The battle to release the best fighting game on the Nintendo 64 was not a great fight. It did however have a lot of contenders. This was at the height of the Mortal Kombat craze. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie. The problem is they just didn’t care to put in any real effort. All you had to have was a fairly competent graphics engine, render a butt load of blood, and throw in some violent fatalities and you were in it. That’s the whole formula. Rinse, lather, and repeat. Today we’re going to take a look at one of these Mortal Kombat clones on the Nintendo 64. Here’s Mace: The Dark Age! Let’s jump in and take a look.
For a game that’s clearly a cookie cutter release an unusual amount of effort went into drafting the story. Mace: The Dark Age takes place in a fantastical version of our world in the 12th century. A magical being called Asmodeus wields the legendary mace of Tanis. Several nations send their strongest warriors to kill him and obtain this all powerful weapon for themselves. This leads to a tournament, and said game. You have a host of different characters and the roster is actually surprisingly diverse. Fighters such as Lord Deimos and his fire red armor really stand out. You also have your generic regionally based fighters, as well as the token girl characters. They’re actually pretty well done, and the roster here is better than in your typical Mortal Kombat clone.
The bar was already pretty low when it came to these violent fighting games at the time, but Mace: The Dark Age manages to pass just under it. This isn’t actually a bad thing. The game had its audience at the time of release, and I’m sure Mace scratched the itch for them back then. Now it’s just funny, but not in a bad way actually. I found some of the very violent endings and finishing moves mildly entertaining because of how low brow they are. Typically it’s a fine line for me in this regard. Somewhere between the Executioner character’s special move of throwing decaying heads at the opponent and the skeleton that can barf projectiles left me mildly amused.
It’s pretty clear just who the developer was targeting by taking a mere glance at the character roster. You’ve got the aforementioned Executioner and skeleton characters, as well as a brick wall Viking guy, ninja, knight, two women wearing very few articles of clothing, and more. If you like your video games politically correct then Mace isn’t the fighter for you. While it’s lacking in originality I did really appreciate a few of the characters. Lord Deimos in particular is cool to me even as an adult. I also really appreciate the fact that he’s more evil than the actual final boss. A few of the characters’ storylines are actually focused around Deimos and getting revenge.
Alright so enough about the characters and setting, sheesh! Mace: The Dark Age is a 3D fighting game with gameplay that’s pretty typical for this genre in that time period. It’s not free-roaming. You move either left or right with only sidestep buttons to take advantage of the three dimensional space. You face opponents in a series of 1-on-1 matches Most (but not all) characters have a weapon which is used for their primary attacks. The A, B, and C buttons are designated for your attacks and holding a direction while hitting one of these inputs gives you different results. In typical fashion characters have a set of special moves, with your typical directional sweeps and whatnot. Finishers offer nothing new, but it’s nice that they were included.
If there’s one thing that Mace: The Dark Age does uniquely it’s in how the characters control. The bigger guys have obvious weight to them which reflects how they move and jump in gameplay. Few other fighters manage this so significantly. A good example is Ragnar. While playing as this character I had to plan for the fact that he has a split second of recovery time more than anyone else when he jumps because he lands so hard. It’s pretty neat actually. I was also impressed with the environmental hazards. Not every stage has them, and some are varied, but they’re awesome when they come in to play. It really keeps you on your toes when the game throws different things at you.
If you’re with me up to this point then Mace probably sounds like an amazing fighting game. Well, a fun one at least. Unfortunately it has some pretty bad issues I haven’t covered yet. The gameplay engine just isn’t smooth. Fighting games need a smooth framerate, and Mace doesn’t. It’s sub 20 frames per second, and that makes everything look and feel stiff. Normally I can handle this, but Mace has overly slow animations. To truly love a fighting game I need to be able to get into a flow. I couldn’t do that here. Typically I can handle recovery times but here I felt like I was sitting around waiting. I tried to adjust by using quick attacks when I needed to and saving the slow ones for when I could. It didn’t work that way. I’m normally good at fighters but this one isn’t that fun.
Mace: The Dark Age is one of the best looking games on the Nintendo 64. That is, if you can get past the low frame rate. Character models are full of detail and the transparencies are wild. The backgrounds are very detailed and some have a lot of moving parts. Lord Deimos himself has one of the best character models I’ve seen on the platform. Honestly, I’d take less details if that could mean the game would run more smoothly. The soundtrack is kind of poor to be honest. The music fits into that hard rock and borderline grunge style. It’s not really my thing, and the compression is really bad here. All of the music sounds really muffled to be honest. Mace sounds pretty bad if I’m being blunt.
I went in expecting Mace: The Dark Age to be hot garbage. I surprised myself by enjoying some of the aesthetic choices and pointless violence. Yeah, I’m still a teenage boy at heart. It could have been a really fun game if the developers had focused a little more on the gameplay engine instead of graphics. It has some good things going for it, but honestly, it’s not hard to see why Mace has been long forgotten.
