Nintendo 64, What's your favorite to play or to avoid in the under $20 crowd? (No first party, No Rare)

[FieryReign]

MKM is really not very good at all. Better on the PS1 with cheasy fmv and nicer control pad.

[Tanooki]

I've never enjoyed or liked to watch FMV so that wasn't even a factor, and the Nintendo d-pad if the game uses it is superior to the PS2 one, but if it's analog, then I agree as the n64 stick is too slippery.

You know what this is an edit. This game even on very easy is pissing me off. The sick thing is, most the difficulty comes around randomly popping in people, the jumping sucks, and most of all why I quit playing MK that goddamn pos block button. I'm just getting my ass beat in the opening area and even when I cleared that I barely got a 1/4 if that into the 2nd stage because of the same issues. Just lost my temper and threw the damn cart across the room into a door. It was only $5. Either I need to back away from it for now *OR* harvest the shell for it's parts and beat the ever loving shit out of the PCB. I'm 50/50 on that. I find beat up N64 games at times I avoid, the parts would be welcome.

[JSoup]

MKM is really not very good at all. Better on the PS1 with cheasy fmv and nicer control pad.

It's...it's not a good game, no. But I still like it. I can't put my finger on why, but I've always enjoyed it. Enough so that it's one of my most often rented N64 games and I snapped up an under priced copy I found a few years ago.

[SpaceHarrier]

A couple people mentioned Cruis'n Exotica, but myself, I can't seem to ever stop playing Cruis'n the World. I guess Nintendo published that, but it was developed by Midway, ported by Eurocom.. and it's definitely cheap.

[Bozle]

Always thought Toy Story 2 was a solid little platformer, it goes for like $5-$10. And this is around $25, but I always liked Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, fun Tomb Raider-like game IMO although the controls/camera can be a bit wonky. Always loved the settings of the game and the levels. Lots of levels and a lot of cool locations.

[Tanooki]

I think I mentioned Indy didn't I? It's a little tough to get for $20 at least without rental stickers all over it or a damaged label. I've never understood why that one is cheap either. Other games that were also rental only (or mostly) go for notably more. Pre-2013 the CIB was $50 on the higher end and a loose one was like $10-15, but now it's up to like $25 for a nice cart alone and complete is $100-120~ roughly.

An interesting foot note you can't find online which I know about it was the game only had a run of 10000 copies total. Before blockbuster had them for rent part of an agreement Lucasarts setup was that they would sell X amount of the games to people at full retail price ($50) and mail to their home which they announced in advance via web/email back in 2001. Around a third went for sale and the rest as rentals -- http://web.archive.org/web/20010129110900/http://www.blockbuster.com/gm/detail.jhtml?CATID=3200&PRODID=255896 That's the old order page.

The game had troubled development too thanks specifically and directly because of Lucas meddling in it. When it was in a moderately beta level he pulled the entire team off it but one guy because Battle for Naboo was falling behind and wanted it out due to the movies at the time. I met the last man standing at E3 in 2000, he was sad and alone in the back corner of the NOA booth. I didn't realize it at first, I just knew Indy would be there and I was sad to find it in a back corner but happy I found it with no line. Ended up playing for awhile and a guy in a black factor 5 jacket was there and he ended up spilling the beans and was stressed out and upset over it as he was forced to work as the coder, tester, and even do some graphics and audio fixes too as he got stuck and was given a deadline too. He got it serviceable but still in beta when it came out which is why it has a good many crash bugs, one even you can reproduce 100% of the time at the end of one of the earlier levels that will trip up anyone. It's also how I knew of the small run on it and why you can't find that data googling it even into the wayback machine to the old Lucas pages. I think they noted the size in a pre-sale hype email I got back in the day but not on the site itself. They emailed for weeks running up to the online sales release of it to the point I figured I'd not get one so I sat at home online that day for when it went live and click-paid on that one fast. It's the only CIB N64 game I've kept all these years too.

Despite the bugs it's the superior release. They added more stages to the game. The well noted broken camera and terrible PC controls were scrapped and they copied Ocarina of Time's camera, z-lock on, and c-buttons layout to help it flow a lot better too. Real time lighting effects and particle systems were added. The game also has new musical pieces that are sequenced music not recorded like on PC.

[JSoup]

Here's another one, Beetle Adventure Racing.
You like a game that has pretty neat landscapes, a surprising arrangement of VW decorations and some randomly frustrating controls? $8, have fun.

[Gamevet]

MKM is really not very good at all. Better on the PS1 with cheasy fmv and nicer control pad.

What is MKM?

[Tanooki]

Mortal Kombat Mythologies Sub-Zero both on n64 and ps1.

[jdc]

I haven't been on here in years, but I suddenly remembered this forum ( and my password !!!) because I was driving this morning and memories of Top Gear Rally popped into my head. So many great "non-Rare" "non-first party" games on the N64. Shadowman was cool. I spent a lot of time playing Fighter's Destiny and Cruisin' USA. No N64 game will top Top Gear Rally as far as hours spent playing. I look back now with embarrassment as I used to think to myself that racing graphics couldn't possibly get much more realistic.

[BetaWolf]

These games usually aren't mentioned very often, but the San Francisco Rush games are great arcade racers, with San Francisco Rush 2049 being the height of the series. The games go for under $10 apiece, and are greatly overlooked.

[Tanooki]

jdc hope you stick around, nice to see older members pop back up. I felt the same way about that game too back when it first came out. I've always loved Rally games because it wasn't some lame contest exactly for first, but it was you against the environment and it was about the total points. I really dug that game just as I did with the Sega Rally games on Saturn/DC too. TGR and its sequel really set a solid bar of quality on the N64. I put a lot of time on it in the day and despite looking old now the handling there is still comfy and I hadn't played it in 15 years from when I wrote about it earlier in the thread when I bought it again. It took me going around a course once on practice to feel out the handling decently.

Beta -- No doubt, not sure why Rush never comes up much. Rush 2049 was insane, but I've always had a soft spot for the original one. There's a lot going on for it to feel like more than just another racer.


That said I'm good on four wheels, right now I'd love to snap up Quest 64 again, kind of want the guide too since no one has scanned it :( so I don't have to put much thought into the maps of the game since I haven't the time I used to. Also think I'd dig Dr Mario 64 and Turok 1 as well. Sooner or later I'm going to go through a big list of games and watch some non-yappy people videos and see what works for me on stuff I've never played on it. I'd like to not just do re-runs only.

[jdc]

Turok!! Another one that we used to play constantly. We got SO good at it that we'd "time trial" it. Three more that I fondly remember.....we'd "lock n' load, crank the volume to 11 and kick ass" with Duke Nukem 64, Quake, and Doom 64. SUCH good times. Oh yeah, Hexen too.

[FieryReign]

Did I spot someone mentioning Shadowman? Good for them. One of the best early 3d metroidvanias. And one of my favorite alltime games in existence. It's superb on DC but the N64 version with ram pack is sufficient. The music and ambience in that shit is timeless! Especially the playrooms. Baby laughter and crying with grinding sounds of flesh getting cut and sliced. It's very creepy and disturbing and probably the best thing to come from Acclaim, period. Great game, essential.

[Tanooki]

Turok!! Another one that we used to play constantly. We got SO good at it that we'd "time trial" it. Three more that I fondly remember.....we'd "lock n' load, crank the volume to 11 and kick ass" with Duke Nukem 64, Quake, and Doom 64. SUCH good times. Oh yeah, Hexen too.

I picked up Turok on ebay last night cheap, hopefully it'll land in my hands by Friday. I've had DOOM64 for years, never let it go since it's a new game not a port which most people mistake it to be, and even it has doom bible stuff that was left out of the original like that nasty multi-part laser and the huge boss at the end. I've never played Duke or Quake on n64, read mixed stuff about Duke and Quake looked to be a PC port (like Hexen which I like and have) and then there was Quake 2 which I know rated better and was unique as well. By the way, ever heard of DOOM EX? This guy made an entire program that extracts the graphics/audio data from the N64 rom, throws it into his program, and you can play it on PC in high res with keyboard/mouse or gamepad -- he also was working on Strife and TUROK. Not sure what came of Turok, but you can see a post about it here -- https://doom64ex.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/status-on-version-2-6-and-turokex-updates/


Fiery -- My brother had a N64 back then too, it was one of a pile of games he picked up. You're right, best thing that terrible company ever created, or at least published. That game is so warped but it works well.