Game Thoughts: Mischief Makers
There's this game for the N64 called Mischief Makers. It's a side-scrolling action platformer by the company that made Gunstar Heroes and would eventually make Ikaruga. I've never personally met anybody else who's played or heard of this game, but it's been an important part of my own gaming experience.
As a kid, the small town we lived in had a single movie / game rental place, and every weekend my younger brother and I would rent something for the N64 or the PS1. There's a couple games that stand out in my memory, but Mischief Makers is definitely top 10.
We rented this one all the time, but our save would always get deleted, as was the way of rental cartridges of the time. We played through some sections countless times, and often played other peoples' saves to see some of the later bosses. Half of it honestly feels like a fever dream, but to this day any time I shake something a little voice in my head says "shake shake" like the main character in the game.
I've got the game in my collection now and last night my brother showed up for the holidays, so we decided to beat it once and for all.
-The game is absolutely bizarre and very much a product of the experimental N64 days. You play a cyborg girl (Marina) attempting to rescue her maker (Prof Theo) from repeated kidnappings on a planet where everyone and everything has a face comprised of 3 holes which slowly pulsate with a reddish glow.
Your protagonist's powers consist primarily of grabbing, shaking, and throwing. Most levels are stupidly easy and the story is absolutely ridiculous, though hilarious. One level starts with a character (the lost king) asking you to retrieve his favourite tricycle; then, you're dumped into a level where you just hop on said tricycle and mash the right-arrow to escape a collapsing cavern. The first time I beat the level I had lost the tricycle only to have the king say "But where's my tricycle?" and send us back to the start, which had us in stitches.
Another level (one I remember distinctly) is an olympic competition where you need to do a 100m through 400m dash, play ball, do math, and participate in other silly events -- the prize for the festival is of course Prof Theo, who everyone admits they don't actually want except for one guy with a pompadour crying in the background over how cool Prof Theo is.
Most of the boss fights are equally stupid, with some just requiring you to repeatedly grab and throw the boss at the ground over and over. Honestly the game's mostly just goofy levels with the occasional minor challenge.
Then there's the 2 boss fights that had us renting this game over and over as kids which are just amazingly choreographed. The first is a fight with a psychic lizard man and his gigantic dragon son, and you need to catch the fists of the giant dragon and throw them into its own face or at the floating father. It's just super super fun gaming.
Here's a timestamped link to a Youtuber fighting the boss
The second battle that rattles around in my head all the time is one where you ride a cat (which you previously bested in a game of dodge ball) as you do battle with a fox man on a giant fox motorcycle / mech, and you jump up with your cat to ride on the missiles he's firing at you, catch other missiles, then shake them to make them bigger and throw them back. Yeah that's in the game.
Same youtube video as before, different timestamp
The way the game kinda oscillates between completely mediocre (but funny) and wildest shit you've ever seen on the N64 can give you whiplash. That battle is right after the goofy olympic games and is followed by a mind-numbing level involving finding kids in a cave.
We beat the game, getting through many parts we'd never seen before. There were a lot more half-assed levels than good ones, and maybe ONE more boss that met the bar the other two I just mentioned. The ending was pretty stupid, and the very final scene has a countdown in the top left based on how many levels you got perfect on -- we had like 15 of those out of 40 something, so we ended up watching the full finale on youtube.
It's not a good game, and it's not a challenging game, but it's still one of my favorites on the console for the memories associated with it. The little voice in my head will forever be saying a little "shake shake".