Nintendos N64 western 3rd Party support was really something

D

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We all like to say that Nintendo's 3rd party support was at an all time low during the N64, but looking at the titles we got, it wasn't really that bad. I also really don't understand how this machine had acquired the stigmata 'kiddie machine' by the end of its life cycle.

The N64 had decent 3rd party ports, like THPS2, we had sports games from NHL to Fifa, awesome ports like Rayman... but this thing was a monster shooter machine! It basically cultivated the Xbox demographic before it came to be.

It had an exclusive Doom, Quake 1, Quake 2, Hexen, and the exclusive Duke Nukem: Zero Hour, Turok 1-3 and Rage Wars, Daikatana, Duke Nukem 3D...

Besides that it had Shadow Man, Armorines, Body Harvest and the Mission Impossible games, it had for some weird reason Command & Conquer and Starcraft, it had the exclusive LucasArts games...
And this is all just western stuff, Bomberman was basically a Nintendo Icon during this time with 3 exclusive titles and Konami also had the 3D Castelvania titles going..

You get where I'm going. The titles weren't that well paced during it's life span, some titles where of questionable quality and hindsight is 20, but there are many titles I look back on fondly besides the obvious Nintendo titles.
I'd say that the shutdown of their American 3rd Party team, when Nintendo Japan/Iwata took the helm during the GCN era was one of the biggest mistakes Nintendo made during their last few generations.
I don't know if their relationships to the western dev teams were better than they are now, but they delivered results considering the Playstations 3rd Party policies were much better, the cartridge situation and that they were late to the generation.
 
Yes, compared to post N64 support it was great!

I remember Extreme G, I didn't like it as a game, but the music was very good.
 
They were the world leader in gaming at that point. It was either support Nintendo or this 'upstart' Sony and we all saw how it turned out. If anything, the N64 Era was perhaps the beginning of the issues for Nintendo.

They failed to see just how important third party support and third party or western devs would be. I'd argue that the output of Rare at that point even rivaled Nintendo themselves. They always saw it as, we're Nintendo, if they want our player base and our console, they'll develop how we want. Many devs wanted Nintendo not to overlook the CD as a storage medium, that cost benefits and storage could help them. What happened is, though they still had a lot of third party support, Sony took the upper hand. They basically took almost every single Japanese developer away.

I hated the PSX which my brother had, disliked the controller, but loved the myriad of games that were on the system and that passed the N64 by altogether.
 
They had good games and they usually sold well. They also had a many sports titles each years covering basically all genres.

It lacked racers simulations. It was basically the console for sports fans, shooters, party/multiplayer and platform games.
NOA did a good job, but in PAL and Japan, the success wasn't the same. Maybe that's the reason NCL decided to take away some power from NOA...
 
That's what happens when you're coming off the Super Nintendo and there are only two really meaningful platforms on the market.
 
You forgot the Turok games too! When people talk of declining 3rd party support beginning in the N64 era, I'm pretty sure they're referring to the Japanese developers like Square, Capcom, and Konami - not the western ones.

On the Gamecube front, Nintendo lacked the one western franchise that would have made a difference - Grand Theft Auto. They pretty much got every single other big western release for at least the first couple of years.
 
Compared to NES and SNES, third party support of N64 was weaksauce. It's where things started to go wrong.

Madness said:
They were the world leader in gaming at that point. It was either support Nintendo or this 'upstart' Sony and we all saw how it turned out. If anything, the N64 Era was perhaps the beginning of the issues for Nintendo.

They failed to see just how important third party support and third party or western devs would be. I'd argue that the output of Rare at that point even rivaled Nintendo themselves. They always saw it as, we're Nintendo, if they want our player base and our console, they'll develop how we want. Many devs wanted Nintendo not to overlook the CD as a storage medium, that cost benefits and storage could help them. What happened is, though they still had a lot of third party support, Sony took the upper hand. They basically took almost every single Japanese developer away.

I hated the PSX which my brother had, disliked the controller, but loved the myriad of games that were on the system and that passed the N64 by altogether.
Click to expand...

Madness.
 
xyla said:
We all like to say that Nintendo's 3rd party support was at an all time low during the N64, but looking at the titles we got, it wasn't really that bad.
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"all time" low?

No. The beginning of Nintendo's third party decline, for sure, but Gamecube and Wii U are the real all time low. It's just that Nintendo was coming off the NES and SNES, when they were the de facto game format for all publishers, so N64 looked dire by direct comparison.

And Wii had suspiciously little support outside of shovelware, considering its install base.
 
I'd say N64 and Gamecube is where they lost the big 3rd party exclusives, but still got the majority of multiplatform titles. Wii though...
 
And you didn't even mention that it had the best version of Resident Evil 2 of that generation with better graphics, analog control options and some extra content (new lore files).

And god damn StarCraft was on that thing lol.

BocoDragon said:
And Wii had suspiciously little support outside of shovelware, considering its install base.
Click to expand...

That's a perception issue. The Wii library has a ton of quality third party titles. It just happens to be titles that for the most part flew under the radar because they didn't align with enthusiast trends of cinematic narrative action games.
 
Lambtron said:
Beetle Adventure Racing and San Francisco RUSH were my two favorite racing games of that gen.
Click to expand...

Beetle Adventure Racing is probably my favorite non Mario Kart racing game of all time. I loved how creative and fun the tracks were and I would love to see someone do a spiritual successor someday with interesting tracks.
 
It definitely had a bunch of great third party games.

But of course, the PSX third party input was just phenomenal. Hell, they defined the console itself: Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil, Symphony of the Night, Tekken 3, Tomb Raider... N64 pales in comparison both in quantity and quality, and is mostly remembered for Nintendo and Rare games. Which is fine, because it really had some of the best they have ever produced (Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye, etc).
 
nintendo attracted western devs out of the gate. i always thought it weird the "dream team" was all western devs, not square, konami, capcom, ect, but it worked in their favor in the west.

strangely enough the system was the precursor to the OG xbox.
 
Franchuzas87 said:
IN64 pales in comparison both in quantity and quality, and is mostly remembered for Nintendo and Rare games.
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Depends on the genre.

PSX had RPGs and better fighting games.

N64 had the best 3D platform games and FPSes.


I also liked the N64 arcade racing games a bit more (since i didn't like Gran Turismo at all)
 
TheMoon said:
That's a perception issue. The Wii library has a ton of quality third party titles. It just happens to be titles that for the most part flew under the radar because they didn't align with enthusiast trends of cinematic narrative action games.
Click to expand...

It's not a perception issue. Even taking into consideration all those types of games like Muramasa, Little King's Story, No More Heroes or Zak and Wiki, the number 5 best selling console of all time had suspiciously little third party support outside of shovelware.

It really was a suspicious underserving of the user base available to developers...

I believe it to be mostly ideological. At launch they didn't think it would succeed. After launch, it was where you put your casual party games.
 
The fact that they never really capitalized on this anywhere near as much as they should have is probably one of the biggest missed opportunities on Nintendo's part. Throughout the 2000s the gaming market would change to the point where western third-party console games became these big huge megablockbuster hits that millions would play. Looking at the Gamecube's exclusive western games next to the N64's is a shame.
 
E-phonk said:
I'd say N64 and Gamecube is where they lost the big 3rd party exclusives, but still got the majority of multiplatform titles. Wii though...
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Wii is where they got plenty of 3rd party exclusives, just many of them were games you probably didn't want to play. They did get several good ones though.
 
NOA did a damned good job of keeping the western 3rd party Devs on board, inspite of the system being hobbled by sticking to cartridges.

Shame their reward was basically being neutered and brought in line with the Japanese HQ's less than stellar attitude toward third parties and western games.

If they'd followed the same path as they started with the N64, made teen friendly party games and shooters a priority and brand focus for the GameCube, it could at the very least have taken the wind out of the Xbox 1's sales, if not managed to halt the generational decline in sales we ended up actually seeing.
 
BocoDragon said:
"all time" low?

No. The beginning of Nintendo's third party decline, for sure, but Gamecube and Wii U are the real all time low. It's just that Nintendo was coming off the NES and SNES, when they were the de facto game format for all publishers, so N64 looked dire by direct comparison.

And Wii had suspiciously little support outside of shovelware, considering its install base.
Click to expand...


NES: 713 licensed games worldwide
SNES: 783 licensed games worldwide
N64: 388 licensed games worldwide
GameCube: 662 licensed games worldwide
Wii: 1772 licensed games (though this numbered may be skewered, as this could also count for Virtual Console games)

The GameCube did have a bigger library of third party games than the N64, as it was a much easier console to cross port to and cartridges weren't an issue. The Wii didn't have the strongest line up of AAA 3rd party titles, and was flooded with shovelware. But it still had a lot of support.

The N64 was a pretty big low for Nintendo in sheer quantity when it came to third party games. But it still had some stand out originals.

For comparison, the Sega Saturn had a total of 597 titles released for it, while the PS1 apparently had 2355 titles overall. The Panasonic 3DO had a total of 312 games release officially for it, and the Atari Jaguar only had 82 titles released for it.
 
N64's western support is a great counter argument to anyone claiming that N64's third-party support was non-existant and the machine was ignored, which isn't true. This is true, if you look solely in the East, but not really in the West.

Every single major western third-party at the time supported the machine considerably with many exclusive titles. This was a key reason for why N64 had a solid userbase in the US market and, for a consistent time, was selling head-on against PSX. N64 sold almost the same as SNES in US.

Too bad, after Iwata's management decided to shut down the whole western development division and stripped away NoA and NoE's authonomy, the western support went shrinking time after time.
 
xyla said:
I also really don't understand how this machine had acquired the stigmata...
Click to expand...

Spinning that stick in Mario Party was bad, but I don't know I'd go that far...

More seriously, I played way too much Beetle Adventure Racing so I'm with you here.
 
Madness said:
They were the world leader in gaming at that point. It was either support Nintendo or this 'upstart' Sony and we all saw how it turned out. If anything, the N64 Era was perhaps the beginning of the issues for Nintendo.

They failed to see just how important third party support and third party or western devs would be. I'd argue that the output of Rare at that point even rivaled Nintendo themselves. They always saw it as, we're Nintendo, if they want our player base and our console, they'll develop how we want. Many devs wanted Nintendo not to overlook the CD as a storage medium, that cost benefits and storage could help them. What happened is, though they still had a lot of third party support, Sony took the upper hand. They basically took almost every single Japanese developer away.

I hated the PSX which my brother had, disliked the controller, but loved the myriad of games that were on the system and that passed the N64 by altogether.
Click to expand...

Sure, it was nothing compared to the NES and SNES era.

And I'd like to argue that Nintendos problems began prior to the SNES era, when they became to cocky and arrogant. All of which lead to their big problems that they cultivated since then.

But I'd like to argue that NoA made something great of a bleak situation. Had they maintained the power and independence they had during the N64 era, I'd like to argue that the GCN era and following would have been much better for them in the US.
They knew how to get a much wider audience than Nintendo themselves and struck good to great deals with western 3rd partys.

Compare that to the GCN era onwards. Their PR department is a joke and they have no idea how to reach a larger audience than 'just' Nintendos own. And even with them, they are often struggling.

BocoDragon said:
"all time" low?

No. The beginning of Nintendo's third party decline, for sure, but Gamecube and Wii U are the real all time low. It's just that Nintendo was coming off the NES and SNES, when they were the de facto game format for all publishers, so N64 looked dire by direct comparison.

And Wii had suspiciously little support outside of shovelware, considering its install base.
Click to expand...

Nope, Gamecube had pretty decent 3rd Party support. Almost all Activision titles made in onto the console. All of Ubisoft titles including the Prince of Persia trilogy and the Splinter Cell games. Even with extra stuff that used the GBA connection.
EA had also almost everything on the GCN, including Mario and Co.as playable characters for titles like NBA Street. Their 3rd party support was really solid and only lacking later (e.g. Burnout 3) or for titles like the GTA series. They just lacked exclusive 3rd party games from the west. They went with the XBox that generation. Everything exclusive that would have sold great on the N64, went with the XBox. Nintendo lost that whole audience they build up before.

And the Wii had pretty strong 3rd Party support, all things considered. I may not like many of the games it got, but that doesn't negate the fact that many 3rd parties experimented with new concepts on the platform, some of which were huge success stories.
 
MrCunningham said:
NES: 713 licensed games worldwide
SNES: 783 licensed games worldwide
N64: 388 licensed games worldwide
GameCube: 662 licensed games worldwide
Wii: 1772 licensed games (though this numbered may be skewered, as this could also count for Virtual Console games)

The GameCube did have a bigger library of third party games than the N64, as it was a much easier console to cross port to and cartridges weren't an issue. The Wii didn't have the strongest line up of AAA 3rd party titles, and was flooded with shovelware. But it still had a lot of support.

The N64 was a pretty big low for Nintendo in sheer quantity when it came to third party games. But it still had some stand out originals.

For comparison, the Sega Saturn had a total of 597 titles released for it, while the PS1 apparently had 2355 titles overall. The Panasonic 3DO had a total of 312 games release officially for it, and the Atari Jaguar only had 82 titles released for it.
Click to expand...

Those NES and SNES numbers are off. Should be ~1200 for NES and ~1500 for SNES. Wikipedia lists Famicom/Super Famicom separately from NES/SNES which is probably what threw you off.

PS1 seems too low also, as GameFAQs lists over 3000 games.
 
Phediuk said:
Those NES and SNES numbers are off. Should be ~1200 for NES and ~1500 for SNES. Wikipedia lists Famicom/Super Famicom separately from NES/SNES which is probably what threw you off.

PS1 seems too low also, as GameFAQs lists over 3000 games.
Click to expand...

oh right, I am not including Famicom and Super Famicom doubles and Japanese only releases. I am probably missing the Japanese exclusives on the PS1 as well.

nkarafo said:
I don't know about your other lists but the jaguar had less than 60 games released. You are counting betas/unreleased/homebrew games and Jaguar CD games.
Click to expand...


Yeah I think I did include though.

But in either way the N64 library is small in comparison to any other home console released by Nintendo, aside from the Virtual Boy, which is not really a home console.
 
Turok 2 was insanely violent, oh my God.
I was in love with this game as a kid, it's a shame I never got past the second map. (game wasn't mine, and games are extremelly expensive here).

I remember a weapon called Cerebral Bore, the bullet from that weapon went to the brain of the monsters, drove them crazy and exploded their heads.

I was used to play Mario and Zelda, and that game blew my mind.
cerebral_bore2.jpg
 
For me the best of the bunch were:

Doom 64
World Driver Championship
Beetle Adventure Racing
San Francisco Rush 2048
Star Wars Rogue Squadron
Star Wars Episode 1 Racer
007 The world is not enough
Rayman 2
Wipeout 64
Shadowman
Rocket Robot on wheel
 
International Superstar Soccer rocked my world. It's a shame PES became the popular game, leaving ISS for dead.
 
xyla said:
We all like to say that Nintendo's 3rd party support was at an all time low during the N64, but looking at the titles we got, it wasn't really that bad.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but it really was.
According to this list the N64 had 388 games in all, around 61 or those were published by Nintendo. So 327 third party games. That's pretty poor support in my book.
 
Wildean said:
AFAIK GameCube had better 3rd party support, at least early in its life
Click to expand...

It's really interesting that pretty much all companies wanted to work for Nintendo again at the beginning of the gen.

But the combination of old school Nintendo shanigans and the lack of success killed the third party support in the long run.
 
I was never really into western N64 3rd party games. As a kid the box art just never pulled me in, I always gravitated towards colorful mascot games and whatever contained the Rare logo.

Lost Vikings on SNES would be an example of a western 3rd party game that appealed to me on all fronts.
 
The only people that could feel N64's third party support during the N64 was good, are the ones who never experienced anything prior to the N64.
 
Shaanyboi said:
That's what happens when you're coming off the Super Nintendo and there are only two really meaningful platforms on the market.
Click to expand...

This.

You can compare Nintendo and SNES -> N64 to Sony and PS2 -> PS3. Lots of third parties (rightfully so) gambled on the market leader of the previous two generations, despite some odd choices by the platform holders. This earned the consoles a large selection of titles they probably wouldn't have otherwise received.

Fortunately for Sony, they bounced back after a dramatic reshuffle of management and change of direction. Nintendo, however, stuck to their original plans and lost a tremendous amount of marketshare and mindshare.
 
I remember as a kid the only N64 stuff I was jealous of were the FPS. Turok, Goldeneye, and the rest. That was something PlayStation never got right aside from a few.
 
It's just too bad western made console games still kinda sucked back then, they didn't really come into their own until some time into the next generation.
 
xyla said:
We all like to say that Nintendo's 3rd party support was at an all time low during the N64, but looking at the titles we got, it wasn't really that bad. I also really don't understand how this machine had acquired the stigmata 'kiddie machine' by the end of its life cycle.
Click to expand...

I don't recall anyone calling the N64 a "kiddie machine" in the US. Looked cool, powerful, a good number of "mature" titles, action games, sports games, and shooters.

Main complaints were the lack of games, price of them compared to PS1, delayed games, and droughts.

It wasn't until the Gamecube that the "kiddie" stuff fired back up again due to the look of the machine.
 
ShinUltramanJ said:
The only people that could feel N64's third party support during the N64 was good, are the ones who never experienced anything prior to the N64.
Click to expand...

This thread is about western third-party support, not general. Yes, N64 had a very solid western third-party support.

Activison (Tony Hawk, Spider-Man, Nightmare Creatures, Vigilante 8)
EA (Madden, FIFA, Nascar, NHL, NBA Live, Beetle Adventure Racing, 007: TWINE)
Ubisoft (Buck Bumble, All Star Tennis, Monaco Grand Prix, Rayman, Rocket, F1)
Take-Two (Silicon Valley, Earthworm Jim, Monster Truck Madness)
Ocean (MRC, Mission: Impossible, GT 64)
GT Interactive (Hexen, Duke Nukem)
Midway (Mortal Kombat, Cruis'n, Wayne Gretzky's, NFL Blitz, Rush, Body Harvest, Rampage, Gauntlet, R2R Boxing, Hydro Thunder, World Driver Championship)
Acclaim (Turok, Extreme-G, NBA Jam, Shadow Man, All-Star Baseball, Forsaken, South Park)
THQ (WCW/WWF, Road Rash)
LucasArts (Star Wars, Indiana Jones)
Infogrames (Worms, Indy Racing, V-Rally)
Crave (Gex, Fighting Force, Robotron, Battlezone)
Nintendo itself managed to publish some third-party owned IPs like C&C and Starcraft.

It's no secret why it managed to keep the SNES userbase intact in US. They actually managed to succeed appealing to the western crowd. Something it's really missing right now under NoA's current management, which is totally subdued to NCL's autority.
 
back in the day japanese 3rd party support was the meat and potatoes while western support was a joke.
that's how most people perceived it. that explains why people say the N64 "didn't have 3rd party support".

if western 3rd parties were a heavyweight like last gen, the N64 would have probably kicked the PS1's ass in America at least. they were rather close early into the gen. Europe would have still went to the PS1 since Nintendo was never big there and JP would be no difference.
 
N64 didn't have much support but it did have some random ass big third party games.

It got fucking StarCraft, Castlevania, some of the best wrestling games ever made, most of the big sports games, Silicon Valley, Rush, etc.

Way better than anything the Wii U can say.
 
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