The Best N64 Games of All Time

Nintendo's biggest cartridge yet at 32 megabytes, up from a planned 16, and you can feel where it went. Playing the ocarina means picking out notes on the C buttons, laid out on the controller in the shape of the instrument's holes, and that decision turns a menu into an instrument. Still the most complete thing on the machine. Nintendo has kept it exclusively to its own hardware, most recently Nintendo Classics in 2021, so the link is Wikipedia.

Every 3D platformer since owes this one the camera it argues with. The analog stick was new in 1996 and Nintendo built a moveset around how far you push it: walk, run, long jump, and the triple jump you chain out of three rising hops. Thirty years on, moving him around is still the good part. Nintendo sells it only on Nintendo machines, most recently in Super Mario 3D All-Stars in September 2020, so Wikipedia gets the link.

Rare took the Super Mario 64 template and tightened it. Click Clock Wood is the proof: one tree, four seasons, and what you plant in spring you climb in summer. A level that remembers what you did to it. Holds up better than almost anything else here, because the worlds are small enough to keep in your head. It's inside Rare Replay now, a compilation Microsoft put out for Xbox One exclusively, and not on Steam. Wikipedia.

Memory is the whole story here. Nintendo made the Expansion Pak a requirement rather than a bonus, because the base machine couldn't hold what it runs: a 72-hour clock winding down in about 54 minutes of real time, and a Song of Time that drops you back at the first dawn with your money gone. Losing three days of work still stings. Nintendo's services have carried it exclusively since, down to the 300th Virtual Console game in North America. Wikipedia.

You needed the Expansion Pak plugged into the console to reach most of this, campaign included, which is a strange thing to ask of a buyer. Rare asked anyway. The Combat Simulator is why it holds up: 30 preset challenges against bots you tune yourself, years before every shooter shipped with them. Its modern home is Xbox exclusively, since the 2010 remaster went to Xbox Live Arcade, and the cartridge original never came to PC. Wikipedia, then.

Four controller ports molded into the front of the console, and this is the game that made them the point. Battle mode drops two to four players into one of four arenas and it's still the best thing here, because the racing itself rubber-bands hard and the split-screen frame rate wobbles. It sold 9.87 million copies worldwide. Wii Virtual Console in 2007, Nintendo Classics in October 2021: Nintendo's own services only, never Steam, so Wikipedia.

About 55,000 copies moved in its first month, a catastrophe, and Nintendo of Europe declined to publish it at all, so THQ handled that. What the money bought is a fight against a giant opera-singing pile of excrement called the Great Mighty Poo, a boss with a health bar and a libretto. Crude, and funnier than it needs to be. Microsoft bought Rare in 2002; the original went into Rare Replay, an Xbox-exclusive compilation. Wikipedia for the link.

First N64 game to support the Rumble Pak, and the peripheral came bundled with retail copies, a hardware launch dressed as a rail shooter. Short, and built to be replayed: hit the right objectives mid-mission and the route branches to planets you didn't see last run. The voice clips are terrible and I can still quote them. Over four million sold, the series' best-seller. Nintendo has kept it, and the Pak, to its own machines exclusively, so Wikipedia.

Sixty frames a second with thirty racers on screen, and everything else was sacrificed to get there: background detail, texture detail, polygon counts that drop away as cars pull ahead. The trade was correct. Nothing since feels this fast, and Death Race, where you ram or pass the other 29 one at a time, is the purest version. Nintendo has published it only to its own hardware, down to a 64DD Expansion Kit sold in Japan in 2000. Wikipedia.

Eight million-plus units, third-best-selling on the machine, and Rare added the multiplayer that did it six months before release. Four players, split-screen deathmatch, and a submachine gun called the Klobb that fires fast, spreads wide and kills nothing. Three-way rights keep it off PC: a remaster died when Nintendo, MGM and Microsoft could not agree a license, and only Xbox and Switch have had it since January 2023. The shooting has aged hardest here, hence ten. Wikipedia.

Intelligent Systems built this after Nintendo went to Square, who had made Super Mario RPG, and the result is a turn-based game that never lets you idle. Timed action commands put a button-press on the right frame behind every attack and every block, in battle after battle, and it keeps a long RPG awake. Flat cut-out characters standing in 3D rooms confused people in 2000 and look deliberate now. Its re-releases have gone only to Nintendo's own services, so Wikipedia.

Masahiro Sakurai pitched it to Satoru Iwata as a prototype called Dragon King, and the idea that survived is the scoring: no health bar, just a damage percentage that climbs until a hit sends you off the screen. Twelve fighters, four of them locked. Over five million copies by 2001. Its own sequels have eaten it. Released to Nintendo hardware exclusively, down to China's iQue Player in November 2005, so Wikipedia.

Rare published this one itself in November 1997, shifting roughly 4.5 million copies, a million in the US inside three weeks. Three vehicles, car and hovercraft and plane, an overworld you unlock by winning, and a pig-wizard named Wizpig at the end. Better structured than Mario Kart 64; worse to actually race. Microsoft paid £375 million for Rare in 2002, then Nintendo published the 2007 DS version. An owner on each side, and it never came to PC. Wikipedia.

Water that is transparent and reflective at once, done with the N64's alpha blending, and it still reads better than water two console generations later. Red buoys pass on your right, yellow on your left, and each one taken correctly lights an arrow and hands you speed. Reviewers called it the best use yet of the analogue stick. Small game, high skill floor. Nintendo's re-releases run only through its own services, most recently Nintendo Classics in 2022, so Wikipedia.

Acclaim got the rights by buying Valiant Comics in 1994, then leaned on this game to save the company. The N64 could not draw the whole jungle, so the limit became the atmosphere: distance fog everywhere, enemies resolving out of it just before they are on you. Tense in 1997, wearying now, which is why it is last. Steam sells a game called Turok, but that is Nightdive's 2015 remaster, and the 1997 cartridge is not sold there. Wikipedia.