Nintendo 64 Turns 30 - Top 10 Best-Selling N64 Games - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 23 June 2026 / 8,306 Views
Nintendo's fifth-generation video game console, the Nintendo 64, is celebrating its 30th anniversary in Japan. The N64 released in Japan on June 23, 1996, in North America on September 29, 1996, and in Europe and Oceania on March 1, 1997.
Nintendo managed to sell 32.93 million units of the console during its lifetime. It is currently the 19th best-selling video game platform of all time, with it behind the Sega Genesis's 34.06 million units sold and ahead of the Atari 2600's 30 million sold units.
The Nintendo 64 proved most successful in North America with sales of 20.11 million units sold. It also sold 6.35 million units in Europe, 5.54 million units in Japan, and 0.93 million units in the rest of the world.
52 games for the N64 managed to sell over one million units, 25 games sold more than two million units, seven sold over five million units, and one sold over 10 million units.
Super Mario 64 is the biggest hit on the platform with 11.91 million units sold. Mario Kart 64 comes in second place with 9.87 million units sold, followed by GoldenEye 007 with 8.09 million units sold and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time with 7.60 million units sold.
Super Smash Bros. was the fifth best-selling game on the N64 with sales of 5.55 million units. Pokemon Stadium comes in sixth place with sales of 5.46 million, followed by Donkey Kong 64 with 5.27 million units sold.
Diddy Kong Racing comes in at eighth place with 4.88 million units sold, followed by Star Fox 64 in ninth with 4.00 million units sold. Banjo-Kazooie rounds out the top 10 with 3.65 million units sold.
Here is a list of the top 10 best-selling Nintendo 64 games:
- Super Mario 64 - 11.91 million
- Mario Kart 64 - 9.87 million
- GoldenEye 007 - 8.09 million
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 7.60 million
- Super Smash Bros. - 5.55 million
- Pokemon Stadium - 5.46 million
- Donkey Kong 64 - 5.27 million
- Diddy Kong Racing - 4.88 million
- Star Fox 64 - 4.00 million
- Banjo-Kazooie - 3.65 million
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 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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30th anniversary edition console??
The console with the most influential games of all time. Period.
Still waiting for some on that list to make it to NSO, namely Diddy Kong Racing.
Seriously! With the 18+ N64 app available, you gotta figure Conker's Bad Fur Day will eventually get added since the big questions were about Banjo and Conker being in Diddy Kong Racing. The former already having both games available on NSO. It would be surprising if there are any licensing issues at this point since so many N64-era Rare games are already on the service. Even got Goldeneye on there, which was a notorious licensing nightmare.
Ocarina of Time & Majora’s Mask deserved so much better. :( It is a bit surprising though to see all these late-gen releases making the charts— DK64 and Pokémon Stadium released in late-99/early-00, Smash in mid-99.
Late gen? They released only 3 years into the console's lifecycle lol. Technically more mid-gen since the N64 didn't get discontinued till 2003 lol.
But Donkey Kong and especially Pokémon were at their peak in popularity though at that time. So they rose up the sales charts quickly.
GCN launched in late 2001/early 2002, so I’d say late-99/early-00 definitely counts much closer to being late gen than mid IMO. Less than two years on the market yet still came close to games like OoT is pretty impressive, you would never see that on something that NS1.
Greater console base.
2nd hand market was much bigger back at the time, and people used to lend cartridges to their friends.
Ocarina of time will get another chance later this year
Ocarina had an attach rate of roughly 22%, Breath of the Wild has an attach rate of roughly 21%. on Switch1 as a launch game.
I'd say Ocarina did do very well.
To this day I find it shocking how different was the N64's sales across the regions
Partly due to not being launched at the same time. It came to Europe only in 1997.
And europe has always been Nintendo's weakest region while it is sony's strongest.
N64 sold around 33M, I guess the writter of this article got numbers of GC
The 5th console generation is still my favourite.
N64, although it had its obvious setbacks, has one of the most influential games of all time.
The PS1, a beast of its own, crashing onto the gaming industry and reshaping it entirely, and lest we forget, my beloved Sega Saturn.
I swear, if Sega's didn't drop every ball possible in terms of management and marketing, it could have succeeded (as it did in Japan) because honestly, its library was more than capable of being competitive.
All three are in my top 5 favourite consoles of all time
These charts are always good to look at due to the amounts of top selling games. The biggest selling on the PS1 is like GT at only just under 11 mil. While there is a better distribution of games as 10th is Tekken 2 with just under 6 (according to this website), 2mil more than N64's 10th.
Meanwhile, all these games, PS1, N64 games. They sold less than Arc Raiders. :P
Not sure how much people understand the industry has grown really.
If Sony didn't join the console race (or if Nintendo didn't drop the ball with disks over CDs and their treatment of third parties) then the N64 would've deserved to be the best selling game system of all time (for its time period). Instant classics in full 3D and new games like Smash and GoldenEye, and of course Pokémania.
4 top 10s sellers with 2 top 5s and the best seller in Mario 64 for that generation on a console outsold 3 to 1 by the winner.
With the exception of Smash, Pokemon and DK64, I owned the rest.
i had so much fun on this system, endless classics!
