To be fair, N64 is not the PS2 or Gameboy--there are only 388 games that were released for it. Going through all of the games that were released and shepherding them through this process is feasible.
if you're interested in this kind of thing, The Mexican Runner beat every NES game (over 700 of them [1]) including such gems as Miracle Piano Teaching System, which took 91 hours to beat and required him to become quite proficient at actual piano playing [2]
I really liked the N64, but if we're being charitable it's probably like 30-40 games. For any given console, even those that achieve legendary status, the game quality follows a Pareto distribution, 80% is crap, 20% is worth playing after the console has left the public mind.
What no one wants to revisit Nagano Winter Olympics or Tetrisphere? Its probably closer to 50 if you want to include some of the lesser-known but interesting titles IMO. One of the most interesting games was Body Harvest since its clearly a prototype for a lot of what became GTA3
> For any given console, even those that achieve legendary status, the game quality follows a Pareto distribution, 80% is crap, 20% is worth playing after the console has left the public mind.
Is this just your best guess? Because you sound confident and then cite the Pareto distribution, but just like a certain Internet personality, there’s no data to support a claim you’re making but it does _sound_ factual.
Every game on the system will have some people who are super nostalgic for it. When many of us were kids, we only had a few games, and we played the hell out of them.