Best N64 Games Tier List

Ocarina of Time is our pick for the best N64 game, and its dungeons are the reason it still holds up, even though the frame rate and item menus now feel slow. Playing with three friends instead of alone? Load GoldenEye 007, the S pick built for a crowd, because its four-player split-screen matches remain the heart of it.

#1 on our boardSThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time1998

Lock-on targeting made 3D sword fights easy to read, and drawing the Master Sword turns young Link into an adult in a Hyrule that has changed around him. The frame rate and item menus feel slow now, but the dungeons still hold up.

1. 2Super Mario 641996The N64's launch game set the template for 3D platforming, and Mario still moves much the way he did here. Blurry textures and an awkward camera date it more than the controls do.
2. 3Majora's Mask2000The moon falls on Termina in three days, so you replay the same stretch of time while masks change what Link can do. That ticking clock puts some players off and gives it a mood no other Zelda matches.
3. 4GoldenEye 0071997Rare's Bond game showed that first-person shooters could work on a console, and its four-player split-screen deathmatches are still why people load it up. It now plays on Switch through the Switch Online Expansion Pack and on Xbox, so the stiff aiming is easy to judge for yourself.

Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, the higher membership level, includes all four S picks, while the basic membership carries no N64 games at all. Two A games have no modern release at all, Super Smash Bros. and Diddy Kong Racing, which makes them the cartridges worth hunting first. Xbox owners have their own route through Rare Replay, which includes Conker's Bad Fur Day, a game Switch Online does not carry, and Rogue Squadron is still sold for PC as Rogue Squadron 3D.

Nintendo's studios hold the most S and A places, but Rare comes remarkably close for a single developer, with GoldenEye 007 in S and Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing and Conker's Bad Fur Day in A. Its bigger platformers are the caution: Banjo-Tooie drops to B and Donkey Kong 64, the largest of Rare's N64 platformers, sits in D, so start with Banjo-Kazooie if huge worlds full of collectibles wear you down. The best game from neither camp is Rogue Squadron, Factor 5's Star Wars flight shooter.

Super Mario 64 is the platformer to start with, while racing fans should pick by the kind of race they want. Mario Kart 64 is the four-player choice, F-Zero X keeps thirty racers on the track at 60 frames per second, and Diddy Kong Racing adds an adventure mode where you swap between cars, hovercraft and planes. For a party night, Mario Party 2 is the N64 Mario Party to own if you only buy one, and WWF No Mercy is still the wrestling game the later ones get measured against.