About the Nintendo 64
The Nintendo 64 launched in Japan on June 23, 1996, arriving two years after both the PlayStation (1994) and the Sega Saturn (1994). In an industry moving decisively toward CD-ROM, Nintendo chose to stay with cartridges — and built the first home console controller with an analogue stick at its centre. The machine that gave the world Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and GoldenEye 007 also gave it a new language for three-dimensional play.
Historical Context
The Nintendo 64 entered the market at a pivotal moment. Sony had launched the PlayStation in Japan in December 1994 — itself born from a failed partnership with Nintendo over a SNES CD-ROM add-on, a betrayal that turned Sony's Ken Kutaragi into Nintendo's fiercest competitor. Sega's Saturn launched the same month. By the time the N64 arrived in June 1996, PlayStation had an eighteen-month head start in Japan. In North America, released September 29, 1996, the N64 launched alongside Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64, and consumers queued for hours. Europe waited until March 1, 1997. The console sold 33 million units worldwide — a distant third to PlayStation's 102 million, but its software library included many of the highest-rated games of the era.
Form & Feel
The Nintendo 64 controller is one of the most unusual input devices in gaming history — and one of the most intentional. Its three-pronged shape was designed around a single premise: some games require two hands on a D-pad, others require a thumb on an analogue stick. Rather than force a compromise, Nintendo built a controller that was effectively two controllers in one. Hold the left and centre prongs: left thumb on the analogue Control Stick, right thumb on the face buttons. Hold the left and right prongs: left thumb on the D-pad, right thumb on the face buttons — traditional 2D mode. The Control Stick itself is a digital encoder that reads movement via a spinning chopper wheel and photodiode — not a true analogue potentiometer. The Z trigger on the underside of the centre prong was the first trigger button on the underside of a home console controller. The Expansion Pak slot on the base accepted a memory expansion unit that doubled RAM from 4 MB to 8 MB, enabling enhanced versions of select games. A second slot accepted the Rumble Pak — first bundled with Star Fox 64 in 1997 — the first force-feedback device on a home console. The console itself was available in charcoal black at launch, with a full palette of colours to follow: jungle green, fire orange, ice blue, watermelon red, and a translucent "funtastic" series.
The World It Was Born Into
The mid-1990s were the most transformative years in gaming history. CD-ROM had changed everything: PlayStation could hold 660 MB per disc to the N64 cartridge's maximum of 64 MB. Publishers could suddenly fit full orchestral scores, voiced dialogue, full-motion video cut-scenes — content that cartridges physically could not accommodate. Square's decision to develop Final Fantasy VII for PlayStation rather than Nintendo 64 was the most public articulation of this tension: Hironobu Sakaguchi cited cartridge capacity limitations directly. The gaming audience was also changing. The PlayStation was marketed with edge and irony — aimed at teenagers and young adults who considered themselves too sophisticated for "Nintendo." In North America, Sega had spent years positioning "Genesis does what Nintendon't" in the public consciousness. Nintendo's image was simultaneously its greatest asset and its most exploited liability. The N64 entered this environment as a machine of conviction: no CD-ROM, no DVD player, no multimedia ambitions — just games, running without load times, on hardware co-designed with Silicon Graphics.
How It Was Built — and Why
The Nintendo 64's CPU is the NEC VR4300, a 64-bit MIPS R4300i processor running at 93.75 MHz — built around the same architecture as Silicon Graphics' own workstations. Its GPU is the Reality Coprocessor (RCP), a 62.5 MHz chip co-developed with SGI, divided internally into two components: the Reality Signal Processor (RSP), which handles geometry, lighting, and audio, and the Reality Display Processor (RDP), which renders the final rasterised frame. The system carries 4 MB of Rambus RDRAM — a high-bandwidth memory format chosen specifically for its data-transfer speed rather than its storage volume. The Expansion Pak raises this to 8 MB. The RCP's real-time texture filtering and anti-aliasing capability — uncommon in consumer hardware of the era — gave N64 games a visual softness that some loved and others found blurry. Cartridge access time is effectively zero; the game code loads into RAM at boot, not on demand. This is the reason Ocarina of Time's transition between rooms is instantaneous, while PlayStation's disc-based games of the same era displayed loading screens. Nintendo's own engineers described the cartridge decision explicitly: Hiroshi Yamauchi stated that "having no loading time is a great advantage" and that customers who experienced it agreed. The trade-off — cartridge costs two to five times the price of a CD-ROM to manufacture — was passed directly to consumers. An average N64 game retailed at $59.99 in North America, compared to PlayStation's $39.99.
The Belief Behind the Machine
"The game starts the moment you press the button."
Nintendo's choice to stay with cartridges for the N64 was not technical conservatism — it was a hierarchy of values. Load time, to Nintendo, was not an acceptable trade-off for storage capacity. A child picks up the controller and plays; they do not wait. This belief was stated directly by Hiroshi Yamauchi and borne out in the hardware's design. The analogue Control Stick was the other expression of this philosophy. Nintendo recognised that 3D games were coming, and that the existing D-pad — perfect for two-dimensional movement — was inadequate for navigating a 3D world. Rather than adapting existing controls, they invented a new one: an analogue stick centred in a three-pronged controller, designed specifically for the hand position required to play 3D games. Super Mario 64 was not made to fit the hardware; the hardware was, in part, designed around the needs of Super Mario 64. This is a reversal of the usual relationship between game and console — the software drove the form of the input device. The result was a machine that sold thirty-three million units, was outsold two-to-one by PlayStation, and yet produced a greater concentration of perfect-score games than any console before it. Ocarina of Time is still the highest-rated game in recorded review history. The N64 lost the market. It may have won the century.
The Sounds and Images of an Era
The Nintendo 64 defined an era of 3D play. These videos capture the machine as it was — on television, at startup, in the shops.
Console CM
Software Commercials 1996-1997
Coming soon — the shop owner's personal note on this console. Taisei Shimizu has shipped Nintendo 64 units to collectors around the world. His note will appear here.
Games in the Museum
Each entry includes a shop owner's note, collector's guide, maintenance tips, and memory prompts — inviting players around the world to share their stories.
Nintendo 64
Super Mario 64
スーパーマリオ64
Super Mario 64 was the Nintendo 64's Japanese launch title and one of the most consequential games e…
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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
ゼルダの伝説 時のオカリナ
Ocarina of Time is the highest-rated game in recorded review history and the first Legend of Zelda t…
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Mario Kart 64
マリオカート64
Mario Kart 64 was the second entry in the Mario Kart series and the first to render its tracks in fu…
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Super Smash Bros.
大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ
Super Smash Bros. is the game that Masahiro Sakurai built in secret. Working without Nintendo's know…
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Star Fox 64
スターフォックス64
Star Fox 64 was the first home console game to ship bundled with the Rumble Pak — the first force-fe…
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