In 1996, with the debut of the Nintendo 64 (N64), video game history was irrevocably altered. The N64 was, and remains, more than just a gaming console; it redefined the very nature of video games. Today, many people, if you ask them, offer several consoles they believe are good candidates for housing some of the industry’s definitive games. But the way I see it, the N64 finds itself in an elite set of the truly fundamental game systems. After the debut of the N64, video games were never the same again—and for the better.
The N64’s greatest innovation was its introduction of 3D graphics to gaming consoles. The last generation had been dominated by simple 2D graphics, but the N64 was set to change all of that, and did. The reason: the N64’s hardware and the 3D software library weren’t just the next step in a tidy, orderly technological progression that had started with Pong and was eventually supposed to lead to the kind of immersive, holographic gaming experiences one associates with Star Trek’s Holodeck. The N64 was the vanguard of a revolution in 3D gaming.
The first time I saw Super Mario 64 was at a local electronics store. A small group had gathered around a demonstration station, and being a small child, I was immediately entranced by what was happening on the screen. Mario moved in a very vibrant, free-roaming way, and it was just a joy to watch the game in motion.
The only consoles I had ever seen were the ones belonging to my older cousins. And they were obsessed with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. So the only point of reference I had for video games was what they looked like and how they were played in the side-scrolling era.
Super Mario 64 set a new standard for 3D game design. It was the first game to show what the new dimension could really do for play—how it could unfurl, not just in new settings and with new characters, but in giving reasons to newly emboldened, backpack-filling explorations. The game’s missions were sometimes set on a massive scale, demanding that you navigate more often by luck than by the North Star method. At other times, the hidden stars you’d found led, in a Rube Goldberg way, to an “Aha!” moment with some new pull of gravity or route to a summit.
The 3D era wasn’t confined to platform games. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was also revolutionary; it was an ambitious game, even by Shigeru Miyamoto’s standards, and its Hyrule felt almost as alive as some of the N64’s renderings of Earth’s ecosystems. Ocarina’s Hyrule had a day-night cycle that seemed to occur in real-time. Its Hyrulean citizens, although often constrained by their spherical bases and therefore always found in the same place or not at all, had conversations that were directly related to the part of the day it was or the weather that was either occurring then or in the recent past. From this consolation of verisimilitude arose a very familiar play pattern.
The N64’s controller was another huge innovation of that console. When you first looked at it, it seemed entirely strange and had a kind of extraterrestrial air to it with its three-handled design and the many buttons it had. It wasn’t exactly ugly, but it was hardly a thing of beauty and seemed a world apart from the nice, simple controllers of previous gaming systems. It took a while to sit well with players, but in time it grew on me, and then one day I suddenly realized what was so special about it.
The change brought about by the analog stick can hardly be overstated. It provided the capacity for accurate 360-degree control, something that remains difficult to rival even in a swipe and gesture-based control era, for the in-game camera of an expansive 3D game world. Along with the addition of the “C” (Control) buttons, moved up to the top half of the controller precisely for the ease of transitioning to the N64’s other game-changer, characters now had an analog stick and an additional three buttons to work with.
Also on the back of the controller was a trigger button (the Z button), which had various uses but in the context of GoldenEye 007 was for shooting a gun. Unlike the A or B button used for jumping or interacting with the world in a lot of games, the Z button is set in a groove on the back of the controller, where your index finger naturally falls. It’s a smart bit of design that makes pulling a trigger in the game way more intuitive and satisfying. And GoldenEye 007 itself was a brilliant application of the N64 controller’s unique setup, not just for a console but also for a first-person shooter – a genre that the N64 essentially redefined as being viable for consoles in terms of its precision and speed.
The arrangement of the controller, with its many buttons and triggers, permitted intricate input schemata that game developers could and did take full advantage of. Star Fox 64″ put the very layout of the controller to work in making a great rail shooter with an equally great number of ways to pilot your Arwing, all amounting to an experience of gameplay that was and is immersive—and impressive not least for the number of times your thumb will leave the base of the joystick to touch the many buttons at the top of the controller. Star Fox 64 introduced the Rumble Pak, too; it pioneered the concept of force feedback.
For its era, the N64 was a real technical tour de force. It had a 64-bit processor when the 16-bit SNES was still fresh in people’s minds. And because of this processor, games blew everything seen on the SNES out of the water, in terms of what could be visually and aurally represented. The enormous and detailed game Banjo-Kazooie is a case in point. With performance like that, could we be far from the ideal of a game where you can get in? – where you might loll about, collecting stuff? wäre einer Überreichung; the rich reward of anything you do is the secret to the game and is often the secret within, too.
Conker’s Bad Fur Day was a stunning achievement for the N64. It featured detail-oriented models with clearly defined spheres of influence that didn’t just sell the appearance of the characters but told the player (in albeit hilariously sophomoric fashion) something about their personalities. And because the same people who made the opening sequence for “Killer Instinct” were making this game’s cutscenes, there was nothing else that looked this good. Games in which the player was given more than one kind of thing to do embodied the N64.
The realm in which the N64 particularly excelled was its provision of fantastic in-game sounds and soundtracks, produced with the top-quality technical assets of the system. Among the most triumphant examples is the entirely captivating soundtrack for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I was obsessed with various dynamic compositions in the atmospheric planets of Ocarina. But I connected most to the magical quality of the ocarina songs I learned, which remain to this day the core of not just the game’s sound design but also its very identity.
The Nintendo 64 also brought forth some revolutionary ideas in game design. One of those original game structures was Pokémon Snap.” Instead of the regular means of playing with Pokémon, like in Pokémon Red or Pokémon Blue, in Snap, the player could only capture images of the creatures. They couldn’t even leave their vehicle. The game remains a much-beloved classic because of the hours spent trying to get the perfect angle for a shot of Pikachu or the rare opportunity to take a picture of Mew. For people who had become attached to their Game Boy Pokémon games, seeing the creatures realized in 3D served as validation for all the hours they’d invested.
There’s no question that the N64 has left an indelible mark on the video game industry. Its very name is like a Seal of Quality that reassures players that something good is coming even before they see or hear anything about the game they’ll soon be playing. Many of the industry’s current leaders in both artistic and technical realms, at companies like Bungie, Naughty Dog, and Insomniac, have mentioned at times how they were influenced by the N64 in their own development of ideas and methods.
The Nintendo 64’s legacy is felt most profoundly in the world of 3D gaming that it helped shape. The insights gained from the development of games like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time continue to reverberate through the 3D platformer and adventure genres. Their revolutionary system of intuitive controls, non-linear, open-ended level design, and sense of place” (enhanced by the next-gen graphics of the time) have gone on to influence a myriad of 3D games during development.
The Nintendo 64 also set the stage for intricate and enveloping multiplayer experiences. GoldenEye 007 was a banner video game for the N64 not only because it was one of the best James Bond games made to-date, but also because it was incredibly fun in “local” multiplayer mode. “Mario Kart 64” was also a fan favorite. These two games are the pinnacle of the N64 library when it comes to local multiplayer, and they had a way of making the console a fixture in the dorm rooms of the late ’90s and early ’00s. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which are relatively recent, still take their cues from the local multiplayer of the N64. They are also quite fun.
As I consider my past with the N64, feelings of nostalgia and pure love overwhelm me. I am lucky enough to have been a vital part of that era, when kids were just starting to become fascinated with 3D storytelling. The Nintendo 64, along with Super Mario 64, is not something I cherish and appreciate just as a piece of fondly remembered memorabilia; it is something I hold near and dear to my heart because of the path on which it has set me, the sheer number of fruitful experiences, and the countless valuable lessons I have learned from my time with it.
Many gamers have a soft spot for the N64. After all, that was the console that first introduced them to 3D graphics. For a lot of people, the N64 represents their childhood or adolescent memories. It’s when they did their first serious gaming. My best friend was way into The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. He used to ask me to come over and watch him play all the time. I remember being so absorbed in some of those darker story moments in the game that it might as well have been a movie.
Concluding, the Nintendo 64 was a landmark console that pioneered many monumental changes in the gaming industry. Its graphics were rudimentary by today’s standards, and gameplay could be clunky. But what set the N64 apart was the magic it contained. Its mystical appearance, tantalizing outer space, the Atari 2600 hit with controller rumble—what more could a blossoming adolescent ask for in the 1990s? That, my friends, is what made it a memorable console: the Nintendo 64 yielded numerous games that certainly gave its audience joy. And that, of course, is its reason for existence.
