Tom Hall’s favorite console is the Nintendo 64. He has decided to show his love for that console in the best way he knows how: by sharing it with the retro gaming community. This is his quest to review the entire North American Nintendo 64 library. Grab a glass of your favorite wine, put on some classical music, kick back in your favorite armchair, and prepare yourself for some world class connoisseuring, N64 style.
Ya know, I almost didn’t do this. But I have to. Not out of some obligation but out of love. I need to say my farewell to a place I called home for so long. Let me tell you a story about this here Castle and how it became more than just a website. Read More
Do you smell that? Smells like a fresh review! Now that all of my Nintendo 64 reviews have been united in one place, I can carry on with the journey. As it would turn out, not a moment too soon, either. If you have been on a deserted island for the last month or otherwise totally shielded from the internet, then two things are true. First, I envy you. Second, you have yet to hear about Yooka-Laylee, the spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie that currently sits at 1000% of its original fundraising goal on Kickstarter. Also, in this fantasy scenario, it’s your first day back in civilization and you chose 1 More Castle? You, sir or madam, have exquisite taste. Anyhow, after being kicked in the nostalgia and going against my long standing personal policy of ignoring Kickstarter by backing this project, I got a hankerin’ to play what inspired it. So I did. Read More
We did it! High fives, everybody! You over there. Get over here and slap me five. YEAH! As of this very instant, all of the N64 reviews have been united here at 1 More Castle. The quest has been completed. When next we meet, we shall be moving ever closer to the end goal of reviewing all 296 North American Nintendo 64 games. By my calculations, let’s see… carry the two… I should be done in like five years. Before we get there, however, I take you back to January 1, 2014– wait, really? I thought posting a review on New Year’s Day was a GOOD idea? Well, that was dumb. Anyhow, here is my review of Harvest Moon 64. Read More
Can you feel it? We are getting ever so close to the end of the quest to unite the first eight Nintendo 64 reviews with the rest of the project. After this review, just one more until the entire band is back together and I can continue on my merry way until all 296 games have fallen to my keyboard. Consider the remastering of these eight reviews like grinding in an RPG before you move forward but in a fun, hopefully enjoyable way. The seventh review was for a perennial favorite of mine. It’s a game I pick up for every console I own. I even have it on my Xbox One. On August 25, 2013, I originally reviewed Monopoly. Read More
Sometimes the timing of things is funny. As you know by now (hopefully) we just had an amazing Review a Great Game Day. As you may also know, or else are about to hear about, we have a second game review holiday here at 1 More Castle called Review a Bad Game Day. You’ll hear more about that one in the coming weeks. I mention it, though, because the next game in my project to unite my original eight Nintendo 64 reviews with the rest of the project is a review that happened to fall on Review a Bad Game Day. As a fun side note, this was also the day I started a really bad job. From August 8, 2013, my review of Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue. Read More
[Original review date: July 21, 2013]
Tetris has been around for almost as long as consoles have and seemingly continues to grow in popularity. Disney has been around longer than most people who will read this review and they have never lost a step, either. So what happens when you get Capcom to take the two entities and combine them? You get Magical Tetris Challenge for the Nintendo 64. Originally, people were super pissy about this game because it took Capcom forever to break onto the N64 and this is what they came with, a 2D Tetris game. Let’s see who’s laughing now. Read More
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I know, it was Tuesday but that is when I’m writing this. As I sip on my whiskey and enjoy the music of my people (I am super Irish, FYI), the time has come continue reuniting my first eight Nintendo 64 reviews with the rest of the class. It has been a fun project for sure, but I am getting antsy to write some new reviews. Still, at only half way there is still much to do. It was about at this point in the review series I realized that I needed to start mixing in games I wasn’t familiar with and that lead to this review from July 14, 2013 of Milo’s Astro Lanes. Read More
Man, I gotta tell ya. Sometimes being a reviewer is tough. You see, as a reviewer, it is my sworn duty to be objective. I can’t let personal feelings or affiliations get in the way of my responsibility, nay, my duty to you the reader. The quest to reunite my first eight reviews with the rest of the project continues with a game I love in a nostalgic sense. Unfortunately, I had to face the reality about the quality of this game. On May 25, 2013, I was forced to tell the truth about Cruis’n USA. Read More
Continuing down the path to reunite my first 8 Nintendo 64 reviews with the rest of the team, we travel all the way back to April 7, 2013. That was the day before Review a Great Game Day that year and so I chose what I believe to be a great game. As it would turn out, “Remastered Review” is pretty accurate. Back then, my website was configured for a differently formatted review. It was the kind where every piece of the review was broken into sections like sound, visuals, etc. It also used that data to compile a score. I learned two things as I kept on writing. First, I hate review scores. Second, my writing style is terrible for such a structured review. That dictates that I have to do quite a bit of touching up to these to fix them without changing the original review too much but they look a lot better now. Anyhow, I present the review of one of the greatest games not just on the N64, but of all time, Star Fox 64. Read More
If you’ve spent any time looking through my Nintendo 64 reviews here at 1 More Castle, the question may have crossed your mind as to why on earth the reviews start with #9. When I first started reviewing N64 games, I did so on my own personal website. After a while, it just didn’t make sense to have two places where I wrote about the Nintendo 64 and at the time, I was looking to do something a bit different with my personal website, so I folded those reviews into the N64 Connoisseur series. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, I left the first eight reviews on my website instead of moving them over with the project. Well that is silly and today the end of that begins. I am going to be moving those reviews over to 1 More Castle and touching them up a little bit as necessary. At the same time, I want to leave them as intact as I can, so some things in these reviews may sound dated. I begin with the review that started it all. This originally posted on March 31, 2013. N64 Review #1 is Blast Corps. Read More
Da da da da, da da da, da da da, da da, da da da da da da. Huh? Oh. That’s the Tetris theme we all know and love. Or at least I know and love it. I also love me some Tetris. I always have. It’s just so very captivating and addicting. I’m not even that good at it, it’s just plain fun. The Nintendo 64 was more than up to the task of quenching my thirst for the beloved puzzler. Perhaps one of the most unique uses of the franchise, however, comes in the form of Tetrisphere. Read More
A thought came to me last week. It seems that we have lost a whole genre of games in the shuffle. I know RPG’s and Shootie Bangs are all the rage and as fun as they are, something is missing. Something we used to love and hold dear is now forgotten and lost. I am, of course, talking about aerial combat games. It’s no secret that I adore games like Star Fox 64, Captain Skyhawk and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, but what happened? A couple of Ace Combat games and we’re done? No, says I. If I can’t have a modern aerial combat game, I’ll go to the archives and so I fired up Aerofighters Assault. Read More
Every once in a while, an individual comes along that changes the very fabric of time and space itself. Sometimes that individual happens to be an intricate part of one of the greatest video game franchises of all time. One such individual is the fairy, the myth, the legend, Tingle. With the recent announcement of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D for the Nintendo 3DS, I tracked Tingle down and forked over countless rupees for a brief interview with one of the greats. Now, without further ado, I present my interview with Tingle. Read More
It is one of my favorite times of year. No, not pumpkin spice season. No, not extraordinarily premature Christmas decoration season. It’s hockey season! Hockey is my favorite sport. In fact, as I write this, I am also watching a Tampa Bay Lightning game. Go Bolts. All of this icy goodness got me to reminiscing about one of my old Nintendo 64 favorites, the great arcade hockey game and the first sports title on the N64, Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey. Old favorite as it may be, I haven’t played it in many years and N64 sports games haven’t aged terribly well on the whole. Seems like it’s worth a look, isn’t it? Read More
Two years ago, I went trick or treating, N64 style. That trip admittedly was more trick than treat. Two years have gone by, though, and there has been much connoisseuring since then. Surely, if I were to try this again, it would turn out better for me, right? RIGHT? Well, we’re gonna find out. I took the entire North American Nintendo 64 game library and threw it into a randomizer. What follows is the first five games from the list, presented as the story of my trick or treating experience. Read More
It is once again that time of year. Kids are getting ready to go back to school. In Florida, it is still sufficiently hot that not only could you fry an egg on the pavement, you could prepare an entire Thanksgiving meal. The NFL has begun preseason, thus bringing meaning to the humdrum lives of millions of Americans. All of those things signify just one thing. The time has once again come for Review a Bad Game Day, the celebration of the worst games the earth has to offer. I am proud to say that this is the 3rd year I have participated. This year, the date fell on an N64 Connoisseur posting date. Well, I’m one day early but close enough. I have chosen a true festering heap of garbage, the incredibly disappointing and offensive to all five senses, John Romero’s Daikatana.
Mario and paper, paper and Mario. How someone came up with the idea to combine these two things is beyond me. Alas, here we find ourselves with Paper Mario, a rare N64 RPG that is a refreshing break from your normal Mario fare. As opposed to the 3D platforming introduced in Super Mario 64, the Mario you play as here is well, paper. A 2D sprite in a 3D world sounds weird and it is. Beautifully, wonderfully weird.
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I have to admit, if you asked me to make a list of real life things I consider to be a good time, fishing is not on the list. So when it comes to video games, fishing video games are about as exciting to me as an all rice cake diet. Nonetheless, I made an oath to review the entire North American N64 library and so it is. Part of what I wanted to accomplish when I set out on this quest was to find games I would not have even considered playing under other circumstances that would turn out to actually be a good time. This is the first game on that quest that has that chance.
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Good day, fellow Nintendo 64 enthusiasts! Now, if you are that one guy over there who reads all of these reviews, you are right now saying to yourself, “Kirby? What in the name of invisible walls is he talking about? He’s supposed to review NHL 99. He said so at the end of the last review.” You’re right, I am. But then a thing happened.
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Once upon a time, a little game called Mortal Kombat was born. It was the king of fighting games because it did things no other fighting games had done before. People were drawn to its shocking violence and for some reason captivating characters. Like most good ideas, a lot of people flat out stole it. This began an age of Mortal Kombat clones, most of them bad. Enter in my 10th N64 review, Mace: The Dark Age.
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