Nintendo 64 also called the N64 is Nintendo's third home video game console. It was released in Japan with two launch games Super Mario 64 and PilotWings 64 on June 23, 1996. When it was released its advertising slogan was "The fastest most powerful games console on earth".

Unlike other video game consoles at the time, namely the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation, the games for the Nintendo 64 came on cartridges.

This had the advantage of having less loading times for games as well as being hard for pirates to make fake copies of games.

However unlike CD's which were cheap to produce, cartridges are expensive, raising the price of the games. Other advantages for cartridges were the ability to save game progress in the cartridge itself without the need for a separate memory card.

Later in the life of the Nintendo 64 an Expansion pack was released giving the console extra memory. Some games such as Perfect Dark were unplayable without it.

Still, even if very successful during its launching, it never reached the estimated success, the playstation taking a too large advance.