If I had a nickel for every N64 game where you get through all the levels and have an initial confrontation with the villain (who is a stereotypical green Halloween witch), but to get the true final battle you have to go back and get VERY close to full-completing the game, I'd have two nickels.
This game actually holds up extremely well... for the most part. The graphics are simple, which is all they need to be for a game like this, and there are a surprising amount of charming and unique details interspersed throughout the levels, with pleasant colors and textures. The music is great, but there aren't that many songs, and hearing the same relatively short loop for three levels in a row gets tiring, no matter how much of a banger it is. Apparently the way they got around N64 music limitations was just... actually making the songs shorter by cutting out parts of them, the "calmer" parts that made them seem less repetitive. The PS1 and Dreamcast versions apparently have more levels too, including more bonuses with varied gameplay, not to mention other features like voice acting and rendered preview images before levels. In my quest to play every decent game on the N64, I have once again fallen victim to the inferior version of a product.
Version differences aside- the simplicity of this game is another reason it holds up so well. The only buttons required outside of menuing are the dpad or stick, with A and B merely zooming in and out. Everything is accomplished by walking around to collect dots (including the classic power pellets that will let you devour your foes), walking onto switches, and interacting with other things in the environment. I could see this kind of simple appeal finding an audience in the indie market today. Yet even here there somehow manages to be camera issues, with a camera that often lags behind your movement. If you don't stop and wait for it to catch up, you can run into some rude surprises.
The top-down maze format is filled with block-pushing puzzles, which almost always involve TNT blocks that explode on a timer and will blow up other blocks in your way, but also the old standby of ice blocks that can cool lava enough to make a temporary bridge, and other types of environmental puzzles and interactions. Nothing is too hard to figure out, but it's fun and engaging enough to keep you going.
Unfortunately, this game has a massive flaw: the stringency of its requirements to access the final boss. You have to get the VAST majority of stars in the game, which are gained from either finding every fruit in a level, every dot, or completing a time trial. Let's talk about those first two. They can ostensibly both be accomplished on a single run, but for some levels you actually can't get everything until you've beaten the first boss (after completing every level at least once) and received a special key, so you might spend time trying to collect everything only to later realize you're gated off from initial success. What's more, there are often "points of no return" in the levels, so if you missed something, get ready to do the whole thing all over again because there's no way to go back.
The time trials, though. They remove all key blocks from the level, making them shorter overall (as there are lots of side areas you won't have to visit)... But even so, they are EXTREMELY demanding (with a few exceptions) and will require routing, practice, and near perfect execution- including avoiding enemies who will take time off your clock instead of damaging you. Depending on how much damage they would normally do, this can be as much as 20 or even 30 seconds. Your attempt could be functionally over after one hit. The challenge could be fun and rewarding but the investment rarely seemed worth it. You will have to do at least a few of them, so choose wisely.
It's easy to sour on an overall fun experience when you have to slog your way through the same levels several times, repeating the same puzzles, with the same walking pace and non-variable gameplay. Even just hacking off five or ten of the required stars would have encouraged people to revisit levels and engage with the time trial mechanics without ending up feeling like a job.
It's a charming and unique game which, due to its simplicity, doesn't really feel dated... but far outstays its welcome. By the end, I definitely felt the maze madness setting in.
This game actually holds up extremely well... for the most part. The graphics are simple, which is all they need to be for a game like this, and there are a surprising amount of charming and unique details interspersed throughout the levels, with pleasant colors and textures. The music is great, but there aren't that many songs, and hearing the same relatively short loop for three levels in a row gets tiring, no matter how much of a banger it is. Apparently the way they got around N64 music limitations was just... actually making the songs shorter by cutting out parts of them, the "calmer" parts that made them seem less repetitive. The PS1 and Dreamcast versions apparently have more levels too, including more bonuses with varied gameplay, not to mention other features like voice acting and rendered preview images before levels. In my quest to play every decent game on the N64, I have once again fallen victim to the inferior version of a product.
Version differences aside- the simplicity of this game is another reason it holds up so well. The only buttons required outside of menuing are the dpad or stick, with A and B merely zooming in and out. Everything is accomplished by walking around to collect dots (including the classic power pellets that will let you devour your foes), walking onto switches, and interacting with other things in the environment. I could see this kind of simple appeal finding an audience in the indie market today. Yet even here there somehow manages to be camera issues, with a camera that often lags behind your movement. If you don't stop and wait for it to catch up, you can run into some rude surprises.
The top-down maze format is filled with block-pushing puzzles, which almost always involve TNT blocks that explode on a timer and will blow up other blocks in your way, but also the old standby of ice blocks that can cool lava enough to make a temporary bridge, and other types of environmental puzzles and interactions. Nothing is too hard to figure out, but it's fun and engaging enough to keep you going.
Unfortunately, this game has a massive flaw: the stringency of its requirements to access the final boss. You have to get the VAST majority of stars in the game, which are gained from either finding every fruit in a level, every dot, or completing a time trial. Let's talk about those first two. They can ostensibly both be accomplished on a single run, but for some levels you actually can't get everything until you've beaten the first boss (after completing every level at least once) and received a special key, so you might spend time trying to collect everything only to later realize you're gated off from initial success. What's more, there are often "points of no return" in the levels, so if you missed something, get ready to do the whole thing all over again because there's no way to go back.
The time trials, though. They remove all key blocks from the level, making them shorter overall (as there are lots of side areas you won't have to visit)... But even so, they are EXTREMELY demanding (with a few exceptions) and will require routing, practice, and near perfect execution- including avoiding enemies who will take time off your clock instead of damaging you. Depending on how much damage they would normally do, this can be as much as 20 or even 30 seconds. Your attempt could be functionally over after one hit. The challenge could be fun and rewarding but the investment rarely seemed worth it. You will have to do at least a few of them, so choose wisely.
It's easy to sour on an overall fun experience when you have to slog your way through the same levels several times, repeating the same puzzles, with the same walking pace and non-variable gameplay. Even just hacking off five or ten of the required stars would have encouraged people to revisit levels and engage with the time trial mechanics without ending up feeling like a job.
It's a charming and unique game which, due to its simplicity, doesn't really feel dated... but far outstays its welcome. By the end, I definitely felt the maze madness setting in.