Nintendo 64 at 30: The Console That Taught Games to Move in 3D

In 1996, Time magazine named a video game console its Machine of the Year. It was the Nintendo 64, which launched in Japan on June 23, 1996, 30 years ago this summer, and in North America that September. It came with one of the most important games ever made, Super Mario 64, and a controller that looked like it had three handles.

The N64 sold 32.93 million units, far behind Sony's PlayStation. But its ideas, a thumbstick for moving in three dimensions, four-player split-screen and force feedback in your hands, became standard on every console that followed. Here is how it happened.

Project Reality

The N64 began life in 1993 as Project Reality, a partnership with Silicon Graphics, the American company whose workstations were used to make the computer graphics in Hollywood films of the era. The goal was to put that kind of 3D power in a living room. Before launch, the console was known as the Ultra 64.

Nintendo planned to sell it for $250 in the US but cut the price to $199.99 to match Sony and Sega. The console officially launched on September 29, 1996, though shops actually started selling it a few days earlier, on September 26. Europe and Australia waited until March 1, 1997.

The stick that changed everything

The N64 controller's centre prong held something new for Nintendo: a thumbstick. It was the first time Nintendo's standard controller had one, and it was built for Super Mario 64, where Mario could tiptoe, walk or run depending on how far you pushed it. Every 3D platformer, shooter and adventure since owes something to that idea.

The controller also had a slot underneath. Plug in the Rumble Pak, and the controller vibrated when you crashed or got hit, a feature that became standard across the industry. And the console had four controller ports built in, which made it the king of the sofa: Mario Kart 64 and the critically acclaimed GoldenEye 007 turned bedrooms into four-way battlegrounds.

The cartridge gamble

The N64's biggest decision was also its most costly. While Sony and Sega used CDs, Nintendo stayed with cartridges. They loaded almost instantly and were hard to pirate, but they were expensive to make and small: at most 64 MB, against about 650 MB on a CD.

That gap had consequences. Square and Enix moved Final Fantasy VII and Dragon Warrior VII, two of the biggest role-playing games in Japan, to the PlayStation, partly because of those storage limits. Losing them helped Sony build a lead in Japan that Nintendo never closed in that generation.

Nintendo tried to work around the limits. The Expansion Pak doubled the console's memory from 4 MB to 8 MB for games that needed it, and the 64DD, a magnetic disk drive add-on with internet features, launched only in Japan. It was a commercial failure.

Why it matters

The N64 lost the sales race but won the argument about how 3D games should be controlled. Its thumbstick, rumble and four-player design became the template that every console since has used in some form. It also taught Nintendo a painful lesson: being right about how games should play is not enough if developers cannot fit their games on your format. Its successor, the GameCube, finally switched to discs.

WGC's take: thirty years on, Super Mario 64 still feels astonishingly good to control, which is the best tribute to the hardware it was built for. For more on the series it made 3D, read our history of Zelda at 40.