Turok: Rage Wars

Turok: Rage Wars is a first-person action shooter made for the Nintendo 64 by Acclaim Studios Austin (formerly Iguana Entertainment) as a spin-off from the main storyline of the Turok series. Unlike the previous entries, which were built around linear campaigns hunting dinosaurs and alien enemies across sprawling environments, Rage Wars focuses mainly on combat arenas geared toward multiplayer — the player picks from characters spanning the whole series, including Turok himself as well as his adversaries from earlier games, and fights on enclosed maps full of weapons, power-ups and hidden shortcuts. Like the previous entries in the series, Rage Wars also relies on thick fog covering the more distant parts of its maps, something N64 developers commonly used to hide the console's limited draw distance — in enclosed arenas, though, it comes across more as an atmospheric touch than a technical compromise.

The game therefore works more like a fast arena shooter in the spirit of then-popular titles such as Quake or Unreal Tournament, transplanted into Turok's world, rather than a continuation of the dinosaur hunter's story. The single-player campaign mainly serves as a string of fights against gradually tougher opponents while unlocking new characters and arenas, while the game's main focus is on local multiplayer with split-screen for several players, which in 1999 was a common and popular way to enjoy a shooter with friends on the Nintendo 64 without an internet connection. Progressing through the single-player portion also unlocked further fighters and arenas, giving the game a reason to be played through in full even by those who didn't happen to have three other people around for a split screen.

Why play it: Turok: Rage Wars will appeal to Nintendo 64 fans looking for a fast arena shooter for playing with several people on one console — it's a lighter spin-off from the main series, built purely on action and combat, with no need to know the earlier story-driven entries or follow an elaborate plot.