VG Mad

N64 (Nintendo)

Updated: 11th January 2015

The Nintendo 64 was released in 1996 (Japan and North America), 1997 (Europe and Australia).
It was discontinued in 2002 (Japan), and 2003 (RoW).

Worldwide sales are in excess of 32 million units.

The most successful game, selling in excess of 11 million units, was Super Mario 64.

A total of 387 games were produced for the N64.

GoldenEye 007, is said to be a great influence in the First Person Shooter (FPS) genre.

Some titles took advantage of the N64's four controller ports, by allowing four player local co-op, including Mario Kart 64, and GoldenEye.

For systems of the time, the N64 is the only cartridge based system of its generation. Competitors such as Sony and Sega, had opted for CD-Rom based media.
Being cartridge based, limited the size of the games, and also kept prices much higher than the competition. The only advantage that cartridges had, over the CD based systems of the time, is the speed of which the games could load their assets.

Many game developers released fewer, if any, games for the N64, compared to that of the competing system. The reason is due to the very tight capacity of cartridge memory (64MB), whereas CDs held upto 650MB.

The N64 was available in 16 different colours over its lifetime, some of which are region, or store specific. The controller was available in 23 different colours in the N64s lifetime, again, some of which were specific to region, stores, or promotional.

For full details on the Nintendo 64, visit the N64 Wikipedia page.