The Nintendo 64 was a gleaming pinnacle of gaming bliss.
For many of us, this little system with its Star Wars “X-Wing” style controller, was our first gaming experience – I can still remember 4 year old me, going into the living room, picking up said controller and taking my first steps towards Peach’s Castle in Mario 64.
The N64 had some true titans of gaming history on its carts, and some equally as titanic disasters too. For every Ocarina of Time or Banjo Kazooie, there was a Superman 64 or Clayfighters 63 1/3.
Times were different. Times were changing. Developers suddenly had to develop games with a whole extra dimension in mind. For a notoriously hard-to-develop-for console too. Some excelled, some failed. And some created some gems that still to this day, are underappreciated and oft overlooked, for what they brought to the table. Perhaps overshadowed by their controls, or release timing against those iconic N64 titles, we’ve come to know and love.
So hot off the back of the Star Fox Remake reveal, and inevitable Ocarina of Time Remake, let’s take a look at 5 Underrated N64 Gems that deserve that glorious 2026 remake treatment.
Tetrisphere
Tetrisphere is one of the most difficult games ever. And by difficult, I mean difficult to describe. Which is ironic considering the main selling point of its Gameboy namesake, was its simplicity.
When I say, “imagine Tetris, but spherical,” I mean it.
Each level focuses on a “tetrisphere” – a planet of tetrominoes of all varying shapes and sizes, just like you’d find in Tetris, with a little robot fella trapped, at its core.
The aim of the game is to free our robot friend from its spherical jail, by breaking through layers of tetrominoes, using matching shapes given to you just like Tetris does, to chip away layers, rack up combos and eventually free our little friend, against the clock.
I mean honestly, it sounds horrendous on paper. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s maybelleine. But honestly, this game can be as addictive as a huff of cocaine from a musky pub toilet seat. The combos you can pull off are insanely satisfying, plus you’ve got puzzle modes and time trials thrown in for good measure too. It’s a well-rounded, and often challenging experience.
Plus the soundtrack too is thumpingly awesome; an entrancing mix of Tetris tunes meets futuristic techno, you know, that acidhouse sound atypical of the 90s that gets your blood pumping, just as much as that huff of cocaine would.
So why does this deserve a remake you ask? Well, how many ports of Tetris have we had over the years? Simplicity sells, and Tetrisphere is an innovative evolution of that classic formula. Once you start playing it, you realise how simply addictive it can be, and the concept just works. And after the success of recent rifts on the formula, namely Tetris 99, I honestly think this game would work fantastically if given a similar battle royale “99 Treatment”, as a remake.
I mean just imagine this against a score of other people, with that OST too.
This is one of the few N64 games I’ve already played against friends, outside of Smash Bros, as a kid, so I know the concept works. Just add 98 other players, all rushing to free their little robo-friends, all while against the time-limit and other players sabotaging your strats, and we’re good to go.
Forsaken
Forsaken has a special place in my heart.
For nearly 2 decades, I had one song that would pop into my head. I never knew what the song was, or the N64 game it had come from. But I knew it was one from my childhood – one with the most grittiest of basslines, grimiest drum tracks and interjections of random sound effects and guitar glissandos.
After a painstaking process of going through N64 OSTs, one night I finally found it. “Pure Power” from Forsaken.
Just listen to that bass…*DUM DUM DUUUUM*… those first 3 notes bought swathes of memories flooding back the night I rediscovered it.
Forsaken may have a special place in my heart because of that track, but it’s also just an outright weird game.
Some will compare it with Descent from whatever system, but I’d honestly never heard of it before researching the game for this piece. So it’s a pointless way to describe the game in my opinion.
Imagine Doom crossed with Star Fox 64 – you pilot a gravity-defining hoverbike, from a first person perspective, with full 360 degree control to fly around the maze-like arena around you. Hunting and gunning down rival bounty hunters and plunderers, who have come to pillage a ravaged Earth, of the last of her treasures and resources. Following an experiment that destroyed the planet’s atmosphere, all life on it, rendering it completely inhospitable.
Or just imagine a first person trench run from Star Wars, with the most delicious trancey dubstep-infused soundtrack, and you get Forsaken.
This game is dizzying. Both in the speed at which you move, as well as getting your head around movement within that 360 degree space. A degree of movement sorely needed when navigating the game’s coliseum-like levels – bewildering mazes of tunnels that will leave you feeling disorientated as well as engrossed, as you explore and hunt down those scavengers, defend a location, or complete whatever objective the level may have in store for you. Not to mention the boss fights you’ll come up against too, some of which can be intense affairs.
Speaking of intense, honestly, they nailed the atmosphere in this game.
The music, coupled with the worry of not knowing what was round the next corner, or tunnel. The visuals are honestly impressive for an N64 game too, with excellent lightning effects when blasting an enemy, and texturework generally being above-average across the game. The controls too aren’t the most intuitive at first, once they click, they click, and the game becomes an absolute joy to whizz around in – channeling your inner Tie Fighter and getting to blast some rebel, treasure hunting, scum.
With that being said, it doesn’t exactly feel like you’re a scavenger flying around the depths of a desolate Earth. More like one of those cameras on the side of a satellite in space, just like when those people went for a fly past the moon the other month., you’re just a UI floating about in space. I mean, sure you can pick different vehicles to trash around these stages too, but at first they don’t necessarily seem any different to one another, you can’t exactly see them. But they do differ in terms of speed, armour and handling when you start to fly around. It’s just the game never tells you that. In the same way they didn’t factor in the 360 degree movement, and speed at which you move, occasionally giving the player motion sickness. Or not being able to select a difficulty, with that being determined by how fast you beat the first level. Or only being able to save after a couple levels.
All strange design choices. But also, easily solvable design choices in this day and age.
Like I said, that one track from the OST stuck with me for all those years, and while the game now is as forsaken in memory as its namesake, there’s something endearing about this game… I can’t put my finger on it. I know the PC version had a remaster in 2018, released on Steam and Xbox One, and the N64 levels were bundled in. But I feel remasters don’t quite do games from that era justice. Sure the weapon effects look better, and textures are sharper, but in some ways that sharpness highlights how flawed those textures are.
We don’t have anything as unique as this “Descent” style of game, in this day and age. An age where 3 hour animations are now passing as “games” and getting top scores on, questionable, review outlets.
Even the multiplayer on N64 was a blast, and that was just between 4 players. Lord knows how chaotic the PC version was, or the remaster with 16 players and the various gamemodes. Which is where I feel the potential lies in a remake.
The remaster had no local multiplayer, or even co-op support (on and offline). So with Forsaken’s levels being so labyrinthian in scale, it often feels way too overwhelming for a solo player to thoroughly explore. Therefore I think a cooperative mode would go absolutely hand-in-hand with this game, just imagine however many of you trashing it about the stages, blasting your way through enemies, having pseudo-races through the tunnels and just vibing to that soundtrack.
It’s giving big bougie vibes.
There’s potential in competitive multiplayer too, but it’d be harder for that to stand on its own two feet, in this age of multiplayer saturation. But bundle it in, you never know.
The OST in itself deserves a remake to be honest.
*DUM DUM DUUUUUM*
Castlevania 64
Man…That intro… that violin… It’s hauntingly beautiful stuff. Honestly I think it’s one of the most underappreciated musical intros on the Nintendo 64.
With that being said, Castlevania 64 has had a rough life.
First struck with development problems, which saw content cut left, right and centre, and now in recent years, has seen its reputation struck down by easily agitated YouTube reviewers, and people who only get their opinions from who they watch. Its led a sad and blighted life.
I’m not saying CV64 is a perfect game by any means, but it gets a bad wrap, when it honestly is a charming title. Its presentation is endearing, the character models and locational textures surprisingly detailed, and the story is also surprisingly deep, with plenty of twists to keep you on your toes.
The scope of the game is impressive – within minutes of loading the game up and picking your character, you’re thrown into your first miniboss fight against a giant skeleton. A perfect “sink or swim” approach to guiding you through how your character plays, the game’s mechanics, and setting you up for the adventure to come. Almost akin to a souls-like approach to its tutorial.
Both characters have unique stages too, similar to how Claire and Leon’s stories differ in Resident Evil 2. Enemies could be terrifying on occasion too, even in their chunky N64 forms.
Oh and there’s even a day/night cycle too, with certain events and NPCs only appearing at certain times of the day. Eat your recovery heart out, Majora’s Mask.
The soundtrack too is on point, with the game relying on ambiental tracks, and occasionally pure silence, to set the tone and atmosphere of the game.
It’s impressive stuff, and the game was only ever going to be more grander than the one we got, considering the content that was cut in development. Originally there was supposed to be 4 playable characters, whose stories all interwove and culminated in an even more majesticly grandiose finale.
So why is Castlevania 64 remembered so unfondly by some?
Well, YouTubers are one thing for a start.
Outside of them, the game suffers from that familiar phrase, “N64 jank” – as is often the case with a lot of games from this era, the camera is often unresponsive and rigid, a near constant battle to control – letting the player alternate between “Normal, Action and Battle.” Which in itself just makes the already annoying platforming sections, over instadeath pits, incredibly awkward. Throw in the games’ unreliable ledge-grabs too, and it just becomes a frustrating experience.
It’s hard to critique the game of course too, without mentioning the Nitro section towards the end of the game. Imagine carrying one of the Nitro blocks from Crash, and it blows up and causes a game over, if you so much as knock it with a feather. Add in narrow beams and enemies you need to dodge too, and you’ve got a recipe for an explosive, rage-filled disaster, waiting to blow.
Plus there’s little things like not being able to use Reinhardt’s whip to traverse (hint for our next game pick right there), and Carrie’s floatiness when trying to navigate your way over those bottomless pits.
Some dislike the whole day/night cycle, and the game counting how many days pass before you get to Dracula at the end – less days = grander finale. But I like that concept.
Which is where we come to the territory known as “Remakesylvania.”
This game needs a remake. Much like some vampire, or werewolf, or Palpatine (hint hint) returning from the dead somehow, CV64 needs a second chance to cast off its janky N64 shackles, and live life as the vision it was originally intended to be.
Perhaps as some hybrid between a Souls-like and hack and slash? Maybe more Nioh than Dark Souls? Or maybe just go full out Bloodborne style?.
I can’t decide which, but the critiques of the game can easily be solved with a remake, and that atmosphere could be even more intensely gothic with a modern lightning engine. I mean why not just go all out and add the removed characters, unique locations and interweaving stories, all while making those quality of life fixes to the camera, pacing, platforming and controls.
Perhaps then the naysayers on YouTube will finally take a stake or garlic clove to their negativity, and lay the game to rest.
RIP.
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
Now I was a HUGE Indiana Jones nut as a kid. Who else remembers Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb on the PS2, Xbox or PC? I do, and I loved that game. So it should come as no surprise that subsequently loved Uncharted as a teen.
But little did I know that an Indiana Jones game existed for the N64 too.
That’s because it never saw a release in PAL territories. The NTSC version of the game released in North America in 2000, very late into the N64’s life cycle, but saw a cacophony’s worth of changes and improvements made to it, compared to the PC version – enhanced controls including Z targeting and C Button Item usage, akin to the N64 Zeldas, plus fully sequenced music and real-time lighting and particle effects. Grand stuff for the N64.
Unfortunately, a bizarre decision to release the game exclusively for sale via LucasArts’ website or store, or for rental only via Blockbuster in the States, coupled with publishing issues this side of the pond and poor sales, resulted in the PAL’s version delay to a 2001 release window, and eventual cancellation.
It’s a shame as the PAL version was mostly complete upon cancellation. A ROM of which of course found its way online over the years, and appears practically complete, and supposedly less buggy than its NTSC counterpart.
To be fair, it looks insane for an N64 game in my opinion.
The premise is interesting too – seeing Indy up go against the Soviets, in a globe-trotting adventure on the trail of the “Infernal Machine” – an ancient Babylonian bit of tech, much like my old streaming laptop, capable of opening a portal to another dimension. Said machine has been split into parts and hidden across the world, with the Soviets looking to acquire it and subsequently, “a weapon greater than a nuclear bomb.”
Do they succeed? Is it a weapon, or something more they’re after? Who knows… well I do, cause I read the wiki.
Honestly that plot alone is endearing enough to make me want to play it, and the more I read about the game and the more I watch, this game was so ahead of its time considering the hardware it was released on.
Some of the levels I’ve seen while researching this game are absolutely massive. Some of the biggest I’ve ever seen in an N64 game; combining platforming, puzzle solving, even vehicle traversal Uncharted 4 style too at times. It can take hours to beat just one level when playing blind for the first time. And there’s 17 of them?!
Combat of course rears its head here and there too, with a targeting system akin to OoT/MM that other platforms didn’t have at the time. Plus C Buttons for easy equipping of weapons like Indy’s trusty whip or revolving. Vastly streamlining that aspect of the experience.
Visually, it looks really good too – those “enhanced real-time lighting effects,” honestly look fantastic when Indy whips, *ahem*, his lighter out, and light bathes the walls around him.
The game just looks great, and it’s such a waste it never saw a release here.
Sure the original had its fair share of bugs, including some game-breaking ones, and the controls were more dodgy than Harrison Ford’s bowels filming Lost Ark in Egypt that time, but the groundwork they laid here with Infernal Machine had some serious potential. I mean, in a time when the only Indy content we get are ports of the Great Circle, which in itself is just not an enjoyable Indiana Jones game, the idea of a remake of Infernal Machine would do a lot to scratch that fedora-sized itch, many of us haven’t scratched since Uncharted 4 released a decade ago.
As highly prized and valuable as this game is, it shouldn’t belong in a museum.
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far Far Away…
*DOOO DO DO DOOOO*
Shadows of the Empire is some seriously great stuff.
Imagine Goldeneye, set in space, with occasional platforming, jetpack sections and ship combat. Mix all that together with a dash of N64 blurriness and jank, and you get Shadows of the Empire – a rough jewel in the crown of Star Wars games.
Set between the events of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, you play as dashingly handsome, Dash Rendar – smuggler and mercenary, turned blaster-for-hire, roped into the Rebellion’s cause following the Battle of Hoth. Tasked with tracking down Boba Fett and his recently carbonited Han Solo cargo. All the while Prince Xizor, Overlord of the Black Sun Crime Syndicate, works from the shadows, in attempts to kill Luke Skywalker, undermine Vader and replace him at the Emperor’s side.
Lore wise, it’s good stuff. Gameplay wise, it’s a mixed bag.
What’s there has the bones to be great, it’s fully playable in both 3rd or 1st person too, but whatever the perspective, it suffers too from that classic “N64 jank.”
Movement is the biggest cause of death in the game – Dash Rendar runs like he’s had one of Joe’s dodgy barbeques, and is desperately seeking a bathroom. Something must’ve leaked onto his shoes too as he slides all over the place when turning. He has hulking great leaps for jumps for good measure too, making any jumps over chasms, even with the jetpack found later in the game, almost as terrifying as the sound effects found in the game too.
Literally nothing terrified me more as a kid, except perhaps the Bear and the Lion from that Teletubies skit, than going toe-to-metal toe with an AT-ST. Hearing that monstrous clank as it stomps around after you, or the grinding gears and computerised warblings of IG-88, as he stalks you around his tetanus-infested boss arena. Not to mention the Wampas with seemingly infinite healthpools, or Dash’s “taking damage” yelp… they all still rattle me now even hearing them as an adult.
Visually, let’s be honest, the game looks like something a sarlaac would spit out. And ammo just floating in the sky too? A dumb design choice “just because” you get a jetpack. It’s difficult too, beyond the controls, let’s just say, stormtroopers are very much on target in this game. But, they’re products of its time, and from developing not just for new hardware, but in a new dimension too.
Honestly, beyond the design and gameplay gripes, the scope of the game feels insane for an N64 title; the atmosphere, the music, the variety of levels, like going from space battle in an asteroid field, to speeder showdown on Tatooine, the scale of them is fantastic. It’s a wonder the game fits on the cart.
From the off, the game starts off on a high. Taking down Probe Droids, AT-STs and AT-ATs on Hoth, through to battling your way through the rebel base to free your ship, to the aggravating long train platforming sequence on Ord Mantell, and eventual fight against Boba Fett and Slave 1. It’s a Star Wars fans’ wet dream. Beyond sleeping with Leia… or one of those hot Twi’lek chicks.
Shadows of the Empire is a rough jewel yes, but a rough jewel that could be redefined into the shiniest of kyber crystals with a remake.
Sadly the chances of this happening are very low, especially with the lore being relegated to “Legends” since Disney took over. Or non-canon for you non Star Wars fans out there. But like Princess Leia, we have hope that one day, we can return to this particular part of the galaxy, because this lore in itself needs to be brought back to canon.
With all that said and done, let us know your thoughts and what N64 games you’d want to see remade, in the near future!
VGT-Joe