Blast From the Past: NPD Group Looks At Best-Selling Games For N64, PlayStation and More

The NPD Group usually provides some great monthly sales numbers on the industry, including how well certain franchises and platforms. But the company’s own Mat Piscatella decided to take to Twitter to share some numbers from the past, giving us an idea of what the best-selling games were for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation and more.

He did include a couple of notes about the numbers, such as publisher designation was removed due to the age of the data, as well as reminding folks that they’re merely for physical sales, not including digital re-releases.

With that, let’s see the numbers. First up was the Sega Saturn, and, surprise, the best seller was a game released by…Electronic Arts?

Yep, Madden NFL 97 dominated the list, followed by NiGHTS Into Dreams and Virtua Fighter 2. But there were other great peak performers like Sonic 3D Blast, Tomb Raider and…Virtua Cop!

Sony PlayStation was up next on Mat’s list, and it’s great to see that Crash Bandicoot ruled with a furry fist.

Other favorites like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 and Tekken 3 found some spots on the list as well.

As for Nintendo 64, it was all about Nintendo with the top ten, to no one’s surprise. But it was a tight race between Super Mario 64 and Goldeneye 007.

Then we have the Game Boy Color, where Pokemon was the name of the game.

But hey, at least there was Pokemon Pinball in there to mix things up.
Finally, Mat posted a list for the Sega Dreamcast. And despite Soul Calibur‘s unbeatable quality, there was a good surprise at number one here.

Yep, NFL 2K and its 2K1 predecessor topped the list. But nice to see Crazy Taxi and Shenmue land in the top ten.

Kudos to Mat Piscatella for sharing these stats with us. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got some old-school platforms to hunt down…