude, and I understand that there are some really good concepts, but the controls are unresponsive and bad.
Oh, they're bad?
Like, genuinely unresponsive and bad. I remember moving left, and literally a second later, the guy's like, okay, I'm on. Here we go.
What I didn't like was the so there was the one button projectiles, like you mentioned, Char, which was fine. But the other button, the B button, was you're boosting into the air. I could not find a good use for going in the sky except getting my ass handed to me and knocked right back down. And if the enemy flew in the air, for some reason, I would use my projectile button, and there's no tracking, and you would miss more often than not, the control. Absolutely terrible. It's just some neat ideas for Midway. But this was such a generic awful 3D game. It really was.
It just felt like they were trying to do something outside of Mortal Kombat with the same concepts as Mortal Kombat, but in a 3D environment. Like, we're going to utilize the power that the N 64 provides, and we're going to try and make a fighting game. That's Mortal Kombat, but it's not Mortal Kombat because there was no finishes or anything. But you could dissect your fighter or your enemy literally in the middle of the fight. So it was still very Midway.
What's the Marvel Midway game that is based on the same engine as Mortal Kombat?
Not marvel injustice.
The DC injustice. You're right.
DC.
Sorry. I got my studio.
It's okay.
I apologize.
Internet.
Don't at me. Internet. Well, or at me. I don't know. Come join our discord and yell at me while you're at it. Like and subscribe. We are shilling for subscriptions. They're free anyway. But this feels like somebody took and had the idea for injustice years before injustice existed. That's what it feels like to me. And they didn't have the right tech to do it, right? Yeah, because if you look at.
But.
If you look at kind of the arena movement and everything, it looks like injustice. Or kind of the later Mortal Kombat games. Right?
Right. I mean, everything's got to have a springboard, right? I mean, you got to have some kind of foundation to work on. And 90% of the time, it's not going to be fantastic coming out the gate, but we'd never seen anything quite like this, and the only thing we had was Mortal Kombat. So everybody's human. Let's take some creature. I mean, sorry, you had killer instinct. Sorry, don't at me, I'm wrong, but you had some cool like, the whole point of it I'm trying to formulate my words here. The whole point of it was these cool robotic creatures and beasts and monsters that you can fight and shit, and you're like, Those guys look cool. Like, every creature you could play was cool looking, and that's the only reason you want to get it. Oh, my God, I could rip that guy's arm off. No way. Oh, this guy's got guns for arms. That's sick. It was purely, like, not practical, but okay, it's not practical, but don't judge a book by its cover kind of thing, you know what I mean?
I will admit, because I lost my arm in one of the battles, and it continued through the next battle. Like, I didn't have my arm in the next battle. Yeah, you don't regenerate. It had moved to, like, swinging backhand and front hand instead of like that was actually really cool. I agree. That was fantastic.
Yeah, it's like Mutant League football, but the fighting game.
Yeah.
That's bio freaks. And I was surprised to see that this was from Midway, so I won't bring it up anymore on there. But they had a few other ones. They had meg and they had gore gods. All three of them are by Midway, all of them on the N 64. All of them are pretty bad. I mean, I don't know if we want to dive into them, but if you check them out, it's so awful.
I don't know if it's Midway, but I do want to touch on Deadly Arts, because if nothing else, once again, 3D arena. But this one was bad because there were lockers in the Battle arena that I was in, and when the camera moved in, the lockers got in your camera and went semi transparent. No game does that anymore. Yeah, even really, somebody was like, you know what would be really cool? The camera is behind the lockers.
It's behind what if you couldn't see shit?
How would that be?
And the boss is like, well, how do we handle that? Well, they go semi transparent. That's it?
Yeah. Not as.
This was Konami in 1998. And you're right, this is a bad one, too. The controls were shitty, the graphics, although they were cleaner, polygons. Is that a thing? I guess, but it still looked terrible. It had one thing going for it that I found unique. It has a creative fighter mode. You can build your own fighter and pick from various different I never got to that. Body sizes, all that kind of stuff for the N 64 back then. That's pretty cool. Game still sucks, but it had a really cool idea, right?
I like that Jake's video immediately goes to create a fighter.
Well, yeah, I would expect nothing less.
Look, I'm not saying I was looking for.
He was looking for a boob slider. Fair enough.
They did not have one. But alas, 3D fighters, no boobs. Not the greatest. Not the greatest on the N 64. So you're thinking, okay, there's a DPAD in this controller. It's got six face buttons. Maybe it's better at 2D fighting games. Moral compatriot is not so bad. But there's another 2D fighter on this system, and this one by Interplay was hyped in every magazine I read. I saw commercials for this damn thing. It was on sness Genesis and also had a version on the N 64. And it's clay fighter 63 and a third clay fighter. I want this on the list.
Three and a third. I love how the whole game is a joke within itself.
That's a joke off of Naked Gun 33 and a Third or whatever, right? It's the same damn thing. They just stole their humor. But this game is claymation render graphics. But it has Earthroom Gym, it has booger, man, it has a few cameo characters. And Earthroom Gym actually looks decent in the game, but the frame rate is awful. It's just so janky. The controls. I was trying to do the super move, which everybody seems to have the same Dragon Punch super move, which is bizarre. Half the time, you don't pull it off. I pull off a different move by accident and just trying to fight the AI. The only way to play this game, the only way to beat this game, or at least get a few stages in, was to just cheese the same move again and again. And you'll see me when I'm playing this in the gameplay, I just cheese the crap out of Earthworm Jim's gun. But why? This game is truly bad. Graphics, music, controls, all were terrible. Nothing is good. But the thing that makes it on this worst of list is the stereotypes and the racism.
Oh, no.
My God. Is this a 90s thing? Okay, first off, you have a witch doctor, a voodoo man who throws chickens at you and tells you to cluck off. Funny, I get it. But the voodoo stereotypical accent, that was bad enough. Then I came across one character kung Pao.
Oh, no.
And we're talking stereotypical haircut, the teeth, the accent, the moves, the poo poo platter move, and chop suey. How the hell even in the 90s, how the hell this get made? I don't understand. This is bad on a whole other level, even for the freaking 90s. So I don't know if you did you guys play Clayfighter?
No. Well, I played Clay Fighter.
I played one, too, for the super, but I never touched this one. I didn't realize that Earthworm Jim and some other characters from other games showed up in this. This is almost like the first fighting game that had introductory characters that we had talked about in the past, like Soul Caliber and stuff like that, where Legend of Zelda was in, depending if you got it on GameCube or if you got it on something else, another character for that system was in. That was a kind of a neat thing. But.
I'm showing this on the video right now. This is bad. This is Kung Pao. This is bad.
Yeah.
Now, the thing about Clay Fighter was that initially in at least the first two, and I'm kind of seeing it here, but it's like you were balls of clay, so you could do cool clay shit. Like it would melt into itself and it would form into different things. And that's kind of neat. But what I'm trying to understand is why Earthworm Jim would be part of the Clayfire franchise.
Because Earthworm Jim was published by Interplay or develop Interplay. And they did this, too. That's the only reason, I think. And I mean, I like the character from Jim. They even got the voice actor from the cartoon to do this game, which is such a waste.
Is this guy blocking with a yes?
Yeah, this is.
Something.
This is a game that could never come out today. There'll never be a Clay Fighter remake.
We might even be episode we better find a new game to play because I don't want to lose our rights podcast.
We're going to get canceled.
Yeah, I'm getting off that screen now.
Getting off the screen.
Okay.
So I mean, fighting games, right? N 64, maybe not the greatest at fighting games. Not really known for fighting games. It's not the PlayStation, right? It's its own thing. Like I said, mortal Kombat trilogy.
Not bad.
Killer instinct. Fantastic. It had a couple but by and large, most of the fires in the system were very generic racist for some reason and just awful. So let's go to a genre where the N 64 probably more comfortable, probably more better known for maybe. Let's look at platforming games. I want to start off with Buck Bumble. Okay. Now, there's one good thing about this game, and I didn't get it in the video, but for anybody watching, after we stream, I want you to go look up the soundtrack to Buck Bumble. And I want you to listen the first 60 seconds of that opening title music. It slaps. This is like one of the best game soundtracks I've ever heard. It's just got a jiving note. It just hits. Buck bumble's got great OST. I wish the rest of the game matched the music. This is done by Argo Software. Was it argonaut software?
Argonaut, yeah.
So that's the starfox, guys. So you're thinking, well, it looks like a starfox.
I mean, it's a flight simulator, essentially, right?
Except you're a mechanical bee and you got a ray gun and you're shooting Hornets.
It's the same thing. You're still a flying creature.
And you even have do a barrel roll. Like, you can do the barrel roll.
But does it have a character that.
Goes, I really hope somebody says in Buck Bumble, do a barrel roll?
Sadly, no. I don't think there was any dialogue when I played. But why this game is bad is the controls. Now, this is where I would love to play with an original N 64 controller, because when I was trying it with the this is the only game on the N 64 emulator that was messing with where if you pushed the stick too far left or too far right. It got real wonky to the point where if I pushed too far to the left, it would wrap around and go to the right. And it felt so disturbingly wrong. And I don't know if that was like that on the original or not, but I had to have a light touch on the analog stick. In the last half of this gameplay, all you see me doing is running into walls, hitting the ground, flying into objects. I couldn't get anywhere. The moment I got any kind of momentum in flying to get to the next level, I screwed it up by hitting the joystick too far to the left or right and fly into a wall. I felt like a drunk bee instead of some ray gun ninja. It was just so bad. This game is awful.
Oh, there you are. You're just whamming into the wall. There it is.
Yeah. Probably specifically designed to use the N 64 controller to do the touch movements, because you could tell that playing Mario 64, for example, there was definitely some tactile feel to using the controller. You could walk with Mario or you could run and you can definitely adjust where you're going with that. So instead of just pressing the button in any direction, that's kind of where the start of the tactile feel of the moch controls started was over here in the 64. So it makes sense that playing this on anything else, I would be running into walls, too. On any other controller without using something that had the ability to use like, I don't know, my PS Five controller would probably be a great candidate for this.
Sure, why not?
Something I followed you up. Big Hands.
So Buck Bumble, terrible game, but banging soundtrack. Now there's another platform game, which I'm not going to call it Gem, but it's definitely hidden. It's a game I never heard of until this week and it's starshot Space Circus Fever.
Oh, jeez.
I had to practice saying that name, I think sinister. You want to talk about this one, but can you please start and try and explain to me why this game has big titty cops in it right from the first 30 seconds?
I also want to call out that the exposition at the beginning of this, you're some sort of thing in space. I don't understand. And the characters literally are the bad version of the trumpet from Peanuts from Snoopy, right? Yeah, basically. But they're more like.
That'S. More South Park, I guess.
That's true. But then they apparently come to a planet and they launch a missile at this planet, and you're like, oh, well, we're starting here. And the missile, right before it gets to the ground, halts in motion. You'll see this?
Oh, it just stopped, like standard missiles.
And then flips itself over and lands on its tail, because apparently this missile was designed by Elon Musk.
Reusable.
Yeah. And then it becomes this weird platformer where the main space dude literally says the phrase, I need to see. We have it somewhere. But it's something like, I don't have any money. I never did Law. But then storytelling, there's this weird, I don't know, Jessica Rabbit style cop right there. But also, the 3D platforming is just bad. It has a stupid camera, like in Mario, where it's the C buttons and you pick up ammo and you pick up other and it's not understandable. Like, I don't know. I played this for 25, 30 minutes, and I still had no concept of how this game worked.
Just when I thought I understood how to play and I thought I was getting somewhere in that level, I got lost. And then I found, like, a wooden plank section, and you have to go across this wooden plank, and there's these fish that jump across. So I'm trying to dodge the fish going down. The plank gets smaller and smaller as you go, and it became a true platforming game. And in this game, with the camera, it's ass, but the fish would knock me over into the water, like, okay, I can swim out, sure, but there's piranha in the water that instantly kill you when you fall in the water. So I died like, four or five times in that one section, getting hit by the fish, until eventually I realized, oh, you can shoot the fish, but you have limited ammo and your gun sucks. It's not controllable really well. There's some ideas here with movements, but for a 3D platform, it controls really bad. The frame rate dips quite often. I don't understand the big titty cops. I just don't. In a game with colorful aliens. It's a French game. Is that why is that a French thing? I don't know.
Maybe.
I don't know.
You're closer to the French than we are.
Are the French interested in launching missiles? Are the French interested in launching circus missiles?
The French are lay tired and they'll have a nap. Then fire them anyway. There's a callback for you. Yeah, this game reminds me as broken and fucked up as it is. This game reminds me of Spyro. Like, it has the same kind of design. No, listen, just hear me out. It's got the same kind of 3D platforming look, right? This definitely looks like it's the basis for a lot of PS One style platformers, where it's got the camera, it's got the 3D look. You're collecting shit and you're trying to kill it. Reminds me of Spyro. It looks very much like Spyro. You're shooting this dude who doesn't die, which I don't understand any what that's about. You got this thing following you. So it's like the dragonfly that indicates your life. I mean, it's essentially the basis for Spyro. They just were like, this is dumb. Let's make a real good game. And they made spyro instead.
It's just spyro control. So much better. And I never got lost. I always know where to go in this game. I had no idea. And it has a map, and I still had no idea what to this was. This was not a great one. I don't know. Starshot, space circus fever. It is no Circus Charlie, but few games are.
We have literally called it everything but its original name because, honestly, remembering Starshot Space Circus Fever is tiresome.
Yeah, no SpaceShot. Circus Charlie hand Job is probably the best title.
I think someone Starfuckers Incorporated. Yeah.
Another niner stills.
Rubber, right? They did my favorite cover hurt.
I hate it. Okay, there's at least two more I want to cover for sure. And the next one I want to cover is Paperboy 64. And I'm saying this because I don't think paperboy for the NES might be on our top 100. If not, I think I know what I'm picking end of this episode. Or maybe not. But I love the original paperboy on Nintendo, and when I've heard there was an N 64 version, I was kind of excited. I thought it might be like Excite Bike 64. It might be kind of like a weird imagining reimagining of it, and it kind of is. But in Paperboy, for those who have not played the original Nintendo, it's a straight street and you're delivering papers. You're chucking them on your bike at the houses, in the mailboxes, and when you get to the end, there's an obstacle course, and then it tallies up how many houses you delivered successfully to in this game. You're still delivering papers, but there's a wonky 3D perspective. And it's like you have to deliver the left and the right side of the street, but you can't maneuver your bike to go from left to right very easily. And there's a few stages later on where the path divides. And it's not just a street straight line. It's always an oval or figure eight. And it kind of forces you to lap around the neighborhood multiple times to get all to the houses. It's really awkward controlling. And the worst part is when you need to throw the papers, you have to aim with the stick at the houses and throw it. But moving with the stick to aim also moves the goddamn bike. And you fly off course and you hit a dog or a mailbox there's one section where I got hit by a car five fucking times in the same loop because I couldn't get off the road because I was trying to deliver all the papers. And for those who have not seen this game, go look it up. This is like stick figures in 3D form, and maybe it's a style choice, but man, is it ugly looking for a game.
Or if you're listening to this podcast, go view the YouTube channel, because the video is playing right now.
And I give it credit. There's multiple streets and environments, but they're all really short. And it just takes the fun of, like, you have a straight line. Of course you're trying to navigate through an obstacle course, and they said to put it on this infinite loop, and you're on a timer. I think it's like two minutes to deliver your papers, and you've got to keep circling until you get it done or until I think you get hit enough and you die. It's like they took the soul out of Paper Boy. And it's not a complicated concept. You're delivering newspapers. It's a fun game on the NES, and they ruined it by just everything. I don't understand. I don't understand any of the takes they did to bring this to 3D did not work for me at all. So I don't know if you guys played this one or not, but this one feels bad.
No, I've only played the original one. I've never played this one.
Oh, I like that you just ran over a cat, though.
I don't know. I get the concept. You've got a brand new 3D platform. It's not a platform, a 3D platform kind of game, right? You want to add aspects. You're going to take some older version of your NES games, and you're going to make them three D. I get the concept of trying to make Paperboy a lot more 3D. That's the best way to say it. But it's broken. It definitely looks broken. Instead of just doing a basic straight line kind of thing like you were saying, and your bike looks like your front wheel is broken.
I don't know.
It looks like maybe you should probably get that looked at before you go out and start throwing papers around. So I get the concept.
It wasn't broken in the beginning. It is by the time I'm done with it.
Okay, it is what it is. But hold on.
I just have to point out we're in a trailer park, it looks like, and there's two dudes fighting on the dirt lawn. Fighting on the dirt lawn.
Have you never been in a trailer park before?
I'll tell you, I appreciate the realism.
Know my immersion.
The true to life paperboy simulator. You deliver the free newspapers to the trailer park.
Of course you do.
But I also feel like this may get us canceled as well.
This is a cancelable episode. I feel like this is bad. We're really pointing out some shit we probably shouldn't.
All right.
Yeah. This looks like a chore.
But the second round of me playing of course it's a chore.
You're working.
You're not even getting paid. My daughter delivered papers. She didn't get paid jack crap. Nobody pays the paper boy and paper girl.
Nobody cars six time in the same area. Apparently.
There'S no work health and safety board in this game. You get nothing.
I like the person that's throwing tires at you.
He's just kicking them into the street like it's his daily routine, like it's fucking 09:00. I guess I better go start kicking.
Tires out the street. It's tire tossing time. Let's go.
I got to have breakfast. I got to clean the yard, and then I got to start tossing tires. Sounds about right.
Wow.
You wouldn't find a tire kicker in Canada. I guarantee that.
If they are, they're not throwing tires at you. All right, so that's Paperboy 64. This is a bad sorry.
They're not throwing tires with an I. They're throwing tires with a Y.
There you go.
Technically, not in Canada. I see what the joke is.
Face is so fucking annoying.
The tires of the Y is more of a UK thing. I know we speak different English than you guys. Okay? But the tire with the Y is more of a UK thing. We have the I in Canada. We are allowed to have the I. Okay.
Lowercase J's.
Right? All right. The last one I have to talk about. Have to talk about. This is a game that I am putting on the Wheel of Pain. I'm surprised it's not on the Wheel of Pain already. Actually, it might be. You control the Wheel of Pain, so.
Look at your own mirror, bud.
Yeah, I know. I'll be the one spinning it this year. I know, but Superman 64 on the Nintendo 64, there was going to be a PlayStation version of this, but it got canceled. There is an unreleased beta you can download to check out. It's bad. But the N 64, this is the game that when you say bad n 64, this is the game that people are talking about. This is a game that is so terrible, people who speed run it found the most optimal way to speed run this game is to go to the option and shrink the resolution down to the size of a postage stamp. Because it runs faster. It runs better. That's how bad this game is. But it's just everything from the lack of voices, the graphics, the story, like you're stuck in a virtual world by Lex Luthor. So you're running through hoops to get to Lex. But the opening scene okay, the opening stage starts off with you have to fly through a series of rings. I got so fed up doing flying through the rings, I went to the menu, changed it to easy mode, and then load the stage up again only to find out, hey, it skips the ring flying like, oh, that's great. But it starts you off in the second portion where you have 6 seconds to find a car and lift it and throw it out away stop. From hitting a pedestrian. 6 seconds. That's how it opens the stage on.
Easy and that's on easy mode.
That's on easy mode. And that's what this game is. The first world, I didn't finish the first stage. It's multiple segments and all of them are timed whether it's a minute and 40 to finish these rings, which if you miss a ring, it flashes. Lex wins. And you start over. But you get to the end of that. You then go to this 6 seconds to save pedestrians from a car. And then the next one was it's something like you have to pick up a cop car as you do and fly it to the end of a road while things are shooting rockets at you. And I screwed that up several times. And when you die, Lex wins. You start from the beginning of that segment again. It's just so bad.
Can I ask a question? Are these Kryptonite missiles? Because missiles can't kill Superman.
I guess because it's a virtual world, Lex can write the rules. There's a portion where you do have to beat up these shadow agents or something. There's three or four of them and you're like, how the hell is a pedestrian like a minion doing anything to Superman? Except the clock, I guess. The clock is like the Kryptomite to Superman, right? He can't beat the stopwatch. I've seen people beat this game and if you're every stage trying to lift.
A car in 6 seconds, maybe don't stroll towards the car. I don't know, maybe. I don't know. Fly.
To fly, you have to hit the trigger button and hit the B button and it's clunky. You have to hit both to go up and then start flying forward. And if you mess up the timing, you've wasted a second, you've lost. And then Lex wins. You start it all over again. The entire game is like this. The entire freaking game. Every stage is just awful. I just don't get how this game exists with such a fantastic license. I really don't.
Yeah, well, isn't the Nintendo 64 basically where the Term, the cameras, the final boss came from?
Probably.
I feel like that's where this originated from because if anybody complains about anything in the N 64, it is always the camera. Always.
Yeah, some games eventually got it. Okay. Like some games, but yeah, just the idea. They had four C buttons devoted to camera controls in a lot of these games and it still didn't work. It just still didn't work. We're lucky that today on controllers we have two analog sticks. It's hard to go back to this era and not have a right analog stick for camera control. It really.
Is.
I don't know, painful to watch.
Yeah.
And why was virtual reality the place to be? Why was VR the place to be? In the late 90s, early 2000s? It was like, we're going to trap the greatest superheroes in virtual reality. They did the same thing with X Men. If I remember right, when you played Clone Wars, I believe you were going through different areas in virtual air. You're like I'm stuck in cerebro. You're like, Why? You're a fucking mutant. Like, the world's already made up. Why do you have to put them in some kind of pretend world to make it make more sense? It's silly.
At least X Men had the backstory of Cerebro to go with I mean.
I'll give you that, but I have VR right there. It's my turn to put up a vehicle card. I got my fucking VR sitting right over goddamn there. I have yet to have a problem fighting creatures outside of the real world. I don't know. I've never been trapped in my VR before. That's news to me.
Yeah, maybe we can look forward to being trapped in VR with the new Oculus Quest Three when that comes out.
Well, we can only see if the Valve Two has a VR stuck mode. I'll probably avoid that one forever trap.
I think it was Onion or somebody did that controller that had the instant death mode or whatever. That would inject you with Murder Juice if you died in the game. And everybody was like, I'm just totally into realism. It's great.
It's the real game, the game of life. Life and death in VR. It's not real. Unless I could die playing this video game.
But don't forget, the final boss is the camera.
It's always the camera. Always. Yeah.
Forever and always.
I don't know. Lots of bad games on this list. Is there any other titles you guys want to talk about that were bad for the N 64? I have one honorable dispension dishonorable mention.
I guess maybe I like it.
Yeah, I don't think you have the video of it, but there's a snowmobiling game called I think it's Polaris something or other. It's bad.
What's that car game? What's that car game that we had talked about?
Oh, aero gauge.
I want to give that one.
Arrow gauge is okay, honestly.
Listen.
Yeah, here's my thing about arrow gauge. It's a car racing game, whatever. But let's give it the real tout that it needs. You can play as the N 64 controller avatar. Is this the one in the game? It is ridiculous, but your car literally turns into the controller itself, and you can use that as your avatar. Driving through the world, I was like, wow, that's a thing. I had a good laugh about that because I was thinking about Jake watching that video going, this has got to be his favorite game in the entire N 64 category, because not only is it on the N 64, but it is also the controller of the N 64, which is arguably his favorite controller in the entire system.
No, I wouldn't go that far. One of the worst controllers ever made.
There's some design that looks great.
Yeah. Arrow gauge is okay.
My biggest complaint with Arrow Gauge is it has a concept that doesn't need to exist in video games, which is you do the whole time trial first before you do the race. That's bullshit. And then you can't move on to the next race unless you are in the top three. So I never was able to get into the top three in my 15 minutes test run of it, so I never saw a second race. Right. These are concepts that I understand unlockables and stuff like that. Sure have some tracks that are unlockables, but let me go select at least four different tracks. Right, right.
This is a genre that's already represented on the system really well. You have wipeouts on this system. Extreme G is not a bad one.
Was it wave Racer 64 thing too?
I thought it was probably and it's actually one of the best games in the system in terms of especially looks. It has that water. Right. But there's lots of great racing games.
Excite Bike 64.
Decent.
Yeah. Mario Kart 64, and even, like I.
Was playing earlier, diddy Kong Racing. Also fantastic. Cart Racer racing games are pretty great on the N 64. I mean, even the Cruising World, Cruising USA, they're upgraded ports of the arcade game, and they play pretty well on the N 64 as well. So racing games were done pretty good on this system. That's one of the strong points, I think, of the N 64. There's no grand tourismo, but I mean, you can't throw bananas in grand tourismo.
Or turtle shells.
Or turtle shells. All right, I'll give you my disarnol mention. And this is maybe you'll get a little flak for this one. Feel free to comment below. Tell me why I'm wrong. I'm used to it. It's up to these guys. But my dishonorable mention is Star Wars Shadow of the Empire, which is one of the I think it was one of the launch titles, or it was very close. It came out 96. And people like this game. They love Star Wars Shadows of the Empire, but I would argue they only like this game because of the first stage, which is the Battle of Hoth. And that's the thing I have a problem with. Every Star Wars game seems to start with the Battle of Hoth, and this is no different. And yes, you're a snow speeder. You're shooting probe droids you're shooting ATSTs. And there's even a section where you have to deploy the harpoon and do circles around the walkers. It's cool. Yes. But everything else in that game, every stage after the first stage, is ass. I'd love to show you on the YouTube video, but I spent 30 minutes playing the first stage and couldn't get past it because this game is also hard as fucking shit. Like, it's brutally difficult. I even played it on Easy, and I still couldn't get anywhere in it. It's hard. Like, the first stage is kill three probe droids. Easy. Kill two walkers. Okay. Kill two walkers, three probe droids and a giant walker. Okay? And then the last stage was like, kill two walkers, three statsds, and, like, five proboids. Like, are you fucking kidding me? No, I couldn't get past shopping. But it's cool.
Yeah, right?
But the music is great. It's Star Wars soundtrack. How could it not be? The graphics in that stage look great, but if you do get past the first stage, you beat the Battle of Hoth. You end up having this. You're playing as Dash Rendar, and there's a lot of third person platforming stages, and they all control, like, cameras. Your worst enemy. It's true. The controls are ass. There's a lot of instant death, if I remember right, there's a train level, and I remember falling off the train more than I want to admit as a kid, and it was just so frustratingly difficult. There's other vehicle levels. There's a swoop bike level. Swoop bikes, they go fast and they die real damn easy or they get stuck quite often, and it just does not feel well at all. So people who like this one, I feel like they only like the first stage and like me today, could not beat the first stage because if they did, they'd play the rest of this game, and they probably think it's ass. It's really a weird, especially when it's a system where Rogue Squadron exists so much better of a game.
I want to call out your dedication to destroying that atst.
You were committed.
Sacrifice sacrificial layout to destroy that atst. Yeah.
So you get to a point where you've taken enough damage, you look at your life counter and you're like, I got two lives left. Let's not waste it. And you just plow into the walker and you take them down in one go. It was a choice.
There's some cool collisionary things in this game. I mean, that being the one of them where you can actually suicide into something and it actually matters, as opposed to if you're playing, say, I don't know, Tie Fighter, and you hit something and it's like it just keeps on going. You're like, well, my explosion should have done a little bit of damage, so at least added it to that. But, I mean, this game is such a maybe it is a nostalgia thing, I don't know, but this was the first chance we got to fly as a snow speeder and take out Atsds and Ads and all that stuff. It's definitely got a good grip to it. But beyond that, I don't know if I played anything beyond the Battle of Hot to be honest with you. I remember coolest shit.
We've already been over the Star Wars games on the yeah.
Tatooine has a lot more parts to.
It than I remember. I understand people do like this one. I do. Dash Rendar as a character. He's cool. I have no complaints there. But I feel like this is one where rose tinted glasses, you're going back in time. It's the first stage is great after that.
Sure.
And especially when there's games like X Wing versus Tie Fighter, I think are far better on PC than this game could ever hope to be. I think they ruin it with those third person stages. Like Rose Squadron came out a couple of years later, and that game is fantastic. And I don't know.
Now I want to call out because my top 100 game today, honestly, may be rose tinted glasses. We'll have a discussion about it. Rose tinted glasses or member berries are huge. They are huge, right? Yeah. And we also had a lot more patience when we were kids. And hey, if we spent 3 hours doing a battle, who cares? We didn't have life to go do otherwise. Right, right.
I get it. I think my top 100 has definitely got a lot of clout, so I'm pretty excited about mine.
Okay.
All right.
Well, so for the N 64 then, I guess. I think we're done. For the topic this week. I do want to hear from people in discord and on YouTube. And hell, shoot us an email podcast@presspitycance.com. I want to know what games you felt were bad on the N 64. Did you get stuck with one? You know that game bought by Grandma that was terrible game that you didn't even want to rent? It was so terrible because I'd love to hear it because there's a lot on the system that was new to me when I was going through this list this week, like Starshot, Spacefucker, whatever the hell it was. Never even heard of that game before. Never even heard of that before. And I've played a lot of retro over the years, and I've never heard of that one. So if you have a game like that's, like that you've never heard of before, share it with us. I want to know. But we've got some business take care of over at PressBy to cancel. We are assembling our top 100 games we feel you need to play, and we're getting very close. I think we're almost up to 80 games. I'm going to have to put a list up in Discord so folks can see where we're at.
We got, like, three months to get the rest of this shit done.
Yeah, well, we'll be done. I think we're pretty good. We're adding three more nominees this week, so we add a nominee. Each of us has a nominee each week to the list. And then at some point later this year, we're going to do some episodes or an episode on ranking those 100 games determine the best games ever, according to us anyway. It's all subjective. So who wants to start this week with their top 100 nominee? Char, do you want to go?
I'll go ahead and go first. So as most of you know, I'm fairly adamant about my RPGs and the RPG spectrum. And I decided to go back to some roots and go back to what was called in the PlayStation One era, the Final Fantasy Killer. This game came out in 1998, I believe, and it is the Legend of Dragoon. Legend of Dragoon is a turn based 3D adventure. I'm looking at the dates actually. It was 99 in Japan, 2000 in North America, and 2001 in Europe. For those of you who have not played Legend of Dragoon, you guys are doing yourselves a huge disservice. It was published by Sony Computer Entertainment. So it came out kind of in tandem with the PlayStation One and was designed to be the better Final Fantasy. But despite this, it does have a huge cult following but never made it beyond the first game. We've had people that are clamoring to get at least a Dragoon remake or something along those lines. So you play as Darts, the main character, and you are trying to discover your past as you cruise through all this other stuff that's going on. You make these cool characters. You have the ability to turn into basically a dragon esque type fighter. And you also fight dragons and take their souls as you continue through the game. It's a fantastic RPG. It's got an amazing story. Killer mean with all sense of purposes. It should have been better than it was, but for some reason never made it beyond the first game, which is a damn, damn shame. It's got much like the Mario RPG. It's got active attacking in battles so you can time your button hits at the right time and do some cooler stuff and you expand on that so you would get different styles of fighting as you were continued through the game. There's a lot of really cool aspects to this game. And if you have never touched Legend of Dragoon, do yourself a favor and sit down for a couple of weekends and give this thing a fire. This thing belongs on the top ten without question. And I'm sorry it took this long to get to it. So Legend of Dragoon, top 100 for me.
I think we did a JRPG music episode or a music episode. And I think this is the game that got mentioned for having a great soundtrack.
I think it should have it's got a rock and it's got a banger of a soundtrack. There's a lot of good rock style music that it's not like, umatsu, style, like take you away, etherical kind of stuff. It's very like Rob Zombie wrote this shit.
Kind of like, oh, really? Okay.
Yeah, it's got some good chugging guitar parts into it, and I was impressed from start to finish. I hadn't played it. I played it maybe three or four years ago, and I badged it on RA. And it is awesome. It's a fun game to play. It's got a lot of cool shit. Characters are all really cool. It's got some hard hitting, like, storytelling where you're losing characters and gaining characters and whatnot. It's a great RPG.
So I would suggest listening, literally is there a ninja?
Did you might be a ninja in there. I don't know, but I probably automatically best character.
I don't know. I never did play that. I thought it was a franchise. That's why I never got into it. I thought there was multiple games in the series and I didn't want to get into it. But if it's just one game, I might check it out.
No, they have literally been holding the torches up for a Legend of Dragoon remake or something, and they keep teasing people with the possibility of one. So we might see one here soon. I would recommend it. It is great. It's a great game on the PS One.
Okay, great. Legend of Dragoon and PS One. Sister, what do you got? This week?
I am going with the Lord of RNG bullshittery. XCOM UFO defense.
Gross.
Or UFO. Enemy unknown. Take your pick on what it was called. But the original XCOM game.
Okay.
I don't even know how to categorize this game.
It's a tactical RPG.
Yeah.
It's turn based combat. It's tactical combat. It's squad combat. But it also has an element of, like, set up your base and build your base and upgrade your characters and this, that, and the other. And so it's kind of this combination of a couple of different things. But I love it because it's one of those games where it's like, there's so much of that, do I save A or do I save B? Because I can't get to both places at the same time. Right? And so you have a lot of that strife. I can't tell you how many times I was like, please, I want to save all the people. Right. It's that completionist. Right? And it kind of teaches you that, but it also teaches you, like, hey, this is a little Dndish. Because even when you have a D 20 die, remember that rolling a one is just as likely as rolling a 20. And so when it tells you 90% chance to hit, that's a 10% chance to miss. And it happens a decent amount. Right. But I wanted to call it out. It's the daddy of the genre. It's the daddy of the series. And it led to some real bangers, like the modern XCOM Games are. So this is why I'm saying this has a lot of member berries, because I haven't gone back and played this version in years. In years and years and years. And I've played the new ones multiple times in the past handful of years. And I love them. I love them front to back. So I'm calling this one out. I believe it belongs on the list because it is the daddy of all of them. And I remember it being fantastic. I remember feeling like this is a new type of game and it's.
For me for me, it's kind of like if I go back and play Jagged Alliance. I really liked Jagged Alliance when I was younger. Going back to it today is very difficult. But I have nothing but respect for what it did for the genre. And XCOM is like that. XCOM is kind of hard to go back to now. But you can't not have in the list because you look at what it gave us. Right. The newer XCOM Games, like you said, are fantastic. Even marvel midnight Suns.
That's the same team that made the plays. Exactly.
There's a lot of influence.
Definitely looks and plays the same way.
Yeah, it's very similar. So it's that style of game. And the original XCOM is thanks for that. So this is one of those, like you said, grandfather, granddaddy. This is like a legacy thing. I believe it absolutely needs to be in that list. It's something that needs to be played. That's a good thing.
And if you can't play it, or if you try to spin it up and you're like because it's also old school hard, go grab one of the modern go grab one of the modern XCOM Games. I can nearly guarantee you're not going to be disappointed. Honestly, I don't know of anybody that's been like that's a bad game.
Yeah. The newer ones are just tactics. Goodness. It really is so good. I love how you get these characters. There's not much story to the characters, right? And they are disposable. They can die, but you kind of get attached to them and you start to really like it. And when they die, you really get pissed off and you feel lost. There's few games where I feel lost for a character when they die. And XCOM does that.
Yeah. You have the falling over in the rain in the movie and the camera's flying up from you and you're going, no, fuck.
It not Sanchez. He was my guy. He was my sniper. I fucking need him. And you got to start from scratch with somebody else. Yeah. XCOM is a good franchise.
Yeah.
All right, so my pick wow, those are good picks. All right, so my pick is wow.
He hasn't even played mine, and he said it's a good pick.
Well, the soundtrack on yours was a good pick. It looked good.
I like to argue with Chard. I like how he's preloading his. He's like, wow, those were some good picks.
Shit.
Guys, get ready for this.
Turd, I fucking swear to God, if you pick Circus Charlie, I'm leaving this podcast right now. I'm done hey, guys, this has been a great run. I don't know.
All right, I'm just going to say.
My game was made by Blizzard. It's nothing special, but anyway, it's made by Blizzard. My pick is lost. Vikings. And I think we spoke a little bit the other week about the sequel game. But the original Lost Vikings, it's a little bit of platforming, a little bit of puzzling. Hugely great cartoon characters. There's a lot of humor to their banter between stages. It's just a great fun approachable puzzle game. I'm going to explicitly say the Genesis version of Lost Vikings. There was a version on Super Nintendo, and I think there's a PC version, too. But the Genesis version had exclusive worlds and stages added to it. And I think the music is better than Genesis. But I'm a Genesis Kid. But lost. Vikings, you have three characters. For those who don't know, you have three characters. One can run and jump. Yes, that's his abilities. And the other guy has a sword and bow and arrow, so he can attack. And your third guy, he eats and burps. And I think he has a shield so he can fly a little bit. But you control all three individually to get through the environments and the stages. You're basically traveling through time, trying to get back home to wherever Vikings live. And there's a lot of charm to the stages, a lot of cool, funny bits. All the enemies are animated really well and very cute. A unique style to every stage. The Egypt stage, totally different than the space stages, totally different than the Calf caverns. I think the exclusive stages are like a candyland thing. It's been a while since I played it, but it's really good. Very challenging, too.
I firmly support this should be on the list as well. I agree. When we were talking about the end of life releases for the sness and we brought up Lost Vikings too, I was like, I remember the first one and it was great. It brought up the member berries, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
You said Blizzard and I thought you were going to go with like, what everybody knows fucking Blizzard for back then. And you said, lost Vikings. And I went, I could hang with that.
Wait, what were you thinking?
Because I was thinking he was going to go with some kind of warcraft like nomination.
On there already.
Blackthorne may need to be on the list.
I know we talked about Blackthorn before. We did talk about where you can shoot the shotgun behind you and you.
Can hug up against the wall.
Well, we know what Cinder starts picking next Friday.
Yeah. No, Blizzard. This is back when Blizzard made games that were good before they got bought out by the Devil Activision. Right? Back in the day. All right, so that's our top 100 entries. Good entries this week. Feel free to check out our discord. Oh, there's the diablo, Diablo, diablo.
Four fan dabble in these low two.
Come on.
Feel free to check out our discord. You can find links at PressBy to cancel. You can also find links to ours. You can listen to our show on any of your favorite audio podcasts from Amazon Music. Feel free to ask amazon hey, Alexa play. Press me to cancel. It should work. If it doesn't, well, I mean, I can't fix your Alexa for you. You got to set up properly. Say, hey, you also check us out on YouTube. Youtube.com at presspadocancel. Please do drop a subscription. We are trying to get to 500 subscribers so we can do the stuff that comes with that. So we're working on that for you guys. In terms of what else happening on the channel lately, wolf generally streams every Wednesday evening or afternoon. He's playing his wolf wild card. Wild card? Wednesdays. And he plays a random game. He played, I think, Miss Pacman this week on the PlayStation One, a game I did not know existed and looked interesting. He's played fun ones. I don't know you guys have been doing anything lately. I think everybody's just kind of catching up from the last few weeks.
Work has been sucking the soul out of my body and I've been unable to do my backlog blitz. I am still working on trying to get something out, but I promise that you will soon see something from me here in the near future.
And I am a little behind on my telltale games. I'm going to get back to that, hopefully this coming week. I'm going to try to get a couple more hours out this week on Back to the Future. The video game, not the movie.
Since I've finished moving finally, although the Unpacking will last me another six months. But at least I've moved now and I got me set up. So I'm working on going through the Atari library. I have a few video ideas regarding the Atari 2600 I want to put together. And I also ordered a Sassy. It's an analog arcade stick, homemade analog arcade stick that the guy sells on Etsy. And I've seen nobody talk about this thing and it's really exciting for me. So when that comes out, I'll be doing a video about the Sassy stick and look forward to that one. Otherwise, check charred out. He streams on Twitch TV chartmunk. I think he's the only one who streams on Twitch. He's our bastion of streaming. And he's pointing upwards a little Cyberpunk.
This weekend and probably some continuation of that. I know October is usually Spooky month, but I'll tell you what this 2.1 version update to Cyberpunk is. We're sandwiching this episode with the start of Cyberpunk and the end of Cyberpunk. It's fantastic. There might be an episode here in the near future of us discussing it.
Both the update and the DLC Phantom Liberty are surprisingly good. Fucking killer. I've given up ballsgate three to play Cyberpunk. That's how this is how great it is.
It's really good.
All right, guys, we are pressed by to cancel. Have a great week in a world.
Where there's one woman for every thousand men.
I need a tank.