Gavin Lane, Editor – N64
“Oof, N64? Bizarre controller, ugly video games, Nintendo heading off a cliff after the 16-bit era. Unhappy.”
Poor take, Made-Up Contratrian Particular person! I will concede that commercially the N64 signalled a decline in Nintendo’s cultural dominance with Sony within the ascent within the mid-’90s, however you aren’t getting to dismiss a library of genre-definers as “ugly”!
Look. Mario 64 is clearly the ace within the gap right here, however you’ll be able to’t grasp a whole console on one nice sport, whether or not it guided a whole style or not. So, let’s throw in a bit of one thing else like, oh I do not know, Ocarina of Time. One epic Zelda journey not sufficient for you? Right here, have a Majora’s Masks, too. That is the most effective one, anyway.
Pff, boring! Each Nintendo console’s acquired good Marios and Zeldas. What else is there? Properly, how about the most effective Star Fox, the most effective F-Zero, and the most effective Mario Celebration (not my bag, however that is what you of us say)? The N64 was the birthplace of Paper Mario, Smash Bros., Pokémon Snap, and the primary four-player Mario Kart. Wave Race 64 is an all-time piece of software program that holds up fantastically in the present day (not the PAL model, by no means the PAL model), after which there’s the majesty of video games like 1080 Snowboarding and Pilotwings 64, simply a few lower-tier releases that put AAAs on different consoles to disgrace. There was even a Kirby sport, when you like that type of factor.
I’ve deliberately not talked about the Nintendo-published Uncommon video games above in an effort to spotlight how the Extremely 64 wasn’t only a Rareware machine. However throw simply a few these within the combine — say, GoldenEye and Banjo-Kazooie — and the standard, breadth, and sheer originality of N64’s first-party output is unmatched by another system.
(Shoutout to the handhelds, although — I really like you, too!)
