Spring is finally here and what better way to celebrate the season's promise of renewal and brighter days than spending hours cooped up in one's room playing twenty-year-old also-rans? That's just one aspect of what we do here on 64 in 64, an episodic exploration of the library of the Nintendo 64, but one that's particularly relevant today with its two clunkers.
After all, if I don't evaluate these games for their longevity and suitability for the Nintendo Switch Online service, who will? Expert consultants specifically paid by Nintendo to do exactly that? Those people don't actually exist; Nintendo just has a big dartboard somewhere with every N64 game written on it.
Speaking of holes caused by missile weapons, here are the rules of 64 in 64 in bulletpoint form:
- I play two N64 games. One selected by me, another selected by fate from a pool that includes every N64 game ever released. Yep, including the Neon Genesis Evangelion game. I will get in the damn robot if that's what it takes.
- The two N64 games will then be played for sixty-four minutes apiece. I've thrown in some sixteen minute status updates so you can see my mind snap in as close to real-time as the written format allows.
- I'll summarize each game based on how it's held up over the years and its probability of being included on the NSO service any time soon. Not well and not likely are the usual answers.
- This feature is not to go anywhere near a game that is already available on the NSO service. It's received no new N64 additions since last week, so we're still hovering at thirteen of the system's best and brightest that are off the table and, I guess, hidden in a drawer somewhere behind a faded ticket stub for The Matrix and a bunch of dead Tamagotchis.
Follow the whole series here: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, and Episode 6. (There are links again at the end.)
Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers (Pre-Selected)
- Infinite Ventures / Kemco
- 1999-05-31 (NA), 1999-07-?? (EU), 1999-08-13 (JP)
- =212th N64 Game Released
History: ICOM's MacVenture series was instrumental in ushering in the age of what we now consider "point-and-click" adventure games, those that use a mouse as its primary means of interacting with the world rather than a text parser. Shadowgate is perhaps the most famous of that series: a nightmarishly difficult dungeon-crawler where traps lie in every direction and you can die simply by lacking a light source (other MacVenture games include Déjà Vu and its sequel, a pair of film noir-inspired mysteries, and the proto-Resident Evil haunted house thriller Uninvited). Kemco picked up the rights to develop Shadowgate for NES, for many the definitive version of the game, and Shadowgate 64 is an attempt to reboot the series in a then-modern context with 3D graphics.
I'm not entirely sure who Infinite Ventures are, but they appear to have picked up ICOM's IPs after the latter went defunct just prior to 1999 after being purchased by Viacom. Now with new ownership, Infinite Ventures worked with Kemco to create both this Shadowgate sequel and a Game Boy Color port of the NES original. Other sites also credit a TNS Co. for co-development in Shadowgate 64, though I've no idea who they are either. Truly, a franchise fond of its mysteries.
As someone who played a lot of Shadowgate for Atari ST (more or less indistinguishable from the original Mac version, except with color) I have been fascinated by this first-person 3D incarnation of this brutally unfair series for a long while. Much like how I was fascinated by the more action-oriented Beyond Shadowgate, in fact, and in the 2014 reboot, both of which I covered in blogs many years back. I imagine a similar degree of disappointment lies in store too but, hey, I gotta know.
16 Minutes In
After an animated intro which sees the protagonist - a halfling named Del - captured by bandits during a routine caravan journey and deposited in the prisons beneath Castle Shadowgate, the game starts with you familiarizing yourself with the controls as you look for a way to escape. Fortunately, it's as simple as finding a hatch underneath the pile of straw that constitutes a bed and using a leftover bone as a means to lift the grate that covers it. The bone comes after a meal, which is triggered by talking to the NPC in the adjoining cell: a wizard named Agaar who claims Castle Shadowgate is filled with magical items belonging to the archwizard that once occupied it, though they're all kept behind four towers bound by impenetrable magic barriers. Shortly after entering the sewers I died - I figured I'd be able to swim a five-foot-wide trench, but I guess that was a lot to ask - and had to start the game over. I've since decided to rely on save states before trying anything risky, though I'm hoping there aren't any puzzles on a game-wide timer that I might fail without realizing. I wouldn't put it past Shadowgate, honestly.
As if to present its insidiousness front and center, Shadowgate 64 has inverted controls by default (they even define them as "flight" setting, which makes me intensely curious why they thought flight simulator controls would be the natural fit for a first-person adventure game) and uses the oft-ignored C-buttons for movement. The analog stick, meanwhile, is used for the camera. Z crouches while R lets you access the map, with Start instead taking you to the main menu for saving, loading, and options. B and A are used for your inventory and interacting with the environment. The interface has been generally intuitive so far, which I wasn't expecting, and something about the languid pace of your hero, the dingy environments, and the constant threat of death remind me a lot of From's older dungeon-crawlers: the early King's Fields, or Shadow Tower. I'm guessing that, like those games, this isn't going to be a walk in the park. Hell, I'm not sure yet if there's going to be combat. (One note about the protagonist: as a halfling, I'm expecting the environments to feel a little too big, with perhaps the height difference becoming a concern for reaching specific items. That's not really been the case so far, but then I've only seen the inside of a prison cell and the sewers: neither of them traditionally known for being spacious locations. Maybe in this world "halfling" just means half-elf?)
32 Minutes In
After a few puzzles in the sewers - mostly involving destroying things, which I'm always on board for - I found myself in the first of the game's four towers: the Disciples' Tower, which looks to be mostly wooden living quarters so far. The game has been suspiciously peril-free since that early watery deathtrap, so I'm wondering when the other shoe will drop. Speaking of, I found a loose slipper in one of the rooms that was mysteriously stuck to the table with magic, sort of like the titular uncooperative flask of Thy Dungeonman. Why I can't take it now is anyone's guess, but I wonder if I'm not supposed to find its twin and reunite them to trigger a flag of some sort. Like a ghost that will eat my face (though granted, that is more of an Uninvited thing).
Progress continues to be slow with the game's leisurely gait and its many empty environments, but there's something to be said for establishing an atmosphere of anticipation and dread. Castle Shadowgate isn't supposed to be the sort of place you'd want to gallivant through, not when a spike trap can open up under your feet at any moment (though I'm starting to suspect I'm unduly hyping up the level of danger involved based only on past Shadowgate experiences - you can die about five different ways in the first five minutes of Classic Shadowgate, after all). I've mostly explored the downstairs of this first tower and will climb it shortly after this update, so who knows what I might find. More inert skeletons, probably. I'll tell them you guys said hi.
48 Minutes In
As I dreaded, there was something terrifying on the third floor of the Disciples' Tower: optional reading material! This tower belonged to Lakmir the Sorcerer, whose shade I met just before ascending to the library area where he explained that this tower was where he taught his disciples (and here I thought the name was ironic) and that he'll meet me in the next one, provided I have the wits to get there. Floors three and four consisted of a library and classrooms, with many books to collect. There's no apparent encumbrance limit so I grabbed any loose book I could but stopped reading them after the first couple: I only have sixty-four minutes here, and none of them were related to any puzzles yet. The one puzzle I did solve involved all these statuettes I kept picking up: by creating an "evolution of man" for a fantasy world, that is to say that men descended from elves which in turn descended from fairies (or maybe it was just describing humanity's connection to fairies via the humanoid elves as a bridge), I was able to place the statues in the right order to reveal the secret staircase in the screenshot above.
I'm beginning to believe the primary cause of death for any adventurer in this version of Castle Shadowgate is acute boredom. That's not to say I don't appreciate an immersive adventure game that's geared towards quietly exploring rooms and solving puzzles, but it's an odd fit for a console like the N64 with its many action, FPS, and sports games. I can guarantee I won't be playing anything quite this laid-back in entries to come, excepting perhaps the original N64 Animal Crossing if it comes up.
64 Minutes In
After reaching the top floor where the student dorms were kept and running out of places to go, I decided to read the rest of the books I'd found for any clues. One gave me a pretty big hint for the statue puzzle I'd already solved. Another talked about a fireplace and how students were forbidden to go near it: the author noted that the tower didn't have a chimney, which made the fireplace fishy and might explain its verboten status. Since the other books were mostly backstory and exposition related, I decided to go hunt for this fireplace. After sweeping the first few floors and uncovering nothing, the final timer sounded and I was done.
I wasn't anticipating this playthrough to be quite so... gentle. Anodyne, even. With the exception of the brief drowning detour at the skeleton sewers, I've spent most of this hour reading books and looking at well-preserved wooden furniture. To put it in the context of television programming, it's been far more Antiques Roadshow than Game of Thrones. That said, it's made me curious about what the rest of the game might be like: is it all similar, or do later towers ramp up the danger and pacing? Since I'm presently stuck here, I'm not in any rush to find out.
How Well Has It Aged?: Fine. Oddly enough, I could actually see a market for a retro first-person adventure game like this. First-person adventure gaming has continued to blossom in the present, thanks to immersive fare such as What Remains of Edith Finch and Gone Home, and likewise developers are producing more Indies with 32-bit polygonal graphical styles to keep up with what would most likely invoke childhood nostalgia among the age range buying the most games right now. With a better interface, better pacing, and no death penalty (not that I've met much that could trigger one) it could almost be something you might expect to see released on modern systems as a deliberate throwback. An example: Lunacid, which appeared on Steam just last week, is heavily influenced by those aforementioned early FromSoft games and has a similar inchoate polygonal aesthetic.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Slim but not impossible. Kemco are still around (they mostly make mobile JRPGs like Asdivine and visual novels like Raging Loop) as are the current Shadowgate IP owners Zojoi: a company founded by former ICOM employees David Marsh and Karl Roelofs who bought back the Shadowgate rights for that 2014 reboot. The Shadowgate license is still pretty active too: Zojoi put out an Oculus Quest-exclusive VR sequel just last year, Shadowgate VR: The Mines of Mythrok. If both companies sign off and Nintendo are interested - we might be talking years down the line, once they've run out of headliners - I could see it happening.
Retro Achievements Earned: 4 (out of 42). Most are story progression, though there's a few fun ones I might've never thought of trying. One involves attempting to read all the blank books found in the library.
Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (Random)
- Acclaim Studios London / Acclaim
- 1999-12-09 (NA), 1999-12-17 (EU)
- 288th N64 Game Released
History: Acclaim cast a long shadow over the N64, being its primary purveyor of low-quality licensed games, and this FPS based on an obscure comic line that Acclaim had picked up somewhere is typical of how comic book and video games tended to intersect during the 1990s. It wasn't all Marvel and DC: so many independent comic creators ended up in the hands of larger game, animation, and toy publishers hoping to spin a buck with tie-ins. Valiant Comics, the comic line in question, also included Shadow Man and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, both of which also saw N64 adaptations that are generally better regarded than the mostly forgotten Armorines. As for the Armorines themselves, they were first introduced as US government attack dogs in power-suits trained to take down X-O Manowar, another Valiant Comics character similar to Iron Man, but after they switched their commanding officer with a nicer one they became heroes of their own comic arc.
Acclaim Studios London is the erstwhile Probe Entertainment, a UK-based studio prominent throughout the 16-bit era. This is one of the few games in which they were credited by their new Acclaim branding, shortly before they were dissolved along with Acclaim itself. Probe is perhaps best known for the Extreme-G franchise, at least as far as the N64 is concerned.
I've never heard of either this game nor the IP it draws from, so this should be... enlightening? The system had a fair many FPS games but very few that have stood the test of time. I actually bought several of them back in the day: Duke Nukem 64, Doom 64, Hexen 64, GoldenEye 007, and Perfect Dark (and, uh, South Park). No guarantees we'll see any of them, though.
16 Minutes In
After selecting between two protagonists - the grizzled loose cannon vet who is one insubordination report away from a court martial or the feisty by-the-books rookie determined to prove herself in a man's world - we get a bunch of exposition told to us via talking heads in text crawl form, ably demonstrating that the developers are sparing no expense with this adaptation. It turns out that the Armorines are special military operatives decked out in nigh-impenetrable power armor and state of the art laser weaponry sent in to clean up alien messes that Earth's regular armed forces are powerless to handle. When did Halo come out, again?
This controls like ass. Could this be our first true kusoge of 64 in 64? Even those F1 games seemed competent at what they were doing. Like Shadowgate 64, Armorines uses the analog stick for the camera and the C-buttons to move, which works out far worse for a shooter where you're expected to run and strafe around a lot. Did any of the Turoks or Rare FPS games do this? I honestly don't recall, but I want to say GoldenEye 007 had you alternate between an aiming mode and a movement mode by holding the R-button down, since each used the stick. Also, like Shadowgate 64, the game uses inverted camera controls by default; however, the difference here is that there doesn't seem to be any way to switch back over to camera movement a normal person would want. I can modify the sensitivity and that's about it. There's also alternative control schemes but the game won't tell you how they change the button layouts. I guess that's what the manual is for?
32 Minutes In
The first level has you running around the surface of Siberia while the second and third go underground into a subterranean missile base. I neglected to mention but the game's enemies are giant alien insects without exception. Insects that look very much like the Klendathu bugs from Starship Troopers in fact, which I guess means we can add more to the list of people who didn't get the point of that movie. (This isn't even the only shooter with giant alien bugs on the system: DMA Design's Body Harvest is still out there waiting for us, and let's not forget how Perfect Dark ended.) The second level mercifully provided a turret sequence onboard a monorail, which meant I didn't have to worry about C-button movement for a while and could just 'splode alien arachnids with the cannon someone installed on this thing.
I'm getting used to the controls but the game's other big flaw is that it's kinda dull. You run around shooting bugs and taking very little damage if they should ever get close, and you occasionally hit a switch (or rescue an NPC who hits a switch for you) to open the way forward. No color-coded keys, no data logs, no awkward 3D platforming (maybe for the best), and the weapons you have are whatever you brought with you; they're all built into the Armorines suit regardless so I don't think you can switch them out. Mission debriefs are exclusively along the lines of "shoot everything" or "shoot everything quickly" (I sincerely hope there aren't any actual time limits). Hopefully I can finish up this Siberian cave system before I'm all done here. I'd like more level environments that aren't just grey or darker grey.
48 Minutes In
I've been running around these creepy-ass tunnels trying to figure out what to do next. The goal here is to disable as many of the missiles as possible before the bugs launch them god-knows-where with a bunch of their eggs, presumably because these are cockroaches that can survive nuclear blasts at close range (I don't think that's what entomologists mean about cockroaches out-surviving humans in a nuclear apocalypse; it's more to do with their resistance to radioactive fallout rather than a resistance to 100 million degree explosions). Having disabled all the missiles I could, I need to find out where the few that launched are going. The fate of the world is at stake, or at least the fate of knowing where to go next once we're done here.
I mentioned the easy difficulty earlier. Turns out there are these big burrowing bugs (I know it's 1999 but watch other movies, guys) that hit real hard if you're not constantly evading, and that put my limited C-button strafing skills to the test. One fortunate twist is that the game has a very generous auto-aim function which elevates it from unplayable to just about serviceable. I'll also retract my statement that there aren't any weapon alternatives: I found a laser rifle on one of the bodies, and unlike your main SMG weapon it has limited ammo and thus best saved for tougher enemies.
64 Minutes In
I figured it out. There was an iron fence that separated me and the rest of the level, and the only thing in its antechamber were C4 bombs. I honestly didn't anticipate that the game would be sophisticated enough to introduce barriers that I would have to manually remove with explosives, but that's on me for not picking up on the obvious hints. The level ended soon after, as did the one that followed where I was tasked with escaping the launch facility and returning to the entrance of the first level to where my gunship awaited for extraction. Wasn't quite the exciting Super Metroid enemy base self-destruct ending you'd hope for, but I'll give it credit for the excellent timing corresponding with the end of its little spotlight here. The above screenshot was taken while fighting against one of those big burrowing bugs, and right behind it was the exit.
Tinkering with the controls, I figured out you can switch the analog stick and C-buttons for character movement and camera movement, but if it anything that makes it worse. Using face buttons for any kind of directional movement is just no bueno. It's not like anyone had figured out 3D FPS movement for a controller quite yet though, so I'll give it some slack. Albeit, not so much slack that I won't complain about it in every single one of these updates.
How Well Has It Aged?: Not Great. The aggressively '90s comic book energy combined with being stuck in that early console FPS dead zone before shit got codified with twin-analog sticks on every controller meant that this is very much a time capsule of a game, and perhaps not one anyone needs to dig up unless they have some very particular nostalgic yearnings. Even if everything worked like it was supposed to, it's just too darn tedious to be worth the trouble. Maybe future levels won't feel like EDF-lite, but I somehow doubt it.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Highly unlikely. First issue is that no-one is asking for it, at least I can't imagine anyone would. Second is that if the current rights holders wanted to rerelease it they wouldn't have to do so through Nintendo. They can just hand the reins to Nightdive Studios, who have already published modern remasters of Acclaim shooters Turok, Shadow Man, and Forsaken on several platforms. Apparently they got their mitts on some tech that allows them to reverse engineer N64 games, so they'd be the ones to handle something like this. That is, again, if anyone wanted it to happen.
Retro Achievements Earned: None. Not supported.
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)
- Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers (Ep. 7)
- 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)
- Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (Ep. 7)
- Eikou no St. Andrews (Ep. 1)
- F-1 World Grand Prix II (Ep. 3)
- F1 Racing Championship (Ep. 2)
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