Hybrid Heaven for the N64 is turn-based sci-fi wrestling at its finest

destructoid.com:

I remember being intrigued while watching my old roommate play through Hybrid Heaven. In my younger days, I had rented it and written it off for a reason I think is perfectly valid: all the environments look the same. Watching him play through it didn’t prove otherwise. Hybrid Heaven is metallic corridors from eyebrows to toe-hairs. But something about the way he was enjoying it was infectious.

After he completed it, he told me that “he probably wouldn’t have tolerated it without save states.” That is not glowing praise, but the experience was enough to keep Hybrid Heaven rolling around in my head for years until I finally found it for a reasonable price. By now, the game has been built up in my mind that I almost had to play through the entire thing. Good or bad.

It’s a pretty unusual game, Hybrid Heaven. While its visual design is familiar and the gameplay has similarities to other games, it was built as if someone had burned the book of game design to heat their tent. It’s bizarre, and it plays like something that shouldn’t work, almost doesn’t, but somehow does.

It’s a mix between an RPG and a wrestling game. You read right. In a fight, you’re not only able to punch and kick your enemy but also suplex them. You could suplex aliens decades before No More Heroes 3 hit the scene. You start off with a limited moveset, but you learn new moves by letting the aliens perform them on you first. Does that make any less sense than finding luchador masks lying around?

You also upgrade your stats as you go, and the stat system is almost too complex for its own good. Not only do you have a defense and offense stat, but your body and each of your extremities also level up separately. So if you use your right arm a lot (I’m not