Category: Game Reviews

Developer: Director’s Cut International Publisher: Midway Released: January 16, 1997 Rated: K-A 7/10 While Acclaim made off with the naming rights to the iconic NBA Jam, it was Midway who would continue the series in earnest with their immediate follow-up, NBA Hangtime in 1996. What we have on the N64, as opposed to its 16-bit Read more

Developer: Locomotive Publisher: ASCII Released: May 21, 1998 Rated: E 3/10 Sometimes being first to market is more important than being better for the most genre-focused titles on a system. With F-Zero X still on the horizon but the style of futuristic racing still very much in vogue during the early polygonal era, AeroGauge would Read more

Developer: Z-Axis Publisher: Fox Sports Interactive Released: November 23, 1998 Rated: E 5/10 Sometimes games are just good enough to get a “meh” review by not being outright broken or offensively bad (at least not in too many ways), and not being as bad as similar titles on the system. This essentially sums up my Read more

Developer: HAL Laboratory, Jack and Beans Publisher: Nintendo Released: July 26, 1999 8/10 Rated: E Pokémon Snap contains within it a number of the unique skills Nintendo has for turning numerous small factors into an overall successful project. We start with turning established genres with unconventional framing — in this case, the turning of what Read more

Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka (KCEO) Publisher: Konami Released: April 16, 1998 Rated: E 8/10 It’s common to look at great games and series that we missed out on in the West and wonder why they never got localized. Platformers, fighting games, puzzlers – things that can be brought over with minimal translation are always Read more

Developer: EA Canada Publisher: Electronic Arts Released: March 31, 1997 Rated: E 3/10 EA’s efforts on the N64 would drop off gradually as the years went on and the console ceded ground to the PlayStation as the destination for sports gamers. They were, however, pretty quick to get involved in the system with their first Read more

Developer: Factor 5, LucasArts Publisher: LucasArts Released: December 8, 1998 Rated: T 9/10 There are a lot of supposed “technical marvels” on the N64, from its first declaration of intent with Mario 64, to the compression wizardry of Resident Evil 2, the expansive world-building of Majora’s Mask, and, in its own way, the peripheral tango Read more

Developer: Camelot Publisher: Nintendo Released: July 21, 2000 8/10 Rated: E Before going into detail about the flavor of the Mario branding and the success Camelot continues to have in handling the IP, I feel it’s important to highlight the foundation of Mario Tennis and its tremendous quality and replayability. Even for aficionados of pure Read more

Developer: Nintendo EAD Publisher: Nintendo Released: April 1, 1998 Rated: E 7/10 From the days when every company needed to try its hand at an extreme sport to stay on the cutting edge of culture and technological advances, 1080 Snowboarding comes straight from the top team at Nintendo to prove the hardware’s power and the Read more