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Feature: 10 N64 Games We Played In A Wondrous Alternate Timeline

Nintendo 64 — *Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life*

The N64 is 30 years old! This week, we’re running a series of articles celebrating the 64-bit machine, its industry-shaping software, and its effect on a generation of gamers.

Today, we’re imagining what might have been if the sliding doors hadn’t opened for PS1 and totally changed the game…

While the N64 era marked a downturn in Nintendo’s industry dominance — with Sony turning up hungry to the picnic and leaving only hubris sandwiches for Sega and Nintendo — it was a fascinating, exciting time for video games.

While its market share declined, Nintendo set the groundwork for 3D console gaming as we know it, with Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and GoldenEye 007 lighting the way for other developers to follow, on N64 but also PlayStation.

However, let’s imagine for a moment what might have been had Sony just shelved its console plans after Nintendo gave them the cold shoulder. What N64 games would we have seen if the system had achieved NES-levels of sales success? What 64-bit series, sequels, and third-party support might have materialised in a different timeline?

30 years on, let’s look at what we could have won…

#1 – Fire Emblem 64

Ike amiibo — *Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life*

Several of Nintendo’s modern mainstays didn’t get a 64-bit entry. Perhaps the least surprising of those is Fire Emblem, a series that wouldn’t debut in the West until 2003’s The Blazing Blade (which we knew as plain old Fire Emblem) on the GBA.

There was a Fire Emblem in development for the N64, though – or more specifically, the 64DD, the disc-drive add-on that only launched in Japan, lacking software support to warrant international release.

One of several cancelled 64DD projects, it was known as ‘Maiden of Darkness’ and was in development with series creator Shouzou Kaga at the helm until his departure from Nintendo following the completion of Super Famicom’s Thracia 776 (another Japan-only entry). The game was soon cancelled, although character concepts and other elements were used in the development of The Binding Blade on GBA.

Official word on the game has been rare in the years since, with no known builds existing beyond whatever Nintendo may have locked in its archives. We’ve glimpsed only a single screenshot, in 2015, in the 25th anniversary book The Making of Fire Emblem:

While the series would become known to international players soon enough, and a home console release on GameCube followed Marth and Roy’s Smash Bros. debut, it would have been fascinating to see Intelligent Systems’ 64-bit interpretation and the superlative Ogre Battle 64 some company in the N64’s slim tactical RPG lineup.

#2 – Tekken 64

Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

Of all the games my PS1-owning pals had, Tekken 3 made me most jealous. (Yes, even the slow PAL version.) Die Hard Trilogy was another, and perhaps Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo, but Tekken could have been a good fit on a system that has a few decent fighters to its name, but no solid-gold classics.

It took a while, but eventually the N64 would get versions of PS1 mainstays like WipeOut, Ridge Racer, Tony Hawk’s, and Resident Evil 2 — all of which felt somehow illicit Nintendo hardware — but we wouldn’t get a home console Tekken until…*checks notes*…Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on the Wii U! And that’s still the only non-handheld entry in Namco’s series we’ve gotten.

N64 had a few decent fighters (Rakugakids, Killer Instinct Gold), and Fighters Destiny gives me the warm fuzzies for some reason (Stockholm syndrome?), but it was never a king of fighters. Sort it out, Bamco.

#3 – GoldenEye ‘2’

Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

Nintendo’s patience with Rare when GoldenEye 007 was delayed and eventually released 21 months after the movie paid dividends, with the game selling over 8 million copies in the end. Naturally, Nintendo asked the dev team if they wanted to make a sequel, but they opted instead for Perfect Dark. The restrictions of the IP — not to mention the royalties raked in by the holders of said IP — made pursuing its own property more attractive from both design and financial perspectives.

But let’s imagine for a moment that Martin Hollis and co. did decide to crack on with a Bond sequel. At the time, Tomorrow Never Dies would have been off the cards as the movie was released just three months after GoldenEye (the game). Then again, that didn’t stop EA’s terrible PlayStation adaptation coming out in 1999 – a game we were mercifully spared on N64. But a Rareware take on The World Is Not Enough? It stirs the imagination.

There was an N64 TWINE game, of course; Eurocom’s effort wasn’t bad, but it lacked Rare’s refinement. It would have been intriguing to see the small Twycross team take a second shot at Bond, putting everything they learned the first time into practice from the start.

Don’t get me wrong, Perfect Dark is great, and notionally a ‘GoldenEye 2’, but it’s not, is it? 007 might have gone to space that one time, but he’s never tussled with aliens; a Bond sequel would have easily strafed around the weakest parts of Perfect Dark (read: all the Skedar bits) entirely by virtue of being earthbound.

Speaking of which…

#4 – EarthBound 64

Dipping back into the realm of cancelled games, similar to Fire Emblem, the original Mother 3 was another 64DD project which went sideways around the turn of the millennium. It was shown in playable form at Space World 1999, but had been cancelled within a year.

Buoyed by the success of Mario 64 and underestimating the complexity of the move to 3D, the project got bogged down by ambition, to the personal regret of Satoru Iwata, who said he was “embarrassed that we weren’t able to finish it” shortly after its cancellation.

The silver lining, of course, is that this would eventually see the light of day in a different form, with series creator Shigesato Itoi reworking elements from EB64 for 2006’s Mother 3 on GBA. A happy ending – at least in Japan. For EarthBound fans in the West, the lack of official localisations outside Japan remains a bone of contention (although the fan translation is excellent).

But looking back at what could have been with our polygon-tinted specs, though, the brief glimpses and accounts we have of the 64-bit Mother 3 make it a tantalising prospect.

#5 – Star Fox 64 2

Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

After perfectly distilling the spirit of the SNES original (and the sequel they shelved) and mixing it with the perfect quantity of B-movie shlock and spectacle — equal parts Thunderbirds and Star Wars — Nintendo concocted such a delicious rail-shooting cocktail with Star Fox 64 that they’ve spent the last 30 years trying to shake up something as tasty. Case in point: the soon-to-be-released Star Fox is following the exact same recipe.

Nintendo does make fairly ‘straight’ sequels on occasion – think Super Mario Galaxy 2, which builds very directly on its predecessor. We saw one such first-party game on N64, too, with Majora’s Mask. So why not build on Lylat Wars’ Rumble Pak-powered momentum and follow it up with an Expansion Pak-powered sequel, with grander-scale combat and a couple of new ideas? Going back to the Independence Day-inspired Katina today, it feels so much smaller than it did in 1997. There was room to go a bit bigger.

With Rogue Squadron and Battle for Naboo, we did pretty well for sci-fi flight combat, and Treasure’s Sin and Punishment is another all-timer in N64’s Japanese rail-shooter library. Still, what I’d have given for another star system’s worth of Star Fox’s particular B-movie brand. Ironically, if the remake on Switch 2 does well, perhaps our wish will come true (sort of) over three decades on.

#6 – Final Fantasy VII (and VIII, and IX)

Image: Gemma Smith / Nintendo Life

Following the SNES, Square’s split with Nintendo (thanks to cart-size restrictions and Sony’s cheaper, less restrictive CDs and licence terms) left a big RPG-shaped hole in the N64 catalogue. It was a significant factor in PlayStation’s success at a time when pre-rendered cutscenes, crisp voice work, and orchestral scores were novelties and next-gen signifiers.

Later in the generation, games like Resident Evil 2 proved that it was technically possible to squeeze a CD’s worth of data onto a (large) N64 cart. Eventually, getting a game like FF7 on the system would have been technically possible, with caveats. But the incentive just wasn’t there.

Not so in this alternate timeline, though! There, we all played and FF7, 8, and 9 on N64, following right on from the SNES entries Final Fantasy II (IV) and Final Fantasy III (VI).

Also, all the games got English localisation and releases in this reality, so it went cleanly from FF to FFVI with no regional confusion or need to screw your face up and count on your fingers. Lovely.

#7 – Metroid 64

Of all the Nintendo series with a classic 16-bit entry that then skipped a generation, Metroid is a big one. According to director Yoshio Sakamoto, he did consider how a Nintendo 64 entry might work, but struggled to find a concept that would work with its controller. “I just couldn’t imagine how it could be used to move Samus around,” he told GamesTM in 2010.

While understandable at the time — again, 3D was the Big New Thing™ and the main differentiator from the previous console generation — it’s a shame that a side-on Metroid wasn’t considered. N64 has a startlingly low number of 2D games, but it would have been refreshing to have a first-party title beyond Yoshi’s Story that dared to be different.

It’s tempting to look back, see the success of GameCube’s Metroid Prime just a handful of years later, and transplant its first-person Samus back a generation, using her 64-bit rendition from Super Smash Bros. as a natural starting point. Yet the challenge of creating an engaging 3D Metroid in a period before first-person shooters became the de facto form for the biggest console games…well, it’s easier said than done.

Modern-day fans have taken to filling that 64-bit gap themselves, with fan projects like AM64 imagining what might have been. Check out the gameplay footage below and revel in the chunky polys and nostalgia – and ponder if Jet Force Gemini is really a Metroid game in googly-eyed disguise.

So, we’ve had a Metroid – time for a ‘Vania…

#8 – Castlevania: 64 of the Night

Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

The two Castlevania games on N64 (well, one and a half) get a bad rap, probably because they came directly after 1997’s sublime Symphony of the Night and, as interesting as Castlevania and Legacy of Darkness are as 3D experiments, they ain’t no Symphony of the Night, that’s for sure.

Ah, but let’s suppose for a moment that they were SotN. Again, it’s a case of 2D feeling dreadfully last-gen at a time when the burgeoning 3D era literally added another dimension. SotN took time to build its reputation; it wasn’t big seller out of the gate.

With time, side-on and top-down games would return, but 2D in the late ’90s was seen as backwards-looking and old-fashioned when polygons represented the bleeding edge for game tech. Even games arguably best suited to 2D (see Earthbound 64) were being shoehorned into the third dimension.

However, we’re a better, more refined and intelligent species in this alternate universe, and SotN (or some ‘Ultra’ variant) launched on N64 to great fanfare and critical and commercial success.

#9 – Contra 64

Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

On the topic of Konami series beginning with ‘C’, the only legit Contra 64 in existence is the Commodore 64 port of the original, unfortunately (although I always enjoyed how Nintendo carried the Commodore’s ’64’ baton- in name only, of course, I just enjoy the symmetry of company + number).

‘Contra Spirits 64‘ was supposedly in development for Nintendo’s system at one point. Then again, looking at Appaloosa Interactive’s contemporary PlayStation efforts, Contra: Legacy of War and C: The Contra Adventure, we might have dodged a bullet with this one.

A classic case of mid-’90s 2D phobia, perhaps. A side-on Contra on N64 would have been an awkward fit, but the underrated Mischief Makers — which came from Treasure, a studio made up of Konami and Contra vets — proves that there was potential if we simple-minded ’90s gamers could have just opened our minds a little.

In our alternative timeline, Probotector 64 blew our collective minds and RD008 and RC011 supplanted meatheads Bill and Lance as the series heroes in all territories.

#10 – Super Mario 64 2

Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life

Yes, yes, the ‘Mario 128’ demo tech ended up going into Pikmin for the most part. Yes, Super Mario 64 DS added a couple of bells and whistles (and characters). And yes, modders in the 30 years since have taken the baton and done all sorts of weird and wonderful things to Mario 64. Mario 64 Maker, anyone?

But imagine, if you will, a direct Galaxy 2-style sequel. Picking up where the last game left off, you climb aboard your dino mount on the top of Peach’s Castle and warp-pipe your way to Bowser’s Castle. Or some other fortress belonging to Wario or Wart, if you like – we can workshop the details later. The point is, it’s the setting for another whole new playground experience, building on and bouncing off the ideas in the seminal first one. Imagine it

It was over two decades before Mario Odyssey finally delivered a sandbox playground that felt like a genuine successor to the N64’s launch game, but I wonder what the devs could have produced with mid- or late-cycle 3D Mario on the same system.

The tech was moving too fast back in those days to swing around for another pass, perhaps. It all worked out in the end, but as with all of the above, it’s fun to envision a world where things went just a little differently.

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