My Top 10 - N64 Games of All Time

Oh nostalgia, you've been a constant companion lately. I trust this will satiate your need for attention.



10. San Fransisco rush 2049
While enjoyed the overall destructive and zany nature of the Rush series, 2049 will forever be my favorite racing game. I'm not a racing fan, but cars with jet engines that could explode after too much damage? I was on board. I still remember recovering from the flu for a few days and spending hours in the game's stunt course, ramping and spinning (and gleefully exploding) to my heart's content.

9. Harvest Moon 64
 Did any one else ever play this series? It was the first incarnation of Farmville, complete with giving gifts and faithfully harvesting your crops or else. I would grind this game for hours on end, farming crops, making friends, discovering odds and ends (including researching a crop teleporter that I never finished), and getting fairly upset when the girl I was pursuing fell for Kai. I tried later iterations of the game, but nothing matched the first time I put an addition on my house or won a competition.

8. Super Mario 64
It was everyone's first game so you know I had to add it. I played the heck out of this game, and I even had to replace the cartridge because my first copy up and died on me. I never successfully got all the stars, but I would go to things like the ice sliding level and play them over and over for no reason whatsoever. But hey, I had plenty of those blue, translucent stars!

Also, did anyone ever find Yoshi on top of the castle?

7. Turok (series)
I don't know what it was about this series, but it gave me a savage sort of enjoyment. Exploding arrows and guns and (in the third game) the Cerebral Bore that would make an enemy's head explode. This was the first game where I used fun cheat codes, and by golly I loved my Pen & Ink mode! The later games got a bit ridiculous, and nothing ever matched the simplicity of a man killing dinosaurs that we got in Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.

6. Goldeneye
Again, cheat codes made this game so much fun to explore. Do you remember the level where you had to chase the bad guy through a bunker and fight your way out before the gas canisters exploded? Turning on god mode and fighting a limitless supply of spawning enemies in a room covered in a green haze was awesome. And multiplayer, for as often as I was able to play it, was a great introduction in to my later Call of Duty addiction. If CoD had Oddjob and paintball mode I'd probably still be playing it!

5. Mario Kart 64
If you've played it, there's no need to expound on what made it awesome. It featured characters everyone loved, fun power ups, and was the cause of a lot of yelling and shoving between friends and family. On the other hand... Rainbow Road.

4. Resident Evil 2
Ohhhh buddy, my first horror game and first true introduction to zombies. I still remember the seemingly innocent bus full of dead people, the cop who died and came back to munch on you, and that narrow hallway when you first encountered that fiendish wall crawler with the long tongue. The game sort of fell apart at the end for me (more zombies, less mutations!), but I played through the first half of the game over and over.






3. Ogre Battle 64
 This one flew under the radar for a lot of people, and it's a shame. It was a huge RPG with a lot of unique classes, a stress-free combat system, and a branching story that started with you as a rookie in the army, to joining a resistance, to fighting a kingdom corrupted by daemons. The combat had you controlling an army of units in the open world, and then you'd go liberate cities all the way to the map's enemy.

When you'd engage in combat you and your opponent would have your units on a 5x5 grid and characters would attack whoever was in front of them according to their initiative. You could flank, use terrain to your advantage, and barrel through the opposition or surgically remove everyone. If you haven't played this, download it on the Wii or get a ROM. The game hasn't aged well graphically, but it's just so good.


2. Super Smash Bros
This may be my favorite game series that has spanned multiple consoles. Getting to see familiar and unfamiliar Nintendo characters duke it out was a dream come true. Whether it was speedy Fox, balanced Mario, beefcake Bowser, goofy Jigglypuff, or my favorite electric mouse Pikachu, everyone had a character that suited their playstyle.

I haven't been a fan of how the single player experience has changed. The Wii version featured a painfully long experience filled with a lot of boring platforming. But the original got it right - it had you doing everything you loved in the game, with a few goofy special levels thrown in. I love how the roster has evolved, the stages have improved, and the item selection has stayed fairly balanced. If I were to get a Wii U, it would be to play this series.

1. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask
Hey, listen! If you heard that in Navi's voice, you can appreciate the influences this game had in your life. Legend of Zelda featured an epic story of a hero rising up to save a world that was corrupted by an enemy he was too weak to stop. Link has always been a favorite hero of many because he lets nothing stand in his way to save Zelda and/or the world. No matter his incarnation, Link is the epitome of courage and sacrifice.

But OoT is where it started for many of us. Despite his 2d iteration, the N64 brought him to life in an entirely new way and is considered by many gamers to be the greatest game ever made. It had unique locations, head-scratching puzzles, intuitive combat, an amazing story with memorable characters, a power-hungry boss you had to hate, and a slew of items that were fitting of the heroic journey you were on.

Majora's Mask took the same style of game and put a dark twist on it. The world was going to end in three days and you had to stop it. In a Groundhog Day-esque twist, you could travel back to Day 1 and better prepare yourself to stop this from happening. Unlike OoT where the cast featured characters full of hope and good, some characters in MM were almost Wonderlandian in their creepiness. And if you ever looked in the sky, the freaky moon creeping ever-closer to earth served as a dark reminder that everything in this game hinged on you finding a way to stop the deranged Skull Kid who was being possessed by the dark artifact, Majora's Mask.


What about you guys? I had a hard time trimming down my list to just 10 items, and I was sad to cut games like Star Fox, Tony Hawk, and the original Star Wars game. What are your memories of the N64? Sound off in the comment section below!

See you tommorrow!



Remember to follow me on Facebook. I'm doing a blog post every single day for 2013, and Facebook is a great way to stay up-to-date as well as take part in my monthly giveaways!