5 N64 Shooters That Still Hold Up Today

For many young players, the Nintendo 64 was the way they were introduced to first-person shooters. Of course, the system didn’t invent the genre; that happened on PC. However, that was a much more expensive way to jump into new games, so consoles like the N64 and original PlayStation were many fans’ first taste of the FPS genre. Developers were still trying to figure it out at this point, but there are a few fun FPS games on the N64 that are worth checking out to see what it was like back in the ’90s.

Here are the five N64 shooters that still hold up today.

5) Turok 2: Seeds of Evil

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil is worth jumping back into if you want to see ’90s excess in all its glory. There hasn’t ever been anything like the Cerebral Bore, which is a weapon you can use to shoot a bullet into your opponent’s head and viscerally disembowel their brain.

It was an absolute blast and made playing through Turok 2‘s relatively lackluster single-player mode worth it. Thankfully, the four-player multiplayer was there to give Seeds of Evil some staying power. It might be a bit more difficult to get three friends over to your house for Turok 2 multiplayer these days, but you won’t regret it.

4) Doom 64

As mentioned, the FPS genre was dominating on the PC during the ’90s. A big part of that was the success of Doom and its many sequels and clones. Doom 64 tried to get the hit series onto the console market, and it mostly succeeded. If you’ve never played it, you might assume this was just a port of the original game, but you’d be incorrect.

The developers decided to make an entirely new game for the N64 audience. There’s still everything you love about the original Doom mixed in, but id Software went above and beyond to give N64 players their own version of the chart-topping series. You’ll find new weapons and enemies, as well as a few expertly designed levels. The only thing holding it back from moving higher is the lack of a deathmatch mode.

3) Duke Nukem 64

Unlike Doom 64, Duke Nukem 64 is mostly a port of the PC classic. The developers made a few changes to the level design, and most of the in-game music was removed due to limited storage. That said, it’s still basically the same game, with a few added features.

Duke 64 incorporated the N64’s Rumble Pak, which was a nice touch. There are also a few new weapons, and the team added The Protector Drone from the Atomic Edition into the base game. I’m putting it just above Doom 64 because it does have four-player split-screen multiplayer. That gives it that extra dimension to take it over the top.

2) GoldenEye 007

When you think about shooters on the Nintendo 64, chances are very high that GoldenEye 007 is the first game that comes to mind. It was the game that proved the genre could work on the console, and quickly became one of Rare’s biggest hits. Sure, there are some framerate and precision issues, but GoldenEye still holds up pretty well.

The multiplayer mode is the star of the show, but don’t forget that GoldenEye has one of the best FPS campaigns of the era. Plus, with plenty of secrets and difficulty levels, you’ll have plenty of reasons to keep coming back. It doesn’t quite take the top spot in terms of quality, but it is the most influential one.

1) Perfect Dark

Rare proved the FPS could work on the Nintendo 64 with GoldenEye 007, but Perfect Dark was the developers’ shooter masterpiece. It took the gameplay everyone loved in GoldenEye 007 and made it bigger, better, and even more feature-complete.

You have so many options to tune your multiplayer experience, giving the mode so much extra replayability. It’s pretty incredible that all of that could fit on an N64 cartridge. Heck, the only game from around that era I can think of that lives up to the sheer amount of content Perfect Dark has is Timesplitters: Future Perfect, which is filled with a frankly ridiculous amount of things to do.

Plus, the single-player campaign is a blast, putting players into the shoes of Joanna Dark for some of the best-designed levels on the system. Oh, and you can play in co-op mode, giving Perfect Dark yet another feather in its cap. And who can forget counter-op mode, where one player plays as an enemy soldier and tries to stop their friend from completing missions. Seriously, Rare absolutely knocked this one out of the park in 2000.

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