25 Years of Nintendo 64 – Flashback Special

Top: The iconic "N64 Kid" meme receiving his new N64 on Christmas day! Directly below is me losing it on Christmas too! Together, both of us are ecstatically exclaiming: "Nintendo Sixty-Fourrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!"

Happy Thanksgiving! Two months ago marked the 25th anniversary of the Nintendo 64’s North America launch. The N64 was essentially my go-to console during high school and was a regular in my rotation for many years after and remains one of my all-time favorite gaming consoles. I have been anticipating writing this Flashback Special for quite some time. Just for a refresher to those who have not read any of my previous Flashback Specials (of which all are linked at the end of this piece), this is not a year-by-year retrospective of the platform. It is a log of my memories and observations growing up with the N64 over the years, with maybe a dash of history thrown in for context.

I mentioned before how it took me way too long to adapt to polygons and 3D gameplay. It was not until early 1997, when I played nothing but Saturn for a week straight, that I overcame my reservations about that generation. The graphics were pretty impressive and not as butt-ugly as I thought, and I realized then the leaps in gameplay quality that were possible with 3D environments. My first hands-on time with an N64 did not leave a good impression, and I was leaning towards preferring a Saturn that generation instead.

My old middle school did a couple of free days a year with all kinds of activities available. Naturally, I signed up for the video games session in early 1997 and briefly played Super Mario 64, and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. I had no idea what I was doing maneuvering Mario around for the first time with the N64’s uniquely shaped controller for the 10 minutes or so I had to play it. That first Turok game was notoriously foggy and hard to come to grips with its controls for the same amount of time. I wound up walking out of that session not-so-hot on the N64 and instead was leaning towards preferring the Saturn. All it took was some good ‘ol Nintendo propaganda to sway me back in their good graces.

Change the System - THAT Nintendo Power VHS Tape


14 year-old Dale absolutely ate up this promotional video.

For several years of my Nintendo Power subscription, they would mail out a complimentary, promotional tape for one of their upcoming products. 1996 saw them mail out one hyping up the launch of N64, with three teenagers being demonstrated Super Mario 64, Pilotwings 64, and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire as the three must-have games for the system. It got me interested in Nintendo’s 64-bit beast, and I ate up its mid-90s “extreme” production effects, but it was not until 1997’s tape that reeled me into “I must have this!” mode. That tape hyped up Star Fox 64 as that year’s must-have game. The video had such a hokey Nintendo rah-rah theme with Nintendo reps constantly one-upping actors portraying Sega and Sony reps. Eventually, the Nintendo reps succeeded at convincing them how better the N64 was to their systems….seriously, just click or press here to watch the awesomely cheesy video to see for yourselves.

Also working to persuade me back into the N64’s corner was all the Nintendo Power propaganda articles hyping up the N64’s first-year library. Sure enough, halfway into 1997 and the system was starting to gain momentum with hits like Mario Kart 64 and Goldeneye 007. It all added up with me dropping many hints to my dad about what I wanted for Christmas. I thought there would be no way he would get me that system and go against his norms of picking up systems for a bargain at garage sales. He surprised the hell out of me on Christmas morning, where I got the system and copies of Mario Kart 64 and Cruis’n USA for my first two games on the system. I made sure to give him a reaction worth capturing that you can see at the top of this entry, and while it may not be N64-kid meme quality, I think I gave it a pretty good attempt. Not too long after that, I received WCW vs. nWo: World Tour from my mom, and I was all-in on what would become one of my favorite gaming platforms.

Countless Four-Player Multiplayer Sessions w/Family & Friends

My dad would have visitations with my siblings and me on weekends during this timeframe, and almost every weekend, there would be a couple of hours dedicated to four-player N64. These are some of my fondest memories of the system, where some combination of me, my brother, sister, dad, or a friend visiting would throw in one of several destination N64 multiplayer games from my N64-branded Game Pak carrying case and play for a majority of the afternoon until dinner time. Mario Kart 64 was an early four-player favorite, where we would replay all the Grand Prix circuits to achieve gold on all difficulty levels. That even went into effect for the unlockable “extra” difficulty where we raced the tracks in reverse, which made courses like Yoshi’s Valley and Toad’s Turnpike quite the teeth-grinding endeavor. Four-player VS. races lead to some emotional outbursts when one of us would collide with those pesky bomb racers driving in reverse in a close race, especially on Rainbow Road. Big Donut, Double Deck, and Four Corners were all quality battle maps to engage in (the less said about Skyscraper, the better).

Goldeneye 007 and a couple of years later with its successor, Perfect Dark, lead to many nights blowing up friends and family in this pair of classic first-person shooters from the developer, Rare. These controls felt just right for me on the N64 controller compared to Turok’s default setup. Almost every friend or family member I played with had their preferred weapon and level set up. Grenade Launchers in the Temple was my personal favorite. My brother loved luring us into his Proximity Mines in the Stacks, and longtime gaming friend Matt was a big fan of repeatedly getting the best of me with Rocket Launchers in the Complex level. The fact that I remember all these setups well over two decades later is saying something! Perfect Dark upped the madness exponentially with more options, modes, and customizations. I could not resist luring people into a deployed Laptop Gun, setting up practice rounds against the many variations of “simulant” AI opponents, or diving into many preset challenges against the AI opponents to unlock everything out of the multiplayer.

Some other family favorite multiplayer hits included The New Tetris. The first four-player Tetris game! It was also the first Tetris game I played that introduced hold pieces and being able to form gold and silver blocks with sets of certain Tetriminoes for bonus line scores. The game kept track of all the lines completed and used them to unlock saccharin cinematics of the Seven Wonders of the Worlds, complete with stats of how many lines each user contributed. It took about a good three years, but we eventually accumulated enough lines to unlock all seven. I will forever remember New Tetris as being my dad’s “Zen” game, and he would be so tuned in to playing, that he would not be able to converse for a single word once we were 10 seconds into a game. I saw him pull off miraculous recoveries in that game and ridiculous high scores. There was one local leaderboard I was ecstatic I cracked the top 10 in until that glee quickly passed when visiting my dad’s the next weekend when I could not help but notice my dad kept playing that certain mode until my name was completely eliminated from that specific top 10 scoreboard. He randomly brings this fact up to me until this very day.

The trilogy of Mario Party games were a smash with friends, regardless if the average game took two hours to finish because we had so much fun with the chaos that resulted from the most deviously sinister party games out there! Finally, while these games are on almost any major gaming platform, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! were both big hits on the N64 with the family. That version of Jeopardy! was the first to include the auto-finish spelling option of responses for quicker inputs, and both of these games were some of the few N64 titles to include full-motion video, with brief snippets from Alex Trebek and Vanna White. Both of these titles were perfect palate cleansers from intense rounds of Goldeneye and Mario Kart.

Last Hurrah for Arcade Sports, Rise of Sports Sims

This generation saw the last line of arcade hit conversions from Midway, and they delivered with big-time arcade sports hits throughout the entire N64 lifecycle. Early on, they ported over NBA Hangtime. I invested significantly more time into the SNES version first, but the N64 is the vastly superior port with more impressive visuals and a catchier soundtrack in this true sequel to NBA Jam T.E.. I also invested significant time into its excellent polygonal sequel, NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC, which of course includes the best sportscast theme in broadcast history! Midway’s pair of Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey titles did for hockey what Jam did for hoops, and it also featured some of the best in-game fighting since NES Blades of Steel. Midway struck gold this generation with NFL Blitz, which finally tweaked the arcade football formula just right that this game was always a hit when playing with fellow pigskin fans or people who had zero interest in football whatsoever.

Griffey rocked the N64 with two more baseball games with his branding, while NBA Showtime successfully brought the NBA Jam look and feel in a 3D environment!

As good as the arcade sports were, this era was when sports sims fully came into their own. I played way too much NFL Quarterback Club ‘98 than I care to admit. Somehow Acclaim secured the exclusive NFL team license on the N64 that year, which was enough to sway me to procure that version that season. Things changed the following season with Madden NFL ‘99, when EA debuted the game-changing Franchise mode, and fully realized their 3D gameplay that year too, but I wound up playing that series more on PSone. Other sports games I got into on the N64 include Major League Baseball: Featuring Ken Griffey Jr., a worthy 64-bit upgrade from the acclaimed 16-bit games. All-Star Tennis did not live up to its adjective, FOX Sports College Hoops I came around on, and I appreciated a code that disabled the crowd and brought back heartwarming memories of SNES NCAA Basketball. Mia Hamm Soccer 64 was an average soccer title, but remarkable for the fact of being the first all-women’s soccer game, and being able to pick an all-women team would not be attempted again in North America until 15 years later with the release of FIFA ‘16!!! The N64 also became the first system I played a soccer management-sim game…in Japanese too….and I dug it to my surprise! So if you ever stumble across a copy of J-League Tactics Soccer, do not hesitate to give it a chance!!!

Hands-Down the Best Library of Wrestling Games on any Platform

Non-wrestling fans may want to skip this part of the feature, or at least please indulge me as I wax poetic for this console’s pro-wrestling games.

The four AKI-developed wrestling games on N64 are all instant classics and still today rank as some of the best polygonal-3D wrestling games of all time. Before I dive into those, it is worth mentioning the N64 itself had a staggering amount of wrestling games. In North America, there were 10 pro-wrestling games, and Japan had several exclusives on top of that for the Big N. The then-WWF was red hot at the time with its “Attitude Era,” and WCW was riding the final coattails of success it had with the nWo, and Goldberg’s undefeated streak. This all resulted in wrestling fandom reaching heights at this time it has not seen since, so having all these top-notch grappling games hit during this timeframe especially made them stand out. The first couple of Acclaim wrestling games on the N64 benefited greatly from WWF’s popularity at this time. WWF War Zone was the first American wrestling game to feature a fully fleshed out create-a-wrestler feature, and my brother and I invested too much time into many of our twisted creations. The follow-up, WWF Attitude, added a calendar-based Career mode that made it seem worthwhile ranking up through several WWF divisions. However, the complex button-sequence controls it ran with were starting to wear thin by that point, and by Acclaim’s third game, ECW Hardcore Revolution, they were downright stale, and that game seemed rushed and a lesser final chapter from Acclaim on the N64.

THQ and developer AKI were banging out some awesome wrestling games, however. WCW vs. nWo: World Tour was their first collaboration, and within minutes of starting up the first match, I could tell somehow AKI stumbled into a magical control scheme on that monster of a controller that made the wrestling gameplay seem authentic. Players would have to wear down an opponent before attempting more decisive strikes and grapples before ultimately finishing them off with their finishing move. The costumes, movesets, poses, and pro-wrestling pageantry were a massive leap from the SNES before this, and it all combined for a great multiplayer game with my fellow wrestling friends. The follow-up, WCW/nWo Revenge, perfectly rounded off the edges by more than doubling the amount of WCW wrestlers, having fleshed out wrestling entrance sets, more refined controls, and having one of the all-time greatest intro cinematics to any game, ever! Seriously, click or press here to see how it perfectly encapsulated how WCW dominated the Monday Night Wars for over 80 weeks! It still gets me jacked taking it all in, and there is never a dull minute in it!

Some WCW games just could not catch a break on the N64 like Backstage Assault having no ring at all, or the port of the awful PSone game, Nitro!

The four Japan-exclusive wrestling games are worth tracking down. Before Yuke’s made countless WWF/WWE games, they developed two New Japan Pro Wrestling games. The first one is rough around the edges but laid the foundation for a much improved second game, Toukon Road 2: The New Generation that saw a more extensive roster, smoother controls, and a season-spanning season mode! Aside from porting over one of its WWF games, AKI developed two exclusive wrestling games for Japan with Virtual Pro Wrestling 64, and Virtual Pro Wrestling 2. I give both my highest recommendations. Both games have loaded rosters. The first game had official WCW wrestlers, and relatively close lookalikes to the top Japanese wrestlers at that time. It released right after World Tour and played like a finely tuned version of that game. Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 was released between the two WWF games, and its gameplay is much improved and has official All-Japan Pro Wrestlers in there like Stan Hansen, Vader, Misawa, and Giant Baba. There are a multitude of atmospheric arenas to compete in, bountiful unlocks to work for in its year-long career mode, and a unique points-based MMA mode that AKI never put in any of its American games. The quality of VPW2 is right up there with WWF No Mercy, and I cannot recommend it enough!!! If I want to split hairs, Japan does have two more exclusive wrestling games, but I have yet to experience the two N64 sumo wrestling games, so I cannot comment on them.

After some expiring contracts during the mid-N64 lifecycle, THQ got the rights to publish WWF games, Acclaim jumped over to ECW, and EA hopped on the wrestling bandwagon to publish WCW games when the company took a turn for the worst and was on the brink of bankruptcy. WCW Mayhem was a promising first entry that laid a solid foundation to build upon and introduced a fun backstage wrestling element to gameplay. EA mistakenly doubled down on the positive feedback for the backstage wrestling and made it the complete focus for the sequel, WCW Backstage Assault, where they were brazen enough to have gameplay entirely transpire backstage and remove the ring from the game!!! Throw in some eyebrow-raising create-a-wrestler gear, severely diminished graphics, and no four-player support, and it all added up to a considerable step down from Mayhem. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention THQ snuck out one last WCW in the final days they had the WCW license, with an awful port of the already-atrocious PSone game, WCW Nitro. It is one of the worst wrestling games I have ever played, and trust me, that is saying something!!!

Let us end things on a positive note with the two AKI-developed WWF games! Wrestlemania 2000 saw the superb gameplay from AKI’s two WCW games now applied to a WWF roster when the company was at the apex of its “Monday Night Wars” success. It added an in-depth Road to Wrestlemania mode for many hours of single-player gameplay and finally went all out with its own robust create-a-wrestler feature. The successor to that and what many consider one of the best wrestling games still today, WWF No Mercy, added standout additions like a branching story mode for every championship that switched up the storyline whether one lost or won, an unlock store in the form of the Smackdown Mall where WWF cash accrued through gameplay can be exchanged to purchase a plethora of unlocks, the ability to create and compete for user-created titles, ladder matches, and a 100-wrestler Survival mode. No Mercy is my favorite wrestling game of all time. It remained in constant rotation with friends for well over a decade, to the point where we bought one of those silly foam championship titles at the store and adorned it with N64 controller decals for our own tangible N64 championship title to compete for! It was indeed a golden age of pro-wrestling games.

The Complete Lack of RPGs…..Actually, Not so Fast….

The N64 had a lot working against it for its RPG output compared to the insurmountable amount of excellent RPGs on the PSone. Even the Saturn had a solid slate of RPGs before that console’s early departure from this generation compared to the handful that hit N64 in America. It was nearly two years into the N64’s North American life before it saw its first RPG release in the form of the infamous Quest 64. I am old enough to recall the hype for it being many N64 diehard’s high hope for being the answer to Final Fantasy VII, and obviously, history has shown that was not the case. I rented it at the time and thought it was fine but not compelling enough to see all the way through. This past year, however, circumstances I will touch on later lead me to play throughout Quest 64. You know what….it is actually a pretty solid entry-level RPG. Yeah, the main character is not that imposing of a protagonist that solely goes by the intimidating name of Brian. Yeah, there are no additional weapons or armor to acquire throughout Brian’s journey, but there is a fun and engaging battle system. The plot itself had some surprisingly involved moments in the back half that caught me off guard and made it worth seeing Brian’s adventure all the way through to the end. Of course, it does not measure up to the studs of the PSone library, but it is not worth writing off either!

Another RPG that gets neglected from the N64 history is the ambitious Action-RPG from Konami, Hybrid Heaven. This has a similar look and vibe to Metal Gear Solid, with most of the game emanating from an intricate complex and a surprisingly deep narrative that I will not even attempt to explain here. However, where MGS focused on stealth-action, Hybrid Heaven had both action gameplay at shooting down drones and traps and a one-of-a-kind turn-based battle system that at its core centered around…..wrestling moves. Yes, really. The game has a long learning curve with some troubling camera mechanics rearing their ugly head throughout the entire game, but the intriguing plot kept me glued in, and yes, the wrestling moves made me get a lot out of the battle system. A very satisfying final act wound up in Hybrid Heaven winning me over.

I rented Ogre Battle 64 around its release and enjoyed my time with it, and one day should go back to it. The initial Paper Mario is another one I have heard endless praise for, and sadly I have not made time for it over the years. I have both of these games on the Wii U Virtual Console, so maybe one day I will correct that wrong by investing ample time into both! On the flip side, I have invested major time into a few Japan-exclusive N64 RPGs! Wonder Project J2 is an interesting adventure/simulation/RPG hybrid with an affable cast of characters worth becoming acquainted with. The townspeople become a great supporting cast for the protagonist, Josette, on her heartwarming journey of self-discovery that culminates with an all-over-the-place ending that lasts nearly an hour! I played my first rogue-like on the N64 with its own Shiren entry! I think I can get down with rogue-like games after finishing the core entry of this game, and it has buckets of supplemental dungeons for dozens of extra hours of gameplay! Finally, Onegai Monsters is a valiant attempt at Pokemon clone, but there are just too many mechanical issues bogging it down from truly standing out.

I have been debating nonstop to include commenting on my time with The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time here or not since I am on the side of ranking it as an action-adventure game instead of an RPG. For this article’s sake, I will include it here since I consider it short of just a few elements from considering it a true RPG, but that is not a bad thing because this is some freaking gold standard Zelda right here!!! I received Ocarina of Time for Christmas of 1998, and it instantly won me over. It is on a shortlist with Halo: Combat Evolved, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Grand Theft Auto III, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where I could tell from within the first hour of gameplay that this was going to be a groundbreaking game and I was in for something special. I got through the first third of the game and loved the child Link portion of the game. However, shortly into the adult Link portion, my little brother kept managing to get more time with the N64 and made faster progress than me to the point I just got into watching him play, and he would pass the controller to me to beat each dungeon’s boss. So in a way, it was kind of a team effort to finish the back half of the game, but I never felt that I truly finished it on my own. I still loved the ride it took me on, the epic dungeons, and the addicting combat. I think I will remember it more for how much my brother got into it as he kept replaying it to see how fast he could beat it, and he got it down to the point where he was able to finish it in just under eight hours! I never did play the sequel, Majora’s Mask. The whole “three days to finish” concept was a turn-off to me at the time, and I understand now how beloved that game is. I did pick up both N64 Zelda 3D remasters on 3DS, which I understand is THE way to experience both titles, so one day I will have to lock myself up for a week and plow through both!

A Surplus of Driving Games

Aside from my aforementioned praise for Mario Kart 64, there are many other driving games to consume on the N64…..too many! Cruis’n USA was the other game I received with my N64 on Christmas. I was so ecstatic in those early months of N64 ownership that I convinced myself it was a fantastic port of the awesome arcade racer I invested an incredible amount of quarters in. Eventually, I realized the pop-up was horrendous on the N64 port, and I detested using the Mad Catz N64 wheel controller for it, but somehow my dad adapted to it, and I witnessed him beat the game with that contraption. F-Zero X is my favorite entry in the futuristic racing series. I found it far more accessible than the SNES original, and it also boasts a rewarding career mode, an intense Death Race option, and a banger of an original score!

Seriously, there are way too many driving games on the N64, and I have somehow played a hearty chunk of them. As usual, I am already running way long on this entry, so for the benefit of time, here are some rapid-fire thoughts on the N64 driving game library….

-Absolutely loved Road Rash 64’s career mode, especially the stages that are oversaturated with cops!

-Extreme-G was a solid alternative to F-Zero, but with added weapon power-ups!

-Played a few too many rally games on N64, but both Top Gear Rally games rank as my favorite, with the first being more arcade-like and the second going for a full-on sim experience!

While there was no Gran Turismo-killer on the N64, World Driver Championship made a valiant attempt at it, and F-1 World Grand Prix is an excellent F1 sim.

-Also played quite a bit of open-wheel games on N64, of which I will give props to both F-1 World Grand Prix games standing out the most with their faithful sim representation of the motorsport!

-Micro Machines 64: Turbo retained that unique trailing top-down camera, but the core racing controls did not capture the same magic as the NES original.

-So-so to slightly above average racers like MRC, Re-Volt, and Roadsters were all too common on the system, and while they were adequate experiences after exhausting everything they had to offer, none of them left a lasting impact on me….except for playing a ton of Re-Volt online on the original Xbox.

-Beetle Adventure Racing did leave a good impact on me with it being a superior arcade racer, and shockingly EA’s only N64 exclusive!

-World Driver Championship was N64’s only attempt at a Gran Turismo-clone, and it actually was a pretty solid attempt! It did not quite pull off managing to usurp the almighty PSone racing simulator, but I never regretted my time with it!

-The two worst racing games on the N64 easily belong to Monster Truck Madness 64 and Automobili Lamborghini (aces name though!). Both have whacked controls, but at least MTM64 can hang its hat of including the interesting curiosities of the WCW-branded trucks in its roster and being an odd couple collaboration between a then-upstart Rockstar Games and Microsoft Game Studios.

-Only briefly played other racing games I wanted to put more time into like the second and third Cruis’n games, the Rush titles, Diddy Kong Racing, and Mickey’s Speedway USA. Eventually, driving game fatigue reared its ugly head on the N64!

Miscellaneous Quick Hits


The N64 has an overwhelming amount of classic soundtracks. A lot of my favorite cuts from that era are played in their entirety in this four-hour-plus, top 100 video! Each track also has annotated factoids! Sadly, none of the excellent AKI wrestling game songs made the list, and I will not spoil if the iconic title tracks for Donkey Kong 64 or Buck Bumble made the list!

-I experimented a lot with the N64 Game Shark. It included a VHS tape on how to create your own codes! I loved walking through locked doors in Goldeneye with cheat codes, and entering complex codes into WWF No Mercy enabled a fan-modded Hell in a Cell match!

Blast Corps is one of the many Rare games I wish to receive more love. Fantastic game all about wreaking destruction with a fun roster of vehicles! Discover it on Rare Replay on Xbox One!

-Propaganda VHS tape aside, Star Fox 64 blew me away with its buttery smooth mechanics and cinematic presentation of its core single-player mode. It did not matter that it took two hours to finish, it was a superb two hours with not a second wasted and had pretty solid four-player support to boot!

-I played an ungodly amount of Starcraft and its expansion, Brood War on the PC in its heyday. The fact that Nintendo and the studio handling the port, Mass Media, managed to fit both campaigns onto one cartridge (with the requirement of the Expansion Pak) and add split-screen two-player support is an astonishing feat. Like any RTS on a console, there were limitations with a controller, but they made the single-player work as best as possible. On the other hand…yikes, the two-player is best to stay away because almost any match would suffer severe slowdown after several minutes of play because the N64 could not handle that many units at once.

-There was a solid lineup of winter sports games on the N64. 1080° Snowboarding is the go-to snowboarding game on the system and has the honor of being the first game I purchased an original soundtrack for! Twisted Edge Extreme Snowboarding is a cannot miss alternative to 1080°. Both Snowboard Kids games are adorably awesome takes of Mario Kart meets snowboarding, but go for a fortune right now online.

-Forsaken 64 is a pretty damn good Descent-clone, and also has the distinction of being to the N64 like Phalanx was to the SNES by having the most WTF box art of the N64 library.

-I loved me some Worms Armageddon on the Dreamcast, and was always perplexed why the N64 version had an extremely low print run and absurdly high price in the second-hand market. I took a few weeks off in the middle of crafting this entry, and during that time Limited Run Games did a surprise authorized reissue of the N64 and Game Boy Color versions for N64 users craving to get that iconic turn-based action game at an affordable price in their library.

-It is still a headscratcher that after having a hearty amount of quality space shooters/shmups on NES and SNES, the N64 only saw one released for it stateside with Electro Brain’s Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth. It is, by all means, a decent shooter, but it did not light the genre on fire. A rom-dump of an unfinished shmup resurfaced in 2015 for Viewpoint 2064 to give the starved N64 shooter community a second option.

-While the Rumble Pak got a lot of hype and was pretty effective at making one “feel” the game in action, it was never really on my radar. With the N64 controller having only one accessory slot, many games prompted users to constantly swap out Controller Paks for Rumble Paks after loading game save data.

-There was a boatload of fighting games on the N64, but only a handful stood out to me. Mortal Kombat Trilogy felt like a nostalgic last hurrah for the original trilogy of games. Killer Instict Gold is also worth a quick shoutout, thanks to its addicting mindless combo mayhem. The cream of the crop goes to the debut of Super Smash Bros.. It was another classic four-player game for the N64 that dominated multiplayer sessions. Its sequels have far surpassed and greatly opened up in gameplay, rosters, and features, but the original is still a blast to play today.

-The Star Wars games received a ton of hype on the N64, but the only one I played a lot of was Shadows of the Empire. I had so much fun with the opening Battle of Hoth stage wrapping up AT-ATs with tow cables and tripping them up! I probably put way too much time into the rest of the game with its wonky platformer controls, but I have mostly great memories of that game as a whole!

-I spent just over a year during the pandemic as part of the writing team to Pat Contri’s upcoming Ultimate Nintendo book focusing on covering the entire N64 library. It was a wild ride grinding away at reviews for the book. It provided an excellent opportunity to rediscover older titles that I have not revisited in decades, go deep into a wide array of titles fresh for the first time, and become acquainted with the N64 import scene. It was an unforgettable experience to contribute to it, and I cannot thank Pat enough for welcoming me onto the team and am excited to see everyone get their hands on it when it releases!

Conclusion

If you cannot tell by now, my love for the Nintendo 64 knows no bounds. While I did play through some of its juggernaut flagship games, my favorite memories of the system almost entirely consist of multiplayer sessions with family and friends. I have an avalanche of priceless multiplayer memories that lasted for years, and in a way, is everlasting. Aside from constantly revisiting the AKI wrestling games, about once every year, I would break out the N64 with friends for a retro game night with a few of the previously mentioned multiplayer hits. Some friends would initially groan at the obviously dated graphics and controls in games like Goldeneye, but sure enough, we would be back in that mid-to-late-90s gaming mindset within about five minutes and become as immersed in our match as we were back then. Local multiplayer games are still a thing to this day, but nowhere to the same degree, with online multiplayer becoming largely predominant shortly after the N64’s lifecycle. Multiplayer ruled on the N64, and it brought me closer together with friends and family when it reigned supreme in my family’s household. 25 years later, it remains hooked up to my current gaming setup, and I do not see it leaving anytime soon!

Thank you for indulging my N64 memories with me. Here are a few un-vaulted episodes of my old podcast themed around the N64 if you want to go further down the 64-bit well with me!


10 years ago I did a 15th anniversary N64 special with Matt…and for some reason we also review the 1994 Double Dragon live action film.


Finally, here is Matt and I hosting the 32/64-bit installment of our history of comic book games series.

Alongside the Dreamcast and Saturn, we also touch on the handful of N64 titles in this installment of the history of RPG games in this episode. (Will un-vault in the near future!!!)

My Other Gaming Flashbacks

Dreamcast 20th Anniversary
GameBoy 30th Anniversary
Genesis 30th Anniversary
NES 35th Anniversary
PSone 25th Anniversary
PS2 20th Anniversary
PSP 15th Anniversary and Neo-Geo 30th Anniversary
Saturn and Virtual Boy 25th Anniversaries
SNES 25th Anniversary
TurboGrafX-16 30th Anniversary and 32-X 25th Anniversary
Xbox 360 15th Anniversary

You Still Want More!?

Boy, do I have a cherished N64 memory I have been dying to save for this last bonus extra. You already read my unfiltered acclaim for the AKI wrestling games for the N64, and this is easily my favorite memory with any of them. In WWF No Mercy, the Royal Rumble match can have up to 40 wrestlers and also be enabled to have a “team battle” option where up to four players can have any preset number of players in their team. To really stretch out a Royal Rumble match, the “over-the-top-rope” elimination option can be disabled, and options can be limited to having elimination only occur by pinfall, submission, or KO. I one day had the quirky idea to pitch to my two friends and brother that I always wanted to do a 40 person team battle match, where we all had 10 wrestlers on our own team and with no over-the-top rope elimination option. The match in all likelihood, would last all night, but I promised them if we played through the whole match, I would immediately treat them to dinner! I do not know if my pitch sold it on them or what, but to my surprise, they went for it, and we kicked off the ultimate endurance Royal Rumble match. It went about four hours, and you can bet your ass I made sure to tape the whole thing on the grainy SLP VHS setting for proof of this bold endeavor.

Unfortunately, good ‘ol knee-jerk gamer rage prevented us from finishing it. We were down to the final three wrestlers, and my brother’s final wrestler was just running down the entrance aisle fresh into the match. He saw my wrestler was in a “special” state, which meant it made my wrestler available to pull off his signature finishing move, and my brother saw I was about to lock in a strong grapple to put away my other friend’s final wrestler. My brother wanted to play spoiler and ran directly at my wrestler in hopes of connecting with a running strike to foil my plans, but his timing was off, and he inadvertently ran right into my strong grapple, and thus I hoisted him up for my created wrestler’s Jackhammer finish! Perhaps it was the four hours of play at 3 am with bloodshot eyes that led to my brother’s sudden reaction where he chucked his controller on the ground in disgust of his miscue, but what he did not account for was the controller bouncing and plopping right on top of the N64 and freezing the game!!! My two friends and I were too sleep-deprived at that point to be upset, and we all kind of laughed at how apropos it was at the moment. We still celebrated the near-achievement with some well-earned 3 am overnight food at a local diner, and yes, I still possess that VHS tape of my all-time favorite match in any wrestling video game today!

Firefly & Serenity (2005)

After spending a few years devouring and writing about my voyages with the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I thought I would go with a different sci-fi franchise that was quicker to consume. Within a few months, I was able to re-watch all of 2002’s Firefly TV series that had a tragically short 14 episode run, along with its 2005 film to conclude their story arc, Serenity (trailer). I already watched both many years ago, but a few years back, I upgraded both to BluRays, and this was the perfect opportunity to jump in and re-experience the cult hit sci-fi/western hybrid created by Joss Whedon.

Firefly kicks off with a two-part "Serenity" special that establishes the ensemble cast and the catalyst that brings the crew together on the vessel, Serenity. In the far-flung future, the United States and China emerged as the two dominant superpowers to colonize outer space, and thus everyone only speaks English and Chinese. After some time, a civil war brews up between the two dominant powers. This results in Captain Malcom Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and his second-in-command, Zoë (Gina Torres), on the losing end in the war's final battle to kick off Firefly's opening scene. The opening battle scene is an impressive CG-feast for a TV series budget.

The next scene jumps forward six years, where Malcom and Zoë now command a small independent salvager vessel, Serenity. They work for whoever pays the most, usually transporting sketchy cargo discreetly, which leads them to a heated wild west-esque gunfight on land with other scoundrels after the same shipment. Also aboard Serenity is their trusty mechanic, Kaylee (Jewel Staite), a working companion, Inara (Morena Baccarin), the comic relief muscle, Jayne (Adam Baldwin), the pilot and husband of Zoë, Wash (Alan Tudyk), their mysterious person of faith, Shephard Book (Ron Glass), and the siblings that are fugitives on the run: Dr. Simon (Sean Maher) and his sister, River (Summer Glau). It is quite the crew, but for nearly the entire run of the show, the showrunners do a fine job at balancing out adequate TV time for most of them, and by the end, they have charmingly dysfunctional family chemistry between them all.

Nathan Fillion receives major credit for his tremendous work as the lead role in the series as the charismatic Captain Malcom Reynolds. His never-give-up, DIY spirit to consistently turn the insurmountable odds against him is an irresistible character quality that makes it impossible to hate him. He has a unique relationship with nearly everyone on the ship, and it is exciting to see how those relationships develop and grow during the oh-so-brief run of the show. Pardon the aside, but Nathan Fillion and his character on the show are nearly a dead ringer for the protagonist, Nathan Drake, of the mega-hit Playstation game series, Uncharted. When first playing the original PS3 game, I thought for sure it was him. When there was an announcement that they were going to try and make the game into a movie, there was a huge outpouring of fan support to cast Fillion as Nathan Drake until the movie fell apart and never made it into production. At least Fillion was part of this unofficial Uncharted short film as a nice tease of what would have been. Back to the matter at hand now….

On my notes for Firefly and Star Trek: TNG, I would give a brief description of each episode and would put a star next to it if I enjoyed the episode. It should go without saying how much I enjoyed Firefly when I ended up "star-ing" 11 of the 14 episodes. Here are some highlights from a few of my favorites: "Train Job" is exactly as the episode title indicates, and I was all in on this episode to see the many twists and turns it took for the Serenity crew to evade authorities throughout their heist. "Safe" sees River and Simon kidnapped as more of their past is unveiled. "Jaynestown" is a top three episode of the series that sees Jayne return to a settlement years later after an earlier job where he is adored as a legend by the local townsfolk, complete with the local tavern bard singing a song of his past heroics.

"Ariel" is another standout from the season that sees the gang attempt another heist for medical supplies at a hospital, but naturally, nothing goes according to plan. "The Message" has Malcom and Zoë on an escort mission to deliver a fallen comrade to his home, but like all episodes, not all is as it seems to be. "Heart of Gold" features the best on-land wild west shootouts in the series, as most of the episode builds to a climactic final battle that lives up to the buildup. Finally, the inadvertent series finale, "Objects in Space" sees the crew overcome their qualms with Simon and River and embrace them as part of Serenity….all while dealing with an assassin who snuck onto the ship.

Unfortunately, FOX suddenly pulled the plug on the show after it failed to deliver in the ratings without airing three of the 14 episodes. Thanks to an overwhelming amount of fan support, Universal stepped in to put an exclamation point on the series with a theatrical movie to wrap up as many plot threads as they could in two hours with the 2005 film, Serenity.

A constant in the TV series was how Simon busted his sister out of an experimental center doing eerie treatments. As a result, River is in a precarious state throughout the series. One of the two big plot points in the film reveals the secrets of the experiments on River, and the origins of the menacing threat, the Reavers. The Reavers were only touched upon in a couple of episodes that set them up as a grandiose threat to all life. On top of that threat, and hot on the heels of the Serenity crew, is an unnamed assassin (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who has early encounters with Malcom that prove he is a vastly superior match in wits and combat.

The film is a constant cat and mouse chase with Malcom and company trying to stay one step ahead of the assassin while also discovering the answers to some of these mysteries that were left hanging when the show came to an abrupt halt. It culminates with a fantastic final act that felt similar to the "suicide run" mission in the Mass Effect 2 video game. Here, the crew comes together to put a final front against the Reavers and the assassin while trying to expose some of humanity's deepest and darkest secrets. Watching Serenity again all these years later felt like the cast and crew wrapped everything up as best as they possibly could in the theatrical time allotted.

Both Firefly and Serenity BluRays have a fair amount of extras. The TV series has three worth checking out. Here's How it Was is a half-hour must-watch that details the lore and characters of the show and details the behind-the-scenes drama with FOX. Firefly Reunion is a luncheon with Joss Whedon and cast members that have them reminiscing with the show's stories and memories several years later. Serenity: The 10th Character is a thorough breakdown of the spacecraft and its set design we all fell for throughout the show's run. There are commentaries with various cast and crew members on most episodes and two commentaries for the movie.

I viewed the film commentary track with Whedon and most of the cast, and it is absolutely worth checking out. It has very few lulls and lots of chemistry still there as they shared anecdotes like Glau's fight camp training she had to endure and Whedon's cuts he had to make to ensure a PG-13 rating. Make sure to have subtitles on for the commentary because Whedon cuts off the audio commentary right as the credits start as his stated rule, but the subtitled commentary continues until the end of the credits and seems almost like a secret meeting that should not have been on the disc.

There is a slick "Alliance Database" interactive menu feature on the Serenity BluRay that felt like exploring the galaxy map in the Mass Effect games to learn more info and lore from the franchise. Two other recommended extras on the Serenity disc are Re-Lighting a Firefly, which is a 10-minute piece on how the fans brought the franchise back with this film. A Filmmaker's Journey is a unique 20 minute extra primarily focusing on the first table read for the film's script and interviewing the cast on that special intangible feeling with all of them sitting down together again for the first time since the show went off the air.

I know I am far from the first and last person to be glowing over Firefly and Serenity. If by some chance, you have not seen it and you are a fan of sci-fi, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend this enough. This brand has the mysteries of deep space, an endearing cast worth investing in, and land-based wild-west action that combines to be an exquisite entertainment dish well worth devouring. Regardless of how much of a bow the film put on the franchise, I cannot help but crave more adventures from Mal and company, and any sci-fi fan will be doing themselves a disservice for skipping over Firefly and Serenity.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

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12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
The Accountant
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
The Avengers: Endgame
The Avengers: Infinity War
Batman: The Dark Knight Rises
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: Civil War
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
The Clapper
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed I & II
Deck the Halls
Detroit Rock City
Die Hard
Dirty Work
Dredd
The Eliminators
The Equalizer
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Grunt: The Wrestling Movie
Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
Hell Comes to Frogtown
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
I Like to Hurt People
Indiana Jones 1-4
Inglourious Basterds
Ink
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot
Jobs
Joy Ride 1-3
Justice League (2017 Whedon Cut)
Last Action Hero
Major League
Mallrats
Man of Steel
Man on the Moon
Man vs Snake
Marine 3-6
Merry Friggin Christmas
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Nintendo Quest
Not for Resale
Old Joy
Payback (Director’s Cut)
Pulp Fiction
The Punisher (1989)
The Ref
The Replacements
Reservoir Dogs
Rocky I-VIII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
Scott Pilgrim vs the World
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Slacker
Skyscraper
Small Town Santa
Speed
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Sully
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
Trauma Center
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
Vision Quest
The War
Wild
The Wizard
Wonder Woman
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Apocalypse
X-Men: Days of Future Past

30 Years of Super Nintendo – Flashback Special

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) recently celebrated its 30th anniversary of the North American launch, so it seems the perfect time to post a Flashback Special honoring it! Suppose you have not perused a past Flashback Special of mine (all linked at the bottom of this entry). In that case, they are essentially my history with the platform over the years, with a little bit of history thrown in, and recounting all my favorite games, accessories, memories, and moments with the system.

Odds are for the average gaming enthusiast reading this, and you probably are familiar with the core details of the SNES launch stateside (if not, then I highly recommend CGQ’s video on it for a quick breakdown). The SNES launched in 1991 when I was eight. I did not have a subscription to any gaming magazines yet, so I most likely first found out about the system around that time from classmates at the time at school, the infamous Paul Rudd commercial, and the fourth season of Roseanne that transpired from 1991-92.

I vividly remember the Roseanne episode with her son, DJ, pleading with his parents for the brand new SNES for his birthday gift and how his parents dreaded not being able to afford the system. I covered that episode when I did my Roseanne complete series re-watch here in the year leading up to the relaunch of the show several years ago. It brought back memories of how that was the story with my parents also denying me the much sought-after SNES, saying it cost too much and that I already have an NES to tide me over. ”But mommmmm, the SNES is 16-bits!!!!” Yeah….playing that angle got me nowhere.

Kiosks & Friends

The first couple of years for the SNES, I mostly remember playing at store kiosks. Super Mario World blew me away from the brief time I played it with it being such a leap from the NES installments. I always ate up the precious few minutes I could procure at a store kiosk if no one were playing Super Mario Kart. One last store kiosk memory was eye-gazing over the impressive WWF Royal Rumble. I loved WWF WrestleFest in the arcade, and for a couple of years, it was the only WWF game that offered up WWF’s marquee over-the-top rope elimination match, the Royal Rumble, and it was endlessly fun to play in the arcade. Fast-forward to playing it on console kiosks around its 1993 release, and I could not eat up enough of that game’s Royal Rumble mode either, and at the time, the graphics seemed like a huge step up from the wrestling games on NES. One of my favorite issues of Nintendo Power is the 50th issue that did a several-page spread on WWF Royal Rumble that I must have thoroughly re-read at least a dozen times.

I read this NP spread of WWF Royal Rumble many times, and it was one of my initially most desired SNES games!

Around 1993/94, a couple of friends and classmates started to get the Super Nintendo. An early SNES memory that stuck with me all these years is my grade school friend, Jon-Paul, having me over for his birthday where he rented a SNES console and Street Fighter II: Turbo from the video store, and we played it for several hours straight. Another is spending a lot of 1994 at my neighborhood friend’s place, where we played countless sessions of NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat II. Both games were big on codes and secrets and perfect two-player games. I was just regularly getting into video game magazines at this time and ate up issues of Tips & Tricks, Game Players, and Electronic Gaming Monthly to see what kind of hidden character and other much-rumored codes were making the waves each month for both of these games. Mortal Kombat II especially dominated the code-fervor that season with trying to uncover how to face off against secret characters like Jade, Noob Saibot, and Smoke, and trying to memorize all the input sequences for the game’s infamous Fatalities.

Fast forward to late 1995/early 1996, and I still did not have a SNES, but a new neighborhood friend, Rich, just got one and the next several months at his place introduced me to so many SNES games. Rich kind of got me somewhat into RPGs at the time, and while it may not sound fun on paper, there were many times I recall just kind of embracing the role of “armchair gamer.” I did this for games like EVO: Search for Eden, and Eye of the Beholder while keeping an eye out during gameplay to offer whatever suggestions seemed viable.

FFVI was eye-opening to me at the time of what video game narratives were capable of, and I devoured the latest secrets for FFVI discovered in the latest issue of my Game Players subscription that was delivered.

The RPG I felt like that I contributed something to was the game that was originally released as Final Fantasy III. That game featured two-player support for battles only, so it was refreshing to help Rich with progressing through the game finally. My two favorite characters to use were Sabin and Cyan. That game especially blew me away with its larger-than-life story with two different game worlds, the momentous opera scene with Celes, the dazzling mode-seven graphics when traveling via airship or Chocobo, constantly getting irked at Shadow whenever he deserted the party, and so many other priceless moments. Over the years, I tried restarting the GBA version on a couple of occasions and regrettably have yet to finish it.

Finally Owning a SNES….in 1996

Growing up with divorced parents put me in a unique childhood when it came to gaming. I lived with my mom, who provided for us as best as possible for the three siblings I grew up with, so we only had an NES for us for the longest time. However, when visiting my dad on weekends, he would always be big on hitting up as many garage sales and second-hand stores as possible and would acquire whatever he thought seemed like a bargain. Games-wise, this usually meant he lagged behind a generation because everyone was offloading their Atari VCS/2600s at garage sales for cheap when the NES was king, so I could have a great couple of years to become familiar with the pioneering-era of games on Atari. He then got into the NES scene when the SNES hit in 1991.

Sure enough, the same month the N64 launched in America in September 1996 was when he bought a Super Nintendo for the family used at our local Premiere Video. The game we picked up with it was Street Fighter II: Turbo. My dad instantly remarked upon booting it up the noticeable jump in graphics. We played nothing but Capcom’s second Street Fighter game on SNES for a few weekends. I could only finish that game by button mashing into a victory against the final boss, M. Bison, once….with M. Bison. I still have a lot of love for this era of Street Fighter - whether it be for the roster, every character’s stage and theme music, and receiving Nintendo Power’s strategy guide for the game for Christmas and studying it regularly to improve.

After a few weeks, we realized we needed something else than a fighting game, and after another trip to Premiere Video, we came home with Super Mario All-Stars. It felt like the easy choice to go with 16-bit remakes of all four 8-bit versions of the core Mario Bros. games. Every game felt like a whole different game with all-new graphics and sound, and more importantly, being able to save progress midgame. This was a bigger hit with the entire family, and it provided many days of taking turns in its alternating two-player mode to see who could get the farthest in the four Mario games included.


Make sure to have some tissues by your side as you witness FFIII/VI's infamous "opera" scene. Seriously, this was mind-blowing stuff to 13-year old Dale in 1996.

16-bit Sportsball Fun

After playing a lot of those first two SNES games, I went into this stretch for the next several years, where most of what I played was sports and wrestling games. I attribute this to many multiplayer sessions with Rich, my brother, Joe, and my dad. I know my dad was not all that into sports other than a passing interest in rooting on hometown Minnesota pro-sports teams. Still, I have to give him credit for spending as much time with us and taking the time to learn and become a pretty solid player at teaming up with me in many sports games.

It is worth noting that I feel the 16-bit era is probably the last-gen where most of its library of sports games had a relatively simple pick-up-and-play feel that NES games had. That changed a little bit in the final SNES years, where it was usually EA’s games that started to incorporate more realism in their sports games and make use of most of the buttons of the SNES controller.

For football, Madden NFL ‘97 was the one I played the most. I played plenty of the Genesis version at Rich's place, so much so that I noticed too many little differences with the SNES version to make it stand out on its own. For 16-bit sports nuts that want to know, the Genesis version had the better playing version, but the SNES had a better overall presentation and more popping audio and visuals. I was part of a small slice of sports gamers big into NES Play Action Football, and the 16-bit version played almost exactly like the NES version, but with a 16-bit upgrade and also has a nifty feature to play games at the high school, college, or NFL level.

NBA Jam and NBA Hangtime dominated my 16-bit sports lineup. The code scene for these games were so intense at the time I had to keep my own binder of notes on them all that I still have today as seen above!

As I alluded to earlier, when it came to hoops, I played way too much NBA Jam the first year it was out at my friend’s place. However, the arcade hoops game I played the most on SNES was NBA Hangtime, which was developed by the same people who made Jam. I got that game new for Christmas in 1996 and must have played it regularly with Rich for nearly a year straight. I do not hear that game receive the same level of praise as Jam, but it added a few new fun layers to freshen up the gameplay, like being able to do co-op dunks and earn “Team Fire,” and being able to create players. For more simulation-focused hoops, I played a lot of NBA Live ’96 with my dad, in addition to Nintendo’s NCAA Basketball which appeared like a technical marvel to me that was ahead of its time with the mode-seven camera allowing constant 3D rotation whenever possession of the ball changed and foreshadowed what would become the go-to camera perspective for the next-gen of basketball games. Finally, I will cherish my time with Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball for it being the only hoops game I ever had to consult a guide to figure out how to shoot the damn ball….and for its surprisingly rocking soundtrack. Find out all about it when I broke that game down with the Your Parents Basement crew on their penultimate podcast.

Nintendo incorporated the same camera style into its hockey game, NHL Stanley Cup. Its graphics also impressed me, but it was rather challenging to score a goal, and I did not have as much fun with it. I played EA’s hockey games more on Genesis than SNES, but EA’s baseball game, MLBPA Baseball, was the hardball game I spent the most time with on Super Nintendo. Many years later, I picked up Nintendo’s Ken Griffey Jr. Presents: Major League Baseball, and had some fun with it, but already played the Game Boy version of it to death by the time I picked up the SNES version, and thus did not invest as much time with it as I did with EA’s game.

Wanna Wrassle!?

I must have read through this review of WWF RAW countless times in my youth, and seeing how this essentially is a bigger and better version of Royal Rumble only increased my desire to one day own a SNES!

The North American wrestling library was a significant step up from the bottom of the stairwell where most of the NES games hung out….but on the SNES, it only made it roughly halfway up the stairs. The aforementioned WWF Royal Rumble provided many hours of fun for its day, but it has not stood the test of time with the button-mashing grapple meter it featured that will obliterate thumbs on the normal difficulty level! Its sequel, WWF RAW, was noteworthy for having more match types available and being one of the first games to have a selectable female wrestler in Luna Vachon, but it too used that same ill-fated grapple meter that has not aged well. WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game is a fun little hybrid of Mortal Kombat and wrestling, but the SNES version is notorious for lacking two wrestlers compared to all other home versions.

For non-WWF games, WCW SuperBrawl Wrestling is rather unremarkable….except for its exceptional wrestler select screen.There were a few interesting unlicensed wrestling games in America. Natsume Championship Wrestling featured a solid wrestling engine but removed/altered the AJPW wrestlers from the Japanese version of the game. Hammerlock had a promising concept of having part of the screen dedicated to nonstop Tecmo-esque cinematics. In contrast, the other half of the screen featured 2D gameplay, but the cameras constantly flipped on screen, to which half was dedicated to cinematics or gameplay. It resulted in it being a jarring mess. Saturday Night Slam Masters is no such mess, however, and is a better hybrid of fighting game meets wrestling game, with this one done by Capcom. It features larger-than-life character sprites, full-on ring entrances with laser lights, and is a fun-playing combination of wrestling and Street Fighter. To top it off, Slam Masters has Final Fight’s Mike Haggar on the roster to boot!


Joey Pink does a fine job detailing why Capcom's "Street Fighter" in a wrestling ring should not be missed!

Ensuring RPGs are here to Stay

Aside from watching Rich play some of the RPGs I listed above, and of course, playing Final Fantasy VI with him, I did get a chance to play a few other RPGs on the SNES over the years, and it was not until the last few years that I finally finished a couple of them. In the late 1990s I first started two RPGs that stood out to me at the time because they broke out of the medieval fantasy mold most other RPGs at the time took place in. Shadowrun on the SNES was drastically different from the Genesis version I first encountered at Rich’s. This one still had the same futuristic cyberpunk world setting and terminology, but there were many more dialog options with NPCs that were pivotal in asking the right questions to progress the story. Additionally, the hacking games played out differently and had more of a puzzle theme to them than the action-oriented ones in the Genesis version, and the combat had kind a PC interface where a cursor had to be dragged across the screen on which target to aim at. I still wound up being totally into it and became stuck in the back half of the game before my save data became corrupted. I thought that would end my days with Shadowrun…

SNES Shadowrun remains one of my all-time favorite RPGs as of this writing! The final gauntlet tower was an ordeal and a half to work through, only to face off against a dragon as the final boss!

…until nearly two decades later in 2016. I mentioned on past flashback specials how I occasionally guest host on the Your Parents Basement podcast, where they cover a random retro game per episode. In 2016 they asked me if there were any games I had in mind to cover, and Shadowrun felt like worth revisiting and possibly knocking off the “must beat this game” bucket list. I progressed until about a little over halfway through by the time we all met to record and broke down the game, but by that point, I just started to make further progress than my last effort and was determined to see this one through! I was playing on actual SNES hardware and was surprised that the battery still held a save but ran into trouble in the final tower with a gauntlet of enemies on each floor to overcome before the final boss. I looked up a walkthrough and discovered an exploit to grind experience to beef up my character. Eventually, I managed to persevere and finally conquer the final boss, a fire-breathing dragon, to cross finishing Shadowrun off my bucket list! I had a riot podcasting with the YPB crew about it too, so please click or press here to give it a listen if you want to know more about this under-the-radar 16-bit RPG.

Fast forward three years later in 2019, and the awesome YPB hosts of Steve, Huell, and Todd helped me once again restart and finish another SNES RPG that I came close to finishing in the late 1990s before evil corrupt save data reared its ugly head again. This time the game of choice is the uber-expensive Earthbound. Like Shadowrun, that game stood out to me because its setting went against the grain of fantasy settings and instead took place in modern times as grade school kids. The opening levels felt like getting lost in your neighborhood and using childlike items as weapons like Yo-Yos and baseball bats. I do not own that ridiculously expensive game, but by 2019 I did own a SNES Mini (more on that in a bit) that I made sure to abuse the save state and the rewind functions it provided to overcome some troubling bosses in the back half of the game. That final act of the game certainly goes places with its sci-fi twists and feels like an entirely different game, but I still loved it all the same! It felt exhilarating to finally knock this one off my “to do” list as well, and I had just as much fun dissecting it to pieces with the YPB crew that you can check out by click or pressing here.

Unfortunately, this is where my extensive hands-on time with SNES RPGs comes to an end. I played a lot of FFIII/VI, and finished Earthbound, and Shadowrun. Sure, I dabbled in several other games but did not put more than an hour or two into them. One of those games is the much-heralded, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and I have no excuse for never sticking with it because I loved the NES original. It was the GBA re-release I played, and I think I was spreading myself thin while playing and reviewing too many games simultaneously. Lufia and Breath of Fire II were another pair of RPGs I put a couple of hours into that both left me with promising first impressions, but there was a whole other reason why I did not go back to those again, and that is because then I was waist-deep at the time in…..

Discovering Emulation

Right around the time my family acquired its first computer in the fall of 1997 was when I found out about emulation. It seemed way too good to be true to easily download and play games right on the computer, especially when factoring in the SNES was at the tail end of its lifecycle, and there were still new games releasing for it. As an unemployed 9th grader at the time, I sampled countless 8- and 16-bit ROMs with the SNES games I was the most curious about. A few of the RPGs in the previous paragraph being prime examples of the ones I invested the most time into. It proved to be overwhelming with so many choices, but I took a long sabbatical after a year or so of taking in the emulation scene after the family computer crashed and I lost all the save data I had amassed in so many games.

It has been interesting to see how emulation has evolved over the years from programs like SNES9X and Retroarch to being incorporated into machines like the MISTer, RetroPi, and Retron 5. Nintendo has learned to embrace official, legal emulation over the years with purchasable digital classic games on systems such as the Wii, WiiU, and 3DS. Having a stable income as an adult now many years later, I feel guilty for embracing the emulation scene so hard in my teenage years, so much so that whenever Nintendo re-releases one of its classic hits several times over, I choose to purchase it again (well…usually at a sale price) to redeem myself.

Keeping SNES Alive Today

Over the years, I find myself diving into retro games versus the latest and greatest coming out. I am a fan of the various SNES hardware updates/clones, both officially from Nintendo and unofficially from other companies, which has kept my SNES and other retro game fandom blood flowing over the decades. I am unsure if it feels right to lump it in here, but the Super Game Boy lead to me getting a lot of extra life out of my SNES. Playing Game Boy games on the big screen was a big deal to me back then, considering it was always a pain to make out what was happening on the non-backlit handheld. For some reason, those special border screens that would eventually have funny animations after being left idle for so long made an impression on me. Game Boy games with the “Super Game Boy Enhanced” logo on the front of the box usually have their own exclusive border and special color palette. I loved the Mole Mania and Donkey Kong Land borders the most! I thought it was rad that around 15-20 special enhanced Super Game Boy titles featured multiplayer support with two SNES controllers. They consisted almost entirely of Bomberman and fighting games, but it was still a cool feature nonetheless.

The handheld Hyperkin SupaBoy is the unauthorized SNES take on the Sega Nomad by having a portable SNES. It is a bit on the bulky side, but it has a rechargeable battery, and its support has been flawless with my entire SNES library. Another Hyperkin product I got a lot of use out of is the Retron 5. I know that particular clone system is controversial with retro game enthusiasts based on the unauthorized emulators it implements. However, the user interface and emulation support made it possible for me to make record progress in many SNES games by taking advantage of save states and its optional Game Genie-esque cheats library. The SNES Classic Edition is an excellent official piece of hardware from Nintendo that has the pint-sized SNES pre-installed with 21 SNES games, one of which is previously unreleased Star Fox 2. It has an adorably intuitive interface and supports game rewinding and save states, which made it the way I was finally able to finish Earthbound. It was also surprisingly not-so-difficult to plug into a PC and import a bunch of SNES ROMs into. Other companies like 8bitdo made that system extra convenient by making their recommended wireless controllers compatible with it!

If you did not grow up with the SNES, then both of these options are great entry points for those looking to move on beyond emulators.

The Analogue Super NT may have been pushing it too much price-wise. When it comes down to the nuts and bolts of emulation tech, I am not a wizard by any means, except that by all sources, it sounds like the Super NT offers the best hardware emulation with its FPGA technology. It makes SNES games appear as pristine as possible on an HD/4KTV without any or as minimal of the fuzziness that happens whenever I try plugging in the composite/RCA cables from a base SNES system into a 4K/HDTV. For those unfamiliar with the Super NT, this video from the My Life in Gaming crew does a thorough dissection of everything it has to offer. The list of options in there is intimidating to mess around with, but this sounds like the way to go if one wants to keep playing their cartridges……although I have to admit I am pretty satisfied currently with the Retron 5 and SNES Classic Edition.

Odds are some of you are quite a bit younger than me and grew up post-SNES lifecycle. Not interested in going down the pricey road of hunting down old cartridges and hardware, and do not want to dabble on the dark side of illegal emulation? Then a terrific alternative is if you have a Switch with Nintendo’s $20/year online service membership and taking advantage of the Nintendo Switch Online and Super Nintendo Switch Online digital game portals. It has unlimited access to the slate of games on there, along with save points as long as your membership remains active. The implementation of save states and the user interface has also improved noticeably over the emulation used for NES & SNES Classic Editions. More importantly, it adds the feature to play online with a friend.

Last year I played online SNES games with my nephew, who was wrapping up 6th grade at the time, and this was his first time playing SNES games. He loves Mario Kart 8 on Switch, and so when the first game we played was the original Super Mario Kart, I could not help but crack up when he instantly remarked, “Dale, this looks old!” He eventually came around, and then we had some fun playing co-op , Joe & Mac . A couple of years ago, on my Genesis Flashback Special, I made sure to reminisce of my fond memories of the summer I spent playing nonstop Sega Channel. These NES/SNES Switch portals are essentially the Sega Channel, but far better because it does not cost $15 a month (in 1994 dollars which equals $27.63 today per Google), offers multiple save states, and ability to play online for only $20 a year!!! Kids, get your parents to hook you up now!!!

Miscellaneous Quick Hits

< SNES games were the most common denominator on six of the 13 episodes I guest hosted on the retro game podcast, Your Parents Basement. Check out their full archives by click or pressing here.

-Turns out I did quite a few guest hosting spots on Your Parents Basement Podcast for SNES games. For those that are podcasting fiends and dug the three episodes I linked to already, then I will link you to three more SNES themed episodes I appeared on where I breathed in the Mode 7 skies of Pilotwings, embraced Capcom’s action-platformer prowess in X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, and made sure not to miss any Gatorade and Wheaties health pick-ups in Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City.

-The SNES controller is my favorite pre-disc console era controller. It kept the similar button layout of the NES controller but rounded off the edges into its iconic “dog bone” feel so the controller no longer cramped in your hands! Throw in the two extra face buttons and two additional shoulder buttons, and it opened up all kinds of deeper gameplay possibilities! It made it perfect for most fighting games that used almost all the face and shoulder buttons. I found the shoulder buttons were also smartly implemented in NBA Jam/Hangtime for being assigned to use for turbo speed functionality.

As far as other SNES controllers/peripherals go, since I loved the NES Zapper, I always wanted to try the Super Scope, but as a kiddo, its bazooka-sized proportions were kind of intimidating. It still kind of bums me out all these years I never got to experience it with epics like Yoshi’s Safari, T2: The Arcade Game, and Tin Star. I never had an opportunity to use the SNES mouse either, which I kind of regret all these years later after seeing all the marvelous creations from experts at Mario Paint, and it was cool to see some PC ports like Civilization, Doom, and Wolfenstein 3D take advantage of SNES Mouse compatibility.

-The 16-bit era was when fighting games exploded, and as you can tell above, I spent a lot of time with Street Fighter II: Turbo, and the first two Mortal Kombat games. Other than that, though, the only other fighting game on SNES I put significant time into was TMNT Tournament Fighters. It was released at the tail end of the TMNT-mania when the cartoon peaked at its popularity. The game itself was a surprisingly competent licensed fighting game from Konami, and tried its best to feel like a solid Street Fighter-clone. Speaking of them pesky turtles…

-…TMNT IV: Turtles in Time was the only beat-em-up brawler I put considerable time into on the SNES. I have vague memories of trying others out once or twice like The Peace Keepers, and Super Double Dragon, but Turtles in Time was the one I frequently revisited over the years. It is a superb rendition of the arcade game, with SNES-exclusive levels like the Technodrome that had a fantastic first-person boss fight against Shredder, where lowly Foot Soldiers had to be chucked right at him to defeat Shredder. The soundtrack is one of my favorite SNES scores, so much so that I went all-in to get the for it! I have so many great memories of this game, with the highlight being my friend Matt and I revisiting this for complete runs of it once every year or two for about a dozen years.


Turtles in Time and FFIII/VI are my favorite SNES soundtracks, but Turtles in Time I own on vinyl so I will embed it here in all its glory for you to enjoy as well!

-The SNES library had a quality slate of racing games. Super Mario Kart quickly rose to the top of the ranks and was always fun to bust through a GP with a friend. Street Racer was one of the first kart-clones to hit in 1994, and for some reason, that one always stuck with me. As did it being one of the few games to have four-player split-screen support with all four screens being horizontal! Rock ‘n Roll Racing is another killer arcade racer on SNES; think of a more beefed up RC Pro-AM, but with a good dose of heavy metal mixed in. This past year saw it re-released as part of the Blizzard Arcade Collection for everyone to experience it! I remember trying out F-Zero at a store kiosk around SNES launch, but was too young at eight years old at the time to fully grasp its style of futuristic racing (or that the name was a riff on F1 racing until a couple of years ago). I was more into a game similar to its style that was the trilogy of Top Gear titles.

Uniracers was a quirky racer I enjoyed with its unique aesthetic and one-wheeled racers taking advantage of their nature in races filled with jumps and loop-de-loops….too bad about Pixar holding a grudge against Nintendo and legally forcing them to yank it off shelves. Nintendo’s other racer, Stunt Race FX, was ahead of its time with the polygonal FX-based graphics running pretty chunky on the SNES. Still, it is a commendable piece of 16-bit tech they were just barely able to keep running at a passable-enough framerate. Another FX-chip game that did not originally gel with me was…

-…the original Star Fox. Being 10 when it released in 1993, I thought those polygonal graphics looked blocky and horrendous and would have none of it! Many years later, I would revisit it and rightfully come around on it!

-Another Nintendo-published game that received a lot of hype was Donkey Kong Country with its cutting-edge 3D models. They were plastered all over gaming mags at the time. I briefly recall trying out the first and second of the three Donkey Kong Country games on SNES. However, I did not put more time into them because I beat Donkey Kong Land on Game Boy before our family got a SNES, which was just a watered-down port with some remixed levels for the handheld. I enjoyed my time with it, but its disappointingly blunt “congratulations” ending left a bad impression on me, and I never felt like giving the other entries a serious go all these years.

-Some may be wondering why there has yet not been anything dedicated to the pair of Super Mario World titles and Super Mario RPG? Super Mario World was probably one of the first SNES games I tried when I visited my older brother at his first apartment in the early 90s. I think the heavy-duty graphics and trying to comprehend attacking with Yoshi proved to be too much for eight or nine-year-old me at the time. I played it a few other times in my 20s, hanging out with coworkers on retro game nights, and had fun with it, but I think since I was exposed to the NES trilogy more and played the hell out of All-Stars, that those were the versions I preferred more.

I appreciated how Nintendo stepped up to Sega’s edgier marketing at the time with Nintendo’s “Play it Loud” marketing campaign. Unfortunately, I think their ad for Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was a bit too extreme for 12-year old Dale at the time. That ad (click here for it if you are feeling daring)was forever planted in my subconscious and always crossed my mind and indirectly caused me to avoid Yoshi’s Island for all these years. I did pick up Super Mario RPG and it is on my “bucket list” of games to play as well. I am holding off on it all these years because I was hanging out with Matt one day, and he explained how he was having a tough time with the final boss, Smithy. Well, he wanted to give me a quick demo to show how unforgiving of a challenge the boss was….but for some reason his clutch gaming skills kicked in right then, and he beat Smithy and was exposed to the ending right then and there!

-As far as other tough SNES games go, the two most challenging for me are easily Contra III: The Alien Wars and Zombie Ate My Neighbors. Contra III is like the first two games on steroids. I love the boss battles and intense walk-n-shoot chaos, but do not love constantly dying in one shot! Zombies Ate My Neighbors is another fun action-platformer that is also equally tough to make it farther than a few levels in unless you seriously dedicate yourself to it. Hey, both of these games also saw re-releases this past year on current consoles with the Contra Anniversary Collection and Zombies Ate My Neighbors & Ghoul Patrol set for those wanting to experience 16-bit nail-biting difficulty (but with save state support!).


I hope this excellent video review from the quintessential retro video game source, Jeremy Parish, suffices for my lack of any meaningful Super Mario World memories here.

-In 1997, I was hyped for a late SNES release, the original Harvest Moon. The farm/life/dating-sim series is still around today from publisher Natsume (as well as the original developers parting ways with Natsume and delivering their own competing Story of Seasons series). During the SNES era, I spent several summers out on a farm. I appreciated rural life's solitude and free spirit lifestyle, and that first Harvest Moon game perfectly encapsulated that. Trying to determine the best way to spend the day tending to the fields, livestock and managing a social/family life was surprisingly fun and engaging! Harvest Moon remain one of two games that I submitted a blurry Polaroid photo to Nintendo Power’s “Arena” high score section. I cannot recall if my score got posted or not.

-The original Sim City port on SNES received a lot of love around the SNES launch window, with Nintendo giving it a unique makeover with bonus Nintendo characters in it and an exclusive tutor in the form of Dr. Wright to ease everyone into the simulation gameplay. I never played too much of that version, but one night at Rich’s, the game we decided to rent that night was Sim City 2000. That one was released way late into the SNES lifecycle and lacked any Nintendo extras the first SNES game had. Still, we stayed up all night playing it and looking at our daily news recap and mayor approval ratings and trying to figure out where to stop underwater pipe blockages! It ran slowwww on the SNES, but we tolerated it fine enough at the time because I had yet to play the PC version. Eventually, I would check out the PC version and came away surprised with so much I had to put up within the SNES game.

-For those wanting to dare the Super Famicom scene, there are a plethora of great games that never made their way stateside, and better yet, a hearty chunk of them have received English fan translations. I am partial to the FirePro wrestling games that never made it here that are vastly superior to all the American wrestling games I broke down above, BS Out of Bounds Golf is an addicting take on miniature golf, the original Star Ocean, and the Back to the Future platformer that was not a five-star classic by any means, but blew away the poor NES and Genesis games that did release here. If you are not that familiar with the Super Famicom library, this top 50 list from RVG Fanatic is a great place to start your research and very much helped clueing me into a bunch of Super Famicom games I had little-to-no knowledge of.

Conclusion

If you are around my age reading this, you may be wondering why I have not gone on about the fabled “16-bit Wars” by now. Rest assured, I experienced it in the lunchroom and at recess and in gaming magazines at the time. I devoured all the side-by-side screenshots in gaming mags of dual-platform releases to see if I could spot which version was better. I want to say back then, I sided with the SNES because I grew up with the NES, but that does not seem like a fair choice since I did not own a SNES until 1996. Reflecting on it, although I experienced a fair amount of RPGs and other games on SNES with Rich, I primarily played endless hours of Genesis games with him back at the time. So whenever I hung out with Rich, I considered myself a Genesis fan, and when I finally got a SNES and grew my SNES library, I considered myself a SNES fan and avoided a lot of the “console wars” trash talk. For younger readers here who want to learn more about the fervor of the 16-bit wars, the book, Console Wars, and its corresponding documentary (which is currently only available on Paramount+/CBS All Access sadly) are my recommended ways to absorb all that hoopla.

I will cherish all of the past 30 years of SNES memories and hope you have enjoyed reminiscing with me for the last several thousand words. If you want to hear more of my SNES memories in podcast form, I have a few SNES-centric episodes of my old podcast I recently un-vaulted and have embedded below for your pleasure. They have some of the friends I repeatedly mentioned above as co-hosts that share their SNES experiences and memories, so please load up a random SNES “podcast game” and boot one of these podcasts up for fitting background noise….

10 years ago I did a 20th anniversary SNES special with Matt!

Here is the history of RPG series episode dedicated to the 16-bit era.

Finally, here is Matt and I hosting the 16-bit installment of our history of comic book games series.

Bonus Overtime

It would not be a Flashback Special without one random oddball bonus story to wrap it up with. The only Kirby game I ever finished receives that honor. One day, my brother and his friend Jake were over at my place. We were discussing SNES games at some point, and Jake mentioned how Kirby Super Star is his all-time favorite. I said how I never played it and did not think anything of it at the time, but the next time I met up with him and my brother, Jake had the copy of that game with him and insisted on borrowing it to me and said not to give it back until I finished it. I felt this sudden obligation to play through it as a priority, so I did not feel like I was keeping his game hostage.

Luckily, Kirby Super Star is a damn fun game, which the front of the box labels as “8 Games in One!” Most of the games are abbreviated-length adventures of only a handful of missions in their unique theme of levels, and a few of the games are mini-games like a race against King DeDeDe. Regardless, almost every game provided that trademark Kirby lighthearted fun and was hard to put down! Kirby’s Dream Course is also a lot of fun on SNES, and is an interesting take of Kirby meets miniature golf! With that anecdote, I will wrap up yet another Flashback Special. Thank you for sticking with me this far, and If you dug reading about my trials and tribulations with Nintendo’s 16-bit machine, please take a look at the other Flashbacks I have linked below!

My Other Gaming Flashbacks

Dreamcast 20th Anniversary
GameBoy 30th Anniversary
Genesis 30th Anniversary
NES 35th Anniversary
PSone 25th Anniversary
PS2 20th Anniversary
PSP 15th Anniversary and Neo-Geo 30th Anniversary
Saturn and Virtual Boy 25th Anniversaries
TurboGrafX-16 30th and 32-X 25th Anniversaries
Xbox 360 15th Anniversary