Let me take you back to October 1997. The Spice Girls were threatening to "Spice up your life", Aqua were living their "Barbie Girl" best and The Verve were telling us that "The Drugs Don't Work" Speaking as a gentleman in his mid-forties with the back of a 90-year old, it seems they were right, as far as painkillers go anyway! But I digress. What I was actually doing in that autumnal month twenty five years ago (Jesus f-ing wept!) was eagerly dismounting an escalator in the Bentall Centre in Kingston upon Thames to visit HMV where, armed with a debit card and a student loan (those were the days, kids), I was going to pick up a Nintendo 64. And Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Ok, nobody's perfect...
It seems fitting that in the year of the 25th anniversary of the N64's European launch, Mr Scullion has written about that very games console. His second book this year (his wrists are either made of steel or he has his PC's cooling system plugged directly into his wrists...), this is a continuation of the Encyclopedia series and the most in-depth one so far. By that, I mean that each game has received a larger entry than would normally be expected due to the lower number of games that were released for the system. However, in the case of the N64, quality had a quantity all of its own, so to speak.
If you've read any of the previous entries, you'll know the score. If you haven't, what you'll get is the US/UK games library for the N64 in alphabetical order. The smallest entries get a quarter page, the largest get a full page. Each entry contains details of the games' year of release, publisher and developer, as well an an indication of which territories it was released in. There is also a screenshot or two and a fun fact. As always, these fun facts vary from funky trivia to observations connected to the game in question, and compliment the style and content of the main articles. This book once again demonstrates that the author is at the top of his game when it comes to writing about videogaming.
Compared to the likes of the PlayStation, the N64 suffered in comparison towards the number of games released for the system, but when you have the likes of Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Mario Kart 64, it's hard to argue that from a first-party perspective, Nintendo had you covered. Third-party support wasn't brilliant but the likes of Acclaim, Infogrames and THQ supplied some respectable gaming experiences.
Of course, the elephant in the room was Rare. Never before (or arguably since) has one developer had such a consistent run to genuinely classic hits, and the ones that might not be described as classics are at least worthy of being called great. I can't think of a single Rare title on the N64 that was naff. Annoying and overly long maybe (looking at you, Donkey King 64!), but not naff.
As an extra for this volume, space permits the inclusion of all of the Japanese-only releases, including the ten titles released for the 64DD add-on. These are useful for both collectors and those, like me, who didn't know much about the domestic titles that never saw the light of day outside of Japan.
As you can no doubt tell, this is another of Yer man, Scullion's brilliant books and deserves to be picked up not only by those who loved the N64 the first time round, but also those who maybe missed out or were too young to experience it (and the joys of late 90's Brit-pop). You can pick up a copy of the N64 Encyclopedia directly from the publisher here or from the usual online stores. You should also be able to order it from your local bookshop. I would also advise you to follow the author on Twitter here to keep up with his work as well as his day job at VGC.
No comments:
Post a Comment