The 10 Best Nintendo 64 Games

Nintendo packed so much joy into Mario Kart 64—the sights, the sounds, the music. It's like a family-friendly carnival ride rolled into a game cartridge. While Super Mario Kart for the Super NES originally architected the Nintendo kart-racing experience, Mario Kart 64 let the concept breathe with fully polygonal 3D tracks, new battle modes, and support for up to four simultaneous racers—which makes this a wonderful party game. For solo players, even when you're done defeating all the GP cups at three speeds plus mirror tracks, you still have plenty of Time Attack challenges ahead of you. The replay value here is immense.

Due to its release date, Doom 64 tends to get overlooked compared to shooters like GoldenEye: 007, which landed later in 1997. But this dark and brooding title should be on every FPS fan's playlist. Ironically, while Doom 64's non-polygonal graphics were considered dated at the time, those graphics have actually made it age far better than many other 3D shooters on the console. The controls have aged well too: as the first Doom title with proportional analog movement, Doom 64 still feels like a modern take on a retro shooter experience. The lack of jump and look up/down functionality that critics cited as drawbacks in 1997 also shine in retrospect, keeping the demon-slaying experience snappy, arcade-like, and easy to get into. Pulse-pounding and genuinely scary at times, it's the best single-player FPS on the N64.

In 1998, Mario and crew invaded board game land with Mario Party for the N64. It delivered a novel turn-based 1-4 player party game punctuated with frantic and exciting action-based mini games at the end of every turn. Unfortunately, many of the intensely physical mini games (i.e. "rotate the stick as fast as you can") in the first Mario Party game wore out thumbsticks and gave players blisters. Mario Party 2, released the following year, improved on that by taming the thumb-busting games, adding new boards, and throwing in playful features like costumes. Many Mario Party fans still consider this game to be the best in the series. Considering there have been at least 15 Mario Party games released across eight different platforms since then, that's saying a lot.

During the golden age of 3D platformers, the Nintendo 64 played host to at least four great entries in the genre. Of these, Banjo-Kazooie really stands out for its good controls, likeable characters, vivid graphics, wonderful dynamic music, atmospheric levels, and a good dose of humor. You play as Banjo, a bear with a bird named Kazooie that hides in a backpack until needed. Kazooie helps by extending Banjo's abilities, such as flapping his wings for a double jump or pecking enemies. This game received a highly regarded N64 sequel called Banjo-Tooie that many consider to be of similar quality.

If you're looking for GoldenEye: 007 on this list, I must apologize: I've given its slot to Perfect Dark, another Rare title that many fans consider superior to the popular James Bond shooter. For most people, Perfect Dark's single-player mode isn't the main attraction. Like GoldenEye, it allows raucous and competitive four-player deathmatches with numerous interesting modes, weapons, maps, and options. The controls can feel awkward from a modern shooter point of view (and the graphics have not aged well), but once you get used to them, they become second nature. If you're looking for a more mature multiplayer experience on the N64, you can't go wrong with this title.

Ocarina of Time did to Link what Super Mario 64 did to Mario: It threw him into a fully 3D polygonal world with a roaming camera and proportional analog control. The results stunned fans and critics alike, who praised the game's innovative context-sensitive controls, intuitive combat (with Z-targeting), rich world building, challenging but fair dungeons, and an epic musical score that may never be equaled by a Zelda title. Melody plays a key part in this adventure: Link's Ocarina flute can alter the world around him, including the weather and time itself. Once you dive into Ocarina of Time, you can't help but feel that you have been pulled into a living, breathing world. While it's tempting to play it on an emulator these days, I suggest tracking down the real thing on a real CRT for the most enveloping experience.

Paper Mario puts the titular hero and his Mushroom Kingdom cohorts into a humorous RPG set in a hybrid 2D-3D world where characters exist as flat, paper-thin objects in three dimensional space. In a console light on RPG games, it's likely the best RPG on the system. Combat combines turn-based commands with action elements such as specially timed button presses for doing extra damage. The rich, colorful artwork and fun lore built into this game makes Paper Mario feel like a fan's love letter to the entire Mario universe that has come to life.

To this day, it is amazing how fluidly and convincingly Wave Race 64 captures the feel of the rolling ocean waves. The character models look blocky by today's standards, but the water is alive. On that slippery ocean surface, you control a racer on a Kawasaki jet ski (the game was sponsored by that firm) racing over sweet jumps and around buoys in various weather conditions. There's also a stunt mode and a two-player verses option. It's a great change of pace from terrestrial racers like Mario Kart 64—and rollicking arcade-style racing action at its best.

Majora's Mask, as a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, looks similar on the surface. But it plays more like a surrealist David Lynch art film to Ocarina of Time's Star Wars. A fierce-looking moon hangs over Termina, growing closer until it destroys everything. You must replay the same three days until you can save Termina from destruction. Using the Ocarina, you control the flow of time to restart your progress and figure out the schedule of events to make all the right actions happen. Along the way, you'll discover many masks that change your appearance and give you special abilities. It can feel maddeningly inaccessible compared to Ocarina of Time, but once your figure out its system, the intricacy of the game's structure unfolds before you like an ornate papercraft flower. It is perhaps the most deep and complex adventure Nintendo has ever crafted.

In 1996, Mario entered the third dimension for the first time in this groundbreaking game that equaled Super Mario Bros. (1985, NES) in genre innovation. You play as Mario as he visits various worlds connected together as pictures hanging on the walls of Princess Peach's castle. The game gets a lot of mileage out of each world by serving up different scenarios in each one, with the goal of getting a different star each time. Even though other titles soon surpassed it in complexity of graphics and gameplay, there's an enjoyable core to Mario 64 with immense replay value that still stands out. In retrospect, it's amazing that the title that basically invented the third-person 3D platformer genre is still such an enjoyable game today. The same can be said of all these Nintendo 64 classics: They're groundbreaking, beautiful, and timeless. (For more, check out our look back at the development of Super Mario 64.)

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