Nintendo – DaveGladow.com

F-Zero X review

There are a lot of “floaty car” racers out there. Here’s another one!

That’s basically the review right there. The second F-Zero game on home consoles released for the N64, F-Zero X stood out for trading any semblance of decent visuals in for lightning speed, as though driving a cyber truck meant you could go 800 mph down a slip n slide.

Sadly, driving a cyber truck only makes you a giant dorkstore. But the good news is this game allows you to make a deal with the devil that actually provides a decently good time and not just the scorn of every person you meet.

The insane speeds here really stand out. Unfortunately, so do the touchy controls, which make the thing a little more inaccessible than other racers, including its predecessor, which I consider a more enjoyable affair overall (and was certainly more groundbreaking).

So yeah, that’s F-Zero X. It’s ugly. It’s insanely fast. And it’s got a steep learning curve. As part of a really deep collection of racers on the N64, I consider it somewhat noteworthy historically as well.

I like it. I don’t love it.

Dave’s Score: 7/10

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond review

This is tricky. A much anticipated and then much maligned sequel of a beloved Nintendo franchise, Metroid Prime 4 is probably best experienced without any of that baggage. So a review kind of defeats the purpose.

What I feel comfortable sharing is that it doesn’t live up to the lofty expectations many had for it, nor does it fall to depths many have accused it of doing. Instead, my experience was very much, “Hey, more Metroid Prime, neat!”

I think the flaws in design are undeniable, so much so that the much derided desert area does necessitate a warning for first-time players: I would not ignore collecting the green crystals. Go a little out of your way to ram into them on your motorcycle as much as you possibly can. Do this and I think the pacing of the game works just fine. Don’t do this and the end of the game might begin to feel like an extended Kids Bop concert.

That there needs to be a caveat is in its own way disappointing, but I want to be clear: I REALLY enjoyed playing this. I’m okay with the choices many had a problem with, the music and graphics are top-shelf, and it’s still as fun as ever to wander through beautiful alien biomes, scanning all the things before blasting them into atoms. (The boss battles in particular are a highlight.)

I would compare this game to “Skyward Sword,” a personal favorite of mine that really irritated a lot of people in the Zelda community. The two games are similar in creating a relatively small, interesting world with interconnected distinctive biomes, and then demanding the user revisit areas in a fairly linear way. They also share the propensity for leaning into what made each series successful, with perhaps an acknowledgement that there’s no further to go without total reinvention. I’m not sure, but I’m thinking possibly so. (The difference between the titles is that the story beats here are not nearly as successful as they are in SS, but again, I still had a good time with the gameplay and environments.)

Ultimately, I hope people play this and we get another sequel. I also hope they mix things up a little more next time.

Dave’s Score: 8/10

Mega Man 3 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 48)

I don’t know that I’m going to have much more room for series duplicates and sequels in the rest of this countdown.

And yet, here we are anyway.

I mean, sure, we’re still going to have to see some covered ground as we go along, because I just have too much fondness for particular games to leave them off. And if we can acknowledge that sometimes sequels can exceed the original work (as we have done), we can likewise acknowledge that sometimes they don’t *quite* get there … yet they have a great deal of value just the same.

Even more than that, if I’m honest with myself (and you), I can also allow that on occasion, my own choice for elevation in this list is more of a coin flip than a definitive proclamation. In other words, the relative quality between two choices for inclusion from a particular property might be essentially equal.

So, let us state for the record that even though it feels a shame to lean into a specific series often during a countdown of this sort (since it will inevitably result in the exclusion of other series), it is also not entirely without merit. Truly, sometimes, the games in question simply just deserve to be here.

For me at least, the real litmus test, above and beyond personal attachment, historical importance, or even quality, is going to be how distinctive an experience you might get from game to game within a particular series.

I can wince a little at all of the Mario games we have on this list so far, but only for appearance’s sake, because when you peer a little closer, you’ll see a unique experience from one game to the next.

To elaborate, Mario 1 was the original promise of continued fun and excitement. Mario 2 was the colorful oddball sequel that innovated. Mario 3 was excellence personified. Mario World was even more excellence personified. Mario 64 was a groundbreaker. And so on, and so on.

It’s the same with Castlevania. “Dracula’s Curse” is perhaps the best possible example of old-school “NES-hard” platforming, “Rondo of Blood” was the transitional game, introducing more dynamic branching levels and upping the visuals and sound, and “Symphony of the Night” was the natural end point for that evolution, going for more explorer-based action.

With all of that considered, you can probably pretty safely guess why we’re now going to talk a little about Mega Man 3. Sure, I have a personal attachment to it. But it’s also a titan among 8-bit platformers giving it a historical relevance, and it’s roughly as good as the game we already covered – Mega Man 2.

But ALSO, it’s here because it’s distinct enough from Mega Man 2 to merit inclusion on its own.

Mega Man 3 at a glance:
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1990
Platform: NES
GamePro’s third-greatest 8-bit video game of all time

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 47)

So, other than Mario and Link, the omnipresent faces of Nintendo who will still be around long after I’ve left this big blue rock, I haven’t had another game/series/character manage to break past two appearances on this list of nearly 50 (so far!) games I think everyone should try playing.

Until now, that is.

Welcome to the club, Castlevania!

Truly, it is a distinguished honor.

Your children’s children will be talking about this moment.

Okay, probably not, but we can still talk about “Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse” for a while if we want to, so let’s do that.

Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse at a glance:
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1990
Platform: NES
Nintendo Power’s ninth-best NES game

The top 10 Nintendo Switch games

Hey y’all, I thought I would take a short diversion from regular programming to talk about the Nintendo Switch for a little while.

The system’s successor, the aptly named “Switch 2,” makes its debut in, well, several hours at this point, meaning the old trusty Switch is going to be on its last legs in terms of product support going forward.

This gives us the perfect reason to celebrate the Switch by talking about what it did so darn well. For me, with all apologies to its unique trailblazing nature as a home/portable hybrid console, that’s primarily the looooooong list of great games it housed.

I wanted to hone in on some of the highlights of that killer library – the true cream of the crop – and so I started to think about things in terms of the Switch’s “Mt. Rushmore,” the games that were truly stellar and synonymous with the system.

That list quickly grew beyond four, so I decided, let’s go for an even 10 and call it a day.

The following are in my view the 10 most impactful, representative, elite games on the Nintendo Switch … with a few caveats beforehand.

Super Mario 64 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 40)

Modern 3D gaming – particularly if we put aside the first-person shooter as being its own distinct category – owes a great deal of appreciation to many trailblazers, but especially two stupidly influential games in particular:

“Super Mario 64” and “Tomb Raider.”

The specifics of how we got to the point that those two games could be as successful as they were is probably a little too boring and certainly too technical (at least for me) to dive into fully. It’s hopefully enough to say that years of development led to advances in the technology (and even a few games reaching the market) that predated the dual releases of Super Mario 64 and Tomb Raider in 1996 (we should acknowledge that lots of people were working hard on this).

And yet, while all of that development was important, none of it hit with the force of my kids stampeding to the front of a dessert table quite like those two did.

1996 was a very big year.

The industry was NOT the same afterward.

And so, with that context, we can probably safely say that those two games are essential. They each, in their own specific way, offered the gamer of the mid-90s something new, and they left an undeniable impact on all of the 3D gaming that would come afterward.

Yes, there were other 3D games to land that year and in the years following. “Crash Bandicoot” gave Sony its own mascot for their new PlayStation, which in and of itself was no small thing, but if we’re honest, that game was also somewhat limited in its approach and also just not as popular as those other two.

In a similar way, no one today is pointing to “Bubsy 3D” as being particularly influential in this sphere, because we’re not crazy. (The game was VERY rough around the edges, the main character is generally reviled rather than adored, and it also didn’t sell super well.)

Conversely, we can speak to the fact that Tomb Raider was a well executed and well regarded game that sold over 2.5 million units in its first year of release, and Mario 64 was considered a landmark title by nearly everyone and sold about 3 million copies in six months itself.

So yes, those were the two biggies. And despite differing from one another in fairly significant ways, they deserve to be joined at the hip in these kinds of discussions as being important, influential titles.

Certainly, at the time, I recall vividly that each game was a “killer app” of sorts for their respective consoles.

Tomb Raider was on the Dreamcast and PC in addition to the PlayStation originally, though it came to become synonymous with Sony’s system (by design … Sony signed an exclusivity deal with Eidos for all of the sequels shortly after the release of the first game).

Mario, naturally, was strictly Nintendo, through and through.

As a result, gamers were presented with a distinct choice in the mid ‘90s. Go with the new hotness and the PlayStation, personified by one Laura Croft, the curvy star of Tomb Raider. Or stick with the colorful and playful “sandbox” cartoon-like stylings of Nintendo.

Having recently become a college student in 1995, it’s not difficult to understand why I would have gravitated toward Sony at the time.

Circling back to Mario 64 many years after the fact, I was struck by the depth of the controls and the craftsmanship that went into his first 3D offering. And yes, while there is undoubtedly some jank present, the game largely succeeds at its objectives in an impressive manner.

Much of the same can also be said of Tomb Raider, of course, and it deserves its flowers too. But as I look back at the two games and consider which to recommend above the other, I come back to a pretty simple equation.

Mario 64 is more fun.

So, let’s dive into why that is.

Mario 64 at a glance:
Genre: 3D platformer
Released: 1996
Platform: Nintendo 64
No. 4 on EGM’s Top 100 Games of All Time

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 36)

By now, I’ve pretty firmly bought into (my own) dogma that states the following:

Mario is better in 2D.
Zelda is better in 3D.

I am not alone in thinking this. It’s not a consensus view or anything, but I feel pretty good about it.

However, that also doesn’t mean that neither property can’t flourish within the either’s domain.

The best possible case to be made in this regard, that each series CAN do well in a different format, is probably “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past,” a game that builds upon its predecessors’ achievements in logical, beneficial ways and ultimately establishes a true pattern that its successors would take and run with in establishing the franchise in its next logical landing point with an over-the-shoulder perspective.

Can the formula be taken any further than this within the classic, overhead “2D” perspective?

No, not really. This is about as good as it gets.

Some might argue that other games in the Zelda canon have done a slightly better job than this one at providing a fun, engaging, beautiful gaming experience within that 2D limitation. And that’s cool! Tastes differ. But I think few would argue that this game doesn’t do those same things exceedingly well in its own right.

Put another way: We might quibble that other 2D Zeldas are slightly better than this one, but to say this one isn’t great itself is probably folly (and we should all throw rocks at that person).

And – let’s not undersell this – this game was innovative as hell. It created the template for the next two decades, not only for classic 2D Zelda experiences, but for the new 3D ones as well.

Taken in that context, “A Link to the Past” is not only a great game, it also absolutely established (rescued?) Zelda’s future, and for that it should be celebrated among the very best games in the history of the industry.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past at a glance:
Genre: Action/adventure
Released: 1992
Platform: SNES
Entertainment Weekly’s best game of all-time

Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 35)

They say age is but a number, but I do believe that our age can come to define us in many respects.

For instance, age can be an important point of common ground. An indication of shared experiences. A garden for bonding.

This reservoir of a common language, both figurative and literal, which arises from those shared experiences represents an easier connection point. It facilitates communication and understanding.

Whether I yell out “Norm!” in a bar or start humming the theme song to “Mission Impossible,” my actions can elicit an emotional response in the people around me. That emotion triggers a willingness or eagerness to connect. And off we go.

Those things that we have watched, heard, read, and experienced differ from generation to generation. And while me aping “Star Wars” for my immediate family is going to yield positive results, the communication will inevitably be lost for folks who have yet to see it. And that – whether they’ve experienced a thing – is determined, at least in part, by age.

Super Mario Bros., the definitive pack-in title for the Nintendo Entertainment System, stands tall as an incredibly important title historically. We’ll get into some of the reasons for that shortly, but it is enough to know at the outset that this game helped define an entire industry, saved a company from near-death while vaulting it to the head of that video gaming industry, and launched a mascot into the sort of fame generally reserved for the likes of Mickey Mouse.

A lot of people know this.

I mean, when I wear a Zelda shirt in public, I get the occasional question: “What is Zelda?”

Maybe this is a meme I am unaware of, but mostly I take it at face value: people who don’t game very often don’t know what Zelda is.

Yet people who don’t game still know who Mario is. And that often cuts across generational divides. Most people can grasp the significance:

Mario and by extension Nintendo are super important/popular in video games.
This was Mario’s first big starring adventure.

That second point is of course muddier than it needs to be, as Mario had previously appeared in a number of other titles, but the modifier of “first big starring” hopefully adds some clarity. This game was a gigantic hit, and the game was about him, Mario.

And people can accept this thing, because they’re at least vaguely aware of the other games that have come along since.

Super Mario Bros. 1.

One.

It was the first.

Okay, I can understand that.

Even a non-gamer in their teens can probably accept these basic truths and connect with an aging gamer in his 50s and carry on a brief conversation about the topic, just through general historical pop culture knowledge and logic.

Where the age gap enters the discussion is when the “other” pack-in game for the Nintendo Entertainment System is brought up.

“What about Duck Hunt?”

And this is why I “cheated” by listing both games here. Yes, they’re technically both included in a single cart. They’re both included as pack-in games for the NES. And each game is provided its own optimal control device in the form of a standard d-pad for Mario and the light-gun zapper for Duck Hunt. But let’s acknowledge: these are two separate games.

So why list them both?

It’s really pretty simple.

I don’t think either game is as good on its own. And I further don’t think that I can ever truly think of one without thinking of the other.

For a certain number of people who lived through that time period in the 1980s, these two games are unfailingly joined at the hip.

And for those people, who lived the experience in real time, that is as it should be.

Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt at a glance:
Genre: Side-scrolling platformer / Shooter
Released: 1985 / 1984
Platform: NES
GameSpot community rated 9.1 out of 10

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 34)

As a grotesque, anthropomorphized moon threatens to collide with your world and bring about total annihilation, you, as the gamer, wrestle with the very real notion that you don’t know how to stop this, and moreover, that you’re not going to have the time to do anything about it anyway, even if you could figure out what that was supposed to be.

In short, you’re doomed.

And you know it.

Bummer.

Quite obviously, it is not a stretch to say that “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask” is one of Nintendo’s darker creations, nor is it unfair to say that the game isn’t shy about throwing the player into the deep end quickly. The primary objective of the game, that of preventing this global apocalypse, is shoved in your face right away.

And it is added upon with still more to burden yourself with, as though preventing widespread death and devastation is … somehow not enough.

Whereas its immediate predecessor (and certified gem) “Ocarina of Time” started you out in the comfy confines of your personal home and community, introducing you gradually to external threats (with mostly obvious methods – and fairly introduced abilities – to overcome them), Majora’s Mask at the outset puts you in a vulnerable position alone on the road, makes you an immediate victim of a robbery and a curse(!), then leaves you with this hellish scenario of the moon colliding with your immediate location raining certain destruction … with just three days to try to stop it from happening.

Feelings of dread and doom overwhelm, to the extent few games have emulated before or since. We’re 45 minutes into this game, and we cannot in our wildest imaginations begin to understand how we’re going to get our heroic alter-ego, Link, through this one.

“Well, it’s been a good run buddy, but I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this one alive.”

“Me neither. See you on the other side, champ.”

Compare this to previous Zelda games. An enemy, even a grossly overpowered one like Ganon, is still just one entity. The challenge is easier to wrap your arms around.

Take down this bad guy.
Save the princess.
Win the day!

The threat in Majora’s Mask is more elusive, ultimately, and more conceptually difficult to process. Its scope is immense, akin to asking a person to solve a problem like world hunger or devise a method for ridding the world of cockroaches.

“Where do I even begin?”

Where indeed. The trick, which is revealed in those early moments (but only after a sort of dread-panic has taken firm hold), is that time travel once again comes into play, as it did in the previous game.

Here, it’s implemented differently, as a kind of looping dynamic. You can go back to the beginning of this hellish scenario as many times as you like, as it turns out, as a way of “buying” yourself more time.

But this is a true deal with the devil, Faustian in its intent.

Yes, you get a chance to restart. But it’s a return to the same initial feelings of despair that so overwhelmed you to begin with. It’s the same place, with the same people, with the same scenario. Played out, over and over again. And as if that doesn’t sound problematic enough – retraumatizing yourself over and over again – certain things you’ve done to rectify the problems in the world around you … well those reset as well. Progress is lost. You must begin all over again. And perhaps worst of all, once you reach a certain point in the time loop, you reach yet another level of horrifying understanding, and it’s that your first impression was actually correct:

The breadth of the task in front of you is simply impossible.

You cannot do it. There’s just no way to save everyone and fix everything. Some wrongs will not be corrected, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

In a sense, you truly ARE doomed.

THIS is the essence of Majora’s Mask. And it’s effing brilliant.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask at a glance:
Genre: Adventure
Released: 2000
Platform: Nintendo 64
Runner-up for GameSpot’s “Best Nintendo 64 Game”

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 32)

Rhythm games haven’t always been so explicit.

Today’s generation of rhythm games – including such noteworthy examples as “Thumper” and “Crypt of the NecroDancer” – are very clear about their design choices in relation to the objectives, generally providing an on-screen timed graphic of some sort meant to coincide with a gamer’s button press.

It all works within the flow of the music, but the idea being conveyed is clear. “Press a button … now!”

If the person playing times their button presses well enough, they are rewarded with praise, advancement, and sometimes even rewards.

This simple concept, of indicating to a gamer when and where they should push a button, as though the music itself isn’t enough of an indicator, has been around quite a while.

1996’s “Parappa the Rapper” is often credited with popularizing this template, and that game absolutely deserves every ounce of praise it has ever received … though it wasn’t exactly alone in creating this sub-genre.

Of course, musical games like “Simon” predate Parappa by a good bit, and if you consider them for longer than a minute, you do realize that while the rhythm of those games is an afterthought, it does emerge organically, particularly as it relates to the avoidance of running out of time.

Moreover, though Simon was an external device/toy unconnected to any dedicated hardware, it was absolutely electronic in nature with a requirement of interactivity in order that it might operate properly.

Within that context, we might accurately say that the origins of the rhythm video game actually lie nearly 50 years past.

And yet, the true heyday, the “golden era” if you will, was the mid-90s to mid-2000s.

“Parappa the Rapper” beget “Beatmania” which beget “Dance Dance Revolution” (Dance Dance is a whole different conversation that we shall come to at some point in this countdown, I can assure you) which went on to beget “Bust a Groove,” and on and on we went, along through games like “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” which themselves became MONSTER hits (with gamers and non-gamers alike).

The newer games within the genre (released within the past decade or so) distinguish themselves by offering interesting thematic elements such as specific characters and music an audience might gravitate towards (Kingdom Hearts! Zelda! The Beatles!), as well as deeper environments to explore that don’t merely consist of one static screen, or perhaps if we’re really gonna get crazy, a screen that scrolls towards you while the notes/button presses come flying at you in real time.

But there’s a noticeable, familiar chaining to this system. “Press a button … now!. Press a different button … now!”

It’s pretty much always this way.

And it doesn’t have to be.

To understand this, we merely need to circle back to a different sort of rhythm game that predates the likes of Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, and Parappa the Rapper. One that’s less explicit in its stated intent, yet no less demanding when the game fires up.

You are not visually or verbally told to press certain buttons … the game merely demands it of you instead.

You are required to do things a certain way to progress, and that way is rhythmic in nature.

Jump. Jump. Bounce. Bounce.

Pause. Jump. Pause. Jump.

Attack. Move. Attack. Move.

Enemies are spaced from one another to encourage these inputs. The music is smooth and appealing enough to pull you in, yet urgent enough to pull you forward.

Patterns emerge. The soundtrack mirrors the action and vice versa.

Jump. Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.

And as you progress through the game, this oddity, of there being a rhythmic nature of one’s inputs, becomes more and more obvious, until eventually, there is little point in denying what is happening.

For those who have been paying attention, “Donkey Kong Country” offered up its own kind of rhythm game when it launched as a reboot/rebranding of Nintendo’s big ape in 1994.

And the series’ first sequel, “Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest,” managed to not only continue that tradition in resounding fashion, but also remains an absolute masterclass in incredible platforming to this day, refining and perfecting what its predecessor laid the groundwork for.

And what is that, exactly?

A true A+ rhythm platformer.

Donkey Kong Country 2 at a glance:

Genre: Side-scrolling platformer
Released: 1995
Platform: Super Nintendo
No. 17 in Complex’s “Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time”