The Nintendo 64 was Nintendo’s glorious attempt to drag video games kicking and screaming into the 3D era. It had four controller ports, which meant you could invite three friends over and immediately discover who among you had the least stable relationship with Mario Kart 64.

That controller was a technological fever dream too: three handles, an analog stick that eventually turned into a mushy little thumb torture device, and a design that seemed to ask, “Do you want to hold this like a normal human, or invent an entirely new grip?” But the N64 delivered some absolute legends: Super Mario 64, GoldenEye 007, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Mario Kart 64, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, and a pile of other classics. The cartridges were expensive, the graphics looked revolutionary in 1997, and saving your game sometimes required a separate Controller Pak because apparently the future had limits.

In short, the N64 was Nintendo’s 64-bit party machine: four controller ports, tiny cartridges, giant games, and enough analog-stick-induced thumb pain to qualify as a workplace injury.