64 in 64: Episode 54—Plats All, Folks! Part Six

I'm not sure if there's something in the air right now but it feels like the Nintendo 64 is more of a going concern than it has been in a long while. Maybe that's just Gerstmann's new show and the looming 30th anniversary of its North American release talking. Or all these decomps and hyperdetailed/moist remakes coming out. Either way, it's hard to reconcile with how we all looked at that early footage of Super Mario 64 and considered how unlikely it would be that we'd ever see better looking games. Also how is that three decades ago? What is time? What is-

Wait, I got off topic here. We're talking about reviewing more N64 3D platformers as I weakly reach into the library once again with my ossified dinosaur arms for a couple more hoppers and crawlers. At least, "Hopper" and "Crawler" are my feeble attempts at hints for what's coming down the pipeline this episode. Like you couldn't just scroll down and figure it out that way; in fact, with how rambling this intro has been I would wholeheartedly recommend doing so.

"Wait," I hear you cry, "we can't skip the rules, those are the best part!". Bless you for humoring the elderly:

• Two N64 games. Sixty-four minutes spent with each. Is that sufficient for a thorough understanding of a game down to its core principles? Maybe. For games on the N64? Almost certainly.

• I'll jabber about my experiences across four check-in updates and then jabber some more about each game's past, its future (on NSO), and whether I intend to chase the dopamine dragon that is its RetroAchievements set, if one exists.

• I chose the shortlist, the random chooser is picking the order. Seems only fair. Otherwise I might've put off Glover and Earthworm Jim 3D to the very end, in the hopes I got smushed by a meteor before I ever had to play them. Hey, a guy can dream about his vivid, sudden death. Psychologically speaking he probably shouldn't, but...

• No games already available on NSO are allowed. I keep including this bit but outside of last week's Banjo-Kazooie it was never going to be an issue with this season. Still tradition. I guess.

For an ever-updated list of links to previous episodes and a full ranking of the N64 games covered so far, be sure to peruse this little 'ol link I got here. I made sure not to accidentally link to my Only Fans account this time. (Who knew a humble image gallery site about rotary cooling devices would see so much traffic? That's summer for ya.)

PAF#11: Disney/Pixar A Bug's Life

• Traveller's Tales / Activision

• 30-04-1999 (NA), March 2000 (EU)

• 176th N64 Game Released

History: The second Pixar movie received a N64 game in much the same way the third one did (that would be Toy Story 2, in case you forgot that Pixar got started on doing sequels almost immediately) and in both cases the license went to a certain small UK licensed game developer. The movie's about a troupe of insect performers that help their new friend Flik, an ant inventor, fight off an oppressive clan of grasshoppers after the performers mistake him for a showbiz recruiter (and he mistakes them in turn for mercenaries). Probably the best all-invertebrate adaptation of Seven Samurai since The Magnificentipede Seven. I assume most of what happens in the movie also happens in the game, but it's been a while since I saw it so I'll just have to play it by earwig. Bug jokes. I have a whole big book of these, don't you worry.

That certain small UK licensed game developer did, of course, eventually become TT Games—a colossus that was built atop a foundation of a thousand brightly colored plastic bricks—but for a while they had to make do with quickie tie-ins in the Disney mines with these Pixar movie games and the 16-bit Mickey Mania (and also Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is perhaps only Disney adjacent if legends about Walt's futile attempts to grasp immortality are true). Oh, and this game's debut on PS1 came out the same year that Traveller's Tales also released the thanklessly tanky Blight Club stalwart Rascal so I suspect I might be getting off lightly here by comparison. (Man, I can only imagine how much more cursed playing and ranking every PS1 3D platformer would be. When friggin' Croc: Legend of the Gobbos is a highlight, you've already passed through the gates to Tartarus.)

That Toy Story 2 game was perfectly fine even if it suffered from the draw distance and controller issues that plagued a lot of N64 ports but given this is an earlier effort (and TT's first ever N64 project) I'm a little more apprehensive. Like, there had to have been a missing link between Rascal and Toy Story 2 and whatever purple-green hominid that existed in that gap couldn't have been much to look at. Also, how is it I'm playing two bug platformers back to back? It ticks me off (that's another one).

16 Minutes In

Flik, flicking the berry. You'll notice I have the gold berries, which activates the tracker at the bottom for enemies permanently killed. Also note the plants on the bottom right: each has its own upgrade path, with all three of these being at least two upgrades in. Feels like there's a lot going on for a kids' movie tie-in, right?

This... is surprisingly complicated for a kid's platformer made by TT. Well, OK, maybe I'll being unfairly dismissive off the bat: the Lego games have always had puzzle sections to break up the jumping and combat and A Bug's Life channels a prototypal version of that energy with its seed-growing mechanic. Flik can carry, plant, and grow seeds to produce plants that provide some manner of benefit: early on that only includes bouncy mushrooms but later leafy plants (where you can stand on the leaves to climb up), healing plants (useful for enemy-dense levels and boss fights), and berry bushes. Each plant form has several upgrade tiers of their own which require finding colored tokens to unlock, like how the mushrooms turn into fans that push you higher in the air and the leafy plants increase in height, adding more leaves so you can ascend even further. The berries, meanwhile, are Flik's ranged weapon and they can be upgraded from standard red to blue (double damage), green/purple (homing, though I'm not sure what's different between the two; maybe purple is extra damage also?), and gold. Enemies will constantly respawn in the level until killed by a gold berry: killing everything is actually one of the three completion states the game tracks for each level, along with grains (50 of those) and the letters F, L, I, K. I guess the gold berry kill is like a vampiric final death? Turns out sucking blood isn't the only thing these little guys have in common with the Embraced.

Both the Training level and the first level, Anthill, do a moderately good job explaining all this to you but leave out certain pertinent bits of information. One such example involves the bonus levels: the means of entering them and the reasons you'd want to do so appear to be closely guarded secrets (unless the manual explains more). Otherwise it feels like an early TT game: same kind of floaty jumps, ambiguous ground states (that is, if the platform you're jumping to is real, non-corporeal, or the kind you just instantly slide off), and (so far at least) a slightly open format that still has an intended critical path through to its end. One curious mechanic is the camera: you can hit C-Down to toggle between "still" and "moving", the latter disabling manual camera control for the sake of a not-always-helpful automated system. I guess no-one was confident their audience would figure out 3D camera controls even by 1999.

32 Minutes In

The game has a few no-damage achievements and these polylegged wall jerks don't help with those given how quickly they pop out as you walk past. It's practically a jump scare.

The first level, Anthill, was one of those that used the aforementioned slightly open format, in that the goal was just to reach the titular destination from a random patch of dirt where you started, but the completion states required a bit more roaming around in order to find everything. The second level, Tunnels, conversely appears to be as linear as they come: you run down a single passage, moving past flaming barriers I couldn't figure out how to eliminate, while fighting insects popping out from the ground, walls, and ceiling. The ceiling enemies are the movie's villains, the grasshoppers: these guys not only stroll around in unpredictable patterns but require at least a blue berry to defeat, as the default red will just bounce off them. This level felt more like a crash course (or maybe a Crash Bandicoot course) in dodging obstacles and fighting enemies, with more urgent BGM to match, but an odd thing happened when I reached the grasshopper section: I was whisked away to another bonus level, completing which offered no evident reward (the target there was to find a floating exclamation mark) and then it kicked me back out to the level select menu with all my progress in Tunnels wiped. Is it possible I'm getting punished for... something? Killing too many bugs? I'm still not sure what triggered it, after all, so it's unclear where the fault lies.

(Post-Playthrough Ed. Note: I looked it up and the bonus levels are activated for killing five grasshoppers in a row without missing a shot, for bouncing on five separate mushrooms in a row, and for butt-stomping any five insects in a row without missing. Now I know what to look out for if I ever resume this game.)

This might be the most surreal 3D platformer I've played yet for this feature, but like Chameleon Twist I have to respect the developer tactic of taking a hard left turn with the inchoate 3D plat-formula than to simply trace over Nintendo's homework. Part of that is because it was originally a PS1 game, I suppose, and I imagine over there Sony and their third-party allies were consciously trying not to draw comparisons to what Nintendo were up to. For now, I'm going to keep pushing ahead and seeing what other forms these levels might take; I recall a few aerial chase scenes in the movie, so are we going to get some on-rails flying action soon?

48 Minutes In

This interstitial screen has "an effort was made" written all over it.

Back in the Tunnels, I realized embarrassingly late that the fiery barricades had numbers on them: they're the number of grains I needed to have on me before they came down. Most were dead ends leading to FLIK letters or more grains, though one snaked around and eventually led to a deeper part of the level presumably meant to be a shortcut back in case I'd found the gold berries and decided I wanted the "kill all enemies" medal. In that sense, A Bug's Life is similar to TT's Lego games in how often it insists on making you backtrack through levels you'd already effectively cleared once to reach a full completion state: the gold berries only turn up either near the end of the level, hovering somewhere that needs upgraded mushroom/leaf plants to reach, or else requires you to keep upgrading the berry bush seed until it produces the gold ones (the purple ones did turn out to be stronger homing seeds, and are the fourth stage of berry evolution with gold being the fifth and final). I'd say it was almost like an exploraction game but who's ever heard of one of those filled exclusively with bug characters?

I ended up spending quite a bit of time in the tunnels overall, ironically given how straightforward it was, and now we're moving onto Council Chambers next.

64 Minutes In

That gray oval is the boss arena and everywhere else in this tiny chamber has collectibles to sweep up. Those banana-looking things are the grains, there's a floating letter to the right (I think it's the I in FLIK), and up ahead is a berry upgrade (left, blue) and a plant upgrade (right, purple). They certainly give you plenty to find.

Two slightly unusual levels follow Tunnels; if nothing else, this game keeps you guessing. The Council Chambers is actually a small boss fight arena but, and I don't think I've ever seen a collectathon do this, you still have the full set of stage collectibles lying around the perimeter all kinda packed in there. That also includes the gold berry upgrade if you can work your way up to it, which both permanently removes the two mosquito adds the boss constantly spawns—the boss, Thumper the grasshopper, hangs around the center arena area unless you get close enough that he chases you but his adds follow you around the entire level—and makes the boss himself trivial to defeat. The next level, Cliffside, simply requires passing over a barren field by holding a dandelion that lets you float and hovering near fan plants to keep airborne: hitting the ground at any point during this sequence causes the bird, the movie's secondary antagonist of sorts (but treated more like a force majeure), to instantly eat Flik.

Despite being a very short level if you simply go as the bird flies, as it were, it's another case where you'll need some trickery and skills to get the full set of medals since the letters especially are in awkward spots. TT no doubt figured out early on that they'll always be catering to two distinct audiences—casuals who just want to beeline the story content and completionists who want to hit that 100%—and found a means to placate both, in a fashion. Either way, we'll be stopping this playthrough just shy of Flik meeting the circus bugs but even if I only managed to get through four of these levels (my completionist tendencies definitely dragged things here) the fact that all four had a different approach to its goalposts while still sticking to its format and rules isn't half bad. At least, were creativity the only thing we were scoring on here.

How Well Has It Aged?: Like a Fly in a Spider Web. This game definitely has its rough spots and the platforming in general feels bad, as does the wonky collision detection for enemies, but at the same time I could imagine some child renting this for a weekend and walking away with a new favorite. Even with the constant nagging pop-ups from your Navi-like flying pal Dot (RIP Hayden Panettiere, I guess I never realized how many voice roles she did) there's comparatively little direction for the more completionist-focused goals in any given level. Those who had whizzed through the story in a few hours and wanted to get more mileage out of their purchase (or, given the age range for a game like this, their parents' purchase) were certainly in for a much tougher ride with these bonus objectives. If kids like anything, it's not being talked down to by their games. Otherwise it's just kind of what you'd expect from a '90s licensed platformer. Hey, at least TT got better at it over time.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: No-one's Bugging Nintendo For This. Well, they might, but it's more that this is a licensed game that's available elsewhere so that's at least two reasons why it's probably not a big priority for NSO. Of all the games to pay out the nose to Disney for licensing, there are far better choices out there on N64 alone (one of which will be coming up later this month).

Retro Achievements Earned: 22 (of 84). This impressive set has five achievements per each of the game's fifteen levels—one for simply completing it, three for the respective medals, and a bespoke RA challenge that usually involves time trials or no-damage runs—with the remainder attached to the tutorial level, a separate "Challenge" mode, and those bonus stages.

PAF#12: Rugrats in Paris: The Movie

• Avalanche Software / THQ

• 08-11-2000 (NA), 30-03-2001 (EU)

• 352nd N64 Game Released

History: Those unsightly melon-headed infants are back again after the barn burner that was Episode 43's Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt (c'mon Blight Club Party feature, we have such sights to show you) with this tie-in game based on the official 2000 movie where they carted the tots off to Gaul for some jabs at the francophones. Was there a "oui oui", "yes I am, as we're talking in fact" joke contained in that slice of cinéma vérité? I wouldn't doubt it. Reports suggest this might be more of a mini-game collection than the standard 3D platformer model we're supposed to be highlighting this season, but as long as it lets me faceplant Chuckie Finster into the concrete from the top of the Eiffel Tower I'll leap through any hoops this game wants me to.

Avalanche Software is a company that has, apropos to its name, been buried a few times during its three-decade-long tenure. After an early period of ports and licensed game work (including this one) they eventually debuted their own well-received creative property in 2003, Tak and the Power of Juju, and shortly after were bought by Disney (ironically, the Disney game we're covering this episode was not by them). They were then stuck doing what they could for such riveting Disney properties as Chicken Little and Bolt before being manacled to the toys-to-life mill that was Disney Infinity, a game best known for being wielded by Johnny V as a +3 ranged weapon. Avalanche was then shuttered and has since been resurrected as a gaming branch of the always reliable entertainment juggernaut Warner Bros. (when the CEO lets them release anything, at least), where they've moved onto doing the wizardly bidding of a virulent transphobe. Sometimes when you fall you hit every branch on the way down. Given the THQ brand has become an Embracer plaything same goes for them too.

I did watch a few Rugrats episodes in the day, as did any kid fortunate enough to have access to Nickelodeon back then, but I'll admit the movie passed me by (as did that weird spin-off where they aged them all up into tweens). The idea of anyone giving Klasky-Csupo feature film money with which to distill their high-octane aesthetic nightmare fuel fills me with an uncanny sense of dread. Well, I'll get to vicariously live through its events in this video game adaptation at least.

16 Minutes In

I picked Kimi, the Asian Baby, because for the life of me I do not remember her being present in the show and now I'm wondering if there's some Mandela effect thing going on.

Turns out the internet was right, as always: This scarcely qualifies as a platformer. You can't even jump. If anything, it's built suspiciously similarly to that Carnivale: Cenzo's Adventure prototype, though that conspiratorial train of thought would have to ignore the extensive history of terrible licensed games for the NES that were in some way centered around a theme park where each individual ride was its own level or mini-game (a non-exhaustive list includes The Trolls in Crazyland, Mickey no Tokyo Disneyland Daibouken, and Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble in Wackyland; like I said, a rich tapestry). Anyway, the idea is you select your baby of choice and then walk around EuroReptarland picking up red Reptar tickets. You can also enter rides, and winning the mini-game presented to you will net you a golden Reptar ticket instead. Both ticket types can be traded at a central gift shop for various items, including puzzle pieces and Reptar merch, though the asking price for these rewards is about as ridiculously high as those at the counter at a skeeball place. That'll be a mystery to look into later once I have way more of these red tickets to throw around.

I've so far completed a semi-tough baseball toss mini-game and attempted a sort of "It's a Small World" boat ride mini-game. The former involved three rounds of hitting targets as they pass by, like any shooting gallery, though the third round turned the screws by limiting your projectiles. The rowing game involves hitting a sequence of animatronic critters so that they're all playing music at the same time; the rub is that it's one of those situations where some animatronics stop singing way sooner than the others, so you have to trial-and-error it a bit to figure out the order you're meant to visit them all. There doesn't seem to be any cost or punishment for losing these mini-games and restarting them over, beyond feeling that your limited time on this Earth is being put to waste.

32 Minutes In

I don't know what any of this shit does, or if they even do anything at all, but I do know I can't afford any of it. Typical Disn- uh, ReptarLand Incorporated.

The theme park seemed a bit small but it turns out it's because there's five sections you have to use the monorail system to switch between. They include the Main Entrance where the ticket prize booth can be found; Ooey Gooey Land which has a subterranean slimy cave theme; Reptar Island; Princess Theater; and Golf Park. I've yet to visit the latter three but I suspect I know what kind of mini-games await me at the last of those. Ooey Gooey had what looked like two entrances to the same ride, the boat ride I mentioned above, but it turned out to be two different mini-games: the first involves activating the animatronics (which I did figure out eventually) and the other simply required you to pop every balloon floating around the same course within a time limit. The last golden ticket for this area involved a floor square with a red puzzle piece: that was one of the prizes back in the hub, so I ran (well, slowly waddled) back there, bought the piece for most of the red tickets I had on me, and used it with the Z-button over the relevant spot to be whisked off to a jigsaw puzzle game where I had both limited time and limited mistakes I could make. It was only like a 12-piece thing though and the outer edge had already been completed, so I won't claim it was some Herculean feat.

With that, Ooey Gooey Land appears to be cashed out (the red tickets in the hub areas don't respawn either; I imagine the game must have just enough to buy everything) so I'm heading to Reptar Island next. If I'm able to conclude my business there before the next segment is over I should be halfway done with the game... which somehow doesn't feel right. Like, I'm not understating just how many of those red tickets I need to buy all the prizes: there has to be a lot more of the park I've not unlocked yet.

48 Minutes In

Been a while since grade school but I don't recall there being too many ninjas during recess. Could just be they were that good at hiding.

Reptar Island has two main rides, the first with three parts and the second with two. The first is bumper cars: for its first challenge, you have to shoot pucks in the goal of your opponent (a French ninja, whom I assume shows up in the movie) to earn points but can also bump into your opponent to steal their points; in the second, you and three randomly chosen babies have to collect balloons while avoiding getting hit, as that'll make you lose some of the balloons you've collected and give the others a chance to nab them; in the third and last, you have to defeat three ninja this time by shooting pucks at them, which can be reloaded after picking up balloons. The second in particular was especially irritating, as you could keep moving to avoid getting hit and still end up sideswiped out of nowhere given there's no way to see behind you. If you get stuck against the wall, you could lose all your balloons in a matter of seconds.

The other ride here is literally skee-ball, so that was a called shot from earlier I didn't quite commit to. Just tap once to the right, full power, and into the highest scoring area the ball goes (some of the time, anyway; the analog is very sensitive here so finding a consistent strategy felt impossible). I appreciate when they take it easy on me, but then it is a game about babies made for babies (I say that, but some of these challenges are darn stringent). Only other thing here is another puzzle piece space, so I'll swing back in the next segment to knock that out too. Then it'll just be the final two areas: Princess Theater and Golf Park.

64 Minutes In

Some immaculate whacking here. Just have to repeat it three more times for the bonus.

In this segment I learned that the red tickets are not only prizes for mini-games you've already completed but they respawn in the hub areas after enough time has passed. Given that's the case, endlessly farming as many of them as you need is not an issue: it's likely by the time you've swept all five sections of the park for their free-floating tickets, the first will have restocked. I spent this last segment wandering around the Princess Theater. The Reptar brand is owned by the Japanese,understandably in retrospect, so this section of the park has a much more Edo period feel to it. One of the mini-games here involved Chuckie (and only Chuckie) fighting off wooden planks and Mokujin lookalikes with the martial art skills I never knew he had. The second was, as you can see in the screenshot, a form of whack-a-ninja where later rounds gave you targets to avoid. There's a third mini-game here as well that I never got to, "Toss Your Cookies", and I can only imagine what that's about. Presumably not projectile vomiting at moving targets? But I guess I can't put anything past Rugrats.

I've some stray thoughts here, now that we've hit the time limit and concluded the playthrough. First, the music is pretty good: you have this Cate Pelose character channelling the original show's Mark Mothersbaugh compositions with near perfect accuracy, and for as much as I like Grant Kirkhope it's hard to beat the Devo guy for goofy-ass circus music OSTs. Second, the movie did indeed center around a EuroReptarland and the reason I hadn't seen Kimi before is because she debuted in this movie: one of the major plot threads is Chuckie's father Chas getting engaged to the movie's villain after being tricked, then changing his mind to Kimi's mother by its conclusion. Also, another tidbit about the movie? Tim Curry had a role in it as a karaoke-singing sumo wrestler. RIP to that guy too; been a real rollercoaster (as it were) of an episode with these big VA talents dropping left and right the past month. Finally, I was curious about why some of the golden tickets still remained on the mini-map for certain rides: the game wants you to get a perfect score on every round of those ones for a bonus ticket, which is a degree of punitive accuracy I did not anticipate from a Rugrats game. You don't strictly need those golden tickets at least: it seems you can earn enough just from playing all the mini-games once through apiece.

How Well Has It Aged?: As Well as That Song of the South Ride. For a younger audience that gets easily distracted I suppose a format like this that offers a number of so-so mini-games is better than one big so-so platformer, though none of them really appealed to me too much. They were either too arbitrary, too unexpectedly tough, or too tedious to be worth the admission price. Both visually and musically it matches the show well, with a number of compressed voice clips for each baby (rare for N64 and its limited cart memory), but I can't say running around a theme park collecting tickets the whole time made for a riveting premise. I also ended up with 12 golden tickets after an hour: three-quarters of what I need to buy the Reptar helmet to finish the game, so that's about 90 minutes at most to hit the ending? I guess it would take far longer than that to get all those perfect scores, if I felt any inclination to do so.

Chance of Switch Online Inclusion: As Likely As Nintendo Admitting Their Consoles Are For Babies. Licensed game issue again which, when combined with the game's mediocre reputation, doesn't bode well for anyone hoping that Nintendo would put any effort into making this inclusion happen. Fortunately(?), Limited Run Games saw fit to include Rugrats in Paris: The Movie in the Rugrats: Retro Rewind Collection compilation they released back in May. Sadly(??), that compilation did not seem to include the N64 version of the game.

Retro Achievements Earned: 12 (of 34). One for each golden ticket event, including several from a trading system (for those merch items in the ticket exchange that serve no obvious purpose, perhaps?), and some miscellaneous ones for getting holes in one in the mini-golf and for earning enough tickets to acquire every prize item. A single missable: unlocking all the golden tickets, not just the sixteen you need, before buying the Reptar helmet and triggering the endgame. Least appealing is a Very Hard completion achievement; plenty of grumblings in the comments about how unexpectedly demanding it is. Unlike the babies themselves, this set's got teeth.

Anyway, that's going to do it for this episode and for being as snug as a bug and a rug(rat). We've four games and two episodes left until we've exhausted all the 3D platformers on here, so be sure to check in next time to see what else I mistook for a game of this genre.