Nintendo 64
The Nintendo 64 launched in Japan on the 23rd of June, 1996, and by the end of that first day, every single one of the initial 300,000 units had sold out. Time magazine named it 1996's "Machine of the Year", saying it had "done to video-gaming what the 707 did to air travel." Celebrities Matthew Perry, Steven Spielberg, and Chicago Bulls players called Nintendo directly to ask for special treatment just to get their hands on one. The console's American debut triggered what Time called "that rare and glorious middle-class Cabbage Patch-doll frenzy."
The Nintendo 64 was Nintendo's third major home console, following the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It competed against Sony's PlayStation and the Sega Saturn in the fifth generation of video game hardware. It ultimately sold 32.93 million units worldwide and was discontinued in 2002 when its successor, the GameCube, arrived. But the story of the N64 is not a simple triumph. It is a portrait of a company that made one enormously consequential bet on a technology the rest of the industry was abandoning, and that decision shaped the console market for years to come.
In early 1993, Silicon Graphics, Inc. founder Jim Clark met with Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi. SGI had been working to adapt its supercomputing technology for consumer products, starting with video games. The company had redesigned its MIPS R4000 CPU family to reduce power consumption and lower costs. Before approaching Nintendo, Clark had pitched the concept to Tom Kalinske, CEO of Sega of America, who said they were "quite impressed." Sega's Japanese engineers rejected the design on technical grounds, though SGI later resolved those issues.
By the 23rd of August, 1993, at Nintendo's annual Shoshinkai trade show, the two companies announced a joint development and licensing agreement for "Project Reality." They projected an arcade debut in 1994 and a home release by late 1995, targeting a retail price under a hundred dollars. Michael Slater, publisher of Microprocessor Report, highlighted the partnership's significance, saying, "The mere fact of a business relationship there is significant because of Nintendo's phenomenal ability to drive volume."
SGI named the console's core chipset "Reality Immersion Technology," built around the MIPS R4300i CPU and the Reality Coprocessor. NEC, Toshiba, and Sharp provided manufacturing support. Nintendo and SGI also partnered with Rambus to design a bus architecture that could transfer data at 500 Mb/s using proprietary RDRAM. To give developers tools before the hardware was finalized, SGI offered a development platform based on its Onyx supercomputer, priced at up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. LucasArts ported a prototype Star Wars game to the final hardware in just three days once the chipset was done.
On the 23rd of June, 1994, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Nintendo announced the console would be named the "Ultra 64." The final name "Nintendo 64" was proposed by EarthBound creator Shigesato Itoi. The original name lived on in the console's model numbering prefix "NUS-", widely believed to stand for "Nintendo Ultra Sixty-four."
After multiple failed attempts to develop a CD-ROM add-on for the Super NES, through collapsed partnerships with both Philips and Sony, many in the industry expected Nintendo's next console to use optical discs. When the first Nintendo 64 prototypes appeared in November 1995, observers were surprised to find ROM cartridges once again.
Nintendo cited fast load times as the biggest advantage. Unlike CDs, which required lengthy loading screens, cartridges provided near-instant gameplay. This had helped Nintendo compete against home computers like the Commodore 64 in the 1980s. Cartridges were also harder to pirate than CDs, and while unauthorized N64-to-PC copying devices eventually appeared, they were far less common than the easily copied PlayStation discs.
The drawbacks were significant. Cartridges took at least two weeks per production run to manufacture, forcing publishers to predict demand far in advance. They were also considerably more expensive to produce than CDs, which drove game prices higher. Nintendo 64 cartridges maxed out at 64 MB; a CD could hold 650 MB. That gap forced developers to use compressed textures, shorter music tracks, and fewer cutscenes. Full-motion video was rarely feasible, and multiplatform games often had to be scaled down for N64.
Square and Enix, which had originally planned to release Final Fantasy VII and Dragon Warrior VII on the Nintendo 64, switched to Sony's console because of storage constraints. Konami released far fewer N64 titles than PlayStation games. The cartridge format is frequently cited as a key factor in Nintendo losing its dominant position in the gaming market during this generation. The entire library of officially released Nintendo 64 games totaled 388 titles. The PlayStation received 4,105 games; the Saturn got over 1,000.
The Nintendo 64's architecture centers on the Reality Coprocessor, which handles graphics, audio, and memory management. It operates at 62.5 MHz alongside the VR4300, a 93.75 MHz 64-bit CPU fabricated by NEC, capable of 125 million instructions per second. Popular Electronics compared its processing power to contemporary Pentium desktop processors. The CPU and RCP operate in parallel, with the VR4300 handling game logic while the RCP processes graphics and sound independently.
The console was among the first to implement a unified memory architecture, with 4 MB of RDRAM expandable to 8 MB using the Expansion Pak accessory. The system supports resolutions from 256x224 up to 640x480 pixels, can display up to 16.8 million colors, and produces audio at up to 44.1 kHz with 16-bit depth, matching CD quality. It was the first home console to feature trilinear filtering to smooth textures, which distinguished its visual output from the Saturn and PlayStation, both of which used nearest-neighbor interpolation.
The controller's distinctive three-pronged "M" shape drew immediate attention. Popular Electronics described it as "evocative of some alien spaceship." The design made Nintendo the first controller manufacturer to include a thumbstick as a standard feature. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo included four controller ports because the N64 was the first console powerful enough to handle four-player split-screen gameplay without significant slowdown. Accessories included the Controller Pak for saving game data, the Rumble Pak for force feedback, and the Expansion Pak for boosted RAM.
Despite the hardware's ambitions, programming for it was described by The Economist as "horrendously complex." Nintendo's hardware chief Genyo Takeda later reflected with regret, admitting: "When we made Nintendo 64, we thought it was logical that if you want to make advanced games, it becomes technically more difficult. We were wrong. We now understand it's the cruising speed that matters, not the momentary flash of peak power."
The North American launch on the 29th of September, 1996, arrived with just two games: Pilotwings 64 and Super Mario 64. Cruis'n USA had been pulled from the lineup less than a month before launch because it did not meet Nintendo's quality standards. Nintendo of America chairman Howard Lincoln had set the tone in 1994, saying, "we're convinced that a few great games at launch are more important than great games mixed in with a lot of dogs."
During the system's first three days on the American market, retailers sold 350,000 of 500,000 available units. Within its first four months, half a million units sold in North America. By the end of its first full year in the United States, the console had sold 3.6 million units. BusinessWire reported that Nintendo's overall sales increased by 156% by 1997.
The North American launch was backed by a $54 million marketing campaign by Leo Burnett Worldwide. That figure worked out to over $100 in marketing for every North American unit manufactured up to that point. While the PlayStation and Saturn both targeted teenagers and adults, Nintendo's stated target audience for the N64 was pre-teens. Pre-launch advertisements used slogans like "Wait for it..." and "Is it worth the wait? Only if you want the best!" to manage consumer impatience during repeated delays.
The European PAL version launched on the 1st of March, 1997, except in France, where it arrived on the 1st of September that same year. The console's ultimate retail price was set to compete with the Saturn and PlayStation, both of which had been reduced to $199.99 earlier in the summer. Nintendo framed the price as an impulse purchase, a strategy borrowed from the toy industry.
Super Mario 64 is the best-selling console game of its generation, with 11 million units sold, beating Gran Turismo for PlayStation at 10.85 million and Final Fantasy VII at 9.72 million. Three of the top five best-selling games in the United States for December 1996 were Nintendo 64 titles, according to TRSTS reports; the remaining two were Super NES games. Five different Nintendo 64 games exceeded 1 million in sales during 1997.
GoldenEye 007, released in 1997, is widely credited as a pivotal game in the evolution of the first-person shooter genre. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, released in 1998, set the standard for future 3D action-adventure games and is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest games ever made. Both titles were among those delayed from the 1997 holiday season, alongside Banjo-Kazooie, Conker's Quest, Yoshi's Story, and Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. Nintendo announced Diddy Kong Racing at the last minute to partially fill that gap.
Hiroshi Yamauchi announced at the Nintendo 64's November 1995 unveiling that Nintendo would deliberately restrict the number of games produced so developers would focus on quality over quantity. The Los Angeles Times observed this was part of Nintendo's "penchant for perfection." Second-party developer Rare contributed heavily to the library's critical standing, and Capcom reconsidered its decision not to publish N64 games after Nintendo announced a roughly 15% price cut on cartridges heading into the 1997 holiday season.
In Japan, the console's smaller role-playing game library was a persistent problem. Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi attributed lower domestic sales primarily to the lack of role-playing titles. Dragon Quest VII, a major domestic franchise, moved to rival platforms because of cartridge cost and storage limitations. Shigeru Miyamoto acknowledged the Japanese and European situations were difficult but noted that American success made "the business completely viable."
Nintendo discontinued the N64 in 2002, the year after the GameCube launched. By the 31st of December 2009, lifetime sales figures stood at 5.54 million units in Japan, 20.63 million in the Americas, and 6.75 million in other regions, for a worldwide total of 32.93 million. The console outsold the Sega Saturn across the generation but trailed well behind the PlayStation.
In 2011, IGN ranked the Nintendo 64 as the ninth-greatest video game console of all time. Video game journalists consistently regard it as one of the most iconic consoles ever made. The N64 was the last major cartridge-based home console until the Nintendo Switch in 2017.
Several Rare-developed titles, including Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie, and Perfect Dark, were released on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade following Microsoft's 2002 acquisition of Rareware. Nintendo retained rights to Donkey Kong 64, which appeared on the Wii U Virtual Console in April 2015. Select Nintendo 64 games have been made available through the Nintendo Classics service as part of the Expansion Pack tier of Nintendo Switch Online. With the Nintendo Switch 2 launch on the 5th of June, 2025, the N64 Nintendo Classics tier gained a CRT filter, rewind function, and button remapping.
The iQue Player, a handheld TV game system based on the N64 hardware, released only in China on the 17th of November, 2003, after China banned traditional video game consoles. It carried a library that ran from 2003 to 2016, including Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Animal Crossing, among others. The 64DD peripheral, meanwhile, remained Japan-only and was a commercial failure, with only nine games ever released for it, including the four Mario Artist titles.
Common questions
When was the Nintendo 64 released in North America?
The Nintendo 64 was first sold in North America on the 26th of September 1996, though it had been advertised for the 29th. It launched with just two games: Pilotwings 64 and Super Mario 64.
How many Nintendo 64 consoles were sold worldwide?
Nintendo sold 32.93 million Nintendo 64 units in total, with 20.63 million sold in the Americas, 5.54 million in Japan, and 6.75 million in other regions.
Why did the Nintendo 64 use cartridges instead of CDs?
Nintendo chose ROM cartridges over CDs for the Nintendo 64 citing faster load times, greater durability, and reduced software piracy. The trade-off was higher production costs and a 64 MB storage cap compared to a CD's 650 MB, which drove many third-party developers toward the PlayStation.
What games are considered the best on the Nintendo 64?
Super Mario 64 is the best-selling console game of its generation with 11 million units sold. GoldenEye 007 (1997) is credited as a pivotal title in the first-person shooter genre, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) is widely regarded as one of the greatest games ever made.
What award did the Nintendo 64 win in 1996?
Time magazine named the Nintendo 64 its 1996 Machine of the Year. The console also won the 1996 Spotlight Award for Best New Technology.
Why did the Nintendo 64 struggle in Japan?
The Nintendo 64 underperformed in Japan primarily due to a lack of role-playing games, a genre especially popular in that market. Higher cartridge costs compared to CDs also contributed to limited third-party support, and major franchises like Dragon Quest VII moved to rival platforms.