Technology is always changing and growing, especially in regards to video games, yet it can be hard sometimes to grasp just how much it has changed. Comparing the latest consoles to their immediate predecessors helps, but that only really illustrates how much things have changed over the course of one generation, and not, say, the 20+ years between the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo Switch.
It goes without saying that games have grown a lot since the late 1990s, and quite literally too. The N64 and the Switch illustrate that growth perfectly, because with the advancements that have made data storage far more efficient, one could conceivably fit the entirety of the N64’s library into one of the Switch’s tiny modern-day cartridges.
This fun fact comes courtesy of Reddit user CorsairVI, who recently crunched the numbers. According to their math, the N64’s iconic rounded grey cartridges are capable of holding a total of 64MB, which, when multiplied by the 388 games released for the N64 globally, brings the total maximum data capacity of the console’s entire library to 24.83GB. However, CorsairVI stresses that since many games were smaller than the max limit, the actual size is smaller than that.
That’s pretty wild when compared to the Switch, whose largest cards can hold up to 32GB, meaning a single one of these could carry everything from the classics (like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) to the rarest N64 games and still have room left over for dozens of additional games.
Dwarfing it further is the fact that the Switch boasts an increasing number of games that outsize the N64 library’s theoretical maximum all by themselves. These include games like L.A. Noire, NBA 2K20, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which sport file sizes in the 27-33GB range.
But while the Switch has bigger games than the N64 by far, the fact remains that game sizes on the Switch are similarly dwarfed by titles on other current-gen platforms. Nowadays, it’s fairly common for games on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to come in at over 70GB, with plenty of games even surpassing the 100GB mark. And that’s not even the upper limit anymore, since Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is inching towards a whopping 200GB thanks to frequent updates.
