Little Yoshi's N64 Game Reviews

YOSHI'S STORY

While you could argue that Mario 64 has set the standard for games in the future, there's no denying that Nintendo's success in the past was from games like Super Mario World or Yoshi's Island. And now, thankfully, Nintendo has made a 2D platformer for Nintendo 64. Well, for a start the games really cute - yoshi's graphics look better than ever and the animations are great. Mario aint ridin' ol' Yoshi anymore, but it's a good thing because all that crying was sending me insane. Yoshi has to go through 24 levels to complete the game. The levels are based on various "materials", like caves, wood, soft toy type material and even denim! (Jeans are made of denim.) Instead of bashing up enemies and finding some teleport or door to end the level, the levels revolve around a big fruit pick. You have to collect 30 bits of fruit to end each level, and sometimes big lardo monsters guard those juicy melons from you. Furthermore, the game is based on a story, with every level title you go into being a book that flips out into a full 3D display. The sound is equally enjoyable and impressive. The tunes are so cute! This has to be the only videogames with tunes this cute. I still can't get that bloody theme out of my head!! The game may lack difficulty and length for the hard-core gamers out there, but everything else makes up for it. This game is set to be an absolute hit for N64. SCREENSHOTS

G0LDENEYE 007^

Goldeneye is a first person perspective game and it's absolutely superb. My freind thinks these type of games are crap but for obvious reasons he loves this one! For a start the graphics rule. They use an engine like Quake2's graphic engine (but much better) and you have an ability to sorta "edit" the characters. That is, when you shoot a soldier, a red blood patch appears, exactly where you shot the bastard. The guns look cool, and have cool lighting effects on the shiny metal ones, but also have shading on the others.

If you have more than one controller at home, get Goldeneye. TRUST ME. The multiplayer mode is cool. And when you die, all of the red bullet patches on your body stay, and you end up looking like a raw hamburger. You can also choose the weapon mode, like power weapons, grenades, automatics etc. which is cool. You can also play the totally original "Flag tag" in which when you find a white flag somewhere in the level, you get a point, then you have to run away from everybody because you can't use your weapon when you die. Then when you do die, (you WILL DIE), The other guy picks up the flag you drop, and it goes on. Be prepared for sleepless nights with your pals!!

The sound are equally impressive. Every gun has a unique sound, my favourite sound being the "Klobb" gun ripping through your opponents (Like a butter knife in the klobb's case!) Why does such a crap gun sound so cool? The soldiers all have assorted voices, so when you kill someone, it goes "urk, warh, oof" and changes on every guy, instead of "ah, ah, ah, ooh" like on that Quake game. (Do you think I am insane?) The music is real instruments, not that midi sorta crap, and sounds like in the movie.

And the gameplay, oh the GAMEPLAY! Goldeneye is pretty hard. You have to go through missions and do stuff like copy discs and photograph stuff, instead of just going around wasting everyone. It's easy to work out WHAT to do, but hard to do it. Unlike in Mario 64, where it's hard to work out and usually easy to do. You'll need joystick skills if you want to finish THIS cart on hard mode! Oh yeah, speaking of hard mode, you have to finish levels on different difficulty levels to get cheats in the cheat menu (which starts blank). It has stuff like the "golden PP7" and stuff. I'll let YOU find out about that baby. Mind you, you can't win cheats while using cheats to finish levels. It's purely fun.

This game is already a hit, and man, if you don't have it and you have an N64 you are insane! It's on the top of my list!

SUPER MARIO 64

This game's a winner. I don't know anybody (except Daniel Starrenburg) who has an N64 and doesn't have this game. It doesn't use a rumble pak, which isn't a pity because I'm surprised if anyone cares, it doesn't need one. It doesn't need any accessories, actually. All the games are saved on disk. The level select is actually a level in itself, that is, it's set in the castle. (at the end of the game there's a scene with Yoshi, and he gives you 99 lives and a wing cap.) There's all these doors that you go into that have weird paintings that you jump into and go into a level - there's different tasks to do in each painting which you do one at a time, or you can come back to. At the start you can only go into one of these doors. To get into the other doors, most require you to earn a certain number of power stars (you get them by finishing the tasks in each painting) and a few, like the last level and the doors going into the basement and the tower, need a special key. You earn the key in a certain special level where you have to bash bowser 'til he gives you the key - then he nicks off (Bwa hwa hwa hwa). There's water too, and it's well done, and you can swim in it (not like in the old Nintendo versions, you SWIM in it.)

The graphics in this game are outstanding. If it wasn't for the standards Mario 64 set many many games would have made it to the top. There's great effects like smoke, flames, (When Mario touches flames he runs around with his tosh on fire and if he already hasn't run blindly in another hazard and died, or gotten to water in time, he loses about half his life...) water, clouds, falling and blowing snowflakes, and tiny leaves flutter to the ground when you jump into trees. But that's extras. This game is extremely colorful and the frame rate is outstanding, and Mario runs how you would expect a cartoon character to run.

The sound in Mario 64 is a definite ten outta ten. When you run on different surfaces it makes different sounds, eg. normal ground goes "thup thup thup thup", snow goes "chut chut chut chut chut" and if you're in water shallow enough to wade in it goes "splosh splosh splosh". Most of the talking is written in like a Japanese movie with japanese talking unless you are in Japan or know Japanese or both. It's written. It still doesn't matter. All of the cute animals make cute little sounds, like this cute little floating thing with a big nose that sounds like a seal (little did I know it would gun me down with an in-built gattling gun in it's shnoz), and bowser makes big lardo sounds like "Bwa hwa hwa hwa." On every level cool music sets the scene. It's all cartoony stuff. It's cool.

This game plays like a dream. There's so many moves, but they don't overwhelm your memory and are very simple to do, and you can do as easily as pressing just one button, which it usually is anyway. I think the game has an in-built "flightsim" too - when you have the wing cap it's as good as Lylat Wars minus the levels, missions and enemies, plus realistic gravity and diving effects (when you do a big dive and go back up you "stall" slightly). You can punch with either arm, kick, jump kick, dive, trip, pound the ground, slide kick, slide, duck, fly, get shot by a cannon, swing, climb, hang onto trees and poles, climb trees and poles swing some enemies, carry some enemies, throw some enemies, and even hang on and climb on a wire net (underneath). All at the touch of a button or two. And play some of these LEVELS - they vary heaps, and they RULE!

Overall this is a perfect game which you can play for a year until you get bored of it, and frankly, if you don't have it there's something wrong with you and you should get a job or get mental help if you already have cash. It's a winner of a game. Be careful, when you finish this game you will want to sell it.

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