Why Nintendo Hasn’t Released a N64 Mini and Doesn’t Have Plans to Any Time Soon
With the success story that has been the NES classic and the SNES classic, one could only assume that Nintendo would naturally want to release a Nintendo 64 classic edition, but unfortunately it’s not only not on Nintendo’s current radar to do so, but there’s also some real challenges in doing so.
In a recent interview with Kotaku, president of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aimé told the publication that the N64 classic is “not in our planning horizon.” He said that the NES and SNES’s classic editions were created with the intention of bridging a year long gap between the end of the Wii U and the launch of the Nintendo Switch.
“So while consumers may have been anticipating something, we view these as limited time opportunities. We’ve also now been very clear that as the consumer looks forward to engaging with our classic content that is going to happen more and more with the subscription service.” said Reggie.
Owners of the Switch can currently access only a limited selection of NES titles via Nintendo’s newly launched subscription service: Nintendo Switch Online. Naturally one would wonder whether Nintendo has plans on expanding this range of titles to include not only more NES classics, but SNES classics, and perhaps even N64 classics?
When pressed on this Fils-Aimé’s response was simply “As we look to the future, our subscription service, NSO, Nintendo Switch Online is going to be the place where you can play our classic content…”
“Beyond NES?” Kotaku replied.
“We’ll see what comes next,” said Fils-Aimé. “As you have already pointed out, we haven’t even made the full library of NES games available yet. So this content has to be optimized for the Switch environment. That’s something we’re working very hard to do. Like you, I look forward to playing Metroid through the Nintendo Switch Online service and we’ll be continuing to release content that way.”
As to whether Fils-Aimé would rule out the potential release of a mini Nintendo 64 sometime in the future Fils-Aimé said “I would not ever rule something out, but what I can tell you is certainly that’s not in our planning horizon.”
One problem that could affect Nintendo’s decision making on creating a mini Nintendo 64 is related to the licensing of two of the best selling games for the system. Both Goldeneye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie were published by Rare games and Rare is now owned by Microsoft. It’s safe to say it would be a major challenge for Nintendo to get Microsoft’s approval for usage of Rare’s intellectual property, even if the intellectual property in question is more than 20 years old.
A lot of people associate the Nintendo 64 with these two titles. That’s not to say that the long list of amazing Nintendo created games wouldn’t sell mini N64’s, but it might affect some people’s decision to purchase the product and that’s something Nintendo no doubt has to consider if they ever were to release a mini Nintendo 64.
If you’re more of a classic gamer you can get your hands on the Playstation Classic next month, the NES and SNES classics are in stock at a number of stores and Sega is working on a Genesis Mini as well as gearing up to launch many of their amazing classic titles for the Switch in the near future.
If you’re still desperate for a Nintendo 64, there’s always the option of buying a used one, there are even mods available to bring it into the 21st century with HDMI support and the like. Regardless hopefully we will one day see a mini N64.
