N64 – Pinkie's Paradise

Pinkie Ranks: Top 5 N64 Songs/Soundstracks

Welcome back again little lights of my life! Today I will ramble more about gaming! Why?! Because as a Virtual Blogger it is now my task to have factually correct opinions! So to celebrate that I am right I really wanted to do a top 5. I wanted to do a top 5 Kaiju first.. but I realised.. I really have to know them a bit better. Mamma Mothra is considered the mother of monsters so .. maybe Godzilla is like my brother.. I might need to learn more about him before I think he is a bit basic.

So because I was listening to video game music while listening to this post .. how about I review video game music again! From the N64 this time! As I did SNES and NES in the past! Like with them, only one entry per franchise (uhm kind off) ..with an honourable mention in the same game (most of the time) .

_{<Disclaimer> All the Songs Are YouTube Videos, to hear them read this post on my actual website. <End Of Disclaimer>}

Number 5: SS Anubis – Jet Force Gemini

Jet Force Gemini was a great game on the N64 that would have never really been on my radar. Shooting bugs with an anime girl, a guy in space armor and a dog wasn’t something I was particularly interested in at the time.. it looked “kiddy” yet did not play kiddy.. so I kinda found that dumb! So I decided to rent Star Wars Shadows of the Empire instead… man I really disliked that game! The shooting was so awful. I returned the game the same day as I took it out.. even though I rented it for a week.. I did not want Shadows to be my weekend! The Video Game Store Owner recommended me to Jet Force Gemini instead and since I wanted space Violence I reluctantly agreed. My mind was blown. This game was so much better! It also had really great music! Very different from what you expect such a cute looking game. The game played so smooth as well.. so I actually kept renting this until I finished it! …Which meant I would have been better off buying it.. .but oh well.

SS Anubis is a track that has a super foreboding tone, but also something big! It had this explorative.. spy movie like quality that also really worked well for alien stuff. Those were some strange times! It is very loopable.. and non intrusive and easy to put on a loop, by it’s own it might sound a bit boring for those who have never played the game.. but there was a way that these tracks were designed where ingame sound and audio blended together in such a nice cocktail that this always left an impression on me! A second favourite of mine is the fire planet Eschebone! I mean.. there are just so many pretty sources of light there and.. the music is absolutely bone chilling. There is a real sense of danger and evil there.. and even though the level absolutely sucks donkey kong.. with the last K being replaced with a D but it’s theme was amazing. Rare did an amazing job. I could have filled this list with just rare songs alone and it would still be a great list. They are on here a lot.. in fact….. the next entry might be Rare as well!

Honourable Mention: Eschebone

Number 4: Sloprano – Conker’s Bad Fur Day

I love platformer games, yet on Nintendo 64 that love was tested a bit. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Mario 64. It’s a great game don’t get me wrong but there were a lot of stars that aren’t fun to collect. I now.. and always will dislike a game that requires ultra specific , conditions such as entering a level at 12 o clock to stop all the moving parts, or figuring out some super vague secrets. Nowadays I do enjoy playing through it. .but then I was heavily leaning towards Team Rare. Donkey Kong 64 is a game I (as one of the few people) really liked (except for playing the Arcade games) and Banjo Kazooie, in my eyes blows Mario completely out of the water. So when a platformer was said to release with lot of potty humor, violence and Teddy Bears I was on board all the way! I had a lot of fun with the multiplayer but I had even more fun with the campaign.. especially the earlier parts.

Sending bees to a sunflower, so she gets ticklish enough to show her boobs to a horney and hungover king bee… and of course.. fighting a giant turd by the power of conjuring context sensitive toilet paper. I loved this game so much and in part it is because of the Opera Scene.. weirdly I am a sucker for Opera music in video games and this one is no different.. although a bit low brow! It’s a song sung by a baritone piece of poo that flings parts of his body at you and the entire opera is metaphors for the excrement. However the way how tempo in the song is used to ramp up difficulty and the comical and clever text pushed this towards some greater heights. While I would not say this track is “forgotten” I often see it passed over for the DK Rap, which I will cheat with and make my honorable mention here. Conker Had great music troughout the game, I very much love the main theme as well.. but since these are the two most iconic N64 songs with Vocals..both by Rare and the same type of game .. I think it is allowed.. and that way you can compare and agree with me that Sloprano is a more unique song!

Honourable Mention : DK Rap – Donkey Kong 64

Number 3: Gerudo Valley – The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time was my first experience with this absolutely amazing franchise, with either this or Windwaker being my favourite installment. The Minish Cap taking a close third. My little sister forced me to call the main character we know as Link Turban8 (Tulband8 in Dutch) or she would reset my game over and over.. so my first Journey with Turban8 was quite unique.. I had never played a game like this before and here it became clear that I was a true gamer and my sister was not. We had to play together but I picked up on the nuances of this game fairly quickly and in the end she abandoned playing this so Turban8 was strictly controlled by me. I loved the music of this game so much, the overworld theme, Zelda’s Lullaby, Saria’s song.. this game blew me away! Music was an actual theme in the game and I would often just try to match the songs that were playing in the background. I learned to do this pretty okay as well.. and I adapted to a new way of Video game thinking.. away from the SNES platformer mentality.

One song impressed me so much more than the others, and that was the song of Gerudo Valley! My oh my did I love that song. The temperament of that song, the punch it packed and the “Bandito” theme really made this an absolute bob! I would often return to Gerudo valley just to hear that amazing song. Song of Storms will be put forward as my honourable mention, it can’t hold a candle to Gerudo Valley for me though! I love this song SO much! I loved it so much it was in my dreams! I once dreamed I got married to a video game character and we had to dance on the music! I just soared like an eagle to Gerudo Valley! Even did the rose/flamenco thing! Hmmm….I watched a lot of cartoons back then! I wasn’t able to beat the game at that age, the temple of Shadow and Spirit proved too tricky for me.. but I kept coming back to this game and falling for the song over and over again. I was so happy it got to be a thing in Smash Bros as well! They also made an absolute amazing Mariachi version of this!

Number 2: Rainbow Road – Mario Kart 64

When I was just a little Pinkie, I had a little friend with a bowl cut, who always invited me to come play Mario Kart on SNES.. I always lost and did not think I would like the sequel.. I hated SNES Rainbow Road to the core! My friend always beat the living daylight out of me! So when I first got Mario Kart 64 I kind of was upset! I didn’t really like that game.. I always played it with my friend because they wanted to play it, not because I liked it.. but I quickly realised how good this game actually is! I loved how this game controlled.. I loved the new weapons and I could actually stay on track and .. since I was not friends with Bowlcut anymore.. I did not really lose to anybody.. except my sister .. but she would punch me if she lost, so I faked losing a lot. Regardless , whenever she was not there I would race the AI on harder cc’s and win! I had so much fun! Then I had to do Rainbow Road.. and it was AMAZING.

Rainbow Road 64 is my favourite Mario Kart Track and Track ever. It really felt like the end of a (short) journey and instead of being punished .. like in the last one you were rewarded with a gorgeous track..which almost took as long to complete as the entire rest of the game. Seeing those character depictions on the sky, the sense of actually driving on a Rainbow.. it did more to me than being just a great track.. and track.. I think my love for Rainbows came from that game.. before that I kinda felt they were overrated but I loved Rainbow Road 64 so much that I even made a Mario Kart Rainbow Road Dungeon in my Digimon campaign. It was super fun! During the game the track almost constantly played and no one was ever annoyed by this music looping. It hits all the right notes of grandeur, space and lightheartedness. This isn’t a final dreadful trial for you to overcome.. this is a reward.. your victory lap! That is to me what Rainbow Road should be. The track before that, should be the final trial. This game got that feeling right, and this track is a perfect accompaniment for it. Oh right.. honourable mention.. Koopa Troopa Beach I get.. cause Island vibes?! It isn’t even in the same ballpark though.. heck.. if Rainbow Road is Yankee stadium.. then Beach isn’t even in America.

“Honourable” Mention: Koopa Troopa Beach

Number 1: The Entire Soundtrack – Banjo-Kazooie

I know , I know, this sounds like yet another cheat.. but you can really take your pick here and pick from anything in this library of this game. Freezy Peaks, Gruntilda’s Lair, Spiral Mountain, the actual main theme, every single track is amazing.. but before we get into that let’s talk a bit about my history with this game. I was reluctant to pick this up as Mario 64 had been a bit of a mid-experience for me. When I say MID I mean that in the softest way possible. I had a great time, but I no where nearly loved this game as much as I loved Super Mario World. I did not love it as much as Super Mario Bros 3 either. It was somewhere around Mario 2 and 1 for me. However because of how much I loved World.. this felt like a disappointment.. I did not care too much about how impressive 3d was. I wanted a fun game I could play with my Sister, I wanted Yoshi, Especially Stompy.. my Yellow Yoshi (my sister claimed the blue one). Then Banjo came and I expected the same experience.. but I was blown away! This game.. was SOOO much better. I am sorry but it just really is. Mario 64 is a great game.. but Banjo… it’s the near perfect collectathon platformer. It is one of those 10/10 games for me.

The gameplay, the humor, the synergy and most of all the music. This music style is SO unique! I am not good with backoffice names.. especially when it comes to music.. or voice actors.. I don’t really care who voices a character as long as I like the voice. I love the voice acting in a Hat in Time .. yet I have no idea who did it.. I love the music in Blast Corps.. I have no idea who did it! When it comes to music I know two names. Nobuo Uematsu, who I still refer to as “that Final Fantasy Guy” and that there is Grant Kirkhope. All respect to Uematsu.. but he just makes amazing music.. Grant Kirkhope’s music is so unique and so is …Kirkhope, I’d almost call it a genre. I can recognise if a song is a Kirkhope and that style feels so catered to the iconic bear and bird. Even if it is used in other games it is as if you can taste that love for this franchise. Whenever I hear a Kirkhope song.. I imagine a Bear and a Bird jamming out to it. There is a love for the characters here.. a LOT of it. After this game .. this type of music and sound design became part of this type of game.. so it simply is just outstanding and I can not pick a favourite. It was the birth of something new.. and I’ll take it as a whole! If I ever would be a VTuber, I would very much would like an Kirkhope style intro! If he’d make one I’d begin streaming the next day!

Thank you for reading trough another of my posts! If you want to support the blog , interact with me in the comments and tell me your favourite N64 song! If you want to support me even more, consider buying me a coffee or becoming a Patreon!

Classic Review: Pokémon Snap

Yay it’s finally saturday, which means I can finally come out to play! The others Pinkie’s might be bigger than me and have like important jobs and such …but just because I am just a chibi doesn’t mean you can think little of me! I am the Pinkie that discusses like the actual fun of playing like the games or who plays with the toys and the likes. Today I decided a classic Pokémon game a lot of people seem to like! My Pokémon Fun the Mime Jr will play it along side of me! Even if this is a single player game! Today me and Fun wil play Pokémon Snap on Nintendo 64.

The concept

Uhm even though I find this a bit of a difficult word, the main Pinkie told me I should talk about what’s the game about here so here goes! This game is like a 3d on rail shooter… but like not one of those mean ones where you kill people or monsters while a lot of angry music blasts through your speakers.In this game you shoot, with a roll of film… well quite a few a rolls actually. You play the role of Todd “Gimme any name’ Snap. A photographer that one his adventures once encountered a Mew but Mr Snap failed to snap it on camera. Luckily after he is tired of the Pokédex and Red, Oak calls Todd to investigate a mysterious place called Pokémon Island. On this Island Mew is to roam and it’s up to our generic looking hero to succeed where he failed before. Generic looking as he may be, he has a nice short! Gotta love the colour. Poké-Island is pretty rough terrain for a hike though, so luckily professor Oak shows us his skill in engineering as he made an all terrain vehicle named the Zero-One… and I mean ALL-Terrain. Mr Snap can take this yellow basket looking vehicle thing out to seven stages that unlock as you complete puzzles or score enough points. Yes points, rather than paying the young photographer in cash, professor Oak hands him points based on how good your photograph is. Earn enough points and you will get new tools and sometimes stages. Solving puzzles with these tools will allow you to snap new pokémon or progress in the game even further. It is a nice idea that is executed quite well and some puzzles are very clever, but more on that later. A lot of people are still hoping for a sequel and given how far the pokémon world has progressed it could make for a nice beefy and mostly relaxing game! This one really misses out on the beefy part.

The Atmosphere

Professor Pinkie told me, I should tell how a game looks, sounds and feels on this spot. So I think, this is what Pokémon Snap does best! It looks super cute! The pokémon are very recognisable and are lively, they do their own thing and if you bonk them with an apple or pester ball on the head they react to it in a funny way! The best thing is, Pokémon have their anime cries. That means every single pokémon states their name or a part of it. Jigglypuff sings it’s iconic song if you save it in a cave, Pikachu is full of Pika-Pika’s and shellder pop out of the water with their cute..yet somehow annoying shell, cry. The 7 stages are very diverse and though they are short they are filled with fun things and easter eggs. Like a surfboard for Pikachu or zelda like walls. Of course this is a game of 19 years ago and yes you will spot it, but the way they move and flow around, it really doesn’t feel that old. The fact that this thing is on rails instead of a massive stretch of land might really help with that. The Pokémon theming is done very VERY well. Originally this game would be launched as Jack and the Beanstalk for something called the Nintendo 64DD , which was supposed to be like an extension or something, but with that falling through Pokémon Snap was born. Normally when a game originally is something else you really notice it. Think Super Mario Land 2 for example. You can easily tell it was Doki Doki Panic first, well not the title of course.. but you can tell it used to be a NOT mario game. Snap can let you lure a slowpoke to a shellder infested river so it can evolve, you can see meowth being mischievous and you can see Snorlax sleeping peacefully. Everything FEELS like pokémon. They look like Pokémon and sound like Pokémon as well. Graveler looks kinda bad though!

Except for Graveler not being as sleekly designed as he could be, the only complaint I have is how boring the non pokémon stuff is. The nature in stages are fine.. but the items and technology thingies are bland and seem to not contribute anything. Todd is blander than Pidgey and never gets anything going for him. The Zero-One.. though practical.. is just a basket on wheels and doesn’t really seem like the best thing to send on this adventure. That loading screen where Oak waves at the Snap kid makes them both look terrible. However this is kind of a nitpick, cause you only see those elements at the beginning and ending of a stage. The stages themselves like the pokémon are wonderful and varied.

Technical Thingies

So how is the game build? Did the makers do their jobs well? Does it control well? I really liked the easy controls myself, even though that Nintendo 64 controller kinda looks like an evil spaceship thingy that can easily cripple you. The biggest problem with Pokémon Snap’s control on the original system actually is Mario Party. I played a lot of Mario Party on my N64 so all my controllers are a bit..wonky because of certain spin the analogue stick mini games. This gave me some issues while playing this, but for the most time it worked well. Controls are fairly decently chosen , though I personally would have preferred all items to work from the C pad, like Zelda instead of just one. That being said the apple and the pester ball are a lot more frequent so I get why this was chosen still as soon as you unlock everything it kinda feels odd. Except for some pop up here and there, the game feels quite smooth actually. The main part of the game , shooting pictures works wonders! I like the Z button for photograph mode controls. It is easy to take cute snaps, and easy to send them to the professor. Everything flows. .. except for the throwing. Throwing apples and pester balls onto pokémon reacts way to specifically. There is no auto-aim whats so ever so be prepared to toss a gazillion apples. Hitboxes can be weird at times and sometimes you knock a pokémon back with a pester ball but sometimes you need an apple for that same job. The balls are filled with some annoying gaslike thing so it would make sense to for it to have an extended hitbox..but no to pester a pokemon you gotta hit it flat on the head. Aside from tossing the technical side is solid as a rock-type though.

The gameplay

Many people adore this game and in the general review scene it would score between a 7,5 and 8,5 out of 10. There is one magazine that has a really weird point score that goes up to 40 and I think they got 30 or so there. Though I had amazing fun playing this game.. I am more in line with the review people as the general public. This game is not a timeless classic. It’s a snack that is great fun. Though it is great fun to take all the snapshots, the fact that it doesn’t feature all 151 original pokémon is understandable, yet 63 feels like such an odd number as well, especially how easy it is to get them. While progressing to mew, I discovered 54 species without any trouble. In part because of the gameplay in my eyes biggest flaws. Pictures professor Oak disapproves off still count towards your “Pokédex’
You can litteralty shoot the foot of Kangaskhan in the first stage and it will still be logged towards your completion process. Though your point count helps unlock items, like the Pokéflute, making bad photos still counts, just very slowly. It takes away some of the magic of the game. Puzzles however are positively interesting. There are spots where pokémon can evolve if you interact with it in a specific way. Knock that charmeleon into a lava pit with an apple and bam you have charizard. Toss an item at Electrode and it will self destruct, which might unlock new secrets, bait a Slowpoke to a shellder pool and congratulations that Slowpoke evolves into a Slowbro! These are fun and oftenly quite clever. Puzzles that you need to complete are nicely telegraphed to the player without it being in your face obvious on your first run either, you really need to look around! These are even fun for non-pokémon players. The only one that might not work for a non Poké-player would be the Slowbro one because the evolution lore is never conveyed to the player. Maybe the diglett you have to snap three times as well. All the other puzzles are something the game can communicate to you and you find out by playing around with your items and pokemon. Progression is possible for everyone and the game knows what it is doing and relays the needed information to it’s players.

Unfortunately all that cleverness is thrown out the window for the final encounter. The way you snap Mew is so dumb that it aggravates me. Once you enter the rainbow cloud you see Mew in a barrier that lights up once you photograph it, ensuring it will not be seen. You solve this by tossing apples onto it’s barrier until they break it. The Pokémon that created all Pokémon life, who has the power to learn every more, shoot fire that can melt through mountains, that inspired the ultimate weapon Pokémon.. which was basically just a clone.. can be stopped by six apples. How cool would it have been if we could use everything we learned so far to break it’s barrier. Knock a zubat out of the sky with an apple so it heals it.. losing energy to his barrier, then wake up a pokémon with the flute while we see Mew losing some energy playing with it. Using the dash engine to ram into the barrier while it gets closer and the likes. Or keep it even cuter. Feed a pokémon with an apple, save a pokemon being bullied with a pester ball, wake a sleeping mother pokemon so she can take care of her kids and eventually Mew sees you love pokémon and reveals itself. Instead we really do get in my opinion of of the worst final stages in gaming history! Meany developers this could have ended so amazing.

I would not have minded the final stage so much if the road towards it was nice and beefy, but you can finish this game very easily. Within 3 to 6 hours you can beat this game if you can keep your eyes peeled, maybe a bit more if you don’t have the logic sense of a gamer. Speedrunners are even able to 100% complete this game in 24 minutes. That time gap is mostly due to the second gameplay element that can feel a bit iffy, the photo ratings.
At the end of each stage Professor Oak will give you an evaluation of your Pokémon. Size, Pose and is it in the middle of the camera. That last one works perfectly. The other two are sometimes a bit hard to find out what oak exactly likes to see. A pokémon doing an attack will always give you good points but not every pokémon does that. Sometimes the pose is connected to a seemingly random set of frames. I managed to capture a dragonite during my run and it popped out with a huge smile on it’s face and the moment I snapped it it looked exactly like it was giving me a thumbs up. It was the cutest photo I took during those 3 and a bit hours and Oak didn’t like it all that much! Waaaaaaah! My favorite photograph!
The ratings can make the game feel a bit more static, but if you are just out here to be driven around in the cart and snap Pokémon it’s nothing too bad. It just can break your heart a little of that greyed fool baka meany professor doesn’t like that one truly amazing photograph.

Score

I truly loved replaying this game, I had an amazing time while playing it. Yet though I love spending time with this game, I do not necessarily love the game. It is definitely worth picking up for an evening when you just want to relax and it ages amazingly well. It doesn’t feel all that retro, in a way it still feels like a modern game. It feels like one of those 20 dollar games you buy on steam these days, you know it’s short but it’s great while it lasts and it’s flaws are easily ignorable for how long the game lasts. The game feels like it was made for “one evening’ and one might argue we should judge it as such. But I am not going to do that. It feels wrong. It feels like saying you love a hooker as much as a wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend . Simply because the one may satisfy you fully that one time doesn’t mean she is 100% satisfactory! Pokémon Snap is an enjoyable ride but it is not something you will come back to each night. It might not it’s intention to last for longer but if we go compare it to a life partner, those can still be fun for that one particular night as well as an entire life. That is why I mark Snap one grade own!

<\ I really need to talk to this girl about her analogies ‘Pinkie Prime>

I am absolutely eager to see a sequel game someday with hopefully just a bit more flesh on it’s bones and a better final encounter.Until then snacking this will have to do! Have you ever played Snap? What monster did snap on camera last? Next week you will find me shouting at a pikachu but remember:
I am not weird, just very pink!
Until we read again.