N64 Retrospective – Day 5

Previous Articles in this Feature

In this installment, we look at two games. One game shows what Rare does best; take an existing game formula and add their own level of shine and polish. The other proves that even though it was cost prohibitive, importing N64 games was possible and worthwhile.

Come back tomorrow for more N64 love ,and be sure to leave comments about your experiences with the following two games.

By: Benny

So I’m sitting at Nintendo’s Press Conference and I’m crazy excited… to the point of shaking. You all probably know, maybe even better than me, what was said and done. But amid all that excitement, perhaps the single most exciting game shown was one that was only shown for 5 seconds in a montage. That game, folks, was Diddy Kong Racing DS.

See, no N64 retrospective would be complete without discussing one of the most underrated games on the N64. DKR is, for me, still THE definitive kart racer experience. Combining the world of a platformer with the DNA of a kart racer… the combination was a beautiful baby of kart racing joy.

Gone were course selection menus, you just raced up to the course… and bam, you were in a race. Once you go onto a course, the fun really began. The mashup of platformer level design sensibilities and kart racing created a welcome revolution in track design. Environmental dangers were in almost every course, and were organically place into the world as opposed to just being thrown in for the hell of it.

And then there were the tracks specifically designed for boss battles! I mean, what pipe was Rare smoking out of when it thought of these?!? And they worked so WELL!!! Boss races were refreshingly different and pretty damn challenging. A major part of the greatness of the track design was the fact that most tracks were designed for three different vehicles.

With three vehicles to master, every course had three different ways to play it. Some kart racers can’t even get handling right with karts… but somehow Rare managed to nail handling on three separate vehicles and crammed them into their game. Kart racing felt exactly like it should have, hovercrafts were quite different but equally fun, and planes were simply a blast. It’s a testament to how great all three handled that I specifically remember not being able to pick a favorite vehicle consistently. Some days I’d feel like hover racing, and others it was plane riding.

A kart racer staple is a large crew of recognizable characters. Diddy Kong had… well… Diddy, and a bevy of newcomers to the game. The crazy thing about this game is that basically without a license (the DK license wasn’t really used all that much), Rare managed to create a cast of characters that were very memorable. Many of which who went on to their own games. Conker and Banjo both got their own games, flipping the genre’s usual order of things on its head.

One look at my 4cr profile, and you’ll see where my allegiance lies when it comes to DKR. TipTup is by far, one of the greatest kart racing characters ever. He’s a turtle… but he’s FAST! Brilliant!!! And who couldn’t resist those calls of “I’m TipTup!” when you picked him from the character selection screen. I’m sure everyone had their favorite, but clearly I’m right when I say TipTup was the best. Try and challenge me… go ahead.

So yeah, DKR is basically, in my mind, the greatest kart racer ever. I love me some Mario Kart, but DKR did things so differently, and it was such a blast to play that Mario Kart looked kind of dated by comparison. While it’s a shame that Donkey Kong Racing never really got a chance to come out… I’m seriously looking forward to kicking some ass over WiFi on the DS version of the game. I’ll be the turtle in first place.

By: Vinnk

I wouldn’t really consider myself a big anime fan. Since moving to Japan, I have watched a few episodes of various shows here and there, but have completed watching a grand total of 0 anime series. However, back in 1998 I loved a little show called Neon Genesis Evangelion. It had big robots, lots of screaming, and was nice and pretentious. In other words, it was the perfect series for the young college student.

Around that time, I also started importing a large number of Japanese video games. Among these games were the Sega Saturn Evangelion games, which were.. interesting I guess. They were set up like choose your own adventure books with occasional turn based battles. Like all anime adventure games of this type, they were great for fans of the series, but not very good games by themselves.

Fast forward a few years. It is now 2000, and I am considering importing my first Japanese N64 game. I saw a video of it on IGN, and it looked amazing. I needed to try it for myself. This was also one of the most expensive games I had ever imported. The game itself was $80, the converter to play it was $20, and the shipping was another $20.

In retrospect, the game was probably not worth the cost but I loved it. This was the first Eva game I played that actually seemed to capture the look and feel of the program it was based on. I was also very surprised that it was an N64 title at all because the game was fully voiced and contained a number of cut scenes from the show.

What was great about this game was that you actually controlled the robots (fans would kill me for calling them robots, but it’s simpler) in real time. And everything was rendered in fluid and detailed 3D. The dialogue and story events happened right during the battles, and a constant stream of communication was going on between your character and the other characters in the game. The controls were a bit on the ponderous side. Controlling you giant robot was awkward, much like I suppose controlling an actual giant robot would be. You could do the signature moves from the show, like breaking your opponent’s arms and head butting them into the destructible buildings. The first time I saw this I was very impressed. Unfortunately, these moves would happen randomly during certain points in the game rather than being something you could trigger at will. They look amazing, but you really aren’t in total control of them, so the coolness of the move has very little to do with your level of skill.

The game is actually made of several smaller games. Each one is a different part of the story, and each plays differently. Over the levels, you will control several of the show’s main characters and not always in their robots. Some of the games are admittedly stupid, and a few have the control scheme of “Press the ‘A’ button as fast as you possibly can! Dance like you want to win!” But the presentation makes up for it. The game is beautiful. It is in my opinion some of the best graphics on the system if you don’t include the games made for the expansion pack.

The music is straight from the show and sets the mood perfectly. Another thing that surprised me is that the game isn’t a side story or an alternate universe game like most other anime based games, but rather tells the entire Evangelion story for the first episode to the end of the movie. And for that reason, you shouldn’t play the game if you haven’t seen the entire series because it is filled with spoilers.

The beautiful graphics, well told story, and moving music make this one of my favorite N64 titles. Still, as I mentioned, it has many issues with control, and a few of the mini-games are fairly useless. But if you are a fan of the series or just giant robots beating each other to pieces, this might be a game to track down.

Then – 4/5
The presentation and overall experience is wonderful, and the graphics top notch, but control issues kept this from being a perfect game.

Now – 3/5
This game hasn’t aged very well and is very hard to track down these days. Still, for the die-hard Eva fan, this game is very faithful to the show and worth the effort to find.