Last summer, I did a live-stream of Doom for the 32X. It was mainly done as a novelty, because the 32X is an interesting piece of gaming history and I hadn’t touched the series in over 20 years. During that broadcast, a viewer asked me if I’d played Hexen. My reply was that I had, but only on the PC. I asked what the best version of the game was and was surprised by his answer: the Nintendo 64 port.

I wondered what exactly made the N64 version of Hexen the superior port. Reading online about it, it turns out that although the game was also ported to the PlayStation and Sega Saturn in 1997, those versions had lower-quality graphical assets, reduced filters on the images, worse lighting, and generally lower framerates. On the other hand, they had CD-quality audio and some FMV sequences. The N64 version kept the graphical fidelity seen in the PC CD-ROM version of the game, had co-op and deathmatch modes of play, and a much smoother framerate by comparison. However, the audio was borrowed from the old floppy version of the PC game and no videos were included. I can see, then, why the N64 version was considered better. Despite having only MIDI audio and losing some video clips, the overall play is much better and, in the end, that’s the most important thing for a game of this nature.

This video here is by no means a complete play of the game. It’s basically a gameplay sample done in full 1080p60 for you to enjoy. I had a lot of fun trying this one out after all these years, and it’s actually a game I wouldn’t mind sitting down and playing through to the end!

I hope you enjoy this one – I had a lot of fun with it. Meanwhile, subscribe, enjoy, and stay tuned!