64 in 64: Episode 46

Welcome back to another round of Nintendo 64 delights on 64 in 64, the only N64-based feature brave enough to say "Super Mario 64 was a pretty good game, huh?". We're getting closer to the end of our scheduled programming here and I can't help but consider how many games I've opted to ignore, not just the ones that I've vagariously decided I wasn't going to cover because it'd be too "obvious" or "fun". Granted, an unholy portion of those that remain are forgettable sports sims that were obsolete within a year, but all the same it feels like I'm leaving far too much on the table. Then I peruse the spreadsheet I use for this series and decide "nah, I think I'm good stopping here". Arguing that the N64 has at least 100 good games might be too tall an order. I'll have to try to remember to break up the final ranking list into tiers once we're done here, of the "play this", "maybe play this if you're bored", and "for the love of all that is good and just, pretend you never saw these" variety.

It's our penultimate even-numbered entry (and our antepenultimate episode overall; you're welcome for the new vocab) which means it's time for another mini-listicle. Last episode covered two games from a batch of twelve prototypes I threw onto the master list as a means of getting us to a nice even 400 candidates to choose from, so let's cover that development-deficient dirty dozen in full since there's now only a tiny chance of ever seeing another one on here (I say that, but just watch what happens with the random pick next time). In alphabetical order, since I can't exactly go by chronological release, we have:

• 40 Winks: This would be the somnambulist Eurocom platformer we covered in Episode 31. Debuting on the PlayStation, the N64 port was canned but eventually resurfaced after a crowdsourcing campaign from its new IP-holders Piko Interactive with both it and a new PC version dropping on Steam. The rave reviews it received on there were mostly of the "why bother?" persuasion.
• Carnivalé: Cenzo's Adventure: I initially thought this might be one of those post-market Brazil-only games you sometimes hear about for Sega consoles but it's actually a 3D platformer tie-in for a macabre kids' movie made by a Tim Burton collaborator. The movie didn't do so hot and I guess the developers (also the movie's animators) TerraGlyph ran out of money to finish this.
• Dragon Sword 64: A hack-and-slash brawler like Gauntlet Legends, Dragon Sword ran into issues with its publishers (MGM, looking to quit games at the time) and did not finish its dev cycle. Developers Interactive Studios were also behind Glover and, I learned recently, was a company started by the Oliver Twins of Dizzy fame. Another one I might've considered playing out of loyalty for a local dev. Not that such loyalty extends to me playing any Glover, though.
• Freak Boy 64: Created by the fine minds over at Zono, the developers of Saturn's Mr. Bones, Freak Boy looked to be a similarly kooky and abstract platformer about a shapeshifting protagonist who switches body parts to suit their current mission. This one's purely an alpha but I'd reckon interesting enough to be worth an hour-long gander.
• Mini Racers 64 / Tamiya Racers 64: An RC vehicle racing game with a similar angled overhead view to RC Pro-Am and its ilk, this multiplayer party racer would've been a good fit for the system had it been finished. Developers Looking Glass Studios were best known for immersive PC games like Thief, System Shock, and Ultima Underworld but had a few N64 credits too (like that weird Command & Conquer port).
• O.D.T.: One of the games we covered last time in Episode 45, this steampunk action-adventure title in the Tomb Raider mold had some intriguing ideas but maybe not the execution to do them justice. This was a Psygnosis joint that, due to complications with an ongoing Sony merger, ended up getting lost in transit.
• Robotech: Crystal Dreams: The Americanized bastard offspring of three different Japanese mecha anime, including Macross, Robotech was popular enough to be considered for a N64 game by TV quiz show adaptation peddlers GameTek. After many delays, GameTek evaporated in the late '90s leaving this to rot in their basement. They were even advertising its localization in Japan at one point, where it would've been converted back into a Macross game. It looked to be another space sim like Star Fox 64 or Viewpoint, below.
• Tommy Thunder: A third-person shooter from the mysterious Player 1 (they of Robotron 64 and Blues Brothers 2000 fame) that didn't make it out of its alpha stage due to issues with their publishers, ASC Games, who instead put all their eggs in a werewolf-shaped basket (specifically, an adaptation of Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the TTRPG made by the same folks behind Vampire: The Masquerade) given their dwindling cash reserves. Looked like the N64 game halted development because they intended to switch over to PS1 instead.
• Toon Panic: The only Japanese prototype on this list, Toon Panic was to be a madcap arena fighter akin to Capcom's Power Stone created by Bottom Up, who developed a couple of sumo games for the platform (one of which, 64 Oozumou 2, I played in Episode 30 to much consternation). A decent Power Stone-like would've really thrived on N64 with its four-player support, so that's a shame.
• Viewpoint 2064: We also covered this one in Episode 45. An on-rails 3D space sim that followed after a '90s Zaxxon-like arcade shoot 'em up of the same name. Bit basic but would've found an audience, I'm sure. Developers Racdym/Racjin would make their mark on N64 with the Snowboard Kids series for Atlus instead.
• Wildwaters: Leaked alongside Mini Racers 64, this Looking Glass Studios extreme kayaking game may have been trying to break into that Wave Race/Jet Moto aquatic racing circuit with the realistic water physics/effects possible with this generation of hardware. LGS collapsed around 2000 after issues with partners Eidos, taking this and Mini Racers down with it.
• X'Treme Roller: An inline skating game riffing on the hugely popular Tony Hawk's Pro Skating and its many imitators across the extreme sports rainbow, X'treme Roller hit the PlayStation intact but didn't quite land the spine transfer to N64. Probably for the best, since the PS1 game was notoriously poor and never left Europe as a result. Still, though, would've made for a fun comparison to THPS3.

Enough of what could have been, let's discuss instead what cannot and should not be. That is, anything that breaks our unchanging slate of rules:

• N64 games covered in 64 minute playthroughs. That's the deal. I won't go under or over that number but I might just veg out in a dissociative state for the remainder of the timer depending on the game's quality. A little catatonia never hurt anyone.
• I picked one of these games through some arcane, mostly arbitrary decision-making involving chickens and the ritual sacrificing thereof. The other was chosen through far simpler machinations, which is to say I got a computer to select something for me. A format decision I've come to regret many times over. (Yes, I ate the chickens afterwards. They tasted... portentous. Might've just been the salmonella though.)
• After every 16 minute interval I jot down how I'm feeling about the game, positive or negative, while bookending these interjections with discussions on the game's history, its longevity, and its chances of making it onto the Switch Online service now that Nintendo's run out of the first-party games it (or anyone else) cares about.
• We're also not going to feature any games already on the Switch Online service. I'm not here to cash in on the warm and fuzzy nostalgic memories people have of Zelda or Paper Mario; we're here for hard science and nothing goes harder than a mascot platformer that everyone forgot about the moment it launched. SEO is the devil's work. You heard me, Google and AI scrapers, I know you read all these.

So with that out of the way, we're just about ready to begin. However, just in case this is the first time you've encountered this series, you might want to check out some of the previous episodes first. You know how it is with the kids these days wanting to read things in sequential order. Spoiled as all get out.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (Pre-Select)

• LucasArts + Factor 5 / LucasArts
• 2000-12-15 (NA)
• 372nd N64 Game Released

History: "Indiana Jones and this Infernal Machine" sees an 80-something Dr. Henry Jones Jr. try to set up an Apple-II personal computer in his living room and fail to create a boot disk via the Integer BASIC OS after hours of frustration. Actually, the titular infernal machine is instead some piece of ancient Babylonian technology related to the Biblical Tower of Babel. Always gotta be something to do with the Bible with this guy. As before, Indy has to reach this potentially apocalyptic bit of apocrypha from falling into the Nazis' hands. And by Nazis I mean Soviets, because we're post-WW2 at this point.

The game originally launched on PC in 1999 and was ported to the N64 the following holiday period, with LucasArts working alongside German studio Factor 5 (the creators of Turrican) to produce the console version. (If a giant metal fist tries to squish Indy at any point I'm not going to be impressed.) We saw this team-up once before with Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and will again for Star Wars: Episode I: Battle for Naboo if it comes up. I can tell you it's not something I'm planning to play; my enthusiasm for covering anything related to the prequels is about equal to the enthusiasm shown by any of the actors in those movies.

I feel like whenever someone talks about Uncharted biting on Tomb Raider's style it's easy to forget that Tomb Raider was long before biting on Indiana Jones's style in turn (the series title even references raiding, something neither of these archeologists ought to be doing). Indy's video game appearances are wildly inconsistent in quality, producing beloved graphic adventure games like The Last Crusade or the Fate of Atlantis one moment and then some terrible action tie-in schlock like the NES Temple of Doom the next. Even as a fan of the first three movies and a mild tolerator of the fourth (I've not seen the fifth) I lost track of Indy games pretty quickly after the mid-'90s, so I'm compelled to discover which out of the terrible quickie tie-ins or the well-conceived adventure games this particular caper will take after most.

16 Minutes In

As I figured, moving from PC to N64 has made the control scheme a little awkward but I think I'm getting the hang of it. I typically jump right to the C-buttons for camera controls, which is intuitive enough on a real N64 controller and more so when you're using a modern controller that remaps the C-buttons to the right stick, but here the C-buttons are assigned the way they are in the Zelda games: the left, right, and down are attached to specific items (lighter, pistol, and whip, respectively by default) and up is used to go into first-person mode for a closer look around. Instead, the only third-person camera option is the Z-trigger to recenter it behind you, which is all I really need since there's a lot of lining up jumps in games built in the Tomb Raider model. That's what we have here, if the pre-amble wasn't clear, with Indy tackling various obstacles and platforming challenges with that series' more deliberate approach towards what was still an unfamiliar means of exploring a world in those early polygonal days. It helps to take things slow at the start of a game but I'm not sure I'll make a whole lot of progress as a result; though most of the blame for that is due to me wandering off the beaten path to look for shinies. I'm like if a magpie was a person.

The game's story starts off pretty similar to Jurassic Park, with our hero digging around the desert mesas of the American south before a helicopter arrives to start the adventure in earnest, but it also acts as a relatively gentle tutorial level with little in the way of death hazards or angry wildlife. A good way to introduce players and acclimate them to the controls and pace. Whole lot of climbing up platforms, using the whip to hook across gaps, and a bit of swimming during which Indy always takes off his hat out of courtesy. My favorite thing so far is that Indy always says some variant of "hmm, what do we have here?" whenever he picks up a treasure. I dunno man, you're the archeologist here, you tell me.

32 Minutes In

First level was resolved pretty soon into this second segment as Indy made it back to base camp to find our game's heroine, Sophia Hapgood, waiting for him. I mentioned The Fate of Atlantis earlier: Sophia was the love interest (and frequent quipper) in that game also, so bringing her back was a sensible choice to get tFoA fans interested in this semi-sequel. She was some kind of psychic Atlantis expert in that game, but here (set about eight years later) she's joined an inchoate CIA and directs Indy to a mission of national importance: the Russians are digging up Babylon to find the site of the Tower of Babel because the expedition's leading scientist, Dr. Gennadi Volodnikov (the guy in the screenshot), believes that the ancient Babylonians accidentally found a weapon even more powerful than the atomic bomb and tried to bury it. Our second level starts us in Babylon, situated in what is now modern Iraq: the place is full of Soviet soldiers working on the dig site, which means we've had to take a small detour to a less crowded part of the ruins. Man, remember when the Russian military were the bad guys of the world? How times change.

Gameplay-wise, I've adapted pretty rapidly to the game's controls, which I feel is more to the game's credit than my own given how many of these C-button-happy affairs I've covered now. We're starting to see things like box pushing (ah, yes, a puzzle left behind by the ancient peoples of Sokobania) and ledge sidling become a regular part of the game's box of tricks and I've just landed inside a temple filled with water (Indy has his own oxygen meter, of course, though it's generous enough) so I'll probably be down here in the rivers of Babylon for a while, weeping as I reminisce about Zion. Or looking for treasure. Either or.

48 Minutes In

I'll fess up and admit that I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out a way through that water temple room I stopped the last segment in. It has windows all around and a doorway at the lower floor opposite to where you come in, but you can't access any of them from the pool in the middle nor are there any underwater exits. If you follow the path around the top, sidling across the narrow part, you can get an optional treasure but not the way forward. Instead, what you're meant to do is get halfway through the circuit to the treasure, take a leap towards the window across from you on the lower floor—but not a running jump, or you'll hit the wall above it and bounce off and drop into the water—and you'll just manage to grab onto the windowsill and pull yourself in. After that, you just follow the route around the bottom floor, leaping across the room one more time, and you're out. Well, after killing a nearby venomous spider (so that's why I keep finding antivenom kits...). What's odd here is that you emerge into a different part of the Russian archeology camp that Indy insisted had too many guards and we'd need to find an alternative route around. Instead, I ended up alerting half the camp after I exited the cave. So, already I'm starting to lose faith in this game's level design. It's all cool though, I managed to take down one Russian by shooting an explosive barrel before he saw me and then took down another nearby who ran towards the explosion (always a good plan). After that, the rest were far enough away and didn't pursue me as I made an intersecting line across the camp to the ruins entrance on the opposite side, even though they were all looking right at me and had guns that could easily clear that distance. I guess the game wanted to incorporate stealth but didn't quite find the time or means to do so? One rather accommodating encounter with the CCCP military later and I was back inside the ruins again, ready to keep exploring.

One mechanic I haven't talked about yet are healing items: you can find them while exploring, intermittently, but you can also buy them between levels based on how many treasures you'd found. It does the Resident Evil thing of giving you sprays and kits but also herbs: I've no idea why both exist given they cost the same and presumably heal the same amount of damage, but perhaps the game populated its areas with both kinds—kits for where humans have been, herbs for unexplored wildernesses as yet untouched by man—and made both available through this system for those with aesthetic preferences. Or maybe the first aid kits come in leather cases that aren't suitable for vegans and so the herbs exist as an alternative? One critique of the Indiana Jones movies is that they're not very vegan-friendly, especially not Temple of Doom. Those chilled monkey brains had chilled monkey families, you know?

64 Minutes In

I managed to get a little further through Babylon before running out of time, shooting a few more Soviet guards and having one sequence where I leap on top of a canopy truck as it goes through a checkpoint, for which the game created a little gap in the archway above to fit an Indiana Jones-sized trespasser. The Babylonians were super prophetic, turns out. Anyway, this only gets me through the one door and I had to shoot my way to the next zone. Good thing these places never have alarm systems. I suspect from the relative dearth of treasures I've found so far on this level that I've either made relatively little progress, I'm very unobservant, or they back-ended them by making the first half about sneaking past the Soviets and the second half in ancient Babylon proper. Wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to put a bunch of treasures around the Soviet base since they'd have no issue finding them first.

There's not much else to say about the game, given how closely it hews to the Tomb Raider formula. Even the combat is similar: you press a button to draw your pistol (though you can equip other guns; the Soviets all had 9mm auto handguns and I'm grateful they left all the AKs at home) and then the game will automatically lock on to anything you can shoot. This also includes explosive barrels, which is great when they're some distance away and next to a bad guy but less great when you're running through an area anticipating resistance around ever corner and Indy keeps wildly swinging his piece around to point at the deadly barrel you just passed. It's already a blow to your self-confidence to get jumpscared by an inanimate object, but one harder still when you get spooked enough to instinctively fire at it and blow yourself up. I'll leave Indy right here to consider his trigger discipline while I get to the final reviews.

How Well Has It Aged?: It's Not the Years, Honey, it's the Mileage. Those Tomb Raider games haven't aged too gracefully but there's still something to its exacting platforming and sense of discovery that's not only evergreen but also feels like an era of gaming that has since passed us by. Unless the Indies (the other kind of Indy, I mean) decide to get all over that very specific type of early 3D action-adventure format I don't think I'll get the opportunity to play too many more games of this sort, or at least ones I'd never encountered before like this. This genre's obviously come a long way since then but what's here is definitely still on the right side of accessible. Plus, I like any game that lets me whip things. Yeah, I said it.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: It Belongs in the Nintendo Museum. Probably not going to happen though given Disney's firm grasp on LucasArts IPs and the conversations that would need to take place. Then again it might not hurt to put more Indy games out there just to build hype for the upcoming The Great Circle, which of course is partly why I decided to take the Infernal Machine out for a spin this episode. Given it's already available on Steam there's no real impetus to put this on NSO either way.

Retro Achievements Earned: 2 out of 77. (One for each stage, plus extras for getting all treasures, playing on hard mode, and another conditional to the stage like a time trial or weapon limitation. This set is brand new: had I played a little more I could've been the first to unlock some of those achievements. Evidently an RA contributor had the same idea I did.)

Bass Rush (Random)

• Visco Corporation / Visco Corporation
• 2000-04-28 (JP)
• 321st N64 Game Released

History: Finally, a game where I can shred on the bass guitar as a rush of notes flows down the highway, replicating the famous bass riffs of Queen's Another One Bites The Dust or Fleetwood Mac's The Chain. The system had precious few rhythm games and we've covered none of them yet so this makes for a refreshing change of... oh. I just saw the box art. This is the other kind of bass, isn't it? Its full title is Bass Rush: ECOGEAR PowerWorm Championship and those definitely sound like angler aftermarket products to me. Sigh, yeah, it's a bass fishing game. It's not even the one interesting bass fishing game on N64, and it's weird that one exists at all: Itoi Shigesato no Bass Tsuri No. 1 Ketteihan!, released just the previous month, is famous for having as its lead director (as well as headliner) the creator of the Mother/EarthBound series of RPGs, Shigesato Itoi. Far as I know, Bass Rush doesn't have any eccentric auteurs involved in its development nor any cool and weird hidden shit. Just fish.

Visco Corporation is not a company I've come across too often beyond a few publisher appearances in the Mega Archive. They worked with SNK on creating Neo Geo games for both the console and arcade and also worked alongside Taito for a spell but they fell out of the arcade biz (and games in general) sometime in the early '00s. Sounds like they make slot machines for various SEA countries now, gambling always proving to be a more stable industry than game development which is saying a whole lot of really real shit. This is the only N64 game they worked on but a few of their others include Puzzle de Pon (unrelated to Panel de Pon, I believe), the fighters Breakers and Breakers Revenge, and the belt-scroller Ganryu. Oh, and Neo Mr. Do! (shoutouts to Gerstmann).

Not psyched about this one, to put it mildly. I have been playing a lot of the fishing mini-game in Like a Dragon: Ishin! lately since it's fun and there's a separate cooking mini-game that requires plenty of seafood ingredients but I wouldn't say I have much affinity for games that focus on angling alone. Sharper 64 in 64 fans might recall that this is the second fishing game we've featured on here: we also played Nushi Tsuri 64: Shiokaze ni Notte, or Legend of the River King: Sea Salt Breeze, back in Episode 35. At least that game had a more cartoony RPG façade to appreciate; Bass Rush looks to be as dry as hell in comparison, ironically for a game set around enormous bodies of water. Well, I guess I'll get to find out what a PowerWorm is at least. That's the one from Dune, right?

16 Minutes In

Get yourselves comfortable everyone, we're going to be here a while. Though I only intend to spend an hour with this game it feels like several have already passed since I started. As anticipated, this is a pretty serious fishing sim with multiple lures and sinkers and starting areas across at least three lakes that I assume are based on real places. I went with the default option, figuring it was probably for beginners, and then picked a spot underneath a bridge since that seemed like it'd offer a pretty cool view and maybe I'll find some unique fish that only hang around under bridges, like a "hobonito" or something. I was also able to select the month, the time of day (but not past 5pm; I suspect that, much like many websites, they didn't bother programming a Dark Mode), and the weather as well. Too bad I don't know what the best conditions for bass fishing are. Starting to suspect this game came with a manual the size of a phone book.

Prior to starting the main mode here, which I could just about read as "Free Fishing" (as opposed to tournaments, which I imagine are more regimented), I took a look at the other options. There's the aforementioned tournament play as well as a place to check out your record catches and what looked like an encyclopedia area to learn about all the different fish to find and angling equipment at your disposal. There's not just bass, turns out: I'm pretty sure I saw some carp and trout in there too. Exciting stuff. You also have the enlightened option to play as either a male or a female angler, though there's nothing more to the character creation process beyond that and your name. Reassuring that a game of this vintage offers equal opportunities for boredom. Oh, and the name input screen only provided western letters so it's possible Visco had plans to localize this game at some point? Sure was optimistic of them.

32 Minutes In

The author Mark Twain once said of fishing, "a good swim spoiled," and man am I feeling that after half an hour of coaxing these pesky picky piscines into biting on my juicy lure so that I might pull them into a hostile, unfamiliar world while I laugh at their futile efforts to breathe. Or whatever it is that makes fishing fun when you're not allowed to keep them. The day slowly progresses as you wait for any action to occur, causing the fish to sometimes retreat to a different part of the lake, so I've made it a habit to move on if I'm not seeing any signs of life. While checking the water before casting you'll occasionally see a few splashes breach the surface so those have been the most promising areas to check (and a clear indication to try elsewhere if the water's perfectly still). In theory. Whether anything down there appears to care or acknowledge my presence is a separate matter.

After swapping my lure for a sinker I did finally catch my first fish: a six-inch bluegill. Bluegills, otherwise known as bream, are the main prey of larger fish like the bass I'm meant to be catching instead. Like Ron Swanson, I absolutely refuse to eat the food that my food eats. Fortunately, this was followed soon after by the second catch of the day. Which was a seven-inch bluegill. I'm thinking I might need to switch the bait I'm using.

48 Minutes In

Things really started to pick up in this fishing game for the third segment—which is sort of like saying a coma patient suddenly got a lot more active because one of their fingers twitched slightly—in that I finally managed to hook some of those sweet, titular bass by going back to my original lure. Now that I have the hang of the fishing process I seem to be doing a lot better, though most of the fish I catch still tend to be on the smaller side. The way the fishing gameplay actually works in this is that you have multiple ways to make your lure move—the A button reels it in slow, C-down is a medium speed reel, C-right is a fast reel, and you can use the stick to make the lure hop around slightly which can also draw interest—and then once a fish clamps down on it, you hold up on the stick to move into fighting mode. The next part's relatively simple: lead the fish but don't give it too much slack in order to keep a gauge from going too far left (at which point the fish escapes with the hook) or too far right (which causes the line to snap). I've since caught three bass, which feels like I've fulfilled some sort of minimum requirement for this playthrough.

After every successfully caught fish there's a voiceover whom sounds uncannily like Billy Crystal that informs you of its quality in a few words, usually (at least for me) along the lines of "oh no!" and "it's small!" (dude, you're like 5'4", let's have less sass from you Mike Wazowski). The one time I caught a medium-sized bass he was like "that's a good size!", a gesture of positive reinforcement that actually got to me to a little bit after almost an hour of what was, in comparison, plaintive sobbing about how much I sucked at fishing.

64 Minutes In

This last segment wasn't quite as lucrative as the previous and I didn't manage to surpass my largest catch as this playthrough came to a merciful end. In fact, it wasn't much longer after this segment started that I hit the 6PM time limit and the game unceremoniously quit back to the main menu. That would explain why I couldn't catch anything towards the end there, the fish all had that "retail workers five minutes before closing time" apathy to them. Instead, I spent the remaining time looking around the encyclopedia and the records menu for all the fish I'd caught: at least five bass and bluegills (the game only tracks your five largest of each) but that's all since I didn't encounter anything else.

Well, this fell completely within expectations for this playthrough. The fishing wasn't so bad but you spend so much time fussing about sinkers and lures that you become paranoid you won't catch anything without some insider knowledge. After that, it's a matter of praying to happen upon a decently-sized fish: it's near impossible to tell from a glance alone if it's a big one unless there's a smaller one close by to compare it to. You do have a few alternative camera angles you can try with the Z-trigger and C-up, the former giving you a bird's eye view while the latter just zooms out a bit, but I couldn't find a reliable way of telling what was out there without observing splashes or just blind casting. I guess real-life fishing doesn't have radars or the telltale shadows that the Like a Dragon mini-games do. Probably much less chance of fishing up a three-meter long great white shark also. Why even make realistic fishing games when the alternatives are so much more engaging?

How Well Has It Aged?: Like a Bass That's Been Left in the Sun for a Week. Maybe the more pertinent question is "how much have I aged?" because it felt like a lot over the last 64 minutes. Not quite ancient enough yet to start appreciating fishing though, so I evidently quit this game too early. If you're a big fan of this particular pastime and were gaming in the year 2000 then it could've been something you may have feasibly played for a very understated definition of "entertainment". However, there were better options available on the N64 and certainly on the Dreamcast, which is where this series went next. Ahhh, maybe the reason I didn't enjoy it so much was because I didn't have the official N64 fishing controller, the Tsurikon 64. That's probably it.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: Nintendo Won't Write a Check for Bass You Can't Catch. Not happening. If they did put a bass fishing game on there it'd be that Shigesato Itoi joint I mentioned. And, knowing Nintendo, they'd advertise it in a Direct like "a fan-favorite game from the legendary Shigesato Itoi finally makes its way onto Nintendo Switch" with Mother 3 music playing in the background. Just because Reggie doesn't work there any more doesn't mean he can't pull some strings to make that happen. Hell, pulling strings is most of what bass fishing is about.

Retro Achievements Earned: N/A. It's not on there. You're thinking of Retro Anchovyments.

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