Cru Jones Society

 

After wasting many hours looking up old Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64 games on Wikipedia, thanks to a link placed on our comment board by Deuce, I searched out my Nintendo 64, hooked it up, and started playing it again. Have enjoyed playing some games from my youth, well the latter part of my youth, ok I played the 64 in high school. I was into pro wrestling and it had good wrestling games. Stop judging me!

I have yet to indulge in either one of the wrestling games I own. I have mainly stuck to three games: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and Mario Kart 64. I present to you my thoughts on playing these games now as an adult (I use the term adult loosely.)

Player 1, Start.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The Zelda games have always been favorites of mine. When we got Zelda II: The Adventures of Link at my house, there were constant battles between my dad, my cousin, and myself over whose turn it was to play. If there was a day my dad was off work, and I was at school, I had a pretty good idea he was playing, and I would rush home to see how far he had gotten. The Zelda games always became an obsession, more than any other game for me.

Each new game console from Nintendo meant that there would be a new Zelda. Which meant there was a new game to take up my time. Reading about the Zelda games on Wikipedia made me nostalgic to play them. Since my regular NES has finally, to steal such an eloquent phrase from Dagger, “shit the bed;” and for some unknown reason I don’t seem to have my copy of Zelda: A Link to the Past for my SNES; I went for the one that I do have for a system that is working.

Now with everything set up, I created my game file and was ready to rock that bitch, Ben Folds style. However the 64 doesn’t cater to the short attention spans like the modern systems do. There is a story in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A lot of games have stories, but they also let you push the A, start, circle, whatever button to skip the stories, or speed through dialogue boxes, but not this Zelda game. People took time to write it, animate it, and program it; and by god you’re going to listen to it, dammit.

Having a story for a game is fine. It’s good even. But make it short, or quick. I put this game into play, not to have story time. I know it sounds wacky to want to play a game, and if I wanted to hear, or read a story I would have put in a movie or picked up a book.

Ok so now I’ve sat through half of an hour of exposition involving sacred realms, princesses, and tri-forces; somehow I’m still interested in playing. I start the actual play of the game and I’m going along just fine then BAMO I get stuck on some part. After struggling for 20 minutes and finding no way to get unstuck I decided I’ve had enough of this game and it was time to try a different one.

I grab the next game on the stack.

Conker’s Bad Fur Day

Conker is an adorable little squirrel, assuming that you don’t think squirrels are pesky rodents, or if you’re afraid of them. What’s appealing about this game is that it has the design of a child friendly cartoon, but it is violent, the characters swear, and there is innuendo aplenty. Game play starts after Conker leaves a bar. He is attempting to get home and has a hangover, or is hung over.

A main character who is a drinker, that’s something I can get on board with.

What I can’t get on board with, much like Zelda, is the long story that I can’t skip or speed through. The story in Conker is much longer than the one in Zelda. And they drag it with their attempt at comedy. The writers put in these jokes that are not funny. They exist only to extend the unplayable parts and to annoy me. Not only is the initial story longer in this game, there are more cut-scenes than Zelda. Every new area has one, ever character you meet has to talk to you with long drawn out dialogue, and they all have the same sense of humor and make unfunny jokes.

My frustration grew exponentially with every cut-scene I had to sit through. As well as how far back some of the restarts are even if you make one tiny mistake. There are many ledges to fall off that won’t kill you, but send you way back to restart the area. Those factors made it real easy to turn off the game the first time I got stuck. I didn’t even come close to putting in the effort I put in once I got stuck in Zelda.

Turning off that game and I made my way to the next one. But I decided to go for one that I knew didn’t have a story I’d have to sit through, or a part where I could get stuck.

Mario Kart 64

Mario Kart 64 is almost exactly like the original Mario Kart for the SNES. There are a few different weapons and the graphics are better. That’s it more or less. The basic idea of Mario Kart is you choose a character from a Mario game, and on a go-kart you race against 7 other Mario characters. Through the racecourse you are able to get weapons that you can fire at the other racers. They’re based on items you could find in the Mario games, turtle shells, stars, etc. The weapons make me feel like I’m a villain in any race cartoon. The ones where they have blades that slice other cars, or create oil spills.

The characters are: Mario, Luigi, The Princess, Toad, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Wario, and Bowser. Each character has a slightly different attribute. Some are faster than others, stronger, or have better acceleration. I prefer to play as Wario. I believe he has attributes that are evenly distributed. He’s not the fastest, but he’s not the slowest. Maybe I choose Wario in order to fully get the villain racer motif going.

Either way “Ima gonna win!”

Wait, I think I just figured out how to get past the troubled area in Zelda! I’ve got to go.

Until next time, have fun with your joystick.

lee.s.hart@crujonessociety.com