The Nintendo 64 is Nintendo’s third home video game console. Usually abbreviated as “N64“, it was released in June 23, 1996 is at September 29 in the United States. The console featured three main launch titles: Wave Race 64, PilotWings 64, and the famous and classic Super Mario 64. This home console was the last to use cartridges for storage, initially distributed in Brazil by the company Playtronic and later by Electronic Gradient.
Announced in 1993 as “Project Reality“. Subsequently, in 1995 its name was changed to Nintendo Ultra 64, five months before the release its name was reduced to just Nintendo 64. Considered innovative, the device had a graphics processor designed by Silicon Graphics, the console also contained an audio processor that allowed the use of up to 100 channels of PCM audio, but actually, for practical reasons, it was never used, as in practice it would already consume all the processing resources.
Super Mario 64 can be considered the most successful game on the console, as it was responsible for boosting its sales at very high rates. The game had the difficult task of replacing 2D graphics for 3D, the giant and three-dimensional worlds replaced the classic two-dimensional obstacles. The secret of the game developed by Nintendo was to maintain and preserve the look of the old Mario games, but including an updated gameplay and graphics and vast worlds to be discovered by the player.
Another well-known game on the console is the GoldenEye 007. It’s a first-person shooter based on the movie from James Bond, was produced by rareware, then Nintendo’s second-party producer. It is considered by many to be one of the greatest first-person games, with a special focus on its innovative multiplayer mode.
In addition, the Nintendo 64 was known for its accessories, including the Controller Pak, a kind of memory card that the player could use to save their progress and also game settings. Nintendo’s original models had about 256 KB from memory (!!!), but some models made by third parties offered greater capacity. Few games made use of the accessory, as Nintendo preferred to use internal memory in the cartridges to keep progress.
Another very popular accessory at the time was the Rumble Pak, which can be considered “revolutionary“ because it produced vibrations to which the character was subjected in the game’s virtual environment. It plugged into the bottom of the controller and was first used in Star Fox 64. The experience was magical. You bet!
Still, the Nintendo console was the first to make use of an analog stick in your control. It is superior to a digital directional pad as it allows them to be applied to different intensities in the movements and is not limited to the traditional directions of a digital directional pad. Currently, all home video game controllers use this technology.
Other interesting data are worldwide sales, the N64 managed to be the second best-selling console of its generation, selling a total of 32 million units, while the first place, the PlayStation One, sold 102 million units and the third place, the Sega Saturn, sold about 8 million units. The Nintendo 64 is the twelfth video game bestseller of all time.
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References: Nintendo Wire
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