Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the N64 Library is Pat Contri’s latest book. His previous books cover the SNES and NES libraries, which I’ll write about at some point. I’m a little behind on some other projects at the moment.
I was one of the Kickstarter backers for this book, so I was very excited about it. Like the other books, I wanted to use this as a reference for collecting and other projects. It is a wonderful book full of information on the N64 Library.
Some parts of the book stood out to me. The unreleased games, N64DD, and the list of what peripherals and controllers worked with specific games were great. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t know about, and that added to my enjoyment of the book.
Reviews and Reflections
This makes up the bulk of the book and is the real draw for anyone to buy it. While Pat wrote some reviews and edited the book, 19 writers contributed to the reviews and reflections. They are credited, and I think they did an excellent job.
Most of the reviews are on a page with reflections, screenshots, and pictures of cartridges from Europe, Japan, and North America. A few have cartridges from other regions, too. This isn’t just the North American releases, either.
This book has reviews for the games released exclusively in Europe and Japan. If I were planning on collecting for the system, this would be a big help. While you can find this information online, there is something special about looking it up in a book that I find very appealing.
Each game has a star rating. This is where things can get fun, as long as you don’t take things too seriously. The scale is at the beginning of the book, which I like a lot. The scale is from one to five.
The bomb rating from the NES book is left out. This rating was used for games that didn’t work or were so glitchy that they weren’t reliably functioning on release. These were for the unlicensed games on the system.
Despite what people think, there weren’t any games that met the criteria on the N64. Granted, these reviews are the opinions of the writers, so you might disagree with them. That is part of the fun of a book like this; don’t take the scores personally.
Unreleased Games and the 64DD
These are two sections at the end of the book. The unreleased games are treated similarly to the game reviews, but they focus on what is known about them and do not pass judgment on the game. I also loved that there was information on the N64DD because I knew little about it but not much more than it existed.
I love this section of the book. Finding information on unreleased games for any system is a little harder. You really have to look for stuff like this, and it is awesome that it is all in this book.
The N64DD, or disk drive, is an add-on for the N64 that was supposed to significantly increase the system’s capabilities. From what I knew, the add-on sounded similar to the Famicom Disk System. Both were very similar in that neither of them left the Japanese market.
Things like this make the book stand out. It isn’t just a list of games with some general information; it gives you reviews, recollections, and information like this that you won’t get elsewhere. I love stuff like this.
Questions about the Library
There are a lot of opinions about the N64 library that are presented as facts. The internet is an odd place where it becomes a reality if you yell something loud and often enough. I was a PlayStation and Dreamcast guy around the time the N64 existed.
Looking through a book like this made me ask myself a few questions. Maybe I’m the only one who does this, but who cares? It’s my blog, and I can write about whatever I want. Some of these questions had to do with what games made up the N64 Library.
Compared to other consoles, the N64 has a small library of games. This makes it feel like the sports and racing games are disproportionately represented. It is one of the things I would like to compare to the other consoles.
There were also fewer Beat’em Ups on the system. This is more of a product of the shifts in the arcade industry than anything else. The late 1990s were a strange time for the video game industry.
At some point, I really want to go through the Nintendo systems and see what percentage of the library belongs to what genre. Then, I want to compare that to the other systems from the 1980s and 1990s. Some would be way more work than others, but it would be a ton of fun for me.
Final Thoughts
I liked this book a lot! It makes for a great coffee table book or reference guide. It looks great and made me ask some greater questions about video games.
I know there are some great games for the N64. I’ve played a few of them, but the games I remember are all multi-player. Multi-player was a different experience in the 1990s than it is today. It is easier today, but it doesn’t feel the same.
I have no idea if Pat is planning on making more of these books. It takes a lot of work to put these together, and the number of games increases with each console from this point forward. While I would like to see a PS1 guide, at over 2,500 games, that is probably way too many games to catalog in one book.
If you want to read more about other books, check out my reviews of Creating Q*bert and the Best from Boss Fight Books.