Issue #64: The Legacy of the Nintendo 64 – March/April 2023

Being a fan of video games used to be a numbers game.

In the late '80s and into the mid-'90s, gamers were unhealthily obsessed with "bits." If your preferred video game system had more bits than your friends' machines did, then you were the winner! You could hold your head high and strut victoriously all around the playground at recess time.

See, the NES was just an 8-bit system. But then Sega raced ahead and brought their Genesis, a 16-bit system, to the market faster than Nintendo could respond! Even the unsung TurboGrafx-16 was able to claim bit superiority over the Big N before the 16-bit Super NES finally arrived and leveled the playing field. But then Nintendo got outclassed again when the 32-bit Sega Saturn made its debut!

There could only be one response. Only one mathematical move would be bold enough for Nintendo to reclaim the playground crown. It was time for . . . Nintendo 64!

This NF issue, our 64th ever, is dedicated to that great moment in time and the unique console library that was created in the N64 era. We've got a roundtable discussion about the legacy of the system, as well as reviews of every Nintendo 64 title that's made it way to Nintendo Switch Online as of this writing. We've got a 25th anniversary retrospective on GoldenEye 007 (one of the greatest N64 games) and then more N64-inspired articles and comics beyond that!

Hopefully NF #64 will be a time-warping trip back to the '90s for many of you, while younger gamers get some insight into a hardware era of days gone by!

(How many bits do you think the Switch has? Hmm . . . )