One of several cancelled 64DD projects, it was known as ‘Maiden of Darkness’ and was in development with series creator Shouzou Kaga at the helm until his departure from Nintendo following the completion of Super Famicom’s Thracia 776 (another Japan-only entry). The game was soon cancelled, although character concepts and other elements were used in the development of The Binding Blade on GBA.
Official word on the game has been rare in the years since, with no known builds existing beyond whatever Nintendo may have locked in its archives. We’ve glimpsed only a single screenshot, in 2015, in the 25th anniversary book The Making of Fire Emblem:
While the series would become known to international players soon enough, and a home console release on GameCube followed Marth and Roy’s Smash Bros. debut, it would have been fascinating to see Intelligent Systems’ 64-bit interpretation and the superlative Ogre Battle 64 some company in the N64’s slim tactical RPG lineup.
#2 – Tekken 64
Of all the games my PS1-owning pals had, Tekken 3 made me most jealous. (Yes, even the slow PAL version.) Die Hard Trilogy was another, and perhaps Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo, but Tekken could have been a good fit on a system that has a few decent fighters to its name, but no solid-gold classics.
It took a while, but eventually the N64 would get versions of PS1 mainstays like WipeOut, Ridge Racer, Tony Hawk’s, and Resident Evil 2 — all of which felt somehow illicit Nintendo hardware — but we wouldn’t get a home console Tekken until…*checks notes*…Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on the Wii U! And that’s still the only non-handheld entry in Namco’s series we’ve gotten.
N64 had a few decent fighters (Rakugakids, Killer Instinct Gold), and Fighters Destiny gives me the warm fuzzies for some reason (Stockholm syndrome?), but it was never a king of fighters. Sort it out, Bamco.
#3 – GoldenEye ‘2’
Nintendo’s patience with Rare when GoldenEye 007 was delayed and eventually released 21 months after the movie paid dividends, with the game selling over 8 million copies in the end. Naturally, Nintendo asked the dev team if they wanted to make a sequel, but they opted instead for Perfect Dark. The restrictions of the IP — not to mention the royalties raked in by the holders of said IP — made pursuing its own property more attractive from both design and financial perspectives.
But let’s imagine for a moment that Martin Hollis and co. did decide to crack on with a Bond sequel. At the time, Tomorrow Never Dies would have been off the cards as the movie was released just three months after GoldenEye (the game). Then again, that didn’t stop EA’s terrible PlayStation adaptation coming out in 1999 – a game we were mercifully spared on N64. But a Rareware take on The World Is Not Enough? It stirs the imagination.
There was an N64 TWINE game, of course; Eurocom’s effort wasn’t bad, but it lacked Rare’s refinement. It eould have been intriguing to see the small Twycross team take a second shot at Bond, putting everything they learned the first time into practice from the start.
Don’t get me wrong, Perfect Dark is great, and notionally a ‘GoldenEye 2’, but it’s not, is it? 007 might have gone to space that one time, but he’s never tussled with aliens; a Bond sequel would have easily strafed around the weakest parts of Perfect Dark (read: all the Skedar bits) entirely by virtue of being earthbound.
