South Park Review (Nintendo 64, 1998)

In 1998 I was in junior high and South Park was all the buzz. Everyone was watching it. South Park was the Beavis and Butthead of that era. First person shooters were all the rage, and my friends and I were absolutely enamored with the first game in the license announced for the Nintendo 64. We watched trailers, gameplay videos, basically everything we could get our hands on. We legitimately expected it to be the next Goldeneye 007 because it was a first person shooter with multiplayer. Then it was released. I couldn’t afford it at the time and rented the game, and didn’t like it. Today I decided to take another look. So here’s our review of South Park for the Nintendo 64.

Activision was the developer behind the game, and it’s clear they had a pretty good grasp of the source material. It’s also pretty evident that Matt Stone and Trey Parker had little to do with it. The game begins with a great re-creation of the South Park opening sequence with 3D polygonal graphics. Aliens have landed in South Park and are trying to take over. It’s up to the boys; Eric, Kyle, Stan, and Kenny to stop them. That’s who you’ll play as; you can choose.

It doesn’t matter much which character you select because they all play pretty much the same. The major difference is the sound clips you’ll hear during gameplay. As I mentioned earlier the game is played from a first person perspective. You have two basic control settings; one uses the C-buttons for movement and the analog stick for aiming and changing directions. The other is more traditional for the system and the camera buttons are strictly for strafing and looking up/down.

The first problem rears its head immediately. There just isn’t much diversity in this game. You wander through stages that are shaped like corridors (the fact that they’re mostly outside circumvents the issue a bit, but not totally). You face only one type of enemy per stage. The first few levels are evil turkeys, then you get clones of Big Gay Al, then toys, machines, etc. It’s always the same thing. The stages even have gates to new areas that aren’t lifted until you defeat a certain number of foes. It gets old really quickly. Different objectives would have gone a long ways.

Regular enemies take a few hits, but each stage is littered with ‘tank enemies’ which are just bigger versions of the standard ones. Should you fail to take them all out you have a penalty stage where the remaining big foes are destroying buildings around the town of South Park. This is the game’s one and only unique feature, and it’s pretty small overall.

In fact, all of the stages are the same thing. You defeat a certain number of foes, and then advance, and do it all over again. The appeal of wandering around a three dimensional version of the town wears out fast. The fact that most of the levels take place in the same area does the game no favors. By the time you reach the end of the first few stages you’ve seen ninety percent of what South Park 64 has to offer.

The game does however make pretty good use of the license. The developers had a pretty clear idea of what South Park was about back then, and there are a lot of details that fit the universe well. Making selections from the menu gives you fart noises, you’re constantly hit with voice samples from the character you’ve chosen, and the story sequences fit right in with the show.

Weapons are limited. You only have a few different to choose from. These include snowballs, egg launchers, Terrance and Phillip fart grenades, and a few others. They fit in with the show but there isn’t a big enough selection. There’s even a ‘yellow snowball’ power-up that is good for a few giggles but not much else. You can restore your health by finding a box of ‘cheesy poofs.’ Like I said, the developers at least knew the license well, but they weren’t up to the task of making a good game.

The big deal when this game was first released was the graphics. It used the expansion pack, and to great effect. South Park 64 looks absolutely incredible given the hardware. The characters and enemies of course are low poly given the source material but they all looked amazing at the time. With that said there are some shortcomings. First of all, while the game runs at a pretty high resolution, there’s a whole heck of a lot of fog. The game only displays a few feet in front of the character before it’s a sea of white. This was common in the era, but it kind of fits here due to the snowy atmosphere. I actually still like the graphics given the shortcomings.

Voice samples are a sore spot for most gamers who had a Nintendo 64 console. The cartridge format, with it’s small capacity, didn’t allow for a lot of recorded speech. South Park 64 transcends this. You not only have the opening theme in its entirety but every cut-scene is fully voiced. It’s marred with a bit of static, but sounds pretty good overall. The music itself is original compositions that sound decent but quickly become repetitive. Also, the fart sounds for menu selections do the game no favors.

I had a great deal of nostalgia for South Park 64 going into this review. I can still remember being wowed by the graphics and the immense amount of voice samples in the game. Unfortunately those don’t hold much weight these days. Even back at release it was clear the developer’s heart wasn’t in this one. The game could have been re-branded and would be seen as nothing more than a generic first person shooter back then. It relied entirely on the license, and now that time has passed that doesn’t mean jack. South Park 64 is pretty lame.