Rampage World Tour

The Short


Pros
- Authentic to the arcade version
- Reboot/rerelease of the NES Rampage
- Three player co-op
- Unlimited continues

Cons
- Monotonous
- Repetitive in both gameplay and levels
- Graphics and sound are ho-hum
- Overall, doesn't stand the test of time

Smashing buildings in 64 bits

The Long

Rampage World Tour is one of the only two arcade games my local Wal-Mart had growing up, the other being the excellent fighter Samurai Shodown. Growing up I'd watch the demo play while my mother checked out at the store, wishing I had some quarters. Years later, I found out the game had come out on the N64, I figured it was time to finally fulfill my lifelong dream. \

And, just like Loopz, my childhood nostalgia was shattered. 

Rampage World Tour kind of sucks. A lot. 

So everybody's played this game's predecessor, Rampage, in its original arcade iteration, or at least heard of it and it's mediocre NES port. Here, I'll even give you a screenshot. 

GRAPHICS!

The basic premise of the original game is to climb buildings, punch them 'til they explode, and then move on to the next. After smashing all the buildings in an area you move on to punch some more. It gets tricky as the army and air force get pissed that you are leveling L.A., so they send tanks and planes and you have to punch those too. Also you can eat people. And that's about it. 

If it sounds tedious...it is. But this was back in a time of crappy arcade games that kept things simple and just adhered to an easy theme. You'd think that, two generations of consoles later, we'd have evolved this formula into something awesome. Well...no.

I honestly think this game is uglier than the 8-bit version. 

All you do is the same stuff. Punch buildings, punch planes, punch tanks, die a lot and have to continue. There really isn't anything unique or new in the whole system. You eat some things that heal you, and other things that hurt you. Pinnacle of gameplay. 

As for the "World Tour" aspect, that basically is just that you slowly work your way around different countries, smashing up similar looking locales based on where in the world you are. It's repetitive, stages recycle, and the game never seems to end. I know eventually you go to the moon, but after two hours of playing I just couldn't keep playing. It was the most boring, monotonous grind I've ever encountered.

The arcade version looks a very tiny bit better. But this game still is really boring. 

You can play this game with up to three people, who can hit each other, push them off buildings, and generally be jerks to each other. Since this isn't in widescreen and the camera is so zoomed in, you and your buddies will be fighting for space the whole way, and not in a good way. 

Graphically this game is hideous, especially on the N64. The flat sprites are poorly rendered, the enemies look poor, and even the explosions are dull. And in a game about destruction, when the destruction effects look like crap you really screwed up somewhere. And no amount of badly rendered high-skirted science ladies can make up for that. 

Skip this one. 

Rampage World Tour is a jump back into Lizzie, Ralph, and George's world destruction, but it isn't one you should take. Sure, the game was an arcade classic, but I now this thing is more of a mess than anything else. It's boring, ugly, and not even fun co-op. If you want to blow up the world, play Prototype or Hulk: Ultimate Destruction. Just don't play this game.

One out of five stars. 

Be afraid, George: your game sucks. 

Goldeneye 007

The Short


Pros
- Proved for the first time that FPS games can work on a console controller
- Loads of characters and maps
- Relatively robust and surprisingly open-ended single player
- Four-player multiplayer had a variety of weapons and game types
- Has duel wielding before any of the Halo games thought that was unique

Cons
- Looks really, really bad today
- Controls also have aged very poorly
- Game is completely outclassed by modern shooters
- UI for life/ammo is bulky
- Lots of glitchy bugs in single player
- Some characters, such as Jaws and Oddjob, are imbalanced in the multiplayer mode

Master Chief, eat your heart out. Also, most screenshots will be emulator uprezed

The Long

Goldeneye 007 was a revelation. After years of Quake and Doom dominating the FPS scene on computers, consoles were still trying to catch up. When the N64 and Playstation finally made the "official" jump to 3D, it isn't surprising they wanted to cash in on that profitable FPS market. They'd ported games like Wolfenstein to the SNES with rather poor results, but the N64 had something different. Rather than just having a d-pad, it introduced an analog stick with full 360 movement. Rare, already famous for their Donkey Kong Country games, decided to try and do the impossible: make an FPS that worked on a bulky controller.

Thus, we got Goldeneye 007. And the rest is history.

And they said it couldn't be done, mwhahaha!

I have plenty of great memories sneaking over to my friend's house to play some 2-4 player Goldeneye. It was a revelation, offering four players on a single box (unlike computers, where you'd have to LAN it, everybody with separate towers). It was the ultimate party game, and the friend in my neighborhood who had it was pretty much king of the street. Using a combination of the trigger, analog stick, and the side d-pad, you could now both move and shoot with relative fluidity (made possible through a very generous auto-aim). It was a novel concept, and one that eventually lead to Perfect Dark and the advent of duel analog stick FPS control.

So, it's been 15 years since Goldeneye came out. Is it still as good as my memories remind me? Well...no. In fact, after playing modern FPS games, Goldeneye is borderline unplayable. 

Ah, here's how the game actually looks on an N64!

The controls have aged horribly. Yes, they were revolutionary at the time and yes, they paved the way for what is now a massive FPS scene on consoles (arguably bigger than on computers now, except maybe Team Fortress 2), but Goldeneye straight up sucks now. It isn't fun to play, it's clunky and ugly, and I actually get hand cramps trying to play it. And the multiplayer? It's still pretty good in concept, but trying to get three friends willing to tolerate the awful controller and control scheme for the same fun they could be having on Halo or Call of Duty and you have a hard sell.

The auto-aim is also frustrating, as it is extremely generous to the point of insane. Perfect Dark ended up doing it a little better, but in Goldeneye it's just...either too smart or not smart enough. It's hard to say, to be honest, but seeing your gun flap around by itself is weird to those accustomed to the precise aiming of the previously mentioned modern FPS games. 

It doesn't help that everybody looks like deformed monstrosities. 

The single player is still decent, with a surprising amount of non-linear ways to tackle missions. It essentially gives you an area (base, etc.) and an objective, and it's up to you to figure out the best way to go about that.  While there are really only a few set "best" ways, the freedom is appreciated, even if it still boils down to "walk into this building and shoot some guys."

Multiplayer is unbalanced if you play with Oddjob (who is short and thus harder to hit. BANNED) and Jaws (who is taller and you only pick if you hate yourself), but aside from that works well. The various modes are now famous ("You Only Die Twice" and "The Man with the Golden Gun" being our two favorites from days gone by). Some of these modes have later been integrated into other FPS games ("Swat" in Halo is sort of like "The Man with the Golden Gun") though I'd love to see them make a more serious comeback in the original form. 

Blur. James Blur. 

The game didn't look that fantastic when it came out (I still think most N64 games looked worse artistically than most SNES games, if only because blocky polygons << good pixel art), and now it's straight up hideous. Enemies are especially malformed, with weird heads and arms and janky animations throughout. Textures are uniform and really muddy and disgusting, which I guess makes sense since this is the N64 but seriously...it looks awful. The sound design is classic but also just decent, with guns being tinny and unrealistic and the music fitting the Bond theme but generally proving blasse throughout. 

The game is a decent length, if you can tolerate it for that long. 

Die-hard fans will probably still glean a bit of enjoyment from Goldeneye 007, but they are the only ones that need apply. The newer gamers who want to see what the fuss was all about will be turned off the second they are handed the N64 controller, and even people with fond memories might only give it a few minutes before going back to duel analog sticks. Goldeneye 007 is a game that certainly was important, but the key word is "was." It was a gateway to a better control system, and as such is outdated and a horrendous mess now. If you loved this game do yourself a favor: keep the memories, don't play it again now. It'll only shatter those rose-tinted goggles, which I'm guessing you want to keep intact. 

As it stands in 2012, Goldeneye 007 just can't cut it. Fans clamoring for an XBLA re-release must have not played it recently, as the Perfect Dark one was hardly playable, and that's a far better game. Just...leave it where it is. We won't ever have the same Goldeneye 007 experience in its entirety again, but you are in luck: there's a boatload of good console FPS games out now to fill that gap. Invite some friends over and blast them in four player Call of Duty or Halo. Trust me, it'll be better that way.

Two out of five stars. 

Licensed to kill anybody who gives his game a bad review. 

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The Short


Pros
- Pioneered 3D action games with a control scheme still used to this day
- Massive sprawling adventure across unique dungeons and locations
- Good music (see below)
- Transition between child and adult Link adds an awesome twist on an old formula
- Lots of secrets, sidequests, and more to explore
- Ocarina makes lots of things (travel, day/night cycle, etc.) streamlined
- The crazy windmill guy is the coolest ever

Cons
- Game looks downright awful, and didn't even look particularly great when it came out
- Music is good, but at least half of it is stolen from Link to the Past
- Story is nonsensical silliness that tries too hard to take itself seriously
- Unskippable cutscenes and slow text crawl
- Any attempt at stealth sections is tedious and poorly implemented
- Focus on jumping platforming where you can't manually jump
- While the idea behind the controls was excellent in 1998, trying to play this on an N64 in the modern day is difficult, obnoxious, and tedious
- When you respawn after dying in a dungeon, you aren't penalized severely but whatever items you used are gone forever, meaning item harvesting yay. 
- Lots of little contrived gameplay experiences
- Set a standard, making it so no console Zelda game after this one even tried to innovate (except maybe Wind Waker)

I can hear the hatemail writing itself already. 

The Long

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a classic and an important game in gaming history. When Mario 64 came along and showed everybody the right way to do 3D platforming, Zelda: OoT showed us all how to do modern 3D combat. While it was a bit clunky even then, the concepts of Z-targeting to focus on an enemy to kill it was a staple that persists to this day. Even modern, more refined (in terms of the combat) games like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry 4 use a targeting system based on single-enemy focus just like Zelda: OoT did back in 1998. It also created a sprawling, massive adventure that few have attempted to emulate (aside from Darksiders, but that was rather recently) since the game's initial release.

So yeah, Zelda: OoT did a lot of good and pioneered a ton of stuff, blah blah blah. But I'm reviewing games in 2012, not 1998. And as is it just so happens, I own an N64, a retro television, and even a rumble pak to get the full Zelda: OoT experience. So after burning through the game for the fifth or sixth time in my gaming career, how do I feel about Zelda: OoT after all these years? 

Well, sit back and take a deep breath, because there's some good and some bad upcoming.

And I thought my Final Fantasy VII review was going to be the hardest.

The story of Zelda: OoT is a simple one that isn't particularly engrossing. Like the Mario games they boil down to one main thing: save the princess, kill the baddie. Unlike Mario, however, Zelda sells itself as a mix between a JRPG and an adventure game, but without the character depth or clever wit of either. Sure, there are plenty of entertaining characters in Zelda: OoT, but there just aren't a lot of them. There's only a few towns (and that's with me stretching what the definition of a "town" is), and each only has a handful of inhabitants, and most of them either won't talk to you or don't have anything to say. Feels sparse. 

Anyway, the point is that little kid Link is chosen by Zelda in what seems more like a fake childhood cardboard fort club than an actual important scheme to save Hyrule, and he has to go collect some gems to open the temple of time because Zelda saw Ganondorf once, through a window, and decided he was evil. I guess because he was the only dark-skinned person to set foot in Hyrule she "knew" he was bad. Whatever. 

So off you go into this sparsely populated kingdom in an attempt to save it. After getting the three gems (which involves a convoluted puzzle to get eaten by a big fish. Brilliant scheme, that) you unlock the Temple of Time and warp to the future where, surprise! Ganondorf won and everything sucks now. 

I WIN

It was actually kind of a cool twist the first time, to show up in town and have it burned to the ground and full of ReDeads. From there it does what it did the first have only as an adult: find more crap at the end of dungeons, bring it back to Zelda for whatever reason (who gets captured. Obviously), team up with Sheik who is very obviously Zelda in disguise (though I don't know why), save Hyrule, yada yada. Though technically you defeat Ganondorf as an adult, which is after he got all powerful. Wouldn't it have been a better idea to have kicked his butt as a kid before he got all crazy? And then all the castle guards would still be alive, so you wouldn't have to fight him alone. There's an idea.

Well, whatever, you win. The story attempts to pad out its history with long, really really boring expository cutscenes about goddesses and the triforce and some bullcrap, but all of it is tedious and generally unimportant to the overall plot. The quirky characters are fun but don't add any particular depth other than a few funny lines, and as a whole the story is just straight up lacking. It isn't bad, and it's enough to make you want to keep playing, but it doesn't aspire to anything beyond that. It's either an annoyance (cutscenes) or just there (rest of the time), which is unfortunate because I can tell they were trying to do something big here.

Oh hey! Now I know why the game is called "Ocarina of Time!" Nintendo, you so clever. 

So who cares about that crap; it's not like Nintendo has every written a particularly compelling narrative in their lives (this is me ignoring the Mother/Earthbound games, but I guess Hal made them so my point still stands). What matters is the gameplay. How has that held up on my oddly three-pronged N64 controller? Does it still work after all these years? Well...yes and no. Mostly no. Yeah, cue fanboy rage right about now, but hear me out.

As stated in the intro, Zelda: OoT pioneered the Z-targeting system and the ability to be highly maneuverable in battle. Before this 3D games either had you fighting one-on-one (fighting games) or just sort of swinging in in arc and hoping you hit stuff. Zelda: OoT helped refine the "swing around and hit stuff" bit by allowing you to focus on a single enemy, and easily switch between enemies ("easily switch" is in theory based on that awful N64 controller, but more on that in a second). This was straight up revolutionary back in the day.

The game also had a heavy focus on having a large arsenal of items at your disposal that you then used for puzzles or to defeat enemies (mostly puzzles, though). While it didn't have an item count to rival the massive Link to the Past, Zelda: OoT in theory should have used its smaller number of side items to a greater extent, refining the game to be built around them. Which it did. Sort of. Hey, it did it better than Twilight Princess at least, which just gave you tons of crap you used once or twice and then never touched again. 

Shootin stuff. 

So back in 1998 I was willing to forgive that stupid-ass N64 controller because I didn't know any better. Hey, it was the first console controller to really use an analog stick right, only to have the idea stolen by Sony with the DuelShock (and fixed, because adding a second analog stick was exactly what it needed) but whatever, still pioneered it. But now, after we've evolved our controllers forward, going back to that horrid three pronged monstrosity is a huge annoyance.

A picture, in case you forgot. 

So my hands are bigger now too, meaning that middle trident prong I'm supposed to grab doesn't exactly fit well, and the whole thing somehow feels both encumbering and too small. But hey, this isn't a controller review, it's a Zelda: OoT review. And I'm going to tell you right now that paired with the N64 controller, Zelda: OoT really hasn't aged well in terms of controls.

The first problem is the analog stick is too sensitive. Yes, it can differentiate between walking and running which is great, but whenever you try to aim the damn thing flies everywhere. It can be hard to precisely move exactly the needed direction to hit a jump, and considering some later levels require pinpoint precision, this can be extremely frustrating.

Let's hit the jumping thing right now as an aside: why are the Zelda creators so averse to letting you jump on your own? The whole "auto-jump" thing is a massive pain in the ass. First off, you have to be running towards a ledge (or just walking fast) for Link to do his little bunny hop off it. Second, he'll "hop" off anything higher than his waist, rather than just stepping down, which can lead to some stupid platforming mistakes. Third, when you actually do want him to just climb down, you have to inch ever so carefully, because one slight tap on that oversensitive analog stick and he'll go leaping off to his death rather than carefully hanging down. All of this could be fixed with manual jumping controls. Come on, you have two shoulder buttons you could have used here, or moved the A button (aka the "roll 90% of the time, talk 10% of the time") button to a shoulder since it isn't used that much and had A be jump. Novel concept. Mario jumped just fine, why can't Link do it on his own?

These are all emulator up-rezed shots, FYI, in case you thought your memory deceived you. 

That's just a small gameplay niggle amongst many. Camera work is horrid throughout (just like Mario 64), which makes getting those precision-required imprecise jumps a lesson in tedious repetition. It seems to work ok in a wide open space (like Hyrule Field or during most bosses), but when you are in a cramped room the camera can't seem to figure out how to function, unable to look through walls and forcing a pan as you step away from the door (which also requires you to adjust where you are pointing the stick, as the movement is based on camera's viewing direction). It's really, really obnoxious.

The bad camera, poor jumping, and mediocre analog controls make the whole game feel very loose, which (based on dungeon design) isn't what the creators were shooting for. Yeah, you can still beat the game, but you can't say it wasn't filled with cheap deaths or hits because of the horrible controls. It's an "added bonus" of difficulty stemmed from poor design, and while I was willing to give this game a cut because it was the first of its kind in 1998, need I remind you it is 2012 now, fourteen years later. The fundamental controls are bad, people. That's just the sad truth about the N64.

The Biggoron sword is awesome, though

There are also lots of parts of the game that just feel sloppy, which may or may not have to do with the awful controls but now I'm not entirely certain. Dungeons are decent in their execution (though that water temple is still infamous) and tend to work well overall, but they don't seem to use all the tons of items you have as much as I'd like. While some (hookshot, boomerang, arrows, etc.) are used frequently, the rest of the assortment seems neglected. Stuff like the Eye of Truth are only used in single dungeons and maybe one area in the overworld later, which makes it seem like a wasted slot. Deku nuts are almost pointless save a few very rare instances, and the same goes for breakable Deku sticks. The hammer can be fun to smash guys with but you have to use the stupid C buttons to do it, which isn't convenient at all.

There's also a lot of running from place to place without anything inbetween, especially across Hyrule field. This is sort of fixed with Epona, who is a bit faster and can sometimes jump fences if you point her exactly at them with the analog stick and at just the right speed (good luck), but since you only get her as an adult that's a lot of wandering around as a kid. A lot of wandering around. 

Does it still hold up? Barely. While the fundamental control issues and weird ideas (Unskippable text? Bad jumps?  Dungeons that rely too heavily on being able to see what you are doing? Fetch quests? LOTS of fetch quests?) bring it down, the core design still seems solid. Dungeons are well paced and strike a good balance between easy and hard, increasing with difficulty at a pretty good clip relative to game progression. A lot of the puzzles can be clever (though for most, if you've solved one you've solved them all: shoot the open eye stone), and there are tons of minigames to infuriate you because you can't control the game well enough to do as well as you'd hope. So the basic infrastructure is there, it's just in the fundamental control scheme that we hit an issue. 

Again: I'm not saying you can't overcome these awful controls. You can. It just is way more worth than should be necessary. I shouldn't have to fight a game every step of the way until reaching some middle ground where neither of us are happy. 

Gee, who would have thought. 

This game looks bad. Like Final Fantasy VII bad, except that game at least had nice battle graphics and CD power cutscenes. I thought this game looked crappy in 1998, with it's super blocky polygons and barren, boring fields, but now it just looks all the worse. Playing at the original resolution (which most of these screenshots aren't) with the super texture fuzz going on makes it hard to know what stuff is. Characters animate stiffly and this translates into clunky battle controls (exacerbated by that freaking controller) which can lead to frustrations. Everything has jagged edges to it that look unnatural, most of the ground just being one massive texture. Yeah, it's an old game and I should cut it some slack, but whatever: still looks bad. I do like that the characters emote, though, something Square couldn't figure out until the PS2. It's too bad they don't talk...which still hasn't happened. Alrighty then.

Music is decent but not fantastic. Yes, I just dissed Zelda: OoT's music, now I'm really gonna get it. It just all sounds...midi. And not particularly original. Yeah, you have your traditional Zelda tunes, but most are stolen exactly from the SNES's Link to the Past. They all seem to be missing like three or four instruments that should be backing up the rest of the notes, like they were only allowed to have three unique instruments playing at once. Come on, the SNES had more options than this. Maybe it was due to the lack of CD technology, but the songs really weren't that exceptional minus a few standouts. 

This song is awesome, though, even if it seems to be missing some key background instruments

So where do we stand? Zelda: OoT is a long game, though it does get a bit tiresome near the end of repeating the same style of dungeon for 20 odd hours, but hey...at least I'm not sailing around looking for freaking Triforce shards rather than killing stuff for the last 1/4 of the game. There's a bunch of other stuff I didn't touch on (the stupid "wallet" not holding enough coins, getting your shield burned mid-dungeon, some other stuff) but I don't feel like I need to. If you love this game, odd are you are blinded to its faults, which means you've either already sent me hatemail or are in the process of writing it right now (or just clicked off this review after seeing my long list of "Cons"). Let me be absolutely clear: I loved this game as a kid, flat out loved it. But that was a different time; it was fourteen years ago. Not to mention every Zelda game since this one has done nothing to change this formula, so if you really wanted to play this game again in all its refine glory, pick up any version not released on the N64. Seriously. They're the same game. 

Anyway, the point is that I've actually played through this again, on an actual N64, with an actual N64 controller, and while it hurts me to say this the game has not aged well at all. I'm surprised the 3DS re-release has gotten such critical acclaim (probably rose-tinted, to be honest, or they fear fanboy ire) considering they say it was relatively untouched, which means it is still a wonky mess. Zelda: OoT is a gem from the past, like a golden idol to a god nobody worships anymore. Yeah, it's still awesome to look back and remember the good times, but we don't worship that guy anymore; his time has passed. 

It's still solid enough underneath the jank to enjoy, though expect massive amounts of frustration (my wife played this after the modern Zelda games, and while she enjoyed it she was certainly annoyed by a lot of its problems). The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is still a landmark game for what it did for the industry, but as it stands it's time to send it to the old-folks home and let its younger, fresher grandkids take the glory. 

Three out of five stars. 

Ah, memories. How you betray me. 

Pokemon Snap

The Short


Pros
- Unique photography game set in the world of Pokemon
- Courses have a hefty amount of replay value, even if there aren't a lot of them
- Photo grading is fun, leads to upgrades, and can prove addicting
- Seeing the pokemon in their "natural habitats" is fun, in a sort of weird, voyeuristic way
- Graphics look quite good
- Used to be able to print out the pictures you took as stickers at a "Pokemon Snap Station"
- On the Wii Virtual Console

Cons
- Only has 63 pokemon. They should have at least added one more since this is on the Nintendo 64
- Only seven locations to visit
- "Pokemon Snap Stations" used to be in Blockbuster Videos, and we all know what happened to both of these things
- Can beat the entire game 100% in only a couple of hours

It's time to play poke-photographer

The Long

Pokemon Snap was the first Pokemon game to take the jump to 3D graphics. After playing Red/Blue and the whole series exploding, those of us with Nintendo 64s were excited to finally get to play a 3D Pokemon game. 3D battles! 3D training! It's gonna be awesome!

So when it was Pokemon Snap, a lot of people were disappointed. You don't battle, you just...take pictures? It's on-rails (in the most literal sense), so all you do is point and shoot while it moves on its own? Only 63 pokemon? What is this?

If one can cast aside the initial disappointment (and subsequent disappointment because Nintendo still hasn't made a 3D Pokemon game), you'll be pleased to find that Pokemon Snap is actually an excellent game, especially if you are a fan of the Pokemon series.

Getting Charizard to show up can be tricky

The premise of Pokemon Snap is simple. Your goal is to take pictures of pokemon for Professor Oak, and to do this you'll be put on a safe cart thing (kind of like the on-rails cars in Jurassic Park, only with less people getting eaten) and shuttled through one of seven locations. While you are there your goal is to quickly take as many pictures as possible (with a 60 picture limit per trip), and after Professor Oak will grade your pictures and reward you accordingly. 

You'd be surprised to know it actually works well, and can be quite addicting. As you progress you get special items (apples, pester balls, etc.) that you can throw out into the world and influence the levels you've ran through before. Doing this will reveal a whole new batch of pokemon to photograph, giving this game a sort of adventure game discovery aspect to it. It's pretty cool to finally figure out how to get one of the legendary birds to show up, for example, and then take a killer picture of it. 

Zapdos! Quick, grab your pokeball...I mean camera!

It's a simple game, but one that works well, especially if you are a fan of Pokemon. The grading system is pretty accurate, giving you incentive to learn how to take better pictures to earn better scores. The seven stages are all unique as well, and each holds their own secrets, to playing through them again provides a new experience each time. It is also cool to just see the pokemon running around doing their thing in the "wild," which at this point in time we'd never seen before except in the anime. 

Back in 1999 there were some other cool things you could do. You could actually take your cartridge to a Blockbuster Video and plug it into a "Pokemon Snap!" machine, and then print off your photos as stickers (they were like $3 each, but whatever...it made Pokemon REAL). Unfortunately these things don't exist anymore, but the Wii's Virtual Console version allows you to email the pictures to yourself or post them on a message board, meaning you can print them out. That's a...surprising amount of dedication from Nintendo for a re-release, considering how they usually just phone it in for most of their reissues. So good on them!

I want to own one of these

The game looks good, which makes sense considering it's a game about taking photographs. All the pokemon are well animated and are well realized in their polygonal renderings, and the environments are all varied and fun to traverse. It's clear that, despite this being a Pokemon photography game, Nintendo put some effort in to make it not suck. And it worked: Pokemon Snap doesn't suck. It's actually pretty good.

I love how it says "THIS IS A GAME PAK. NOT A CAMERA." right on the back of the box. You know, just in case.  

There really isn't any game like Pokemon Snap. Dead Rising tried to incorporate it's photography rating system in with the rest of the game (zombie mashing), and Bioshock did a similar thing with its camera (giving you bonuses against enemies you took good pictures of). You'd be surprised, but it also stands up against the test of time, proving to be just as fun and addicting now as it was back in 1999. It's weird, because when I first heard of this game I really wanted to hate it, but after playing it then and replaying it now, I can't help but think it's a blast. Especially for kids who like Pokemon, this game is both charming and fun. 

It runs for $10 on the virtual console, which I think is an excellent price, especially with its increased functionality. If you are a Pokemon fan and ignored this game, check it out! Once you get past the somewhat odd premise you'll find a game that is wholly unique and a joy to play. It's a short lived experience (maybe 3-4 hours at most before you "Photograph 'em all") but a good one, so it comes with my recommendation.

Four out of five stars. But if you don't like Pokemon, you can probably cut 2-3 stars off that rating. It's still a good game! But the Pokemon aesthetic is really what sells it.

Now make a sequel, Nintendo! With Wii-mote support!

See ya, Snorlax

Pokemon Puzzle League

The Short


Pros
- Apes the Tetris Attack formula perfectly, creating an addicting experience
- Lots of options, people to battle, and puzzles to...puzzle.
- Basically this is Tetris Attack with a Pokemon skin. Hard to say much else about it.

Cons
- Only two players (instead of four)
- Voices of characters from the anime are extremely obnoxious
- Not much here that hadn't already been brought out in Tetris Attack back on the SNES

Get ready for some puzzles in a league of their own!

The Long

Tetris Attack is a pretty good game. I first played it on its Japanese iteration Panel de Pon, on a Virgin Atlantic flight to and from London. They had SNES's installed in the seats (yeah!) and for some reason had this Japanese game on it. It was a 12 hour flight, and I'm pretty sure I played it almost the entire duration. It was that addicting.

The US version (Tetris Attack) replaced the underaged fairy girls (oh, Japan) from Panel de Pon with Yoshi and other Mario characters, which isn't too surprising. Then, when 2000 rolled around and the N64 and Pokemon where hot topics, they released a skinned version of the game for the N64. Thus, Pokemon Puzzle League came into existence. 

Ash has that expression every time he earns a badge. I first thought it was stupid, now it's weirdly hilarious. 

I should probably have reviewed Tetris Attack before this one, but it's too late now, so whatever. Tetris Attack...er...Pokemon Puzzle League is a fairly simple puzzle game. You are given a grid filled with colored blocks, and you can switch two at a time horizontally (as many times as you want). Your goal is to get sets of three (or more) to clear out space. If your blocks reach the top, you are done. Pretty easy.

One of the big differences between Tetris Attack and Pokemon Puzzle League is that in Tetris Attack's main single player mode your goal was to simply clear down to a line. As you progressed the blocks would keep coming up, and after a while a line would appear and if you got rid of all the blocks above that line you won.

Not so in Pokemon Puzzle League. Here you are battling your way through the original gym leaders of Pokemon Red/Blue in an attempt to be the pokemon master. Which makes sense I guess, but I'm sad to see that other mode isn't the main attraction this time, as having a single player that's primarily competitive in a puzzle game is a bit...weird.

This isn't the Pokemon I'm used to. 

So how do you battle? Well first you pick a pokemon (and which one you pick seems to have no effect on how the game goes, elemental weaknesses or otherwise) and then you start swapping blocks. If you get four or more in a row or make combos, you'll drop big blocks on your enemies. They then have to make matches near these big solid blocks (something like 2x4 or bigger, etc.) and then they'll turn into regular colored blocks and can be erased by puzzling. That's it. It's pretty simple, and all that really changes is the speed increases until the end. Failing can be based both on skill and luck, with luck being the key factor in the end levels. 

It also has two player multiplayer, but for some reason they didn't add four player multiplayer (which, honestly, was the reason I got this game even though I already owned Tetris Attack. I should wiki these games before I buy them for very specific feature inclusions). Dr. Mario 64 added four player multiplayer just fine; what gives? Without it, there isn't any fundamental improvement over Tetris Attack, because Tetris Attack had a VS mode too. There are no bonus features here at all, aside from the Pokemon skin.

Oh, and speaking of that...

There's that face again. 

Every time anybody talks in the game I want to punch them. Tetris Attack had a few voice clips, but most were just "Stop!" if you stopped the timer or a "Yeah!" when you won. In this game, people won't shut up. It's like they realized the N64 had more space on the cartridge, so they crammed all the voices from the anime. If you or an enemy make any match, expect them to shout one of three canned phrases. And since you only play as Ash, you'll hear all his lines after about the second battle. Considering their voice acting isn't exactly...good, this is really, really, really annoying. 

"RAWR I'M ASH RAWR LOOK AT THAT HEART RAWR"

The graphics also haven't seen much of an upgrade. Honestly I think it looks worse, and I like Pokemon. It's muddy (like all N64 games) but they don't use any of the power to add new effects or change things up or anything. Even the backgrounds are more soulless, mostly just showing the same generic Pokemon arena, while in Tetris Attack the backgrounds were bright and colorful. It's a step down, to be sure.

"RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRRRR"

It still works as a game, because the core formula is so extremely strong. There's a reason I played it for 12 hours nonstop (and not just because I was trapped in a plane and my GBA SP's battery died). It's a puzzle game that's extremely easy to pick up but gets difficult very quickly, making it perfect for when you have a few hours to burn. 

However, if you really want to play this type of game, I'd suggest any version aside from this one. Or you could turn the volume off on your TV, which would fix 90% of the problems. Yeah, you should just do that. 

I still like this game, but since this N64 version has literally no improvements over Tetris Attack on the SNES (and only takes things away in terms of awful Ash Ketchum voice screeching at me constantly), I'll probably just always play Tetris Attack instead. AS SHOULD YOU.

Three out of five screaming Ash faces. 

"I WILL EAT YOUR SOULS."

RAWR

Hey You, Pikachu!

The Short


Pros
- Can talk to Pikachu and make him do things
- Actually has a lot of stuff to do
- Looks ok for an N64 game
- Is probably good if you are a kid. And live in 2000.

Cons
- Pikachu is either an idiot or hates me because he never does anything I say
- Required microphone only works for this game and another game released in Japan. Useful!
- Lots of games, but most aren't particularly fun
- The definition of "crappy cash-grab spinoff"

This is going to be awesome.

The Long

So Nintendo has this thing for releasing crap to go along with their consoles. I think this probably stems from back in the NES days, where they marketed it more as a "toy" than a "video game console" due to the stigma following the great video game market crash. In an attempt to make the NES appear more like a "toy," they unloaded a massive amount of garbage for it (or allowed third party people to do it) such as the R.O.B. robot, the Power Glove, etc. Most of these crappy add-ons were expensive, annoying, and only worked with one or two games before they were swiftly abandoned.

Nintendo has continued this practice to this day, though it took a slight break during the SNES period (Super Scope, anyone?). The N64 was graced with a memory card, a rumble pak, an actual RAM expansion (that became required to play some games), a CD-Drive (that never made it out of Japan), and this microphone. In fact, now that I think about it, they had a microphone on the Gamecube too, for that one game...Odama. I think that's the only game that used it there, too.

Oh, and Wii Speak, for the Wii! That worked in...uh...Animal Crossing? Was that it? I guess you could voice chat in like The Conduit, but who would want to; it was a thing that sat on your TV (like my Kinect, only somehow dumber). The DS and 3DS also have microphones, but they only use them on early DS games to blow on things (usually for minigames or in Zelda: Phantom Hourglass) and...that's it. 

In a world where Siri is actually pretty brilliant, and Microsoft is making their Kinect toy more and more powerful, it's weird to look back and see that Nintendo had a piece of that pie, but instead of eating it or selling it they sort of left it in the fridge to get moldy. But this isn't a post about Nintendo's pie aversion, it's a post about Hey You, Pikachu! a game that aspires nothing more than to be mediocre, and succeeds heartily. 

Yeup, there he is. 

Hey You, Pikachu! is essentially a collection of minigames on the Nintendo 64 which are all Pokemon themed. There are about seven actual activities in all, ranging from keeping a bunch of Caterpie's awake so they can evolve, searching for treasures, and so on. The gimmick here is that you don't directly control Pikachu (your proxy into this mad world) but have to issue him voice commands instead. And this works exactly as well as you'd think based on year 2000 voice recognition technology.

Yeah, you suck. 

I would yell, whisper, articulate, and try everything in my power to get Pikachu to understand what I was telling him, but it only worked maybe 25% of the time. The rest of the time he either completely misinterpreted or just ignored me. Which, if this were real Pokemon, would be about the time I forced him back into his Pokeball and replaced him with another one who can understand me.

The biggest problem might be the microphone itself. That warning on the box that says "For Ages 12 and under" isn't a coincidence; the microphone is made to better detect higher-pitched voices rather than all of us who've passed puberty. So even if you have a high voice for an adult male (which my tenor-singing self will begrudgingly admit) odds are your words just aren't making it through the mic, much less into Pikachu's tiny brain. Why would you limit your technology like this? Was it too hard for actual voice recognition? 

The game looks decent for an N64 game. Too bad it isn't fun at all. 

This might be ok if the minigames themselves were fun, but most are just boring endeavors that focus heavily on yelling at Pikachu to do things for you. I won't elaborate further than that, though I will give it a bit of the benefit of the doubt by saying they'd probably be ok for kids, though kids these days are much more video-game adept than I was as a kid and can recognize a bad game on sight (usually. Angry Birds still sells for some reason.) so maybe it won't even be good for kids either.

Why is Pikachu on my bed? Giving me a "come hither" look?

Graphically it actually looks pretty good. It's polygonal and blurry but that's all N64 games, so we can't fault it for that. The music is just a bunch of poppy, boring songs made to be background noise, and you probably won't hear them over your repeated yelling at the screen trying to get Pikachu do to one simple task, which he will then ignore you and just play around by himself. Hey, it's like having a real pet!

I imagined the Zelda "Got Item" sound when I saw this picture. 

I'm more than willing to forgive a spin-off game if it still is a decent game (see Pokemon Pinball).  I'm even willing to forgive a movie game if it is still a decent game (see Saw). But this game, either by the limit of its tech or being just plain rushed, falls flat in nearly every aspect. When it does work it's actually pretty fun, as fun as ordering an electric rodent around in minigames is. But the fact that it only works half the time (if that) kills it, especially since the people playing it in this day and age will probably be in their twenties and have too low of voices for the microphone to even work.

So, you get one out of five stars, Hey You, Pikachu! You might have been more forgivable back in 2000, but since I remember seeing you as a kid in the height of my Pokemon obsession and still thinking you looked idiotic, I'm guessing no.