10 Great Versus-Multiplayer Games to Play on N64 Rollback
For when you just gotta duke it out with someone.
If you’re looking for the best Romhack’s for Rollback, I’ve written about a few here!
5 Multiplayer Romhacks You Should Play Using N64 Rollback
If you’re looking for the best Co-op games for Rollback, I’ve written about my favorites here!
12 Co-op Games for the N64 to Play using Rollback
Banjo-Tooie
The bear and bird duo on a revenge mission to stop a Grunty and her sisters from sucking the life force out of their entire Isle ‘o Hags. Through out the singleplayer campaign, you’ll be playing LOADS of mini-games—some in the vein of Mario Party, others are full on first-person missions. Believe it or not, the folks at Rare turned all these Mini-Games into a unique multiplayer experience! Play them one-on-one, or face off to see who can get first to a certain number of points. My favorites are all the FPS death matches (yep, that’s a real thing!)
Mario Golf
This is my favorite entry in the Mario Golf franchise, mostly because it hides a surprisingly brutal game engine underneath all that cheerful Mushroom Kingdom paint. It’s noticeably jankier and way harder than any of the sequels—there are no casual assists here, so if you misjudge the wind or botch your timing on the swing meter by a single pixel, your ball is flying straight into a hazard. But that’s exactly why it rules; fighting through the harsh physics gives every clean drive and clutch putt a genuine, high-stakes “you earned it” feeling that the newer, safer games completely lost. Plus, the sheer amount of content packed into the cartridge is insane, pairing a massive roster of characters and sprawling fantasy courses with a ton of specialized modes—like precision-heavy Ring Shots, speed runs, and a fully realized Mini-Golf mode that turns a slow-paced sports sim into a cutthroat arcade fight.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is arguably the most accessible of the classic entries, striking a perfect balance before the series got bloated with overly complex mechanics. It gives you almost everything you need for modern high-scoring runs, only missing the caveman/revert combo extensions that came later, meaning you still have to rely on raw spatial awareness and strict momentum conservation to keep your multiplier alive. Getting to dive into its massive urban sandboxes with a friend is rad as hell, turning those classic map checklists into highly coordinated runs. Instead of just skating side-by-side, it completely recontextualizes the park layout through the cutthroat “Graffiti” mode, where landing a high-scoring combo on a piece of geometry claims it for your color and steals it from your opponent’s score pool, triggering a high-mobility territory war where you are actively rushing to snipe high-value structural assets right out from under each other.
The World Is Not Enough
The World Is Not Enough is criminally underrated, and honestly, I prefer it over GoldenEye 007 because its linear missions are a perfect fit for a tight, cinematic Bond game. The visual upgrade is instantly noticeable, too, pushing the hardware way further with sharper models and much smoother performance. Where it really shines, though, is the multiplayer arena design. Instead of just recycling campaign hallways, these maps feel like actual competitive arenas built with distinct verticality, sniper perches, and tight choke points that force constant friction. Best of all, the customization suite lets you fill out matches with aggressive AI bots—which I genuinely thought were called “All Bots” as a kid—allowing you and a friend to team up and wage absolute resource-denial wars against a full squad of digital enemies.
Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate
Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate is an absolute blast, mostly because it leans into how wonderfully goofy it is and plays like a classic, slightly unhinged fighting game. It has absolutely nothing to do with the main story of the show, but it’s great seeing the whole cast thrown together in an arcade ladder. While learning combos is admittedly a nightmare—the game does a terrible job of actually teaching you its mechanics—embracing it for what it is makes it incredible; it’s flagrantly just "SoulCalibur for the N64," and that’s a beautiful thing. It even has its own version of Dan Hibiki from Street Fighter with Joxer, who is delightfully terrible and hilarious to play.
Beetle Adventure Racing!
Beetle Adventure Racing! features surprisingly competent racing mechanics, and it’s easily at its absolute best when played in Manual mode. Unlike the floaty drift-physics of the Cruis'n series or standard kart racers, this engine does a decent job of replicating the actual weight, suspension, and physical feedback of a real vehicle—even if you're throwing a tiny, colorful Volkswagen Beetle around the bends. Tackling the massive, sprawling tracks with a friend becomes a masterclass in path optimization, as the courses function more like open-ended driving sandboxes stuffed with breakable shortcuts, hidden tunnels, and massive jumps. The spatial friction peaks if you hop into the "Beetle Battle" arena mode, which ditches the traditional starting grids for a cutthroat vehicular combat free-for-all where you have to hunt down colored ladybugs and sabotage each other with rockets and proximity mines before racing for the exit.
Pokémon Stadium 2
Pokémon Stadium 2 is legendary for its mini-games, but if you and a friend actually know the series, the main turn-based battling mode is where the real game is at. It aligns strictly with Generation 2—bringing in the full roster of 251 creatures from Gold, Silver, and Crystal—and introduces the core mechanical shakeups of that era like held items and distinct typing splits. If someone is completely new to the franchise, jumping straight into the deep end here might feel a little strange as they try to rapidly memorize complex type advantages and status effects on the fly, but it is absolutely a hurdle worth clearing for the sheer depth of the competitive mind games.
Snowboard Kids 2
Snowboard Kids 2 is an absolute gem, and while the actual racing physics might not be my favorite on the system, the overall vibe is entirely unmatched. The game plays like a vibrant Saturday morning cartoon come to life, packed with a super colorful art style, an incredibly catchy soundtrack, and an eclectic roster of characters that completely sets it apart from any traditional sports or racing game out there. What really makes it special is the pure imagination found in its sprawling, thematic tracks—you aren’t just carving up generic snowy mountains; instead, you and a friend are navigating wildly creative sandboxes that have you snowboarding through a sunny tropical beach, a haunted house, and even an underwater castle. It completely leans into that playful, chaotic energy, turning every downhill run into a frantic battle of item management and spectacular, stylized tricks.
Extreme-G 2
Extreme-G 2 is an absolute blast of a futuristic racer, functioning at an incredibly fast pace that leaves zero room for error. The whole aesthetic—with its hyper-stylized neon visuals and frantic, pounding breakbeats—instantly reminds me of a late-90s The Prodigy music video. You could definitely argue that F-Zero X is the technically superior racer in this specific high-speed gravity genre, but everyone already knows about that game, and I never actually played it anyway. Instead, this title carves out its own distinct identity by giving you and a friend massive, winding roller-coaster tracks to blast through at supersonic speeds, adding a ton of chaotic friction with an aggressive arsenal of homing missiles, rear-firing mines, and shields that turns a standard speed run into a brutal, high-mobility war of attrition.
Golden Nugget 64
Golden Nugget 64 is a fascinating relic, especially since traditional casino simulators aren’t really made like this anymore. That said, the massive success of modern hits like Balatro proves that people still absolutely love the aesthetic and tension of card games. Sitting down to play something like this with my partner has actually been way more fun than you’d expect. It obviously doesn’t have the flashy animations or complex pieces of other multiplayer games on the system, but that’s exactly the appeal—the timeless table-game vibe and mechanical simplicity give you plenty of breathing room. It’s the perfect low-stakes sandbox to just relax, shoot the breeze, and talk about life while you try to take down the house together.