Poll: Greatest N64 Game?

[PureChaos]

OoT of course. Shadowman and Snowboard Kids are great ones too. won't go into the full list of awesome N64 games but to keep it simple, OoT was the best (though the Master Quest was better)

I have a copy of Shadow Man around the house I intend to play once I get around to it -- i.e., once I finish Pokemon Emerald, The Secret of Monkey Island SE, Body Harvest, and Perfect Dark -- as I've heard good things. What's it like?

Also -- though I understand why it's so acclaimed -- I could never really get into OoT. The graphics, muzak, art design, etc. were all excellent, but I just found the sheer volume of tedious and/or obscure puzzle-solving in the game broke down the momentum of it. Of course, that criticism can be extended to virtually every Zelda except the first, which is my favourite.

Shadow Man is great. there is a lot of exploration so you will do a fair bit of backtracking (though not as much as in Metroid Pime). generally, it's really creepy, great story, cool weapons, gruesome enemies and some very fun times. i would recommend it to anyone...as long as they like horror!

also, i like the puzzle solving on OoT and evey other Zelda game. it's one of the reasons i love the series so much but i can see how some can find it annoying

 

[end_boss]

My tastes aren't really those of the typical or hardcore gamers. My favourites on the system were: WWF No Mercy, and Tetrisphere.

 

[Weaver]

[HEADING=1]JET FORCE GEMINI[/HEADING]

 

[DustyDrB]

I forgot about Shadow of the Empire. Hasn't aged well, but I loved it back then.

 

[ntnimara]

I might have voted OoT.. but I can't believe Super Mario 64 is trailing so badly

I loved Golden Eye.. but the race should be between SM64 and OoT

which is unfair, as OoT essentially uses a modified version of SM64's graphic engine.

So OoT awesomeness is much thanks to the work done on SM64

But I guess I'm part of those weird dudes that takes gaming historic and contextual details into account when comparing games :|

 

[EzraPound]

I don't get why people say Goldeneye is the best N64 FPS. Perfect Dark was pretty much Goldeneye but improved in every single way possible. And good lord, the guns, oooh the guns.

So, yeah, I guess my favorite N64 game would have to be Perfect Dark.

Actually, Perfect Dark did a number of things worse than GoldenEye. The graphics in it, for example, frequently looked grainy -- compare a level of PD to the Dam or Surface -- it had some serious frame-rate issues that GoldenEye didn't (which made the higher difficulties nearly impossible), and the fact it neccessitated buying an expansion pak to play properly was annoying given that there were really only two other high-profile games the RAM add-on was needed for (Majora's Mask and Donkey Kong 64). Plus, one could argue that the single-player levels in it are less inspired than GoldenEye's, and that the inclusion of a gun that shoots through walls is out-of-the-box thinking that nearly founders the the box.

 

[Julianking93]

Majora's Mask.

Brilliant game and beats the fuck out of Ocarina of Time.

 

[EzraPound]

I forgot about Shadow of the Empire. Hasn't aged well, but I loved it back then.

It was panned upon release, but I always liked Shadows - the game was brief, albeit consistently enjoyable owing to its divergent play styles, the soundtrack was orchestrated (something Rogue Squadron's wasn't), and the Hoth mission in which you hook to the AT-ATs was brilliant, especially for 1997.

 

[Pimppeter2]

Super Mario 64 is the obvious choice. But OoT and Goldeneye come close

 

[oppp7]

Wow, I only have 3 of these, and only played 2...
Anyone know where I can get an expansion set?

 

[mokes310]

Goldeneye, without question!

 

[Grayjack]

Jet Force Gemini. I should have never given away my N64.

 

[sephiroth1991]

I'm going with Goldeneye cos you always see Mario and Zelda nowa' days.

 

[EzraPound]

Greatest N64 game? None.

If there's one thing as a gamer that I will never, ever regret, it's not buying an N64. Looking back on that era, I got so much out of my PS1 and could never get excited for the backward cartridge setup, small line up of games and that god awful Frankenstein's monster that people called a controller. Any time I've run into an N64 game that people told me was "classic" and "had to be played", it turned out to be really bad, or just plain mediocre.

If pressed to pick one game, I'd pick Starfox 64. Since, unlike most N64 titles, it was genuinely fun to play and wasn't a sloppy 3D translation that defied the idea of being functional. But I could never come up with ten.

Ummm. . . it's fairly ridiculous to say the N64 doesn't have good games, as there were several genres it clearly excelled at compared to the PSX. These include 3D platformers (Super Mario 64, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Rayman 2: The Great Escape -- the better port --- and Space Station Silicon Valley); console FPS' (GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, The World Is Not Enough, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, and Turok: Rage Wars}; and the loosely-defined 'adventure' genre (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time & Majora's Mask; Shadow Man). Plus, it was competitive in terms of sports and racing titles (Wave Race 64; Mario Kart 64; Excitebike 64; Ridge Racer 64; Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2; NHL '99; All-Star Baseball 2001; International Superstar Soccer '98), and produced an RPG arguably as good as any on the PSX in Paper Mario.

Of course, the PSX had better RPGs, fighters, and third-person shooters -- think Metal Gear Solid or Resident Evil 2 (the latter of which was ported to N64, anyway) -- but it really was one of those generations in which owning one console couldn't do it justice.

 

[WalrusMan]

Ohmygod Paper Mario. That has to be one of my favorite games of all time. If Nintendo had released an actual new Paper Mario for the Wii and not that Super Paper Mario crap, I would have kept my Wii for that alone.

 

[L24z13L]

For me it was a toss up between SSB and 007 Goldeneye. I ended up going with Goldeneye because it's older and therefore more retro and everyone knows more retro equals more cooler.

 

[nathan-dts]

I was about 4 when I got Yoshi's story but I had limitless fun with that and Mario 64. Also, the goal of Yoshi's Story was to rescue the "Super Happy Tree". Yeah, it was called that.