Dinosaur? (Nintendo N64)

Member Name: Welshlad

Product:	Nintendo N64
Date:	07/12/00 (130 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great family console

Disadvantages: Age, range of games

While in a recent review I was singing the praises of the Playstation and how it had stood the test of time very well, the same thing cannot be said for the N64. Unfortunately, this was always destined to fail, and apart from the ridiculous number of Pokemon games being released, it has very little new to offer.
Games on Cartridge always meant this console had one foot in the grave, with limited capacity, and even more limited support, Nintendo really did make things hard for themselves. Add to this the fact that Nintendo also like to govern the releases and tight quality control also meant the number of games was a mere fraction of the rival Sony and Sega machines.
Nintendo themselves seem to have now given up on this console, having announced it successor, the Game Cube (a nice pink box – no pun intended!) that looks to hold the key to Nintendo’s future, and by the time that is released, I feel the N64 will be well and truly laid to rest!
However, after all those bad comments, things are not entirely bad, and it does have many plus points. While I mentioned the tight quality controls, admittedly it means there are nowhere near enough games released, it does mean those that do get to show their faces on the N64 are usually very good, and there are some really Gems amongst them. The likes of (the good but not great) Perfect dark, Goldeneye, Zelda, Mario 64 and many more are all top quality games, and will give hours and hours of gameplay. They are suitable for an incredibly wide audience, being cute and playable for children, but challenging enough for the bigger kids among us.

Overall, the N64 is a bit of a gaming dinosaur, which never really lived up to its hype and is dying a slow but somewhat deserved death. Lets hope the GameCube is better – for mighty Nintendo’s sake.

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