Time consuming and considering the lack of alternatives, quite good at what it does. But it fails to seamlessly merge the combat and trading that Elite did so well and is, to put it bluntly, a bit on the dull side.

The content will make this fairly heavy going for the adventurer of light heart but, for serious role players, it makes a big change from the floppy hats and warty ogres.

Everything about Unreal Tournament is spectacular and in your face.

Someone out there obviously thought that creating a simulation of real-life farming was a pretty good idea -- the worrying thing is that they might just be right! It may be all too much like hard work but this game can make growing cabbages seem as addictive as Hagen Das ice-cream!

There is so much to do in this enormous, indepth game that you could get sucked into its fantastically animated absorbing world and stay there for weeks. Donkey Kong 64 deseves the fanfare of being the most eagerly-awaited game since Zelda.

Just a wasted opportunity. Of course, we are totally missing the point here because the game is aimed at players as young as eight, and we are therefore being far too damning in our criticism, but what the hell, we love kiddie platformers just as much as any juvenile, and we still thought this game was unimaginative and distinctly lame.

Breaking the mould of film conversion failures, this is a great game and (niggling flaws aside) is fun to play.

The camera is extremely intelligent, zooming in and panning out where appropriate to give you the best view of proceedings. On the odd occasion where the camera doesn't give a perfect shot of things, the camera buttons make fixing the view very simple. Rare has got a serious rival for the title of N64 3-D adventure game supremo!

While Medal's mechanics are every bit as sophisticated as "Goldeneye," it's clear that PlayStation isn't up to the task in terms of graphics, though that shouldn't be any surprise. What is does have is gameplay by the trench-load, war movie tension and really grizzly violence.

Resident Evil 2 is not just a great game, but also proof that the N64 can do the supposedly impossible when developers put their minds to it. An incredible achievement.

Bangin' drum and bass kicks out of the stolen sports cars super woofers as you prowl the streets for criminal action. Climb behind the furry wheel of a pick-up truck and it's good ole' hillbilly rock. This game knows how to use music and it shows it big time.

Graphically appealing and full of great special effects and sound samples, this will enthuse any Crash fan. As a racing game though, it's just a little too slow to get your pulse racing.

This is entertainment on a grand scale, simply on another level to the rest of the clone-driven, deadline-throttled gaming industry. A breathtaking arcade blast which makes the N64 essential.

Within minutes of starting out, you will find yourself totally immersed in the world inside your PC. No longer will you care about what''s for dinner or how you pay the rent. Instead, you will be worrying about how to raise finances to build catapults, or how best to storm the nearby French castle.

Ultimately this is an enjoyable package. If you can look beyond their relatively simplistic visuals then both games are worth investing some time in.

The depth of story is surprisingly luxurious... This isn't a "Final Fantasy" beater but it's a cracking RPG nonetheless.

A game with such huge scope that you can master it at your own pace and have a great amount of fun while doing it, Tony Hawk's Skateboarding will win you over.

A shotgun blast of colour and speed, Wipeout 3 is not something you'll forget easily. It's the biggest, finest-looking, finest-playing game of an exceptionally good trilogy.

A work of Tolkeinesque proportions and not only the greatest RPG of our times, but one of the greatest games of all time. Wholeheartedly recommended.

Big and brave Homeworld might be, it doesn't quite add up to the wondrous game we were hoping for. The spectacle of deep space soon begins to look very empty and the battles repetitive.

Raziel is tremendously well animated and his surroundings are epic. In fact, the whole feel of Soul Reaver is epic, more than just a third-person adventure, but a whole tale of jealousy, betrayal and revenge.

The sheer quality of every graphic, sound effect, the gripping playability and the level of detail to be found in the game goes to show what effort the team has made to produce a stunning title, congratulations to them!

Prepare to be dazzled, gob-smacked and taken for the wildest ride of your life. And that's guaranteed... a masterpiece. The best game we've played for ages and absolutely recommended.

Beautifully conceived and packed chock-full of garish Mario-isms. This is far better than any other golfing effort the N64 has spewed up in the past and we had to wait for the trusty little plumber to prove again just why he's the dog's danglies at almost everything he does.

Without a doubt, Pokémon Snap is a game of the highest quality and brings a new genre to the N64 … but if you hate the little creatures, we’d recommend that you give it a miss.

Tremendous fun... Gameplay is rarely this pure. Get monkey spanking!

If you persist past the ugly and confusing combat and a Bible worth of speech, there is a harmlessly atmospheric, quirky game underneath.

Although World Driver Championship is technically superb and looks gorgeous, it''s arcadey where it should be realistic and vice versa. The end result is that it's just not thrilling enough.

So Lunar Silver Star Story may possess all the weakness of most Japanese RPGs - sub-standard graphics, linearity and a sickening level of morality, but the younger generation will love the friendly interface and unfolding story.

A package more desirable than Neve Campbell wrapped in a lottery cheque!

Fighting games don't come much more accomplished than this though, and Street Fighter Alpha 3 is one of the most addictive and playable we've ever come across.

EverQuest is certainly the more immediate of the two online role playing games but it still has a lifetimes worth of enjoyment in it.

Quite simply, Beetle Adventure Racing is the most fun, most exciting and most satisfying racing game on the N64 to date.

Flawed, yes, ambitious definitely - Silent Hill is a whole new experience adding to the challenge of "Resident Evil 2," while maintaining what it set out to do... drain you psychologically and scare you shitless!

With the perfect combination of all-out mass slaughtering and stealth missions, Syphon Filter is an unexpected gem that comes highly recommended.

The balance of gameplay is just right, you are fed gently in to the game and by the time it starts getting tough, you are hooked and unable to leave your machine for hours and days on end!

Mario Party reflects Nintendo's current policy in Japan of knocking out gimmicky video toys instead of those pesky expensive-to-produce games. A good laugh with a group of friends, but it's no substitute for the games that made Nintendo's name in the first place.

If you're prepared to overlook, or at least work around, the faults, Castlevania is well worth considering. The only thing that old hands at Castlevania will be left wondering is why you can't swing with the whip.

That's the great thing about Baldur's Gate, not only does it look "the dog's," it provides the player (and multiplayers) with a living, breathing world complete with specific rules which must be adhered to. Now that's magic!

Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil has -- as a one-player game -- turned out to be good, but not the world-shaker everyone was expecting. It's Doom, basically -- a glorious-looking update of Doom, but Doom nevertheless. What saves Turok 2 is the multiplayer game, which is faster and smoother than Goldeneye.

Every mission gives you a new perspective on the game, causing you to re-evaluate your prior thoughts and strategies, giving priority to different units in different battles.

When it comes to what people will now demand of a top videogame, Nintendo has moved the goalposts off the pitch, into a lorry, down the road, into the airport, onto a plane and halfway round the world to a different continent entirely.

Tomb Raider III may essentially be more of the same apart from a few new bells and whistles, but with gameplay as engrossing as this, perhaps that's no bad thing. It still walks all over young pretenders like ODT.

Half-Life is brilliant in every respect with huge monsters appearing later on, Half-Life gets so spooky it hurts, so frightening people simply watching jump!

If you're a Star Wars fanatic and you own an N64, then you can't afford to be without this game. If you''re not a Star Wars fan then still buy this game because it's the most exciting, most gripping shoot-'em-up on the N64 so far.

Fans of the original will love RT2 and anyone with even the slightest strategical bent will love the challenge it poses.

A magical adventure in every sense, Abe's Exoddus stands oversized head and boney green shoulders above any competing title. Yes, it's a lot like "Oddysee," but it's ingeniously more complicated and so long they had to put it on two discs!

To accompany the breathtaking graphics is a soundtrack of pure extravagance, and it does wonders to heighten the action and suspense, we can tell you.

The puzzles in Silicon Valley are varied and fun, preventing the whole thing from just becoming a matter of repeatedly killing things, and this is yet another factor which keeps the interest going.

Body Harvest is big, different enough to stand out among the clutter of Mario clones, and ambitious in a way that very few N64 games dare to be. Body Harvest had the potential to be one of the best games on the N64, but as anyone who''s seen insects like termites at work will know, little bugs can bring great structures crashing down.

GF doesn't really go anywhere new so don't expect too many surprises in that field, where it does excel is in keeping to the tried and tested Lucasarts formula of comedy and logic combined to give you the most senseless fun you can imagine.

Where Shogo departs from its gaming relatives is in the mix of huge MCVs that can leap gracefully up the outsides of tall buildings and daintily tread on dinky people and the on hoof levels where your frail body is fully exposed to the bullets, laser bolts and high explosives.

A little more innovation would have been appreciated, but this is one case where a more or less straight update of the SNES original was all that was needed to produce a great game.

It's a full scale epic that completely engulfs you from the off and squeezes out so many different emotions that after a long stint, you're left wondering whether you really do like it or not. [JPN Import]

One thing that really needed attention in the Japanese version of Tenchu was the over active camera that follows your character. Skipping around with stomach-turning irregularity during fights and wandering off to give a confusing partial view of you or your opponent because it couldn't deal with nearby walls, this spoiled an otherwise very enjoyable game.

Considering that Japan isn’t famous for its success in the sport, for some reason the developers at KCET have a canny knack of delivering almost every attribute of our beautiful game in precision detail, with realism so sharp you could almost take an eye out!

A step back to the bad old days when the name was more important than the game -- a practice that Ocean was supposed to have left well behind.

Brilliant, plain and simple, and another example of why Nintendo have become so dependant on Rare -- the company produces games that are every bit as good as Nintendo's own, if not better.

The biggest, best and sexiest racing game ever. What we have here is a gigantic car game that's such enormous fun to play because of three main elements: unparalleled realism, ground-breaking graphics and the chance to spend a lot of money.

This really is classic stuff. Most games of this ilk can be effortlessly breezed through within a couple of goes, but not this monster. Despite having ten continues as standard, you''ll lose them within the first three levels -- leaving vast chunks of unexplored terrain that''ll have you begging for extra credits. [JPN Import]

Has enough substance behind the dazzle to hold off accusations of it being nothing more than a Descent clone in pretty new clothes. Forsaken 64's deathmatch mode is superb, every bit as playable as that of Rare''s Bondage festival. One of the best games of the year!

A thoroughbred that out-strikes the opposition as if it were high on steroids. Put bluntly, we're not gonna get a better beat-'em-up. Tekken 3 is a killer app that is close to perfection.

An enjoyable, fun-filled game which should keep you puzzling for a long time to come.

If real aliens turn up while you are playing this, they don’t stand a chance of getting your attention.

The Danger Zone and the easy-to-use reversal system combine to make the skirmishes of Dead Or Alive more varied than many current classics, including high flyers like "Soul Blade."

And they're the meanest bunch of cops you'll find outside of America's deep south.

Playing Quake is like living a horror movie. The game simply gushes atmosphere from every slime-coated, ambient lighted, gothic architectural artery.

Mischief Makers dropped some hints about what the N64 can do in 2-D, but Yoshi's Story pushes the boat out so far it''s run ashore on the other side ... but once you've got past the initial sense of ''ahh, isn''t that sweet'' it doesn''t take long before all that sugar rots your teeth and sets your stomach a-churning.

One of the most clever, crowd-pleasing, tense, dramatic, beautiful and playable games ever conceived.

Yeah, this is what videogames should be all about -- indiscriminate carnage on a massive scale without a trace of cuteness, "nurturing and trading" or thought.

Beneath the day-glo grass and cuddly-wuddly wittle characters beats the brutal, steroid-pumped heart of a sadistic beast who eats raw liver and stamps on puppies for laughs. Everything about Diddy Kong Racing is perfect.

An enthralling giant of a game, packed with countless delights (not forgetting the superb dramatic music) and a mammoth challenge to keep you playing for weeks on end, at the least.

The definitive action game for hardcore gun fetishists -- it''s second only to Goldeneye in the first-person adventure stakes, and a close second at that!

These breakthrough graphics also add to the enjoyment of the Colony Wars experience in terms of gameplay, because the stunning attention to detail throws you into the battle like you wouldn't believe.

As a party game, PaRappa the Rapper is top notch. It is totally hilarious when you have the cheesy cartoon hip-hop pumped up loud and people get into difficulties trying to follow the lyrics in time.

More brutal than anything we've seen before on PlayStation, the open structure of the game and lack of energy bars are welcome additions to a genre which was frankly getting stale.

The tracks! Wow! The first ones... well, they''re okay, and they seem fast, but they're not really anything you won't have seen before - that's for the first one or two. But from then on... hold onto your hat, or rather, hold onto your lunch! If you thought rollercoasters were bad, try this! Loops, dips and multiple junctions that make it possible to take a different route for every lap of the race.

Though I never though I'd say it, Total Annihilation rises above every strategy game there has ever been. To put it bluntly, it is the best.

Besides the high quality visuals, real time battle is the key element that is arousing unashamed geeks around the planet for Final Fantasy VII.

Goldeneye is even better than "Mario 64." Even Oddjob could figure out what that means! A Nintendo 64 without Goldeneye is like James Bond without a vodka martini.

While 32-bit consoles have seen a drift back to the old 2-D scrolling shoot-'em-ups, Star Fox updates the format for the 21st century. It's a stunning, state-of-the-art space opera.

Faithful fans will have a good solid game in their collections with six new tracks and an unthinkable amount of extra horsepower to play with.

The most important thing to realise with Turok is that it's very much a post-Doom, total 3D game. The gameplay balance has had to shift away from mass onslaughts to a slightly more thoughtful variation. For the most part it's an enthralling, if occasionally frustrating atmosphere piece.

A riotous arcade experience structured to provide massive, total addiction. The 'just-one-more-go' syndrome is impossible to resist.

Mario Kart 64 is much more of an arcade combat game than before but its lastability, like the 16bit original, will be measured in years not months.

Represents state-of-the-art gaming and pushes the PlayStation to its limits -- short of nicking a coin-op, this is the closest thing you'll ever come to arcade perfection in the home.

The pace is always utterly frantic, usually over in under a couple of minutes, and gives players an uncontrollable urge to come back for more.

It's a high quality product that blends tactics, strategy and management into an accessible and playable game -- just watch out for the appearance of any latent megalomaniac tendencies.

With lusciously detailed graphics and some superb sound FX and music rounding the game off, Red Alert looks destined to follow "Dune II" and "Command and Conquer" straight into the Westwood hall of fame.

But be warned, this game is horribly difficult early on and it will take even the most capable gamesplayer an age to complete.

A dark horse of Grand National-winning quality. The stunning graphics, immaculate playability and entirely original handling make for a game like no other. As much as with "Mario 64," Wave Race 64 alone justifies the cost of the N64.

Lords of the Realm was one of the best selling historical simulations ever but there was room for improvement. Lords 2 takes all the elements of the original and embellishes them, with added graphics, sound and gameplay.

Harvester really does combine slick packaging, with true depth of gameplay and innovation. For those with a liking for the strange, unusual and downright revolting, or just a taste for great adventure games, I can''t hesitate to recommend it.

The presentation of the game is spot-on and it's an interesting challenge for those hardened adventurers who prefer a who-dunnit puzzler to a comical romp in the park.

Psygnosis has managed to improve WipeOut to such a degree that even those that hated the original will find WO2097 accessible and rewarding to play... WipeOut 2097 is a scorcher!

Simply flying around and admiring the scenery is an enjoyable enough pass-time. When you get serious with the game, it's demanding but fair, constantly pushing you further in mastering the various craft and the environment.

The sheer scale of the achievement, in originality, variety and technological muscle earns it a 'Best Game Ever' acclamation through sheer muscle, almost regardless of its undoubted and typically Nintendo artistry.

There''s ''playing hours a plenty'' here for all strategy fans, the soundtrack and speech are great and the story is complex and intriguing. Put it this way, it's my present number one pastime apart from swivelling my microscope.