Welcome to N64 Blog!
Martin Watts December 30, 2012It’s fair to say that gamers get nostalgic. Despite the relative youth of the video games industry, many of us have grown up with home computers, consoles and handheld systems in our lives, and seeing a game or hearing a piece of music from it years later, can conjure up memories of the good ol’ days. We weren’t worrying about how we were going to pay our gas bill or when we were going to get our laundry done; we just wanted to make sure we beat Bowser and returned the princess safely to her castle.
At the same time, nostalgia has a way of clouding our judgement. We all bought a dud game at one point or another, yet still played it religiously because it was all we had. We remember how much fun we had playing a particular game, only to then go back to it years later to find that the controls are a complete mess and that it doesn’t look quite as good as we originally thought. Nostalgia—all too easily it seems—can get the better of us.
Nevertheless, there are some games out there that truly stand the test of time. Despite some faults and now outdated mechanics, they’re still immediately playable and incredibly fun, too. As a result of this, many of us still keep going back to these games over and over again; it’s as if the game cartridge were crafted with magic.
The Nintendo 64 is home to many games that hold these qualities. Its library of games, while relatively small, is filled with some of the best games ever created (and that’s not nostalgia getting the better of us for once!). It may not have been the system that brought mainstream success to the industry (that honour deservingly goes to Sony’s PlayStation), however, it introduced a number of innovations that are still found today. There was certainly something magical about the system, even if some of its technical aspects did hold it back from achieving the commercial success its creators had hoped for.
The purpose of this blog isn’t to try to tell the world that the N64 was the greatest video game system ever created. We know that our nostalgic views of the system aren’t necessarily shared by everyone else.
We do realise, however, that the N64 still remains a popular pastime for many people around the world. Whether they be long-time fans that never stopped playing, veterans that returned through the wonders of eBay or entirely new players altogether, people are still enjoying what this delightful little machine has to offer.
N64 Blog seeks to act as a useful accompanying web resource that provides informative articles, engaging retrospectives and helpful purchasing advice to collectors and enthusiasts. While it may be a tall order for us to aim to catalogue every single Nintendo 64 game on this site, it’s something worth striving for.
We hope you enjoy what you find on N64 Blog and look forward to growing our site further.
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