By Jason Venter Published Jun 27, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT What to Play From a one-hit wonder to a driving force.
Nintendo made a fantastic Mario Kart, but a half-baked World GTA 6 fans are astounded by the mud, of all things All barn find locations in Forza Horizon 6 30 years ago, this ambitious sequel transformed a Nintendo fluke into an institution Nintendo Mario Kart 64 Sign in to your Polygon.com account Nintendo has been releasing games long enough now that it’s easy to take the publisher’s successes for granted. We’re still feeling the effects the Nintendo 64 had on the industry 30 years after its launch, which is an impressive milestone, and yet there are times when it feels like it all happened yesterday.
As we look back on the Nintendo 64, we all might remember favorite titles that provided us with hours of quality entertainment that still resonates today. The classic software library has recently provided fertile ground for new projects, such as Starfox for Switch 2 and the recently announced The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. But there’s one game that hasn’t seen such an update, instead paving the way for some of the most important, system-selling sequels in Nintendo’s library of hits.
Image: Nintendo When the Nintendo 64 launched, it did so without a new Mario Kart. At the time, that wasn’t unusual. Consoles frequently reached store shelves without support from the larger libraries we expect today. In Japan, Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 were reason enough to buy the new system (plus there was a chess game).
America had the same lineup, minus the chess game, and then Cruis’n USA followed in early December. Mario Kart 64 arrived almost two weeks after that in Japan, before heading west the next year.
For players who had fond memories of Super Mario Kart , Mario provided a second compelling reason to buy the new hardware. Perhaps more importantly, by adding new features like four-player races, additional power-ups, memorable shortcuts, robust drifting mechanics, and an updated character roster, Mario Kart 64 ’s developers solidified a formula that paved the way for some of Nintendo’s best-selling games of all time. Mario Kart 8 , by far the most popular installment, has gone on to sell nearly 80 million copies across the Wii U and the original Switch.
Love it or hate it, you owe the blue shell powerup to Mario Kart 64 . The franchise has become famous for dynamic difficulty, which some people call “rubber banding.” In Super Mario Kart , it was fun to lap the drivers who finished behind you. In its sequel, a player who builds a commanding lead gets hit more frequently by the other drivers, human or otherwise. Poorer performers gain access to weapons that even the playing field. The blue shell is divisive because it exclusively targets the lead player (unless you happen to get too close to the lead driver when vengeance arrives from the skies).
Image: Nintendo via Polygon The blue shell, though overpowered, ensured that players of varying skill levels could enjoy an experience with the appearance of a tight race. For a game leaning into the party angle, that was helpful. The Nintendo 64’s four controller ports allowed as many players to compete at once, doubling the number of participants, as long as you could afford to purchase four of the oft-maligned Nintendo 64 controller.
The new drivers also had more personality than those in the SNES game. Koopa Troopa and Donkey Kong Jr. went away, capably replaced by Wari…