You know that feeling when you're digging through a charity shop's random box of N64 games and you spot something that makes you double-take? That's exactly what happened when I found Glover tucked between about fifteen copies of FIFA 98. The cover looked like a fever dream – this white glove character with cartoon eyes, holding what appeared to be a rubber ball. I'd heard whispers about this one on old gaming forums, usually accompanied…
Saturday afternoon, 1997. I'm sprawled across the carpet of my mate Dave's living room, the kind with those swirly brown patterns that could hide Cheerios and shame in equal measure. The N64's been out for a year, and we've already worn grooves in Mario 64's castle floors, but today's different. Dave's sliding a new cartridge into that front-loading slot with the reverence of a priest handling communion wine."My brother got it from Blockbuster," he says,…
You know what's weird? I can still remember the exact moment I realized Dash Rendar wasn't just some random smuggler they threw into the Star Wars universe. It was probably the third or fourth time through Shadows of the Empire on my N64, and I'd just nailed that speeder bike chase on Ord Mantell without hitting a single tree. Something about the way his ship, the Outrider, felt different from the Millennium Falcon in other…
The smell of a friend's basement in winter 1999 is burned into my memory—that musty carpet odor mixed with the electric warmth of a CRT that had been on for three hours straight. We'd gathered for what felt like a historic moment: someone had actually managed to get Resident Evil 2 running on Nintendo 64. Not just running, mind you, but looking… well, shockingly decent.I mean, we all knew the story by then. PlayStation had…
I was digging through my game collection last night, trying to find something to show my nephew who's visiting for the week, when I spotted that familiar yellow cartridge. Donkey Kong 64. Just holding it brought back this wave of Saturday mornings and the particular excitement of unwrapping what was essentially Rare's love letter to everything they'd learned about making platformers.You know what's funny? Everyone remembers the Nintendo 64 as this revolutionary machine—and it was—but…
You know what still gets me? The way that little paper Mario would flutter when he jumped. There was something so perfectly Nintendo about taking their most famous character and flattening him like he'd been run over by a steamroller, then somehow making that limitation feel like pure magic.I remember the exact moment I first saw Paper Mario running in that Mushroom Kingdom intro. My mate Dave had picked up a copy from Electronics Boutique—remember…
The other night, I was digging through a box of old gaming magazines when my hand brushed against something unmistakable—that three-pronged controller that still looks like alien technology twenty-eight years later. Just holding it brought back everything. The weight, the slightly rubbery grip, that analog stick that clicked when you pressed it down. But mostly, it brought back memories of weekend warfare in my mate Dave's front room, where four of us would huddle around…
The controller felt wrong in my hands at first—that weird three-pronged alien design that made you hold it like you were operating some kind of spacecraft console. But once Perfect Dark loaded up and that haunting synth melody kicked in, everything clicked. This wasn't just another shooter. This was GoldenEye's older, smarter sibling who'd spent a gap year traveling and came back with stories that would blow your mind.I remember the exact moment I knew…
There's something about sitting in front of a massive CRT on a Saturday afternoon, analog stick getting properly sweaty as you guide a gorilla through jungle canopies, that modern gaming just can't replicate. The N64 era gave us platformers that felt like they were carved from pure joy, and honestly? Rare's Donkey Kong Country series on that system was platforming at its absolute peak.I remember the first time I plugged Donkey Kong 64 into my…
There's something almost criminal about how Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards gets overlooked in those "best N64 games" conversations. I mean, everyone rattles off the usual suspects—Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye—and fair enough, those are masterpieces. But then Kirby 64 sits there like the quiet kid in class who turned out to be brilliant at everything but never made a fuss about it.I picked up my copy from a Blockbuster that was closing down,…