TBT - Space Kids, Their Dog And A Whole Lot Of Ants

I'm willing to bet that most of you knew what game this article would be talking about simply by reading the title. For those of you too young to know, read on to discover a gem lost in time.

In 1999, Rare released a game that would rock the N64's sense of distinctive games—a concept that has yet to be revisited since. That exceptional game was Jet Force Gemini. Looking back now, Jet Force Gemini was one of the most original games conceptually and I'm glad that it had received a fair amount of media coverage.

So what is Jet Force Gemini? The game initiates with a small cinematic that presents you the three protagonists. Juno, a young angry sort of child who's drinking space coffee, Vela, his blue-haired twin sister who doesn't seem to be doing much and lastly, their dog Lupus, who's sporting a trendy space suit with a blaster strapped to his back.  I know exactly what you're thinking: "What the shit?", but it gets better. So if two estranged kids and their gun wielding dog was not weird enough, their ship is attacked by eight-foot tall ants. Yes, giant, blue, gun trotting, ants.  Grammatically, that last phrase may have single handily killed the English language, but that's okay because we're talking about GIANT ALIEN ANTS. Take a moment to ponder on that. Breathe in the extremely awesome revelation I just handed to you on your computer monitor.  Somebody over at Rare paid attention to his strange childhood habit of stomping on ants and turned it into a video game, brilliant!

Furthermore, the game presented me with my earliest recollection of choice in terms of the character you play as, other than fighting games of course. It was your standard third person shooter with some platforming that rewarded you with an interesting storyline and hours of bug-blasting fun. You unlocked several different weapons such as your standard machine gun and the cluster bomb. You dealt with endless amounts of rehashed enemy types. You had your standard blue ant which was the equivalent of any typical grunt but the game covered all their bases in terms of enemies. The green ant was a sniper, red ants did something I can no longer recall, big purple beetles were your heavies and there were even zombie ants. Pause, say that with me.

Zombie......ants.....

In addition, your mission of being a three-man pesticide squad had the ultimate goal to eradicate Mizar, a big mother of a bug. Along the way, you made pit stops on different worlds to save some uncanny Ewok looking bear creatures. I do not recall what the incentive was when you saved these cuddly senseless creatures but I do know that I did not get them all. So there's your replay value right there, go find all the bloody Carebears who've gone into hiding. Nevertheless, it was fun and there was something refreshing about retrieving sentient beings opposed to a gold star or similar objects. That being said, let's sum up all the incredible features: responsive third-person gameplay, lots of guns and unlockables, decent storyline, '90s charm, Carebears, the dog equivalent to the T-800, world to world bug genocide and zombie ants. I realize that you gamers are pondering "Charlie, this sounds amazing, how can it get any better?". Well I'll tell you what makes this even better, Multiplayer!

That is right my friends, multiplayer is large and in charge. Growing up, my father never really gamed alongside me. When he purchased this game for me, he couldn't help but watch me play. It was so unique that he figured what the heck and decided to play the multiplayer. Let me tell you, it was a blast. The multiplayer was excellent because it really used the game's strength to its favor.  With an established responsive gameplay (the game felt good to play), the designers created large square MP terrains with different vertical fields. The level that comes to mind is the abandoned town. There's a series of buildings that you can climb to different levels to either escape, ambush, snipe and troll your opposing player. Not to mention that you can play as all the bloody bugs in the game. The green ant was my favorite while my father always picked the reddish beetle. I remember hours of carnage as we enacted this exo-skeletal civil war.

To summarize: kill the ants, become the ants, kill each other. In all honesty, it was an incredibly enjoyable game and truly endearing to me. My father never played any other game with me since then. If it attracted him to it then it is safe to say that there is something special about it and if you had the opportunity to play it then take the time to reminisce a bit. If you never had the chance to indulge yourself in this fictional world then just remember one thing:  zombie ants.