Best N64 Platformers of All Time

The N64 and the 3D Platformer Revolution

The Nintendo 64 didn’t just move platformers into three dimensions — it had to invent what 3D platformers were. Super Mario 64’s design process required Miyamoto and his team to solve problems that had never existed before: how does a camera follow a character in a 3D space without disorienting the player? How does a platformer communicate the precise landing zone of a jump when the world has depth? How does exploration work when levels can be entered from any direction?

The answers Super Mario 64 found defined the 3D platformer as a genre. Banjo-Kazooie refined those answers with more level variety and collectible density. Donkey Kong 64 expanded the formula to its logical extreme — and arguably past it. Conker’s Bad Fur Day used the technical capabilities for adult satire that the console’s family-friendly positioning made incongruous and memorable in equal measure.

Super Mario 64 — The Foundation

Super Mario 64 released with the N64 in September 1996 (North America) and remains the most historically significant single game on the platform. The analog stick — required for precise 3D movement — was a new controller design built around Mario 64’s needs. The game’s 120 Power Stars, hidden across 15 courses plus the Bowser stages and secret stages, created a collectible exploration framework that every subsequent 3D platformer either borrowed or deliberately rejected.

Mario’s moveset — triple jump, wall kick, long jump, ground pound, dive, backflip — was designed such that expert players could chain movements to reach areas without intended tools. The speedrunning community discovered Mario 64’s movement depth within months of its release; world record runs today use movement tricks that the developers neither intended nor imagined.

Banjo-Kazooie — The Refined Blueprint

Rare’s 1998 answer to Super Mario 64 took the collectathon structure and added more: more note collectibles, more jiggies, more moves to learn from Bottles the mole throughout each world, more creative level themes. Gruntilda’s lair — the overworld connecting the game’s nine levels — was itself a puzzle, with notes collected in it unlocking skill tests and new areas.

The dialogue was the game’s second achievement. Mumbo Jumbo, the shaman who transformed Banjo and Kazooie into different animals for level-specific challenges. Gruntilda’s rhyming villain monologues. The various characters scattered through each world with their own personalities. Banjo-Kazooie had the warmth and character density that Mario 64’s minimal story couldn’t accommodate.

Conker’s Bad Fur Day — The Anti-Collectathon

Rare’s last N64 platformer was a deliberate departure from Banjo’s formula. Conker’s Bad Fur Day used photorealistic aspirations (for 2001) to frame a cartoon squirrel’s profane, alcohol-fueled adventure through a world of parody set-pieces — The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan, 2001: A Space Odyssey — within a framework that made collecting feel like a punchline to Banjo’s premise.

The game’s technical achievement was genuine: N64 rendering that approached PlayStation 2 output. The content — genuinely adult humor executed with animation quality Rare had refined over a decade — made it the console’s most controversial exclusive. Its Game Boy Advance port was censored. Its Xbox remake, Live & Reloaded, sold poorly. The original N64 cartridge now commands $60-80 used.