On June 23, 1996, the Nintendo 64 first went on sale in Japan. Twenty years ago! Think about that.
[Image: areiz1]
Facing off against Sony’s PlayStation, the Nintendo 64, which was the last major home console to use cartridges and which came with a unique controller, would see iconic and influential games like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and GoldenEye 007, among many others.
Thanks for the memories and the games!
Comments
21 responses to “The Nintendo 64 Turns 20 Years Old Today ”
Darn it, Ashcraft! Now I’ll be spending the whole work day trying to resist the urge to dig mine out!
The rumble pak, the analogue stick, and the subsequent need for Nintendo to issue free “palm gloves”.
Also, dual analogue mode was such a whacky idea back then.
Fuuuuuck.
Very good times with this console! One of my all time favourites.
Goddamn I feel old now.
I just saw a hack yesterday to make the rumble pak run from power from the controller. Apparently the batteries were included because there was not enough power to run 4 at once. Or at least that’s what some propose.
I had four rumble paks which were designed to run from internal power. I doubt they were first party peripherals, but they were way more convenient.
Can’t remember if they were weaker than the OG.
I also had a 3rd party rumble pak/memory card combo which didn’t require batteries. I think they were weaker because you could also put AAA batteries in this one which made it rumble more…not sure why you would bother with that to be honest, haha
Pretty easy to do with only basic soldering skills! I love that I can not have to worry about batteries leaking in mine 🙂
Had some of the best times of my gaming life on the N64 (Ocarina of Time and Mario Kart 64), and the PS1 (FFVII).
Ah, the good old days…
I wish it didn’t look so terrible on a big modern tv :(. Funnily enough though the NES and SNES look glorious and scale fantastically.
Even the hd port of perfect dark looks like ass. I love the 64, but I can’t go back or I’ll ruin so many of my favourite memories.
Gamecube games still look ace, though.
Oh jesus I bought Mario 64 on Wii-U thinking I could finally play it again without motion sickness. Looks worse than the N64, and has a weird control scheme.
The ds version was the best. The small screen masked the fugly, and the additional characters kept the game fresh.
I’m so glad I still have two crt tv’s for this exact purpose. Upscaling them via an emulator helps abit on an lcd, but still leaves alot of blockyness and muddy textures.
Unfortunately CRTS just take up too much space for my situation.
“Facing off against Sony’s PlayStation” What no mention of the Sega Saturn shame on you. Just wait until Segata Sanshiro hears about this.
Panzer Dragoon for the win, :-P.
Nintendo “64”…… god I’m glad that marketing shtick isn’t with us any more!
I owned an N64 and had a blast with it but thanks to Xbox I get to relive some of those treasures as a lot of the games released on the 360 and X1 thanks to msoft buying Rare.
Rare were definitely the naughty dog of the N64 era
I’m a big fan of naughty dog but I think the sheer range of rare put them in a class of their own that just wouldn’t be possible today. They made games in nearly all genres that were widely considered some of the best of that category – fighting (killer instinct), 2d platforming (donkey kong country), 3d platforming (banjo kazooie), racing (diddy kong racing), fps (007, perfect dark) …I don’t think we’ll ever see that level of standard again. The best companies these days tend to stick to the one genre they do best.
You forgot third person shooters with Jet Force Gemini!