The Nintendo 64 was the very first game console my family owned. I don’t quite remember how my sister and I happened into possession of one, but the specifics are immaterial; the important part is that the console had a truly massive impact on both my overall life and my developed tastes in gaming, and I know for certain I’m not the only one.
While it may not have had as many high-budget, cinematic games as its chief competitor, the PlayStation, the N64’s library is jam-packed with certified bangers that each made their mark on gaming history at large.
It’s easy for me to forget that it’s been nearly 30 years since the N64 was first released, and going forward, there are and will be entire generations that have never touched one.
That’s downright tragic, frankly. If there is any justice left in this world, the next generations will get the chance to try these N64 games, even if it’s just to get a taste of the decade-spanning cultural osmosis they cultivated.
10 F-Zero X
Truly Unparalleled Speed
There have been three major entries into the F-Zero series to date, not including side games like F-Zero 99: the original on the SNES, F-Zero X on the N64, and F-Zero GX on the GameCube.
When the topic turns to favorites, it’s usually either X or GX depending on who you ask, but for me? I was all about that F-Zero X, from the first time I played it as a rental to the moment I bought it used at FuncoLand.
Unlike other racing games on the market that were more about realism or shenanigans, F-Zero X was about one thing and one thing only: speed. You wanted to go as fast as you could while keeping yourself from flying off the track completely, which was easier said than done on tracks like Big Blue’s cylinder.
F-Zero X was a game about pushing the absolute limits of what a virtual machine could achieve in speed. Sometimes I’d boot up on Silence in a time trial just to see if I could set a new personal speed record, enjoying the awesome metal riffs as I went.
GX was great too, but I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to say that it was X that gave us all that longstanding need for speed.
9 Pokémon Snap
I Still Miss Blockbuster
One of my favorite things about the older generations of gaming is their degree of connectivity with real-life businesses. For example, if you owned and played Pokémon Snap, you could bring your cartridge to your local Blockbuster Video, stick it on a special machine, and print off your in-game pictures as real-life stickers.
I guess you could technically still do that with in-game screenshots and a printer these days, but back then, it was an unparalleled novelty. Even putting that aside, Pokémon Snap was one of the first games in the franchise that had nothing to do with battling or adventuring.
It was our first proper glimpse into Pokémon as real, living critters, going about their lives and interacting with one another in the wild. With PokeMania in full swing in the 90s, any kind of insight we could get into these fascinating creatures was as good as gold.
It also helped that it was a generally fun and cozy game with a simple, yet deep photo grading system. I don’t think I ever beat my sister’s high score on her Mew photo, that’s how perfect of a shot it was.
8 Mario Party
The Cruelty Of Probability Made Manifest
Something many of us 90s kids have in common is the shared suffering inflicted upon us by a certain select few games. For example, you know how the modern Mario Party games have warnings that you shouldn’t use your palm to rotate the joystick?
Yeah, we’re the reason those warnings are there. We hold the scars inflicted on us by the original Mario Party as badges of honor, proof that we endured the pain of sheer, merciless probability.
While the recent Mario Party games have their fair share of cruelty potential, they’re downright pleasant compared to the original game. The very first Mario Party had friendship-ending potential on par with Monopoly, random happenstance that would always seem to strike at the worst possible time.
No matter how secure you thought your lead was, it only took one bout of Chance Time to forcefully rip it away from you.
In spite of all that, I think it’s important that new players experience the cruel indifference of Mario Party, so that they may understand what we old folks went through, and perhaps show some more appreciation for better game balancing in the modern age.
7 Banjo-Kazooie
Never Forget What Microsoft Took From Us
It still burns me up how callously Rare has been treated by publishers over the years. I don’t even know why Microsoft bought it if it wasn’t going to really do anything with it. The main reason I’m still salty about this all these years later was thanks to the excellent collect-a-thon experience that was Banjo-Kazooie.
Banjo-Kazooie was arguably one of the most ambitious games on the N64, a massive interconnected world of cartoony shenanigans and shiny objects to pick up.
It was bright, it was colorful, it was funny, and for the most part, it was consistently fun and interesting to play. There were always new abilities and gimmicks to uncover, new puzzles to solve, and it was all right there for you to stumble upon.
Banjo-Kazooie has long served as a banner-holder for this kind of game, with even modern 3D platformers still trying to capture some of that old magic. Maybe we could still have those kinds of games if Microsoft was thinking with its brain instead of its wallet.
6 Star Fox 64
High-Spec For A Rail Shooter
As I mentioned, if you wanted a game with presentation, that was more Sony’s department than Nintendo. The N64, bless its heart, wasn’t exactly the most technologically advanced kid on the block. Even so, it managed to have a few games with more presentation than you may have expected, including Star Fox 64.
Star Fox 64 was one of the handful of Nintendo 64 games to have full voice acting, something that was not easy to facilitate on a cartridge.
My first exposure to Fox as a character was his grunt-exclusive appearance in Smash, so it was really cool to actually get a proper glimpse into his and his companions’ personalities instead of the unvoiced text boxes from the SNES original.
Star Fox 64 was also one of my first, for lack of a better word, awakening games, helping me realize that a video game could be more than just “go here, press A.” It was a simple, arcade-style game on the surface, but had a subtle, intricate system of branching paths that determined the ending you got. It was one of the first games I really put some research into to properly understand.
5 Super Smash Bros.
Every Series Had To Start Somewhere
One of the important justifications for classic game preservation is properly understanding the progression of design and development that leads us into the modern day.
For instance, we can still play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate easily enough, but you can’t understand the full breadth of how far that series has come unless you can play all those that came before it. I think, if you’re used to Ultimate, playing the original N64 Super Smash Bros. would completely freak you out.
Super Smash Bros. was a lot of firsts for Nintendo: the first platformer fighting game, the first true crossover between its various franchises, and even the first time some of its characters would be rendered in 3D or get voices.
Compared to Ultimate’s roster, the original’s is positively tiny at just 12 characters, but you could see the care that went into making each both faithful to their sources and still fun and viable to play as.
Super Smash Bros. established the building blocks on which the rest of the series was established. There were no Smash attacks, far fewer stage gimmicks, and no Final Smashes; it was pure, no-frills acrobatic combat.
4 Paper Mario
More Fun Than A Trapper Keeper
While not the first Mario RPG to be made, Paper Mario is arguably one of the most accessible Mario RPGs ever made, if not the most accessible. Its predecessor, Super Mario RPG, was great, but it was kind of just a Final Fantasy game with a Mario coat of paint. Paper Mario showed that the IP could be used to create a wholly unique adventure in both design and gameplay, and on the N64 no less.
Moreso than Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario turned turn-based combat into a series of mini-games and challenges, with all of Mario and his partners’ attacks and abilities requiring you to engage with memorization and timing gimmicks.
As I first played this game when I was very young and didn’t have the patience to appreciate traditional turn-based combat, this went a long way toward helping to keep me engaged and accustomed to this kind of format.
Paper Mario was also one of the most ambitious stories to be told with the Mario IP at the time, full of distinct characters and cool locales. Yeah, it was still just “go to the castle and smack Bowser,” but everything in between that and the start was an adventure worth experiencing.
3 The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time
An Adventure For All Time
As the Nintendo 64 was Nintendo’s first 64-bit, 3D-ready console, it brought many of the company’s IPs into the third dimension for the very first time.
The transition was a little rougher on some than others, but I think we can all agree that one series that made the leap fairly cleanly was The Legend of Zelda with Ocarina of Time. Ocarina of Time was a major upgrade over previous mainline Zelda games in terms of scope and presentation.
Not that A Link to the Past was bad, of course, but Ocarina of Time went the extra mile to really sell you on this incredible fantasy journey you were going on with expressive character animations and dramatic camera angles, all things that can only be facilitated in 3D.
Ocarina of Time was such a game-changer for the Zelda series at large, I’d say there’s still a little sprinkle of it in every 3D Zelda game that has been released since then. If nothing else, all of us 90s kids still have flashbacks to the Water Temple whenever a new Zelda game has a dungeon full of water. If that’s not a lasting impact, I dunno what you’d call it.
2 GoldenEye 007
The Original Couch Showdown
Prior to the age of dual-stick controllers, the idea of playing a 3D first-person shooter on a console was iffy at best. The N64 could handle Doom well enough, since you didn’t need to aim in that game, but games like PCs were getting at the time weren’t really feasible.
Nevertheless, Rare decided it’d take a crack at it with one of the most recognizable IPs at the time, James Bond, and gave us GoldenEye 007.
Playing GoldenEye today will definitely give you a much greater appreciation for optimized controller layouts, because having to stop and aim all of your shots was a bit of an undertaking. At the time, though, it was as close as a console could come to PC shooter action, and we were all glad to have it.
Of course, the real highlight of GoldenEye was its legendary split-screen multiplayer. Needing to stop and aim your shots against real players adds an extra layer of timing and subterfuge that gives the game a distinct flavor you don’t get from modern shooters.
That’s not even mentioning the sheer volume of cultural osmosis this game inspired; it wasn’t a weekend in the 90s if you and your friends weren’t arguing over whether or not you got to play as Oddjob.
1 Super Mario 64
The Joys And Frustrations Live On
When Nintendo released Super Mario 3D All-Stars on the Switch (which I still don’t get being a time-limited thing), the very first thing I did was boot up Super Mario 64, resolving to play the whole thing through again.
Let me tell you, that was a commitment, because that’s a game that doesn’t always want to be played. But I did it anyway, because in spite of its jank, it’s a game that has earned its right to be experienced.
Super Mario 64 was absolutely groundbreaking for its time, not just as the first 3D Mario game or as an N64 launch title, but the first true shot of the 3D platformer genre.
By today’s standards, of course, it’s downright primitive, with weird collisions and physics routinely sending Mario hurtling off of ledges and into voids. Both me and others I know have had plenty of screaming matches with their TVs while playing Super Mario 64.
Even so, we play on. Because it was a vital piece of our collective childhood. Because it was a landmark moment in game development as a whole. Because, alongside all the jank, it was still a game that managed to capture our hearts with its distinct environments and classic music.
- Security Camera Installation – indoor/outdoor IP CCTV systems & video analytics
- Access Control Installation – key card, fob, biometric & cloud‑based door entry
- Business Security Systems – integrated alarms, surveillance & access control
- Structured Cabling Services – voice, data & fiber infrastructure for new or existing builds
- Video Monitoring Services – 24/7 remote surveillance and analytics monitoring
Author: 360 Technology Group
