Here’s five hours of video to rank every single racing title on the N64. Don’t worry, we’ve got the timestamps for each game so you can skip around.
The Nintendo 64 was a keystone of childhood (and college) for so many of us millennials. While it didn’t have that much in the way of sim-style hardcore driving gamers, it certainly had a deep catalog of cool racing titles. This five-hour(!) video through almost every N64 racing title is the perfect tour to tickle your nostalgia bone.
Yuri Tereshyn is best known as a host on the YouTube car review channel TheStraightPipes, but he’s also big into retro stuff and shares some great old-school game and toy videos on his passion project channel Yuri Retro. He recently did an epic N64 car games video, and it’s honestly a much better way to experience these than going out and buying an old console off eBay or taking the time to emulate this many games. This doesn’t quite grab every single N64 racing game ever (where my Beetle Racing fans at?) but it’s a pretty damn good rundown.
I love his setup, the fish-eye reaction cam plus nicely captured game footage is great. For those of you with a casual interest, here’s a short version:
If you want to dive deep, here’s the full five-hour upload:
If there’s one N64 game you’d love to revisit in this context but are a little intimidated by this preposterous video runtime, our man Tereshyn has done us a solid and timestamped each game if you want to skip around:
When Nintendo 64 came out in 1996, I was still playing a hand-me-down NES (released in 1985) from my uncle. Hah, the zoomers will never understand going from blowing on old cartridges and learning tricks to jiggling power buttons just right to stepping into a three-dimensional digital world. I will honestly never forget the first time I saw Super Mario 64—at a friend’s house, somebody was playing one of the swimming levels, and my mind pretty much melted.
I’m so old that I rented an N64 console from Blockbuster on two separate weekends while trying to save up for my own. My parents, bless them, eventually did help me buy one and I logged hours and hours and hours on it from third grade through college. Besides Mario, Smash Bros, and GoldenEye, I was naturally a huge racing game fan and I enjoyed Tereshyn’s tour through some of my old favorites in particular. Mario Kart 64 (of course), WaveRace (I still listen to the soundtrack regularly), Cruis’n USA (even still remember the easter eggs), and MRC (one of my fave game intros to this day) were on heavy rotation in my house. I really liked Vigilante 8 too, though I’m not sure I’d call that a racing game—it was more like sci-fi demolition derby. Roadsters and Automobili Lamborghini were also fun to me. Shoot, I could keep going all day!
Anyway, this is a sweet little memory lane run to take on a Sunday night. Enjoy, and let us know what your favorite titles are while you’re here.
