I remember having a lot of fun with the sequel to Vigilante 8, Second Offence, but never played the first. The car combat genre seems like something that would do extremely well with online, yet the more recent implementations of Vigilante 8 (as well as Twisted Metal) just never seemed to recreate what was fun about the earlier games – although they just haven’t tried since the 360/PS3 era.

That said, I didn’t find playing Vigilante 8 to be that much fun, although I’m sure multiplayer would help with that. The main mode has you going through five levels blasting enemies. There seems to be two kinds of AI opponents, those that stop in front of you and shoot until they die, or ones that flee to the health pickups whenever they get grazed and are incredibly annoying to deal with.

In each level, you also have a (thankfully optional) objective to protect a random building. A couple of these I failed within the first 10 seconds of a match, due to enemies being spawned right next to them. The levels themselves are quite nice, with good visual variety and destructible buildings. They have a very 60s American feel about them.

Ultimately, though, the game is fairly basic and repetitive. I think a singleplayer mode for a game like this should have different objectives, and even the multiplayer should be more than wiping everyone out.

Fine

Vigilante 8 is a PlayStation game that’s been given the Nintendo cartridge treatment. Having been stung by previously shoddy ports, we approached it with a fair amount of caution. However, developers Luxflux are plainly aware of what makes the N64 tick and have created a game that is the very model of conversion etiquette.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #28. Review Score: 74%

Remake or Remaster?

We do need a new game in this series. Even if it’s a smaller downloadable title. There is a fan-made Unity remaster of the game that incorporates things from both games. It seems quite faithful to the original in terms of feel, so is a good way to try out the games on more modern hardware.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Vigilante 8.