Wave Race 64

Wave Race 64 started life as "F-Zero on water": high-speed transforming boats, shown in that form at the 1995 Shoshinkai show. Producer Shigeru Miyamoto swapped the boats for Jet Skis so the game would stand apart from anything on other systems — something tactile and everyday instead of sci-fi. Nintendo put a $4 million marketing campaign behind it, and on November 4, 1996, a few weeks after the console's American launch, it arrived as the third N64 game released in the US (it had launched in Japan on September 27) — the first racing game developed for the console, on an 8 MB cartridge.

The racing was elegant and surprisingly deep: thread red buoys on your right and yellow on your left across courses like Sunny Beach, in shifting weather, on water that refuses to sit still. Critics fell for exactly that — the fluid animation, the realistic physics, the satisfying controls. N64 Magazine called it "one of the deepest racing games" they'd played, its dynamic waves constantly re-testing your control, and IGN credited it as the first game to use the N64's hardware to "create a believable and engaging water environment unmatched by previous games." Every lap was a conversation with the sea. Over it all floated Kazumi Totaka's score — funky, synth-driven, pure beach-radio electronica.

The honors and the influence came fast. EGM ranked it #68 on its 100 Best Games of All Time in 1997; Codemasters producer Guy Wilday later cited it as a key influence on Colin McRae Rally (1998); and the game stands as part of the proof that Nintendo had truly landed the leap from 16-bit sprites to convincing 3D worlds. But what everyone actually remembers is simpler: the way the wake rolled under you, the buoys bobbing on real swells, and the title screen you could just sit on, watching light move across digital water — because in 1996, water that moved like water was the most futuristic thing a television had ever shown you.