30th Anniversary of Nintendo 64 (and Quake)

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Tomorrow, 23 June 2026, marks the 30th anniversary of the Nintendo 64. That was the day the console was released in Japan, along with Super Mario 64. It would later be released in North America in September 1996 and in Europe in March 1997.

If you think Super Mario is just for young children, you can instead observe another anniversary as today marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Quake.

[Andrew NDB]

Quake was fairly revolutionary but it was not a great game.

[frank_one]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Was was fairly revolutionary but it was not a great game.

Which one, Mario 64 or Quake. I think they both are still highly enjoyable games.

[Powder]

Although we were pretty strictly a Nintendo household, I instead wound up with PS1 during that generation. Having gotten to play it a bunch with a close friend who had one, I felt like I got the better of the two. I just regretted lacking access to Pokemon Stadium, mostly. N64 has a lot of iconic titles, some of which I do enjoy playing, but I was never too keen overall. To this day, I find the cameras/controls of so many classics just a bit too tedious to put up with. I also did not care for the art direction of certain things as they moved over to 3D. Funny, I cared about that stuff way more as a kid than as an adult. I like to revisit the old Mario Party, Pokemon Puzzle League, & Dr. Mario games on Nintendo Switch Online's emulation service of it, but anything else worth playing has superior ports/remakes now, like Starfox 64, Mario 64, TLOZ:OOT, etc.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by frank_one

Which one, Mario 64 or Quake. I think they both are still highly enjoyable games.

Quake was revolutionary but not a great game. Mario 64 was not revolutionary but it WAS a great game.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Did I forget this one?

[sdp]

My favorite console and yes I'm being biased. Here is my full tribute to Nintendo 64 and memories. It defined my childhood and I will forever love it. I've never spent more hours on video games on a single console as that one and likely never will. I can go back to all those "badly aged games" with no problem, their issues are nonissues to me.

Favorite games not when I was a kid since it'd be slightly different but I consider today as my favs: Super Mario 64, Pokemon Snap, Perfect Dark

but yeah if I talk about my favorite games in each series they all come down to the N64 versions, i don't care if i'm biased, they're the ones i have most fun replaying. Mario Kart 64, Smash Bros, Paper Mario, Star Fox, Ocarina of Time, WWF No Mercy, Mario Party 2, and so on, my favorite in each franchise is here. I guess the only exception would be Yoshi, Kirby and Donkey Kong.

For third parties I also love the quirky N64 versions Forsaken 64 is just cooler on the N64, Turok games were exclusive here at the time, we got the better South Park game. Shadowman, man Acclaim was just killing it here, and we all know Rare's relevance ended after the N64 as well.

Heck the first time I ever played arcade classic games was on the N64 thanks to Namco Museum, Ms Pacman, Galaga and the like here for the first time.

[Andrew NDB]

I'd kind of file the N64 next to Gamecube in terms of Nintendo systems that I bought but never quite felt like there was enough games worth buying for it to justify the system.

[CyberCubed]

90% of the N64's library worth playing is now on Nintendo Switch online (only Diddy Kong Racing and the original Smash Bros. 64 are missing), so you can literally play everything there to see what the best games on N64 were like.

[frank_one]

The N64 was powerful and had great potential but it had an even bigger limit: the cartridges' memory size. According to Wikipedia, from the console's first year from late 1996 through 1997, Game Pak sizes were 4 to 12 megabytes. It's like being a PC gamer in the late 90s, with a brand new 3d accelerator card on your PC but you're stuck with a floppy drive.

[sdp]

But looking back cd space was all fluff and nothing really worthwhile. All those amazing looking CG FMVs? They now look dated as fck and it's not even gameplay. CD music was missed as was voice acting but voice acting back then was so awful that it doesn't really matter much, playing PS1 games and having the cringe dialogue spoken outloud is even worse than just reading it, especially with the silly movements and no lipsyncing.

Back then loading times were also so long, N64 absolutely skipped all of that having near instant changes between levels.

[Andrew NDB]

There's still a huge difference between the 600 megs of a PS1 CD and the 4-35 megs of a Nintendo 64 cartridge. Graphically of course, but to even have quality audio and music you need that room. There's a reason Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on PS1 takes up almost the whole 600 megs (and it isn't because of FMVs) vs. Castlevania 64 being only 12 megs.

And even with every single FMV removed from it and all the music reduced from .WAV orchestral to tiny MIDI files, can you imagine Final Fantasy VII on N64? There's no way.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Tyler Esposito and his video game-crazy dad even imported a Nintendo 64 console from Japan in the middle of summer, because he couldn't wait until September, despite that being very expensive. Would your own parents allow you to do that back in 1996–1997?

[Andrew NDB]

Well this is cool news:

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/11305...tform=facebook