The Nintendo 64 wasn’t interested in playing it safe. Back in 1996, while Sony was winning over teenagers with CD-ROMs and FMV cutscenes on the PlayStation, Nintendo stubbornly stuck to cartridges and handed us a three-legged controller that looked like a weapon from a low-budget sci-fi movie or something from the back of an adult video store.

The decision to stick with carts meant severe storage limits and enough fog to make every game look like it was set in a swamp. But it also meant zero load times, an analog stick that blistered your thumb just from looking at it, and four controller ports built right into the front panel for instant couch multiplayer.

It was a chaotic, brilliant, and downright weird era of video games. So let’s take a look at the best Nintendo 64 games of all time.

Super Mario 64

There couldn’t be an N64 list without the main man himself. Nobody really had a clue how 3D movement was supposed to work in 1996, so Nintendo just went ahead and wrote the blueprint that everyone else copied for the next thirty years.

I will still fire up Mario 64 whenever I can and marvel at what Nintendo pulled off all those years ago. The blueprint of the semi-open-world hub in the castle, with all its secret areas and rabbits to chase, is an escape to the Mushroom Kingdom that, in my opinion, hasn’t yet been bested or replicated in any 3D Mario game.

Jumping through paintings in Peach’s castle felt like pure magic. The camera operator Lakitu could throw an absolute temper tantrum from time to time, but long-jumping across floating islands and slinging Bowser around by his tail into bombs made up for it. It set a bar so high that developers are still trying to match it today. One of the best games of all time to this day.

GoldenEye 007

Console shooters were usually unplayable trash before this, and movie tie-in games were even worse. Rare ignored all of that, laughed in the face of conventional wisdom, and handed us a stealthy single-player campaign alongside an absolute monster of a local multiplayer mode.

GoldenEye 007 wasn’t just a game for Bond fans exclusively. If you had an N64 at the time, you had GoldenEye. This was the game that sold the console to me and was probably my most-played multiplayer game pre-online gaming.

Your entire summer holidays vanished into screaming matches over the golden gun and proximity mines in the Facility. Shameless screen-peeking was practically mandatory, and there was a universal agreement that anyone picking Oddjob was a despicable cheat.

Mario Kart 64

Moving the SNES formula into full 3D track design, this was the exact moment kart racing turned into a bloodsport. While Mario Kart 8 has the crown for best Mario Kart game, there was a time when Mario Kart 64 was seen as the peak for the franchise.

Despite starting life on the SNES, Mario Kart 64 feels like the true first entry in the series we know and love today. The ability to have 4 people next to you, all jostling for first place, was an experience that should be bottled and sold so younger generations can understand what this era was like.

It handed us friendship-ending tracks like the chaotic traffic nightmare of Toad’s Turnpike and the endless, wall-less terror of Rainbow Road. It also introduced the Blue Shell, proving that Nintendo has always loved a little weaponized anarchy. If you wanted to test the absolute limits of a friendship, you just booted this up.

Yoshi’s Story

After the absolute masterpiece that was Yoshi’s Island on the SNES, changing the direction for the N64 sequel was always going to be a huge gamble. Instead of giving us a ruthless platformer, Nintendo turned this into a pop-up storybook where your primary goal was eating 30 pieces of fruit per level to keep Yoshi happy.

Unlocking the different colored Yoshi and passing the controller to my cousin till we finished it over the holidays is a memory of simpler times I cherish. We absolutely rinsed this game of endings and unlocks, not that there are many compared to some games (looking at you DK64), but younger me felt accomplished when we got both the Black and the White Yoshi.

It is easily one of the most misunderstood games on the system. The pastel, hand-crafted aesthetic was gorgeous, and the dynamic difficulty meant you could make a run as brain-dead easy or surprisingly tricky as you wanted. It was weird, ridiculously cute, and a complete comfort game.

Diddy Kong Racing

Everyone remembers Mario Kart, but real ones know Rare actually built the superior racer on the system. Instead of just picking a track from a menu, Diddy Kong Racing gave us an entire adventure hub world, complete with a story campaign, boss fights, and silver coin challenges.

I used to argue with friends in great detail about why Diddy Kong Racing was better than Mario Kart 64. To this day, I would stick by that statement. Everything here was just bigger and better than the offering from everybody’s favorite plumber.

Swapping between cars, hovercrafts, and airplanes completely changed how tracks played out. Add in TT the clock and a soundtrack that had no right being that catchy, and you have a game that easily stood toe-to-toe with Mario’s karting crew.

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

Launching early in the console’s lifecycle, Shadows of the Empire let us live out the expanded universe as the not-Han-Solo mercenary Dash Rendar. I absolutely loved this game for the between-the-movies story it told as I had just started getting into Star Wars at the time.

Perhaps a product of its time compared to other titles on this list, Shadows of the Empire’s story and cross-media push with novels, comics, and action figures were a huge move for any licensed video game. While age may not have been kind to our Dash, the nostalgia I got from this game when I last fired it up was unbeatable.

The controls for the third-person foot levels could feel like navigating an oil slick, but that first Battle of Hoth mission was absolute brilliance. Wrapping a tow cable around the legs of an AT-AT in full 3D was the exact kind of spectacle we bought an N64 for in 1997. 

Mario Golf

Camelot took a sport notorious for being dry and somehow turned it into one of the most addictive arcade games on the console. It allowed connection to the Game Boy version of the game to transfer your character from the RPG mode there onto the main platform – younger me was amazed.

Not that I am a huge fan of golf, but I have picked up every Mario Golf title since this one in hopes of recapturing the magic. Personally, I think this one, when played alongside a save on the Game Boy, is the best game in the series.

It nailed the classic “easy to learn, impossible to master” swing bar mechanics while giving us a roster of classic Mario characters and ridiculously charming original human golfers. Whether you were trying to hit a hole-in-one on Koopa Park or playing Speed Golf with friends, it proved Mario could make literally any sport fun.

Star Fox 64

“Do a barrel roll!” Star Fox 64 was a brilliant arcade rail-shooter in its own right, but its true legacy is the Rumble Pak. Bundling the game with a weird plastic chunk that plugged into the back of the controller introduced force feedback to console gamepads for the first time, making every laser blast and engine rumble shake your hands.

Nintendo has never topped this one. Proof is in their re-release of the game on the 3DS, its Wii U reimagining in Star Fox Zero, and the recent remake on the Switch 2. If you bat a home run on the first hit, it is hard to top it.

With branching story routes based on how well you played, secret warp zones, and non-stop radio bickering from your wingmen, the replay value was high. Taking down giant boss ships or dogfighting with Star Wolf never got old, offering a campaign you could blast through in an hour and immediately restart.

Mario Tennis

Another Camelot triumph, Mario Tennis gave us tight, responsive sports gameplay that cared far more about momentum and shot placement than real-world physics. Like Mario Golf above, you could transfer your Game Boy character to this version, which was technical wizardry at the time.

Similar to Mario Golf, I place this version of Mario Tennis above the rest of the franchise due to the cross-save from the story mode on Game Boy. It really got you invested in both games and was deeply satisfying to see your 8-bit tennis player in 64-bit glory.

It introduced Waluigi to the world, which alone earns it a spot in the video game hall of fame. But beyond the meme value, the local four-player doubles matches were intensely competitive, fast-paced, and easily up there with the best multiplayer offerings on the system.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The hype for this game back in 1998 was suffocating. Somehow, like Mario beforehand, Link’s first venture into three dimensions actually lived up to it, carrying the weight of the entire industry on its shoulders and blowing past every expectation.

Yet somehow I never resonated with it at the time as I had done with Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy. It wouldn’t be till years later, on 3DS, that I gave the game a proper shake.

This was the title that gave us Z-targeting, fixing 3D combat overnight. Stepping out onto Hyrule Field as the sun dipped below the horizon is a moment burned into the brains of anyone who played it. The Water Temple is infamous for being pure torture, but Ocarina remains an all-time titan that still holds its crown.

Looking back, the Nintendo 64 was a mess of a system. The textures were blurry, the analog sticks ground themselves into white powder after a few months of Mario Kart, and the third-party support dried up fast. But when the N64 hit its stride, it delivered moments that defined a generation. It was weird and completely unapologetic about doing things its own way, and I absolutely loved mine.

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