Original Platform: Windows (Steam)

Version We Played: Original Release, on Steam Deck

Verdict: All I want for Christmas is a gravity gun.

A confession: I quit Half-Life 2.

It was probably ten years ago, which is to say, a decade after its 2004 release. I’d picked it up as part of the fabled Orange Box (of which more in a moment), but after working my way through the masterpiece that is Portal, I found Half-Life 2 slow, frustrating, outdated.

In retrospect, that wasn’t fair.

Portal is such a singular experience – a metafictional dark comedy masquerading as a AAA puzzle game, not to mention one of the smartest games ever made – that expecting anything to live up to it was a mistake. I set aside H-L 2 back then (right around the third or fourth antlion attack), but, inspired by conversations with friends and far too many glowing retrospectives, I decided, this year, to give it another chance.

What I found was a first-person-shooter which is oh-so-much more than that. Rigorously designed, fiercely intelligent, Half-Life 2 is a breathtakingly entertaining game, brimming with great ideas (many of which would be borrowed/stolen by the many games it would go on to inspire), and most of all a joy to play.

Half-Life 2 is a puzzle trapped in a shooter.

More specifically, it’s a brilliant, endlessly inventive, physics-based puzzle game, trapped in a very good but admittedly creaky first-person-shooter, with all the baggage that comes with it.

The sequel to 1998’s (also very good) Half-Life, H-L 2 continues the story of Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist who, through events which are, frankly, partly his own fault, has gotten mixed up in an intergalactic cold war pitting several alien factions against humanity. In the first game, spoilers, Gordon succeeded in repelling invaders from the Xen dimension, only for a mysterious figure known only as “G-Man” to recruit Gordon into the ranks of an unnamed, shadowy organization.

Fast-forward six years – twenty years in game time – and 2004’s Half-Life 2 begins with Gordon awoken from the stasis he was placed in at the end of the first game. In the twenty years since the events of Half-Life, Earth has been invaded by not one but two alien forces, new foe the Combine having already conquered the planet (with, it’s implied, the support of some collaborating humans). When Gordon wakes up, he discovers a world at war – a human rebellion fighting the Combine, the Combine staving off endless hordes of Xen aliens, returning from the first game.

Details about this war, about the motivations of various factions, about the remarkable passage of time, remain frustratingly vague throughout – one of the unfortunate knock-on effects of H-L 2’s approach to storytelling, in which key details are omitted, and in which our eternally silent hero fails to ask some fairly basic clarifying questions. Indeed, if H-L 2 has any real weakness, it’s the rather perfunctory narrative, which doesn’t entirely cohere and which ends on a cliffhanger which, rather infamously, has yet to be resolved.

When Half-Life 2 is firing on all cylinders, it’s the absolute best an FPS can be. The gravity gun, in particular, opens up – and encourages – such wildly entertaining experimentation it can be easy to forget Gordon has a whole arsenal of weapons to choose from. (That is, until a Combine soldier unloads a shotgun in your face, and you realize you should probably stop throwing boxes at them.)

Half-Life 2 is also a rollercoaster ride of brilliant ideas, each section offering something novel, something exhilarating, while also building on everything which came before.

One moment, H-L 2 is a slowburn horror game, the zombie-cum-haunted house stylings of the Ravenholm chapter (ominously subtitled, “We Don’t Go To Ravenholm”) an obvious standout. The next, it’s a Halo-style vehicular combat journey across Highway 17, zipping past enemies, slowing down for the occasional pitched battle. Sometimes, H-L 2 is even a co-op or squad-based shooter, Gordon joined by an array of computer-controlled allies including quasi-love interest Alyx (later to star in her own, widely heralded, VR game).

Impressively, while Half-Life 2 may be the progenitor of environmental storytelling – in which environmental details (rather than scripted cutscenes) offer glimpses of a broader narrative – its environmental storytelling is still excellent, surpassing in certain places even the BioShocks and Dishonoreds of the world. Sure, there are the simple things – like stumbling across a corpse next to a weapons cache, the poor soul having run out of food/water – but then there are the more intriguing ones, like the blood-splattered walls, the ominously placed chair in the middle of a room, hinting at the terrible things which happened before your arrival.

This helps H-L 2’s world feel lived in, organic – as do the actual glimpses of other storylines playing out in real-time, as, for example, when you spot Combine thugs interrogating a frightened civilian, or when you come across an active firefight between your enemies, the alien-zombie hordes menacing a Combine squadron. Even today, in 2026, it’s cool to just stand back and watch these battles play out, waiting for your moment to pick off the survivors.

In Half-Life 2’s case, the adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” does not apply.

H-L 2 even makes space for some bona fide scripted set pieces, again played out in real-time. Highlights include an Airboat (think mini-hovercraft) chase where you’re weaving through falling smokestacks, or a bridge crossing in which a high-speed train races through just in time for you to dodge it, or – one of my favourites – the ominous arrival of the War of the Worlds-styled Striders, enormous tripods which can stomp or laser beam you to death in an instant.

Thanks to some very brilliant hidden scripting, these events appear to play out spontaneously, even if they’ve actually been finetuned down to the millisecond by the team at Valve.

I didn’t notice it as much the first time around, but my second encounter with Half-Life 2 cemented for me just how indebted it is to the classics of sci-fi past.

Sure, the headcrabs are basically just reskinned facehuggers, but by the time H-L 2’s “fast zombies” are aggressively smashing through skylights and scurrying along walls, it’s impossible to ignore the Alien influence. The evolved, poisonous headcrab is particularly Alien-coded, with its devastating attacks which knock you down to a single point of health.

There’s more. The biomechanical Striders are, as mentioned, lovingly borrowed from H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. The mysterious G-Man is basically just The X-Files’ Cigarette Smoking Man. The omnipresent, all-seeing Administrator Breen, Gordon’s former boss and now leader of Earth’s Vichy-style government, is heavily Big Brother-coded. (Breen’s name, incidentally, is a likely nod to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Breen species, the grunts in the intergalactic empire of DS9’s The Dominion.)

The list goes on.

I say this not simply to congratulate myself for being a mega-sci-fi nerd, but to highlight how expertly Valve melds all these influences into something so memorable and, yes, unique. Sure, its story isn’t quite up to snuff – there are, frankly, too many unresolved details, particularly in light of Valve’s ongoing failure to deliver on the promised Half-Life 3 – but it’s still an impressive inheritor of a proud sci-fi tradition.

From a purely gameplay perspective, H-L 2 excels from top to bottom. This is a game which admirably resists handholding, while at the same time pushing you to experiment with its many tools and systems. Enter a room full of dropped saw blades? Who could resist hoovering them up with the gravity gun and then launching them at enemies. Spot a deviously-placed ceiling barnacle, its extended tongue ready to scoop you up like a Venus flytrap? Try rolling a nearby explosive barrel towards it. Half-Life 2 is full of moments like these, mini-dioramas which encourage experimentation on the part of the curious player.

The impeccably designed physics system – see gravity gun, above – is probably the best part of the game. So many times, I’d encounter an environmental puzzle, a pathfinding challenge, a just-out-of-reach item, which forced me to stop, think, and figure out how to use the game’s physics system to find a way forward. (You spend a surprising amount of time constructing simple levers and bridges.) You can easily spot the seeds of Portal in these moments, when H-L 2 ceases to be a shooter and turns into a meaty, intelligent, physics-based puzzler.

For a game about blowing up alien zombies, H-L 2 also finds time for subtle details.

Take, for instance, the game’s mind-controlling headcrabs, which have a nasty habit of turning humans into zombies. Occasionally, upon killing a zombie, the headcrab will fall off, revealing the tortured face of the infected human underneath.

The entire Ravenholm section, in which the devoutly mad Father Grigori has created a sort of contained ecosystem for his “flock” of zombies, slowly reveals a whole crazed backstory without once spelling it out for the player.

Elsewhere, discarded newspapers found throughout the world reveal the devastating nature of the Combine’s invasion of Earth – details which can easily be overlooked unless you take the time to stop, read, survey.

Half-Life 2 is also, of course, an imperfect artifact of an imperfect era.

The actual gunplay is the least interesting part of the game, with bullet sponge enemies which require a few too many shots to defeat, and sporadic placement of ammunition and medkits, which can occasionally trap the player in an endless checkpoint loop of defeat. (I had to reload earlier saves a very small handful of times.)

Half-Life 2, by design, also refuses to point you in the right direction – an idea which mostly works, but can occasionally grow frustrating when your pathfinding is persistently interrupted by enemy attacks. (I found the waterborne Airfloat chapters of H-L 2 to be particularly annoying in this regard.)

To its credit, H-L 2 also lacks boss fights in the traditional sense, though there are still a few progression wall battles which feel slightly unfair. This is especially true when Gordon is faced with waves of endlessly refreshing enemies, and you begin to wonder when the fight will finally peter out.

The conclusion, on the other hand, is excellent, deftly avoiding the mistakes of its predecessor’s godawful trampoline boss, and instead offering a mini-setpiece in which Gordon faces a series of enemies while trying to deactivate an enemy reactor. It fits well within the overarching story, and offers narrative payoff for Gordon’s adventures dating back to the first game.

What else can be said about Half-Life 2, by someone who’s only played it through for the first time in 2026? Well, the voice acting is great – I was delighted to hear Star Trek’s Ro Laren, Michelle Forbes, in a key role – and the graphics are very good for the era. It’s not scary, exactly, but the horror vibes are strong.

It’s also, as noted, impossible to discuss Half-Life 2 without talking about its re-release.

In 2007, three years after its debut, developer Valve re-released H-L 2, in slightly upscaled form, as part of the now-legendary Orange Box, a compilation package which included the base game, its two postgame expansion chapters (which I have yet to play), the wildly popular multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2, and a little game called Portal.

One day, I’ll write a whole other feature about Portal, a superlative, game-changing experiment quickly creeping up on its twentieth anniversary next year. Suffice it to say, Portal is one of the two or three real works of video game genius – the other two being, say it together now, Journey and Shadow of the Colossus – in which the very act of gaming is simultaneously interrogated and celebrated while you play.

Portal starts inauspiciously enough, player-character Chell handed a physics-based weapon – here, a portal gun, styled much like the gravity gun and canonically manufactured by the same in-universe company – and tasked with navigating a series of challenge rooms.

Soon enough, however, Portal – under the malevolent watch of its seemingly omniscient, diabolically cruel AI overlord, GLaDOS – reveals itself to be something else entirely:  an offbeat, very funny, fourth wall-teasing short story (it lasts about four hours) which challenges long-ingrained notions of player agency, game design, and the act of telling an interactive story.

From using the portal gun to sneak behind the scenes of GLaDOS’s puzzles, to tripping across its many (also very funny) Easter eggs, Portal is so much more than a cake meme, and an essential experience in its own right. It’s Portal which retrospectively undermined my first impressions of Half-Life 2, and it’s also Portal which, all these years later, finally convinced me that I should give Half-Life 2 another shot. (Side note: Portal’s sequel, starring Stephen Merchant, is arguably even better and funnier than its progenitor, though I’ll always have a soft spot for the original.)

Even if Half-Life 3 remains only a gleam in creator Gabe Newell’s eye, the Half-Life universe continues to expand. There are the aforementioned H-L 2 chapters and the VR game, while Valve’s bespoke handheld console, the very good Steam Deck, comes with a free game, Aperture Desk Job, which doubles as a hardware demo and canonical adventure in the H-L/Portal universe. Counter-Strike, the remarkably successful and long-running series of multiplayer shooters, started life as a Half-Life mod, before being taken in-house – and given quasi-canonical status – by Valve.

Admittedly, if, in 2026, I was asked to recommend one Valve game to a new player, it would have to be Portal (followed closely by Portal 2). But that’s no knock against Half-Life 2, a singular gaming experience which, more than two decades on, continues to impress and even surprise.

I loved rediscovering Half-Life 2, exploring its many and varied regions and storylines, getting (re)acquainted with its characters, goofing around with its physics system and gravity weapon. I’ve played a lot of first-person-shooters, but this one, precisely because it’s not just a shooter – just as BioShock, or Dishonored, or Prey, are more than just Half-Life-alikes – reminded me of the endless possibilities of a game developed by very smart people who are very aware of the context they’re working in.

Of all the games I’ve been late to, Half-Life 2 is the one I’ve had the most fun with.

***

For more Late to the Game adventures, check out our archives.

The post Late to the Game: Half-Life 2 appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Growing up first on the Sega Genesis, then the Sony PlayStation, I mostly encountered Super Mario et al. in the homes of friends, cousins, neighbours (and then almost exclusively in multiplayer). It wasn’t until high school that I picked up a GameCube, and it would take even longer, undergrad, before I got my hands on my own, personal Nintendo 64.

I was, in other words, late to the game for some of the most important releases of my generation. The advantage of which, however, is that my appraisal of these games now, so many years later, is (mostly) unaffected by rose-tinted nostalgia. (That said, I will die on the hill of Mario Party as the greatest sleepover game ever made.)

Granted, not all N64 aficionados will agree with the list I’ve put together for this feature, celebrating the thirtieth birthday of the N64, which released on June 23, 2026.

Some of that is, of course, a function of the wonderful subjectivity of these exercises. Some of it, also, is attributable to some woeful omissions on my part (including, deep breath, Majora’s Mask, Paper Mario, Pokémon Stadium, Jet Force Gemini, Harvest Moon 64, to name a few). I only ask that, if your favourite is missing below, you understand I intended no slight.

As we’ll get to in a moment, the N64 (with the PlayStation alongside it) represented a unique moment in gaming history, the transition from 2D pixels to 3D polygons enabling some of the most impressive, rewarding, and indeed experimental gaming experiences of not just that time, but all time. I still think the PlayStation is the better system overall (if nothing else, it habitually got a lot weirder), but that’s not to discount the thirty games which make up this list.

As always, I’ve done my best to identify where these games are playable today, many of which are, happily, available in their original form via the Switch/Switch 2 Online Library. Alternatively, eBay or your local retro gaming store are always solid options.

1. Super Mario 64 (1996, available via Switch Online N64 Library, or in (inferior but HD-upscaled) format in the hard-to-find Super Mario 3D All-Stars package)

It’s probably safe to say the top two entries on this list were never in doubt.

Both games the product of the unimpeachable mind of gaming god Shigeru Miyamoto, both precedent-setters in their own right, both still endlessly replayable today. If Super Mario 64 only slightly ekes out its place ahead of our next entry (you already know what that is), it’s for the sheer inventiveness of its platforming gameplay, where even the very act of moving about is a joy.

Whether it’s learning (and then experimenting with) its various gimmick levels – like the mechanical clock which moves at different speeds depending on what “time” you enter – or exploring the endlessly varied rooms and hidden corridors of the wonderfully-realized Peach’s Castle, SM64 is never dull. Add in its delightfully “broken” design, which can be shortcutted, glitched, or otherwise exploited to let you, say, drop a baby penguin off a cliff, it remains the quintessential example of a freewheeling approach to game design which, frankly, no longer exists.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998, available via Switch Online N64 Library; modern remake coincidentally announced just this past month)

Miyamoto’s other N64 masterpiece is a gem – sorry, rupee – which admittedly has not aged quite as well, but is still absolutely worth seeking out.

There are so many things that Ocarina gets right – the intuitive combat system; the pitch-perfect musicmaking mechanic on the titular instrument; the incredible and endlessly evolving level design – and which game designers still look to when planning their next adventure. (Except the Water Temple, but then we don’t talk about the Water Temple.)

Like its Miyamoto stablemate, Ocarina also has an impeccable sense of exploration, rewarding players for roaming off the beaten path, finding novel ways to combine items/abilities, exploring its semi-open world on the back of gaming’s second-best horse, Epona. It’s still my favourite Zelda – and I’ve played a lot of Zeldas – and arguably the best classical action-RPG of all time.

3. GoldenEye 007 (1997, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

A mainstay of childhood sleepovers and drunken dorm parties alike, Rare’s pixel-perfect James Bond simulator is not only an essential multiplayer experience, it’s also a fantastic single-player FPS in its own right.

Now, obviously, there are those who argue that its rudimentary polygonal graphics, its exasperating escort missions, its confusing reticle-based aiming system (attributable, in part, to the limitations of the infamous N64 controller), render this an artifact of the past.

Those people are mistaken. Sure, GoldenEye has its quirks, but plunk any random four people in a room, give them time to get accustomed (or reaccustomed) to the controls, and you’re guaranteed a great time. No Oddjob.

4. Super Smash Bros. (1999, unavailable on modern systems)

Because I am terrible at this game, it pains me to acknowledge its superiority. However, there’s no questioning the abiding influence – and evergreen mechanics – of this superbly realized multiplayer fighter, yet another sleepover/dorm room mainstay.

It’s not just that it lets players smash together virtual action figures based on beloved video game properties; it’s not just the incredible stage design, the tense battles down to the wire, the innovative knockback counter, which, instead of reducing health, increases the odds of knocking your opponent off-screen. No, it’s all these things, together, the sum of SSB greater than its (very, very good) parts.

While we’re partial to later entries – particularly SSB Ultimate, with its legions of non-Nintendo guest stars (including Nintendo rival Sonic the Hedgehog!) – the original is still one of the greats.

5. Mario Kart 64 (1996, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

There was a time, well past the N64’s heyday, in which the only meaningful rule in the house I shared with three friends involved neither dishes, nor vacuuming, nor the question of who did the groceries. Rather, our house rule went like this: if you hear Mario Kart 64, it’s time to play it. All of it, all sixteen tracks, start-to-finish, a winner-takes-all Grand Prix which only ended when the last person crossed the Rainbow Road finish line (or blew up in ignominy, as the case may be).

Of course, the house’s second (unspoken) rule was that the only way to play MK64 was with the living room TV volume at max, blasting the roar of the opening engine noise across the house. Never have I heard so many people slam shut laptops, textbooks so quickly and come running.

6. Wave Race 64 (1996, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

A deep cut, perhaps, but nonetheless an exemplary title for its day, in a genre which really hasn’t seen much action in the intervening decades. A multiplayer-centric jet ski racer, Wave Race‘s impeccable, trick-happy gameplay, which predates Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater by about three years, is matched by the fun diversity of its modes, including the time trials we spent far too much time perfecting, the delightful stunt mode, and of course, its robust multiplayer competitions. Honestly, the water still looks pretty good.

7. Star Fox 64 (1997, available via Switch Online N64 Library; a modern remake, pictured above, is scheduled for release on Switch 2 later this year)

I admit, I was surprised when I returned to SF64 recently and found I could blast through the entire thing in just shy of ninety minutes. Not, mind, because I was speedrunning or a particularly expert player, but simply because it was built that way. (HowLongToBeat.com generously places average completion time at two hours.)

Thankfully, SF64 is built for replayability, with branching paths generating a sum total of fifteen unique routes to conquer in its thrilling, Star Wars-esque dogfighting. Then, of course, there’s the fantastic multiplayer, pitting four friends against each other in a series of mixed Arwing and bipedal tank battles which to this day have never really been outdone. (Incidentally, its “lost” predecessor, the game jettisoned at the last minute to make way for Star Fox 64, is an interesting experience in its own right.)

8. Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (1998, unavailable on modern systems)

Intriguingly, it’s this original (not the aforementioned copy) which fares ever-so-slightly worse in our retrospective look at the best of this era.

Yes, Rogue Squadron is a fantastic game, and yes, it lets you relive the Death Star Trench Run, but it’s also slightly less polished compared to the heavily Star Wars-inspired Star Fox, thanks to some creaky controls and relatively barren level design. There’s also the fact Rogue Squadron has since been surpassed by Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader for GameCube, not to mention the recent, VR-enabled Star Wars Squadrons, both of which render this otherwise very good game essentially superfluous in 2026.

9. Mario Party (1998, available via Switch Online N64 Library; also, many of its best courses and minigames received an HD glow-up on the recent Switch Super Mario Superstars, pictured above, which is probably the better place to start)

Everyone knows that the best board games are those which encourage a massive amount of backstabbing. Clearly, the fiendish minds at Hudson Soft knew what they were up to when developing Mario Party, with its alternatingly hilarious and ruthless virtual board game design, in which Power Stars can be won, lost, or stolen at the drop of a hat (or spin of the roulette wheel), and in which the nastiest minigames are those which force you to steal hard-earned coins from your friends, lest they steal from you.

Other Mario Parties may have bigger and more robust minigame selection or board design, but we will forever hold a special place in our hearts for this chaotic original, and the bleeding palms it gave us.

10. WCW/nWo Revenge (1998, unavailable on modern systems)

Here’s one where nostalgia makes it tough to tell how strong the game really was, versus how strongly it happens to live on in our memories. That said, retrospective critical consensus confirms that, for its time, this one randomly-licensed wrestling title was among the very best 3D fighting games available. We still have fond memories of launching piledrivers and smashing chairs with Canada’s own Bret Hart, the Spider-Man-coded Rey Mysterio Jr., and goofy hidden character AKI Man.

11. Mario Tennis (2000, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

Much like real tennis, the Nintendofied version is at its best with two perfectly-matched opponents (or four, if you can gather together enough friends for doubles), each match a pulse-pounding, controller-sweating duel for glory.

12. Diddy Kong Racing (1997, unavailable on modern systems)

The 1990s saw a surfeit of cartoonishly-themed kart racers, all heavily inspired by (if not stealing outright from) progenitor Mario Kart, but very few of them are actually worth your time. And while we had reasons to be skeptical about a non-Mario racer, DKR’s success was, in retrospect, always assured thanks to three little words: Developed By Rare.

The fabled British studio, responsible for four other games on this list, was always too good to simply settle for a knock-off. Instead, DKR makes up for what it lacks in memorable characters (Timber the Tiger, anyone?) with elegant level design and multiple vehicle types, including standard karts, hovercrafts, and even biplanes.

13. Mischief Makers (1997, unavailable on modern systems)

It’s been over a decade since Treasure, the legendary studio behind fabled shmups like Einhänder, Ikaruga, and Gunstar Heroes, released a new game. In its heyday, however, this cult-beloved Japanese studio dominated the niche space of hardcore shoot-em-ups, even as it occasionally dabbled in other genre fare, notably this bizarre but deeply satisfying 2.5D action-platformer, built around a unique grab-shake-throw mechanic which vaguely calls to mind my beloved Tomba!.

14. Mario Golf (1999, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

VR minigolf may be all the rage these days, but this console classic represents yet another evergreen multiplayer title, with player-friendly – but not simplistic – mechanics in service of a surprisingly straitlaced take on the sport, with nary a fireball or super mushroom in sight.

15. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (1997, remastered version available, alongside Turok 2, as part of Turok Remastered on Switch/2, PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, and Windows/Steam)

Despite the obvious mass-market appeal, there aren’t nearly enough games about dinosaurs. Sure, there are games with dinosaurs (warning: spoilers for a thirty-year-old PS1 game at that link), but building a whole game around them, hunting them, being hunted by them, remains relatively rare. Even all these years later, Turok is still a blast, with its time-travelling hero doing his best Homer Simpson impersonation as he attempts to survive the “Lost Land”.

16. F-Zero X (1998, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

The outrageously fast F-Zero series was for a long time a Nintendo staple, even if it’s been a few years (scratch that – two decades!) since the last mainline release in this futuristic sci-fi racer. Consensus is that this entry ranks second to the legendary GameCube sequel, but that’s no knock against its blazing fast, hardcore racing gameplay, which still looks great.

17. NHL 99 (1998, unavailable on modern systems)

It’s beautifully broken, but how beautiful that brokenness can be. Not the best of the NHL series (that honour goes to NHL 94), what 99 lacks in, say, entirely functional gameplay, it more than makes up for in easily learned glitches and exploits which add an unexpectedly thrilling dynamic to every game.

Do you try to juke past your opponent’s computer-controlled goalie, relying on the game’s janky AI to trip them up, or, knowing your opponent also mistrusts their own goalie, do you attempt a double fake-out and watch as they take manual control and flop Garth Snow into oblivion?

18. Perfect Dark (2000, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

I’ve always said Perfect Dark should have been another James Bond game, but kudos to Rare for branching off on its own, creating, in Joanna Dark, a worthy super-spy inheritor to the console FPS mantle. (That said, given the mediocre Tomorrow Never Dies game we got instead of a proper Rare-developed GoldenEye sequel, this one especially hurts.)

19. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (2001, modern remake available as part of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 on PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, Switch, and Windows)

Not nearly as good as its PS1 counterpart (which benefitted from the extra capacity and audio capabilities of PlayStation discs), this skateboarding classic is still one of the best N64 titles, even if the soundtrack is a little busted.

20. Resident Evil 2 (1999, modern remake available on PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, Switch, and Windows)

Like the previous entry, this survival horror classic played and looked a heck of a lot better on PS1, though it’s impressive enough how Capcom managed to squeeze all that zombie goodness into a single N64 cartridge. Setting aside the Ocarina ReDeads, it’s the scariest game on this otherwise very family-friendly console.

21. Star Wars Episode I: Racer (1999, HD remaster available on Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One, and Windows/Steam)

Time has been kind to Episode I: Racer, a sub-F-Zero sci-fi racer released at the height of prequelmania, and which managed to overcome the curse of movie tie-ins and break through into mainstream success. A recently-announced sequel, set for release later this year, has fans reminiscing about racing through Beggar’s Canyon all over again.

22. 1080° Snowboarding (1998, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

While the best snowboarding game remains a certain PS2 classic, this wonderfully designed boarder for N64, surprisingly developed in-house by Nintendo itself, offered a plethora of awesome racing and stunt/trick modes, à la Wave Race.

23. Space Station Silicon Valley (1998, unavailable on modern systems)

1998 saw the release of two critically acclaimed, wildly inventive N64 adventures from the mavericks at DMA Design, who you probably know better today as Rockstar North. While I never played Body Harvest (which N64 purists will no doubt tell you deserves a spot on this list), I thoroughly adored SSSV when I encountered it years later, with its nifty animal possession gameplay, in which you jump from robot-controlled animal to robot-controlled animal, solving puzzles.

24. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (1996, unavailable on modern systems)

The worst best Star Wars game for the N64, it’s difficult to describe the phenomenon that was SotE for those who weren’t around to experience it. Billed as a quasi-official “interquel” set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, the SotE project boasted tie-in novels, badass action figures, and one very ambitious if not altogether sound video game. I can still hear the rhythm of the AT-ST’s footsteps whenever I think of this game.

25. Sin and Punishment (2000/2007, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

Okay, this one’s a bit of a cheat. Not actually released in North America during the N64’s lifespan, this Japan-exclusive eventually made its way to Western digital storefronts with a much-loved Wii Virtual Console release in 2007. Developed by legendary shmup studio Treasure, it’s a brilliant, wonderfully designed rail shooter, in which your endlessly moving protagonist must overcome wave after wave of brightly-coloured, overpowered enemies. Its more recent revival via the Switch Online Library is a gaming blessing for the ages.

26. Banjo-Kazooie (1998, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

Because I’m such a Super Mario 64 fanatic, and because Banjo-Kazooie always felt, rightly or wrongly, like a poor substitute, and because I detest collect-a-thons, I’ve never been totally sold on this beloved classic. Still, it’s hard to deny its charm and enduring popularity.

27. Conker’s Bad Fur Day (2001, unavailable on modern systems)

Another title I was significantly late to the game for, and boy has it not aged well. An M-for-Mature satire of cute and cuddly mascot games, this Rare title is funny in fits and spurts, but also regularly grinds to a halt with lazily profane humour, and, more to the point, agonizingly dull and repetitive gameplay. It just barely cracks this list for sheer force of its brazenness on the otherwise family-friendly N64.

28. Madden NFL 99 (1998, unavailable on modern systems)

I don’t like football (in any of its forms), but that’s never stopped me from enjoying a good game of virtual pig-iron or whatever. The N64 Maddens are easily the ones I’ve spent the most time in, with this second entry – the first to allow custom playmaking – widely regarded as the best of the bunch.

29. Cruis’n USA (1996, unavailable on modern systems)

It’s not the best racing game of all time – heck, some might argue it’s not even the best Cruis’n – but for my money it’s this, Outrun-style racer, with its fantastic course selection (hello San Francisco and Redwood Forest) and fun multiplayer, which deserves its spot at the tail end of our top 30.

30. Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls (1998, available via Switch Online N64 Library)

It’s my list, okay?

Sure, Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls may have a goofy name and even goofier aesthetic, but I’ll be damned if my friends and I didn’t have a blast racing through its deviously-designed quasi-3D courses, which involve a lot of grappling hooks and a whole lot of ruthless sabotage. I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun spoiling a friend’s run outside a well-timed Mario Kart lightning bolt.

***
Looking for more classic gaming recommendations?

Check out our 30th anniversary roundup of the N64’s rival console, in the Thirty Greatest PS1 Games of All-Time, or read up on any one of our entries in the ever-expanding “Late to the Game” series.

The post The N64 at 30: The Greatest Nintendo 64 Games of All Time appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

This is, in part, possible because SM64 – unlike so many other Mario titles – begins not in a Stage 1 littered with enemies and obstacles, but in a wide-open space, the gardens of Princess Peach’s Castle, which players are free to explore at leisure. It’s a deliberate choice, director Shigeru Miyamoto cognizant of the importance, at the time of SM64’s 1996 release, of acclimatizing players to Mario’s brand-new three-dimensional environs, here on the just-released Nintendo 64.

But even if Miyamoto hadn’t set it up this way, it’s safe to say we’d goof around anyway.

That’s because Mario – specifically, this Mario, the star of Super Mario 64 – is just so much fun to control, with a wealth of actions – a backflip, a double jump, a triple jump, a butt-stomp, so much more – which reward the curious player, and which eventually prove vital to tackling the game’s many and wildly varied challenges.

Testing these moves out, combining them, exploring various points of interest (for example, a sealed cannon in the courtyard, which in theory only unlocks after you’ve beaten the game), it’s easy to lose yourself in SM64’s opening, not even realizing there’s a whole castle interior to explore.

More to the point, Mario’s control scheme – the stuff you mostly figure out for yourself while frolicking about the courtyard – exemplifies something else about this now thirty-year-old masterpiece. Which is: its sly, improvisational spirit, the ragged edges (both deliberate and not) which generate a sense of freedom, of possibility, unparalleled in gaming.

Everyone knows the story.

The little Italian plumber, known only as Jumpman at his 1981 debut in Donkey Kong, who quickly became the turtle-stomping, platform-leaping mascot for not just Nintendo but videogaming as a whole.

Super Mario Bros. (1985) remains a justly celebrated masterpiece to this day. Its immediate sequels – the offbeat Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988, in fact a hasty reskin of a wholly unrelated Japan-exclusive, Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic) and Super Mario Bros. 3 (also released 1988) – each impressive in their own way, even as the next-gen Super Mario World (1990, Super Nintendo) solidified the template for the 2D platformer while ushering in a whole new era of bright, beautiful 16-bit graphics.

Then Super Mario 64, followed by Super Mario Sunshine (2002, the black sheep of the family), Super Mario Galaxy and Galaxy 2 (2007/2010) – together the two games which come closest to the SM64 spirit – and finally, the most recent entry in the canonical Mario platformers, 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey. (This, not to discount the many wonderful games which technically count as side entries, including the entire “New” series, the 3D World games, and the recentish Bowser’s Fury.)

But to return to the singular moment that is Super Mario 64, the game which released day-and-date (June 23, 1996) with the era-defining Nintendo 64, what remains so impressive about SM64 is how, in hindsight, it represents arguably the last moment when Nintendo truly allowed Mario to cut loose.

Partly, that’s because Miyamoto and team were learning as they went along, their free-for-all spirit infecting the game’s design, its willingness to push boundaries, test the limits of the new 3D space they (and we) were playing in.

Partly it’s also because, in so doing, Nintendo delivered an inherently flawed product. Not flawed in the sense of bad, but in the sense that, for all its bells and whistles, Super Mario 64 is overflowing with elements ripe for exploitation by the curious or bored player.

Whether it’s the jagged or incomplete level design which can, fairly easily, be glitched through, or the freewheeling mission structure which can be shortcutted, cheated, or just messed with for fun, SM64 represents the most fun you’ll ever have pushing against a game’s limits. (Surely Davey Wreden and William Pugh, creators of the delightfully fourth-wall-breaking The Stanley Parable, had Super Mario 64 in mind.)

Most of all, SM64 represents a bygone era of game design, an era in which focus testing, microtransacting, handholding, corporate synergizing hadn’t yet come to dominate creative decision-making.

Nothing about Super Mario 64 feels clean, tidy, pristine – and it’s all the better for it.

Case in point: SM64’s infamous dead baby penguin.

Gamers of a certain vintage will recall with morbid delight the moment they discovered that SM64’s fourth stage, “Cool, Cool Mountain”, places no restrictions on where you can take the adorable baby penguin you’ve been tasked with rescuing.

Up to that point, interactions with NPCs (non-player-characters) in SM64 had been relatively limited. There’s an early race against Koopa the Quick (easily beaten with one of the game’s many built-in shortcuts, which also serves the dual purpose of teaching players to look beyond the beaten path), there’s the friendly bob-ombs who operate the player-launching cannons, and there’s the Lakitu Bros., the mostly unseen camera operators shown briefly in the introduction, operating the in-game “cameras” which track the action. (A delightful conceit never repeated, to my knowledge, in any video game since.)

“Cool, Cool Mountain” ups the ante by featuring one of the game’s more talkative NPCs, a Mother Penguin anxiously pleading with Mario to find her missing baby. Doing so rewards, as do most such tasks in SM64, a Power Star, one of 120 such collectibles obtainable across the game. (Side note: although only 70 Stars are required to access the final boss, the remaining 50 offer some of the game’s best challenges, not to mention opportunities to tease out the limits of SM64’s interlocking gameplay systems.)

Most players, upon locating the Baby Penguin – she’s honestly quite easy to find – will simply race back to Mama and collect their reward. Others, though, perhaps already accustomed to testing the game’s boundaries, will drag Baby around with them, all over the titular Mountain, seeing what kind of mischief they can get up to. Horrifyingly, players soon learn this extends to the ability to drop Baby Penguin – canonically named Tuxie – off the side of a cliff, plummeting to an off-screen, but assuredly horrible, demise. (Pro players know to do this after collecting their reward from Mama Penguin, just to complete the portrait of evil.)

In Tuxie’s fate, then, we encounter something practically unheard of in a Nintendo, let alone Super Mario, title. And it’s something which would not, indeed could not, happen today.

Back in 1996, someone at Nintendo – perhaps deliberately, perhaps not – failed to set guardrails around where Baby Penguin can go, how far Mario can throw her. (I like to think it’s deliberate, given how tantalizingly close Mama Penguin sits to the precipice.)

If this game was made (or remade) in 2026, you can be sure such restrictions would be in place. Perhaps the level design would prevent Mario from chucking Baby off the ledge. Perhaps the drop/throw animation would rebound off an invisible wall if you tried. Whatever the means, the Nintendo of 2026 – fine-tuned, focus-tested, controversy-averse – would find ways to prevent this sort of experimentation.

SM64 is, in fact, filled with dead penguin moments, whether it’s glitching your way into areas you’re not supposed to see, exploiting enemy AI to do silly things, or taking advantage of certain techniques – many of which unimaginable to the game’s designers – to hyperspeed your way through the normally 12-to-15-hour game.

And there are some great dead penguin moments in Super Mario 64.

You can, for instance, glitch your way into that courtyard cannon I mentioned earlier, gaining early access to a rooftop – and Yoshi cameo! – not meant for players until they’ve collected every Star. You can also, exploiting the game physics, kill the normally unkillable giant fish which hunts Mario on “Tiny, Huge Island”. How? By tricking it into beaching itself, of course.

Many of SM64’s best-known glitches have been discovered by the speedrunning community, who have found ways to skip scripted sequences, glitch through otherwise impenetrable walls, and, perhaps most significantly, abuse a technique known as the Backwards Long-Jump (BLJ) to blast through the game. Here’s a video of the current world record holder, suigi, deploying many of those techniques to complete the game in under fifteen minutes. (Another side note: as a self-declared Old, it pleases me greatly to note that many of today’s top speedrunners are Gen Z, born long after SM64’s heyday but embracing the joys of its evergreen gameplay.)

Incidentally, if you watch that video I linked above, you’ll see that not all speedrunning tricks involve glitching or taking advantage of programming flaws. Rather, players have learned, through a mix of Mario’s core move-set and some daring pathfinding – just check out suigi’s remarkable pattern of back- and sideways-flips – how to race their way across the game. SM64’s worlds weren’t necessarily designed with such exploits in mind, but the game was built in a way which makes them possible.

Back in 1991, Capcom’s Street Fighter II accidentally ushered in a new era of gaming after its developers discovered a bug which allowed players to rapidly stack attacks, inflicting extra damage on vulnerable opponents.

This function – what we now know as the fighting game “combo” – did not exist before Street Fighter II, and we only have it today because someone at Capcom realized how revolutionary their accidental new system would prove to be.

Fast-forward a few years, and Super Mario 64, a game of vastly different scope and remit, similarly demonstrated what could happen when bugs, glitches, oddities left in the game code, add to, rather than subtract from, the experience.

Super Mario 64 is, in one sense, broken. Even a novice player can do things, clip through glitchy level elements, that its designers almost certainly never intended. (The amount of time I spent backflipping my way up the steep hills of Bob-omb Battlefield, for example.) Spend any meaningful amount of time in SM64, and experimentation starts to come naturally – I am hardly the first player to look at “Bowser in the Dark World” and ask myself, why take the stairs?

I’m not saying those types of shortcuts aren’t available in, say, Super Mario Odyssey. But in that game, and in others of its (modern) ilk, they’re largely anticipated, by a team of designers who grew up on Super Mario 64, and who know what makes for a fun detour.

This, perhaps, is the core difference between the bygone era of SM64, when it was still up to ambitious players to carve their own path, and today’s modern, smoothed over games, in which every possibility – every wrong turn, every controversial choice – has already been accounted for and baked into the game’s design.

But getting back to the dead penguin: do I feel remorse over Trixie? Sure. Did I think it was funny? That, too. And if I interrogate why it was funny, it was by virtue of the very fact of its subversiveness, of the way it felt like I was breaking Nintendo’s rules.

Kid-friendly Nintendo is not supposed to let you drop a cute animal off a cliff.

Kid-friendly Nintendo is so afraid of offense that it transformed Mortal Kombat’s blood into gray “sweat” on the SNES. Sure, there are anomalies – hello, No More Heroes – but even in 2026 it’s rare to see Nintendo really put itself on the line, risk anything remotely tending towards controversy.

Back in 1996, however, Super Mario 64 broke free of all that, Miyamoto and friends – shoutout to assistant director Takashi Tezuka, who played such an important role in bringing SM64’s impeccably-designed stages to life – experimenting within the confines of the bespoke sixty-four-bit system which was in fact built with SM64 in mind.

In so doing, Nintendo created something singular, and essentially unreplicable. (Which is not to say there aren’t dead penguin-like exploits to be found in other games of the era, such as Miyamoto’s own Ocarina of Time and its endlessly exploitable item glitches, or the hilariously manipulable attributes system of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.)

The dead baby penguin of Super Mario 64 is, in other words, indicative of something much bigger, something which has been lost. That is, the sense, rarely present in contemporary gaming, of an organic world, of a world that’s ripe for exploration, not on its terms – what the developers want you to do – but on your own, even if it means breaking the game wide open. (Perhaps the closest approximation is the recent Zelda games, though even those are so finely-honed that it’s rare to pull off any trick the game hasn’t already anticipated.)

The genius of Super Mario 64 is that it works, not in spite of but because of its broken frames and glitchy stairways, its impossible coins and its absent guardrails. It is a wonderful exemplar of a kind of design which no longer exists, a design which isn’t afraid of what players might do, of allowing them to peek behind the digital curtain.

There are no invisible walls in Super Mario 64, not really.

Instead, there are glitches to exploit, guardrails to barrel through, and a dizzying array of ideas generated by a man, Miyamoto, and a company, Nintendo, at the top of their game.

It is, in its own way, the perfect game of an imperfect era.

***
For more nostalgia-laden retrospectives, check out the Toronto Guardian’s Late to the Game series, where we try – for the first time – all those classic games we missed out on during their heyday.

The post Dead Penguins and BLJs: Super Mario 64 and the Lost Art of Game Design appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

The best entry in the best modern racing series.

IS IT GOOD?

It is the best.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Gearheads. Shuichi Shigeno. My buddy Matt.

START YOUR ENGINES

Growing up, my favourite racing games were, in no particular order, Mario Kart 64, Gran Turismo 3, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

Vastly different experiences, to be sure. The first, a cartoony mascot racer with an emphasis on fantastical track design and multiplayer mayhem. The second, a rigorously assembled simulation with top-notch graphics. And that last, now-forgotten one, a stylish arcade racer featuring flashy cars and wicked cool, Fast and the Furious-style, street racing (from the creators of Grand Theft Auto, no less).

Forza Horizon 6 doesn’t necessarily do any of those things better. But it does do each of them really, really well, combining awe-inducing graphics, blisteringly fast quasi-arcade gameplay, and even some cartoony fun, like its absurdly destructible environments and yes, you may have heard about this, at least one race against a giant bipedal mech.

Forza Horizon 6 is easily the best entry in this already legendary series, and a late-arriving contender for best racing game of all time.

THE UNREAL DRIVING SIMULATOR

Gran Turismo 3 may have been the game of my childhood, but even I can understand the appeal of the less rigorous arcade-style racers. Where the GT series – including its excellent, current PS5 incarnation – is known for its fidelity to real-world physics and real-world tracks, arcade racers are, by design, quite different, with entertainingly dubious physics, over-the-top track design, and an emphasis on style over realism.

For over a decade now, Forza has been the best exemplar of that approach.

All of the Forza, or at least the Forza Horizon series (2012 to present) have been excellent, the series beautifully iterating on the open-world design introduced by the aforementioned Midnight Club, not to mention Club‘s fellow PS2 racers such as Need For Speed: Underground 2 and Burnout Paradise. In this open-world format, half the fun is the journey between races.

It’s been fun to watch Forza Horizon evolve.

The 2012 original was limited to a fictionalized version of Colorado. 2014 expanded things with a Europe-set racer which guides players across southern France and into parts of Italy (notably, the Amalfi Coast). Horizon 3 went to Australia, while 4 (sadly now impossible to find) embraced the car culture of the U.K., while 5 (which I glowingly reviewed) offered up a pixel-perfect digital simulacrum of Mexico, from its sopping wet rainforests to ancient archaeological sites and beachside resort towns.

Last year, if you’d asked me what one racing game is worth playing on modern consoles, I would have said Forza Horizon 5.

FH 6 is better than its predecessors in every measurable way.

STREETS AHEAD

Forza Horizon 6 looks better.

It plays better. It moves faster, and yet does so in a way that doesn’t give you motion sickness.

FH 6’s world is impeccable. Like Assassin’s Creed Shadows before it, it’s a delight for the virtual tourist in all of us, encouraging players to wander across a beautifully realized Japan, from snowy mountaintops through coastal towns to after-hours street racing in the streets of Tokyo.

Forza Horizon 6 is also, and always, fun.

It’s fun to drive from Point A to Point B. It’s fun to rack up points through the game’s generous skill system, which throws points at you for pretty much anything, good or “bad” – blazing through a speed trap, going airborne over a huge jump, smashing down trees or guardrails.

About that last one: while also true in prior entries, this Horizon is easily the most destructible yet. Your car is basically a 200 kph battering ram, smashing through not just fencing (tired) but also densely thicketed forests (wired) and other hazards like concrete barriers, bamboo groves, and the game’s hundreds if not thousands of collectible mascot statues. Even on my relatively underpowered Steam Deck, there was nary a moment of slowdown as I sent my Aston Martin DB5 plowing through a mountainside forest, racking up points even as I clearcut worse than Bowron.

On a related note, what I especially love about Forza Horizon 6 is how much of its activities occur naturally, uninterrupted by menus or structured races.

Drive through a “Drift Zone” on the map, and the game automatically triggers a counter which challenges you to pull of an extended series of drift turns through a discrete area. Blaze through a Speed Trap, and the game instantly captures your top speed, rewarding points on a scale of one- to three-stars.

Then there are the jumps, oh the jumps. As with the smashing and crashing of its generous physics system, FH 6 loves to send you seriously airborne. The open world has specific jump spots which challenge you to generate airtime, but even within races you’ll have plenty of opportunity to fly through the air at crazy speeds, often in slow-motion. It is absolutely, 100%, unrealistic, and it is awesome.

GO

Races in FH 6 generally fall into one of five categories: stunt challenges (self-explanatory), track races (both on- and off-road; off-road is more fun because I get to drive my beloved Lancer Evo), Midnight Club-style street racing (very illegal, always awesome), cross country treks (my favourite category, in which you race point-to-point across the world map, instead of looping through laps), and drift courses. Pretty much of all of which, incidentally, can be accessed through the game’s optional multiplayer, which allows you to quickly and mostly painlessly hop into online races, co-op challenges, or “convoys” alongside other players.

There are also the occasional gimmick races, making fine use of the game’s more unusual vehicle selection (pickups, old-timey Fords, etc.), and of course the now-famous Gundam race, in which you go head-to-head against a thirty-foot-tall Japanese robot. (Spoilers: you win.)

If Forza Horizon 6 falters anywhere, it’s in the drifting. This has also been a problem in the past, and it’s clear that in Playground’s desire to offer everything to everyone, they’ve had to compromise on what might have been more accurate (if more difficult) drifting. At least the game makes up for it by offering up several garages’ worth of the greatest drift vehicles of all time, including the fabled Sprinter Trueno of Initial D fame, the Nissan Silvia, and the Mazda Miata.

Exploration is also the name of the game in FH 6, promising just as much, if not more fun, outside the confines of its structured challenges.

I love exploring the idealized, largely unpopulated Japan of Forza Horizon 6. For one, it’s a great way to track down the game’s many secrets, from unlockable vehicles to quasi-hidden (albeit heavily signposted) destructible mascot figures, to properties which can be purchased and then used as fast-travel garages spread across the map. (Though why anyone would want to fast-travel is beyond me.)

For another, it’s just such a beautiful, and beautifully-realized, landscape. The amount of time I’ve spent in photo mode (also handily available at the tap of a button) – capturing a shot of my Evo perched on a mountaintop, my VW Beetle snaking through the streets of Tokyo – is almost embarrassing. It’s a graphical showcase from top to bottom, and probably the best-looking racing game ever made. In a sense, it’s what we remember Gran Turismo 3 looking like, through the haze of rose-tinted memory.

In short, Forza Horizon 6 is a masterpiece, and easily the must-play game released so far this year. See you out on the road.

***
Final score: 10/10

Visit the official website for Forza Horizon 6 here.

The post Forza Horizon 6 Review: Wakarimasu appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

WHAT IS IT?

A beautiful HD remaster of 1993’s R-Type III: The Third Lightning for the SNES.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s a great shmup from a bygone era.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Shmuppers.

FLY RIGHT

My favourite shmups – Ikaruga, Einhänder, the little-known Sine Mora – work best when they make you feel like a gaming genius. Combining blistering difficulty (Dark Souls ain’t got nothing on Ikaruga) with repeatable, learnable attack patterns, these are games that are meant to be honed over countless hours of practice, only to finally reach the point where the whole adventure can be finished in less than sixty minutes, its toughest sections no longer a match for your lightning fast reflexes.

R-Type is one of the progenitor shmup series, and it’s easily one of the best. R-Type Final was one of my favourite games on the PS2 (it narrowly missed the cut on my rundown last year), but the series, with its attachable “Force” powerups, has always been good. While R-Type Delta (1998, PlayStation) is generally considered the best of the bunch, that’s no knock against the SNES-era R-Type III: The Third Lightning, or as it’s now been confusingly rebranded, Dimensions III.

FLY RIGHT

It’s been seventeen long years since R-Type Dimensions, an Xbox Live Arcade title (remember those?) which brought together and remastered the original R-Type and R-Type II for widescreen, HD gaming. There’s been nary an R-Type since then (saving the release, earlier this year, of an HD compilation of the offshoot turn-based Tactics games), and that’s a shame for what was once a widely-heralded series.

Dimensions III – even more confusingly, there is no Dimensions 2 – comes at a great moment for fans of retro-shmups. There’s Saros, busy applying the shmup ethos to third-person roguelike shooters, while the ever-expanding Switch/Switch 2 retro console library features a plethora of classic shmups, ranging from the aforementioned Ikaruga to the similarly-celebrated Radiant Silvergun and a large swath of the R-Type games.

FIRE

What Dimensions III brings to the table is the ideal version of a game widely considered among the best 16-bit shmups. Optional HD graphics – you can swap between the classic and modern with the tap of a button – alongside local shared screen co-op make for a fun afternoon, if you happen to know any other shmup nerds. (I know, we’re a dying breed.)

As for the game itself, it’s got the same solid core of spacefaring combat, albeit with the same extreme difficulty the series is known for. Difficulty modifiers help ease the pain, but players should bear in mind that this isn’t so much a game to be sit down and played through, as it is one to be mastered, over countless hours of improvement. It’s still far less daunting than Elden Ring, at any rate.

That said, we did notice some occasional slowdown, both in 16-bit and HD mode, and we actually found the original graphics to be preferable in certain areas. (Less visual clutter.) The lack of online multiplayer is also disappointing, if forgivable. Mostly, our main criticism has to do with difficulty: it is very hard, so unless you have the stamina to keep pushing through the same levels over and over, this one may not be for you. (Again, Elden Ring sickos, you’ll understand.)

***
Final score: 7/10 Vic Vipers.

Visit the official website for R-Type Dimensions III here.

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