Let's blow on some cartridges and hunt around for rumble paks as we once again revisit the Nintendo 64 and its library via what is probably one of the least flattering methods imaginable. As always with this feature we're giving these old games another spin to see if they're ready for Prime Time, which in this case means inclusion on the Nintendo Switch Online service and its special N64-enriched tier. If you're dropping serious cheddar on that service you should expect the best of the best.
Episode 6's another freebie for me, with an excellent pre-select I've been waiting forever to bust out followed by a lottery pick for a genre I've not have the privilege of encountering so far. Of course, every time I eliminate two tolerable games from the pool, it becomes that little bit more stagnant and fetid. As we say around here, that's a problem for Future Mento.
Meanwhile, Current Mento realizes he should probably go over the rules again:
- I pick one N64 game to showcase every week. I also have one foisted upon me by a metaphorical wheel of misfortune, drawn randomly from the system's entire library. Yes, including Superman 64. What a dark day that will be when that finally shows up. A dark, foggy, hoopy day.
- For each, I spend sixty-four minutes with them exactly with check-ins written after every sixteen minute interval. Progress reports, status updates, and anything else I feel deserves a mention.
- My closing thoughts take into account how well the game has aged and the likeliness of it showing up on NSO given its quality, reputation, and the present state of its IP owners.
- We're also excluding any game that is presently already on the NSO service. As of March 11th, that now includes Nintendo's own F-Zero X. Missed my window on that one.
Be sure to check out previous episodes here: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, and Episode 5. (There are links again at the end.)
Diddy Kong Racing (Pre-Selected)
- Rare / Rare
- 1997-11-21 (JP), 1997-11-21 (EU), 1997-11-24 (NA)
- =50th N64 Game Released
History: Rare's fourth game for the N64 sees them reacquainted with the Donkey Kong Country canon, giving Diddy his own kart racer game with various new friends that will later find their own solo successes, Banjo and Conker being the foremost examples (though I'm still holding out for a Tiptup solo project). Animal pals Diddy, Timber, Pipsy, Tiptup, Conker, Banjo, Bumper, and Krunch are all recruited to save an island paradise from the intergalactic villain Wizpig by out-racing him and his speedy minions across land, air, and sea.
I was planning on playing Diddy Kong Racing earlier in this feature, as it's one of my favorites for the system, but I was waiting for a merciful dry spell of racing games to prevent any burnout (incidentally, Burnout did not appear on the N64). It is my favorite kart racer to this day, though granted I don't play too many, and since it's one of a handful of games I'm near certain will be arriving to the NSO service at some point soon I wanted to cover it on here ahead of that announcement. Given we've now had to exclude another of the few great N64 racers (see above), it seemed prudent to hurry this process along. After all, isn't hurrying up the essence of racing games?
16 Minutes In
Man, it's like riding a bicycle. Or, more accurately, like riding a cart, a plane, and a hovercraft. The trick you need to remember in Diddy Kong Racing, and that I've never forgotten, is to let off the accelerator just before hitting any of the zippers on the track for an extra boost. Armed with that tidbit and an uncommonly eidetic memory for these tracks, I'm already in the final course in the first major area of the game. After this race, I'll take on the easier version of the boss and then probably bounce over to the wintry area rather than do the coin challenges here. DKR always gives you a lot of options in its otherwise linear adventure mode, though, so I'll gravitate towards whatever track seems the most palatable.
I'm maining Bumper here because the poor guy never gets any love. He's the Luigi of the DKR world, with the same all-rounder stats as Diddy and Timber. Haven't run into trouble so far but then DKR is a game that gets steadily more difficult as it progresses. Also? This soundtrack continues to rip. Not a surprise but worth mentioning nonetheless.
32 Minutes In
In almost no time at all my overconfidence has once again proven to be my undoing, with some very narrow wins over the Dino Domain boss and the first three coin challenges of that realm. The coin challenges, for those unaware, involve collecting eight silver coins in each course (since it's a Rare game, we gotta have collectibles) and finishing the race in first place as usual. The hitch is that these coins aren't always on the optimal route and there are a few which you can't really get on the same lap because they're on branching paths or on opposite sides of the track. I usually burn my first lap collecting as many of the out-of-the-way coins as possible and then catch up and win with the second and third. It can be a fun challenge that tests your knowledge of the course and often does the clever design trick of teaching you the shortcuts if you didn't already know about them, though naturally the coins are in weirder places on the harder courses making those races even more of a struggle than usual.
I'm still rocking my man Bumper over here, now taking on the Snowflake Mountain challenges - most of which involve endlessly complaining about having to wear a facemask - as I work through the game's early content at a rapid pace. Whether or not I can maintain it over the next thirty-two minutes is the question.
48 Minutes In
As you can see, I've already conquered Snowflake Mountain and achieved the goal of going outside and touching grass, or whatever the internet's mad about today. As well as the standard single races, the boss challenges, and the coin challenges, there's also a hidden key in each world that unlocks a single-player version of one of the game's many battle mode stages. For some reason, these are super hard against CPU: the first involves taking eggs, incubating them at your nest, and protecting them from poachers (the other players) long enough so they'll hatch. I was lucky to nail it first time here, but if the CPU are really on your case with their sticky fingers it's often a crapshoot. The other thing are the trophy races: the grand prix mode, as it were, where the goal is to earn points across all races and finish at the top of the leaderboard. I'm not going to be doing that here though: I've too little time to spend racing on all these courses again.
Bumper continues to defy all contenders as he romps through to another first place finish. After this, I think I'm heading to the beach for pirate ships, rock pools, and a bit of the ol' sandy badger, if you catch my brake-drift.
64 Minutes In
With one final push in Snowflake Mountain and its coin challenges I managed to finish this session with a semi-respectable 17 balloons, though I got too distracted to follow through with my trip to the beach. I would've preferred 20 - as well as being a nice round number which matters to OCD weirdos like me, it's the same number of stars I earned in the Super Mario 64 playthrough for this series - but that's my bad for being stubborn about those tougher coin challenges. They start getting a lot harder in the ice world, often placed far away from the zippers that make getting ahead of the crowd that much easier. When you're in the thick of the group, you're much more prone to getting hit with a missile or an oil slick.
Bumper lived up to his name, driving into many a wall in dogged pursuit of those annoying coins, but still reigns supreme for now. This playthrough was an utter delight and I'm sad it's already over, but maybe getting out before the game really starts to ratchet up the difficulty is for the best. I've had the soundtrack on in the background as I write this up and may just continue to do that with all episodes going forward.
How Well Has It Aged?: Like a serving of chilled monkey brain, this game is exceptionally well-preserved. The feel is always the most important aspect of any good kart racer and it's not an easy balance to strike between arcade-style racing, power-ups that can make or break a strong lead, and environmental hazards where a lot of lost ground can feel arbitrary due to some unlucky turn or a giant dinosaur stomping on you as you drive underneath. Modern kart racers, specifically the Mario ones, are too focused on levelling the playing field so that anyone of any skill can win from behind, which makes the multiplayer chaotic and exciting but the single-player a nightmare. Diddy Kong Racing is one of the old guard that hits a happy equilibrium, giving you several opportunities to catch up and get ahead with your own skill without relying on lucky item box draws (all items in DKR are static: you always know what you're getting due to how they're color-coded) or too much in the way of rubberbanding that make victories feel unearned and hollow. Also, the three vehicle types and how they each change a course's feel completely! The course design with its wildly varying thematic differences! That music! It really is a complete package and one of the finest N64 games out there. (I swear I'll get around to my problematic faves in due time.)
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Good. I'm liable to repeat most of what I've already said in the Blast Corps entry about Rare, their current owners Microsoft, and the friendlier relationship the latter is fostering with Nintendo. I might argue that Diddy Kong Racing has a better shot than most of Rare's back-catalogue due to the Kong connection, or the Kongnection since I have no willpower to stop myself from writing portmanteaus, but it's all down to what the two companies decide to allow and/or prioritize when it comes to the NSO inclusions. Nintendo might also try to stick to first-party stuff for the foreseeable future just to avoid having to pay MS anything.
Retro Achievements Earned: None. Used the wrong ROM again. Really picky stuff, this site.
Fighter Destiny 2 (a.k.a. Kakutou Denshou: F-Cup Maniax) (Random)
- Opus / SouthPeak Games (JP: Imagineer)
- 1999-08-27 (JP), 2000-07-14 (NA)
- =236th N64 Game Released
History: While a sequel to one of Street Fighter's many imitators (though perhaps closer to a Virtua Fighter in practice), the Fighter's Destiny franchise made the unusual decision to turn the game into a martial arts sim with a point-based scoring system that rewards knockdowns based on the technique used. Drop foes quickly with special moves and counters to become the world's best. Developers Opus were not particularly renowned at the time, having mostly only put out PlayStation music games like Denki Groove Jikoku V and Fluid. As for the publishers, SouthPeak got into the FMV adventure game racket a little too late and focused on publishing licensed games thereafter while Imagineer's had a long and spotty track record going all the way back to the Famicom Disk System, including many more N64 games. (One of the few games they both developed and published for the system is Quest 64, which I'm going to force myself to play for this feature eventually if the lottery doesn't beat me to it.)
One thing I recall about the N64 from a historical perspective is that it had a rather poor track record when it came to one-on-one fighters. It saw quite a few of them, but they were all early polygonal fare that neither looked good or ran as smoothly as you'd hope and won't have improved with age. Didn't help much that the better fighter developers like Capcom and SNK largely kept to the PlayStation and Saturn during that era. I have zero experience with this franchise and little with its developer (Opus made A.S.P. / Desert Fighter for SNES, which was kinda bad but I liked it anyway, and more recently the amusing Half-Minute Hero games) so this should be a trip. Speaking of which, I should find the sweep leg button and spam that shit.
16 Minutes In
Took Saeki out for a spin, since he's evidently the Ryu of this game and I'm too much of a noob to not pick the shoto. After getting three opponents deep into the main Vs. CPU mode I decided I needed to brush up on how this game actually works and skulked off to the labs to train. Saeki's move list is relatively simple: there's a special on forward-forward-kick that's easy to learn, and forward-forward-punch is the counter. Hitting punch and kick together is the universal throw, but I need to be close to pull it off and the CPU can do it to me too once I've closed the distance so that strikes me as a risky strat unless I've stunned them first.
I'm definitely seeing the Virtua Fighter comparison. Granted, I'm not the most well-versed in this genre but Fighter Destiny 2's a bit more technical than I'm used to. It's a lot of reacting to your opponent's moves and responding when their guard is down; more a mind game than a masher. Took me a moment to acclimate to the points system and there's some evident strategies that it prioritizes, which I've only picked up on after watching the CPU exploit them. For instance, throws are an instant win and give you two points, while pushing your opponent off the ring with sustained aggro is only one point, which makes it way less viable a winning strategy. Pulling off a special - which are comparatively easy to avoid, since there's build up - will always knock down your opponent for three points, as does countering your opponent's attack with certain moves. Using the specials seems to be the fastest and most reliable route to winning a match, which requires you earn seven points total, but the CPU can dance around them if you're not careful. All right, I'm intrigued enough with what's going on here, though I can't imagine I'll get good enough to win any of the modes within this time limit.
32 Minutes In
Armed with the dreaded leg sweep move, I've taken Saeki all the way through the versus mode to this foppish French dude who looks like Shakespeare. Given this guy wasn't on the character select screen, he's gotta be the boss or at least one of them. Along the way I've been introduced to most of the other fighters: there's a rough British street boxer called Dixon that reminds me of Vyvyan from The Young Ones; another British fighter named Kate who I'm fairly sure is modelled on Titanic-era Kate Winslet (not that she has too many fistfights in that movie...); a ninja called Ninja; Ziege, who's like a pro-wrestler Frankenstein, so maybe a Frankenscottsteiner? (we'll get to the genetic freaks when Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. inevitably shows up on here); a large dude who just makes weird noises called Abdul; Adriana, one of those Brazilian Mardi Gras festival dancers wearing next to nothing; Mei-Ling, the customary Chinese girl with pigtails; D-Dog, who is just straight up Dennis Rodman; and a clown named Pierre who fights in the nightmarish metaphysical circus stage that you saw above.
I've also gleaned a few more tidbits about how the game functions, which you'd hope after spending thirty minutes grappling with an engine. Throws aren't the instant wins I thought they were: there's a rapidly draining gauge that means you can hit an attack button to escape the throw in time, though this gauge is smaller when you have low stamina or are being thrown from behind. Draining the stamina bar, which isn't health, causes your opponents to be briefly stunned though they can still move out of the way and dodge. If they can recover, most of their stamina comes back, but almost any attack will knock them down for three points in this state and some specials even earn four points. It's also possible to grab onto the edge of the ring if you're about to fall and there are moves you can pull off here to yank the opponent down, but I've not been able to perform them yet. So far, Saeki's leg sweep seems to be doing wonders. I just need to kick this guy all the way back to Stratford-upon-Avon and then maybe I can check out the other modes before my time's up; right now it's simply a case of "To Beat or Not To Beat."
48 Minutes In
Well, that didn't take long. After a couple more attempts I managed to take out that upstart crow and now his winter of discontent is my summer of victory, as it were. I was surprised to find that beating the single-player unlocked one of Saeki's special moves: they're not all available from the jump, it seems. I suppose this system makes some amount of sense - some of these specials are powerful, and you're likely overwhelmed by choice early on and might appreciate a dripfeed of new skills to try - but if you were playing these games casually with friends it might rankle if someone couldn't use their usual tech because the console owner hadn't progressed far enough in the single-player. After completing the game, which is a first for 64 in 64, I tried out another mode: the Fighter's Arena. This place is absolutely wild: it's a sugoroku game where your chosen fighter earns stat upgrades and new moves (probably making it more viable than completing the Vs. CPU mode over and over) by moving around the board and getting into fights with special conditions. Sort of like a Mario Spar-ty.
I also met the Master and the Samurai here: the former is this game's Edge Master (from the Soul Calibur series), an elderly sensei that shows up in training battles that'll probably be difficult to unlock; and Samurai's basically Mokujin from Tekken - a possibly-sapient training dummy who I imagine can also be unlocked by jumping through the right hoops. The Master warned me about a character named Cherry who pops up in the Fighter's Arena and is apparently quite a challenge. I'm going to see how far I can through this mode with the remaining time as Fabien - since I just unlocked him and he seems kinda tough for a 17th century aristocrat who named all his moves after The Three Musketeers, the dork - so here goes nothing.
64 Minutes In
So... Cherry turned out to be Ivy Valentine if she were a vamping drag queen. Or maybe not, since the game uses female pronouns for her. I'm not sure where to start parsing any of that, so I'm going to move on to talking about this sugoroku Fighter's Arena mode a bit more. You actually start with pretty lousy stats: it's not what I first thought, where you bulk up a standard character and can transfer the resulting monster into the other single-player modes to dominate them, but rather you're working your way back up to that standard fighting shape. However, I think the moves you learn from the board's bigger fights might actually carry over. By taking part in as many of the smaller fights as possible and beating them, you earn stat points which make the important fights more winnable and that's where you earn the permanent upgrades. An interesting approach to fighter training, though as you can see above it can get a bit... strange.
Sixty-four minutes later and I feel like I'd be just about done with Fighter Destiny 2 even if there wasn't a time limit, excepting that I didn't get to try out too many of the other fighters. Ninja and Dixon seemed kinda fun and Ziege hits like a freight train which might've made his Vs. CPU route a bit easier to handle. I had a glance at the other characters in the game: I forgot to mention Federico, from whom I get Doctrine Dark vibes, and there's apparently a bipedal cow character you can unlock. I mean, I guess, right? '90s fighters all had something like that (and yes, Fighter Destiny 2 predates the fighting cow from Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, though does not predate fighting like a cow from The Secret of Monkey Island).
How Well Has It Aged?: Honestly, not so bad. The polygonal graphics are decent enough for N64 standards, though obviously of that generation, and the points system is an uncommon way of framing success and prioritizing a more tactical, risk vs. reward approach than just tossing out supers every other second. Throws become more like pins in wrestling games: they can end a match quick but your opponent won't take them lying down if they have enough vitality left. With only two attack buttons though I'm not sure it has the complexity most FGC types would want. Bit more of a gimmicky Virtua Fighter overall, though not without its nuances. It certainly falls outside my area of expertise so take all of this with a grain of salt.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: I'm going to say Not Great. SouthPeak vanished in 2011 after putting out the mostly reviled Stronghold 3. Imagineer's still around - they just put out a curling game on Switch last month - but I'm not sure Nintendo's bashing down the door for the rights to their N64 library. Given netplay is a major component of the NSO service, though, they might look to include some of the system's better fighters; since I imagine it's a short list, Fighter's Destiny and its sequel might be in with a chance.
Retro Achievements Earned: None. Doesn't have any.
Current Ranking
- Super Mario 64 (Ep. 1)
- Diddy Kong Racing (Ep. 6)
- Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Ep. 3)
- Mischief Makers (Ep. 5)
- Blast Corps (Ep. 4)
- Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Ep. 2)
- Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (Ep. 4)
- San Francisco Rush 2049 (Ep. 4)
- Fighter Destiny 2 (Ep. 6)
- Tetris 64 (Ep. 1)
- NBA Live '99 (Ep. 3)
- Rampage 2: Universal Tour (Ep. 5)
- South Park Rally (Ep. 2)
- Eikou no St. Andrews (Ep. 1)
- F-1 World Grand Prix II (Ep. 3)
- F1 Racing Championship (Ep. 2)
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