It’s the anniversary of one of the great N64 exclusive games, and to celebrate, Nintendo fans can play it for free because it is free with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription if you have the Expansion Pack. The game in question was originally released on September 27, 1996, at least in Japan. It didn’t come to North America until November 4, 1996. Unfortunately, Nintendo ended up not having any plans to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the game, but for those feeling nostalgic because of this anniversary, the good news is it holds up better than most Nintendo 64 games.
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In addition to a free download for a 2025 remaster, Nintendo Switch Online subscribers with the Expansion Pack have a free download of Wave Race 64, which is now over three decades old. For those around and playing games on the N64 30 years ago, you may remember that Wave Race 64 was once billed as “F-Zero on water.” This is partially because the game was originally supposed to be high-speed boats that could change through transformations, not jet skis, which it ended up being. What the game would have been if it were high-speed boats, we will never know, but Nintendo surely doesn’t lose sleep over it because Wave Race 64 ended up being one of the best games on the console.
It wasn’t just a big and important game for Nintendo, but it was important from a development perspective, as Nintendo learned a lot about developing 3D games after being accustomed to developing 16-bit 2D games during the SNES era.
The Legacy of One of the Best Racing Games of All Time
What came next for the series was a sequel in 2001 via the GameCube. This sequel being Wave Race: Blue Storm. Where the N64 game sold very well and earned a 92 on Metacritic, its sequel only earned an 80 and sold lightly by comparison. And it ended up being the final game in the series. A sequel was in the works for Wii, but ended up being cancelled, and Nintendo never did anything with the IP again.
What a lot of Nintendo fans don’t know is that Wave Race 64 isn’t the first game in the series. It popularized the series and was the introduction for many, but the first game was actually a Game Boy game released in 1992, Wave Race. The reason many don’t know it exists is that it wasn’t very good.
While we never got the Wave Race game on Wii, Nintendo did re-release Wave Race 64 via the Virtual Console. Then it re-released it again via the Wii U Virtual Console in 2016. Finally, in 2022, it came to Nintendo Switch Online.
Unfortunately, it appears the future of the IP is to remain dormant. If Nintendo was going to revive it anytime soon, it would surely have done it with this anniversary. And for what it is worth, extreme sports games just aren’t as common as they were in the 1990s and early 2000s, largely because extreme sports aren’t as popular in general.
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Image Courtesy of Aspyr/Deep Silver
