The Unoffcial N64: A Visual Compendium Review

 

While we have a pretty decent knowledge of all things retro there are always blind spots. Despite the fact we’ve gathered a modest N64 collection together it would be fair to say that we are far from experts when it comes to the console. This latest Bitmap Book seemed a perfect opportunity to remedy that. So with thoughts of short draw distances and weird looking polygons in our head it’s time to take a look at Nintendo's first foray into the world of 3D.

We are reviewing the book via a digital copy so we can’t comment on general build quality. That said all the previous visual compendium we have looked at have been of an excellent standard and we see no reason why that may have changed. As usual, the cover features a host of characters from iconic games which hits the nostalgia button right from the start with everything from Pokemon to James Bond drawing you in.

The book follows the now proven route in terms of content. You get the usual excellent intro full of information to both make you an instant expert and also pique your interest into what’s to come and an excellent selection of interviews from developers and industry veterans of the time such as motion capture expert Remington Scott and Kevin Bayliss from Rare.

The games are mainly presented with a single, well chosen, screen shot spread over two pages with decent amount of text to give further information. Some games do get three or four pages, such as Paper Mario and the selection is pretty expansive with all the titles you would expect and many more obscure ones as well. The interview with Rare is particularly good and gives a key insight into a lot of the systems most iconic games. It's always a pleasure to look through and find games that look interesting to try and hunt down.

Away from the standard games there is also a look at some of the 64DD games such as Doshin the Giant, cancelled cartridges such as Eternal Darkness and some of the peripherals like the Expansion Pak. There’s also an interesting look at the development of the unique N64 controller. This helps to give a fuller and more well-rounded feel to the book and gives some more context behind the technical thought process and aims of the console.

Overall,the N64 Visual Compendium is up to the same high standards of Bitmap Books other releases. We felt that this book in particular gave us a real urge to go and find a lot of these games and add them to our collection. As we weren’t experts on the console in the first place we found it a great way to get a detailed overview of the interesting and diverse back catalogue and also the systems place in the market in term of historical context. We may not have known much about the development of the N64 before this but after reading through we certainly love it more than ever.

 

Store link - https://www.bitmapbooks.com/products/n64-a-visual-compendium?variant=47549388325057