N64:20 #1: The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (1998)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Some games are good, some are bad. Occasionally one comes along that is genuinely great, but even rarer still is the game that makes a real and lasting impact on your life. It creates fond memories of playing it, and discovering its world. It sticks in your mind for years after the fact. These are the games I treasure. They are generally either role-playing or adventure games: ones with a fictional world to explore, and characters to discover. They are games that require a significant investment of time, because they tell an actual story. They are not just fun to play, they have a real emotional effect.

There have been a bunch over the years for me. Secret of Mana. Shenmue. Red Dead Redemption. Harvest Moon. Of all of the games that have stuck with me over the years in this fashion, the best of them by a country mile is The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.

N64:20 #2: Super Mario 64 (1996)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Super Mario 64 was a launch title for the Nintendo 64, making its debut alongside the console itself on 23 June 1996. This was not an unexpected strategy: Nintendo had already found enormous success by launching their Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) with a Super Mario title alongside it. Super Mario 64 was a little different, however, since while Super Mario World marked a strong iterative improvement on earlier Mario titles, Super Mario 64 pretty much revolutionised an entire style of videogame.

N64:20 #3: GoldenEye 007 (1997)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

GoldenEye 007 is a remarkable game. For one thing it is a licensed title based on a feature film, and it does not suck. Even today, almost 20 years later, that is a rarity. For another thing it revolutionised the first-person shooter in multiple ways, making it not only a great game but a historically important one as well. Finally it was for many players - myself included - the best party game that the Nintendo 64 had. While four-player GoldenEye matches were generally an excuse for me to repeatedly get beaten by my much more talented friends, those matches remain some of my most fondly remembered gaming experiences. This is a legendary game.

N64:20 #4: Mario Kart 64 (1996)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Mario Kart 64 was one of the key early titles for the Nintendo 64. It was released in late 1996 in Japan, and in the first half in 1997 in the rest of the world. It was a huge hit for Nintendo, shifting almost 10 million copies and becoming the console's second highest-selling game after Super Mario 64. I strongly suspect it was responsible for selling a lot of consoles by itself: it is a capable game for a solo player, but it came into its own with played with friends.

N64:20 #5: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Nintendo's much-delayed The Legend of Zelda title The Ocarina of Time was a massive hit in 1998, selling 7.6 million copies worldwide and becoming pretty much the most universally acclaimed videogame of its year. Nintendo was keen to avoid another lengthy delay between sequels - there were seven years between A Link to the Past and Ocarina - and so rather than develop the next game from scratch, the graphics engine was re-used and a small team assembled to quickly produce an Ocarina sequel as quickly as possible. Thus Majora's Mask arrived only two years later, looking very much the same as its predecessor but with a new setting, an all-new story, and an original game mechanic that ensured it stood out very much on its own.

N64:20 #6: Space Station Silicon Valley (1998)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

In 1995 British game developer DMA Design signed a contract with distributor BMG Interactive to produce three videogames. One of these, the strategy game Tanktics, was fairly unsuccessful and sank without a trace. The second, Grand Theft Auto, sparked off one of the most successful videogame franchises of all time. The third was Space Station Silicon Valley which, like Tanktics, was a commercial failure. Unlike Tanktics, however, it was widely acclaimed by critics and has since become a strong cult favourite. There seems to be a special sub-set of Nintendo 64 players. They will start discussing their favourite games, one will mention Space Station Silicon Valley and the other player's eyes with just light up with delight - someone else who had the chance to play the game has been found.

N64:20 #7: Paper Mario (2000)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

One of the more surprising titles released for the Super Nintendo was the Nintendo/Squaresoft collaboration Super Mario RPG. It was an unexpected blend of the Super Mario Bros characters and the gameplay of a turn-based role-playing game (RPG). While Nintendo moved from the SNES to the Nintendo 64, Squaresoft did not. The developer jumped ship to produce videogames for the Sony PlayStation instead. As a follow-up to Super Mario RPG Nintendo teamed with second-party developer Intelligent Systems, who had produced the console's Fire Emblem franchise, which had been very popular in Japan.

N64:20 #8: Perfect Dark (2000)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

When Rare's first-person shooter GoldenEye 007 became an unexpected smash hit, the development studio fully expected to develop a second shooter based on the film sequel Tomorrow Never Dies. When Rare was outbid on the adaptation rights - and by a reportedly huge margin at that - the nascent sequel was taken back to the drawing board and redeveloped as an original science fiction game. That game was Perfect Dark.

N64:20 #9: Super Smash Bros (1999)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

When Nintendo announced that it was releasing a fighting game based around its various corporate characters it seemed a difficult announcement to believe. While fighting games had become a remarkably popular genre of videogame through such franchises as Street Fighter, Tekken and Virtua Fighter, that sort of game seemed fundamentally incompatible with the bright, child-friendly stable of Nintendo heroes include Mario and Luigi, Kirby and Pikachu. In typical Nintendo fashion, however, Super Smash Bros took the basic concept of the fighting game and then re-fashioned it into something distinctive, family-friendly and packed down to the bone with a charming Nintendo identity.

N64:20 #10: Blast Corps (1997)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Here we are, with yet another Rare videogame for the Nintendo 64. Aside from Nintendo itself Rare was easily the most critically important developer for the console, generating a wave of hit titles including Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Donkey Kong 64 and GoldenEye 007. Blast Corps was their first major N64 game, and while it actually sold below expectations it was widely acclaimed and remains an exceptional videogame today. Quite why it has never been reworked or revived in the past two decades is beyond me: it deserves the exposure.

N64:20 #11: Snowboard Kids 2 (1999)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

It's not really spoiling anything to admit that Mario Kart 64 is one of the higher-ranked videogames in this Nintendo 64 countdown. For one thing it was such a great party game, with four players playing simultaneously in races. As with all videogames though, sometimes you can play a game too much and start craving some variety. You find yourself looking for a solid back-up: similar sorts of games but with different race tracks or mechanics, and so on. As a kart racing substitute, Snowboard Kids 2 was one of my go-to titles.

N64:20 #13: Star Fox 64 (1997)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Star Fox 64 was a much-anticipated sequel to the popular SNES game Star Fox. In both games the player controlled space fighter pilot Fox McCloud, who was as his name suggests an actual fox, as he led a squadron of fighters against an alien invasion. It is for the most part an 'on rails' space shooter, by which I mean the player has only limited control of her or his space fighter as it travels through the level. Instead the player controls the direction in which he or she wishes to shoot at things. It is a format that become reasonably popular in the mid-1990s, reaching its creative height with Sega's excellent Saturn title Panzer Dragoon Zwei.

N64:20 #14: Donkey Kong 64 (1999)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Rare had scored some big hits on the SNES with Donkey Kong Country and its sequels: they were essentially Super Mario World clones, but boasted visually arresting graphics thanks to a careful conversion of 3D rendered characters into two-dimensional sprites. It was a big deal at the time, with Nintendo handing over responsibility for reviving their first big videogame character over to a British developer. Given Rare's success with the character, it was not a surprise to see Nintendo and Rare repeat the exercise on the Nintendo 64.

N64:20 #15: Banjo Kazooie (1998)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

So let's talk about Rare. This British videogame developer was established in 1985 under the name Ultimate Play the Game by arcade game developers Chris and Tim Stamper. After developing some titles for ZX Spectrum home computer, the Stampers were shown Nintendo's Famicom console. Impressed by the technology and keen to develop for the console, the Ultimate team reverse-engineered the code - something Nintendo had maintained would be impossible - and sent a tech demo directly to Nintendo in Japan. So impressed was executive Minoru Arakawa that he signed Ultimate up - now using the studio name Rare - to develop games for the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System.

N64:20 #16: Body Harvest (1998)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Body Harvest is a videogame produced by Scottish developer DMA Design, whose biggest success - Grand Theft Auto - came to overshadow pretty much all of the other games that DMA produced. That is a deep shame, because there were a host of great DMA titles produced over the years and a lot of them sadly seem to be forgotten. Body Harvest is a pretty good example of that. It's inventive, addictive, challenging and in its own way rather ground-breaking. You hardly hear anybody talking about it any more though.

N64:20 #17: Star Wars: Episode I Racer (1999)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

It is safe to say that when Star Wars: Episode I opened in cinemas around the world in May 1999, that the audience response was somewhat disappointed. The 16 years since the release of Return of the Jedi had created an anticipation that was effectively unsurpassable. Producer/director George Lucas could have made the best film of his career and it seems likely audiences would have still felt let down. The fact is he made the active hands-down worst film of his career, so it is not like we can blame the viewers for the poor esteem in which The Phantom Menace continues to be held. The story was weak. The acting was wooden. The digital sets and characters are made things look weirdly fake and artificial. A lengthy racing sequence in the middle was singled-out for particularly emphatic scorn. The pod race was described derisively as something out of a videogame.

Rather fittingly, while the film remains a punching bag among movie enthusiasts, the videogame-like pod race sequence actually did make for a pretty stunning videogame. LucasArts produced it themselves, releasing it alongside the film in May 1999 and making it the best aspect of the entire Phantom Menace experience.

N64:20 #18: Bangaioh

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Not all of the best Nintendo 64 games made it outside of Japan. Occasionally a great game barely manages to make it in Japan itself. Take Bangaioh, sometimes titled Bangai-O. It was a fast-paced, quite extraordinarily chaotic shooter developed by Treasure and distributed on a limited run of just 10,000 copies. It is one of the trickiest Nintendo 64 titles to track down. I have never seen a physical copy in the wild, and the only legitimate version I have owned and played is the subsequent - and much more widely distributed - Sega Dreamcast port.

N64:20 #19: Goemon's Great Adventure

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Ganbare Goemon is one of those videogame franchises that has trucked along merrily within Japan but has remained fairly obscure and unknown in the rest of the world. That is almost entirely down to availability. The Goemon character has appeared in almost 40 different titles in his home country, while only five have been released international: one for the SNES, two for the Gameboy and two for the Nintendo 64, all released under the Mystical Ninja title.

N64:20 #20: Hybrid Heaven

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Hybrid Heaven was an odd title for Konami to release on the Nintendo 64. Since launching with Super Mario 64 the N64 had pretty much become the de facto console for children, with a growing range of brightly coloured platform titles and racing games, each featuring a different variety of cute anthropomorphic animal or object. Konami, on the other hand, specialised in slightly more mature action-based titles including the long-running Castlevania franchise as well as PlayStation titles like Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid. While Konami had released quite a few sports-based and family-friendly titles for the N64, Hybrid Heaven was their first original IP released for the console that actually targeted a more mature audience.