Nintendo just released two additional games on their Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack’s Nintendo 64 app. Let’s have a look!
Here’s what I thought:
Nintendo 64 App
| Game | Genre | # of Players | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donkey Kong 64 | 3D Platformer | 1 | C |
tl;drThis 3D Platformer is bursting with personality, and it’s very creative, but it has also aged very, very poorly. A terrible camera you need to constantly fuddle with to get even a halfway-decent angle, tedious slow pacing, with even more tedium piled on by needing to constantly return to places after unlocking abilities, with even more tedium added by needing to replay areas with each of the game’s five characters. While it’s certainly not bad, it’s hard to go back to this after playing more modern games in this genre. | |||
I previously looked at this game on the Wii U Virtual Console, and a few more years hasn’t changed my mind. I know this is seen as a cult classic by some people, but in my book this game earned all of the hate it received back in the day, and then some. That’s not to say this is a terrible game, but it is a heavily flawed one, one where the “collect-a-thon” elements of the era’s 3D Platformers reached the height of their excess, and which also suffers from other issues of that era’s games, like an uncooperative camera.
Look, this is an iconic game, so I’m certainly not going to argue against its inclusion on the Nintendo 64 app. It’s just a shame that we got this before countless other games I’d be much more excited to see, like Super Smash Bros., Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Mischief Makers, Battletanx, Snowboard Kids 1 & 2, Wipeout 64… and if we got a licensed game in the form of Goldeneye 007, perhaps it’s not too much to hope for that we could also see Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Battle For Naboo, Spider-Man, WWF No Mercy, Beetle Adventure Racing…
But, yeah, I suppose Donkey Kong 64 getting added to the lineup was inevitable, so at least that’s out of the way…
tl;dr – The Nintendo 64 app gets Donkey Kong 64, an iconic 3D Platformer that has aged terribly, and that’s in addition to the justifiable reasons a lot of people hated it back in its original release. Still, it’s a key title in the Nintendo 64 lineup, so it was bound to show up here sooner or later…
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