now despite how much a lot of the wider gaming sphere will sing the consoles praises, i actually don't have a lot of experiance with the n64, has some cool games i'd like to play, winback, hybrid heaven, shadow man and some of the rpgs but on the whole it's just not a system i'm all that into, a lot of it's heavy hitters like its rare games (i'm just not a fan of them or their style, though perfect dark, kameo and starfox adventures do own, i just don't like banjo and many other of their games) or even the zeldas just aren't all that interestng to me and star fox was much the same, seeming at least cooler than many of the consoles games with its nice OST i saw used a lot and its shenmue level VA but never enough to really make me go out and play it but i'm really glad i did, this actually made me want to give many of the systems games another go.

despite how good the gameplay is my favourite thing about this is just how much charm and heart it has, it's got such a fun dub full of quotable lines (do a barrel roll is funny even without playing the game) and the characters are pretty fun to be around, and no slippy is actually not annoying he's cute and he's doing his best, the cast is full of real shonen archatypes and it works for the game with the cool rival and the older mentor and the rookie who screws up a lot but does his best and they even have roles in gameplay like how falco will give you backup or how slippy will show you boss health bars, it's a fun little arcade romp with these characters, the dub is the star here, it's got that shenmue vibe where it's not like, well performed or well written, but it's just so memorable and cheesy in the best way possible. it's also just impressive how much of it there is, the system didn't usually have anywhere near this much so the fact every level is so full of unique conversations and there's also a very lengthy OST here too with only a few repeating tracks, you didn't see a lot of that on the system. the music itself (by longtime nintendo staple composers koji kondo who's done a large chunk of the companies best music,many mario and zeldas but also of things like pilotwings, paper mario and even some work on samurai warriors 3 but the ost was also worked on by Hajime Wakai who has also worked on many marios and zeldas but also things like wii music, the pikmin series, nintendoland, pokemon stadium and nintendogs, is also so good, the main menu theme is one of the best and the level tracks all fit so well, it's not as listenable casually as say mario 64's or pokemon stadiums osts but it's still great, the menu theme as said is a standout but also katarina, aquos, sector x and zonos, the less epic sounding tracks really work for me, the little jingles for picking up items also make me :) and i love the mission complete music, for some reason it made me feel nostalgic despite this being my first time through, which is a little weird, right.

the gameplay is much more on the arcadey side, it's nowhere near as in depth as a real flight sim and is much less focused on even dogfighting versus just being a rail shooter off rails, which i like a lot, rail shooters are one of my favourite genres and this just feels like an offshoot of that, like a more advanced space harrier with a little bit of a more traditional shmup in there , you shoot down enemies, fly through rings for health and power ups, you got shmup style screen clear bombs and power ups for your shots too and it's really fun, the levels even throw in little gimmicks to mix it up too like a few tank levels ,a train chase, a level with constantly draining health, dogfights or stealth sections and they're mostly all fun, the stealth section is a little too difficult to pass and the underwater section can drag a little, but it gives every route a ton of variety, though figuring out how to get to some of these routes can be a little tricky, i'd say use a guide for the harder ones just to know how to get the level unlocked. the routes themselves are more or less 3, but you can mix and match, the upper route is the hardest and has some very difficult requirements to finish, especially on zonos which made me use all my lives, the middle route can also be a little hard to do as well because of the warp gates on meteos but it's easier overall, the lower route is still the easiest, though you don't get to see katt or bill there, which is a shame, it also locks you out of the true final boss on venom 2 if you dont quickly course correct, but this level is so hard that i'd say to do venom 1 your first time on the low route anyway, to get a better feel for things. it's not a hard game really, it's also not a long one at maybe 4 hours total for every level, but it will have longevity for just how fun the game is, plus repeated runs for the final boss if you fail or the medals you can earn here for really good play, a few levels are tricky and venom 2 took me a lil though, there's also a 4 player multiplayer mode too that seems like good fun with friends, though i couldn't get enough people around to really play much, it's just dogfights but you can use multiple different forms of vehicles from the campaign.

graphically it's also really nice looking, the foggy visuals give some planets a really spooky atmosphere and it's pretty colourful too, the darkness in aquos and the really cool fire effects on solar are standouts but i also love how the sea and the swamps on zonos look and the water on corneria has reflections which really surprised me, it's an amazing looking game, though i wish there were more snow effects on fichina and some of the space levels like meteos and the sectors can look a little samey, the character designs are amazing too though, everyone is so cute amd well designed and how some of them have their own customised ships like katts pink one are cool and i'd want at least a few plushies of them, maybe i will... anyway there's a few ways to play this game, the original which is how i played it on the n64 is super cheap and easy to find, i was able to get it bundled with a psp copy of dragonball evolution from a seller for under £10 and this ver looks and plays great, there's a 3DS ver that's also readily available but this one i'm not so sure on, it made very major changes to the games graphics and it loses a lot of the charm in the process i think, the games foggy darker look just works better for me and the new voice acting just doesn't hit the same, it's not as iconic but this version does add some things like gyro controls and a score attack mode to make up for that, it's also on basically any virtual console service too if you just want a straight port that works well enough. the legacy of the series is a little weird though, there was never really much in the way of a true followup here gameplay-wise, adventures took dinosaur planet and threw starfox in but ended up being a great platformer, assault has some flying levels but is seemingly much more of a shooter which i really vibe with, fox even looks edgy with a gun on the box like, that's adorable. command was close to this but is more of a spinoff, same with 0 and guard, though 0 is still a flight sim despite its weirdo controls and platnum being involved in it for sure has my interest, i'm dying to check some of them out, zero, assault and adventure mostly. the game was also staffed by some cool people who went on to make many neat projects, like it's director takao shimizu who made stuff like personal favourite umbrella corps (seriously i love that game, it was one of my GOTY's that year) pokemon stadium, GB donkey kong and super mario sunshine, even recently he's worked on stuff like resi 7 and mh world, also on staff would be takaya imamura who was the director for the 3DS sub games steel diver and its sequel and he even helped make some of the best f zero games with GX and GP. the actual team behind the game was nintendo EAD who are still around, they also make things like big brain academy, animal crossing, captain toad, many mario karts and even nintendogs, most recently they did pikmin 3 deluxe and the new big brain academy game for switch. one other little legacy thing the game has is its use of the rumble pad which i already had a spare of before this, it's a useful peripheral and was fairly new for it's time, i don't think it's as good as the ps1's because it's a little more inconvenient and i tend to prefer its slot for memory cards, but it's still a neat piece if history and it works really well here!

this episode of EP had 4 games most of which are themed like last week's one: there was x-wing 2, ace combat 2, star fox 64 and manx TT superbike, three flight sims and a bike game though unlike last week i didn't have any experiance with any of the themed games shown off, i've never played the star wars flight games, not sure how into them i'd be but the gamecube ones seem neat, i've only played a little of ace combat 5 but i really did like it and i did consider getting this one for this week but i'd want to cover that series in order if i can so starting at 2 isn't ideal, as good as it seems and i'd also never played a star fox game outside of adventures, so i decided to go with it, it's worth mentioning that i did have experiance with the other game shown off though, i love manx, i think it's one of the saturns best racing games which says a lot considering just how good the systems racing games are, it's super fun and it has some really nice tracks, i hope it gets added to LAD someday so more people can try it. like last week they also represent their platforms well, maybe even better to an extent, you have nintendos take being more cartoony, easy to play and family friendly, sony's take is cooler and more adult with maybe a more wide appeal and the PC gets a more in depth franchise game, the dorkiest of the games this week.... then you have sega just doing an unrelated arcade thingy and doing well with it. next week they covered only a few games, with porche challange, fighters megamix and a minigolf program, naturally i'll be covering fighters megamix which was already one of my favourite fighting games ever made, so expect that in time for next week.