Nintendo 64 · 1998
Body Harvest
A 1998 Nintendo 64 action-adventure in which a time-traveling soldier battles recurring alien invasions across five historical regions.
- Publisher
- Midway Games
- Format
- Cartridge
- Genre
- action-adventure game
- Released
- 1998
01
Overview
Players control Adam Drake, who must stop insectoid aliens that return every 25 years to cordon off a region and harvest its human population. The game unfolds across five non-linear settings spanning roughly a century, from World War I-era Greece to a near-future stage, with each region enclosed in a shield that must be broken by destroying alien processors and a shield generator. Core play combines open-world driving and on-foot combat, vehicle hijacking, building exploration, and wave-based defense of civilians, with a civilian-casualty meter that can trigger a mission failure if it fills.
02
Why it matters
Body Harvest is a notable early example of open-world third-person shooter design on a 1998 console, developed by DMA Design, the studio later known as Rockstar North. Its long development history, including a switch of publishers before launch, makes it a distinctive artifact in N64 publishing history.
03
The physical edition
A typical complete copy includes the game cartridge and its outer box, along with any included instruction manual; contents can vary by region and release, so packaging should be verified item by item. North American releases were published by Midway Games, while European releases carried different publisher branding, so box art, labeling, and manual language differ between editions.
04
Playing it today
The game is best experienced on original N64 hardware, where the cartridge plugs directly into the console; it plays as a single-player, long-form action-adventure. Expect dated presentation and some frame-rate drops during heavy combat, but the core open-world loop of driving, exploring, and defending towns remains intact.