The 10 Biggest Selling Nintendo 64 (N64) Games Of All Time - Warped Factor - Words in the Key of Geek.

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The 10 Biggest Selling Nintendo 64 (N64) Games Of All Time

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Released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, and March 1997 in Europe and Australia, the Nintendo 64 (N64) was named machine of the year by Time. Going on to sell 32.93 million units, before being discontinued in 2002, the N64 was the last major home console to use a cartridge as its primary storage format until the Nintendo Switch resurrected the format in 2017.[7] Although with only around 380 games available throughout its lifetime, the Nintendo 64 was someway behind its console rivals for titles (Sony's Playstation had over 1100 games and SEGA's Saturn in excess of 600), Nintendo focused on quality of release rather than quantity of release. It worked as three of the top five best-selling games in the U.S. in 1996 were Nintendo 64 games (both of the remaining two were Super NES games).

How many of these titles did you own?


1. Super Mario 64
Just like the NES and SNES, the flagship Mario title for the console is the biggest selling game on the system. Available from the Nintendo 64's release, and bundled with the N64 for a period of it's production lifetime, Super Mario 64 features open-world playability, degrees of freedom through all three axes in space, and relatively large areas which are composed primarily of true 3D polygons as opposed to only two-dimensional (2D) sprites featured in the previous Mario games. The technological leap for Nintendo's most popular franchise was rewarded with sales of 11.91 million.


2. Mario Kart 64
A bit of a habit formed with Nintendo 64 releases, in that the number 64 tended to follow the title of a vast amount of the games released for the system. Also, many games took advantage of the potential 4-player option the N64 offered, and Mario Kart 64 was no exception to this. When released in December 1996, some critics were disappointed with it, feeling the earlier SNES version was superior. Gamers disagreed as it sold 9.87 million copies - a million more than  Super Mario Kart.


3. GoldenEye 007
A stone-cold classic and I'd argue its case for the greatest multi-player game of all time, Rare's Goldeneye 007 was released in August 1997, two year's after Pierce Brosnan debut Bond film arrived in cinemas. That delay clearly didn't bother the 8.09 million people who snapped up the title. They were just loving the atmospheric single-player missions, stealth elements, and the quite brilliant multiplayer deathmatch mode.


4. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
In the United States, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time received more than three times more pre-orders than any other video game up to that point and was the best-selling game in the country for 1998. Not bad for a title that was only available for five weeks of that year! In the end, worldwide Ocarina chalked up sales of 7.6 million and went on to win six honors at the 2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, including "Game of the Year", "Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Design", "Outstanding Achievement in Software Engineering", "Console Game of the Year", "Console Adventure Game of the Year" and "Console RPG of the Year", along with a nomination for "Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development".


5. Super Smash Bros.
The first installment in the Super Smash Bros. series saw a crossover between several different Nintendo franchises, the likes of which had never been seen before. Developed by third-party HAL  Laboratory, Inc (HALKEN), a Nintendo second-party developer, the game featured characters from Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Metroid, F-Zero, Mother, Kirby, and Pokémon. Pick your fighter and battle it out to discover which in-game character was the victor. 5.55 million N64 owners did just that.


6. Pokémon Stadium
The first console Pokemon game available worldwide (Japan had an exclusive earlier version of this) gave GameBoy owners the chance to transfer their Pokemon across to the N64 to view, organise, store, trade, and battle! Although critical reception wasn't great when released in April 1999, 5.46 million copies of Pokemon Stadium were sold.


7. Donkey Kong 64
Another classic release from Rare and the first in the Donkey Kong franchise to feature 3D gameplay. The top selling N64 game of 1999 (which, like Ocarina, it achieved in just 5 weeks of sales), Donkey Kong 64 won the E3 Game Critics award for Best Platform Game, and multiple awards and nominations from games magazines, as well as adorning 5.27 million gamers collection. 


8. Diddy Kong Racing
Giving Mario a run, or should that be race for his money, Diddy Kong Racing was the big N64 title for the 1997 holiday season and it did not disappoint in sales or gameplay. Eventually shifting 4.88 million copies, Rare had themselves another major hit on their hands and became the third-party developer of choice for Nintendo's powerful 64-bit console.


9. Star Fox 64
The fifth in-house title on this list, developed by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development Division (Nintendo EAD), formerly Nintendo Research & Development 4 Department, Star Fox 64 was a reboot of the original SNES game and was the first Nintendo 64 title to have included support for the Rumble Pak, with which it initially came bundled. With total global sales of 4 million this 1997 release was an essential purchase.


10. Banjo-Kazooie
From humble beginnings a decade earlier, four of the top 10 biggest selling Nintendo 64 games were developed by Rare. Arriving in June 1998, the first game in the Banjo-Kazooie series was both a critical and commercial success, with worldwide sales on 3.65 million - nearly 2 million of them in the U.S. alone. The platform game featured nine nonlinear worlds where the player must use Banjo and Kazooie's wide range of abilities to gather items and progress through the story by overcoming challenges such as solving puzzles, jumping over obstacles, collecting items, and defeating opponents.

And they are the 10 biggest selling Nintendo 65 games of all time. How many of them did you own? Let us know in the comments below.

Previously
The 10 Biggest Selling Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Games Of All Time
The 10 Biggest Selling Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) Games Of All Time

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