A fighting game featuring giant mechs from various anime – although to my uncultured mind, this is a Megazord fighting game. In the story mode, each “episode” has some story before each fight, which is a nice touch.

Unfortunately, this is another dull beat-’em-up. The large mechs don’t really move like large objects, more like people moving in slow motion. The really poor levels also don’t make them come across as large machines, either, so the impact of fighting with giant mechs is just completely lost. The fighting itself is very generic as well, with a few moves and not much else. There is a hover mechanic, but it doesn’t amount to much.

This just seems like it was quickly put together to cash in on the various anime shows included in it.

Being a movie tie-in to an action spy film gives Mission Impossible a lot to live up to, as it was always going to be compared to GoldenEye. Like GoldenEye, Mission Impossible had origins on the SNES before being made for the Nintendo 64 instead, as well as offering objective-based gameplay, this time from a third person perspective.

The first mission impossible takes a lot of goes to get used to how the game works, form movement and the camera (in the first level, it’s a very high camera, but you can change it to behind Ethan Hunt, who is not based on Tom Cruise). You have to find a certain guard, knock him out and use the face maker to use his image as a disguise – it feels a lot like an early Hitman game.

After the “cold open” levels, you the need to rescue some fellow agents and recover a list form an embassy. The stating level is great, although very much trial and error, as you are undercover and have to lure people to the correct places. It’s a very strong start to the game. There is only one correct way to do things, but it creates the Hitman film really well for its age.

Then the game suddenly becomes a strange corridor-based shooter as you blow up crates and jump over pits of acid. It feels completely at odds with the previous levels and just comes across as padding.

Thankfully the following level is much more like the Embassy level, and I was even able to mess things up and fix them without failing the mission, which is a nice touch. If there were more levels like this in the game, it would be great, but unfortunately, this is the last proper mission in this style. There’s a few small touches of stuff like this throughout, but unfortunately no levels that fill like living areas.

Instead, the rest of the game is some linear corridors, a lot of shooting (with really terrible aiming) and some platforming sections with floating platforms. The friendly AI that follows you is also terrible and makes Natalya look like AI by comparison. On one level, Candice claimed she was fine, before walking right to a guard looking at her, saying “he snuck up on me” and getting shot.

While the rest of the levels aren’t great, there is a surprising amount of variety as missions feel quite different. There’s one where you use spray pain to block cameras, one in and then on top of a train (which look quite impressive for the N64), a sniper mission, the famous laser scene from the film and navigating a tunnel by jumping on trucks.

There are a lot of frustrating aspects. Sometimes you’ll try punching a guard, but they’ll automatically arrest you – but that only happens on some levels and even then it doesn’t happen all the time. The game is also very picky about what you do, so you’ll often try something only to fail the mission.

After a very strong start, Mission Impossible loses its footing, although even then it’s still mostly a decent game from that point onwards.

I loved F-Zero GX on GameCube, but I’ve never played the N64 version before. It turns out I love this version, too, even though it feels a lot more brutal than I remember GX being. This is Nintendo’s take on the sci-fi racer genre, and it does a great job at it.

F-Zero X features a whopping 30 racers at once (each with a unique ship) and – even with some obvious rubber banding – they all move like actual opponents, making mistakes and reacting to your presence. The game goes a great job at remaining smooth by adjusting the level of detail as the framerate is perfect throughout. The tracks twist and turn and it’s all incredibly fast.

One key part of the game is the energy bar. On top of representing your health, it’s also your boost. There are places to recharge on the track (usually near the end of a lap) so a key part of the game is deciding how much you’re willing to risk in order to go faster. Blow up and you lose a life and have to start the race again.

The tracks in F-Zero X start out quite gentle, but things take a sudden turn in the last track of the second cup (there are four cups in total, with 6 tracks each) and you’ll start getting thin portions of the track with no edges – fall off and you’re not placed back like other games, you lose a life and start again. Just surviving the tracks becomes the main challenge until you start learning them.

Not every choice is made against the player, though. You have barge attacks and a spin attack at your disposal. Take someone else and they won’t score any points for that round. To make good use of this, the game even highlights you rival (the opponent with the highest score) so you can try to target specific opponents and pick them out of the crowd.

On top of the leagues (which have four difficulties) and multiplayer, there’s a few extra modes. There’s an unlockable X cup that serves you up procedurally generated tracks and a “death race” mode where you race around a short track trying to take out every other racer (I personally would prefer if you could do this on other tracks as well).

F-Zero X is a great game that is quite full of stuff to do. It’s still a ton of fun today.