When you look at the grand library of consoles thatNintendohas developed, there are some real winners in there. The Switch is the biggest runaway success the company has ever seen, while the DS is a handheld console that no one has been able to match.

And then there’s the N64. It is remembered incredibly fondly now for the standout games that did launch on the console, but looking at it objectively, it had a surprising dearth of games. Far less than any other Nintendo console, in fact. Let’s dive into exactly why that was.

How Many Games Did The N64 Have In Total?

While the Switch has far-and-away the largest library of any Nintendo console with over 5,000 games, that’s definitely an outlier.The majority hover somewhere around 1,000-2,000 games, give or take a few either way. Impressive numbers, and they tended to grow with each console. So where does that leave the N64?

There are under 400 games for the N64, with 388 the most commonly accepted final number. Compare this to around1,700 on the SNES and around 650 on the Gamecube, the N64 lies bizzarely low. Every console following has never reached such a low number, even the Wii U, so what happened for this retroactively beloved console to witnesssuch a dry spell in game releases?

Why Did The N64 Have So Few RPGs In Particular?

A massive aspect that had defined the success of the SNES, the predecessor to the N64, wasits massive selection of RPGs. While RPGs were popular internationally, they found their most devoted audience in Japan. As such, it became somewhat of an expectation that any Nintendo console would be rich with RPGs.

This, however, was not the case. While the N64 was lacking in an overall number of games, it was lacking most especially in RPGs. In fact,Japan was the worst-selling region for the N64, and Europe did not fair much better. North America, which did not have as deep an association with RPGs, was more than happy with the other games on offer.

International Or Japan-Exclusive

Shiren the Wanderer 2: Shiren’s Castle and the Oni Invasion

March 2001

Only Europe and North America

While there are a few more games with light RPG elements on the N64, this listing focusessolely on those that are fully RPG in nature.

As you can see in the table above, however, the situation for RPGs on the N64 was especially dire. A massive part of this was because ofSquare Enix’s decision to shift all its major franchises to the PlayStation, the vast majority of which were RPGs. The N64 was more expensive to develop for, and the costly cartridges pushed customers away from buying games in the first place.

That was bad enough, but due to the general lack of interest of RPGs in North America, it meantmany of the N64’s RPGs remained exclusive to Japandespite there being an appetite for them in Europe. As such, of the13 dedicated RPGsreleased on the N64, only6 of them actually launched internationally.

Why Did The N64 Have So Few Games In Total?

So now we know why the most celebrated genre of games on the N64 was so limited, but why did the console in general have so few games? Well, it ties back into the same reasoning but on a much larger scale. The originalPlayStation had a two-year headstart, and came with CD-ROMs that allowed higher storage that could be read faster than cartridges.

For many, this was enough to jump ship. But then why didn’t they develop for both consoles? Well, a lot of that came down to the storage media as well. Discs and cartridges stored data differently and read it differently as well. It wasn’t a simple copy-and-paste job. On top of this,N64 games were sold at a premium to make up for the cost of the expensive cartridges. This meant less money for third-parties.

Nintendo briefly cut the price of the console and gamesin the holiday season of 1997, prompting Capcom to continue making games for the console.

Another major angle to consider, and one that likely influenced many,the N64 just wasn’t selling well. Nintendo didn’t have many of its own games ready to go, leading to long periods without any new games, and this in turn lead to lower sales internationally. While the N64 briefly outsold the PlayStation in North America, it didn’t hold this record for very long.

This attitude is even seen when carried over to the subsequent GameCube. While it used optical media, and was more powerful than its competitors, the fear of being associated with a console that simply might not sell had manywary to actually invest in it.That was a direct result of soured relationships from the N64 era.