"Shaking up some trouble!"

Mischief Makers was easily one of the more overlooked games during the 3rd gaming generation. Not to mention it was created by Treasure, an overlooked company. Probably this was so because 3-D games had recently taken the world by storm, and 2-D games were history to many people. Mischief Makers, however, kept that 2-D sort of tradition.

Here's how the story goes. Professor Theo is traveling to a distant planet with his greatest creation, a robot named Marina. But when they get there, the professor is kidnapped by a group of goons for some apparent reason I can't quite recall at this time. Marina must rescue him by going through the 5 world of the strange planet.

This was one of the few N64 titles that kept a 2-D environment with 3-D textures. In fact, it did one heck of a lot better job of executing it than Yoshi's Story did (which was released about the same time). The main character you control is named Marina. You go through several 2-D environments in 5 different worlds. The stages each have different objectives. Some have you simply try to reach the end alive. Others have you search and collect stuff in order to complete the stage. The last kind are the boss stages, which pit you against giant enemies which take several hits to defeat. The stages have a rather inconsistant difficulty, but it's still fun platform action. The tasks you must do in order to reach the star at the end are quite fun and challenging, though sometimes a bit tedious. In some levels, you must use Clanbombs to explode walls to get through, and shake the Clanballs to reset the walls, making you get to new heights. This game requires very good reflexes to get through some of the harder levels. Lots of the main action is spent by jumping from balls to balls. If you shake them, sometimes they'll drop items out. Jumping from the balls is usually a way to reach higher places. Colored gems also restore your health. Different colors restore different amounts. Also, a gold jewel is hidden in each level. The more gold jewels you collect, the bigger the reward at the end of the game.

The play control takes a bit of getting used to, but eventually it feels perfectly fine. The A button lets you jump. The B button grabs things. The Start button pauses the game. The Control Pad lets you move Marina around. The C Down button lets you ''shake'' items, which brings out certain items, unlocks certain points in the level, or makes a transporting star appear. The other C buttons can make you move in the air, make you fly, or make you get off some of the things you grab onto extremely fast in the direction. Mostly, the game controls finely, with no real problems. However, I do not like the abundance of things that the C buttons do. They can make you fly if you're in the air, make you dash, or do many different things while grabbed on. There are too many uses, and can get confusing. Besides, pressing right or left on the control pad is better.

The graphics in the game resemble anime art in a way. The face expressions on the characters change and the backgrounds are flat yet detailed. Nothing too ground-breaking, but it's all fairly bright and colorful.

Sound is probably the game's weakest aspect. The tunes are rather upbeat and cheerful. They have sort of that ''anime'' feel to it. But the character voices, however, are something to be desired. To sum it up in one word - annoying. Marina's constant ''Shake shake'' gets really old really fast, and some of the main bosses have some really bad voice acting. But I'm not the biggest fan of anime voicing, so others might have a different approach to it.

It's a shame practically nobody ever played this title. Mischief Makers may not be a perfect title, but I'm glad that my curiosity got the best of me. It's really a shame that Treasure never makes sequels, as I would love to see a Mischief Makers 2. This was definitely one of the Nintendo 64's most overlooked titles.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/21/04, Updated 10/09/04