It could almost fit the JavaScript bytecode from Gmail.

There are even a few 64 MByte / 512 Mbit N64 cartridges (IIRC: Resident Evil 2, Pokemon Stadium 2, Conker's Bad Fur Day).

Mario 64 is a bigger game than most I've played in recent memory...

How are you defining "big"?

Mario 64 was impressive for its time, but the worlds are pretty darn small by modern standards.

The game also uses multiple mission objectives (and a requirement that you return to the start of the map after each mission) to pad out the length.

I just saw a girlfriend review of Zelda Ocarina of time (another N64 game).

She was amazed by how many things are packed into this game and how each room or character feels way more unique than the last assassin creed game.

I would not say that all modern games suffer from this but I have come to deeply appreciate games that did the best with the limitation imposed by them by their tech.

In addition to N64 games, I have always been impressed by how Grim Fandango took a low poly graphical engine and turned it into an amazing art style.

Especially when I compare it to so many AAA games with huge budgets and a brown "photorealist" approach as interesting as a wet carrot and that look extremely dated 3 years later.

That’s interesting because I thought I was alone. I’ve been playing Assassins Creed Origins for a while and my general feeling is there’s a TON of content but none of it is important. There will be a city in the desert and maybe one mission, and a bunch of very samey houses? It’s certainly realistic, but the real world is so boring.

In older Assassins Creed games you could tell loving thought went into how you would traverse things, climbing things took a lot more skill and there were secrets to find.

The newer ones the other hand have just tons of bland, and climbing is basically automatic, just push forward. It’s kind of sad to see one of my favorite series become so dull.

To be fair I have played to the new one for less than an hour.

I could play it for free during the stadia demo. If I had played for more than one hour, I would have been able to keep the game. The tech itself is amazing, but after skipping 2 or 3 asscreeds games, I was very surprised to see health bars.

The series always had a bad tendency to pad its length by relying to the endowed progress effect with lots of copy paste content like "collect the 100 feathers".

The health bars and levels already made the first fights boring, not to mention that I don't think they have anything to do in a stealth action game. They just sound like another way to pad the game length.

If the platforming also got worse ? damn, I don't regret letting this franchise go.

It starts off pretty strong but it gets to the point where there will be a giant city and 1 or 2 missions in the entire city. It makes the scenery feel like set dressing rather than a place designed to be played with.

> I just saw a girlfriend review of Zelda Ocarina of time (another N64) game.

Sorry, is this a typo or is there a specific niche of "people who are girlfriends" (?) reviewing games?

I guess OP means "amount of content", which is definitely true. That one little trick, combined with genuine fresh gameplay, gave it some incredible longevity.

I've been playing through the first two Thief games, released 20 years ago, and I put 60 hours into beating the first and am already 30 hours into the second.

Gotta say I'm extremely impressed given most games I've played in the last few years are on the order of a few hours' playtime.

In terms of quantity though, I don't think there was that much content. It all came together well, especially for its time, but that's different.

Define "content".