I want to like this game. There's a lot in the game I really do enjoy. Marina is a fun character, and I really like the idea of a moveset focused on grabbing and shaking enemies is really fun, and for a lot of the game, it was.
I really like how the game looks, the blend of 2D sprites and 3D environments has always been one of my favorites. And the music was both fun and pretty unique from the games I've played.
Though I think I have two specific problems that kept me from enjoying the game. For one, I think the game constantly disoriented me. Multiple moments in the game had a constantly shifting aspect ratio, and one specific level made me start feeling nauseous. The other major issue I had were the bosses, my inability to read their patterns or dodge their actions made the bosses feel more annoying that challenging. Sure, maybe I'm just not good at the game which is probably the case, but that doesn't stop me from being annoyed, y'know?
There's a lot that I do enjoy in this game, but those certain aspects made the game a lot more dreadful of an experience. Though maybe I should've taken a break instead of playing the entire game in a single sitting.

Oh god I love this game

Was playing it when I was a little brat, couldn't understand English, yet it was a game that I loved so much I replayed it again and again... Even to this day !

And now that I understand English, it's waaaaaaaay better 'cause I can see how funny this game is !

And don't even get me started on the music... :D

SHAKE SHAKE

O plataformer mais único e diferente que já terminei, o jogo com a maior variedade de fases que já vi, nenhum level é igual, muito autêntico.

Os gráficos são uma mistura de 2D e 3D, felizmente envelheceu muito bem, é bem bonito.

A Marina é um amor, super carismática, o resto dos personagens são ok

A gameplay também é única e assim como os gráficos envelheceu super bem, no início você vai estranhar de leves a mecânica, mas depois que se acostumar, vai se apaixonar assim como eu, é MUITO divertido

Soundtrack impecável.

E é um jogo bem longo viu, vai perder uns dias jogando ai, foi uma experiência maravilhosa que valeu super a pena, recomendo

The core movement and the grab/throw mechanics are great when you actually get to make good use of them. I especially like the dash that transitions into a high jump, but there's a wide range of movement options and ways to interact with enemies.

But then there are a lot of gimmick levels toward the latter half that don't really test those skills, and many are pretty miserable, especially the sports one. I had this game as a kid, and I had to ask my dad for help with the marathons because there was no way for me to mash fast enough. Even now, getting the gold gem there is very tight for me. Please don't put mashing in your games. Anyway this game's got issues and even many of the better levels in the earlier half are crazy short, but the fundamentals are fun and I like the weird aesthetic.

Fun little game, Treasure never misses. Definitely not an absolute favorite of mine though, which is weird considering how much I like most of Treasure's other offerings. The platforming is honestly more action-puzzley rather than just flat out action like stuff such as gunstar heroes, dynamite headdy, or alien soldier, so maybe that might be why I didn't gravitate so much towards it. The boss fights are really fun though, as always with Treasure games. Characters and art are all done by the same guy that did Guardian Heroes and Gunstar Heroes, so if you like that aesthetic, then theres more of that here too. I also think that your completion percent directly corresponding to how many seconds of the ending you get to watch is really funny. Definitely a unique entry to the N64 library.

This is one particular game that my perspective has wildly changed over time, I'm still on the fence how good I consider it to be.

What I can say for sure is that you will not find another N64 game that has so many unique and risky ideas crammed into it, it doesn't always stick the landing and can come off as incoherent at times, but no matter what the game is fun (about 90% of the time anyway) There's so much "charm", style, and personality that really comes through in this game, in a way that few games of this genre have. It's one that I can tell the developers actually enjoyed making.

The story of this game is complete nonsense it's very quirky and random, there is a plot but this is not a game you should play for story and it isn't meant to be taken seriously, even though they clearly spent a lot of time on it, the game is full of cutscenes and character interactions, the best aspect is how much character is given to the main protagonist.

The movement in the game is perfect, you can cancel other moves into each other and this creates opportunities for more skilled play. The movement and variety in what control you have is amazing and extremely well polished.
One problem most players will probably deal with is that the way you control the game is also completely non-traditional and will take some time to adjust to, it can be a lot to come to terms with.

The point of the game is to grab, throw, and shake things and there's secrets and small simple puzzles built around it.
The bosses are very unique and fun to fight, mostly a test of reaction and problem solving.

I went back to play this years later and noticed how easy it was to break, and how some bosses are just a pattern of moves you repeat until it's defeated, and many levels are a gimmick and nothing more, at times it's so easy it's mindless, few parts were truly challenging it felt shallow in ways I hadn't noticed before.

Even worse is that the game doesn't have any "real" levels until halfway through world 1, they knew the controls would be hard to learn so it's a disguised tutorial that teaches all of the mechanics, this is great your first time, but repeat playthroughs these aren't as fun.

Now I tried going for 100% and then speedrunning it, and I realized what the developers were going for, sometimes the game is expecting you to create your own difficulty and try a certain playstyle and it isn't inherently difficult.

It's a lot of fun dashing through levels, and defeating bosses quickly without making damage, this game can be fun in that when you're good it makes you feel invincible and it is rewarded with a letter grade for how fast you were.

The sports competition level (yeah there's a sporting event level) is the big low point of the game for me and I never look forward to it, it doesn't really fit the rest of the game and doesn't add anything worthwhile character or story related.

There are a few places where the frame-rate drops sometimes in the 20s or 15s and those stick out unfortunately, the game typically will run at 60 and when it really counts and matters (when precise timing is needed) it doesn't slow down thankfully.

The worst thing I can say about this game is that it just ends too early, it feels likethere should have been a bit more, the final world is just a few empty levels with some (very good) bosses at the end, it feels a bit unfinished but it doesn't overstay it's welcome.
A few of the bosses really are just throwing them over and over for 3-4 minutes while they do nothing and those are just bad.

The main boss fights are definitely the best part of this game, I replay them the most and they are varied and have mutiple phases, in addition to just looking really cool, even for an N64 game there are moments that left me speechless because of how stylish and impressive they were, this game can be technically and artistically impressive sometimes.


The soundtrack fits the game, it's super weird but extremely catchy and has a good number of themes, most levels will have their own theme so they don't get repeated to much, and the boss themes really create intensity and tension that adds a lot to the "feel" of fighting the harder enemies.
It's unforgettable, for better or for worse you might hate the wierd music.

Characters have voice lines that are very memorable too, so there's that.

The game is 2D, meaning not polygonal, it's almost entirely pre-rendered so if you typically like or dislike that look you will probably feel the same here, the game does this quite well, and the animations are expressive and detailed the backgrounds are nice to look at.

Overall this game is hard to rate and even harder to sum up because it's all over the place, a real mixed bag, it just so happens that I enjoy a large portion of what it has to offer.
This is a very devisive game but you will never know what to expect and it's one that will likely stick with you. If you enjoy a unique challenge this may become one of your favorites but it may take some time to come to terms with it's strange quirkyness, there really is no other game like it.

It has several shortcomings, but the highs make up for a lot of it to me, you might not be so forgiving though.

This game is equal parts a mixed bag, and wonderful.

One the one hand, the "shake mechanic" and overall gameplay aren't necessarily my favorite. The game is hardly "perfect", and certainly could have played smoother, or had some more interesting level designs.

On the OTHER hand, on a system that had all but abandoned 2D gaming (to my great sorrow), here was a game that helped illustrate WHY they shouldn't have. The game is mostly 2D, with prerendered graphics, though there are some stages, and even bosses, that have polygonal elements. But it is a pure side scroller, and while it's not THE most beautiful game (Yoshi's Story looked better, well, at least the sprites did), it still helped to illustrate what games like Symphony of the Night had already proven. That there was still a LOT that 2D gaming had to offer, and with more powerful 32/64 bit hardware, there was a lot more that 2D games could do than we had yet seen, be it graphics or inventive level designs, etc.

This game isn't amazing, by any means, but I was still very fond of it, and it was one of the handful of N64 games I actually owned myself in the late 90s, on my original system. There is still a good amount of fun to be had, once you get used to the gameplay, and it's still one of my favorite N64 titles.

neat little gem. from what i've played and seen from treasure, their whole thing seems to be doing these absurdly awesome and cinematic 2d games and this one is no difference. three of these boss fights are just incredibly raw with multiple phases and crazy concepts, reminiscent of something from gunstar heroes or contra hard corps.
this game does a thing where it mixes actual 3d with the kind of pre-rendered 3d that donkey kong country did, and this gives the already cute artstyle a cool edge to it.
the gameplay is good, a lil hard to get used to at first but becomes pretty intuitive later on. a couple spots where the odd puzzles become a little cryptic, including one near the beginning of the game where you're just supposed to know which ball to wiggle. there's also an olympic games part where you basically have to button mash to win three seperate sprint races, each getting twice as long as the last one, which just felt stupid and reminded me of mario party or something. other than that, yeah the gameplay feels nice. it's overall a mostly easy game, with the exception of a couple notably tough bosses. if you like treasure's usual antics, definitely give this one a go

Porque de niño no decidí jugar esto cuando lo tenía en frente solo por el trauma de las caras que me causaron cuando fui muy pequeño haya por 2001. Y es que recién ahora es que lo juego y lo termino. Las horas que le hubiera dedicado en su momento hubieran sido gloriosas, pero desgraciadamente no pude tener los huevos de hacerlo, nisiquiera cuando ya por 2008 volví a usar mi 64 ya que desde hace 2 años no funcionaba, y ya era algo más grande, pero aún así, no. El juego es muy divertido y creativo, con un Gameplay único y dinámico, aparte de un apartado artístico muy raro para la época. Aunque no se salva de tene algunos niveles medio paja, que aunque sean cortos, es algo meh, como el de laberinto de números. Tampoco es un juego muy difícil pero está hecho para la rejugada, y completarlo y mejorar con el ranking que propone, las gemas amarillas que van desbloqueando el final, muchas son fáciles de agarrar y no tomarán mucho, otras cuestan más y otras ya si son jodidas, pero con su tiempo se logra. Al final, me gustó mucho, aún me impresiona que lo poco conocido del juego, tuviera su cartucho (posiblemente de mi primo que es más Otaku y tal, y en su momento fue una consola eredada por parte de él y mi prima, quisas viene de eso, pero en fin) y aún así, no lo tocará hasta hoy.

A unique N64 game in that it completely disregards the control stick, and is far more interested in the fact that the controller has two "dpads". With the D-Pad controlling Marina's movement, and the C-buttons boosting her around, it's a platformer which really moves like no other.

Game has so many mechanics, and wished those got flexed a little more. I feel it is in a little bit of a hurry to end, with the final world being tragically short. However, at time of writing I haven't gotten all the Goldem Gems required to view the entire ending (lmao, what a thing) so wouldn't be surprised to bump this up to 4 stars and write some more once I do that.

The story starts off surreal, in a strange alien world where buildings are made of screaming faces. It quickly finds its footing with a self-aware Saturday morning cartoon energy which is hard not to love.

THE BIG DEAL HERE is that Migen Brawl and Cereberus α are two of the best boss fights in any video game. You're gonna struggle to find boss fights better than these anywhere else. All the other bosses are also really good, but Migen and Cereberus really stand out. The final boss also rules.

Mischief Makers in an N64 classic absolutely worth shake shaking a stick at, ho-ho.

(though if you're emulating, may be awkward to play without a controller with two dpads, hope you like 2D movement with your control stick)