When a new console generation is released, usually the changes are incremental–enough to be impressive, but never truly mind-blowing. That’s why sometimes you have to compare a modern console to its retro counterpart to understand how much games have really grown–sometimes literally. The N64 used large game cartridges, but their data could all fit onto only one Nintendo Switch game card, according to a new report.
Redditor CorsairVI decided to run the math on this experiment, as picked up by Go Nintendo.
With the Nintendo 64‘s signature rounded cartridges holding a maximum of 64MB each, CorsairVI worked out absolute maximum size of the Nintendo 64’s international library of 388 titles to be 24.83GB. However many games were much smaller than the cartridge’s max limit, meaning the full library would have been even smaller.
With the largest Nintendo Switch game card coming in at 32GB, the entire N64 library could easily fit on one card.
Three singular Switch games are larger than the theoretical maximum size of every N64 game combined– NBA 2K20, NBA 2K19, and L.A. Noire, though with a more accurate figure there would likely be a lot more games on that list.
Notably, the Switch has the smallest game sizes of the current generation of consoles. On the Xbox One, Gears Of War 4 ended up larger than 120GB after post-game updates, while Modern Warfare currently demands an eye-watering 185GB on PS4 and Xbox One.
