Gex is a series of platformers that started out in 2D on the 3DO before moving over to the PlayStation with Gex 2 in 3D (which was then ported to the N64). While the series is seen as an alright platformer, it’s mainly known for its humour. So how well does the humour hold up?

I think the bigger question is “was the game ever funny in the first place?”. The attempts at humour seems almost entirely disjointed with the game itself, with almost all of it being a random selection of quotes from Gex himself, spoken at random intervals – they have nothing to do with what’s happening on screen and they repeat very quickly. It’s like making a pun when there’s no thyme or plaice for it – it doesn’t work without context.

Most of the rest is in the level names, with the levels themselves being generic themes. There are a few moments, such as Gex in a bunny outfit fighting Elmer Fudd, where the parody creeps in to the actual level, but definitely not enough to be a focus of the game. There’s also a few musical rip-offs, most notably the Indiana Jones and James Bond themes.

For the most part, Gex is a very generic platform game that doesn’t do anything special with its levels. It also has a few crippling issues. It’s extremely difficult to judge where objects are in relation to each other, so you’ll end up missing a lot of jumps because you thought a platform (or Gex) was somewhere else.

The camera is also atrocious – even on manual mode, it likes to try to “correct” itself. This means that when you’re running on a narrow platform, at some point the camera will decide to quickly turn around to be behind you. This may sound good, but it also affects your controls, so before you’ve had time to react to the camera change, you’ve already ran off the side of the platform due to Gex turning in relation to the camera.

Gex doesn’t have enough moves to keep the game interesting. You have a jump and tail attack, along with an awkward to use high jump and a running kick, both not really needed. Sometimes a collectable will be slightly out of reach, but there’s enough in the level to just ignore those ones

He can also climb up walls, but this is only possible on a very small number of walls and the feature is never used for anything interesting.

Enter the Gecko is a surprisingly unimaginative game that is quite annoying to play.

Poor

On the PlayStation, Enter the Gecko is genuinely enjoyable and well-executed, if rather lacking in scope and imagination. But even if this was a perfect N64 version, it would struggle to impress we Nintendo devotees. With the likeso f Banjo and Mario being benchmarks for platforming perfection, Gex 64 appears creatively bereft by comparison.

James Price, N64 Magazine #21. Review Score: 59%

Remake or remaster?

There a semi-emulated remaster of the PlayStation version in the works. At the time of writing, it’s unknown if this will include any of the N64 specific levels.

Official ways to get the game.

There is currently no official way to get Gex 64, but that will change shortly.