 Many of you that are familiar with the channel know that I'm not the biggest fan of the N64, but I would like it a lot more if there were more games like Sin and Punishment. Of course, this is a really easy game to like, I mean just laying back and shooting everything that moves making stuff go boom with all sorts of different weapons and power-ups. It's like the game was custom made for me personally, and it was made by Treasure, who created tons of fantastic games up to this point, everything from Gunstar Heroes to Dynamite Heady to that crazy Yuyo Hakusho fighting game that never left Japan. And sadly, Sin and Punishment also never left Japan, with Treasure teaming up with Nintendo Rnv1 to crank this game out in 2000. But what's weird here is that this game's story is told with English dialogue and Japanese subtitles. So yeah, you don't need to know Japanese to play through this one, and I don't know what's going on with the whole dialogue situation, but it really doesn't matter, because as you can see, as with most Treasure games, the gameplay here is the most important thing. We have a rail shooter in the vein of Star Fox with gallery shooter mechanics in the vein of something like Wild Guns. You can move back and forth, jump and double jump, all while shooting and destroying enemies. Well, we'll jump out at you when you first play this one, however, is the controls. They're, uh, a bit odd. Using the N64 controller, the analog stick controls your crosshair, and either the d-pad or the c-buttons control your character's movement while the z-button fires your weapon. It's weird at first, but it's actually really nice to have the option of playing this one right-handed or left-handed. Not too many games are able to pull that off. You use either the L or R buttons to jump, and you also have two different modes of firing your weapon. There's the free aim mode, where your crosshair is free to go wherever and shoot everything, and there's a locking mode, which automatically targets an enemy once you move your crosshair over it, kind of like holding down the fire button in Star Fox 64. There's a catch, though. Your locked in shots are a bit weaker than if you target the enemy yourself. You also have a melee weapon you can use once a projectile gets near you, and you can send it back to where it came from. That's pretty cool. If you think that control scheme is a bit complicated, well, you have the option to make it even crazier by adding a second player. No, it doesn't add a second character to the screen, unfortunately. Instead, it allows one player to handle weapon fire and the other to handle movement. Yeah, this can turn into a complete cluster bleep very quickly, but hey, what's the point of two-player co-op if not to take turns blaming each other for dying? You get one health bar, and several continues to get through three levels that are broken up into a ton of different stages that play out more like set pieces. The game kind of moves you along from stage to stage, and it's your job to try and survive, and yeah, like most treasure games, Sin and Punishment is reasonably forgiving, but only to a certain extent. Sure, it sucks you only get one life bar, but for every 100 enemies you kill, you earn another continue, so that's cool. I'm honestly not sure if there's a save or password system here, though, because all the menus are all in Japanese, so if you're going to play this one, be prepared to tackle it all in one sitting unless you can read Japanese. Sin and Punishment does a great job making sure this game creates as much carnage as the N64 was capable of, by providing plenty of variety in the level design. At one point you're chasing this crawfish thing, at another point you're flying around on a piece of metal, shooting at these boats, you twist around in the air and shoot some fighter jets, then helicopters come down, man, if there's one thing treasure does well, it's making games that really know how to get that dopamine and adrenaline rush. Although there is some intensely weird stuff that you have to fight too, like whatever this is, birth model? What the hell is that? And that brings me to the story. The Earth is under attack from Ruffians, no, not your average West Ham fan. These Ruffians are aliens that are bred for food, and they've become self-aware and have turned against their masters, and not only that, the military has turned against you too, I guess? I have no idea. I had a hard time making sense of what the hell was going on, but hey, you don't need to, just shoot everything that moves. So yeah, it's easy to ask the question, why the heck weren't there more games like this for the N64? Seriously, this game is freaking awesome, and for what it's worth, it's an easy Top 5 Nintendo 64 game for me. Even though this one never came out in the United States, it did get a sequel on the Wii, titled Sin & Punishment Star Successor, another outstanding game. But yeah, what I especially admire about the original Sin & Punishment is that the game's structure does such a great job mitigating the system's weaknesses by keeping the set pieces, so to speak, shorter by design, so there's not a whole lot of that gray fog here, as well as keeping the polygon count to a minimum so the game plays really fast. Okay, there is gray fog here, but there's only so much the wizards at Treasure could do, but hey, if you ever get a chance to play Sin & Punishment, it's definitely worth playing any way you can. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.