Image: Ollie Reynolds / Nintendo Life
The N64 is 30 years old! This week, we’re running a series of articles celebrating the 64-bit machine, its industry-shaping software, and its effect on a generation of gamers.
Today, George meets new people with Nintendo’s multiplayer marvel. What follows is an epic session, concluding with the system’s only eight-player game…
Console gaming is a luxury for me these days. Between dropping kids to school, work, pickup, and bedtime, there are precious few hours available to fire up a game, let alone see it through. I would imagine this is the case for many gamers who, like me, were bright-eyed, bushy-tailed youths when the mighty N64 rolled around.
With the recently announced Ocarina of Time remake and the console’s 30th anniversary upon us, I’ve been thinking about Nintendo’s first 3D machine a lot recently, and whenever my mind drifts to the subject, I always end up in the same place: multiplayer.
Launching in the same era as the Saturn and Playstation, which both only featured two discreet controller ports, Nintendo’s decision to brazenly slap four ports on the 64’s front (in contrasting colour to the console shell, no less) felt like a challenge to its rivals and an invitation to its players – this machine was going to be the home of some of the best multiplayer titles around.
We’d play multiplayer on other consoles, sure, but it always felt like you were waiting ages while Players One and Two took their turn, particularly if you had more than three friends round. If you had an N64 and a group of friends, it was unlike anything you’d experienced at home before. A proper group of four all squashed in, huddled round a monitor, while a full other group of four could be behind watching and then all swap in at once. Bliss.
Finding friends
I miss those days, so I resolve to do something about it.
First off, I fire up my old Fire-Orange N64 (paid for with pocket money and door-to-door offers of car washes – peak ’90s) and test out some cartridges; everything is still live and kicking.
Paid for with blood, sweat, and car wax — Image: George Banks / Nintendo Life
I have the classics, of course, but out of curiosity, I search for multiplayer gems online – and stumble upon something I didn’t know. There’s an eight-player game for the N64. Micro Machines 64 Turbo. And as luck would have it, a very reasonable secondhand copy is available to buy.
This is it. This will be the crown jewel of an N64 get-together. Experiencing its most multi multiplayer game together in one room. I swoop in and buy the game, then get to work finding other players.
This is where I begin to get a little nervous. Remember all those things I mentioned that suck up your time as a parent? Well, it turns out it leaves precious little time to form friendships, too – beyond a quick hello and small talk at the school gates or during the occasional play date. Would it even be possible to find seven other people willing to wheel out this creaky console?
Luckily, I know Alastair and Tom are fellow retro enthusiasts through our mutual admiration of the CRT TV, and they encourage me to pop a message into one of the Dads’ social group chats:
“Slightly left field question – was anybody here a big fan of the N64?”
The replies come in pretty quick. Lots of memories and anecdotes for Zelda, GoldenEye, Mario Kart, and the like with Toby simply replying, “You mean the king of consoles?” before dropping this megaton on us:
A wild N64 in active use! Also, nice fireplace brag — Image: Toby Nelson / Nintendo Life
Not only has he still got one, but it is permanently set up in his living room.
This is extremely encouraging. I float the idea of an eight-player get-together for an N64 evening and create a new group chat. Slowly, we assemble our team.
Location, location, location
The idea of trying to cram eight men into a living room, playing raucous multiplayer games while children sleep upstairs, is not one I entertain for very long. Luckily, we have a lovely hub in our local park for hire and it’s mercifully inexpensive.
I walk down after drop-off and meet Anna, who runs the space. I begin to explain to her what the hire is for when she suddenly chimes in with, “Oh, my husband Dave is going to that!” The multiplayer gods are with us. She gets it booked in for the eight of us on the day we’ve set aside and we’ll have just shy of two hours to play.
It’s all going pretty well. Too well. Our first small hiccup? Dave messages just before the event:
“Hey George, sorry to bail, but I’m afraid I can’t make it on Tuesday after all, just realised I’m double booked and will need to be in Cardiff.”
Dave had gotten Anna tickets to see Take That for Christmas and forgotten about them. Or so he claims. Dave, I don’t think it’s an excuse, but just in case it is: Whatever I said, whatever I did, I didn’t mean it. We just want you back for good.
The group contact a few other dads, but work and planning around children is proving prohibitive; we’ll have to make do with seven on Micro Machines. It should still make for some interesting playing. I pack up my N64, four pads, a spare N64, an LCD TV, Tom’s CRT and enough tins of booze, massive bags of crisps, and biscuits to feed a small army into my tiny car and shuttle off to the event.
Upon entering the space, we realise we’ve done something extremely British. Virtually everyone has brought enough beer and crisps for everyone there to have eight beers and a massive packet of crisps to themselves. During a two-hour event. Dads.
Tables are hastily laid out to maximise playing time, the TVs are plugged in and consoles connected. My brother-in-law Nic has brought a Yoshi mascot who takes pride of place on the CRT and Toby has even brought along some backup pads and his N64 game collection to boot!
We are truly spoiled for choice, but opt to begin with a stone-cold classic (you’re definitely thinking about one of two games right now).
The players are ready: back row L to R we have George, Nic, and Christian; front row L to R we have Toby, Tom, Greg, and Alastair. No Dave, sadly. But Could it be Magic? — Image: George Banks / Nintendo Life
Twin sticks? Behave yourself
The game is GoldenEye, of course, and we decide to play a mini tournament – a four-player round and a three-player round, with the top two from each round then playing a four-player decider; first to five points for each round. We pick names from a hat and first on is Alastair, Greg, Tom, and Toby.
Nic: Oddjob and slaps?
George: Are you essentially just asking if it’s okay to be an *******?
Nic: Yes.
Maybe not this round – it would be good to actually make some friends after this.
Image: Gemma Smith / Nintendo Life
We opt for pistols and the level Stack, as Toby remembers that it keeps the players in fairly close proximity. I give everyone a brief rundown of the frankly ludicrous controls when Toby then asks:
Toby: How do you crouch?
George: I don’t remember.
Alastair: Just be Oddjob.
Christian: Wait, can you crouch?
Toby: I think it’s those two (correctly signalling ‘R’ and ‘C-down’) that’s what my muscle memory is telling me. It’s been a while, but it’s in there.
He’s answered his own question about button combinations, which no one else recalled existing, and demonstrated level layout knowledge. We are fearful of Toby.
Alastair: Do you have to collect ammo and stuff?
I am fearful for Alastair. And rightly so, Toby swiftly murders him.
Alastair was barely getting to grips with the inverted axis on ‘C-up’ and ‘-down’, but there is no mercy in this Rare classic. Christian mentions having only played this once or twice and being absolutely atrocious each time – but it can’t get much worse than what’s happening on screen as Alastair, Greg, and Tom are on the lower floor, all attempting to slap each other while Toby picks them off from above.
The phrase ‘fish in a barrel’ is lobbed out – an early gauntlet throw down for the night. Greg responds with a kill of his own.
Alastair: Where are the guns? Anyone?
In his defence, it is incredibly difficult to see them. Just small black or grey blobs on the ground and our withered eyes trying to pick them out against the grainiest of textures. Alastair then provides some comedy gold when he essentially locks himself into a room and just cannot get out of it – the doors that blend in to the walls really blend in to the walls by today’s standards. “Is it that blurred mess over there or this blurred mess over here?” It’s really not his game, this.
I had earlier romanticised the idea of firing up the CRT for the fully authentic experience, but given its screen is only marginally larger than one of the current LCD’s four-player quadrants we’re already struggling to see items in, it’s a thought that’s as dead as Tom – as Toby takes him out for the win. Tom’s done enough to secure second, though, and move on to the next round.
Toby the Destroyer — Image: Nic Rowley / Nintendo Life
Tom: Argh!
George: Man, how much did you play this as a kid?
Toby: I went through a spell of playing it Friday evenings after college at Charlie Elderton’s house. Legendary.
George: Was Charlie an absolute god at GoldenEye?
Toby: We all got quite good, to be honest, but it got to the point with him where he knew where you were going to spawn, so he’d be waiting to immediately shoot you in the face.
Nobody likes a spawn camper, Charlie.
Myself, Christian, and Nic jump on and Nic basically admits defeat before even starting by selecting a nameless scientist NPC as his character. Has he never seen a Bond movie? I am Boris, mainly so I can say “I am invincible!” before we begin. We head to Complex and what follows is one of my favourite things about couch co op – Toby is hovering, essentially guiding us during the game.
Toby: There’s body armour up there. The yellow bit.
George: How do you know this? How long has it been? Decades?
It is so difficult to hit anything in GoldenEye. The notion of standing still to then aim with the reticle is so alien, so we’re just running like headless chickens, taking potshots where we can. I catch Christian in the back and feel pretty bad, then catch some flak from Alastair.
Alastair: You know how I know you’re a sweaty try-hard?
George: Ha! How?
Alastair: Your grip.
George: Yeah, I change my grip for different games. It’s weird.
The Claw: it’s normal. (What in the…? – Ed.) — Image: Alastair Stevenson / Nintendo Life
I’m quickly flanked by the current non-participants – drawing derision for my ‘claw’. In my defence, the round finishes off with my emerging through a vent and using said claw to cap off a clean sweep. Five points, no deaths. Invincible I am, though I did have to suffer some slaps from the scientist. I’d love to see that in the next film.
See? Yoshi approves. (So many questions, George. – Ed.) — Image: Nic Rowley / Nintendo Life
GoldenEye has already sucked up nearly a quarter of our slot, so we expedite the final with Licence to Kill – one hit kills in Temple. With zero kills between them in the last round, Nic and Christian make way for the top three from the previous round – so it’s myself, Tom, Greg, and Toby. You’d think we’d be getting used to the game at this point, but it’s still a scrappy affair.
Christian: I think that little blob of pixels is a gun.
George: Oh yeah, thanks. I’ve been trying to open this door, but it turns out it’s a wall.
Knowing one hit will do the job has certainly sent a ripple of tension through the proceedings. All four players are arched forwards while the spectators engage in hushed conversation about who is where, punctuated with “Oooh!” every time someone is taken out. Just seeing another player is now terrifying as you wrestle to turn your character in time to take them down. If modern shooters are jet skis, this feels like playing with tugboats.
Greg is a valiant fourth place, while Tom and Toby split the honours for second and, to everyone’s surprise, I manage once again to steal the game with Boris. I refrain from saying the catchphrase.
The final round got tense — Image: Alastair Stevenson / Nintendo Life
Start your engines
We could play GoldenEye all night, but we must move on. We opt for the other stone cold classic – Mario Kart 64 (admit it – it was the other one you were thinking of).
The game doesn’t fire up. Release cartridge, blow, reinsert, good to go. It never gets old.
The remote for the television we are playing on has long been missing, but Christian manages to navigate the buttons on its side to raise the brightness and backlight, which were both bafflingly set to minimum. A skillset I can’t imagine anyone younger than 30 ever needing to know, but it’s helped considerably here. If only we’d cracked it before GoldenEye, maybe all those doors and walls would’ve been easier to tell apart.
Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life
George: What CC are we going for? Being brave with 150? Cowards and doing 50? Or sensible down the middle and 100?
The general consensus is 150. We are being brave.
We assign some teams out of a hat for swapping on and off between races and I get lumbered alone. You can’t do a GP in four-player, just VS mode, where you select races, and we settle on Flower Cup as it begins with Toad’s Turnpike — a series mainstay — with the theory that we’ll be quite familiar with it.
Wrong. And 150? Mistake. The races start quick. I’m still offering biscuits as Lakitu gives us the green light. It is not a smooth start for anyone as Mario Kart 64 does not play as we remember, all of us barreling into cars left, right, and centre. Why are the karts so slippery when you jump into a corner? Such an immediate, massive amount of tilt! Want to glide around a truck? Too bad, eat this tailpipe instead.
Loathing for the incredibly irritating little yellow bombs roaming the track in place of NPCs comes pretty quick, too, as their terrible draw distance scuppers each and every one of us whenever we build up a head of steam.
George: Urgh, I know Mario Kart 64 is beloved, but—
Alastair: Don’t say something you can’t take back.
George: It’s just my least favourite. I can’t do it! I would rather play the SNES one every day of the week. Ooh, Christian’s got skills!
Christian: I like this one. I remember the SNES one being super hard.
Alastair: (ramming into a bomb) Oh, give over!
George: I think we should’ve picked a slower CC. Oh wow, Alastair is storming into first!
Cruelly, though, the final lap is decided by a lightning strike, letting me squash Alastair virtually on the line. It doesn’t feel good, but that’s Mario Kart, baby.
Oof. Those textures, though — Image: Nic Rowley / Nintendo Life
The snowmen of Frappe Snowland and boulders of Choco Mountain force howls of anguish as we continue through our GP, struggling at times to even make out where the track is as the blurry textures speed by. In spite of the rough visuals, camaraderie is high, with Alastair and Tom exchanging high fives as they pull off some top finishes, and we are all laughing and giving each other stick when we get derailed or our items fail.
Toby suggests we sack off the GP and opt for Koopa Troopa Beach for our final race because of the ridiculous shortcut jump – it’s off a giant ramp and through a mountain.
I don’t know what possessed us to imagine we still had the requisite skills to land this, given everything that has gone before, but the attempts are utterly catastrophic – just Mario and the gang suffering severe concussion while smashing endlessly into walls, ramps, and water, spinning out at an alarming rate. It’s a riot. It may not be my favourite entry, but you can undeniably feel the influence of Mario Kart 64 on every subsequent game.
Bombs away
I offer up Smash Bros. as our next game, but it’s met with a pretty unanimous veto. Just when I thought I was beginning to like these people.
Instead, we take a look at the cartridges Toby has brought. There’s some pretty left-field multiplayer choices, and one that catches my eye in particular.
Some unsung heroes amongst these — Image: Alastair Stevenson / Nintendo Life
George: Oh, Bomberman 64! I don’t think I’ve ever played it.
Game doesn’t fire up. Release cartridge, blow, reinsert, good to go. People will tell you it’s not really a thing. Don’t listen to them. Tom, Nic, Christian, and Alastair settle in to discover how it works.
Alastair is ready to drop bombs — Image: Greg Puttock / Nintendo Life
A much harder task than it sounds. Nobody, not even Toby, who owns the game, is 100% sure what is going on in this one. I was expecting the usual Bomberman grid and ‘plus’ shaped explosions from the bombs, but of course, this is a 3D console and keen to show off its 3D capabilities. As such, the four typical Bombermen are running around but the explosions are funny little domes of fire. Some people are kicking the bombs, there seem to be power-ups, but we aren’t entirely sure what they do.
Before we can really decipher any of it, it’s the end of the round and Nic has emerged victorious!
George: Does anybody know how?
Nic: I kicked the bomb and I won.
Christian: Yeah, when you get hit by a bomb, you do actually die.
Greg: Quite the discovery.
Christian: I thought that—
No time for Christian to finish, another round starts. And almost immediately, another round is complete. Nic wins again!
Death came pretty swiftly — Image: Christian Olesen-Scott / Nintendo Life
Toby: I don’t understand what is happening?
George: It’s your game!
Toby: I only played the one-player.
Nic: Well. I kicked the bomb and I won.
Solid strategy. Nic also discovers that you can punt other players to stun them. My wife has informed me of his prodigious skill at administering covert dead legs during childhood; such malevolence is a blessing in this arena.
George: What are those fire things? Do they make your explosions better?
Alastair: That’s what she says.
Nice. Tom stays on, Toby, Greg, and I swap in and we are still none the wiser. “Do we press A to kick it?” “Wait, you can move as a ghost?” “Oh – I’m tiny! How did that happen?”
Crucially, in spite of the bafflement, we are still having fun. It’s very fast-paced and the room is very noisy. A great find, but time is evaporating.
Kicking worked well. We think. We honestly don’t know — Image: Alastair Stevenson / Nintendo Life
George: It’s great to play a game you don’t really know!
Toby: Do you think we better Micro Machines Up?
George: Let’s Micro Machines Up.
Micro Machining Up
That’s the weirdest thing I’ve said in a while. But we’re finally here – we are finally going to try out the Nintendo 64’s biggest multiplayer game.
Now, I don’t know who at Codemasters came up with the idea of sharing an N64 gamepad, but they are an absolute anarchist genius. It turns out that to facilitate eight-player you use the D-pad and C buttons as two sets of directional inputs – effectively having a D-pad each to turn your car left, right, and press down to brake while it auto accelerates.
Image: George Banks / Nintendo Life
But — and this is a substantial ‘but’ — they made the baffling decision to not use down as down, left as left and right as right, but instead assign left, down and right to up, left and down respectively on the D-Pad and left, down and right to down, right and up respectively on the C buttons. Yes. It’s as simple and intuitive as it sounds.
The select screen basically demonstrates this by ‘splitting’ the N64 controller in half. Were they under the impression this was possible? Unless there is an incredibly special and rare N64 pad I am totally unaware of, this setup seems to encourage you to sit facing the other player in order to have the controls mapped correctly, while craning your neck to look at the screen.
I grant you, sharing the pad was always going to be awkward, but if that’s the case, why not just keep them upright and have each person hold a prong? It’s SO WEIRD.
Codemasters are chaos monkeys — Image: George Banks / Nintendo Life
We pull names out of a hat and somehow I am on my own again, but Alastair is paired with Nic, Tom with Christian, and Toby with Greg. Each pad is one team of two cars, red, blue, yellow, and green. We pick up the pads. They are not built for grown men to share. Having learned from our Mario Kart mistake, we opt for turbo level one, though Nic is feeling ambitious.
Nic: Is there a boost as well?
Alastair: (indicating the minuscule amount of pad available) Considering what I’ve got access to here…
Cheesy Jumps is our first race, set on a dining table. Classic Micro Machines. The first track gets underway and almost everybody speeds straight off the table, except a plucky yellow. It lasts about four seconds.
George: Who’s yellow? Hooray!
Tom: It’s us, but I don’t think that was me.
I simply cannot get to grips with this at all – I am trying to simultaneously control two cars with opposite controls to one another, but it does give me a good chance to observe. Conversation is frantic and loud. All the team members are essentially trying to strategise and figure out what is happening in real time between super short bursts where cars are just getting flung off a chair or waterlogged in an errant puddle of milk. I have a recording of the chat and, genuinely, it’s so cacophonous I can barely decipher anything.
Yellow team takes the first round by simply not dying the quickest.
George: Does anyone have any idea how that actually worked?
Tom: If I was controlling the car that I think I was controlling, then yes. I think.
Alastair: I had a similar feeling.
Christian: I feel like mine didn’t even start going in the right direction initially.
George: Incredible.
Greg: If I don’t press anything, it goes straight, right?
George: In theory.
Cereal Killer is next – great track name, same theme as before. We’ve figured out that you earn points by being the last colour team alive during each phase, and lose points by crashing out. When there’s a single car left, all the cars are replaced and the next phase begins, until a team has acquired the necessary points to win the round – and the whole game is nothing more than steering to stay on the track. Simple enough, we just didn’t have time to take it in before. Something key emerges during the setup, too.
George: Ah! Right, you need to try and keep an eye on which car is your car. Look, for each team there’s like an F1-style car and a boxy thing.
Everyone: AHHHH!
Tom: Oh, it wasn’t me then. Christian, you did well!
Yes, that would’ve helped. And so it proves, as we have our first phase that lasts longer than 10 seconds.
George: Guys, an impressive run!
Alastair: It helps when you know what car you are.
The greens, Greg and Toby, are really getting into the swing of it. Greg has had some super laps and sussed that it’s a ‘tap-tap’ type of game. Generous of him to release this information, and it makes things much more level into our final phases – with Christian and Toby enjoying a pretty intense duel lasting almost a full minute, which Christian edges. High fives abound again. It doesn’t even matter when you crash out, it’s just fantastic watching the energy of the players and the chaos of keeping their car on the track afterwards.
There’s precious few minutes left and Alastair suggests a different racing biome. We plumb for the Snooker/Pool Table. Another Micro Machines all timer – and where we should have begun, as there aren’t precarious edges to instantly fly off of.
It is insane to ask people to share a pad like this — Image: Alastair Stevenson / Nintendo Life
It proves to be an absolutely incredible finale. Everybody has found their feet with the game and each phase results in a two-, three-, or four-car chase for a good length of time, with jumps, skids, and collisions peppering the competition.
George: Oh my god, this is thrilling! Why did we wait to play this? It’s incredible.
Christian: When you get down to a few, you think, ‘Oh – I’m at the front so I can actually see where I’m going.’
George: Yeah, you don’t get all that stretching when there’s more players. It’s almost like it’s easier when there aren’t eight cars involved.
Cheers are positively erupting when a single car ends the phase, regardless of team affiliation. Then something curious happens. Some of the cars have little pincers on them. But nobody can suss out what they can do. Until…
Alastair: I think this game has produced the highest number of swears per second.
George: 100%. Good call on the track, too. But we’re low on time, we might have to call it quits.
Tom: No.
George: I’ve got the pincers again, too, but I’m still not sure what they — oh! Ah! AHH! I don’t know how I did it!
The pincers shoot forward and drag your opponents back towards your car! They are an absolutely sublime edition and Greg eventually discovers it is done by pressing the shoulder button that corresponds to your side of the pad.
Tragically, it’s too late to fully enjoy it – our time is up. Nintendo simply must bring this to NSO. I can’t think of a better title suited to the Joy-Con.
Game over
Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life
We indulge in a few drinks afterwards and chat about our experience that night, our memories of the 64. We even suggest starting up a club to make coming together and enjoying old consoles a regular thing.
George: What would we call it?
Alastair: Pixels and pints?
George: Technically polygons, but pixels is better.
Greg: I just said I was going to help with a research project. Got me out of the house no problem.
Greg is a genius. I even get a message the next morning from Tom marvelling at how, despite how busy modern life is, a 30-year-old console can provide so much fun and connect people for friendly competition.
It’s true. The N64 has the uncanny ability to bring people together around it – and there’s a game for everyone, too. Whether it was Toby and I ruthlessly stalking the halls of GoldenEye, Alastair and Tom taming the slipperiness of Mario Kart, Nic gleefully wreaking havoc in Bomberman, or Christian and Greg mastering the tappy turns of Micro Machines, everybody found their game and had a great time playing the others. The time absolutely flew by and we could’ve spent the whole evening on any one of those experiences without getting bored.
If you haven’t tried the Nintendo 64’s multiplayer magic first-hand, I urge you to do it. On the walk home I thought of my childhood friends I’ve lost touch with, whose houses we would crash into nearly every weekend to enjoy this wondrous machine. I didn’t realise how sad I had become to have lost that, but I’m so happy I have new friends to enjoy it with today.
All it took was a little chat about Nintendo’s best ‘friend’ machine. There’s life in the old boy yet.
The N64 – still great fun — Image: Alastair Stevenson / Nintendo Life
George is a stage and screen actor and voiceover artist with a deep love of gaming and all things Nintendo. His writing has appeared on Nintendo Life and Time Extension, and he’s the host of NintenDormant.