Nintendo 64 15th anniversary -- What are your N64 memories?

[Samus Aran]

In 1996 the Nintendo 64 came out. When it was first released everyone bought one to play Super Mario 64... and not much of anything else for a while.

It was the most technically-advanced of the fifth generation consoles (PlayStation, Saturn, Jaguar), but the cartridges had a high production cost and limited space compared to their disc-based competitors, and despite selling 33 million consoles, Nintendo saw their popularity drop and lost their top spot in the market share (not having many RPG options really hurt it in Japan).

It also gave us one of the worst games of all time that thankfully I never played -- Superman 64.

But I don't remember logging in as many hours on one console when I was younger as I did on the N64. Granted, it was for the same games over and over again -- GoldenEye, Mario Kart, Dr. Mario, Smash Bros., and WCW/NWO Revenge. Perfect Dark may have been better than GoldenEye but we just didn't get into it as much, and even though Diddy Kong Racing got rave reviews but to us it just paled in comparison to Mario Kart.

So what are your Nintendo 64 memories?

I remember all the hours my friends and I put into Mario Kart, especially Wario Stadium, where the guy with the lightning would wait until someone was making the jump to shrink them. There were also places on the map where you could cheat and jump the track for a shortcut. The very last one where you're racing toward the finish line at full speed and jump the wall instead of making the last two turns was the only one we considered fair to use.

Occasionally we'd also attempt the jump at the beginning of Rainbow Road that would either put us so far ahead if we made it or put us in dead last if we missed.