I Think the Nintendo 64 Is One of the Most Underrated Gaming Consoles Ever

Nintendo has been a titan in the video game industry for decades, and while it didn’t invent the home console, it certainly revolutionized it. Starting with the Famicom in Japan and the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the United States, Nintendo has created some amazing consoles; a lot of them are rightfully praised — the NES, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (or SNES), the Wii, and the Switch — and others are fairly maligned (the Wii U) – and that is before you even get to the Nintendo handheld gaming systems. However, there’s one Nintendo console that doesn’t get the love it deserves: the Nintendo 64.

The Nintendo 64 hit shelves on June 23, 1996, in Japan and September 29, 1996, in the United States. It was the hottest console of Christmas 1996, but it came at the wrong time. 1997 was the year that the PlayStation put out some of the greatest games of all time; Sony sucked the air out of the room, and the Nintendo 64 was left to flounder.



However, the console has some of the greatest games of all time, and despite some problems, I think it deserves way more love than it gets.The Nintendo 64 Has a Rich LegacyThe Nintendo 64 has a lot of fans, but it’s a console that most don’t rank very highly. It was a 64-bit console, making it more powerful than the 32-bit PlayStation and Sega Saturn, but the console didn’t look as good as the PlayStation.

3D game development was in its infancy, and developers were still mastering the hardware; by the time the Nintendo 64 debuted, devs had basically mastered the use of the PlayStation’s hardware and were making games that looked a lot better than what was on the Nintendo 64, at least in the AAA portion of the gaming industry. And then, of course, there was the fact that CDs were able to not only supply better sound but also hold way more information. This made the PlayStation superior in most ways and it had the better games.

Now, obviously, Nintendo put out amazing games on the N64, which it had spent years building and knew how to use better than anyone. Games like Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros., The Legends of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Star Fox 64, Paper Mario, Wave Race 64, and basically every other Nintendo-made game looked great and most of those names are still legendary IPs in the video game industry.

Super Mario 64 changed platforming forever, and is ranked by many as the greatest platformer; the two Zelda games are also highly ranked among fans, and Mario Kart and Smash Bros. were the party games of the late ’90s. However, much of the rest of the console’s library isn’t nearly as good as the games on PlayStation, and the Nintendo 64’s controller was an.

.. interesting design and was not nearly as ergonomic as the PS1’s.

RELATED: 1998 N64 Classic Returns This Month With New ReleaseHowever, go back and read that list of games above. That’s quite a list, and those games showed why the Nintendo 64 was such a great console. Nintendo poured its heart into those games, working with some of the greatest developers of all time to create games that redefined what 3D gaming could be.

Another huge feather in the Nintendo 64’s cap was the four controller ports. This allowed four players to play a game at once, which created some of the most fun multiplayer experiences of all time. That brings us to a Nintendo-made game that wasn’t mentioned above, a game that changed multiplayer gaming and first-person shooters forever — GoldenEye 007.

GoldenEye 007 wasn’t the best-looking shooter in the world; even when it came out, PC shooter games were already better-looking than it. FPS games had mostly migrated to PC, partly because of the better control options, but GoldenEye 007 helped to change that. GoldenEye 007 found a way to use the 64’s somewhat awkward controller better than any console shooter that came before it, which made a huge difference.

GoldenEye 007 was a superbly designed game, and it introduced a whole generation of gamers who didn’t have a PC but had an N64 to shooters. Nearly every elder millennial has a story about playing GoldenEye 007 with their friends. I can tell hours of stories about playing the game with my friends, the thrill of victory, and the wrenching agony of defeat.

It showed exactly what the Nintendo 64 could do when it was at its best, and supplied countless hours of gameplay for fans. This was why the Nintendo 64 was such an amazing console and why it deserves way more praise than it gets.The Nintendo 64 Shook the WorldThe Nintendo 64 had its share of problems, and it definitely didn’t do the numbers that the PlayStation did.

Sure, it had its share of era-defining titles, but it was a much more limited console than the PlayStation was at the time. That’s the reality of the situation. As good as the Nintendo 64 could be, it just couldn’t match the PlayStation.

The PlayStation holds a much bigger place in the minds of millennials and those who came after, and became the console of the late ’90s. However, the Nintendo 64 was able to make some great strides forward in game design, as well as supplying countless memories.The N64 was never the loss that it’s made out to be.

It still sold a lot of units — 32 million — and was a favorite of a passionate minority of late ’90s gamers. Nintendo always gets a lot of hype at first, and the fact that the Nintendo 64 couldn’t maintain the hype is why it’s remembered as a much worse machine than it really is. This is not the reality of the Nintendo 64, though.

It was a pretty revolutionary system in its own respect and helped push the world of gaming forward. It’s a best-of-all-time system, and I’m tired of people saying otherwise.The post I Think the Nintendo 64 Is One of the Most Underrated Gaming Consoles Ever appeared first on ComicBook.

com..