Mega Man 64

"Good Sound and OK Storyline Fail to Compensate for Horrible Graphics and Controls"

Story: 5

Not too bad. Not too good, either. Essentially, you’re a futuristic treasure hunter (a “digger”) who crash-lands on an island and saves the inhabitants from pirate invaders. (Did I mention that you are ten years old?) The story doesn’t get any better until much later in the game, when you start exploring subgates and especially at the very end.

Controls: 2

Bad. Really bad. Consider this: in practically every 3-D platformer on Nintendo 64, you use the control stick to go forward, backward, left, and right. Well, not this one. On this one, you use the control stick to go forward and backward, or turn in circles. You use R and Z to go left and right. Now, you can eventually get the hang of this. However, once you do get the hang of it, it is incredibly simplistic. There really is no variation. None of the rolls, slides, or special jumps that you’ll see in Super Mario 64 or Donkey Kong 64. Just plain running and jumping.

More odd controls: the action button is C-down, not the beloved A of many other platform-style games. To aim at enemies, you press R and Z simultaneously, a combination so contrived and inconvenient that I choose to ignore it altogether. To use your primary weapon, you press B, which is fine, but to use your secondary weapon, you use C-left, which is just plain odd. You get the idea.

Graphics: 3

Antiquated, low-quality graphics. There are some SNES games that have comparable graphic quality. Everything is very low-resolution. Especially odd is the way you can see behind walls whenever you turn in the opposite direction. It is atypical of an N64 game, and I don’t really like it.

Sound: 7

Not bad. The music is appropriate and well done. I especially like the Main Gate music. This is one of the few console games that actually has speech. All important character speech is actually audible. Unfortunately, it is not of very high quality. This means that, for example, the huge segments of monologue at the end of the game, although they are very interesting and contribute immensely to the storyline, are practically inaudible. Still, if you turn your volume way up for the speech segments and back to normal for everything else, you should be able to understand most of it.

Replayability: 6

Even once you complete the game, there are plenty of subquests to engage on and many items to find. Also, there are two hidden modes (hard mode and easy mode) to play once you beat the game on the standard mode. It’s not something that I’d play over and over again, but it’s definitely a keeper.

Overall: 4

Good points are sound, decent replayability, and a so-so storyline. Bad points are horrible graphics and controls. If you are looking for a good platformer, try something else. But if you already have all the major titles in the genre and are just looking for a few hours of new entertainment, MegaMan 64 is not a bad choice. It should last about eight to ten hours your first time through, and maybe another fifteen or twenty hours of replayability. Although the graphics and controls certainly interfere with gameplay, it’s still a very playable game.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 05/27/01, Updated 05/27/01