Reason #1:
Mischief Makers, Developed by Treasure.
Mischief makers harkens back to an era long since
past, an era where graphics didn't matter (Although MM's sprite effects are good)
and gameplay was king. Long before violence was a selling point for a game, a small girl
named Marina shake shake'd her way into our hearts..for all three of us that have actually played
this game. This is one of those games people rally to when people ask their opinions on what's an awesome
game, even if they haven't played it.
It's probably the best 2D game for the Nintendo 64, and something that's dirt cheap now. I highly recommend it.
Reason #2:
Zelda: Ocarina of time/Majora's Mask
Well people might hate me for this, but I liked both Zelda games. True the camera is a bitch to fight with, and
some of the side quests are trials in patience, and the Water Temple in Ocarina made me weep openly. But they did take that first
baby step forward into the next gen. I just didn't think Nintendo wouldn't evolve past these engines for a long time. Unless the newest
Zelda game moves away from it, it'll be a trial in patience like the last three. It's not a broken game by any means, but the flaws inherant
in 3D games hurt and hinders it a bit.
Reason #3:
Paper Mario
With this game, Nintendo proved it didn't really need Square to make a classic (Square pretty much developed the original Mario RPG on SNES).
It has all the charm of a Nintendo game, coupled with a pretty fun battle time system, and the cutest sprites you'll ever see. Some of the emotions
Mario goes through is just fun, and most of the charachters you use as sidekicks add a lot to the game in my opinion, and the stealthy bits
with Princess Toadstool add a lot of flavor to the game. All in all, it's pretty much the only RPG (Besides Ogre Battle 64) worth even touching
on N64, because the only other one is Quest 64. and unggnghgh that one hurts me internally.
Reason #4:
Goldeneye 007
This game revolutionized the First Person Shooter on consoles. This is Rare's second finest hour in my opinion, and
is the second most addiciting multi-player game in recent memory in my honest opinion. Starting off with a movie
license is usually a death knell for any game, but this is one of the very very few games based on a movie that works.
Despite the now primitive looking graphics, it still holds it's own today against bigger badder threats like doom
3 and
Halo 2. The controls flow wonderfully, and it's actually a lengthy game that wraps up perfectly. How many games today can you say that
of?
Reason #5:
Star Fox 64
This is THE reason to own a Nintendo 64. They took the building blocks
of Starfox on SNES and the discarded parts of Starfox 2 (Not released)
and built this masterpiece. Hidden paths, medals to unlock, splitting
missions, and just plain
fun. Remeber when games were fun and
not chores to be completed? This is the most fun I've had outside
Tetris Attack in my entire gaming life, and that's saying a lot. And
even after this masterpiece of gaming, Nintendo still fumbled the
ball with Star Fox Adventures (Which I can semi-forgive, because it
was an existing game and just slapped with new charachters a'la Super
Mario Brothers 2.) and Star Fox ASSault. This series is all but dead, but
it peaked here and now with Star Fox 64. Also introduced Rumble Technology for
videogames. Which has become the defacto standard for everything nowadays.
People have bitched about the Nintendo 64 doing a lot of bad things, but what other system could survive as long as this one did
with pretty much 0 third party support? If you took away Square from Sony would they have done as well in the PS1 era? What about
no Halo for Xbox? That's pretty much game over for Microsoft and they join 3D0 and Atari's Jaguar in the scrap heap don't they?
And there's a ton of marginal fun games for N64 like Blast Corps, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, the early WCW wrestling games,
Bangai-O (Import) and even Pokemon Colosseum when Pokemon was cool for that 5 or 6 seconds.
So go back to your new fangled systems, and I'll be sitting here with my old stuff and playing good games, and not tech demos with
gameplay afterthoughts.
