Mischief Makers

Still one of the N64's more unique games, Mischief Makers is a 2D platformer with a focus on shaking and throwing objects and enemies. It's an interesting concept, but becomes tedious coupled with the game's frustrating controls. Whilst the story begins promisingly, its pacing falls flat almost immediately and many of the levels feel fleeting, disconnected and unfinished.

Fun game but way too short. The controls & mechanics take a while to get used to, a lot of them aren't explained very well in lieu of reading the manual, which would be a deal breaker in 2016, but I'm willing to tolerate it here. There's also a problem with the level sequencing, in that some of the hardest levels are in world 2. I think this may have been intentional on the part of the developers to cover up the fact that there are only three worlds after that one, by increasing the difficulty so early on that it takes a relatively long time just to get to the later levels. In general, though, there tends to be a lot of variety in the design of each level, especially after the earlier ones have familiarized the player with the basics of the controls and mechanics - some of the "themes"/objectives are really wild. Unfortunately, far too often ideas are explored which never show up again. The plot is similarly kind of underdeveloped, or at least it takes a long time for it to develop much at all, but it's substantial enough to serve the game's purposes, and there's certainly a lot of funny/bizarre dialog which gives it a very unique charm. On a whole this feels like it was initially envisioned as something much more ambitious in scope, based on the variety of one-time mechanics employed in various levels, etc., but deadlines & hardware limitations prevented it from being taken completely to those ends and so there was a lot of rearranging in terms of pacing etc. to make it seem presentable and not unfinished. It's also disappointingly easy, and doesn't have much replay value at all. Consequently, a lot of more recent evaluations seem to be based more on nostalgia (this was still a relatively popular title for the N64, but then I guess it had such a small library that every release for that console must've been bought by those who owned it simply because there was nothing else to play) than on honest critical evaluation, but I will say that the imagination shown throughout the levels and the ginormous, crazy unbelievable bosses is really impressive, and showcases what the developers were capable of.

Tbh I can't say it any better than the GameSpot review says it, so go read that & you'll basically get the jist of what I mean. It's a good game, but you can tell there was a lot more intended for it than what it ultimately became. If Treasure hadn't recently called it quits I'd say that an expanded remake might be incredibly opportune given the fond reminiscences you can find on the internet from people as old as yours truly.