The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Tingle Tingle! Kooloo-LimPAH!!

The Nintendo 64 was home to a great many greats, both single titles and full series, and I've basically played none of them until tracking them down for this 1001 list. I have seen many of them, however, and I often know enough about them to know what's going on in a general sense at least, but The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a game that I don't know an awful lot about.

I know that it's got something to do with time, and probably a lot to do with a mask, but beyond that, I don't have much of a picture. It's another 3D Zelda game on the N64 that passed me by as I was off playing umpteen PlayStation games in its stead.

What have I missed this time?

Sin and Punishment

RUFFIANS IN MEMORY

We've not seen a shoot 'em up for some time now, and while you could argue that Sin and Punishment isn't strictly speaking a shoot 'em up, I'm going to ignore that, because it's an on-rails shooter developed by Treasure, who have shoot 'em ups running through their very veins.

You are... uhm... hang on a second, I'm going to need to read up on this...

Paper Mario

"You always seem to beat up your enemies... Do you work out?"

From one colourful goofy-looking RPG to another. This time it's the Nintendo 64 playing the host to the second RPG title for the moustached plumber. The first, Super Mario RPG, didn't engage with me in any real way. It was showing its age, I suppose, and the characters weren't doing it for me.

Fast forward four years, with a new console to play on, and the second game, Paper Mario, has the chance to save the day and hopefully offer a Mario RPG that gets my attention.

I said Grandia II was predictable. I wonder if Mario is about to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser...

Excitebike 64

So you wanna be a champion?

You wait for ages for a motocross title, and then two come along at once. One with elastic physics in Elasto Mania, the other Excitebike 64 for the Nintendo 64, a sequel to 1984's Excitebike.

I don't recall ever having played Excitebike, and I've certainly never played Excitebike 64, though I do own it. If I can get around to owning a working N64 to go along with it, that'd be great, but until then, I'll just have to run its bits and bytes through an emulator.

After bouncing around the weird world of Elasto Mania, a more traditional, more grounded motocross experience is probably what I need. Let's see if Excitebike 64 offers it.

Banjo-Tooie

Wuh huhauh wuhuah wuh...

We're back in this bright green platform playground are we? Smashing. I said Banjo-Kazooie was better than Super Mario 64 when I had the chance to play it, so how does the imaginatively titled sequel, Banjo-Tooie stack up to both?

Does it follow the fine tune and perfect it approach? Does it cram in yet more collectables to hunt down? Will it make use of even more of the N64 hardware? Is that even possible in the distant past that is the year 2000?

Rocket: Robot on Wheels

Fishy, fishy, fishy?

Ernest Rutherford is quoted as saying 'that which is not is physics is stamp collecting'. Little did we know at the time that he wasn't referring to the various fields of science and how they look at the Universe, but accurately describing the gameplay of the largely unknown Rocket: Robot on Wheels.

Just how could a physicist at the turn of the 20th century know about a Nintendo 64 title released at the turn of the 21st? The miracles of science...

Jet Force Gemini

Astonishingly, this can played to this day.

You wouldn't believe how often I've gotten Jet Force Gemini's title wrong because of a certain other Jet Something Something game from the past. It's safe to say that I'm much more familiar with that than I am with this Rare title for the Nintendo 64, and I've barely skated and spraypainted at the same time in video gaming as a whole, so we're talking next to zero knowledge - just the way I like it.

Jet Force Gemini follows the story of some space police or something as they attempt to thwart the galactic spread of insects. Giant, weapon-wielding insects. Insects as big as bears. Bigger, even. This is serious business.

F-Zero X

Booster OK!!

Is it safe to say that when it comes to sci-fi racing games, players are usually in one of two camps? Those who swear their allegiance to Wipeout (wipE'out"?) and those who follow F-Zero? Sorry to all the fans of XGIII there...

If it is safe to say that, then I am - as you might have read in this blog before - firmly grounded in an anti-gravity craft belonging to the Wipeout series. Nintendo consoles weren't my thing back in those formative years, so it doesn't matter how good F-Zero X was claimed to be because I just wasn't there to know it at the time.

Even in the decades since, I know only of F-Zero games as 'like Wipeout but with more, smaller ships'. That's what I've got going into this game. Many small ships, kinda like Wipeout. I think it's time to educate myself.

Body Harvest

The Aliens have returned... and they're hungry.

Some of the games on the 1001 list are masterpieces, presenting gamers with the absolute best experience that the technological progress of the times could allow. They have a fanbase that spans across the world, they have genre-defining entries in their series, and have spawned entertainment outside of the video game, bleeding across into geek culture, and whathaveyou.

Then there's Body Harvest, which very few seem to know or care about, despite it being another milestone on the road to open world 3D games like Grand Theft Auto III - also developed by the studio behind Body Harvest.

What's it all about then, this hidden gem? Why is there a spaceman blowing up a huge bug in the desert?

1080° Snowboarding

You can neither pizza nor french fry here...

One of my earliest PlayStation memories was of a demo disc that contained one of the Cool Boarders games, I forget which one exactly. Snow itself was a rarity in my life, and snowboarding was, therefore, an impossibility, save for its digital incarnations.

For me, after Cool Boarders was a chunk of nothing before SSX arrived on the PlayStation 2, but in the wider world, the other console that was the Nintendo 64 had its own snowboarding title, and it was probably a fair bit better, as we'll soon find out after playing some 1080° Snowboarding.

Banjo-Kazooie

Huh whuauh huhwhuah wuh...

There are quite a few games that I haven't played before owing to the fact that I never owned the hardware they were on back in the day, or in any days since, really. Once you buy into one system, you stick with it. The PlayStation was my first console, the PlayStation 2 my second, the PlayStation 3 my third... It wasn't until only a few years ago, with the intent of going through this 1001 list that I even gave a look into buying the likes of an Xbox 360, or N64.

So, it's 2018, and I've had my N64 for some months now, and one of the boxless, manual-less cartridges I have available to play is Banjo-Kazooie, a third-person platformer heavily inspired by Super Mario 64 - and why not?

Taking control of a banjo playing bear and his sarcastic feathered friend, you must rescue your sister from the witch Gruntilda, obtaining more collectables than you can even conceive of along the way.

Let's see what I remember from however many playthroughs and speedruns I've seen down the years...

Star Fox 64

Do an aileron roll?

Does anybody out there even know of this game by its various alternate titles? Lylat Wars? What even is that? This is Star Fox 64 - always has been, always will be, and like pretty much all Nintendo 64 titles on this 1001 list, I'm playing it for the first time twenty years after its release.

Following the Star Fox team on their mission to stop scientist-turned-psychopath Andross from destroying the Lylat system, we're going to play as Fox McCloud, barrel rolling through enemy fire in his Arwing.

Fox McCloud

That's right, him.

GoldenEye 007

The name's Bond.

First Person Shooters. Video Game Console. The two have a history of not getting along, according to the Internet, and you can see why. When compared to the precision of a mouse and the vast array of inputs available on a keyboard, a limited controller with clumsy digital inputs just doesn't seem like it'd work.

Yet GoldenEye 007 exists and is considered one of the greatest titles known to man, as well as one of the most important milestones along this historical trek of ours - a first-person shooter on a video game console that doesn't suck.

I first saw it somewhere around its release at a friends house. I don't recall much of that day and don't think I ever played it myself, and most of what I know about it comes from watching plenty of speedruns and hearing it almost constantly get brought up in discussions of someone's gaming past.

Let's get this blog done in six minutes, shall we, James?

Blast Corps

Smashing.

Destroying things is fun. Destroying things in a variety of different ways is fun. Destroying things against the clock can be pretty fun, though it does depend on the time limit. Destroying things because the 'plot' involves clearing a path for a runaway nuclear missile launcher with a tendency to explode on contact with anything attached to the floor is... well, it's Blast Corps.

Dozers at the ready, because we're about to crash with a purpose.

Wave Race 64

Let the good games roll.

Racing games had been around for a long time by the mid-1990s. Cars and motorbikes, futuristic hovercraft, planes. What machine can we leap onto and trash around a circuit in pursuit of thrills that we haven't experienced yet?

Alright, it's not actually the first time we could jump aboard a boatercycle in a video game, but Wave Race 64 is a clear front-runner for the best time aboard a boatercycle. Colourful, arcadey, and sat atop water physics that will leave you suitably impressed, this game has singlehandedly demolished my childhood.

So thanks, Nintendo. Thanks a lot.

Super Mario 64

Just try me.

There aren't many titles that can claim to be one of the most revolutionary video games of all time, but bragging about it doesn't get you many friends, so Nintendo simply let the critics and consumers praise Super Mario 64 to the heavens and just sit back and bask in the glory.

I was not a Nintendo 64 kid. Somewhere in the mid to late 1990s I played GoldenEye at a friends house and have no real memories of the game, the console, or the house itself, but I did have a mesmerising ice cream float - my first ever, in fact, and I'm getting off topic.

I didn't have an N64 and was perfectly content with having a PlayStation instead, and so these monumental giants of video game history that have been developed by Nintendo have simply gone unplayed, even in the decades since their release.

Super Mario 64 is no exception, I've not played it. I've seen it. Maaaany many times. Slowly, quickly, very very quickly, very very glitchy. But I've not gotten my hands on a three-pronged controller to find out how it handles, and how it changed everything.

Limber up your larynx, because we're gonna get all 'Woo, whey, wah-hoo!' as we hunt down a bunch of stars in order to save Princess Peach.

Again.

Pilotwings 64

No, he was the man. It was a really great move. He was inverted.

Way back when, I played Pilotwings and didn't quite get off the ground with it, despite the game taking place everywhere other than the ground. The controls were imprecise, or perhaps precisely too precise, and my level of skill was so far off the charts that getting into the office in order to take the various pilot license tests was an achievement too far.

Enter, then, Pilotwings 64, a 3D sequel, again releasing alongside its host console, the Nintendo 64, hoping to introduce players to the skies with a colourful cast of characters whizzing about a tropical island in hang gliders, jetpacks and gyrocopters.

Will the introduction of an analogue stick lead to more success for me? There's only one way to find out.

Mario Kart 64

Poomp!

"Who loves Super Mario Kart?"
"I love Super Mario Kart. That's a classic game, right there, yessirree."
"Who wants to see it leap into the third dimension, a strange place where tracks can have curves and bumps and uppy-downy bits and scenery - actual scenery?"
"I'd like to see that, yes, certainly."
"Then I give to you, Mario Kart 64. All the graphical power of the Nintendo 64, with none of the sprite work from yesteryear."
"But there's spri--"
"Sssh."

There's something inherently fun about not letting go of the accelerator as you tear around an otherworldly race track, dropping bananas and F-bombs as you go. I don't know what it is exactly. Maybe it's the fact that it's so not serious, and yet in a multiplayer battle - literally or not - it sure can be.

Mario Kart 64 is perhaps the forgotten Mario Kart game. It hasn't aged brilliantly, but that's not going to stop me from rediscovering it twenty-odd years later.