Time. Time is the fire in which we burn. When we think of time we think of old men in cloaks holding hourglasses, or Doc Brown's modified DeLorean, or a blue anime girl that says "Gwak!" a lot. Whatever the perception, I clearly don't think highly enough of time to not waste my weekends playing bad Nintendo 64 games and then reviewing them for their suitability for the Nintendo Switch Online service and its rich-people-only tier. At least, that's been my excuse so far.
However, while respecting time isn't a pre-requisite the precision of time is very important to our purposes here with 64 in 64. I cannot, shall not, allow myself anything other than sixty-four minutes with which to appraise the N64 games that land on my judge's bench. Any more would be inequitable and any less, insufficient. That goes for both of this episode's candidates: the first a never-played sequel to one of my favorites for the system, and the second yet another g-d racing game. They have to run out eventually.
While we wait for that blessed day to arrive, here are the rules of this chrono-critical operation:
- I play two N64 games a week, one pre-selected and the other chosen randomly, for sixty-four minutes apiece. It's the same number that's in the name of the console. Not just a coincidence, turns out!
- Each game gets four status updates spaced sixteen minutes apart. You can see my heart grow three sizes the longer I spend time with them, especially if they're giving me the hypertension.
- I'll give you the rundown on how well the game's held up and its likelihood of joining its brethren on the NSO service. One doesn't necessarily influence the other.
- If the game is presently on the NSO service, we're not doing it. The Mother Brains at Nintendo have already deemed it worthy. I tried asking them to let me assist, but they just shot energy donuts at me.
In case you thought we started with Episode 9, which is just the kind of crazy thing this knucklehead over here would do, that's happily not the case. We have eight more of them: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6, Episode 7, and Episode 8.
Goemon's Great Adventure (Pre-Selected)
History: The thirteenth Ganbare Goemon game, though only the fourth to be localized into English, Goemon's Great Adventure (a.k.a. Ganbare Goemon: Derodero Douchu Obake Tenkomori) directly follows the first N64 Mystical Ninja game with a new story that sees Goemon and his friends Ebisumaru, Sasuke, and Yae attempt to recover the Wise Old Man's resurrection machine from the deranged spirit Bismaru, who is looking to use it to bring back a demon prince of yore. Unlike the first N64 Goemon game, Goemon's Great Adventure is styled like a traditional side-scrolling platformer with 3D environments in the same manner as Kirby 64 or Klonoa: Door to Phantomile.
This is the second Konami game on 64 in 64, after Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, and likewise the second game we've covered from their Osaka branch (KCEO = Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka). Most of KCEO's non-Goemon N64 output are sports games, of which there are at least ten so I suspect we'll be seeing them a few more times before this blog series concludes. We also have another non-sports game of theirs coming up soon as another pre-selection: a certain Resident Evil ersatz of some ill repute that I can't wait to revisit.
So, here's where the other geta drops. For as much as I wanted to play Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon again the real reason I played that earlier in this feature was so I could set up a playthrough of this sequel, which I've never laid eyes upon before. I knew a few things, like that it's going for the whole "2.5D" perspective, but nothing about how it played or its story. This ought to be fun.
16 Minutes In
I don't know what it says about Ebisumaru that he immediately wanted to use the resurrection machine to bring back James Dean - or maybe it says plenty - but I did like how the entire opening cutscene was voiced and the localization seems as solid here as it was in the first game: while there's the occasional typo and misstep, the comedic intent is very much shining through the many layers of cultural and language barrier. The platforming has been solid as well: you have your usual jump and hit stuff mapped to the main two face buttons, and your chosen protagonist (there's two initially, though I suspect I'll unlock Sasuke and Yae relatively soon) has unique abilities that are acquired as the game progresses. I've not seen anything in the way of collectibles just yet, beyond the money needed to purchase health items and armor, but maybe they're just well hidden.
After the first action stage I'm now in this more benign town area where I can gather information from NPCs and buy gear, much like in Mystical Ninja games past. Going to press on and see if I can complete the first world in the time alloted; from what I can see of the world map, there's about three more action stages to go.
32 Minutes In
Every time I say something like "I'm just going to move forward without distractions" I get distracted by something. In the case here, it turns out Oedo Town has more going on than just onigiri vendors and NPCs talking weird shit: I've been collecting these "entry pass" things by completing odd jobs around town, such as finding three music-related objects in the first action stage for a Mr. Beat Mania and meeting the enigmatic Iguana-Man down the local well, and I finally kicked the plot forward by locating the tea house where Sasuke the robot ninja was waiting for me. I've no idea what these entry pass things do yet, but I suspect I might need at least one to eventually exit the town and continue my journey.
I also collected Goemon's Chain Pipe from a cross-dresser squatting in my home (best to just accept these developments in stride, I've found) so that might be another pre-requisite for a future impediment, at least if the previous game was any indication. Also, I could tell it was Goemon's house because he had a "Goetanic" movie poster on the wall. Impact's supposed to be a global movie star now, I wonder if he's in that one? (If so, he's probably the iceberg.)
48 Minutes In
The teahouses are also character select areas if you ever felt like switching. I've since switched to Sasuke and the only major differences are that he's faster and has less range to his kunai weapon until you've maxed it out with power-ups (at which point they become projectiles). Since switching characters involves finding a teahouse - there's one between dimensions too, but that obviously means having to hitch a ride in a UFO to visit it - I'll probably just stick with Sasuke for the rest of the run. I also met my first mid-boss: Digadig Mine had a fight with an unnamed giant skeleton on a bridge, which reminded me that Konami made this game (N64 Castlevania will have a colossal skeleton or two for me as well, if I ever get around to it).
Something I've not mentioned yet is that the game has a day/night cycle: the enemies change depending on the clock and the night ones drop more money while being a little tougher to deal with, and in towns the NPCs are in different places at different times and a few, like Iguana-Man, can only be encountered after dark when no-one can see his oily green skin. Interesting idea, but it could use a fast-forwarding feature like Ocarina of Time's Sun's Song so I don't have to wait around in real-time for it to switch if need be. Maybe I can find a method to do so later? Talking of mysteries, I keep picking up these entry passes but no-one's asked for them yet. I wonder if I need them to access the second world? It's looking unlikely I'll reach the end of World 1 here with only 16 minutes to go, but with only two action stages left there's a slim possibility. Just gotta ignore all these side-quests and get crackin'.
64 Minutes In
Well, I didn't quite get to the end of Oedo Castle and reach the first proper boss fight of the game, but I did answer a few of my questions. The entry passes were for reaching the final level of this world: it's not quite clear how many I needed, but the guards seemed impressed enough by the number I found. The Ringbell Pass level just before it also required the Chain Pipe to proceed - there are some star-blocks that only it could destroy - so that also explains why it was useful to pick that up. The next time I saw a star-block, in Oedo Castle, it was guarding a useful power-up so I imagine most future instances of these character-specific abilities will just be optional boons. Either way, since the other two characters don't have any unique abilities of their own yet, I'm sticking with my boy Goemon.
Or I would be, except this is the end of the playthrough. I think I saw a decent enough cross-section of what this game will be like going forward. The SNES Mystical Ninja (specifically, the only one that left Japan) did the same thing splitting up its action stages and town stages, the latter handy for stocking up on curatives that activate upon death and armor that absorbs a hit so you don't lose your weapon power-ups, and Goemon's Great Adventure felt more in line with that than the proto-Ocarina of Time that the first N64 Goemon game turned into. Either way, besides some very punitive jumping here and there (this game could've benefitted from a double jump; maybe that's one of Yae's unique powers or something), it's definitely been one of the better games I've subjected myself to so far for 64 in 64.
How Well Has It Aged?: I'd say it's aged just fine. Ironically, while at the time it might've felt like a blast from the past to dip back into this 2D (or, well, 2D movement at least) stage-based, side-scrolling format it ultimately may have endured better than that ambitious first N64 game with its concomitant early 3D platformer issues concerning the camera and an open world with insufficient mapping tools to figure out where to go next. I still love that game to bits and this one does feel like a step back to the 16-bit era in many ways, but both are so akin in terms of quality that picking a favorite would purely come down to style preference. I'm going to have the run the whole series some day once more of them have been localized (or I kick up my Japanese reading comprehension a few more notches).
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Konami. Any Konami game is just going to have the answer of "Konami" to this question, which is to say that it's pure chance that the mercurial pachinko manufacturer ever deigns to let their old games out to play. They've done so in the past, even recently with that TMNT compilation, but it might take some third-party intervention and/or a bulging sack with a yen symbol written on it.
Retro Achievements Earned: 10 (of 70). Almost all are progress-related or concern the side-quests I've been doing, though there's some tough challenge runs for the final levels of each world.
Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (Random)
- Stormfront Studios / Electronic Arts
- 1999-05-11 (NA), 1999-08-31 (EU)
- 209th N64 Game Released
History: Hot Wheels Turbo Racing is, as you might surmise, an attempt to cash in on the preponderance of the titular small toy cars and their versatile track-building sets, much like Codemasters had done with the Micro Machines franchise previously. Though intended for kids, its eclectic licensed soundtrack and variety of tracks and vehicles made Hot Wheels Turbo Racing appealing to racing fans of all ages. Even Jeff G liked it: he gave it a 7.9 during his tenure at GameSpot.
Stormfront's an interesting developer, and not just because of their retroactively unfortunate name. They began as another studio working with SSI on their D&D games, specifically the Gold Box series, and were instrumental in developing one of the first popular MMORPGs: Neverwinter Nights (the renown of which later prompted BioWare to name their series of Infinity Engine-successor RPGs after it). Later they moved into producing sports games for many years - where we find them now - before eventually pivoting back to RPGs with the likes of the LOTR: The Two Towers movie adaptation and the Forgotten Realms-branded Demon Stone, which used a version of The Two Towers's brawler-like action-RPG system. They went defunct in 2008 shortly after two other fantasy movie tie-ins: Eragon and The Spiderwick Chronicles, both of which fared about as well critically as the movies themselves. Almost all their sports games were created on behalf of EA Sports, so that's why they're here.
I mean... I guess there are worse things the randomizer could've chosen for me, but it's dawning on me just how many racing games there were on the N64. Either that or I just keep getting lucky with them: in nine episodes this is the fifth one I've received from the lottery pick. Suffice it to say I have no prior experience with this or any Hot Wheels video game adaptation, but I did play a considerable amount of the Micro Machines games back in the day so perhaps this won't be so different.
16 Minutes In
Remembering my lesson the last five times I played an unfamiliar racing game, I took on an exhibition race to figure out how Hot Wheels Turbo Racing ticks. The default course, which has you driving around an old abandoned mine full of loop-de-loops (wouldn't all the ore fall out of the minecarts?) seems way too narrow for all these vehicles but it does offer a few branching paths and shortcuts to diffuse the pack. I went with the car called "Stealth" here but I didn't see any sort of power rankings so the vehicle might be a purely aesthetic choice. As you might expect from this era they're all bulky polygons in the vague shape of cars regardless.
What is intriguing, and clearly something I'll need to master quick, is that there's a dedicated stunt system in the game where pulling off more daring maneuvers earns you more turbo gauge, which you can then spend to make up distance on the straights. You can also burn some turbo before a jump to give yourself even more airtime to earn bigger gauge increases. The aerial movement is extremely loose: I managed to do a 900 degree spin for a huge turbo gain because that's how wildly dextrous your vehicle becomes when in mid-air, to the extent that it becomes far too easy to accidentally nudge something and wind up facing the wrong way (or the wrong side up) when you land. It's going to need some practice before I can reliably keep my turbo gauge stocked without blowing the race on a stunt gone bad.
32 Minutes In
Figuring I have enough of the basics down, I went for the Hot Wheels Cup since I determined the game's measly selection of six courses meant another scenario like San Franscisco 2049 where I'd have to unlock the rest through what passes as a story mode. Otherwise I'll have seen all the game can offer at the moment within the first half hour. That said, I think the cup races might be a magnitude more challenging than the exhibitions: I was fighting the whole time for the result you see above, and since the races are now mysteriously bumped up to six laps per course it's that much more of a tragedy if I crash and burn close to the finish line.
Couple of observations: the first is that I found the useful "reset to track" button for those times when I do beef a 360 Fakie or whatever, so it shouldn't cost me the whole race unless I mess up on the final stretch (and that seems like the time to just unleash whatever boosts I have left in the tank while driving as accurately as possible). The second is that, whenever you go into a tunnel, the cars automatically stick their headlights on and the game chooses to represent this with a huge polygonal cone of white light that emanates from the front of the vehicle. What this means is that, if you're in a tunnel and a bunch of your opponents are right behind you jostling for your position, the visibility goes way down with all those overlapping foglights shining right up your caboose. Starts to feel like an appointment at the proctologist's.
48 Minutes In
Two races into this six-round grand prix and, even though I've come in first both times, these victories were barely won by the skin of my teeth. Though having six laps per race does mean spending more time than I care to on these rollercoaster courses it also means you can get a pretty good handle on where all the jumps and the best places to boost are while still having enough time to turn the race around if you've dropped into last place. The combination of getting as much turbo gauge as possible from the bigger ramps and then transforming it alchemy-like into bursts of high velocity means it's easy enough to get ahead... until your opponents are rubberbanded to catch up to you. I like to think of it as them forgetting they also have nitrous until you've passed them.
I haven't brought up the music yet but despite having a relatively short soundtrack there's some real interesting choices on here. Mix Master Mike, Metallica, Meat Beat Manifesto, and even Primus. This also means that, after South Park Rally, this makes Hot Wheels Turbo Racing the second game I've covered on 64 in 64 with a Primus song. Huh. Can't be too many more of those, right? The only other Primus-affiliated N64 game off the top of my head is the billiards sim Let's Play Pool With Les Claypool, which I'll probably draw from the randomizer before too long.
64 Minutes In
I was close to the end of the fourth race when the timer finally beeped the beep that would end the playthrough. I was a little optimistic to think I could finish a six-race grand prix with the amount of time it takes to complete six laps of these labyrinthine courses. I notice that the CPU are often geniuses when it comes to course layouts - I'd notice my position drop rapidly, only to have them fly overhead because they took some shortcut I didn't even see - but once they were ahead their IQs would drop precipitously and I once went from fifth to first passing a huge car pile-up after they drove into walls and each other. The rubberbanding works both ways, I suppose, and with a game as deliberately chaotic as this that's for the best.
Hot Wheels Turbo Racing is certainly different from what I've played previously in the N64's racing game library. The sheer sense of velocity is close to a F-Zero X or Extreme-G, but the agility with its stunting makes it a bit more ridiculous than even those sci-fi speedsters. The game is also aggressively stupid, in a way that I can kinda get into. Every time you land a stunt jump you have some Phil Hartman-lite voiceover guy yell something like "Grip it 'n' rip it!" or "Fuckin' and truckin'" (maybe? I wasn't paying close enough attention) and hitting the boost at any point always projects you forward on the track even if you happen to be facing the wrong way, so you could theoretically finish a race backwards if you have enough turbo gauge left over. I think it embodies the spirit of the toys quite adroitly, where it's not so much about realism but having fun devising your own ludicrous racecourses and sending cars flying so far off ramps that they miss the track completely and end up in a laundry basket or next door's yard.
How Well Has It Aged?: S'fine. Future driving games will build on the idea of a less-serious racer where you mug for stunt points on high jumps for one boon or another, and by then they'll have figured out how to do CPU player performance that's a little more consistent. The racers going for deliberately wacky physics and such are always going to age better than those attempting realism, since the latter gets outclassed by generational technology advancements so quickly. You know what it could use, though? More Bumper the Badger. Just insert that dude into every racing game.
Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Low. If EA's putting one of their 1999 N64 racing games on NSO they'll almost certainly go for the beloved Beetle Adventure Racing instead, but I'm wondering why they would bother at all when they're working on their own EA Play service and whatever else follows after Origin. There's also the matter that Hot Wheels Unleashed was released last year by the Koch Media-owned studio Milestone, so Hot Wheels license holders Mattel have evidently long since moved on.
Retro Achievements Earned: 3 (of 55). This list cleared up some questions I had about unlockables. There's only two other tracks (making a grand total of eight) but tons more vehicles, and there's a few achievements relating to the other modes I didn't check out like the one that focuses on earning points with stunt jumps.
Current Ranking
- Super Mario 64 (Ep. 1)
- Diddy Kong Racing (Ep. 6)
- Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Ep. 3)
- Goemon's Great Adventure (Ep. 9)
- Mischief Makers (Ep. 5)
- Blast Corps (Ep. 4)
- Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Ep. 2)
- Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (Ep. 4)
- Spider-Man (Ep. 8)
- Bomberman 64 (Ep. 8)
- Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers (Ep. 7)
- Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (Ep. 9)
- 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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