Best Adventure Games on the N64

The adventure games worth playing on the Nintendo 64 start with Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, Donkey Kong 64.

The N64 and Adventure Games

The machine that worked out how to move a character in three dimensions, and then had to invent the camera to film it. Small library, enormous influence.

Adventure Games are a solid rather than a defining part of this library — worth knowing, but not the reason anybody owns the machine.

Filtering to adventure means the place and the story are what you want back, not the challenge. It is the right filter when the thing you remember is where you were rather than what you did.

The Adventure Games Worth Playing

  1. 1. Super Mario 64

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  2. 2. The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  3. 3. Donkey Kong 64

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  4. 4. Banjo-Kazooie

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  5. 5. The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  6. 6. Perfect Dark

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  7. 7. Conker's Bad Fur Day

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  8. 8. Paper Mario

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  9. 9. Diddy Kong Racing

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  10. 10. Bomberman 64

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  11. 11. Jet Force Gemini

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  12. 12. Rayman 2 The Great Escape

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

What Makes a Good Adventure Game

A world with a reason to wander it, and writing that survives being read rather than skipped.

Mechanical depth. Several of the best adventure games have combat that is deliberately unsatisfying, because they want your attention somewhere else.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best adventure game on the N64?

Super Mario 64 is the usual first answer, and there are 12 in the library we cover.

Was the N64 good at adventure games?

It is a solid rather than a defining part of the library.

What counts as an adventure game?

Anywhere the story and the place matter more than the skill ceiling — point-and-click, walking sims, narrative thrillers and most open worlds. The label alone tells you very little, which is why each pick here says what it actually is.

Are adventure games long?

They split hard. Open-world adventures run to a hundred hours; the narrative ones are often finishable in an evening, and the short ones are usually the better written.

How is this list put together?

From the games this site covers on the Nintendo 64, matched against hand-mapped gameplay categories rather than a storefront's genre tag. A page only exists where there are at least four, which is why some console and genre combinations have no page at all.

Adventure Games on Other Consoles

More From the N64

Or browse the whole Nintendo 64 library.