27 years ago today, Nintendo changed everything

On June 23, 1996 - 27 years ago today - the Nintendo 64 was released in Japan.

Never the most popular console, nor the best-selling, it’s nonetheless still a console that holds the fondest of memories for a legion of fans, and one that was home to some of the most important and influential games the industry has ever seen.

Third-party studios may not have flocked to the system in the same way they did with the PlayStation, but - except for perhaps right now - Nintendo has arguably never been in better form than during the N64 days.

It wasn’t just the quality of the games they put out either, it was the variety. Whether it was platfomers like Mario 64 or action RPGs like Ocarina of Time, extreme sports titles and racers like Wave Race, 1080 and F-Zero, fighters like Smash Bros, or at-the-time-photorealistic semi-simulations like Pilotwings, Nintendo was on a quite remarkable hot-streak.