One Important Thing Could Be Hindering A Nintendo 64 Mini Classic Edition

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Yesterday, Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime broke a lot of hearts when in a Kotaku interview, he said that while he wouldn’t rule out the concept, a mini N64 Classic Edition was “not in our planning horizon.”

That comes as something of a surprise, as many assumed it might be another holiday blockbuster for Nintendo as soon as this year, but it seems for now that NES and SNES Classic Editions will be all Nintendo has, though rival Sony is producing a (not terribly well-received) Classic PS1 for the holiday this year.

So, why isn’t Nintendo making an N64 classic? There are a number of potential reasons, some having to do with hardware given that it’s an upgrade from the 8/16-bit era, others having to do with marketing, saving it for a rainy day. But there’s one aspect of an N64 Classic that would taint the console unless by some miracle, Nintendo can work something out.

That would be Rare games.

It goes without saying that some of the most iconic games in Nintendo 64’s history are Rare titles, namely Goldeneye and Banjo-Kazooie, and to a lesser extent, Perfect Dark and Conker’s Bad Fur Day. But Rare was bought by Microsoft in 2002, where it proceed to make a lot of less-classic games than those, culminating with this year’s Sea of Thieves, an experimental Xbox-exclusive pirate title that has not exactly lit the world on fire since its release.

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The Rare of today is not the Rare of 20 years ago, and I mean that literally, as most of the core people involved with it have moved on. But with Microsoft owning all Rare content, it would be something of a licensing nightmare to try and figure out how to get these all-time classic titles on a mini console they desperately need to be on. And for Goldeneye in particular, the James Bond license may be the most complicated question mark of all, as Activision last owned the license in 2013, but then had it revoked and we haven't seen any Bond games since.

Previously, Microsoft, or at least a few individual executives, have expressed willingness to lend Nintendo back some Rare characters like saying they were open to Banjo-Kazooie in Smash Bros. But it’s a different matter altogether when you’re saying “hey, we need to borrow the rights to the most famous games Rare has ever made to sell this new mini console,” and that may be a proposition that is so expensive or impossible to orchestrate, Nintendo doesn’t want to bother with it.

With all this said, it’s clear that Nintendo could still have a hell of a nostalgia machine on its hands even if it was just using its own classic properties. Off the top of my head, there’s Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Starfox 64, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Pokémon Snap, Donkey Kong 64, Paper Mario and Yoshi’s story. So maybe you don’t have the Rare games or Turok or WWF No Mercy but that’s still quite a haul.

And yet, a Nintendo 64 re-release without Goldeneye? The N64 was practically a Goldeneye machine alone for my childhood, so that would be a bummer. There is probably a lot going on behind the scenes here in regard to why an N64 Classic isn’t forthcoming, but hopefully we may end up seeing it one day all the same.

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