SGLF: Let's Play Quest 64! (It's over baby,gimme some sugar)

The SGLF hasn't been active in a while, so I'll pick up the torch and march in a different direction. Instead of showing the decent in a game that, while seen as "bad", was okay in it's own, I'm going to play a genuinely shitty game that happens to have a few redeeming qualities. Few. Very few. Yeah. We'll see how long this lasts.

Introduction

Quest 64 was the first big "RPG"for the Nintendo 64. For some reason, Nintendo put a lot of money into this project and marketed it like there was no tomorrow. It was quoted as being "better than Zelda", "Nintendo's response to Final Fantasy", "the next generation of RPGs". Yep, hype existed back in 96/97 when they were priming the waters for this turd. They apparently were pushing the idea that they would deliver an innovative combat system, highly differentiated party members, a deep magic system, and an epic, detailed story.

Things came out a little different when released in 1998. The combat was sort of innovative, but not well thought out. Party members didn't happen. The magic system was all kinds of broken. As for the story, it's like they had a bunch of ADHD kids draw stuff and then used that as the storyboard. It makes Bethesda or Bioware look like geniuses. It bombed critically and financially when put in the context of the expectations and hype, but was spared terrible reviews and sales for one saving grace; 70% of games on the Nintendo 64 were utter shit so this piece of shit looked slightly more appealing in comparison. I guess telling grandma to get little Timmy Quest 64 as a Christmas gift was probably better than telling her to get him Scooby Doo 64, Pokemon Snap, or some other franchise/gimmick game.

Without further adieu....

It's intro time!



Oh man, magical spirits! That's it honey! We're moving there this instant!



That could be a good place to raise a family. The kids could play around with witchcraft and other satanic things while looking like model Christians because they're doing it in a monastery.



I wonder if the Queen has paparazzi problems...



Gee...I wonder if he's a bad guy.....



I have a feeling all that is about to change.....



See....piracy is bad. It makes people fall under an evil spell.



So who better to solve them than a seven year old?

I wish I was kidding....



Menu screen FUCK YEAH!

First, and-

-sounds awesome. Looking forward to this, ERM. Why does the protagonist have an erection in his hair?

Chapter I: Welcome to Earth! *shits pants*

Welcome to the first chapter of Let's Play Quest 64. Here, we go through a poorly written and explained crash course into the world of Celtland and Brian's quest.

Hope you liked that awesome slideshow intro by the way, because that's the closest thing you're getting to a cutscene from this game. The game starts with this terribly written word vomit.





If you haven't guessed already, our protagonist is of the mute variety. Get used to seeing people vomit up . And here he has not only a "Find Daddy" quest, but a "Find the magic MacGuffin" quest. How revolutionary.



Brian probably wonders what exactly it is this "Z Button" is. He probably thinks it's a repressed memory of the abbot touching this fellow when he was younger.



I guess the abbot.....I mean the "Z Button", did a lot of that.



Ten bucks says graphics whores and console fanboys would have pointed to how next-gen this was ten years ago.



Low polygon count horse says hi.



Ahh...the peaceful starting town. Perhaps some people here have interesting things to say.



Nope.

And are the monsters the MPAA and RIAA?



Well, well, well. How often did he "visit" you? An what exactly do you mean by "bring prosperity"?



Brian meets a strange trouser-less woman in the inn who assures Brian they'll meet again. I thought this game was rated E, but I guess that doesn't stop her from treating everyday like no-pants day and wearing a shirt that would be typically found on either a 70's supertramp or a Ye Olde Renaissance Faire slut...I mean lady of the night.



Upon leaving the city, Brian is accosted by bunny Jehova's Witnesses. Brian smacks them down soundly with the power of *insert pagan diety here*.



Circus rejects are also no match for Brian, who beats those gypsy scum up with his stick.



Oh look, a spirit Brian can grab. These help him power up his different magical elements,and get new spells as well as make the ones he has more potent. You can also get these by killing enough baddies to effectively "level up". This is one of the redeeming factors of the game, you can still level up without fighting much.



Now Brian can heal himself. This makes the game 15 times more playable. If you don't pickwater as one of your primary elements, you're probably boned unless you grind agility and defense stats for hours on end. Yay broken character system!



Brian get's his fortune told at a hut along the way. I thought fortune teller's made their money by telling you good things spliced in with stuff any perceptive person could tell by looking at you, not that a whole mountain of shit was about to fall on you.



The enemy design is pretty shitty at times.

Yes....those are living piles of dung.

And I took really shitty screenshots, so the next chapter will go into a bit more detail about gameplay and combat. Also, there's a huge section of nothing but combat after this ends.



And Brian makes it to the town of Dondoran.




He kind of wonders how to town survives with everybody being so generous. Maybe communism does work in magical fantasy land?

The reality of it is, Quest 64 doesn't have any sort of economy or monetary system in place. The only items you have are consumables for your HP, MP, and status effects and you can only get them in chests, or from certain people if you have none of the item they are giving away.



This man speaks funny.



Supertramp Shannon found her way to the Dondoran Inn. She still didn't find some pants.



This is the tenth person who has said something about this robber. I wonder if I'll have to fight him....



And Brian goes into the castle.



While looking for things to steal...I mean liberate for the good of the people, Brian runs across the king's bitchy daughter. Pants are also not her thing.




Someone drank their Carnation Instant Bitch™ today.






The slightly addled king rambles on about four different things and tells Brian to go kick a robber's ass for him. Some "hero to his people", getting a seven-year old to do the job for him.



So Brian enters the dark and spooky forest.




Where he is accosted by monsters slightly less stupid than living crap.



He also finds many more spirits. He doesn't have a hunger meter though. He went through spirit Jenny Craig.



Finally he finds the robber's hideout.



Look's like the robber has the Beastmaster vibe going on...with all that fur.



And he has earth magic.....kind of badass.



And any badassery has been killed. "You humans"? You know what that means right? He's some furry otherkin who got it's disgusting mitts on a powerful magic artifact. Brian must purge the uncleanliness.

Boss fight time!



Brian tells the furry to suck on his wind cutter....then promptly takes it back, realizing the connotations. He still shoots off the wind cutter level 2 spell...he just doesn't have a snappy one-liner to go with it.

Time to talk a little about the elements. The furry is an earth element monster, sohe's resistant to earth attacks, weak to wind, and takes normal damage from fire, water, and stick.



This is one of the furry's two attacks. He shoots a magma laser or something at Brian. It's easy to dodge, and this adds to how easy it is to dunk him with wind magic that works well at range.

Oh yeah....and this game is turn-based too. Just wait for Chapter 2.



The furry closes the gap and rockjaculates allover the place.



Brian uses his large cutter spell and tells Solvaring to yiff in hell.



He vanishes and Brian claims the Earth Orb. He wonders if he will inevitably find wind, water, and fire equivalents along his journey in an equally coincidental manner on his

quest for the book and daddy.

Nah....what are the chances of that?




If he was just ten years older....then he'd probably be getting some right now. Alas, he faces the terrible fate of all child heroes....having his best days be his earliest and probably end up like Macaulay Culkin.



Well....must suck to be those knights now.

"Oh hey Sir-Couldn't-Do-What-A-Seven-Year-Old-Could!"

"You're township is under attack by bandits? Why don't you askthe local kids for help?"

"You have a small pecker" (What? News travels slow in Medieval-like times sosome hecklers might need stock insults).



Protip; The orb, it does nothing.




Now that's more like it.



Unfortunately Brian forgets that he is physically incapable of taking anything not in a treasure chest or given to him via text interaction. So no gold and riches for him.

To be continued.[/b]

A country where girls do not wear pants? Sign me up!

I've heard a lot of bad things about this game but I never imagined that it would be that terrible and painful to the eyes. God-fucking-damn.


Gollum?

oh lawd this was probably the first rpg i ever played, but I don't think I made it much farther than the first boss

I was DESPERATE for an RPG for the N64 after Square decided not to make games for it, and this game is what I got. I pretty much stopped console gaming after beating it.

However, I pumped fire and never had the problems you say for people who don't go the water route. I probably raised it high enough to get some healing, but I recall having a difficult time up until I learned fireball or something like that, and then I mostly just fried everything in my path until the end game.

Shannon is supposed to wear pants, it's a very singular emulator bug.

Also, bump Earth. For Avalanche, I think it is, makes the game a cakewalk.

DefJam101 said:

Why does the protagonist have an erection in his hair?

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Don't know. Maybe he wants to be Quail-Man?

Gragt said:

A country where girls do not wear pants? Sign me up!

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Yeah, but it's a communist shithole full of goofy, dancing monsters. Gotta take the good with the bad I guess.

Fat Dragon said:

I've heard a lot of bad things about this game but I never imagined that it would be that terrible and painful to the eyes. God-fucking-damn.

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I should find some of the soundtrack and post that so people can get the full experience. While some of it is okay, most of it is terrible. Luckily I have the Arnold Schwarzenegger concept album to keep me from going completely batshit insane.

Lord Chambers said:

However, I pumped fire and never had the problems you say for people who don't go the water route. I probably raised it high enough to get some healing, but I recall having a difficult time up until I learned fireball or something like that, and then I mostly just fried everything in my path until the end game.

Click to expand...

Well, it's just that some of the ridiculous dungeons last so long that you will get worn down without healing. And the limited items help to cement this.

Admiral jimbob said:

Shannon is supposed to wear pants, it's a very singular emulator bug.

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YO RUINNIN' MAI FUNNAHS!

Also, bump Earth. For Avalanche, I think it is, makes the game a cakewalk.

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Between that, and the invincibility spell, yeah.

Chapter II coming up soon.

Ed, you are a better man than I will ever be. Best of luck, dude.

Bookmarked.

Re: SGLF: Let's Play Quest 64! (56k rape ITT)

Edward_R_Murrow said:

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Sig material right here.

Bookmarked. Teenage Atheist Ninja Squadron was damn fun, so there's plent of street cred to begin with.

Well, now we know from where FO3 stole the brilliant main quest idea, too bad it could not imitate as successfully the writing quality...

I'll be watching this, keep it up.

Jeez Ed, what the hell is this penance for? Mass murder?

Chapter II: Getting Mechanical

Last time, our seven-year-old hero had just killed a furry and saved a kingdom from being subjugated to death by yiff.



Uhhhhh...okay. It's not like he can do anything with it or sell it. He's kind of stuck with it you know....



Now Brian heads out of Dondoran and back into the forest to take the road that was blocked by furry magic. Note that this place is called the "Holy Plan". Yeah, somebody forgot to buy an "I". It's one thing to have a typo in a dialogue, it's another thing to make one on the map screen, where testers should notice these things.



Time to head into a long, incredibly drawn out monster hack.

Remember how I promised to go into more detail regarding the mechanics? Well, since there's jack shit to do in this section other than that, here goes.



See the orange ring? That's the boundaries of the combat zone. The blue ring is Brian's movement area. You can make him run around in there to your heart's content. Help fight childhood obesity and take advantage of it.



If any of Brian's movement area crosses over the boundary o the combat zone, you can go in and escape combat by ending your turn in there. This comes in handy against the endless enemy swarms.



This is what it looks like to select an element. I press the element button and this menu comes up. All elements have a stage one spell automatically ready and a set of stage two spells that can be picked out with a press of another element button.



Here's some stage 3 spells that become selectable after a stage two spell is selected.



And here's a selected stage 3 spell.



Time to throw a lot of wind cutters with the level 3 version of the spell. This will cost me 3 MP, where a stage two spell would cost 2, and a stage 1 spell only 1.



And we'll get some decent damage. Woo-fucking-hoo. Our turn is over after an action, whether it be a spell, a staff attack, using an item, or just moving and ending the turn.



This is during the enemies' turn. Sometimes enemy attacks give the player an opportunity to move and dodge. Here I can make Brian dodge this poorly textured rock.



Some attacks don't give much of an opportunity. Here, Brian feels what it's like to be an enemy in a Mario game.



Certain spells are better for certain occasions. This large cutter spell is shorter range than a wind cutter and only hits once, but deals good damage and can hit multiple foes.



When all else fails, you can go Andrew Jackson on enemies' asses and beat them with your stick. Your stick does damage in proportion to your HP, and the more you attack with your staff, the more you level up the HP stat.



And this is Brian afflicted with a status effect;in this case being frozen. He can't move and can't turn. There are others like this, such as restriction, being silenced, and stats being lowered.



This is the stat screen. Pretty fucking sparse, eh?

HP is pretty obvious. You get more max HP by hitting things with your stick, taking hits, and beating bosses.

MP is also pretty obvious. You get more max MP by using lots of MP.

Defense reduces the damage you take. More defense equals less damage. You get more defense by taking damage.

Agility makes it so when you fail to dodge attacks, they have a chance to "miss" that is higher for greater agility. You get more of this by dodging attacks.



And this is the element screen. Tracks how many points your have in each and how close you are to getting another point to put in via baddie killing.

Well...that's the combat mechanics. Now on with the Let's Play.



Oh look, a goofy snake. This shouldn't be hard....



Brian learns that big snakes can be painful...



He definitely can't handle two long, thick serpents at once...at least not yet.



He makes it through monster land and to the docks. There he finds an inn and the supertramp at it. Brian really wonders how she gets everywhere so quickly. She must have that super-awesome teleportation magic. Why the hell didn't they give this to the player?



Before setting off across the water, Brian checks his map and notices a forest he didn't go in. He knows he has to go there, because optional areas always mean nice loot, even if it means going through a ton more godawful random encounters. I mean...a spooky forest won't be filled with a bunch of dirty tree huggers and stoned Wiccans. No....there's monstahs and loot!



On his way, an angry furry (slimey?) French monarch attacks him.



In the forest are a bunch of spirits and...surprise, surprise; more monsters! Goth-blins and a toilet-paper-monster or two attack.



Unlike what the hippies say, trees are not all wonderful things. Does that tree look like it would be nice to hug? Obviously there is a clear cut solution to this encounter.



Yeah, that's a plant with Botox lips called a "Hot Lips". It attacks you with a fire pillar from it's stem. Yes, a plant with lips that uses fire. I wish I was making this up.

And this screen makes it look like one of the plants is going down on the other. Fucking hell....



Oh look, a scenic vista of terrible texturing and awful draw distances. Soon graphics whores everywhere will look back on Oblivion and Crysis the way everyone looks at this. And by soon, I mean (probably) already.



Brian runs into a hippie chick living out in the woods with a vacant expression on her face talking about some "Blue Cave". Sounds like a pretty bad trip. Time to steal her stuff.

Protip; the Blue Cave is godawful. Probably one of the worst dungeons ever made.

Also Brian should get the nickname outboard, because he's the perfect height to motorboat just about every woman in this game.



Brian tries to drown himself. Alas, he can't, so his adventure continues as he leaves the forest to head back to the dock.



He runs into two big, brown cocks and beats them off.



After fucking up the tough forest monsters, these snakes are a breeze. He puts him on ice and then beats it to death. IN YO' FACE SHITTY PIXELS!

Then he boards the boat.



"I'm looking for my father...you know, the middle aged guy...seen him around?"



He walks into the cabin and then decides this place is pretty shitty and decides to wait out the rest of the trip on the deck.

But when he goes out...




We're already there. What a coincidence! And Bria gets the feeling that the mentions of the wind and water going all wrong mean he's going to fight some wind and water people.

Protip; This means most of the monsters in the area will be resistant to my magic. Yay....

Also....the lake is flowing? What the fuck? I'm no expert, but I wouldn't say lakes "flow". Now turn this thread into a ten page debate about the semantics of "flow".

Next time: The first "dungeon" and a whole lot of other crap!

"I'm looking for my father...you know, the middle aged guy...seen him around?"

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wow, i can't get over the pink dialogue text. I know those Japanese are weird as hell, but wtf?

Ed, what on earth possessed you to start this undertaking? I think you should start and end each post with a morale meter (scale of 1-10, perhaps) so we can properly monitor your progress.

I liked Quest 64 when I first played it, but thought it was pretty silly that your melee attacks become the best choice later in the game.

This is looking to be a great LP, ERM. I remember some of the hype for this game (especially after Square left Nintendo), but I never got an N64 because I was thoroughly addicted to my PS1, so I found this LP particularly fascinating (and depressing)

I even remember when Square demo'd a 3D Final Fantasy on N64 hardware before finally leaving them for Sony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5l0A3zzEgw.

I still don't understand, to this day, why the fuck Nintendo decided to stick with cartridges instead of evolving to CD's like an intelligent company. "Our games are smaller, less impressive, and cost more - but at least they load faster!"

Occasionally Fatal said:

wow, i can't get over the pink dialogue text. I know those Japanese are weird as hell, but wtf?

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It's an emulator bug, the original game had regular black text.

Chapter 3: Revenge of the Shit

When we last left our hero, he had just stepped off someone's poop deck onto a new area of Celtland.



Oh look, fancy stairs. Perhaps this means tourism is established well enough here to have security to stop all the monsters.

Nope.



Somebody fed Gizmo after midnight and gave him water.



The Jehova's Witness hares.....they breed quicker than Catholics.



This little piggy got stabbed by ice knives.



Throwing puppies off cliffs? That's nothing on drowning demon dogs with water geysers.



Hmmm....a town. Perhaps they will point Brian in the right direction....



This is Larapool, the water themed city. Yay theme towns!



Brian really wanted this guy to kick someone into he well, be he wouldn't do it. Sad.



How emotionally touching and well written. I'm sure some fanboy embellished this and other things to make Quest 64 sound good in a GameFAQs review.



Hmmmm...looks like the pantless supertramp is pointing me towards Normoon, the wind theme town.




This woman is pointing Brian towards Normoon as well. She also blathers incoherently even more. I'm just going to leave this here for the curious...

http://i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10 ... ap0012.jpg
http://i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10 ... ap0013.jpg
http://i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10 ... ap0014.jpg
http://i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp10 ... ap0015.jpg



Brian checks his map and sees that the fastest way to Normoon would be through the forest,so he sets off towards that way. Because it's not like jRPGs don't love making the easy route coincidentally blocked....



On his way he is attacked by little girls who spear him with ice knives while hopping backwards. What the fuck Japan?



The gate to get to the other end of the bridge is barred. Brian guesses that perhaps talking to the people inside the house nearby will help open it.



Unfortunately it doesn't. They say the bridge is destroyed, when it most clearly isn't. They're probably government/union workers....



Oh joy....a "dungeon". And by "dungeon", Quest 64 means running through a long-ass corridor with increased monster spawns. Fucking hell....



On the way he runs into a goat who moons him and causes an avalanche.



What a foreboding cave entrance....



This is what a third of the cave looks like. Amazing.



This is what another third looks like.



This section is filled with tough wyverns. These like to spit fiery loogies on Brian, and ejaculate huge pillars of flame. And when I say the cave is filled with them, I mean every ten steps makes you run into one of these bastards.



As you can see...they hurt, making healing a must. It's so fun to spam cast heal 7 times after every battle.....



These are the other things in the cave. Furries who like to dress as crow people, and the rejected blood-flavor Jell-O that the company decided to dump in this fantasy world after the sole niche interested in purchasing it, vampires and vampire people, were found to be allergic to it. Something about the Jell-O being alive and vicious didn't sit too well with the company lawyers too well either.



More cave. Breathtaking.

Not shown: 70 or so fucking random encounters......



And more cave. Awe-inspiring.

Not pictured: Monster bukkake.



Did I mention there were a lot of wyverns?



Yay, no more wyverns!

It looks as though the cave is changing into the Jolly Green Giant's......beanstalk.



This really wasn't appropriate for a penis joke because, holy shit, would this be one messed up penis. I've heard of a curve problem....but never a zig-zag.



The cave then opens up into a green section. Don't let my bad screenshot fool you, it's still essentially a corridor. Wouldn't want to be having any fun, now would we?



More brown corridors. Now this is exciting!



And more.



Yep....you guessed it. More drab locales devoid of anything interesting.



DON'T GO INTO THE LIGHT!!!!



And finally that shithole is done with. One dungeon down, 4 more to go, all but one far worse than Cull Hazard was.

Next up; Normoon, the Windward Forest, sodomy, Joseph Stalin, and a tupperware party.

This is kinda what Wizardry 8 would look like if a bunch of 8 year-olds on LSD had developed it.

Heres where I would haVe stopped playing the game if I had played it when I was younger, monster spawning is lame.

DefJam101 said:

This is kinda what Wizardry 8 would look like if a bunch of 8 year-olds on LSD had developed it.

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And probably played like too. And I don't think the most trippy enemies have even showed up yet.

Slenkar said:

Heres where I would haVe stopped playing the game if I had played it when I was younger, monster spawning is lame.

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Me too, except I'm feeling masochistic again.

Oh yeah...and post more, people. I'd like to have the updates a bit more spaced out if possible so they don't totally jam people's internet tubes like a clogged artery. Make it easier on people's bandwidth and all that.

Chapter 4 coming up soon (basically as soon as it hits page 2...yay testing the ransom model!), and Chapters 5 and 6 won't be far behind.

Edward_R_Murrow said:

DefJam101 said:

This is kinda what Wizardry 8 would look like if a bunch of 8 year-olds on LSD had developed it.

Click to expand...

And probably played like too. And I don't think the most trippy enemies have even showed up yet.

Slenkar said:

Heres where I would haVe stopped playing the game if I had played it when I was younger, monster spawning is lame.

Click to expand...

Me too, except I'm feeling masochistic again.

Oh yeah...and post more, people. I'd like to have the updates a bit more spaced out if possible so they don't totally jam people's internet tubes like a clogged artery. Make it easier on people's bandwidth and all that.

Chapter 4 coming up soon (basically as soon as it hits page 2...yay testing the ransom model!), and Chapters 5 and 6 won't be far behind.

Click to expand...

Fuck you! I refuse to give into your ransom bullshit!

Oh...crap.

Ugh, damn this game's graphics are just painful to look at. I've only played a few N64 games (Mario 64, the two Zeldas, and Banjo Kazooie) but those looked way better than this piece of shit.

This looks like FF7 graphics only with the camera zoomed up closer. *barf*