From offering four controller ports right out of the gate, to industry-defining 3D capabilities, and even to the introduction of feedback/rumble support, the Nintendo 64 as a whole was an innovative console. Despite controversial decisions like choosing cartridges over CDs for their games, the N64 also saw Nintendo trying all sorts of interesting things during the fifth console generation. Let’s take a closer look at some obvious and not-so-obvious Nintendo 64 games that anticipated the future of console gaming. We’re not including Zelda here, because that’s just a bit obvious.
1. WinBack: Covert Operation
Developer: Omega Force
Publisher: Koei
WinBack: Covert Operation is a highly entertaining and largely well-made third-person stealth shooter in the vein of Syphon Filter. It’s also one of the very first games to utilize a cover system during combat that can nowadays be found in so many third-person action games. Gears of War is the biggest example, but many, many, many games in the seventh generation owed a debt to WinBack.
The gameplay is where WinBack shines (kind of), although the game’s basic plot of stopping a terrorist group trying to use a weapons system to obliterate the world is at least serviceable, even without voice acting. You’re part of team S.C.A.T, and that’s all we can say there.
WinBack: Covert Operation was and still is pretty easy to pick up and play, minus the obvious clunkiness of 3D action from the time. The game also offers a behind the player perspective that wouldn’t really become popular until the likes of Resident Evil 4.
WinBack’s a pretty OK game overall, one that actually got a PS2 port a year later, and even a sequel that nobody remembers called WinBack 2: Project Poseidon, but that was nowhere near as interesting.
2. Perfect Dark
Developer: Rare
Publisher: Rare
While people generally agree that Perfect Dark is one of the best Nintendo 64 games ever, we sometimes gloss over why it continues to be seen as a gold standard for its original console. As a spiritual sequel to GoldenEye 007, Rare took the first-person shooter elements, the missions with varied directives, and the general atmosphere of espionage and stealth, and created something that improved upon its predecessor in every possible way. All with an original and compelling plot built around a secret agent named Joanna Dark infiltrating a shady corporation to rescue a scientist.
Perfect Dark was a hit because it was very ahead of its time. The enemy AI is always worth mentioning, boasting a degree of intuition and understanding so deep for console FPS games, the game is still considered a high mark for enemy intelligence and challenge that new games can aspire to. Disarming opponents with an emphasis on stealth, close combat, and hitting just the right spot is another way Perfect Dark put itself ahead of just about anything being done on consoles at the turn of the 21st century.
Multiplayer options, a stunning variety of weapons and gadgets, hub sections, and an incredible variety of campaigns and objectives are a few more ways Perfect Dark left so many of its contemporaries in the dust. It’s one of the best-aged games of its era, so much so that we’d much rather play it than Perfect Dark Zero.
3. Body Harvest
Developer: DMA Design
Publisher: Midway
Originally planned as an N64 launch game, until Nintendo got nervous about the game’s violent content and refused to publish it, Body Harvest would no doubt have a very different place in game history if it had been released on time. At least, it would be a little better remembered than it is today, which is more deserving of an excellent N64 action-adventure game that has fallen through the cracks over the years.
As a time-traveling, genetically engineered soldier, you’re effectively humanity’s last hope after a brutal series of alien invasions has rendered us effectively obsolete. Body Harvest has a nonlinear structure that sees you traveling across time periods in what is one of the earliest examples of an open world game on a console, and it’s interesting where we’d be without it today.
A major part of the connection Body Harvest shares to those present games is the fact that Body Harvest was developed by DMA Design, who these days is perhaps better known as Rockstar North. While it’s not 100% open world, because come on, this is still the Nintendo 64, everyone, you can still very easily see the genesis of concepts that would become better defined as the technology improved.
4. Super Smash Bros.
Developer: HAL Laboratory
Publisher: Nintendo
While Super Smash Bros. didn’t invent multiverses, or even crossover games featuring a whole roster of famous IPs, they were making beloved characters kick each other’s teeth in long before Fortnite made it almost kind of boring.
Did you guys hear that Gunther from Friends is coming to Fortnite? Ah, who cares.
The success of Super Smash Bros, which basically boils down to “What would happen if Mario and Kirby got in a fight?”, was a clear influence on the mass of similar games that have come out since. Even movie franchises like the MCU indirectly benefit from earlier media like Super Smash Bros or even the Marvel vs. Capcom predecessor X-Men Vs Street Fighter launching three years prior proved that people really like it when characters from different worlds get together to fight. Super Smash Bros. was a relative novelty when it was released in 1999 for the Nintendo 64, especially as essentially the first platform fighter that’s now been emulated 1000 or so times.
The mass of easter eggs and various references to other games and characters is another major aspect of pop culture that, again, wasn’t invented by Super Smash Bros., but arguably helped people to believe the unexpected when it came to crossovers.
5. Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage
Developer: H20 Entertainment
Publisher: THQ
Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage, with its turn-based combat and a mostly third-person perspective as you explored a sprawling world, was as close to an RPG highlight for the console as anything else you could get. The hugeness of the game’s world, as well as features like permadeath and terrain-based combat that could even be influenced by the time of day, makes Aidyn Chronicles feel at times like an early example of the action RPGs we see a lot today. But it’s that seemingly endless world that you can explore that makes Aidyn Chronicles far more unique in its heyday than you might think.
The game looks, well, fine for its time, but it’s also unforgivably difficult in places, buggy as hell at times, and the combat overall is agonizingly slow. The First Mage unquestionably has its problems.
Despite bugginess and gameplay issues, Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage is worth exploring. The story of a young squire named Alaron whose search for a missing farmer begins a much larger narrative is one that’s well-told. There’s a ton of characters to meet and recruit, and most of them are fascinating and extremely helpful. The soundtrack is also extremely underrated, but it’s that opportunity to explore a world that even by today’s standards is still impressively expansive that makes Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage ahead of its time.
6. Super Mario 64
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
There’s an anecdote involving the infamous PS1 3D platformer Bubsy 3D, in which creator Michael Berlyn saw a demonstration of Super Mario 64 at the January 1996 CES. Berlyn was almost immediately struck by the realization that his Bubsy 3D was going to get absolutely slaughtered by the game that would set the standard for 3D platforming when it was released four months before. Bubsy 3D was developed at a point in time in which no one really knew how to make a fully-realized 3D platformer for a console. That doesn’t forgive Bubsy 3D, but it’s important to note that it was made at a time when it didn’t have much influence or inspiration to draw from.
We’re giving Bubsy 3D a lot of airtime here.
And then Super Mario 64, more than any other 3D platforming game up to that point, showed everyone how it should be done. You can’t get much more ahead of the times than literally establishing a standard that didn’t previously exist. Executing complex jumps with precision and excellent timing in full 3D worlds, with a mostly free camera following along, was now demonstrably possible. In the case of Mario 64, it was also a really good time.
It’s easy to forget the full impact of Super Mario 64 nearly 30 years on. From the top of its most beloved games to the more obscure releases, the Nintendo 64 had so many groundbreaking titles.
7. Rocket: Robot on Wheels
Developer: Sucker Punch Productions
Publisher: Ubi Soft
Before they became the creators of Sly Cooper, and eventually a part of PlayStation Studios, Sucker Punch Productions made exactly one game for the Nintendo 64, and it would be their first. Rocket: Robot on Wheels isn’t one of their best-remembered titles, but it’s a fun 3D platformer which sees you completing stages and unlocking worlds as a robot utilizing a variety of different vehicles.
It’s the part where your character traverses these themed worlds in various vehicles that we’re paying attention to, because Rocket: Robot on Wheels would be the first home console game to build its entire gameplay around a real-time realistic physics engine. That’s nothing special today, but in 1999 it was almost unheard of. Suddenly, you had a game in which the puzzles you faced could only be solved with a respect for the basic laws of physics, including inertia, friction, and mass. You don’t have to be an expert on this stuff to enjoy Rocket, but the usual rules of platform games from this era aren’t going to apply either.
This might be a cute N64 platforming game, with Rocket in particular being a pretty likable little robot, but once you start playing Rocket: Robot on Wheels, you find something very different to anything else on the console.
8. Hybrid Heaven
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Again, RPGs really didn’t have much of a presence on the Nintendo 64, but the ones that did make it to the console had a chance to immediately stand out for that reason alone. Games like Hybrid Heaven further stand out because it’s one of the weirdest RPGs of its era. Owing as much to third-person action-adventure games as it does to traditional RPGs, Hybrid Heaven is an ambitious effort from Konami, but it’s not one that gelled with a tonne of players back in 1999.
At least as far as the west is concerned, Hybrid Heaven is among the first console games to try and combine RPG elements with action game fundamentals. It’s one of only a handful of games that lets you put enemies in backbreakers, and could actually be seen as a weird blend of something like Parasite Eve, Sloclap’s insanely underrated Absolver, and a bit of Final Fantasy.
It’s an impressive game for that reason alone, but it’s also a fun, engaging, and suitably challenging release from Konami, but one that’s definitely not for everybody. Hybrid Heaven will have you leaping around like a Tomb Raider game one moment and locked in a real-time RPG battle with monsters the next where you have to seriously think about their body parts, and you’ll be able to keep up with the transition easily.
9. Castlevania 64
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
With a dramatically different 3D depiction of this franchise than anyone was expecting, a lot of Castlevania fans simply weren’t sure what to think of. The game received a mostly positive reception from fans and critics alike in 1999, with a few standout bad or mixed reviews, but these days the game seems to have a deeper appreciation for trying to bring this series into the 3D world.
Games like Nightmare Creatures and Castlevania 64 may not have realized it at the time, but both games anticipated the player who doesn’t mind when the odds are almost impossibly stacked against them. And also being big goths.
As the Soulsborne staples and Soulslike genre developed later on, games like Castlevania 64 proved there was something fun to be found in environmental storytelling and really making your players explore that environment to figure out the way ahead.
To put it another way, Castlevania 64 drops you off in the deep end from a challenge standpoint, and then almost completely leaves you to figure things out on your own. The unusual day/might cycle and specifically timed interactions with NPCs even precedes Shenmue. There are plenty of fair criticisms to level against this game, but it’s really nowhere near as rough as what you’ve heard.
10. Space Station Silicon Valley
Developer: DMA Design
Publisher: Take-Two Interactive
Space Station Silicon Valley, the 1998 puzzle-platformer with bizarre and sometimes brilliant creature designs, is another fascinating game from the artists formerly known as DMA Design, and it’s another opportunity to see these developers working with concepts that seemed highly unusual in the late 90s.
Space Station Silicon Valley struggled in its day to find a large enough audience that would enjoy its weird sense of humor, strange designs, and gameplay centered around a robot that must possess different animals on a crashed planet to survive. Each animal has different traits that will influence both the platforming and the puzzle-solving, and it complements the unique aesthetics of Space Station Silicon Valley to have accessible gameplay that still manages to keep you on your toes. You can even do a quick crash course through multiple other genres with its bonus stages — a neat little addition.
Space Station Silicon Valley saw disappointing sales, and it’s too bad that this inventive release is rarely mentioned today. Beyond its forward-thinking innovations, which will probably appeal to you sickos who loved Spore after all, and even jived with the Cappy possession mechanics in Super Mario Odyssey, it’s just a really weird little game to pick up for a couple of hours.
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