Sometimes, a poor choice in name can give the wrong impression, and can lead to your game being forgotten. On Wikipedia, the N64 Paperboy game is buried as a footnote for the original Paperboy. Even though it shares the same name, it’s a completely unique game, and the third main Paperboy game (the only ones we got after were mobile games). They really should have called this Paperboy 3 or Paperboy 3D (or, if they really needed to, Paperboy 64).

Paperboy is a silly and over-the-top paper delivery game. Your main task is delivering newspapers to certain houses, but that’s not all you do – throwing your newspapers at pretty much anything will get you points. People, animals, objects – committing assault and vandalism is very important. Some of these will not even get you points, but also bonus coins in order to unlock bonus modes. If you deliver all papers, you get given more houses (and time) for your next attempt.

The controls take a bit of getting used to. Holding R or Z will bring up a targeting arrow (starting in different directions), and then you can fine tune your aim. Once you’re used to it, it works really well. However, if you start off the game on easy, you’re in for a horrible experience, as you’re stuck to a thin “path” and can only move slightly to the side (like the original game), and can’t turn around.

But get to the later levels (or pick a harder difficulty), and you can now roam around the levels how you wish, and the game is much more enjoyable.

The game doesn’t really have much depth to it, though, and compared to other full priced N64 games, this really wasn’t a good option at the time of release. It’s still a fun little game, though, and feels like something that would have been great on the XBLA (that just got the original game).

Fun

But when you look beyond the pointless extras and the funky new Ren & Stimpy graphics, it’s the same old Paperboy at heart. If you liked the arcade machine and don’t mind putting up with the fact that you’ll probably finish this in a couple of evenings, this is a reasonably competent, but extremely short-lived update.

Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #36. Review Score: 62%

Remake or remaster?

A re-release would be quite nice.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get the N64 version of Paperboy.