The Decade of the N64

1up is running a piece looking back at the ten years since the N64's launch. The start of Nintendo's slump, the N64 still managed to come out of the console wars with some great and lasting memories, like GoldenEye, Smash Bros., and Ocarina of Time. From the article: "Nintendo certainly gave players plenty of time to get all 120 stars. By the end of 1996, the N64 still had fewer than a dozen games, and even that anemic library was glutted with mediocrity like Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Cruis'n USA. Sure, there were gems like Mario Kart 64 and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and there was the stubborn optimism of Nintendo of America President Howard Lincoln (who insisted N64 games sold more than 250,000 per title), but industry commentators were starting to see through the emperor's clothes. Meanwhile, Sony was turning up the heat with massive blockbusters like Final Fantasy VII." The Press the Buttons blog has some additional commentary on Nintendo's first 'meh' console.

Comments

Re:Meh?

[Zardus]

Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Turok: Rage Wars, Super Smash Bros, Jetforce Gemini, Bomberman 64, Mario Party. That's 10 absolutely amazing games for the N64. Some of them are unrivaled to this day by any current offerings (I have yet to play a console shooter that is as diverse and fun as Perfect Dark. The amount of weapons, levels, bots, options, etc in that game was staggering. Also, Bomberman 64 is the best bomberman game ever made and the only one worth playing, IMO). Some of these were only surpassed by sequels (Super Smash Bros), and many practically defined current/last-gen gaming.

Although from that list, 8 of the titles had multiplayer play as one of their biggest features (sure, you could play Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, and Bomberman single-player, and we did, but a huge part of those games was playing with/against your friends), so if you didn't have many friends that played video games back then the N64 probably wasn't for you. Me and my brother had 3 or 4 friends over every weekend, and there would always be at least 4 of us crowding the N64. We played every multiplayer game on that list for hundreds of hours. Every group of friends I hung out at the time had and played the N64, and every gathering would see 4-player of some game or other. To us, the Playstation was a laughingstock. There was absolutely no value in it. Sure, you could sit alone playing FFVII or whatnot, or you could all hang out and have insane amounts of fun playing the N64. So, it was the N64 for us.

I didn't even know that the PSX outsold the N64 until well into the Gamecube era. I started hearing that Sony won that generation and was very confused, because out of probably 15 or so people that we played games with regularly, only 2 had a playstation.

Its the same with the Gamecube for me. I have no interest in most single-player games. The only exception to that this generation has been Mario Sunshine and Zelda Wind Waker. Those are my two single-player games. My multiplayer games are: Super Smash Bros Melee, Mario Kart Double Dash, Wario Ware, Zelda Four Swords, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, some Mario Parties, Monkey Ball, F-Zero GX, Pacman VS, and so on. All the gamecube is missing is a decent shooter (the closest I know of this generation on any console is Halo, but Halo pales in comparison with Perfect Dark, so we play Perfect Dark on the 64 instead).