Mace: The Dark Age (N64) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
1,315A playthrough of Midway Games' 1997 3D versus-fighter for the Nintendo 64, Mace: The Dark Age.
Played through as Mordos Kull on the default difficulty level.
Mace was always one of my favorite N64 titles, and I feel like it really shows off the strengths of the system. It's a port of the Atari arcade title that came out earlier the same year, and it features most of the same things that any other good 3D fighter did at the time - smooth, detailed graphics, loud and obnoxious soundtrack, moments of gratuitous violence, and an easy to use (albeit somewhat limited) combo system that makes it easy to create flashy fights.
I'm a huge fan of the execution moves - though its totally zoomed out and you really can't see much by the head bouncing away in a spray of blood, there isn't much that satisfies more than the squishy splashing noise that you hear as your blade renders the opponent little more than a pulpy red mist.
It's too bad that this didn't get a PlayStation release, but I always felt that the N64 was better suited to the 3D arcade titles of the 90s. Cleaner graphics (the arcade version ran on a 3dfx chipset, and the N64's image filtering mimics that look well) and the lack of load times often made them feel closer to the originals - now, if only you can ignore how unsuitable the controller is to this type of game...
Oh yeah, and good luck at that last boss. It seems that someone looked to SNK a bit too closely in how to fashion an unreasonably hard last boss that relishes in smashing you into the ground over and over again. There's no real curve leading up to it - it just comes out of nowhere, and unless you're well prepared, Asmodeus *will* destroy you again and again, no matter which of the difficulty settings you choose.
Anyways, it's a really fun fighter that doesn't take itself too seriously, looks great, and is perfect for a quick free fifteen or twenty minutes of distraction.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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