PixlBit

So it's been 90s week on my Switch this week. I got Turok a little over a week ago, and then I've also been playing a certain little known PS1 RPG that somehow just found its way onto a Nintendo console over 20 years later. And that got me thinking about the N64.

The N64 is, sadly, my least favorite Nintendo console other than the Virtual Boy. That's a shame, because the system had a lot of potential, and I was really excited for it at first. I had just gotten back into console gaming and had gotten a SNES with A Link to the Past as a bundled game. I also had what was probably the best version of Mortal Kombat II, Super Metroid, and Final Fantasy III (VI). That's a pretty badass lineup of games in itself. I'd hoped the N64 would carry that great tradition into 3-D.

It wasn't to be. A couple of months after I finished FFVI came the huge bombshell that FFVII was going to be on the PlayStation instead of the N64, and it looked incredible. To give you an idea how big a bomshell that was, Nintendo's stock on the Nikkei crashed the day that announcement was made, and sales of the PS1, which had barely been holding their own against the Saturn in Japan, suddenly took off. But no matter, Super Mario 64 looked great, as did the first prototypes of Zelda 64. I got a N64 the Christmas it came out with SM64. I got Killer Instinct Gold for my birthday a couple of weeks later.

After that, othet than the occasional Turok, Star Fox, and Mario Kart, there was very little on N64 other than bad ports of PC games which generally weren't very good to begin with, and Rare games. Unlike a lot of other people, I wasn't especially a fan of Rare. And the N64 was lacking in two of my favorite genres - RPGs and fighting games. Watching Nintendo try to make War Gods and Mace: The Dark Age look like viable alternatives to Tekken was a little frustrating, but that was nothing compared to the insanity Nintendo trying to make Quest 64 look like its answer to Final Fantasy VII, which was completely ludicrous. Nintendo tried to keep the hope alive with Mother 3 on N64, and they announced that Namco was working on Tales of Phantasia 2 for N64. Hey, both of those games did come out. Mother 3 came out on the GBA, where it has continued to not be released in the US. Tales of Phantasia 2 did get reworked and came out on the Gamecube as Tales of Symphonia, which was a great RPG, though that didn't help the N64 RPG drought. The only three proper RPGs the N64 ever ended up getting were Ogre Battle 64, Harvest Moon 64, and Paper Mario. The one genre were the N64 was better than the PS1 was first-person shooters, and those are not my favorite games excepting Metroid Prime.

So I got my first ever non-Nintendo system - a PS1, and indulged myself in RPGs. 20 years later, the Nintendo Switch is amazing and loaded with all the anime RPG goodness I could ever want plus one hell of a Zelda game and the handful of Western games I regularly enjoy, like Mortal Kombat, Doom, and Civilization, but in terms of the system and Nintendo's PR, the N64 represented a low point for Nintendo for me. The titles Nintendo had promised kept getting canceled right and left or being moved to PS1. The 64DD was supposed to offer the cheap high-density storage that Square, Capcom, and Namco had switched to the PS1 for, but tha didn't go anywhere, and that, along with Shigesato Itoi's complaints that he found 3-D difficult to work with, ended up sealing Earthbound 64's fate as well as the grand plans for expansions to Ocarina of TIme.

That isn't to say the N64 was all bad. A lot of Nintendo's first party offerings were amazing. My favorite Mario game of all time is Super Mario 64. Admittedly, I have yet to try Odyssey and need to remedy that situation. Star Fox and Mario Kart were fun. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were successful transisitons of the Zelda series into 3-D, even though I greatly prefer Breath of the Wild and both of the Gamecube Zeldas to the N64 games. As I have said, I was not a huge fan of Rare but I did enjoy Goldeneye and Perfect Dark.  There were even a few good third party games on there. Turok was lightning fast and made Acclaim a respectable company for a  time. THQ, another compay previously known for making licensed garbage, and bad games that made Acclaim look like Activision by comparison, scored a hit with WCW vs. NWO: World Tour.  Konami actually did make four interesting games: Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, which was a 3-D Zelda game before Ocarina of Time, the Metal Gear-styled RPG Hybrid Heaven, and the two N64 Castlevanias. I know it's fashonable to dump on the N64 CV games and praise Symphony of the Night to the heavens, but I had a good time with them. Capcom even managed to fit Resident Evil 2 onto a high-capacity N64 cartridge.

The Gamecube was a welcome return to form for Nintendo, with plenty of RPGs, fighting games, and unique original fare like Viewtiful Joe, but sadly sold even worse than the N64, with the freshman Xbox just barely edging the Gamecube out in total sales. 

So, friends, what are your thoughts on the N64. 

Oh, and I got a new computer to replace my old computer which was literally fallong apart- pieces of the casing were actually falling off and the computer was slow and laboring. My old computer was a Sony Vaio, and Sony no longer makes PCs. So I got a used MacBook Air for $240 at a pawn shop. I really like it, it works great and works pretty well with my iPhone.