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Thread: "40 Winks" for N64-a lovely little platformer

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    Great Puma (Level 12) YoshiM's Avatar
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    Default "40 Winks" for N64-a lovely little platformer

    Recently I decided to jump onto the flashcart bandwagon and splurged for an Everdrive 64 V2.5 from Stone Age Gamer. I couldn't justify getting the new model. I did opt for an 8 GB memory card as I didn't have one kicking around. When I got the cartridge and the memory card, I discovered that SAG set up the card for me! On top of the setup, I got some free games compliments of SAG and Piko Interactive: "40 Winks", "Glover", "Milo's Astro Lanes", "Star Shot", "Wetrix" and a beta version of a game called "Dragon Sword" (which I'll talk about in a later post-it's rough but had a LOT of potential IMO).

    After kicking the tires of the cart using games I know like "Super Mario 64", "Goldeneye" and such, I started dipping into the Piko Interactive stuff. So I started alphanumerically-"40 Winks". I didn't know much about the game and I skipped the intro as I was still in my "cartridge testing phase" (as I told my youngest step son who was insisting that he get to play as he sat by me with a 2DS in his hand with Smash Bros). As it turns out, it grabbed me enough that I went through and beat a level before moving on to the another game. It may not be a Mario, but man the characters of Rough and Tumble trying to save little creatures in their dreams is a fun adventure!

    In the game, the children Rough and Tumble need to go into their dreamworld to save these little creatures called winks while fighting the strange nightmarish creatures that haunt their imaginations. The controls are your typical Mario/Banjo fare. I can't recall if you could choose your character at the beginning but I moved the boy Rough around with ease. He scooted about effortlessly while holding out his candle that magically kept itself lit while he ran about. An old style alarm clock is your "Bottles"or "Toad" informant that tells you what you need to look for or how to handle situations. The first level I went into was a haunted house. You start off in a forested area with an easy chair representing a save point, which saves your game to a memory pak. The button controls are your standard jump/attack with the C buttons adjusting the camera. The Z trigger makes your character, at least Rough anyway, do a sonic ranged attack that sounds like an angry cat. This power becomes available when you gather moon-shaped tokens that are floating about.

    General game play is pretty typical of the "collect-a-thon" style of the mid to latter 90's platformer genre as are some of the puzzles (at least that I encountered). As mentioned before, you collect moon tokens to give your child a ranged attack (the "snarl attack"reminded me of when a character used "fire breathing"in the game "Gauntlet Legends"). "Zzz"'s are life, which you start in the 50's (if I remember right) and deplete when you get clobbered by bad guys. Though when you slap around those dream creatures, they are bound to cough up some Z's for you. Gears, or at least in the haunted house level, are like notes in the Banjo Kazooie games were you need to collect X amount in order to enter doors. As I haven't ventured to the next level yet, I'm not sure if the number of gears carry on to the next level. You seem to get all the gears you need to get through the level you are on and I didn't encounter a door that had more than I could find, so I don't think there's any back tracking. There are blocks to push, buttons to jump on and switches to flip. You also get access to power ups that transform your character into something more powerful. In the haunted house, I found a Jack-in-the-box that turned Rough into a jester-looking character that had a high jump and a strong wand melee attack. I got 99 seconds to be in the form, which allowed me to get through a couple areas a lot easier than without. If you run out of the power, you can always back track and get it back.

    The audio/visual package is decent for such a title. Everything looks cute and not really blocky but it does seem to have that N64 "fog" over it. The music was decent and not obtrusive. Sound effects were your standard cartoon "bonks" and such. There was no lag or slow down, which could be attributed to the level layout. Each section of the house wasn't really huge and there are "warps" that take you from a part of the house to a different area of the house, probably to free up memory to keep the game running smooth.

    All in all, it's a fun little adventure I'll be getting back to. When reading about the game on Piko's site, I discovered that it's also a co-op game. I'll definitely have to try that out when a youngin' is itching to play.

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    Alex (Level 15) Custom rank graphic
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    Is it better than the PS1 version?

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    Great Puma (Level 12) YoshiM's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gameguy View Post
    Is it better than the PS1 version?
    Well, it's on N64, so that's a plus :-)

    Honestly, I don't know. I never played the PS version. The N64 version does have co-op over the PS version, so if that's your thing (and it works well-I haven't tried it yet) then there's the plus. I don't know what made the PS version not so good but I had a good time on my playthrough.

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