Dark Rift delivers hyper-active 3D fighting with a sci-fi theme! Compete against eight exotic and powerful characters and two very large bosses. Motion captured character animations enhance the realism. The arsenal includes multiple-hit combos, back-crunching grabs, juggles, projectiles, and punishing special moves. Tune into individual character stereo sound tracking. Fight in Tournament, 2-Player or Training modes.
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Dark Rift is a classic N64 fighter that's all about speed and flashy combos. The visuals were impressive for the time, and the character animations are surprisingly smooth. However, the AI is brutally unforgiving, controls feel clunky by today's standards, and there's not a ton of content to keep you coming back. It's a fun blast of nostalgia for retro fighting fans, but falls short compared to modern titles.
I remember playing this game a lot as a kid. I wasn't that picky, the characters were unique, the combos were enjoyable, and the character animations were my favorite. Sometimes I would just sidestep to the music without even fighting.
The N64’s early life was filled with disappointing arcade ports, but Dark Rift was the N64’s first fighting game that was specifically created from the ground up for it, so you would expect this to be more suited for home consoles, building upon what Killer Instinct Gold did. Unfortunately, this is another bare bones fighting game.
One thing that did impress me with the game was how well the flat square round and the 2D backdrop merged together, creating a more fluid looking environment – even if it made the levels feel like they took place far away from the distant objects. You have tournament mode and practice, and that’s it. The practice mode is also more basic than Killer Instinct.
The characters aren’t very memorable, but also aren’t as dreadful as War Gods, with a few interesting ideas. The actual fighting has special moves, which are often slow-moving projectiles which can be easily avoided by dodging (while the game never brags about being 3D, it works similar to War Gods). The main trick seems to be the c-buttons and mashing these and blocking at the right times seems to be the way to win.
While incredibly bare bones, this is slightly better than War Gods simply due to the characters being fine. For something specifically built for consoles rather than arcade, it still feels like just another poor arcade port.
One thing that did impress me with the game was how well the flat square round and the 2D backdrop merged together, creating a more fluid looking environment – even if it made the levels feel like they took place far away from the distant objects. You have tournament mode and practice, and that’s it. The practice mode is also more basic than Killer Instinct.
The characters aren’t very memorable, but also aren’t as dreadful as War Gods, with a few interesting ideas. The actual fighting has special moves, which are often slow-moving projectiles which can be easily avoided by dodging (while the game never brags about being 3D, it works similar to War Gods). The main trick seems to be the c-buttons and mashing these and blocking at the right times seems to be the way to win.
While incredibly bare bones, this is slightly better than War Gods simply due to the characters being fine. For something specifically built for consoles rather than arcade, it still feels like just another poor arcade port.
A mildly interesting fighter, one which I never realized had the distinction of being the first 60fps title on the N64; a visual feat that likely would've been very impressive had I played it at its release, but I didn't get to this one till closer to 2000-01. Blade-swingin' gameplay is fine, but Soul fuckin' Calibur was already howling at the gates.
fun fighter although not as sharp or as technical as the big name ones
This was basically the Soul Calibur of the N64, which was kind of cool if all you had was an N64 and wanted to play a weapon based 3d fighter. I've got a lot of nostalgia for this one, but with that said, a great N64 fighter is still overall pretty mediocre. I had to search pretty hard to even remember the title of this game, as almost nobody talks about it, but I was finally able to find an episode of Super Best Friends where they play it. Honestly, bless that channel for being an archive of some of the weirdest and most obscure fighting games out there.