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Compared to the competition, it lacked third-party support (an issue that modern Nintendo still contends with), leading to a relatively paltry 296 games, total, being released in North America.Īttempts to extend the consoles lifespan with add-on accessories like the Expansion Pack and 64DD, both souping up the console’s innards, fell flat too. Super Smash Bros would never have spawned the madcap must-play Nintendo franchise it is today if the beat-em up didn’t first cut its teeth in 4-player N64 brawls, while the console played host to the, quite literal, Mario Party, a 4-player minigame menagerie that cemented the console as the go-to system for multiplayer. Hours were spent in splitscreen Mario Kart 64 four-player head-to-head championships, and gunslinging GoldenEye shootouts with a gang of pals. Knowing that each console had built-in support for group play, developers had no qualms making four-player action a focus. Long before the port-free orgy of wireless controllers, the N64 as a result ushered in a golden age of couch-based multiplayer action.
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The Nintendo 64 had not one, not two, but four front-mounted controller ports for its wired pads. You’ve got this great controller, so why limit yourself to just one or two in use at a time? The SNES, PlayStation and Mega Drive may have each had some form of multi-tap add-on, but the N64 was the first to make party play an integral part of the experience. Pick up an N64 and Super Mario 64 today, and it’s as fun as the first time it was committed to cartridge. It’s a testament to Nintendo’s skill that this worked at all – moving Mario from his 2D safe space into a bold 3D direction didn’t necessarily have to work – just look at the mess Sega made of its 3D Sonic games. This was digitised freedom on a glorious scale. Not only did this showcase the minutiae of control on offer, but it offered a bird's eye view of the gigantic 3D playgrounds Nintendo had created. To crown it all off, by collecting the right in-game hats, Mario could fly. While some modern games still struggle with 3D camera movement, Mario 64 almost nailed it straight off the bat, keeping Mario in sight even when pulling off his most audacious moves. Mario could turn on a dime, sprint with an extended lean of the analogue stick, and even pull of backflips and triple jumps with some well-executed button acrobatics.
#ALL MARIO GAMES FOR NINTENDO 64 FULL#
Here was Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom, rendered in full 3D, ready to be explored with an unparalleled level of accuracy thanks to the analogue stick.
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But the world had seen nothing like Super Mario 64 upon the N64’s June 1996 release. It’s hard to explain just how mind-blowing Super Mario 64 was upon its unveiling, in this age of the 4K open world adventures.
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Why the N64 controller is the most important of all time.And Nintendo had the perfect system-seller up its sleeve – Super Mario 64.
#ALL MARIO GAMES FOR NINTENDO 64 SOFTWARE#
It was a killer piece of tech, but it needed killer software to show it off with. Having trailblazed that particular tech way back with the 80s’ NES, Nintendo was pushing forward with a bold new idea – emulated 360-degree movement, with a stick that supported minute, intuitive, pressure-sensitive adjustments for pinpoint accuracy. For, while consoles like the PlayStation and Sega Saturn had dabbled in fully 3D polygonal gaming, each was still resting on digital directional pads for controlling movement. But it was that analogue stick at its heart that was to be the true key to the revolution that Nintendo was unlocking.