![]() ![]() The box even told you that only 33 percent of the game would be available were you to play without the Expansion. It probably did not help that Perfect Dark seemed like it was only a multiplayer arena shooter if you didn’t have the Memory Expansion Pak. ![]() Perfect Dark might not catch up to that kind of figure even if Microsoft releases it anew on every console they ever make. ![]() But still, GoldenEye 007 outsold even Ocarina of Time on the N64, finishing behind only Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. Perfect Dark would get a second life on the Xbox 360 when a remaster made the Nintendo 64 classic the dual stick shooter it had always tried to be, and its presence on the Rare Replay Collection that upscaled it to 4K for the Xbox One and Series X/S platforms, along with its presence on Game Pass, has given it life yet again. Most of the people I’ve met in my life who have scoffed at me for saying Perfect Dark is better than GoldenEye haven’t actually played Perfect Dark: those who have actually played, which is a considerably smaller number of folks, know the truth of things.Īnd so, the best game Rareware made on the N64 - the best game Rareware has ever made, be it self-published or a Nintendo or Microsoft joint - had to be content with 2.52 million sales and a legacy that doesn’t come close to that of GoldenEye’s because of the relative smallness of that figure. GoldenEye had more time to win the hearts and minds of N64 owners, given how early into the system’s lifespan it released, comparatively, and even though Perfect Dark blows it away in every conceivable way, timing, nostalgia, and just the sheer difference in exposure the two games had are difficult forces to overcome. At 3.36 million, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask topped the list of 2000 releases in terms of both sales and quality, nearly cracking the lifetime sales top 10 for the N64 despite its late arrival to that party. ![]() Banjo-Tooie, Pokémon Stadium 2, Mario Tennis, Excitebike 64, Mario Tennis, Kirby 64, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Paper Mario, WWF No Mercy, and 007: The World Is Not Enough - the sequel to GoldenEye 007 - would all release in 2000, and would all sell in between 007’s 1.08 million copies and Banjo-Tooie’s three million. That’s not to say that everyone with a Nintendo 64 stopped buying games for the system, or that Nintendo and the third parties that supported the 64 stopped trying just because the next-gen had arrived. The N64’s successor, the GameCube, wouldn’t arrive until the fall of the next year, sure, but the Dreamcast was already eight months old by the time Perfect Dark hit shelves, and Sony’s Playstation 2 - which stormed ahead of the early arriving Dreamcast in a hurry and then sold so well for so long that it saw a release of 2011’s iteration of MLB: The Show - was already two months in by the time Perfect Dark arrived. It didn’t come out until late-May in 2000, well into the Nintendo 64’s lifespan, and when gamers were, en masse, moving away from the fifth generation and into the sixth. Perfect Dark’s release date is the primary reason why it’s not a more significant deal. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link. Throughout the month of September, I’ll be covering the console, its games, its innovations, and its legacy. On September 29, 2021, the Nintendo 64 will turn 25 years old in North America. ![]()
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