Nagano Winter Olympics ‘98
In which MegaDaffy reviews another Olympics blunder, this time in the form of a video game from 1998. How will it go?
Ok, Get comfortable kids, because it’s storytime again. One night when MegaDaffy was leaving work, he noticed that there was a blue telephone booth near his car that almost looked like one of those telephone booths you would see in London, England. MegaDaffy started to walk towards both his car and the telephone booth, and as he got closer a man emerged from the telephone booth dressed in a suit and tie ,he was also wearing a brown jacket over the suit as well. The man also appeared to be 6’1’’ , not much taller than MegaDaffy, and had brown hair. As Daffy got to his car, the man said to him “Hello my dear boy! I have something for you!” Daffy asked him who he was and the man responded that he was a Doctor [of what I do not know]. Next, I asked him what he had for me and he responded,
“I heard that you were doing a…review you say it was?”
I told this Doctor person that yes I was planning on reviewing as many Olympic games as I could within the month that the Olympics were on [*a goal which I had later failed, but that’s an irrelevant point right now*] and asked why and how he knew this.
“I know all things about time and space, and I wanted to give you a game from your younger days! Back when you first started watching the Olympics and playing these video games as you call them!” The Doctor said to me before handing me a box that was wrapped in brown paper, “Open that when you get home!” he told me before he walked back into the telephone box and disappeared.
Not really thinking about it, I took the box, got back into my car, and went home. The next day, however, I remembered that I hadn’t unwrapped the box that the Doctor fellow had handed me yet. I unwrapped it to find a game that I had remembered playing a long time ago. This game was Nagano Winter Olympics ‘98 for Nintendo 64. Developed by Konami and an unknown company called DiamondDust [a company that I can’t find any information on for some weird reason] and released a month before the actual winter games were aired on TV, Nagano Winter Olympics ‘98 was another sports game whose main goal was to provide a simulation of the 1998 Winter Olympic games [much like how every sports game has worked since the dawn of gaming]. Did it achieve this goal is, as always with my reviews, our question today. Let’s boot up this game that Mr. Doctor gave me and find out. [Disclaimer: While I am aware there is a Playstation version, I have the N64 version and will be reviewing that.]
The game boots up with an opening animation featuring nameless, polygonally-created figures participating in the 12 events that the game offers [we’ll cover those later] interspersed with random shots of Nagano ’98 signs, which in my opinion feels very forced mostly because they just appear without any context to the opening cutscenes and feel like they’re either filling time or thinking you’ve already forgotten what Olympic game you’re playing. Outside of that the opening is OK. It’s there, it’s interesting, and the music is at least decent, but it doesn’t hype you up or get you interested in the game at all. After coming to title screen [depicting the best graphics you’ll see in this game] and pressing start, we come to the menu.
There are two options you can pick to play in this game: Olympic mode [single play] and Championship mode [Play through 7 events that Konami has picked for you]. There are other options on this menu, but they are mostly just saving and loading a game from the Controller Pak [*Yeah yeah, insert Linkara quote here*] and looking at scoring records in the game. Since both of the options that include gameplay have practically the same events, I’ll discuss Olympic mode first and then discuss the slight changes to these events in Championship mode [Editor’s Note: Yes, he played both. Because he has no life and SOMEHOW gets enjoyment out of playing below average games. XD]. Before I continue, I would like to note that I did somewhat enjoy the cheesy, upbeat synth music that plays in both the Olympic mode and main menu :
Olympic mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sfVo3sfRjs&index=4&list=PL07D15DD780899EED
Main Menu:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFGKnk_JLPQ&index=3&list=PL07D15DD780899EED
[Yes, I did a YouTube Search for these songs to prove my point. Don’t judge me.]
We open Olympic mode with a guy running into my house with a torch and accidentally lighting my curtains on fire, just kidding. Actually we start the game with usual question of one player or multi-player gaming featuring the Owl mascots from Nagano ‘98. I thought this added a cool touch to the game, seeing as this was really the only other thing [besides the events themselves] in the game that correlated with the actual olympic games. With that sidenote out of the way, we proceed to see the 12 events that the game has to offer:
-Alpine Skiing Downhill
-Alpine Skiing Slalom
-Ski Jumping K90/K120 [actually 2 separate events]
-Freestyle Skiing Aerials
-Snowboard Halfpipe
-Snowboard Slalom
-Speed Skating 500m/1500m [also 2 separate events]
-Bobsleigh
-Luge
-Curling [eh.]
After picking an event, you get to pick a country to play for in that particular event. Nagano ‘98 offers 16 countries to play as [USA, Canada, Japan, Italy, Great Britain, etc.] in all 12 events. Pick whichever one you want as they all play the same with no real advantages or differences [other than team colors]. There’s also a name entry option that I’ve always liked to have fun with by entering names of actors, actresses, or your friends from the Reviewaverse [*an option where you can find the answer to the question “Can my boss (or my colleagues) ski or not?” LOL*]. You can also write your own name in too, but where’s the fun in that?
Anyways, I’ve babbled on long enough about the basics of the game, let’s actually play something shall we? In the interest of easier reading [and because like me, you probably have the attention span of a rodent], I will break this review up into different sections and review each event separately and give a final conclusion after I discuss championship mode. It’s all downhill from here, folks [“*smooch* Good night Everybody!”-Yakko Warner, Animaniacs]! [Note: I will also break this article into several parts as well, so that you aren’t overwhelmed by a wall of text, and so that I can get what have done for this review out for mass consumption faster.]
Alpine Skiing Downhill
The description of the Alpine Skiing Downhill event is in the name, go down Hakuba mountain [No seriously, that’s the actual name of the mountain. You can see it if look at the signs fast enough before the game starts] on skis as fast as possible. The controls are also very simple, use the control stick [or as the game calls it the 3D stick, don’t ask why, I don’t know either] to move the skier and the A buttons to “edge”, or in simple English, turn left or right harder. Sounds easy right? You’ve played Sony’s Coolboarders and Namco’s Alpine Racer at the arcades and those had the same controls [somewhat] right? One would think that. In actuality, skiing in Nagano ‘98 is like driving a Lamborghini in Need For Speed, or for my non-gaming fans, driving in a truck during a New England winter. Very hard to control, almost to the point of being unresponsive until you are practically holding down the stick in the direction you want to turn. This also leads to it being a bit too easy to crash into either the “wall” [a plastic gate on either side of the track] or the downhill flags on the course. But hey, It’s the Japanese mountainside, at least that looks nice right? Yes, the mountainous background does look very nice and adds a nice, realistic touch to the whole downhill skiing experience. However, the part of the screen that you need to focus on to play the game, namely your skier, the track, and its surroundings, are a blurry mess of colors when you are in motion and look marginal at best when you are standing still or moving very slowly. I’d also like to note that these graphics also hurt my eyes a bit, even though I played this on a nice flatscreen TV in a well-lit room. This is a shame really because this could have been a fun mini-game, but the blurry graphics, which I attribute to Konami most likely rushing the game out for the 1998 games [because I’ve seen and even own games on the N64 that looked nice by 1998-2001 standards], and poor control leave it to be a rather mediocre event. [To be continued in part 2, coming hopefully sooner than this one did. LOL].
RT Gomer Productions 