Forgotten Nintendo 64 Platformers - AntDude

[Music] 3d platformers are one of if not my favorite gaming genre exploring huge colorful worlds just collecting whatever the story tells you to collect and having a lot of fine-tuned control of your character while doing so oh it's pretty awesome and the Nintendo 64 is known for having some of the best of the best banjo kazooie Rayman 2 Conker's Bad Fur Day if you even wanna call that one a platformer and of course super mario 64 the game that kick-started the whole third dimension revolution and that's all fine and good but when you really dive deep into a consoles library and you look for platformers you see that there are a ton of games that make you wonder do people even know that these games exists so I have taken it upon myself to play through some hidden I don't want to say gems necessarily but definitely hidden platformers that you may or may not have heard of but people certainly don't talk about it doesn't really help that when it comes to the Virtual Console what it is and what it was a lot of the options that I have here is just not happening these games are lost in time so I've went ahead and pulled out three and 64 games that I really couldn't see myself making a solo dedicated episode on and I think you'll see why in just a bit but let's get this adventure started shall we first off we got chameleon twist and boy what uh what a relic of its era this one is oh man okay so what so what animal have we not made a platformer of yet okay a chameleon perfect make it ship it quick whatever happens happens so here's the story the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland I guess is running off into a giant jar that leads him into a different dimension and as the curious little chameleon that you are you jump in and doing so you transform into this thing which is still a chameleon boy I I certainly like a good narrative in my platformers there are actually four different chameleons that you can choose to play as but I had to go with Fred I think he speaks to me on a personal level chameleon twist is a pretty basic linear 3d platformer that utilizes one main mechanic the chameleons incredibly long tongue with it you can slurp up a bunch enemies and then spit them back out latch onto different rods to get you to new platforms or spin around them for some extra challenge and even get to perform a pole vault and honestly that kind of covers the whole game the adventure has you travel through six different lands oh hey look at that ant land that's where I live each one of course has a different aesthetic but really if you play one you've kind of played through them all in all of them you go through a series of different rooms each one offering some sort of platforming or enemy challenge and then there are these special crowns that can be found if you want to be a true completionist and yeah that's it um hell yeah dude alright I just I just got to nudge my way off this platform ever ever so slightly and that crown is okay okay cool so while the game is pretty repetitive it doesn't overstay its welcome it honestly takes only about two hours to complete and in that timeframe it manages to stay pretty enjoyable the entire way the bosses in particular are really satisfying you just got to find a weak point and then absorb as many items in your mouth as you can and give yourself some nice big old chubby cheeks it's kinda cute despite the polygons and then you just keep attacking until you win it actually really works you do that six times and then the credits just kind of appear out of nowhere and yeah that's that's chameleon twist as there was there was really no way I was gonna get a full episode out of this game chameleon twist represents a simpler time in gaming it's definitely nostalgic for the era but it really really won't blow your mind it did manage to get a sequel though which is kind of surprising but I think we'll save that until next time honestly I think the best part about this game is the cat at the very beginning [Music] yep definitely that part oh yeah here we go now we're getting into some more of the classic stuff out there mischief-makers it's weird I know I'm talking about this game in the context of it being forgotten but it's kind of not people know of mischief-makers but they kind of know nothing about it I never see anyone talking about it so it may not be forgotten but it's definitely ignored and that's a shame in short well treasure made this game so you should kind of play mischief-makers for that alone the story is pretty basic this professor has been kidnapped by these alien creatures and as the professor's creation you the robotic maid Marina goes out to save them and while exploring the planet of clancer you actually find out that not all of these creatures are bad don't associate us with those guys we're also suffering because of them did did the game just have some sort of social commentary this uh this this got to real so the basic idea is to save the day you just grab on to anything that you can and you shake the crap out of them it's it's a lot more satisfying than you may think what's really weird about the game is the structure is super confusing you are presented a pretty basic level map but you have absolutely no idea what a level is gonna have you do until you get there so there's a lot of ball shaking that goes on that's a pretty common thread but then you could capture some alien kids cuz they ran away from from their parents there's there's like a little tricycle thing that you can ride that's that's kind of neat you outrun exploding platforms and that's all that level is typically when the game tosses a new ID at you the level that's associated with that idea is pretty short and then there's a good chance you will not see that mechanic again while some other levels tasks you with exploring making those levels a lot longer it's really inconsistent and it would be more of a problem than what it really is if it wasn't for the fact that it's actually pretty fun like there's this level about halfway through the adventure where you basically partake in the Olympics and the final competition is a mathematical face-off finally my years of being good at math and school finally come in handy oh and then you know you play dodgeball with the cat yeah you know as as one does for being a 2d platformer I really can't say that I've seen one laid out like this before shake me shake me hard grab me and shake me oh I don't think I like this game anymore [Music] okay so I know I just said that you never really know what to expect from the games levels but then this guy showed up he begged me to shake him and then he turned into this weird formation of balls and blocks with faces on them and man the 90s were actually a mistake this whole time yeah serves him right probably but ultimately the biggest problem that I have with mischief makers is it does kind of do a pretty poor job of introducing some gameplay mechanics as well as sometimes not really pointing you in the right direction in some of the exploration levels it was actually kind of frustrating because I just didn't know where to go and then some of the mechanics that just pop up out of nowhere are really cumbersome like there's this pot idea where you get to hold it and then toss items into it and then depending on what items are in the first few slots you can then combine them together and the game is like all you never know what you're gonna get keep trying out combinations but it is used so rarely and for such small contextual puzzles that it ended up being pretty annoying to use whenever it did pop up the bosses can be pretty confusing at times too often hitting me when I definitely feel like I pressed the grab button at the appropriate time it also really doesn't help that there's actually a bit of a delay from pushing the throw button in midair to when she actually does it the game has a lot going for it and I'm sure that's why it's so highly regarded but honestly it turned out to be a little bit too frustrating and random for its own good in my opinion Oh oh my god oh my god what is that ah yes that's the one mission where you're escaping from danger on an ostrich it's my favorite part of any game to be honest it's like it's like Mario 2 right yeah it's just a big ol Mario 2 ripoff but at the very least there is some replay value every level has a gold gem hidden to find sometimes in pretty arbitrary ways I don't know how anyone back in the day would have been able to get these without looking at a guide but yeah they're they're certainly hidden all right each boss can give you - but you gotta beat them perfectly without taking any damage and I quickly realized after like a half hour of trying to beat this dragon thing without getting hit yeah that's where I gave up that just it does not seem possible that or I suck again that's very easily a possibility the game does end off pretty strong though I'll give it that throughout the adventure you go through plenty main boss battles there are three different commanders that all try to stop you along the way in a pretty glamorous fashion might I add this leads off to a battle with their boss the evil commander so it's a clever name and then that leads off into the final battle where all three of the previous commanders combined together with their vehicles and a final fight that admittedly is is pretty cool the bosses in this game can range from being super easy or pretty frustrating except for this final boss which is actually kind of perfect and then there's the ending which is um it's it counts down a timer with the number of how many gold gems you've collected to that point and since I didn't get them all eventually the ending just stops when it hits zero if I got more though the ending would actually still continue and the only way to get hundred-percent is to get the final gem which you get by getting all the previous gems in the ending it's weird it's a very very weird ending I will say though everything else I've set aside the main theme is jamming mischief-makers is a game that I certainly like the idea of but an execution I feel like it's just a little bit too too random and frustrating for me I don't have the nostalgia that I'm sure a lot of you guys do out there so sorry to disappoint you that's just how I see things I definitely could see why people want a sequel though that would be awesome that alien transformation still haunts my dreams last up here today we have tonic trouble already I'm feeling a little weird about this just what exactly am I looking at here what is this weird ray man knockoff looking thing actually it turns out that this game was in fact created by the creator of rain Michelle Ansel okay all right you know I'm a little more interested now in this game you play as the space janitor Edie who drops a can of weird drink to earth which ends up transforming everything into evil versions of themselves and now the new person in charge grog has to be stopped this games gonna try to pull a message up don't litter the environment isn't it and then like after that cutscene that it cuts to a PowerPoint presentation of the rest of the story what Wow Wow talk about cutting costs I cannot think of a single other game off the top of my head that just gave up its storytelling halfway through the first cutscene it's pretty impressive I'm not gonna lie the first thing you do is a slide mission as well man what of what a bizarre opening from that point the game does end up following a pretty standard formula throughout the entire adventure here is the doctor he needs some help gathering materials all conveniently in bunches of six to power up his machine to get Edie to where grog is located you go and explore pretty linear 3d environments to get the MacGuffins that you need you get a new ability every time you complete a level to help you out on your next level you rinse and repeat until the end though I will say the game is very very rough often it just doesn't feel like the game is finished with how bad the camera can be at times the controls sometimes just aren't responsive the framerate dips into insanely low numbers at times I'll be honest though just the absurdity of what I was doing did keep me invested until the end believe me a lot of the game a whole lot of it is frustrating due to the poor camera and controls like I mentioned before but I'm clearly just a sick person here I just had to see what the next level was gonna do to me who knows what weird and wacky layout of platforming and puzzles I'll end up hating in 20 minutes can't wait to find out alright I just I just want the thing I just I just want the thing I just want give me the thing all right fine you know I didn't I didn't even want it in the first place like okay a common mechanic throughout the game is like you okay regionally stumble upon these popcorn machines that and I'm really not lying here are branded Newman's Own of all the brands that you could partner with you choose them oh yeah and then that happens dude just what the hell was going on in the 90s I get it a lot of you guys miss it myself included but let's be real here a lot of you guys who were part of it you you were out of your minds all right man you against me with my dart gun obviously I'm gonna win that that man exploded I kind of have a sneaking suspicion here that the developers really had no idea on how to make this adventure make sense like you collect ten thermometers to increase your maximum life for some random reason they probably thought that was funny but then you also collect bits of mercury the stuff that's found within thermometers to heal up so I guess it ends up making sense and honestly a while I did kind of enjoy myself here the game is certainly not pleasant at all to look at you're kind of just surrounded by caves and metal for the entire way through just with different colors you're also expected to collect a majority of these swirly little things - oh they're called antidotes by the way I don't know why either and the only way to do so is with that good old-fashioned backtracking Oh talk about having the cherry on top by collecting enough of them you then get access to the final item that you need to take on grog you then get slingshot into orbit cuz I at this point sure I'll take it and after one final level you battle grog and his robotic creation and oh my god it's mainly flying with these terrible controls they just they just had to ruin the final boss didn't they after far too much time dealing with that torment grog disintegrates the world goes back to normal and celebrates and the docs daughter congratulate you from now on will take more care our environment oh my god they actually did it I am honestly a bit stunned on how poor this game is considering how good Rayman 2 is Raymond would go on to be one of the best games on that console while tonic trouble deservedly went on to be forgotten it's probably where it belongs at the very least it does have an interesting spot in the consoles history it just makes Rayman 2 look that much better at the end of the day here despite these games being forgotten they still do all represent a part of gaming history this was a time where 3d platformers were so prevalent but people only were interested in the cream of the crop all of these other games came out to try to get to that success but barely any of them did these adventures created brand new worlds characters and stories but I doubt that we'll see companies return to them anytime soon and really now in the context of a gaming world where everyone wanted to be 3d it's amazing that mischief-makers exists all this hyper on games adding a z-axis to the x and y axis for you to play through and this game goes 2d it's no wonder this game got lost in the shuffle I know I just ended up picking three games that I wasn't a huge fan of but here's the thing realistically the quality of these games don't really matter if you're a fan of the n64 and a fan of platformers you have three more games to check out here it doesn't matter if they're good or bad because at the end of the day these are games that represent this console and that generation while I didn't enjoy tonic trouble I definitely don't regret playing it but that's only three games now I'm only scratching the surface of what forgotten platformers are out there but there is one game that I did want to check out that I think I could go a little bit more in-depth with I know you guys are gonna be asking for it anyway so tune in next time we have a glove game the 90s were weird [Music]

Channel: AntDude

Views: 495,271

Rating: 4.9068241 out of 5

Keywords: AntDude, Dude Reviews, Review (Media Genre), Video Review, Nintendo 64, Super Mario 64, Nintendo Switch, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Rayman 2 The Great Escape, Platformers, Mischief Makers, Chameleon Twist, Tonic Trouble

Id: mfX_RDgAx08

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 18 2018