30 Years of Nintendo 64

It's probably not a coincidence that Nintendo is launching the new Star Fox remake this week, since this is marking the 30th anniversary of the Nintendo 64. We will also be getting a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time later this year, and if this is marking a new trend, then we might be getting a Super Mario 64 remake afterwards, to complete the trinity of Shigeru Miyamoto's first 3D hits before he retires.

The Nintendo 64 holds a special place in my heart, because it was my first own home console. I got it only three years later, for Christmas 1999, the fancy grape purple edition (see here). But games like Ocarina of Time were absolutely magical at the time, which might be difficult to grasp today, with the clunky controller and the blocky graphics. There was nothing like this before. It was a whole world in your TV, which felt alive and which you could freely explore in three dimensions.

And there was a big emphasis on those three dimensions. Just look at the first dungeon, Inside the Great Deku Tree, with its multiple floors, where you had to jump down from the very top to break through a giant spider net in the middle. While you had tower-like dungeons in A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, where you could drop down from one floor into the rooms below, such verticality in the level design wasn't possible before. It was awe-inspiring.

Another thing I always like to praise about the games from this early 3D era is their atmosphere. What they may have lacked in the number of polygons, they made up for it with incredible soundscapes and soundtracks. Play the rattling of the windmill in Kakariko Village, with birds humming in the distance, and I'm immediately taken back into the place, fully immersed.

Anyway, it looks like the remake of Star Fox is more of a remaster with a full engine swap, re-using the code base of the Nintendo 3DS version. Let's see whether they will take the same approach for Ocarina of Time or give us a complete re-imagining. In any case, it will be a nice way of celebrating 30 years of this beloved classic console.