Top 10 N64 games we want to see on 3DS

Forget eye-popping three-dimensional visuals - sans goofy goggles - and an army of high cachet developers, from Hideo Kojima to Yoot Saito, showing their breathless excitement for the little system.

I think the most exciting thing about the 3DS is the N64 renaissance it's covertly bringing us. Much like how the Game Boy Advance chucked a bunch of excellent SNES ports, from Link to the Past to Super Mario World, onto dark grey cartridges, the 3DS has already promised a number of N64 remakes, retreads, and recreations.

Think we hadn’t noticed, Nintendo? With The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Paper Mario, Starfox 64 and a new version of Pilotwings all confirmed to hit the handheld, we’ve seen your clever ploy to bring back the 64 bit era.

The only (official) game, that claims to allow you to shoot all the little critters. With a camera, of course, as you fill up reams of photo albums with candid shots of Charmander eating an apple or Pikachu have a surf. What a little scamp.

The game has you sitting in a car, whizzing along a track that’s conveniently placed next to loads of natural habitats of the common pocket monster. It’s easy to snap a shot of a Jigglypuff, but other characters require more devious scenarios involving bait, whistles and pure god-damn luck.

It’d be far easier to wield a camera controlled with a stylus, rather than the uncomfortable analogue-knife on the N64’s batarang controller. Plus, with the 3D visuals, the Charizard who pops up to blow fire in your face would really make you poop your pokepants.

If you’re sick of snapping Poke Polaroids, you can always pit the critters against each other in barbarian coliseums. Pokemon Stadium takes the static, 2D battles of the Game Boy RPGs and extrapolates them into massive 3D epics.

The original N64 game let you take your favourite monsters and stick them into the game with the Transfer Pak: a unwieldy Game Boy cartridge reader that makes your controller as top heavy as Barbie.

The 3DS edition could make use of that beefy (rumoured) 1GB storage space, letting you cache critters from Black and White, before swapping out cartridges for 3D gladiatorial showdowns.

If that’s still not enough Pokemon punishment for you, how about pitting Pikachu against Samus Aran or Donkey Kong as Nintendo’s greatest protagonists bash seven shades of yellow out the electric mouse.

By the time the N64 came along Nintendo had so many heroes - from mustachioed plumber Mario to thigh-high tunic wearing Link - that it actually had to put them in battles to the death, simply to thin the numbers.

The game’s a side-scroller, so the 3D effect wouldn’t do much. But seeing Mario uppercut Ness from Earthbound is awesome, so quit complaining.

Okay, we know Rare holds the license. And having once been Nintendo’s biggest fan - going from making one game a month for the NES (it’s true!) to looking after two of the big N’s greatest franchises - cuddly UK dev Rare has now been snapped up by Microsoft.

And we know it's recently chucked this N64 classic on Xbox Live Arcade and made a dire sequel on Xbox 360. But it’s a wishlist, so cut us some slack.

And, also, tell us it wouldn’t be cool to see this glorious first-person shooter in three dimensions. Headlined by awesome red head Joanna Dark and featuring some of the most unique weapons in shooter history, this is game we’ll look forward to playing on 3DS. In our dreams.

After hundreds of mascot-filled kart racing games, featuring everyone from Shrek to Dick Dastardly and Alex Kidd to Crash Bandicoot, it was nice to finally see a boxcar game that could stand up against Mario Kart.

That game was of course Diddy Kong Racing, the adventure-come-kart racer featuring Diddy Kong, Banjo, and a bunch of random animals Rare thought up. Seriously - Bumper the Badger? Who the hell is that.

We know Nintendo’s got a Mario Kart game lined up for 3DS - it’d be mad not to - but variety is the spice of life and there are even a fair few fanatics who thought that Diddy beat out Mario on the N64.

Here’s the golden rule for '90s, futuristic, floating-car racing games. If you want dastardly weapons and track-manipulating super missiles, go for WipEout. If you want mind-bending tracks and loop-de-loops and gravity defying bends, F-Zero is your game.

And boy would those tracks look brilliant in 3DS. It’d make you vomit your lungs up, of course, but it’d be a visual treat while you’re chucking up your vital organs.

My favourite part of F-Zero X was always death race: a 30 lap endurance course, perfectly straight halo-esque track, that was all about ramming the opposition down into the dreary abyss.

1080 Snowboarding is a strange sort of game. It’s about strapping a plank to your feet and then falling down a mountain.

How the Poindexters at Nintendo got the idea is beyond me, but it works pretty well and they made a couple of games from the idea, so good on them.

And imagine all that snow and ice and sleet, popping out the screen in 3D like giant, imaginary icicles. It’d be enough to freeze your corneas. Put that claim on the box, it’d sell a boat load.

This Rare-made game is a little less cut and dry. If Ultimate Play the Game (+10 nerd points if you get the refence) really had the license to Blast Corps, wouldn’t it be shoving that brilliant little slice of gaming goodness on Xbox Live Arcade faster than you could say “five million downloads”?

So, if Nintendo owns it, and not Ashby Computers and Graphics Ltd. (another +20 nerd points), let’s get it on the 3DS. Not because this top-down game would make much use of the extra dimension, but because its great.

The game has you manning a giant bulldozer, getting rid of garbage (like houses and useless stuff like that) in the path of a runaway world-ending missile. If that isn’t the best idea for a game ever, I haven’t heard it.

Like 1080 Snowboarding, this game wouldn’t get much out of an extra dimension other than the goggled-eye excitement of seeing a thing sort-of popping out of the screen.

As with F-Zero X, seeing the tumultuous bobbing of a jet-ski in 3D would probably make you violently sea sick in a matter of minutes.

Here’s the power of the internet collectively fawning over a cult classic. Previously a staunchly Japanese only N64 cartridge, the game has since had an English translation, a Virtual Console re-release, and a sequel on Wii.

One more step remains in the saga of Treasure’s loveable rail-shooter: the 3DS. The game’s all about stuff flying in your face as it is, as you attempt to lock on and blast it all to pieces. Add an extra dimension and you can sell the game all over again.

Or Bangai-O, Treasure’s other addictive N64 classic. Take your pick, do both, who cares. Just take my credit card.