[ad_1]
<div _ngcontent-c14 = "" innerhtml = "
Yesterday, Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime broke a lot of hearts in an interview with Kotaku. He said that even if he did not dismiss the concept, an N64 Classic mini-edition was "not in our planning horizon".
It's a surprise, because many have assumed that it would be a new success for Nintendo this year, but it seems for the moment that NES and SNES Classic Editions will be all that Nintendo has, although his rival Sony produces a terribly good received) Classic PS1 for this year's holidays.
So why is Nintendo not making a classic N64? There are a number of potential reasons, some related to the hardware as it is an upgrade of the 8/16 bit era, others related to marketing, which makes it possible to keep it for rainy days. But there is an aspect of an N64 Classic that could tarnish the console unless, by a miracle, Nintendo does not fix anything.
It would be rare games.
Needless to say, some of the most iconic games in Nintendo 64's history are the rare titles, Goldeneye and Banjo-Kazooie, and to a lesser extent, Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day. But Rare was bought by Microsoft in 2002, where he started creating a lot of less classic games than these, culminating with Sea of Thieves this year, an exclusive Xbox-only experimental pirate title that has not lit the world since his Liberation.
Today's Rare is not the Rare of 20 years ago, and I mean literally, because most of the people involved in this project have evolved. But with Microsoft having all the Rare content, it would be a license nightmare trying to figure out how to get those classic titles all the time on a mini console that they desperately need. And for Goldeneye in particular, the James Bond license is perhaps the most complicated interrogation point, since Activision owned the license last time in 2013, but then revoked it and we have not seen any Bond games since.
Previously, Microsoft, or at least some individual leaders, had expressed their willingness to restore to Nintendo rare characters, for example saying that they were open to Banjo-Kazooie in Smash Bros. But that's quite another thing when you say you need to borrow the rights to the most famous games that Rare has ever created to sell this new mini-console, "and that's maybe a a proposal so expensive or impossible to orchestrate that Nintendo does not want to worry about it.
That said, it is clear that Nintendo could still have a nostalgic machine on her hands, even if she only used her own classic properties. First, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Starfox 64, Ocarina of Time, The Majora Mask, Pokémon Snap, Donkey Kong 64, The Story of Paper Mario and Yoshi. So maybe you do not have the WWF's Rare, Turok or No Mercy games, but it's still a big hit.
And yet, a Nintendo 64 reissue without Goldeneye? The N64 was practically a Goldeneye machine alone for my childhood, so that would be a disappointment. There is probably a lot going on behind the scenes of why an N64 Classic is not planned, but we hope to see it someday anyway.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Read my new detective science fiction novel Herokiller, now available in print and online. I have also written The trilogy born of the earth.
">
Yesterday, Nintendo's Reggie Fils-Aime broke a lot of hearts in an interview with Kotaku. He said that even if he did not dismiss the concept, an N64 Classic mini-edition was "not in our planning horizon".
It's a surprise, because many have assumed that it would be a new success for Nintendo this year, but it seems for the moment that NES and SNES Classic Editions will be all that Nintendo has, although his rival Sony produces a terribly good received) Classic PS1 for this year's holidays.
So why is Nintendo not making a classic N64? There are a number of potential reasons, some related to the hardware as it is an upgrade of the 8/16 bit era, others related to marketing, which makes it possible to keep it for rainy days. But there is an aspect of an N64 Classic that could tarnish the console unless, by a miracle, Nintendo does not fix anything.
It would be rare games.
Needless to say, some of the most iconic games in Nintendo 64's history are the rare titles, Goldeneye and Banjo-Kazooie, and to a lesser extent, Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day. But Rare was bought by Microsoft in 2002, where he started creating a lot of less classic games than these, culminating with Sea of Thieves this year, an exclusive Xbox-only experimental pirate title that has not lit the world since his Liberation.
Today's Rare is not the Rare of 20 years ago, and I mean literally, because most of the people involved in this project have evolved. But with Microsoft having all the Rare content, it would be a license nightmare trying to figure out how to get those classic titles all the time on a mini console that they desperately need. And for Goldeneye in particular, the James Bond license is perhaps the most complicated interrogation point, since Activision owned the license last time in 2013, but then revoked it and we have not seen any Bond games since.
Previously, Microsoft, or at least some individual leaders, had expressed their willingness to restore to Nintendo rare characters, for example saying that they were open to Banjo-Kazooie in Smash Bros. But that's quite another thing when you say you need to borrow the rights to the most famous games that Rare has ever created to sell this new mini-console, "and that's maybe a a proposal so expensive or impossible to orchestrate that Nintendo does not want to worry about it.
That said, it is clear that Nintendo could still have a nostalgic machine on her hands, even if she only used her own classic properties. First, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Starfox 64, Ocarina of Time, The Majora Mask, Pokémon Snap, Donkey Kong 64, The Story of Paper Mario and Yoshi. So maybe you do not have the WWF's Rare, Turok or No Mercy games, but it's still a big hit.
And yet, a Nintendo 64 reissue without Goldeneye? The N64 was practically a Goldeneye machine alone for my childhood, so that would be a disappointment. There is probably a lot going on behind the scenes of why an N64 Classic is not planned, but we hope to see it someday anyway.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Read my new detective science fiction novel Herokiller, now available in print and online. I have also written The trilogy born of the earth.