Top 20 WORST Nintendo 64 Games

The N64 didn’t get nearly as many RPGs as other Nintendo consoles did. And there’s a good reason “Quest 64” didn’t leave that big a mark. Focusing on a young mage looking for his missing father, it’s about as bland an adventure you can get. While it isn’t offensively bad, it is entirely forgettable. Everything from its combat mechanics to its setting are completely uninspired. It's even set in a world inspired by Ireland named ‘Celtland,’ just to give you an example of its unoriginality. Some Nintendo loyalists may have fond memories of this one. But in comparison to everything else the RPG genre can offer, “Quest 64” is shallow at best.

“Mario Party” adapted the competitiveness of board games and built another franchise for Nintendo’s mascot. On the other end of the spectrum, “Scavenger Hunt” took the “Rugrats” IP and wasted it. Whether playing alone or with others, the gimmick of each board boils down to searching for items on specific squares, hence the name. However, with only three board options and no mini-games, even kids would find themselves bored to tears. It’s nice to hear the original voice actors all in their roles. But with the limited sound capabilities of the system, and the game’s dull mechanics, even that novelty wears thin fairly quickly.

The N64 received some surprisingly good baseball games, but “Mike Piazza’s Strike Zone” obviously isn’t one of them. Despite there being many other games to focus on the sport, this one didn’t seem to get anything right. Its visuals were laughable even at the time, with textures so blurry they’re hard to look at. Other points of criticism were aimed at its audio, both low-quality and repetitive, and its performance. Character models are stiff, and the framerate is so bad you may as well guess when to swing your bat. It was one of three baseball games to hit the system in 1999 alone and it brought absolutely nothing to the table.

Midway was a juggernaut of the arcade during the 90s. But even a titan of the industry can rip itself off and produce an inferior product. “War Gods” was inspired by another one of the publisher’s fighters, “Mortal Kombat,” even including fatalities. What made it different were its 3D arenas, a unique feature for the era. However, that didn’t add much to the experience, and everything else about the game was unoriginal. That’s all before getting into the distinctively bad features of the N64 port, which includes poor framerate and animation, unbalanced AI, and mechanics that either weren’t suited for the N64’s controller or were poorly implemented. Either way, “War Gods” is better off forgotten.

Since every fighting game follows the same basic principle of ‘defeat your opponent before they defeat you,’ developers need to find ways to make things interesting. Unfortunately, Konami only succeeded in the bare minimum with “Deadly Arts.” Every character’s design was already generic several years before release, and none of their movesets or mechanics bring anything else new either. That wouldn’t have been a death sentence if not for the game’s controls and performance, both of which constantly battle to see which will annoy you the most. Everything about “Deadly Arts” felt dated at launch, which means picking it up today must be an absurd test of patience.

The original iteration of “Paperboy” was simple, yet entertaining enough to keep players yearning for high scores. But by the late 90s, players were clearly looking for more depth that the N64 update simply didn’t deliver on. It essentially had the same focus of passing out papers and messing with civilians, all while earning points inside a time limit. However, its failure to innovate is far from the only thing that weighed it down. Horrible graphics, even by 1999 standards, made it an eyesore while its unrelenting music sounds like a carnival band falling down a set of stairs. Even the satisfyingly simple gameplay hook of the original is ruined by poor controls.

As we can see, the Nintendo 64 was the unfortunate recipient of some pretty awful fighting games. With “Dual Heroes,” the developers tried programming different AIs for each of its characters. This was done in an attempt to make the single player mode feel like you were going up against other players of varied skill levels. However, this led to one of the game’s biggest faults. The AI, to be quite frank, was atrocious. Players could trick enemies to run off the edge just by baiting them, posing little challenge. Of course, it doesn’t help that every character is a near identical jumble of pointy polygons, just in different colors, nor that the gameplay is quite dull.

Other than being the developmental debut of future “Call of Duty” mainstay, Treyarch, there is absolutely nothing interesting going on in “Olympic Hockey ‘98.” But surprisingly enough, the hate behind this sports title isn’t because it has bad visuals or gameplay; it’s because it's the third version of a game masquerading as a new title. Basically, Midway published this game mere months after “Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey ‘98,” a sequel that was also criticized for essentially being the same as its predecessor. The biggest difference here was that “Olympic Hockey ‘98” included the license for the Winter Olympics of that year. This triple-dip understandably made a lot of people angry.

It shouldn’t come as a shock that a bad movie led to a bad tie-in game. But that doesn’t change the fact that the N64’s “Blues Brothers 2000” absolutely deserves some hate. It was late to the game in every sense; it was released two years after the movie in which it's based on and during a period where it seems like every other game was a platformer. Even if the market wasn’t absolutely swarmed, nothing about it was very memorable, and so the only things setting it apart were its negatives. The game’s mechanics were uninspired and its visuals were worse than those that launched alongside the system.

With their adorable designs, ultra-powerful attacks, and a roster of entertaining villains, the potential for a “Powerpuff Girls” fighting game is pretty high. Sadly, “Chemical X-Traction” is a major disappointment. You’d think that this arena fighter would feature the same quick pace as the show, but every character moves at a snail’s pace. Most attacks boil down to the simplest of punches and kicks. If you want to do something else, you’ll have to use a nearby object as a weapon. But the characters move so slowly, you may as well not even bother. Oh, and we hope you don’t grow tired hearing an instrumental version of the theme song because you’ll be hearing it a lot.

While “South Park” has certainly enjoyed a resurgence on the video game market in recent years, the series was bottom-of-the-barrel crap at the turn of the millennium. “South Park Rally” is a racing game, because nothing screams “South Park” like racing! As you could imagine, Trey Parker and Matt Stone had little involvement in the game, aside from providing the voices, so it’s missing the signature “South Park” humor which makes the show and subsequent games so much fun. This would be forgivable if the go-karting was actually interesting, but it isn’t. The tracks are confusing and the game can be brutally difficult. But hey, that’s Acclaim “South Park” games for you.

This entry in the “Earthworm Jim” series was the first to be developed by a company other than Shiny Entertainment, and it shows. VIS Entertainment was the team behind this game, which was basically a carbon copy of similar platformers of the time like “Super Mario 64,” only about a tenth as good. While the game certainly wasn’t horrendous, it wasn’t exactly good, either. Despite looking great, the game needed work, as the camera was a constant nuisance and Jim controlled like garbage. It was standard platforming fare, but when you’re trying to compete with the likes of “Super Mario 64” or “Banjo Kazooie,” standard is not good enough.

“ClayFighter 63 1/3” is more of a parody game than anything else. It copies many different gameplay elements from older fighting games, and the “63 1/3” title is a play on the “64” which accompanied many games on Nintendo’s console. However, in order for a parody to work, it actually has to be good, which this game certainly isn’t. The character animations were poor, as were the very awkward transitions between stages. The fighting itself was also frustratingly bad, especially when the animation became particularly choppy. But hey, if you have a copy of the Sculptor’s Cut laying around, you can make some good bank on eBay.

The “Mortal Kombat” games are some of the most influential fighting games of all time. While the series has enjoyed a relatively stellar lineup throughout its lifetime, we think everyone and their mothers has forgotten about “Mythologies.” Sorry to bring up past trauma. The game focused on the backstory of Sub-Zero and served as a mix of action/adventure and fighting game, but it succeeded at neither. The game was ugly as sin, and the controls were abysmal. They completely ruined the flow of the game, and for that matter, the entire game itself. We’re just lucky that this game didn’t serve as a fatality for the series.

We hate to pick on more games aimed for children, but we gotta do what we gotta do. The game sounds awesome enough: it features fan-favorite villains like Diabolico, and voice clips from the actors are peppered throughout the game. However, no matter how much effort went into making this game pleasing for the fans, they forgot to make it fun. For one thing, the game was ugly, especially considering that it was released in 2000. For another, the game consisted of little more than pressing a button and shooting bad guys ad nauseam. We have a feeling that even the kids would be falling asleep while playing this one.

As if the overly edgy marketing campaign wasn’t bad enough. “Daikatana” is from the mind of John Romero, the man involved in some of the best games of the early 90s, including “Doom” and “Quake.” However, technology seemed to be passing John by, as “Daikatana” was hideously dated from the outset. At its E3 demo, the game ran at a disgusting 12 FPS, and what little fan interest remained immediately collapsed. The game was released, and as everyone feared, it was both outdated and boring, making “Daikatana” one of the most disappointing video games ever.

And the children’s game bashing continues! “Hey You, Pickachu!” was certainly an experiment. The game utilized the Nintendo 64’s voice recognition unit, and through using it, you can talk to and control Pikachu. It was a neat idea, and it was the only game released in North America to take advantage of the hardware. Unfortunately, the game behind it was mediocre at best. It was frustratingly tedious, and the voice recognition hardware was consistently touchy. We suppose it would have been decent if you adored Pokemon and were 9-years-old, but if you weren’t, then this game had nothing for you.

It’s really a shame, because the animated movie was so damn good. But, like most movie-tie-in cash grabs, this video game was a steaming pile of crap which was obviously rushed to market to capitalize on the movie. In the game, you control Batman in a side-scrolling beat-em-up, and it is every bit as boring as that sounds. Everything about this game just screams terrible, from the horrible animations to the ugly graphics to the seriously outdated gameplay mechanics. As a 1980s arcade title, this game would have been alright. As a game released in 2000, it’s just pathetic.

Don’t get us wrong, “Carmageddon” is an awesome game, providing you’re playing on the PC. However, when it’s played on anything else, but particularly when it’s played on the N64, it is completely irredeemable. This port took everything which was fun about the original and ruined it. The fluid controls were now jerky and unresponsive. The graphics were muddled and watered down. And, serving as its most vile change, the game altered the humans to zombies. We suppose it was to curb the controversy which the original was subjected to, but that defeats the entire purpose of the game! It was an all-around mess and a huge blemish on the “Carmageddon” name.

Was there ever any doubt that this would be number one? “Superman,” which was infamously developed by Titus Software, is now a piece of gaming history, as it is widely regarded to be one of the worst video games ever made. Let’s list some flaws. You have the awful graphics. The terrible controls. The constant clipping and framerate dips. The incredibly stupid enemy AI. The countless glitches. Really, this game was just a mess from top to bottom, and we commend anyone who has actually sat down and finished it, because that is one Herculean task.

What do YOU think is the worst N64 game? Let us know in the comments.