NASCAR is about a large amount of cars doing a ton of races around a track a massive amount of games. NASCAR ’99 lets you do that in the comfort of you own home. The game features a lot of cars (which have a ton of advertisements on them) and quite a lot of different tracks (even though most feel the same).

The game functions just fine and there’s nothing terribly broken about it, but it’s just really boring. The handling isn’t enjoyable and the tracks are incredibly dull – I can’t see anyone managing 200+ laps. The opponents also just drive along the racing line as though you don’t exist. I have heard that people enjoy NASCAR for the potential crashes, so I figured I’d test that out.

Going backwards along the track at full pelt, I was able to be a mild inconvenience at most to other cars. They don’t really react to you and once they wiggle past you, they carry on as though nothing happened.

This is just a fairly boring game.

Gex is a series of platformers that started out in 2D on the 3DO before moving over to the PlayStation with Gex 2 in 3D (which was then ported to the N64). While the series is seen as an alright platformer, it’s mainly known for its humour. So how well does the humour hold up?

I think the bigger question is “was the game ever funny in the first place?”. The attempts at humour seems almost entirely disjointed with the game itself, with almost all of it being a random selection of quotes from Gex himself, spoken at random intervals – they have nothing to do with what’s happening on screen and they repeat very quickly. It’s like making a pun when there’s no thyme or plaice for it – it doesn’t work without context.

Most of the rest is in the level names, with the levels themselves being generic themes. There are a few moments, such as Gex in a bunny outfit fighting Elmer Fudd, where the parody creeps in to the actual level, but definitely not enough to be a focus of the game. There’s also a few musical rip-offs, most notably the Indiana Jones and James Bond themes.

For the most part, Gex is a very generic platform game that doesn’t do anything special with its levels. It also has a few crippling issues. It’s extremely difficult to judge where objects are in relation to each other, so you’ll end up missing a lot of jumps because you thought a platform (or Gex) was somewhere else.

The camera is also atrocious – even on manual mode, it likes to try to “correct” itself. This means that when you’re running on a narrow platform, at some point the camera will decide to quickly turn around to be behind you. This may sound good, but it also affects your controls, so before you’ve had time to react to the camera change, you’ve already ran off the side of the platform due to Gex turning in relation to the camera.

Gex doesn’t have enough moves to keep the game interesting. You have a jump and tail attack, along with an awkward to use high jump and a running kick, both not really needed. Sometimes a collectable will be slightly out of reach, but there’s enough in the level to just ignore those ones

He can also climb up walls, but this is only possible on a very small number of walls and the feature is never used for anything interesting.

Enter the Gecko is a surprisingly unimaginative game that is quite annoying to play.

The first N64 Wrestling game with the WWF licence, containing classic wrestlers like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Triple H and Star Trek: Voyager star “The Rock”. It also featured a decent create-a-wrestler mode (although, oddly, the female options need to be unlocked), and even an unlockable Turok. It was a good selection for fans of WWF at the time due to having big names, even if it lacked in terms of quantity.

The game itself is decent, although quite dated – WWF No Mercy set the standard for N64 games later on. While there are different modes, the fighting itself doesn’t feel particularly different and the simpler moves work just as well the ones that are a faff to perform, so it’s easy to get into the habit of just doing the same thing over and over.

I definitely believe that this was pretty significant when it came out, especially due to some of the wrestlers in the game and the fun create-a-wrestler, but all aspects have been improved upon in later games.

Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls is a very hideous game. It’s not that it’s low quality, there’s just something ugly about the entire design from it, from the design of the ball characters, the platforms of the world, the dirty-looking water and the blurry background. It’s all very unappealing, especially for a kind of game that would excel from a more adorable design.

The game is a 2D platformer racing game taking place on circular platform. you use a grappling hook to bring yourself up platforms, or perform large swinging moves. Sadly, the controls feels far too stiff and imprecise for a game like this, and the CPU opponents often don’t have the same issues (although every now and than, they’re extremely incompetent), so quite often you need a perfect run to win.

This is particularly evident in world 3 – which is too dark to see important details, such as metal portions of platforms (which you can’t jump or grapple through) – the CPU has zero problem with visibility here. The grapple can also be used to attack enemies and there are items you can collect – which also means these can be used against you, adding to the frustration.

The concept of Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls is a sound one, even if the rest of it isn’t. N+ took a similar concept of multiplayer 2D platforming and made it incredibly fun, and this can sometimes be fun in multiplayer as everyone has similar control issues, but the whole game is just so unattractive from a design standpoint that it detracts even more.

This is essentially the Western release of Augusta Masters ’98, however the translation into English also game with an entirely different course in Hawaii (but still one course). I was expecting it to play the same as just an average golf game, but I ended up encountering so many problems.

I edited the first character by changing the name and appearance, the same as Augusta, yet somehow when I started the game, I was trying to tee off with a putter – it was my only club. I went into the editor and changed to change my selection (it’s impossible to tell what you have selected) and when I got to the green, I had no putter. I ended up sorting this ,but I still had no small range clubs (or a sand wedge), but had given up caring at that point.

The game really can’t decide how fast the shot bar moves, changing from painfully slow to impossibly fast. The accuracy of the shot also seems to be random, with the ball undershooting or overshooting. I managed to hit a perfect shot with the wind behind me, an the ball still didn’t approach the target.

Waialae Country Club was an incredibly frustrating experience and feels very broken. I really don’t understand how this happened considering I got on fine with Augusta, but I just hated this.

In my review of GT64, I touched upon how racing simulation games have aged much worse than more arcade-style ones. F-1 World Grand Prix seems to be a clearer example of that as, while GT64 was always a poor game, F-1 World Gran Prix got great review scores – unfortunately, can’t get into it.

Compared to F1 Pole Position, this is a much, much nicer looking game. The tracks have detail that you can see at a distance, with a good amount of detail of the world beyond the track. There’s still some pop-in, but it’s more for finer details, so you can see the track itself with no issue. There are some options for realism and assists, plus adjusting the amount of tracks.

One great feature is the challenge mode, which pits you in specific situations based on real races. You have to perform in a similar way (or better) than what the actual professionals did, doing things like taking advantage of other cars using the pit stop, maintaining a lead with a broken gearbox and blocking a rival so that your teammate can win.

Sadly, I just couldn’t get used to the driving, with or without assists. I’m not a fan of first person view and in third person, the camera kept tiring to “help” by twisting into turns, which completely threw me off every time it happened as I kept thinking that I was properly aligned (as the camera was looking down the track) while my car was off to the side – of course, it could just be that I’m also a terrible driver.

Even with that, I can see the effort put into the came and that it was probably a great experience when it came out.

B-Daman is a series of toys that are little figures that shoot marbles, with the original ones being based on Bomberman before expanding a lot, eventually spawning its own manga series, Super B-Daman. The video game, Battle Phoenix 64 is a minigame collection with 10 minigames.

You control your selected B-Daman and most games involve shooting, with a few basic shooting galleries. One fun one involves a bursting a balloon on spikes, but you need to reveal the panels underneath first. Unfortunately, the aiming on all of them are fairly poor. Some have you moving a target on screen and is very slow, and others have you aiming a row of dots and is not precise.

With only 10 minigames (some you need to unlock in singleplayer before you can play in multiplayer), they all get tiresome very quickly, especially as a few of them last too long for how simple they are.

It’s not an atrocious game, there just isn’t much to it.

Rakugakids is odd in that it came out in Japan and Europe – but not North America. It’s a 1-on-1 fighting game where magic crayons have brought the creations of children to life. This created a fun cast of inventive characters – showing Clayfighter that something fun can be done with its concept – these fighters even change shape as they perform moves.

It has a really lovely visual style, and some neat touches like shadows and a stage that features a mirror. The fighting itself it a ton of fun, and I’m not someone that enjoys the genre. There are a lot of moves for each characters – the moves reminded me of Super Smash Bros in a way.

The presentation and how much fun it is to play – even the movement and jumping feels extremely fluid – makes this one of the N64’s standout fighting games, which is a nice change for a platform littered with poor examples.

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.