Top 10 Best-Selling Nintendo 64 Games - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 12 September 2015 / 27,197 Views
Earlier this week we took a look back at how well the original PlayStation sold, with particular emphasis on the top 10 best-selling games for it. Now its the turn of one of the PlayStation's generational rival, the Nintendo 64.
Nintendo's third console - the Nintendo 64 - was the company's first home console that failed to claim the top spot, and was a partial harbringer of things to come. Despite signalling a decline in Nintendo's predominance within the home console arena, the Nintendo 64 was nonetheless able to sell 32.93 million units lifetime. That makes it the 14th best-selling platform of all time and the 9th best-selling home console.
Looking at the regional breakdown we can see how strong the platform was in North America compared to other regions. Nearly two-thirds of its total sales - 20.11 million units - were accounted for in North America. In Europe it sold 6.35 million units, and in Japan it sold 5.54 million units. Outside of the three main regions it sold just 0.93 million units.
As with most other Nintendo platforms, the best-selling games were all first party. Below we've compiled a list of the top 10 best-selling Nintendo 64 games:
10th. Banjo-Kazooie - 3.63 Million
9th. Star Fox 64 - 4.03 Million
8th. Diddy Kong Racing - 4.88 Million
7th. Donkey Kong 64 - 5.27 Million
6th. Pokémon Stadium - 5.45 Million
5th. Super Smash Bros. - 5.55 Million
4th. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 7.60 Million
3rd. GoldenEye 007 - 8.09 Million
2nd. Mario Kart 64 - 9.87 Million
1st. Super Mario 64 - 11.89 Million
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A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials.You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Four games are from Rare. Somehow, I think people actually UNDERRATE their importance as far as Nintendo's success during that era.
True and I agree. However only 1 of those games is an original rare title where they own the character still.
But don't get me wrong Rare was great Conkers Bad Fur Day is my favorite game of all time. But Rare has proven to be terrible without guidance from Nintendo.
Yes, I think I am guilty of this!
Personal preferences get in the way... I am not a fan of any of their games, but I always respectee their technical prowess.
I can't imagine how that's possible. When people think N64, it's pretty much Mario 64, Zelda OoT, Smash Bros, and Goldeneye that they're thinking of.
Dang thing won't let me edit and I didn't mean to submit yet. Anyways, if not those four, there's at least ALWAYS a Rare game in mind when thinking back to N64.
Just seeing how many Rare games are on the list and how Microsoft is doing nothing with them makes me want Nintendo to buy Rare even more :(
What for? Literally all the talent at Rare went out the door after (and some even before) the sale. All the people who made the original Battletoads, Killer Instinct, DKC, Banjo-Kazooie, Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark, etc...all gone. Rare games don't JUST suck on Xbox because it's Xbox. They suck because Rare just isn't Rare anymore.
Majora didn't make it? Disappointing.
of course not you needed the accessory which came packed in with DK64 to play it, so you would need to both have bought DK64 and love Zelda.
It sold between 3m and 3.5m, so it's probably somewhere in the top 15.
One of the first of these lists where I have all 10 games still perfectly kept. Loved my N64
This is the BEST generation in gaming. Platformers on the 64 and RPG's on the PS1.
FPS on N64 and fighter of PS1 was also a big deal
good old times when any genre or new IP could sell millions and millions
To be fair though, N64 had an extremely small library of games, compared to the PS1.
I owned a PlayStation and in certain genres it was the console to have, but it's my N64 that still gets use even today. Before online gaming, the 4 player local co-op of games like 007, Worms Armageddon and MK 64 was truly next gen and many many hours were spent playing them. A lack of games and expensive cartridges hurt the system, but the inability to pirate games for it cannot be understated. People I knew bought a PlayStation for this reason.
DK 64 did not deserve the sales it got. People were expecting 3D DKC, and instead got a watered down, lesser Banjo-Kazooie experience. BK was literally meant to be a "test run" for building a 3D DK game, and yet BK was far superior.
Personally I think some of the best games didn't make it, the N64 was the best group local multiplayer machine I have ever seen thanks to the four control ports and great underrated games. Sure you have main stays like Goldeneye 007/Perfect Dark and Mario Kart 64, but much love for the many THQ wrestling games, still decent EA Sports support, under the radar classics like Bomberman 64 that populated it.
Boy oh boy, these games are my favorite!
Was rare 1st party? I thought they were 2nd!
Console with very small numbers of games but again so many great hits and one of the best games ever (Mario 64 and Zelda OOT).
Personally my favorite console ever.
Despite selling just about a 30% of What Playstation sold, the amount of sales of the top 10 best-selling games is really similar to the PSX Top 10.
32.93 million? Wow. I thought it sold roughly 50- to 60 mil. A solid system nonetheless. Thanks for the article.
It's because it came out when Dreamcast and PS2 were just launching. It suffered the same fate as MM.
Again, any game which required the memory expansion pack was going to be limited in sales since they were only accessible to a limited number of the 30 million owners of the N64 to begin with.
Well, since this is about sales and not quality of game...
