The N64 can proudly boast a very healthy handful of the best games of all time. It’s a console that changed games forever. But, just like a lot of early 3D adopters, it had a bunch of games that didn’t adapt well back then, and they surely don’t hold up well now. Grip the middle part of your N64 controller tight for good luck, these are the worst N64 games of all time. Quick, obvious bonus bad game: Superman 64. We wheely got nothing to say about it.
Carmageddon 64
Developer: Software Creations
Publisher: Sales Curve Interactive/Titus Interactive
Especially when this one may just be so, so much worse.
The Carmageddon series on PC and PS1 was a popular, straightforward, and highly violent franchise. You had to survive and complete races, destroy the competition, and pick up as many points as possible for mowing down pedestrians in your wake while also not getting caught by your mum playing it. Dumb and really not that great at all, but at least those games arguably had some entertainment value behind them. That value is completely absent from Carmageddon 64, which suffered from so many distinct flaws that it’s hard to focus on any one wretched mistake in particular.
With bland, dated graphics, a terrible soundtrack and just sound design in general, and controls that make you feel like you got absolutely plastered before getting behind the wheel in Carmageddon 64 like you’re a Hollywood actor, the N64 may not have had a Grand Theft Auto, but it did have Grand Theft Oh-No if you’re counting this one.
A frankly honking port of the second Carmageddon game, Carmageddon 64 makes the simple act of turning a corner into some kind of fist fight with a large hadron collider. It’s a game that fights you the entire journey, and is just hideous to look at. Quite honestly one of the worst PC ports of all time, Carmageddon 64 faced many delays before it was eventually sharted out onto the N64, and we really wish its developer had much less fibre in their diet.
Daikatana
Developer: Ion Storm
Publisher: Kemco
You know something’s gone a bit wrong with your “revolutionary” game when the Game Boy Color version of it is by far the best version.
John Romero is one of the key figures behind the creation of such groundbreaking, influential first-person shooters as Quake, Doom, and Wolfenstein. He’s also a lovely guy with somehow even lovelier hair. 57 years old and he currently has more hair than I think I’ve ever had?
But make no mistake: his baffling, visually horrific, and barely playable mess known as Daikatana is utterly, completely terrible.
Daikatana was arguably doomed for much of its long development period. Everyone at least initially expected something special from Romero, who seemingly turned into Colonel Kurtz for a while. The game was repeatedly pushed back to incorporate new ideas and technology.
What we finally got for the PC and N64 felt like a parody of what was promised. The dismal AI and loathsome controls were highlights for a game with unlikable characters, absolutely awful companions, a dumb story, and a difficulty curve that forgot to be fun. By the gods, what a mess.
War Gods
Developer: Midway/Eurocom
Publisher: Midway
Even at the time of its release in 1997, War Gods felt like the worst things about the 90s were boiled down to an essence that could cause severe poisoning if ingested, and not just because the Nickelodeon goo would be in that weird broth too.
An unremarkable arcade game that received several ports, the N64 version of War Gods is perhaps the worst of a very depressing bunch. Nevermind that the game feels like an aggressive ripoff of Midway’s own Mortal Kombat, with players choosing among a group of edgy, completely forgettable warriors. It’s almost a surprise that the characters aren’t also named like offbrand Mortal Kombat misfits. You half expect these dorks to be named counterfeit names like Johnny Sturdy Box, Tania Knife or Seasonally Frigid.
While it did have some bangers, the N64 was home to some of the worst fighting titles ever made. IGN dismissed it as “a good idea that went sour” and scored it 4.3/10, while GameSpot called it a “strange mix” that didn’t quite come together. Even magazines like Nintendo Power, usually generous to N64 releases, weren’t that kind.
Ultimately, War Gods was an early failed experiment with the 3D engine Midway would later use for the MK franchise. That 3D was poorly executed in 1997, and it’s comically bad in the modern era. War Gods has frustrating controls to match characters and a story that you just can’t bring yourself to give a damn about. War? What is it good for? Not this.
Olympic Hockey ‘98
Developer: Treyarch Invention
Publisher: Midway
Sometimes it’s kinda surprising that Midway limped by publishing games all the way up until 2009. Especially with jokes like this one. Which was developed by the Call of Duty Zombies guys, by the way!
The fact that Midway took their mediocre sequel Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey ’98 and rereleased it as Olympic Hockey ’98 was bad enough. If this happened today there’s a very, very high chance Reddit would get quite upset about it.
You see, the games are virtually identical, with the exception of national teams replacing NHL teams, and the addition of an Olympic tournament feature. Midway couldn’t be bothered to make any changes to a game whose overall quality was roundly criticized for being a sequel that doubled down on its weakest points, while offering virtually nothing new. The game is fun in brief spurts, but that’s almost exclusively undone by how boring it all gets before long. There’s nothing of depth here, and that becomes clear after about 20 minutes of play.
IGN infamously gave this reskin of a bad game a big fat zero in its contemporary review. Normally, that would seem kind of harsh, but this was one of those FIFA Legacy Editions on Switch we used to get but for the N64, except it’s somehow even less upfront about it. This w a real assault on how much laziness you’re willing to withstand.
WCW Backstage Assault
Developer: Inland Productions
Publisher: THQ
World Championship Wrestling in 2000 was a trainwreck in every sense of the word. If you didn’t already know that at the time, WCW Backstage Assault was probably where you realised that the house that Disco Inferno built was not long for this world.
Here’s the main problem: there’s no ring. Every match takes place in backrooms, garages, the void where The Wall’s charisma would be, boiler rooms, or next to cars. Ooh! What could’ve been a cool gimmick as a side mode is instead the entire game. You’re just smacking people into walls and wondering if these wrestlers had been in traffic pile-ups, but no: they just look like that. Kinda nuts that Just Bring It would come out a year later.
Controls are sluggish, moves rarely connect properly, and hit detection feels like a lottery. The roster is large enough, but the wrestlers all feel weightless. Throwing Goldberg or Sting around has the same impact as tossing a paper aeroplane in your dreams.
Reviews at the time buried it. IGN gave it 2/10, calling it “a complete disaster.” Fans agreed, and sales were abysmal. It was so bad it effectively ended EA’s brief stint in the wrestling genre, leaving WCW Backstage Assault remembered as a cautionary tale in how to miss the point entirely.
All you have is a game that hates you for playing it more than Bret Hart hates Bill Goldberg.
Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue
Developer: Mass Media
Publisher: THQ
Probably the biggest claim to fame that Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue has is that it’s often seen as the hipster’s pick when it comes to the worst N64 games. Released a month before the PS2 came west, barely anyone even knew this existed for a long time.
This game should’ve been an easy win though really. Kids loved Power Rangers, the show was still doing alright, and the idea of morphing into giant Zords sounded cool. Still does. But there’s nothing cool about this piece of arse.
Most of the game revolves around bland rescue missions where you run through empty city blocks saving civilians. There’s almost no variety — the objectives repeat, the environments look barren, and the Rangers move with all the grace of shopping trolleys piloted by infants. Combat is worse: punches and kicks barely register, hit detection is all over the place, and enemies stand around like cardboard cutouts waiting to fall over.
The Zord battles should’ve been the highlight, but they’re just slow, awkward 3D slap-fights where giant robots feel like toys from Home Bargains missing most of their face.
The only good thing anyone will ever say about this licensed mistake is that you can finish the entire thing in a little over an hour. Beyond that, don’t even bother.
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
Developer: Kemco
Publisher: Ubisoft
Nothing says “Batman Beyond” like a video game that looks like a dog’s backside and plays like a punishment for daring to dream of fun.
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker for N64 is based on the movie that brought back Mark Hammil’s Joker to essentially end Batman Beyond on a dark, dramatic note, and the show overall really did a lot to rehab Batman’s image back after Batman & Robin. Return of the Joker apparently wanted to undo that. Just look at the way Batman moves. Has he been eating enough fibre?
This is a thoroughly bad release in its controls, graphics, sound, and everything else, and it’s wrapped in a big, bright, miserable package of tedium that is difficult to put into words. Environments are bare and lifeless, character models look blocky and unfinished, and animations are stiffer than Keanu Reeves with acting instruction other than “kill”. He is good at kill, though.
It’s just so, so lazy. Lazier than writers who keep saying “so” for emphasis. So lazy. Beat up some bad guys, move to the next room. Repeat. Long after your eyes have rolled into the back of your head, and your journey to the afterlife begins, this game will continue to drag on.
At least, in death, you won’t have to play Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker again.
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
Developer: Avalanche Software
Publisher: Midway/GT Interactive
After the success of Mortal Kombat III, which was not without its own issues, Midway signed off on a string of profoundly not very good games as they aimlessly chased trends. They really put the mid in Midway back then.
Often referred to as the worst spin-off of all time, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero might be the worst of this period, offering an intriguing concept that becomes borderline unplayable when it’s run through the specifics of a Mortal Kombat game. Or any game, actually.
Taking on the role of Sub Zero in a solo, side-scrolling action platformer, players are subjected to an elaborate series of crushing disappointments. The MK fighting style translates poorly to the format, and that’s really just the beginning of the annoyance that awaits you.
Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero has one of the worst controller setups in the history of the Nintendo 64. The game might be salvageable if it wasn’t so difficult that you may go blind from the sheer frustration of trying to make even one jump or survive one of the normal encounters with a random enemy. The rest of the game is arguably just a veritable, forgettable orgy of frustration, but the platforming here feels completely subhuman. Every single jump feels like your cartilage just grew in half an hour ago.
It’s the controls and immediate degree of difficulty that propels Sub-Zero to a special kind of awfulness. If you thought you were safe from it, it is, for some reason, a part of the Mortal Kombat Legacy Collection. Oh, brother.
Blues Brothers 2000
Developer: Player 1
Publisher: Titus Interactive
Blues Brothers 2000 is a cringey, unnecessary movie sequel partially saved by some pretty solid musical sequences. Partially. It still isn’t very good. Not even 25 years of revisionism could save it.
You don’t get that sole saving grace in the Blues Brothers 2000 video game, though. It’s right at home with the film’s almost decadent level of failure, offering a platformer devoid of fun, charm, or anything that could even be regarded as ironic entertainment. It’s frankly kind of astonishing that Blues Brothers 2000 shares the same console and genre as Super Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie. But then again, it is published by Titus Interactive, who also published Carmageddon for the N64.
Where do we even begin with this glaring turd? Well, the platforming elements are uninspired to the extreme, with the constant feeling that you’ve seen this done better literally dozens of times. The rhythm game elements are annoying at best with the N64 controller. The graphics are nothing special. There’s nothing to keep you going, and yet the whole thing is so intensely easy, you’ll be done in about the time it takes to watch the actual Blues Brothers 2000 movie.
Don’t do that instead. Or buy this. Really don’t do that. Don’t do anything. Just stay in your room and hope the millennium bug belatedly takes the movie and this game out of existence, then go and get the original movie on 4K instead.
Clay Fighter 63 1/3rd
Developer: Interplay
Publisher: Interplay
If you didn’t live through the 90s, which is precisely 4 of you maybe, it was a pretty cool time. But you were at least spared the glut of movies, shows, and video games that told you thousands of times per second imaginable how cool and edgy they were. Cowabunga and so forth. If you were to build a town around this radical behaviour, the supposedly funny fighting game Clay Fighter 63 1/3rd could run for mayor and somehow be even more incompetent than err um uh Mayor Quimby.
Unfortunately, if you take away such classic “jokes” as racial caricatures and a title that makes you wonder who the lead singer of Primus is beefing with, what you’re left with is even more depressing. Bad controls, unappealing visuals, and a brutally slow playing style that makes every fight feel like a century of existential dread. Clay Fighter 63 1/3rd isn’t even fun to type or say, let alone play.
Performance issues didn’t help. The framerate dipped constantly, inputs sometimes failed to register, and load times dragged on longer than most matches. Reviews at the time were brutal: IGN gave it a 3.5/10. Kinda surprised nobody gave it a 1.3 or a 3 ⅓ out of 10 score. What a waste.
Clay Fighter 63 1/3rd was later released in a Blockbuster rental exclusive edition called The Sculptor’s Cut, which adds new glisten to this giant mound of crap. Today, that version is one of the rarest N64 games ever and of course now one of the most expensive, proving that people will buy anything as long as you put a “very rare” sticker on it.
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