N64 Time - Duke Nukem 64

[J0e Musashi]

In Blighty it's like this:
Street Fighter = beat-em-up
Final Fight = scrolling fighter, brawler

In the US it's like this:
Street Fighter = versus fighter, fighting game
Final Fight = beat-em-up, belt scroll fighter

I don't know what part of the UK you live in, but scrolling fighters have always been known as beat 'em ups as far back as Renegade. Brawler is an American term in itself, and I've never heard a game described in that way by an English.

Street Fighter = fighting game.

Final Fight = beat 'em up.

[nakamura]

Street Fighter - Beat em up.
Final Fight - Scrolling beat em up.

[sj33]

I've always understood it as:

Street Fighter - Fighting game.
Final Fight - Beat 'em up.

Still, I suppose even the inverse wouldn't be technically incorrect.

[J0e Musashi]

Street Fighter - Beat em up.
Final Fight - Scrolling beat em up.

It doesn't make sense though. Nobody really played fighting games until 1991, and calling a beat 'em up a scrolling beat 'em up would have been pointless as there was no reason to differentiate a scrolling beat 'em up from a fighting game back then. The fact that you are beating up a bunch of baddies is where the term beat 'em up comes from. As in beating them up because there are more than one that you are against at any given time.

Scrolling fighter is a term that came about following the release of fighting games on a large scale. Renegade, Double Dragon, Tough Turf and Final Fight etc have always been known as Beat 'em ups, not scrolling fighters or anything to that description. You only need go back and look at a review from the time of release to see that.

[nakamura]

Who cares. Now it does make sense.

[J0e Musashi]

You cared enough to post.

[nakamura]

Jaja.

[noobish hat]

What daz says about "them" makes sense, but I guess you could say that in one-on-one fighters, you always have to fight every character as you go through the game. Anyway, when I was a kid, everybody called Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat etc beat 'em ups, and so did all the magazines I read.

[J0e Musashi]

It's the same as Shoot 'em up in that respect. You don't get one on one shooters after all.

[noobish hat]

Shoot 'em ups? You mean like Goldeneye and Half Life and all that?

[J0e Musashi]

Like R-Type.

[noobish hat]

Hoo boy, I just beat the first adventure. What made me really rather proud, given my usual lacklustre gaming skills, is that I had no major trouble beating the Silver Coin Space Station Alpha level, which is always described as the hardest in the game. N64 Mag themselves stated in the review that it took them a day and a half to beat it. I thrashed it in less than an hour! What was insanely difficult was the second show down with Wizpig. The first was hard enough, but actually just required memorizing the location of the zippers (and the use of the zipper tricks I mentioned before). The intense music and storm effects were totally pimp, btw. The second race was SO hard and took me a few hours. You have to fly through caves and canyons with flying boulders, spaceships, and laser everywhere, and you have to dodge them all or you will lose. Nailed it eventually though. Adventure 2, next!

Definitely one of the very best games on the system, and another example of an obscenely hyped game that somehow lives up to its reputation.

[noobish hat]

I think I've come to the end of my time with this mammoth game. I spent this week destroying Time Trial mode, which has been very tough. I finally demolished the last few tracks tonight, and at long last unlocked TT himself as a playable character. I'm very happy with this because in most other games (see MRC and Top Gear Rally), this level of completion is usually beyond my skills. I still have most of Adventure 2 to finish, but I'm not sure if I'm going to bother with it because I'm a bit played out on it all now and as far as I'm aware there's nothing further to see or unlock. Most of all though, I'm eager to get onto some of the other cool games that have come out this Christmas.

There's Duke Nukem, which I think I'm going to be playing next; Chameleon Twist, which I've been wanting to check out for aaaages; even Automobili Lamborghini continues to interest me despite getting a bit of a rollicking in the mag. On Japanese import there's also Puyo Puyo Sun 64. On top of that, although it won't be in the mag until next issue, Yoshi's Story is out in Japan TODAY, 21st December, 1997. Now that I think of it, I'm tempted to play that as soon as possible. I'm really spoilt for choice now. What a difference a couple of months makes!

[nakamura]

Lamborghini is terrible. Pity as it looks ok.

[The Moleman]

N64s had a habit of being placed on carpets and they attracted a lot of dust and gunk, buy a bottle of compressed air and give it a good clean, it'll help with some of the slowdown.

Duke Nukem 64 is an absolute gem, it was a shame about it's release date as it never escaped Goldeneye 007's shadow. The co-op single player was really fun and the multiplayer is just as playable as Goldeneye's. It's hilarious shrinking a mate then stomping them to death!

It's strange that it was censored so much despite still receiving an 18 rating. DN64 is easily the best port of the game and in some cases the devs improved the it by fully rendering objects in polygons as oppose to the bitmap rubbish the PC version had.