Yeah, sue me I actually meant to put Mario Kart 6 
4 was considered crap.
Yeah, sue me I actually meant to put Mario Kart 6 4 was considered crap.
But again, who by? This is another game that got great reviews and was extremely well accepted by N64 owners. Its one-player mode was almost certainly too easy, which is something I wouldn’t argue with, but from a critical point of view it was easily one of the best multiplayer games released on a console up to that point. From what I can remember it was accepted accordingly: contemporary reviews for the game tended to state “9 out of 10, but it’s primarily a multiplayer game”, which is quite different from “crap”.
I don’t remember this game being given great reviews at all and people just was n’t open to Nintendo as they are now. Your forgetting that people was starting to buy into the PSX bandwagon at this stage.
Most mainstream gamers were certainly on the PlayStation bandwagon before the N64 was released, but I don’t see that as being very relevent; we’re talking about what the people who played N64 games thought of the games, and what the critics who reviewed N64 games thought of the games, not how successful they were with the masses: the masses just didn’t own N64s.
In all seriousness though, have a look and see if you can find any contemorary reviews of Mario Kart 64 or any of the other games I’ve mentioned that said they were anything but very good games. If you can find any at all that come from respectable sources, compare them to the number of positive reviews these games got from good reviewers who knew what they were talking about: I assure you the negative reviews will be outnumbered ten to one.
I don’t know about yourself, but I read up widely on the games that came out during the N64 era because I had no intention of buying games that I wouldn’t enjoy. I also spent a significant amount of time talking with other Nintendo fans and other N64 owners, and what I gathered was this: no respectable sources said that the games I mentioned above were crap. Now sure, extreme purist hardcore fans had some gripes with how their favourite franchises had been translated into 3D - they even had complaints about Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time - but in all honesty, I’d be more surprised if they didn’t. It would take an extremely biased reviewer to write these games off as “crap”.
You mean someone like Goonboy.
Thanks for the copliment G
I don’t know anyone that enjoyed this game. Trying to back up your statement by saying that Mario Kart 64 was great by fellow nintendo players is being a bit desperate don’t you think? The game was lauded by people who reviewed it and those who brought the game. Compared to the original the game plainly sucks.
The N64 somehow managed to be a success despite its failure to take off in Japan. It’s good to see that Nintendo’s attitude towards RPGs has started to change for the better over the years.
I’ve never been a fan of Nintendo. It has nothing to do with personal bias and everything to do with the fact that Nintendo’s goals don’t seem to go beyond milking established brandnames for all they are worth (although I must admit, Nintendo is a lot more inventive than the likes of EA).
This is all in response to your original point that:
Most of the games they made themselves were not considered at the time to be the of the standard Nintendo quality that fans were use to up to that point.
… in which your subject was Nintendo fans. You might also have noticed from the last paragraph of my post that I’m really not so bothered about hardcore Nintendo fans’ opinions myself: they genuinely are biased, and can love or hate games that a competent unbiased reviewer would view differently. The main point of my argument was that most unbiased and / or professional reviewers did consider it to be a high quality game.
Yes, it was praised by reviewers and other people who actually played it: this is generally a sign that a game has “received acclaim”. I was under the impression that you were arguing against this when you said that it was “considered crap”, which is why I brought it up.
Does it? I’ll be the first to say that the one-player mode wasn’t as interesting or satisfying because of the low difficulty level, but that was more or less it: that doesn’t automatically mean that it “plainly sucked” or “was crap”. And in what ways was the multiplayer mode objectively inferior to the first game’s? I can’t think of anything myself, and it was the multiplayer mode that gamers primarily wanted the game for. To be honest though, I’d rather not derail the topic with my personal opinions on the game. My point is that others - notably, the professional critics - generally did like the game, which seemed to be the issue at hand.
Let’s look at this the other way round for a moment, anyway: you’re saying that most of Nintendo’s N64 games were of a low quality, and that neither the reviewers who played them or the people who played them liked them. As I say, I disagree; if you have a flick through any old (unbiased) games magazines or a search through any respectable websites that have contemporary reviews of these games, you’ll see that most critics really liked almost every N64 game that Nintendo produced. However, you’re also saying that Nintendo has picked up again now, and that the GameCube is a better time for game quality.
This is the part of your argument that I really don’t understand, though. Most of Nintendo’s GameCube games are essentially updates of N64 games that have improved graphics and almost nothing changed in their gameplay formulas: compare Super Mario 64 to Super Mario Sunshine, Zelda: Ocarina of Time to Zelda: The Wind Waker, Mario Kart 64 to Mario Kart: Double Dash, F-Zero X to F-Zero GX (technically developed by Sega, but Nintendo certainly got them to keep it conservative), Super Smash Bros. to Super Smash Bros. Melee, etc, etc. Some of these games even have arguably inferior gameplay to their N64 predecessors (not blatantly inferior, but arguably inferior), and they’re certainly not as groundbreaking; this really shows in comparisons like Wave Race 64 vs. Wave Race: Blue Storm and 1080 Snowboarding vs. 1080 Avalanche, where the N64 originals were generally thought of as being very good while the GameCube updates were only average or just above average. So how can this be a better time for Nintendo game quality? Nintendo was moving forward in the N64 period by adapting their existing franchises into the third dimension in relatively innovative and relatively successful ways: now their creativity and innovation is much less pronounced, if not stagnant.
After what you’ve said, I’m curious: do you own Nintendo consoles, and do you play Nintendo games yourself? Do you make a point of keeping up to date by reading up on Nintendo games, and talking to people who are unbiased about what did and what didn’t work about the latest releases? I can assure you that I do and that I have done in the past, which is why statements like “Nintendo had a dip period in the N64” and “Only few of the titles nintendo released themselves received any acclaim during a five year period” seem quite strange to me.
EDIT: Added a little for clarity.
I wonder if Goonboy is that guy on Gamefaqs who gave PDS 2/10…?
I’m not a nintendo fanboy and i’ve never owned a nintendo console apart from the original gameboy (not color or pocket or anything).
And yet I did love all the games that have been mentioned by a certain someone here as “crap”.
In fact, there used to be stores here kind of like net cafes except they had consoles and games you could play and all the rage at those times for EVERYONE that was interested in games was to go there and play four player mario kart or goldeneye or even solo mario 64 and ocarina of time trying to finish them over a span of days or weeks playing a little every day having friends around helping or attempting certain sections someone couldn’t manage etc… It was the most fun i’ve had in games with a few sega games exceptions for sure.
Anyway, seriously, I never heard anyone call those games crap, even hardcore sony fanboys loved playing mario kart’s battle mode or goldeneye and such…
The same goes for all the magazines, every single magazine I had seen here rated all those games extremely highly.
I know plenty of people who enjoyed and enjoy this game. In fact, it’s not uncommon for me to be walking down the halls of my dorm and hear the sounds of Mario Kart 64. I never owned the game myself (didn’t have much in the way of money or friends back then) but everyone I’ve talked to seems to put it right up there with Goldeneye and Super Smash Bros as far as N64 multiplayer goes.
I wonder if you can come up with an intelligent debate without having to insult anyone? Most of your peers in this topic has basically done what I expected them to. Funny that you haven’t.