Nintendo 64

The Nintendo 64 is one of the best examples of a launch immediately giving new players all they’ll really need by offering an incredible, generation-defining game right out the gate. Most consoles can’t claim to have the kind of system seller that Super Mario 64 was back in 1996. It didn’t matter that the Nintendo 64’s controller is the kind of sin that god will judge humanity for when we reach the pearly gates; Mario’s first leap into 3D felt like a true generational leap of the kind that’s become increasingly rare in recent decades. One game made such a succinct case for the console that some reasonably argue the N64 never surpassed it. In reality, as they arrived in the years that followed, games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and GoldenEye similarly demonstrated the capabilities and potential of the N64, but most companies don’t have this kind of paradigm shift on store shelves the same day their new console lands. Nintendo had done it twice before, though, with the NES having Super Mario Bros. right out of the gate and the SNES launching with the one-two punch of Super Mario World and F-Zero. And the company would go on to pull off this feat at least twice more, too… — Kenneth Shepard