Nintendo 64

Many have followed, but few touch the bar that Mario Kart 64 established for kart racing, and it found its way to North American shelves on this day in 1997.

Super Smash Bros. Melee transcended its own generation to become a game the world would play years later, and it came to North American shelves today in 2001.

It was today in 1996 that North American players were invited to join in Nintendo’s leap to the next dimension of gaming.

It was on this day in 1997 that Rare released GoldenEye 007 exclusively for the N64 and opened the discussion on both the market of console shooters and the more “realistic” approach that would culminate in numerous hit franchises later on.

Controversial video games have been around since the very beginnings of the medium. These games turn heads and raise ire for their use of edgy or blatantly offensive content which have drawn every reaction from petitions and boycotts to full-on legal battles. Conker’s Bad Fur Day is one such game, but it’s a little different from other games of its kind. Bad Fur Day was a revamp that came far out of left field for what it was, where it came from, and the time period in which it was released. It didn’t just flip the script on what we knew about Rare and their innocent little red squirrel. It lit the script on fire and put it out in a toilet, but in a good way. It was on this day back in 2001 that this unapologetically scatological adventure game hit the shelves and began a legacy.

17 years ago, Masahiro Sakurai and his team at HAL Laboratory introduced us to the crossover fighting game that featured Nintendo's most popular characters. In case you've been living under a rock, Super Smash Bros. is a fighting game that features the likes of Mario, Samus, Link, Fox McCloud, Pikachu, Donkey Kong, Kirby, and more. It allowed gamers to settle the schoolyard debates they had in the '90s as to who could win in a fight, Mario or Link. After all those times Donkey Kong kidnapped Princess Toadstool, it was nice to be able to play as Mario and finally punch that ape in the face.

To no surprise, one of best pick up and play games of the mid-1990s can still be enjoyed, even by those who weren't even fetuses at the time.

Watch the former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan play GoldenEye 007 on a Nintendo 64 with Jimmy Fallon on 'The Tonight Show.'

Watch out for that massive Chain Chomp, someone remade Bob-omb Battlefield from Super Mario 64 and it looks amazingly detailed.

The Big N has hinted that Nintendo 64 titles are next in line for the Wii U's Virtual Console.