10 Worst N64 Games

Ready 2 Rumble Boxing came out in 1999 from Midway on several consoles, the N64 among them, and like Nintendo's Punch-Out!! it is full of colourful characters, such as Afro Thunder. Land hard blows or taunt your opponent and the RUMBLE meter fills one letter at a time. Spell the whole word and you can unleash the Rumble Flurry. Ring announcer Michael Buffer appears as himself, and every version got its own exclusive boxer, J.R. Flurry on the N64. The N64 version averages 52 out of 100.

That gap was the problem from day one. One reviewer who had played the Dreamcast version for months found it hard to accept an inferior version, even though it played just as well. Players barely bring it up, which keeps it in the middle of the pack. It was a fine game somewhere else.

Earthworm Jim 3D is the third game in the series and the first not made by Shiny Entertainment, which had recently adopted a strict no sequels policy. Development dragged on so long that at times people thought it would never come out. Jim gets hit by a flying cow, falls into a coma and has to save his own brain by collecting Golden Udders and his lost marbles. Evil the Cat was planned as the boss of the Fear world and got cut, though his picture still turns up on records in one of the levels. It averages 53 out of 100.

Players are split. Plenty call it the worst or most disappointing jump to 3D, and just as many admit they like it anyway. The best way to enjoy Earthworm Jim 3D, one of them suggests, is not to play it.

Rampage 2 picks up after World Tour. George, Lizzie and Ralph have been captured and put on show, in New York, Tokyo and London, and Scumlabs has caused another accident that made three new monsters, among them Curtis the mouse and Ruby the lobster. In Rampage 2 you pick one of three monsters to go and rescue the original three, then work together to break buildings and eat people, which turns into a competition between the players. It averages 51 out of 100.

The N64 version has no cutscenes, and it reuses the North American music for the European and Asian levels. Hardly anyone mentions it at all. Smashing a city with a friend is still a decent way to spend an evening. It just never gets more interesting than that.

Mythologies is a story-driven Mortal Kombat starring Sub-Zero, set before the first tournament, and the first in the series with side-scrolling gameplay. You run, jump and fight through dangerous levels, and beating enemies earns experience that turns into new moves, a small RPG twist. Reviews of the N64 version were considerably more negative than those of the PlayStation one, because it stripped out the FMV cutscenes, which many considered the best part of the game. It averages 48 out of 100.

One critic told readers to take the worst controls of the NES days and multiply them by 10. Players who were excited for it remember the disappointment: the controls were bad and the deaths were cheap. Looking back, some critics now count it among the worst Mortal Kombat games ever made.

Tonic Trouble is a 3D platformer from Ubisoft Montreal in which Ed spills a magic potion on Earth and turns vegetables into living killers. It was dreamed up by Michel Ancel, who had created Rayman, and it was the first project for the Ubi Soft Montreal studio. It averages 48 out of 100, and the title changed roughly 8 times during development before an online vote picked the final one.

Critics liked the music and the level design, then went after the camera and how much it borrowed from other games. Players are kinder than critics here, and some call it underrated. It sold 1.1 million copies by 2001 and was re-released with Nintendo Classics in 2025, which is a better second life than anything else on this list got.

WCW Nitro started on the PlayStation, and the N64 version came out in 1999 with the updated roster from its sequel, Thunder, and without any full motion video. That was a real loss, since the PlayStation original came with video clips of the TV show. Some of the secret characters are not wrestlers at all, but made-up characters or THQ staff. Its score sits a hair under 55 out of 100, the highest of these ten.

Players are the reason it's this high. They call it bad, flatly, and it keeps turning up when they name the system's worst. Critics in 1998 were gentler, and many concluded that for all its flaws it was better than most of the few wrestling games out at the time. That was not a high bar.

Quest 64 was the first role-playing game released for the N64 in North America, a quest by the magician's apprentice Brian to recover Eletale's Book after its theft throws Celtland into chaos. Spells come from elemental spirits, with each of the controller's four C buttons tied to one of the four elements. The English release was seen as too short and easy, so Imagineer added new events for the Japanese one. Reviewers liked its graphics and spell system but criticized it for lacking depth. It averages 38 out of 100.

For a lot of players it was their first RPG, and they still have fond memories of it, faults and all. A few still go back and replay it regularly. That nostalgia is what keeps it out of the top three, despite a lower score than the two games just above it.

The N64 version of Lightspeed Rescue is a 3D action game with the Rangers and their Megazords, for one or two players, with villains like Diabolico and voice clips from the show. Its story mode, Titanium Quest, has three episodes played in order, and over 30 missions in total. It received generally unfavorable reviews. It averages 47 out of 100.

When players name the worst game on the N64, this one gets its own groan, and more than one answers with a version of hold my Megazord. A licensed game for a kids' show was never going to be Ocarina of Time. Still, it is hard to make giant robots boring, and this one manages it.

Return of the Joker is a scrolling beat 'em up from Kemco, based on the animated film, where Bruce Wayne has retired and handed the cape to Terry McGinnis. Despite some kind words for its multiple batsuits and cutscenes, critics slammed it for its outdated and repetitive beat 'em up style, weak enemy AI, useless weapons and suits, amateurish graphics and poor sound. The N64 version could be beaten in a few hours. It averages 45 out of 100.

Reviewers compared it to Superman 64, and Electronic Gaming Monthly later gave the N64 release one of only five honorable mentions on its list of worst-reviewed games. Players hate the controls most of all, and they put it right next to Superman when they name the console's worst.

Superman 64 is based on Superman: The Animated Series. Lex Luthor has trapped Superman's friends in a virtual reality Metropolis built with the help of Brainiac, and it's up to Superman to save them. The story calls the green haze Kryptonite fog, but it is really distance fog, there to hide how little the console could draw. Critics attacked its unresponsive controls and its heavy distance fog. It averages 19 out of 100, the lowest of any N64 game with enough ratings to count.

It went on to top worst-game lists from GameSpy in 2004, GameTrailers in 2006 and Den of Geek in 2024. What players remember most is the rings, so many rings. They treat it as the benchmark for awful, and some have bought it precisely because it's the worst. There's even a cheat to skip any level, which may be the kindest thing in the game.