By the mid '90s, Nintendo knew they needed another system out, and as the natural progression of Super NES games like Star Fox and Mario Kart and popular games for the PC indicated, they knew it needed to be 3D. Thus, Nintendo developed the most powerful gaming machine at the time, a 64-bit monster called the Nintendo 64. It had a sleek look, utilized powerful anti-aliasing (allowing for some of the smoothest graphics the world had ever seen), and an incredibly innovative controller design. Its one glaring drawback was that it was a cartridge-based system. This little fact was probably what first turned players off to Nintendo and the N64, if only because it meant FMV (full-motion video), which was popular at the time, couldn't be loaded into the games the way it could on the Saturn and PSX game discs. However, the system's first game, Super Mario 64, which was also the world's first free-roaming 3D adventure, sold hugely well, and was a major milestone for Nintendo and the gaming world alike. Of course, there was much more on the way...

Shigeru Miyamoto (a.k.a. God) developed two of the most world-changing games of all time for the system, Super Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Super Mario 64 was a mind-boggling platformer, opening up the universe of complete 3D environments for the first time. Ocarina was a breathtaking, epic journey, with some of the most realistic graphics and interactive gameplay anyone had ever played. Other N64 games, as well, made more of an impact than gamers today choose to admit, such as Super Smash Bros., GoldenEye 007, and the Mario Party series.

At some point, developers in the company felt the need for large capacity, rewritable media to play their N64 games. Nintendo took a chance with the invention of the N64 Disc Drive, a failed add-on that never made it to the States. A list of 20 or so titles were even in the works to be compatible with the 64DD, and strangely, one of the most anticipated was EarthBound 64 (which, as we all should know, was further cancelled for any release at all in the Summer of 2000).

The 64DD looked like it could've been an amazing, practical way to let players interact with their gaming enviornments. One of the developers described what it could do by saying that, in a 64DD game, a player might plant a seed, and as time in the real world wore on, no matter how much the game itself was played, a tree would grow slowly in its place. The possibilities were endless, and it would've made each gamer's experience different, which isn't too easy to program otherwise. The 64DD used rewritable magnetic disks as the media (as opposed to, say, CDRWs), which may have turned off the consumer market, hearing "disc" and thinking "FMV" again. After a flop in the Japanese market, it and nearly all planned titles for it were canned for good in the States. Those that weren't, such as Ura Zelda and Animal Crossing, later found their way back into development on the GameCube.

Fast-forward to 2003 - China, the most populous nation in the world, still has no official Nintendo or Sony product. But all that was about to change. In November of that year, Nintendo boldly released the iQue - a controller-sized N64-calibur machine that displayed on your television screen (sort of a "handheld console", if you will). Games are loaded onto flash memory cards at Chinese game stores for a small fee, and so far quite an impressive library of the N64's greatest hits has made it to the system, including Mario 64, Star Fox 64, and even the original Animal Forest, fully-translated for Chinese players.

Many amazing games followed the release of the 64, and though it has become a system that has been attributed to great games, it has also had the mark of a "kiddy" image. This was another reason the N64 wasn't as popular as some other consoles. Later on in the system's years, Nintendo tried to change that, with games like Perfect Dark, Super Smash Bros., and Conker's Bad Fur Day (which is still today probably the most racy game ever), but it was too little, too late. In 2001, the system slowly died off, with only about 1 new release each month, and basically none past the Summer. The N64 should always be remembered as both a fully-dedicated 3D system - the first of its kind - and as an awesome cartridge fun machine - truly the last of its kind.