Games That Pushed The N64 To The Limit

F-Zero X is an impressive title for the lowly Nintendo 64 console. One thing commonly associated with the N64 was the terrible, terrible draw distance. Think of the fog from Silent Hill, but in nearly every single game released for the console.

F-Zero X blew people away with its blistering speed without much of any fog anywhere to been seen. It's impressive, and one of, if not the only, racing game on the N64 without the massive amounts of fog. Sure, the textures are lacking, but the trade off in speed is worth it, as you won't have much time to enjoy the sights.

On a technical level, Resident Evil 2 manages to surprise just about everyone out there. How the team managed to compress a game that came out on two discs on the PlayStation 1 onto a single N64 cart is mind-blowing. They even managed to include the plethora of FMV, albeit not quite as sharp.

The game got some strings pulled to make this happen with the use of a 512-megabit N64 cartridge, a cart twice as big as the one used for Ocarina of Time. Sure, everything is not quite as the sharp and pretty as the PS1, but it's impressive to have the full RE2 experience on a cart.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is a beautiful game that benefits from the use of the 4MB RAM pack, and a tweaked version of the Ocarina of Time engine. These little additions go a long way to create a game that pushed the N64 to its limits.

That little red expansion pack helps increase the draw distance and play a bit more with the games lighting. 4MB is almost nothing, but back in the day it was more than enough to allow developers to do some impressive things. And while the framerate does drop from time to time, the overall experience is pretty great.

Goldeneye might get more love, but it was Perfect Dark where RARE really showed what they could squeeze out of the Nintendo 64. Having access to the expansion pack also helped the team create a huge FPS experience that puts Goldeneye to shame.

The cut-scenes are all rendered in-engine and the sound pumped out is in Dolby Surround Sound. The framerates were also much better than Goldeneye and you get a lot of details that you wouldn't expect from an N64 game like all sorts of lighting effects and higher polygon counts.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is an interesting title for a couple of reasons. LucasArts was mostly known for making games that pushed the limits on the PC, but also had some success on the N64 with the impressive Rogue Squadron series.

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine takes full advantage of the expansion pack to help create some massive levels to play through. But what's really strange is the the N64 version of the game had better textures than the version that released on the PC. There was some serious magic at play here.

Wave Race 64 was an early game in the life of the N64 and still manages to impress people today. For a game that didn't have the benefit of the expansion pack, as it didn't exist yet, the water physics that it produced are still some of the best.

Every single person that played the game was blown away with how the developers had managed to create water that actually seemed to act like real water. You took waves, skimmed the tops of choppy water, plowed through and under waves in a spectacular fashion.

Donkey Kong 64 is simply a massive game, and one that come to define the proclivity to collecting endless junk that RARE seemed to love. Hell, people are still finding new collectibles even as recently as 2017. The massive world looked amazing and the underwater segments showed just what RARE could do with the console.

And while the game was one of the few that required the expansion pack (it wouldn't even load without it), it didn't actually need it. RARE found a memory bug that kept the game from running on a stock N64 and used the expansion pack to patch the bug as it was too late to fix. This is all stock N64 power!

With most Nintendo consoles the best and most impressive games come from Nintendo themselves. This makes sense as they created the console and know the capabilities from top to bottom. But the N64 was different, as it became RARE that really pushed the N64 like no other.

Conker's Bad Fur Day is one such title that pushed the visuals that the N64 could pump out. The game managed some truly impressive textures with a very clean layout not usually seen on the N64. The game stutters at points, but it's probably the most visually impressive games on the system.

Turok 2 was darn impressive, but Turok 3 did more than most would ask, or expect from the N64. The cut-scenes blew other games out of the water with 3D facial animations synced to voice overs, huge levels and lots of action. Too bad the game wasn't all that great with its mishmash of ideas.

But you can really see the amount of things going on when the game drops you back into the very first level from the original Turok game. The changes are like night and day, almost feeling like an HD remake well before HD was even a thing.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is the only Japan only game to make this list, and while many in the West might not even know this title exists, it's a damn beauty. The game featured the shows massive EVA units doing battle with all manner of creatures. The models were huge and the game pushed the limits on the visual front.

The game also featured some nice pre-rendered cut-scenes that would feel right at home on the PlayStation 1. The game also featured some voice acting with was pretty nice to hear. The game isn't very long, but it sure is easy on the eyes.