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Collection essentials #428: Star Fox 64 (N64)

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The original Star Fox was a very significant title on the Super Nintendo, since it had 3D graphics before that was the norm for home consoles. The console wasn’t built for 3D, so the graphics were primitive and the game had a “choppy” look as there weren’t many frames of animation. But thankfully the core gameplay behind it was really solid, so the game wasn’t just a short-term “style over substance” package that would quickly lose its appeal. You can read more about Star Fox 1 in my post about it here . With the Nintendo 64, Nintendo was able to greatly polish up the formula from the original Star Fox with much better graphics, sound and gameplay. Of course, Star Fox 64 would not be as novel as the original, which had the unique status of being a 3D game when the gaming world was almost all 2D. But 64 would make up for it and stand out by simply being fantastic. Star Fox 64 mostly keeps the gameplay fundamentals from the original, being a dogfighting (or I guess Foxfighting??) rail sh...
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Collection essentials #426 & #427: Snowboard Kids (N64) and Snowboard Kids 2 (N64)

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If one were to sum up these games in one sentence, it would definitely be, “What if Mario Kart were a snowboarding game?” Many Mario Kart clones exist, and while not all of them are bad, a lot of them suffer from the problem of not standing out enough and making you think, “I could just be playing Mario Kart instead”. Thankfully, being a snowboarding game helps Snowboard Kids differentiate itself a little more and make it worth a try. Like Mario Kart, you can choose from a variety of characters in this game who each have their own attributes. In this game you can also choose between snowboards you want to use which also have different attributes, so you can mix and match, something that Mario Kart didn’t let you do until several years later.  You will notice right away that the controls feel very different from vehicular racing games, which is a good thing. Since you’re going downhill, you don’t need to hold onto a “gas” button, though you can still influence your speed by hopping ...
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Collection essentials #425: Pokémon Puzzle League (N64)

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What we have here is basically an updated version of Panel de Pon/Tetris Attack for the Super Nintendo, only with Pokémon characters instead of fairies or Yoshi’s Island characters. It’s hard to call this a sequel, because there’s barely anything new here aside from the new skin. Basic gameplay is exactly the same, and for more info on that, you can read my post about the original release . Pokémon Puzzle League is specifically based on the hugely popular Pokémon anime TV series at the time, which was in its second season in the English-speaking world at the time. And so the main protagonist is Ash Ketchum and his right-hand Pikachu as Ash seeks to become a Pokémon master…by battling with puzzle pieces! The English voice actors from the anime are all present, which is a nice touch. There’s even a bit of original animation for the game’s cutscenes, too. What’s very odd is that this game was never released in its home country of Japan! I honestly have no idea why. Pokémon Puzzle League h...
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Collection essentials #424: Pokémon Stadium 2 (N64)

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It’s slightly awkward that I’m covering this before actually covering the second generation of Pokémon games, but oh well, not that big a deal. You likely knew what I meant when I said that. But in case you don’t know what a “generation” is in Pokémon terms: when Pokémon first launched, it did so with multiple releases named after different colors, “Pokémon Red Version” and “Pokémon Blue Version” (and there was a “Green” in Japan). They were basically the same game, following the same story, with the difference mainly being that some Pokémon were available in one version but not the other. And eventually there was a “Pokémon Yellow Version” which was still mostly the same game but had more noticeable differences and additions. After some time, Nintendo released the next set of Pokémon titles, with a brand new story, a bunch of brand new Pokémon introduced, along with new and updated gameplay features and mechanics. A set of games like this is called a new “generation” of Pokémon games....
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Collection essentials #423: Pokémon Stadium (N64)

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The mainline Game Boy Pokémon titles were huge. And despite the vastly inferior hardware, it was clear that handheld systems would be the main home for the series. The games were perfect for portable play, and the Game Boy’s link cable let players trade and battle their Pokémon which were essential aspects of the series. And so, the next big and grand Pokémon adventure wasn’t going to be on the Nintendo 64 or any other home console. But was there a way Nintendo could make a major Pokémon console game that was more than just a spinoff like Pokémon Snap? Turns out, there sure was.  The brilliance of Pokémon Stadium is that it functions sort of like additional content for the main Pokémon games. The game came bundled with the “Transfer Pak”, so players could insert their Pokémon Red, Blue or Yellow Game Boy cartridges into the Pak which plugs into their Nintendo 64 controller, and then use data from their Game Boy game on Stadium for the Nintendo 64.  Pokémon Stadium doesn’t cont...
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Collection essentials #422: Pokémon Snap (N64)

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Pokémon exploded onto the Game Boy during the lifetime of the Nintendo 64, so it was only a matter of time before the lovable creatures made an appearance in 3D. Gamers outside Japan would have to wait almost a year to get a Nintendo 64 Pokémon game, which probably seemed like an eternity for eager kids back then. The first one we got was this amusing spinoff title which was not about catching or battling the monsters, but rather, taking photographs of them. Pokémon Snap was not the first video game based on photography, but it was certainly not a concept you saw very often, and certainly not in a prominent mainstream release. The concept here is that you choose one of the game’s levels, and then you are “on rails” riding on a track as the wild Pokémon appear around you. The object of the game is to get as high a score as possible. The quality of each photograph determines your score. There are various rules to scoring which are pretty intuitive. You want your Pokémon to have their who...
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Collection essentials #421: Paper Mario (N64)

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Super Mario RPG on the SNES was Mario’s first foray into that genre. Although the game’s developer, Squaresoft, had switched to developing games for Sony’s PlayStation, Nintendo still wanted another Mario RPG to happen (not a surprise since the Nintendo 64 had an infamously small amount of them), and they gave Intelligent Systems the job, the creators of Fire Emblem. On paper (pun not intended!), this game seems to have many similarities to Super Mario RPG, but in practice it feels quite different and very much its own thing.  You may ask, why is this game called “Paper Mario”? It’s because the concept is that this game is a storybook come to life. All the game’s characters are depicted as paper cut-outs. I remember as a kid being disappointed with the fact that the characters are not 3D polygons like in Super Mario 64. However, the paper look gives the game its own distinct style, and age is far kinder to its look than it would have been to jagged polygons that would have seemed t...
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