So here we are, at the end of a very long (or maybe it just felt that way) journey through the back-annals (phrasing) of the Nintendo 64 library in this, a feature in which I figured out a way where I only had to play this ancient trash for an hour. For as much as I kvetch, and kvetch I most certainly do, this feature's been a ton of fun to put together and it's introduced me to a few N64 games that I was inclined to spend even more time with once their related entries were written up and sent out across the ethernet to die. The N64 was not really as much of a hidden gem factory as I'd previously hoped, since most of the small and weird and wonderful types flooded to PlayStation with its cost-effective CD manufacturing, but it definitely had some underappreciated highlights that haven't yet found their way onto the Nintendo Switch Online service: one of the major reasons I chose to keep those popularity contest winners away from this whole shebang. Underdogs only—that's the policy around here.

This time around we have the usual Pre-Select and Random choices—both bangers to see us out in style, thankfully—and then I have a juicy post-script for you all where I get into the games I regret leaving out of the itinerary (plus another list of those I'm happy never caught the eye of the random picker app) along with some other musings. Before all that though, we'd better go through the rules of 64 in 64 one last time just in case someone decides to Benjamin Button this whole feature (sodriew ,uoy ot deepsdog):

• Two N64 games. Sixty-four minutes each. I chose one, the other was plucked from of a list of every N64 game that ever was that I subsequently fed into a computer. If Skynet starts humming the Buck Bumble theme when the nukes are dropping everywhere, well, I'm sorry, but we kinda deserve it.
• Each game, regardless of quality, gets the VIP treatment of four sequential progress reports, a history lesson, a frank and honest review of their longevity, and a little bit of me making some shit up about how likely it is to join NSO despite lacking the business or journalistic knowhow to support my delusions. Turns out you can just say anything you want on the internet, it's fantastic. (And by "fantastic" I mean that it's probably going to be what causes the end of the world?)
• There are games that are available on the Nintendo Switch Online service that need no further commendation or promotion on my part, so I've prohibited them from appearing on here. Do you need to know if Ocarina of Time or Star Fox 64 are any good? Of course not. Would it have been nice to play them instead of half the garbage I've covered so far? Absolutely. Mistakes were made.

What wouldn't be a mistake is checking out the grid below for all the past episodes of this feature, especially if you've skipped any. For more details on what was covered when, be sure to also consult the final ranking list found at the end too. I've been playing a lot of Echoes of Wisdom lately, so I've gotten pretty handy at making tables appear:

Nuclear Strike 64 (Random)

• Pacific Coast Power & Light / THQ
• 1999-11-30 (NA), 2000-03-03 (EU)
• =277th N64 Game Released

History: Nuclear Strike is the fifth and final game in Electronic Arts's Strike series of jingoistic helicopter sims in which the player is tasked to cross large environments full of enemy units and other hazards in order to complete a series of assignments, all the while restocking ammo, refilling their fuel tank, and repairing damage incurred via resource caches scattered around the map. Notable for their open-ended nature, most Strike games have the player completing these assignments in any order they wish or else scour the map on their own for targets of opportunity. Nuclear Strike is set in the fictional South East Asian nation of Indocine where the player is tasked with foiling the plans of the Kurtz-esque rebel warlord Colonel Beauford LeMonde with the assistance of native guerrillas and mercenaries.

Pacific Coast Power & Light, previously known as Don Traeger Productions and latterly as Locomotive Games, is a Santa Clara-based developer closely linked to THQ, this game's publisher. The two would later work together on another N64 game, Road Rash 64, which was also previously an EA property. THQ and EA were big rivals at the time so I'm not sure what negotiations ensued for THQ to produce EA games on N64 but evidently they hashed out something mutually beneficial. Pacific Coast Power & Light's N64 career only included this game and Road Rash 64 before they moved on to PlayStation for Jet Moto 3, but THQ was very busy on this platform having published a total of seventeen games (only two of which we've covered on here before: Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt and Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage).

Starting with the random choice this time just to shake things up a bit. I'm so relieved we didn't have to end this feature with more sports or some impenetrable shogi game, though at the same time that could've led to a potentially amusing "I quit!" tirade. I recall having a great time with the earlier games in this series, particularly Desert Strike and Jungle Strike, and how they pre-codified (along with GTA, of course) many of the mechanics and approaches of the open-world genre once it exploded in the generations to follow. Heck, I'm sure you could draw a straight line from a Strike game to MGSV, and not just because of how heavily helicopters tend to feature in both. Intrigued to see what 3D did to the usual formula of performing chopper-based odd jobs around an isometric map but given this series didn't persist beyond this game there's undoubtably cause for concern.

16 Minutes In

Yep, this is pretty much how I remember these games playing. Flying around a map, blowing up stuff, eventually getting on with the mission instead of being distracted by whatever might be over the next hill or river. Controls seem pretty straightforward too: quickly found my main gun and rockets (there's missiles too; I'm going to want to know how to fire those without necessarily firing them at thin air since I have so few), the Z-trigger and R-button are used for strafing which makes it much easier to avoid RPGs if not so much regular machine guns since they fire a lot faster, and all the winching resources and NPCs business is done automatically if you hover over them (with your craft's shadow there to help line it up) so I'm glad they kept that as is. Looks like the mission structure has become much more linear: I had three tasks to complete on this map and they all had to be done one after the other. Beyond that, though, there's plenty of red dots on my radar that I could go 'splode if I felt like it, and you can conveniently change your radar's little arrow pointer thing to home in on either the next mission objective or the nearest enemy/resource of a certain type instead. Good stuff so far, if fairly simple.

As to this starting map, the first mission is to eliminate an entire village that was housing an enemy informant (sure sounds like the kind of military operation you hear about in the news all too frequently these days) and then rescue a Tanya-esque guerrilla leader named Naja from an ambush trap, take her to an allied facility, and then escort a truck she's very slowly driving across the map while protecting it from a bunch of tanks that spawn in from nowhere. I imagine this will be the sort of mission variety I can expect from the rest of the game, though likely with much heavier resistance. I am wondering though if they kept the on-foot missions from Urban Strike (but I'm hoping they didn't).

32 Minutes In

Naturally, the second map is where the difficulty starts to ramp up. A lot of the missions here are time-sensitive: even if you're not seeing allied health bars slowly dip down on the HUD there's action happening all over the map whether you're there to witness it or not. The first mission of this more coastal region is to quickly eliminate a bunch of tanks and APCs rolling into town before they push the natives into the sea. That's followed by a mission where a quartet of gunboats are heading up-river to eliminate enemy encampments: here, you can just rely on the boats to take on most of the flak from the enemy cannons but they will occasionally need your help to remove jetties and other damaging obstacles. Clearing the path for all four of them means they can all converge on the most dangerous area: something that would be a real problem to deal with on your own. After that, and the stage of the process that I failed at as you can see above, is rescuing a bunch of NPC pilots from little prison areas. Unfortunately, they're guarded by these real nasty anti-air missile trucks that will quickly ruin your day if you don't ruin theirs first. Sort of a glass cannon situation where expediency is needed over caution: those things have insane range once they've locked in on you, so the only way to survive is to go full aggro with your explodiest ordnance.

There's precious few armor pick-ups on this map but I'm not certain if the radar only registers those that are out in the open. It could be that there's useful pick-ups inside enemy buildings if I felt like blowing up some random villages, but in addition to a war crime tribunal I'm also concerned about getting distracted since every mission is on a timer. Still, I have a better idea of what I'm supposed to be doing (and not doing) so I'm sure this second attempt will go much more smoothly: since the gunboats take a while to get to where they're going maybe I can use that downtime for some reconnaissance.

48 Minutes In

Map #2 went off without a hitch this time, though with plenty of winches. Largely due to considerably less goofing off involved on my part. I'd forgotten that they'd introduced alternative vehicles at some point in the series, and I noticed that one of the "friendly" targets you can choose as a waypoint target—there's mission targets, allied/resource targets, and non-essential enemy targets—was a hovercraft. The hovercraft was perfect for guiding those gunboats (except for the time I accidentally ran one over and destroyed it, whoops) and though its armor and weaponry was limited it meant less stress on the chopper once I'd switched back. Gonna have to remember to look around for other vehicles I can take over in these missions, as well as keep in mind they're probably going to be a bit less sturdy than my main ride.

After fighting both LeMonde's forces and my own ADHD to stay focused on the missions, I saved the POWs this time and that was the end of the map. The third map, which I've just started, involves incinerating three fortified villages (can't we just call them "encampments" or something less atrocity-y? I thought the military was full of euphemistic jargon) and abducting the enemy generals holed up inside. Since there's three to choose from I can take my time to check out the defenses and whittle them down at my own pace, dipping back to HQ for ammo and armor repair when needed. At least, that's the plan: the map just started and I'm going to bet that unpredictable chaos will ensue eventually. No more anti-air missile trucks, please.

64 Minutes In

This mission was an odd one, because what was strictly limited this time was your ammo rather than your health. The map is absolutely jam-packed with enemies but scant few of those were directly in the way of the mission's success. I had to restrain myself from flying into packs of red radar pings because the chances are I didn't need that heat nor could I afford to waste rockets on them. The ones I did need to take care of were the enemies surrounding the buildings the generals were in and those circling the POW camps: the POWs were not mission targets this time, but every one saved restored 200 of your armor (out of a max of 1500) and were the only way to repair any damage in this map. That ideally meant clearing out the POW camp defenses before hobbling over there in a near-death state hoping for some helpful rescuée to patch me up. Ditto, I found out, for the map's only two weapon caches: both were well-guarded, so I needed some firepower left in reserve to deal with them if I was going to safely restock (and you can absolutely destroy the ammo by mistake; I accidentally exploded some fuel drums earlier, though it feels like fuel isn't as vital in this game or maybe just not on the default normal difficulty).

Other tasks involved another escort mission as I got Naja to a jungle fortress base and then murdered anyone trying to enter the building to stop her. After that, it was destroying a convoy carrying LeMonde himself which is where most of the remaining ammo ended up going. So... he's dead now, right? Game over? Turns out that was just the first scenario: the second will start with recruiting a mercenary called Harding Cash (bit on the nose) and taking on local SEA crime lords before I guess LeMonde makes his big comeback. Either way, it's none of my business. Just the trio of maps for me today: three Strikes and I'm out.

How Well Has It Aged?: Striking While the Iron's Cold. It's still a perfectly fine game, even if the formula's starting to feel its age by 1997 (let alone 1999, when this port came out). Sadly, EA didn't think to pre-empt GTA3 and go super open-world with it; if anything, the linear mission structure makes it feel way more constricted and limited than its predecessors. There were other non-essential map objectives like roaming enemies but absolutely no reason to go after them, since the game doesn't have any kind of scoring or XP system that would incentivize players to go beyond beelining the mission targets and bugging out instanter. Bit of a disappointment considering the lineage and what would soon follow, but judged on its own merits and compared to other military vehicle sims on N64 I think you could do a lot worse.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Strike the Thought From Your Mind. For the N64 port specifically I'd say it was pretty unlikely, given the current status of THQ Nordic and the Embracer Group as a whole. More likely EA just decides to revamp all five in some nostalgia-bait remastered compilation, maybe with Nightdive's or Digital Eclipse's help, and that'd be the ideal option for any present-day Strike fans.

Retro Achievements Earned: 3 (of 36). Pretty basic set, as there's three to be earned from each of the twelve maps: one for completing it on normal difficulty, one for hard, and one for hard without losing a life.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (Pre-Select)

• Edge of Reality / Activision
• 2002-08-30 (NA)
• 388th N64 Game Released

History: The third game in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series of skateboarding sims is usually considered the best of the bunch (it's my second favorite after THPS4) due to a combination of more ambitious level design and the introduction of the revert maneuver, which could extend combos even beyond a quarterpipe/halfpipe trick where most would previously end, as well as general all-round improvements along with additional tricks, specials, and customization options. As before, each map has a variable set of missions that include constants like earning a high score or collecting a set of items within the game's strict time limit, while others would be unique to that particular area and its gaps and fixtures. Completing challenges unlocks new stages and you can even find XP tokens scattered around to level up the stats of your skater—either chosen from a selection of real-life pros and pop culture cameos or one you've custom-created. These stats would often be instrumental in completing tougher challenges, providing ample reason to backtrack for anything that was a little out of reach before.

Edge of Reality was an Austin-based developer that was responsible for all three THPS N64 ports on behalf of series publishers Activision, with Neversoft having developed the original PS1 games those ports are based on. Edge of Reality also did the port work for Monster Truck Madness 64 and Spider-Man, both of which were previously featured on here. They'd later go on to port Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect for PlayStation 3, so I've them to thank for those two platinum trophies. The company later had a few original games of their own, mostly based on licensed properties, and closed down as recently as 2018. We don't need to get into who Activision are, only to say that this is the second of their eleven published N64 games that we've featured (after Toy Story 2).

If you caught the final episode of Anyway, Here's WonderSwan last week you'll notice a pattern here: not only is THPS3 one of the few N64 games left in the pile of those I really wanted to play but it's also the very last game ever released on the Nintendo 64. In fact, its August 2002 release date comes three months after the console officially went out of production for the sake of focusing on the Nintendo GameCube, which had launched the previous autumn. THPS3 is available for GameCube too, on that note, where it probably presented a much more compelling choice for anyone looking to do some grabs and grinds on a Nintendo system. I'm real curious (in perhaps a morbid way) how a next-gen game could've trimmed itself down sufficiently to work on this old and busted hardware, though. Guess we'll find out.

16 Minutes In

Well, it might be some trite wordplay for a skateboarding game (when has that ever stopped me) but this first segment has been host to a whole lot of ups and downs. The ups are, of course, that this is THPS and I found myself right back in its groove of pulling off trick combos and taking some time for stage exploration as I feel out some of these requirements and specifically the ones I feel I'm capable of performing right now. The game runs well enough and there's even actual music rather than the lyric-less MIDIs I was dreading: it feels like this version of the OST is limited to the classic Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones, Brit legends Motörhead's Ace of Spades (which suffered quite a lot from the truncation process; I won't forget the joker, Lemmy, I swear it), your requisite whiny pop punk by way of Not the Same by Bodyjar, and about three hip-hop tracks I couldn't name. Of course, many of these tracks had to be mangled down into two-minute versions to match the time limit but they're more or less the same. More or less. The downs naturally include the N64's controls: it took forever to find the grind button (C-Up, same as lips) and that's usually my go-to for making big combos in a hurry once I find a good long rail and ideally a gap to earn for grinding across it in full. Instead, I've been relying on flips for the time being since the skater I chose (Elissa Steamer) had average stats across the board—no worries about dump stats while I get my skating legs back—but above-average "Air": it was enough to earn the first two high-score challenges on the inaugural stage (Foundry) though I'm a long way from the final 75,000 one as of right now.

Presently I'm planning to get as far as I can with the career mode, collecting as many of the stat point tokens as I can before moving onto the next stage. There's a lot of content missing here, including I think anything mercantile (maybe that came later), though the option to create-a-skater was there if I felt like it (no female characters in this version sadly, besides the pre-generated ones). It also has the in-game gap checklist for all those stage-specific environmental bonus modifiers, which was one of my favorite things to play with in THPS4 since it gave you all the time in the world to experiment and find them. With a decent Air stat I should be able to reach most of these stat tokens in the Foundry and start pouring them into both Air and Rail Balance both to give myself a shot at some high-scores and for further stat token acquisition. After that, I might figure out some specials and start going to town more.

32 Minutes In

Oof, that two-minute time limit continues to be a huge bummer and really the only issue I have with the first three THPS games. Just when I'm in a position to finally make it to one of the harder to reach areas the timer ends and I have to start over, with a unhealthily long load-in time to boot (which you wouldn't think would be a thing on N64, but it has ways of surprising you). That THPS4 did away with the time limit while reconfiguring some of the challenges that required it—you're still timed for the score challenges and the S.K.A.T.E. letters now needed to be collected in a single combo—was such a huge improvement it's almost impossible to go back to the way things used to be. That people resented THPS4 for eliminating the "purity" of that time limit remains to this day the keenest feeling of alienation I've had from my fellow video game skateboarding enthusiasts. However, THPS3 is still amazing fun despite that party-pooping "no more fun allowed" mechanic and even hobbled as I am with these controls things are starting to turn around 180° (or maybe 900°) for me. Just gotta recall that the revert/manuals are on the bumpers going forward, or else I'm not going to get those combo multipliers high enough.

I've collected three of the stat tokens for Foundry—the fourth and fifth elude me for now, though I know where they are at least—so for the next segment I'll be starting on the second stage, Los Angeles (which was the penultimate stage in the PS1 version, so that's worrisome).

48 Minutes In

Los Angeles is the one with a lot of high up electrical cables to grind across, so I'm glad I've been bumping up my Grind and Air stats for this. One irritating thing about this version of the game (or maybe this game in general) is that there doesn't appear to be a way to see what tricks you have assigned to what buttons while in a session. I gotta bounce out and check my skater stats to see what to do to make, say, a Cannonball happen (right and C-Right, turns out) before I can land the specific trick and gap combos these challenges are asking for. I'm frequently hopping back to the character customization to spend any stat points I might've found anyway so it's not really all that inconvenient, but it's like playing a fighter without being allowed to see your move list.

Otherwise, LA is a pretty straightforward area with some decent scoring zones for grinds and half-pipe tricks so I'll probably try to grab those high-score challenges next and maybe see if stage three (Rio de Janeiro) is one of those annoying competition stages before we're done here. Do those still have stat tokens? Because I'm going to have to upgrade my Speed at some point too: I keep sliding down these slanted grind rails before I can reach their end.

64 Minutes In

Man, I dunno if I've actually ever liked Blitzkrieg Bop. That whole repeating "ay, yo" bit can get old real fast when you've heard it a dozen times while trying to land a stupid wallride-to-grind trick. Anyway, LA is going well. Managed to get four of the stat tokens here and was about ready to start going after some score and trick-specific challenges but hit the end of the timer—the one for this series, not the in-game one—and that was that. I got this close to the secret video tape; it's real high up and requires me to grind across four different things from the roof of the starting building, in case anyone wondered why grinding up your grind stat is important.

A fine reminder of how much I enjoy this series on PlayStation consoles where the grind button is within easy reach instead of being one of the awkward C-buttons. If I had a main menu option to rebind the controls to put grinds and lips on the B-button then I'd be inclined to put this much higher up the ranking table. As it is, regardless of where it eventually lands, THPS3 is a darn good time and something I could easily play for hours if I didn't have to restrain myself for this feature. That said, I'd probably go seek out THPS4 on PS2/GameCube and check if it has any RetroAchievements sets I can go after, or else maybe just wait and see if that THPS 3+4 remaster ever materializes. Heck, I don't think I played any of the ones after 4, so if I can stomach some Jackass-lite Bam Margera horseshit I'm sure I'll find something to enjoy in those too. Well, at least THPS3 on N64 did its job of letting me recall how much THPS in general slaps, even if it's far from the version of this game that I'd recommend.

How Well Has It Aged?: It's Not the Same, It's Changed. This is another case like Mega Man 64 where it's an absolutely great game but this is not its best form. And since I'm trying to curate a list of the best N64 games (oh, was that what I was doing?) it seems disingenuous to rate highly a game that I've better memories of playing elsewhere. Even so, the original experience is still fairly intact here and it is one of those times where I walk away after an hour of a game still antsy to get back into once I'm done with this write-up. Wholehearted recommendation for the game itself, a more muted endorsement for this version in particular.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Do Forget the Joker. The ball's in Microsoft's court, I suppose, though I don't know if they'll have to negotiate with Embracer since THQ was behind the port. Sounds to me like a big ol' headache that none of the above needs or wants, especially as there's better options available and the choice to just remake the thing if MS can scrounge a good team together for it after Vicarious Visions got dissolved.

Retro Achievements Earned: 0 (out of 49). This is a pretty expert-level set, starting with three cheevos per stage (clearing all challenges, clearing all gaps, and setting a 1,000,000 point high-score) followed by a bunch of character-specific achievements where you have to land all their starting specials in one combo. Some ouchie stuff but no sweat for a THPS freak I'm sure, and I'm heartened that they at least don't involve the massive and unappealing time-sink that is finishing the game with every skater.

Final Ranking

1. Super Mario 64 (Ep. 1)
2. Diddy Kong Racing (Ep. 6)
3. Perfect Dark (Ep. 19)
4. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Ep. 3)
5. Donkey Kong 64 (Ep. 13)
6. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (Ep. 48)
7. Doom 64 (Ep. 38)
8. Space Station Silicon Valley (Ep. 17)
9. Goemon's Great Adventure (Ep. 9)
10. Bomberman Hero (Ep. 26)
11. Pokémon Snap (Ep. 11)
12. Tetrisphere (Ep. 34)
13. Rayman 2: The Great Escape (Ep. 19)
14. Banjo-Tooie (Ep. 10)
15. Rocket: Robot on Wheels (Ep. 27)
16. Mischief Makers (Ep. 5)
17. Worms Armageddon (Ep. 44)
18. The New Tetris (Ep. 42)
19. Super Smash Bros. (Ep. 25)
20. Mega Man 64 (Ep. 18)
21. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (Ep. 46)
22. Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! (Ep. 41)
23. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (Ep. 42)
24. Forsaken 64 (Ep. 31)
25. Wetrix (Ep. 21)
26. Harvest Moon 64 (Ep. 15)
27. Bust-A-Move '99 (Ep. 40)
28. Hybrid Heaven (Ep. 12)
29. Blast Corps (Ep. 4)
30. Nuclear Strike 64 (Ep. 48)
31. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Ep. 2)
32. Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (Ep. 4)
33. Tonic Trouble (Ep. 24)
34. Densha de Go! 64 (Ep. 29)
35. Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren 2 (Ep. 32)
36. Viewpoint 2064 (Ep. 45)
37. Snowboard Kids (Ep. 16)
38. Spider-Man (Ep. 8)
39. Bomberman 64 (Ep. 8)
40. Jet Force Gemini (Ep. 16)
41. Mickey's Speedway USA (Ep. 37)
42. Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers (Ep. 7)
43. Body Harvest (Ep. 28)
44. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (Ep. 33)
45. Gauntlet Legends (Ep. 39)
46. O.D.T. (Ep. 45)
47. Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! (Ep. 29)
48. 40 Winks (Ep. 31)
49. Buck Bumble (Ep. 30)
50. Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage (Ep. 20)
51. Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1 (Ep. 39)
52. Conker's Bad Fur Day (Ep. 22)
53. Gex 64: Enter the Gecko (Ep. 33)
54. BattleTanx: Global Assault (Ep. 13)
55. Last Legion UX (Ep. 36)
56. Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (Ep. 9)
57. Cruis'n Exotica (Ep. 37)
58. San Francisco Rush 2049 (Ep. 4)
59. Killer Instinct Gold (Ep. 47)
60. Iggy's Reckin' Balls (Ep. 35)
61. Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt (Ep. 43)
62. Fighter Destiny 2 (Ep. 6)
63. Charlie Blast's Territory (Ep. 36)
64. Big Mountain 2000 (Ep. 18)
65. Nushi Tsuri 64: Shiokaze ni Notte (Ep. 35)
66. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness (Ep. 14)
67. Tetris 64 (Ep. 1)
68. Mahjong Hourouki Classic (Ep. 34)
69. Mahjong 64 (Ep. 41)
70. Bass Rush (Ep. 46)
71. Milo's Astro Lanes (Ep. 23)
72. International Track & Field 2000 (Ep. 28)
73. NBA Live '99 (Ep. 3)
74. Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside (Ep. 47)
75. Rampage 2: Universal Tour (Ep. 5)
76. Command & Conquer (Ep. 17)
77. International Superstar Soccer '98 (Ep. 23)
78. Starshot: Space Circus Fever (Ep. 43)
79. The Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Traction (Ep. 44)
80. South Park Rally (Ep. 2)
81. Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (Ep. 7)
82. Eikou no St. Andrews (Ep. 1)
83. Rally Challenge 2000 (Ep. 10)
84. Monster Truck Madness 64 (Ep. 11)
85. F-1 World Grand Prix II (Ep. 3)
86. F1 Racing Championship (Ep. 2)
87. Sesame Street: Elmo's Number Journey (Ep. 14)
88. Wheel of Fortune (Ep. 24)
89. Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (Ep. 15)
90. Yakouchuu II: Satsujin Kouro (Ep. 40)
91. Mario no Photopi (Ep. 20)
92. Blues Brothers 2000 (Ep. 12)
93. Dark Rift (Ep. 25)
94. Mace: The Dark Age (Ep. 27)
95. Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. (Ep. 21)
96. Ready 2 Rumble Boxing (Ep. 32)
97. 64 Oozumou 2 (Ep. 30)
98. Madden Football 64 (Ep. 26)
99. Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals (Ep. 22)
100. Heiwa Pachinko World 64 (Ep. 38)

Conclusion

That's our final list of 100 N64 games from the best and not-so-best that the NSO service has yet to claim (barring those that did get added some time after I covered them). I think if I were to start separating this into tiers in order to provide something of constructive value to retro gaming fans (heaven forfend), here's how I'm leaning:

• 1-25: Genuinely excellent games that have more or less held up beautifully. Not just highly-rated technical marvels of their era but those that still have something to offer the audiences of today.
• 26-40: I think this is the tier that some might call "guilty pleasures" or "problematic faves"—games with some amount of problems but still ones I'd happily go to bat for in some sort of argumentative podcast medium.
• 41-50: These ones I might be a little less quick to champion but they're still entirely OK (and in several cases, better than most would give them credit for).
• 51-77: This would be the mediocrity zone, full of promising games that missed the mark or competently made sports/racing games that I nonetheless had zero interest in playing after my hour with them was up.
• 78-87: These ones actively had some issues that made them hard to tolerate, let alone recommend, even if that issue was often just "it's super boring".
• 88-100: Poor old Yakouchuu II doesn't deserve to be here (its placement was purely based on how much I'd want to keep playing a visual novel I couldn't read), but the rest are actually terrible games that either fell apart in the process of getting ported over or likely weren't good in the first place. Games that prompted all sorts of interesting noises out of me the moment the random chooser worked its nefarious magic.

After pondering what was, let's ponder what could have been (why did I turn this whole finale into A Christmas Carol, I'll forever wonder):

The Ten Biggest Remainders

In the off-chance I kept this feature going another season, I did have some ideas for what I'd eventually like to cover. Some of these would've featured in earlier episodes were it not for one matter or another, while others definitely give a "scraping the bottom of the barrel" feeling that partly influenced my decision to end here on a nice and round 100 games processed. Here's ten of the candidates (in alphabetical order) I was seriously considering:

1. Carmageddon 64: I've heard the N64 version was a carwreck in more ways than one but I've always had a soft spot for these vehicular manslaughter sims. That soft spot being a pedestrian's unprotected flank.
2. Chameleon Twist (& 2): It wasn't the most polished platformer on the system but the tongue grappling system, as gross as it was, did make for some inventive challenges. I own the first game so I have nostalgic affection for it, as well as some curiosity about its follow-up, but I never got around to including either given there were plenty of other mascot 3D platformers to choose from.
3. Any game in the N64 Doraemon trilogy: I'm sure they're as super rudimentary and thrown together as any other licensed platformer but I was hoping to play at least one of these robot cat games. The license has its own fast-travel system built in with the Anywhere Door.
4. Hexen 64: The Hexen N64 port was a little less scuffed than its Duke Nukem and Quake ports, but maybe that's owing to the smaller profile of the Heretic franchise. I remember enjoying it back at the time, albeit without the experience of playing the PC original to compare it to.
5. Magical Tetris Challenge: Sure, 64 in 64 might've finally received that coveted Mike Minotti plug had I covered more Disney games with this feature, but the main regret for not covering this one is that it was the fourth and final Tetris game on the system (and how fitting is it that there's exactly four?). Would have been neat to rank them all to definitively see which was the best one.
6. Puyo Puyo Sun 64: If I ever got bored of Tetris (impossible), there were a couple of Puyo N64 ports I could've checked out too. This one saw a fan translation so it would've been my pick, had I been in the mood for some blob-stacking.
7. Robotron 64: I had this on my shortlist for a while but then that Midway Arcade compilation happened as a random pick, and since that had the original Robotron: 2084 it felt kinda weird to double up. Is there such a thing as too much Robotron, though?
8. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (& 2): Goes without saying, I suppose.
9. Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion: If I ever bring this series back in the distant future, the third Turok will almost certainly have joined its two older siblings on NSO by then. I have no experience with this one (unlike the first two) so it might've made for an enlightening subject to cover, were I to have any remaining patience for playing FPS games with a N64 controller.
10. Wonder Project J2: One of the other few fan-translated JP-only games, Wonder Project is a sequel to a SNES title where you instruct a living automaton how to act like a human and send it around solving problems. Always seemed pretty ambitious and it looks amazing too with that Ghibli-esque art direction.

The Ten Biggest Bullet Dodges

I'm not talking danmaku games—pour one out for Bangai-O, sorry I missed out on you too—I'm speaking specifically about the games I really did not want to see come up on the random pick list. Of course, this list of ten "please don't"s is not the same list that I started with—shit happens, as they say—but I kept an updated version enshrined at the bottom of the text document I use for this feature as a sort of talisman to ward off their evil presence. Might as well post it here too; these games can't hurt me any more after all. (I say all that, but I'd probably rather play most of these than a hyper generic sports sim.)

You could probably predict what's on here easily enough, if not actively rooting for them to appear in any of the previous episodes, but here we go regardless (in ascending order of how much I didn't want to play it):

1. Castlevania
2. Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko
3. Quest 64 / Holy Magic Century
4. Glover
5. South Park: Chef's Luv Shack
6. South Park
7. Earthworm Jim 3D
8. ClayFighter 63 1/3
9. John Romero's Daikatana
10. Superman

And that's going to do it for all these post-feature extras. Thanks again to all those that read and/or commented on (especially those who commented without reading; that takes guts) this feature over the years and I'm sure I won't stay away from the N64 for long. Hell, I'll probably boot up another Mario 64 hack for the achievements before the end of the month.

See ya around.

...

......

...OK, but what if we added in all those forbidden NSO games? What would that final list look like, were I to embark on the science involved? Excepting all those on NSO I'm unfamiliar with, that list might resemble something like this:

Super Final Ranking EX: Cheat Edition

1. Super Mario 64 (Ep. 1)
2. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
3. Banjo-Kazooie
4. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
5. Diddy Kong Racing (Ep. 6)
6. Paper Mario
7. Perfect Dark (Ep. 19)
8. Star Fox 64 / Lylat Wars
9. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon (Ep. 3)
10. Donkey Kong 64 (Ep. 13)
11. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 (Ep. 48)
12. GoldenEye 007
13. Doom 64 (Ep. 38)
14. Space Station Silicon Valley (Ep. 17)
15. Goemon's Great Adventure (Ep. 9)
16. Pilotwings 64
17. Bomberman Hero (Ep. 26)
18. Pokémon Snap (Ep. 11)
19. Tetrisphere (Ep. 34)
20. Rayman 2: The Great Escape (Ep. 19)
21. Banjo-Tooie (Ep. 10)
22. Rocket: Robot on Wheels (Ep. 27)
23. Mischief Makers (Ep. 5)
24. Yoshi's Story
25. Worms Armageddon (Ep. 44)
26. Dr. Mario 64
27. The New Tetris (Ep. 42)
28. Super Smash Bros. (Ep. 25)
29. F-Zero X
30. Mega Man 64 (Ep. 18)
31. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (Ep. 46)
32. Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! (Ep. 41)
33. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (Ep. 42)
34. Forsaken 64 (Ep. 31)
35. Wetrix (Ep. 21)
36. Harvest Moon 64 (Ep. 15)
37. Bust-A-Move '99 (Ep. 40)
38. Hybrid Heaven (Ep. 12)
39. Blast Corps (Ep. 4)
40. Nuclear Strike 64 (Ep. 48)
41. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (Ep. 2)
42. Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (Ep. 4)
43. Tonic Trouble (Ep. 24)
44. Densha de Go! 64 (Ep. 29)
45. Fushigi no Dungeon: Fuurai no Shiren 2 (Ep. 32)
46. Mario Golf
47. Viewpoint 2064 (Ep. 45)
48. Snowboard Kids (Ep. 16)
49. Spider-Man (Ep. 8)
50. Bomberman 64 (Ep. 8)
51. Jet Force Gemini (Ep. 16)
52. Pokémon Stadium
53. Mickey's Speedway USA (Ep. 37)
54. Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers (Ep. 7)
55. Body Harvest (Ep. 28)
56. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (Ep. 33)
57. Extreme-G
58. Gauntlet Legends (Ep. 39)
59. O.D.T. (Ep. 45)
60. Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue! (Ep. 29)
61. 40 Winks (Ep. 31)
62. Buck Bumble (Ep. 30)
63. Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage (Ep. 20)
64. Mario Party 3
65. Mario Party 2
66. Mario Party
67. Midway's Greatest Arcade Hits Vol. 1 (Ep. 39)
68. Conker's Bad Fur Day (Ep. 22)
69. Gex 64: Enter the Gecko (Ep. 33)
70. BattleTanx: Global Assault (Ep. 13)
71. Last Legion UX (Ep. 36)
72. Hot Wheels Turbo Racing (Ep. 9)
73. Cruis'n Exotica (Ep. 37)
74. San Francisco Rush 2049 (Ep. 4)
75. Killer Instinct Gold (Ep. 47)
76. Iggy's Reckin' Balls (Ep. 35)
77. Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt (Ep. 43)
78. Fighter Destiny 2 (Ep. 6)
79. Charlie Blast's Territory (Ep. 36)
80. Big Mountain 2000 (Ep. 18)
81. Nushi Tsuri 64: Shiokaze ni Notte (Ep. 35)
82. Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness (Ep. 14)
83. Tetris 64 (Ep. 1)
84. Mahjong Hourouki Classic (Ep. 34)
85. Mahjong 64 (Ep. 41)
86. Bass Rush (Ep. 46)
87. Milo's Astro Lanes (Ep. 23)
88. International Track & Field 2000 (Ep. 28)
89. NBA Live '99 (Ep. 3)
90. Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside (Ep. 47)
91. Rampage 2: Universal Tour (Ep. 5)
92. Command & Conquer (Ep. 17)
93. International Superstar Soccer '98 (Ep. 23)
94. Starshot: Space Circus Fever (Ep. 43)
95. The Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Traction (Ep. 44)
96. South Park Rally (Ep. 2)
97. Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. (Ep. 7)
98. Eikou no St. Andrews (Ep. 1)
99. Rally Challenge 2000 (Ep. 10)
100. Monster Truck Madness 64 (Ep. 11)
101. F-1 World Grand Prix II (Ep. 3)
102. F1 Racing Championship (Ep. 2)
103. Sesame Street: Elmo's Number Journey (Ep. 14)
104. Wheel of Fortune (Ep. 24)
105. Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero (Ep. 15)
106. Yakouchuu II: Satsujin Kouro (Ep. 40)
107. Mario no Photopi (Ep. 20)
108. Blues Brothers 2000 (Ep. 12)
109. Dark Rift (Ep. 25)
110. Mace: The Dark Age (Ep. 27)
111. Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. (Ep. 21)
112. Ready 2 Rumble Boxing (Ep. 32)
113. 64 Oozumou 2 (Ep. 30)
114. Madden Football 64 (Ep. 26)
115. Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals (Ep. 22)
116. Heiwa Pachinko World 64 (Ep. 38)

Just wanted to say that, while I didn't post often, I did read every entry in this series. Thanks for all the effort you put into it. They made for an entertaining read, and encouraged me to try out a couple games I would not have otherwise.

Cheers

I've probably been consistently annoying with my comments, but I've genuinely, thorougly enjoyed this series and always looked forward to reading when a new entry popped up. Glad it was fun to make as well, and not purely fueled by masochism. (just a little masochism— as a treat!)

And hey, if we can hold hands, BUCKITY-BUCK BUMBLE klaxons blaring across the wastes, as nuclear fire finally turn our bones to dust, it must've all been worth it.