12 Co-op Games for the N64 to Play using Rollback
Specifically non-competitive games to play together!
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
Want to face off against your buddies with some hidden gems? I gotchu!
10 Great Versus-Multiplayer Games to Play on N64 Rollback
1. Goemon’s Great Adventure (aka Mystic Ninja 2)
Rejecting bloated overworld exploration, this title locks you into structured 2.5D levels packed with relentless folklore monsters and high-stakes arcade difficulty. The simultaneous two-player co-op introduces intense spatial friction, locking both players onto a single screen where you must remain perfectly in sync to avoid fatal camera pulls. The game maximizes this cooperative dependency through unique mechanical synergy, letting you hop onto your partner's back to carry them through demanding platforming sections or physically toss a baton back and forth to hot-swap pilot controls during massive, first-person robot boss fights.
2. Diddy Kong Racing
Integrating a full adventure campaign packed with hidden collectibles and boss fights sets this title apart as a highly sophisticated racing sandbox, forcing you to master three entirely separate vehicle physics models: karts on land, high-drift hovercrafts on water, and unrestricted airplanes in the sky. Activating the "JOINTVENTURE" cheat code unlocks simultaneous two-player campaign progression, introducing an efficient division of labor where player one handles overworld exploration while the actual tracks drop both players into the field. Because only one of you needs to secure first place to advance, you can completely optimize your routing—allowing one player to lock down the racing line while the partner explores branching paths to farm hidden secrets.
3. Sin & Punishment
Set in a dystopian near future where a genetically engineered food source mutates into a ravenous alien threat called Ruffians, this high-octane rail shooter tasks pilots with defending an oppressed Japan from absolute annihilation. The gameplay delivers screen-filling boss fights and unrelenting action, operating similarly to an aggressive, infantry-focused Star Fox 64 where you navigate your character’s actual physical body through dense, bullet-hell scenarios. Because handling simultaneous spatial evasion and precise targeting can easily create an input bottleneck, the two-player suite splits the execution loop: one player assumes total responsibility for character movement and dodge rolls, while the second pilot strictly navigates the crosshair to clear the screen. This shared-brain architecture completely shifts the dynamic of the shooter into an intense test of real-time communication, transforming chaotic alien waves into a highly coordinated exercise in absolute spatial tracking.
4. Perfect Dark
Perfect Dark is an absolute masterclass in tactical first-person shooting, entirely defined by its intelligent enemy AI, dense sci-fi atmosphere, and deep sandbox customization. Instead of letting you mindlessly blast through corridors, the mission design forces you to play methodically—utilizing stealth, specialized gadgets, and a massive arsenal of weapons that all feature distinct, often ridiculous secondary firing functions. The attention to detail is insane, making every single map feel like an open playground built for experimental routing and creative playstyles. The splitscreen feature suite is totally unmatched, offering a traditional co-op campaign alongside the brilliant, asymmetric “Counter-Op” mode, where one player tries to clear the main story objectives while the second player actively inhabits the enemy guards spawning across the map to assassinate them. On top of that, the multiplayer engine lets you stack matches with highly customizable AI “simulants,” turning a casual couch session with a friend into a chaotic, full-scale battlefield where you can customize enemy behaviors down to the pixel.
5. Gauntlet Legends
Gauntlet Legends is an absolute staple of the hack-and-slash genre, focusing heavily on clearing out high-density dungeons overflowing with hundreds of monsters alongside classic character archetypes like the Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard, or Elf. I used to dump endless quarters into this game at the arcades as a kid, famously getting all the way to the final world before running completely out of money, so finding out it actually had a home console release was absolutely breathtaking. It quickly became a game I frequently rented from the local video store but never owned, which led to its own brutal hurdle: back then, you needed an N64 Controller Pak to actually save your progress, and since I didn’t have one, every single rental turned into a frantic, non-stop marathon to see how far we could get before shutting the console off. The game is built from the ground up for couch co-op, locking all players onto a single shared screen to force team coordination, requiring you to balance unique class abilities while simultaneously triggering a hilarious, greedy race against your friend to grab finite food drops, potions, and gold within the exact same active space.
6. Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D is a completely timeless piece of FPS history, and the N64 build is easily one of my favorite versions to go back to. It strips out a lot of the edgier “mature themes” found in the original PC release, but honestly, all of that feels pretty corny by today’s standards anyway, so you really aren’t missing out on much unless you’re thirteen years old. Instead, the game shines through its incredible splitscreen integration, which lets you experience the entire over-the-top campaign side-by-side with a friend. Tearing through those highly interactive urban corridors together completely shifts the dynamic from a tense solo survival crawl into a chaotic, buddy-cop demolition derby where you’re constantly establishing crossfires and clearing choke points. When you want to flip the script, the dedicated head-to-head multiplayer mode turns those same dense city maps into a lethal playground for high-mobility deathmatches, making it the perfect sandbox for frantic, low-stakes arcade chaos.
7. Rampage (World Tour and Universal Tour)
I had a buddy tell me they once completed the campaign of Rampage with a friend in a single night while tripping acid. Something about that story kinda recontextualizes this game for me. Sure you’re just some beefy ass dude smashing things up… wait, we’re some beefy ass dudes smashing things up! That is simultaneously the coolest thing, and also the most gut wrenching. Imagine the lives you’re ruining, the sheer horror you’re inflicting… now watch me punch down this skyscraper in like 5 seconds lol
Embracing pure arcade demolition, this title casts players as giant, mutated monsters tasked with systematically leveling major global cityscapes block by block. The core loop is delightfully streamlined and mechanical: you punch buildings until they crumble, swat military counter-measures out of the sky, and consume citizens to maintain your health pool. It functions as a high-energy, stress-free smash-fest where success is measured entirely by destruction efficiency across destructible vertical planes.
8. Battletanx (and it’s sequel, Global Assault)
Thismight look like just another standard tank shooter on the surface, but its post-apocalyptic story is absolutely unhinged. In short: a virus instantly kills 99% of the women on the planet, prompting the collapsing governments to round up the survivors and lock them away in sterile environments. Naturally, heavily armed male gangs form to break them out, immediately deifying them as “QueenLords” to rule over their respective turf. The main character’s wife happens to be one of the women captured, and since he really just wants his marriage back, he sets out in a massive armored tank to rescue his own QueenLord—and that is genuinely the entire plot. Embracing that grim, over-the-top sci-fi absurdity, the actual gameplay throws you and a friend into completely destructible urban battlegrounds like a ruined New York or San Francisco, turning city blocks into smoking craters as you trade high-explosive shells, deploy swarming gun turrets, and fire guided nuclear missiles at each other in a fast-paced, high-mobility war for total wasteland supremacy.
9. Hexen
What a fascinating port of the classic PC title! You and a friend choose between distinct classes like the Warrior, Cleric, or Mage, entirely shifting how you approach combat as you wield massive axes, cast lightning spells, and manage artifacts like the Icon of Defender. The level design trades Doom’s straightforward corridor shooting for massive, interconnected hub worlds filled with intricate puzzles, requiring serious coordination to track down hidden switches across entirely separate maps just to open a single main gateway. It’s dense, atmospheric, and incredibly punishing, turning a standard splitscreen co-op run into a methodical dungeon crawl where you’re constantly mapping out cryptic pathways and covering each other’s backs against relentless hordes of stalkers and centaurs.
10. Starcraft 64
StarCraft 64 is an absolute mad-science experiment of a console port, and trying to manage a massive real-time strategy economy on a standard N64 controller is admittedly a brutal, finger-cramping hurdle given how strictly the game was built for a mouse and keyboard. But if there’s a will, there’s a way, and wrestling with the radical shortcut menus and radial command overlays is completely worth it just to experience the exclusive split-screen cooperative mode. It scales down the traditional fog-of-war friction so you and a buddy can command the exact same faction side-by-side on a single television screen, splitting up macro and micro duties on the fly. One player can focus entirely on base expansion, supply lines, and tech-tree optimization while the other manages high-intensity Zerg rushes or micro-intensive Protoss drops, turning a notoriously stressful PC click-fest into a uniquely collaborative, couch-bound tactical sandbox.
11. Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M.
Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. was developed by Acclaim Studios Austin—the exact same talented team responsible for N64 heavy-hitters like Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil—and you can instantly feel that distinct lineage in its DNA. It is admittedly a pretty flawed shooter that doesn’t quite match the heights of those legendary dinosaur-slaying titles, but it still carries a ton of late-90s charm if you’re willing to overlook some clunky platforming and aggressive fog-of-war. Heavily inspired by the vibe of Starship Troopers, the game drops you and a friend into high-tech armored suits to wage a frantic, first-person war against endless waves of extraterrestrial bugs. The splitscreen co-op completely saves the experience, turning a somewhat repetitive campaign into a fun, low-stakes arcade blast where you’re constantly covering each other’s backs, sharing specialized heavy weaponry, and watching alien bugs explode into colorful goo on a shared couch.
12. Vigilante 8 (and it’s sequel, 2nd Offense)
Vigilante 8 dropped right when the vehicular combat genre was at its absolute peak, and while it originally tore up multiple platforms, the N64 community has rightfully claimed this specific version as one of their own. It completely captures that late-90s alternative energy, letting you and a friend choose from a roster of eccentric, fully voiced drivers—ranging from renegade truckers to disco-obsessed vigilantes—and drop them into massive, fully destructible 1970s sandboxes. The mechanical friction is incredibly satisfying, as you’re not just racing; you’re managing complex physics while drifting around a ruined oil refinery or a desert canyon, collecting specialized weapon pickups like homing missiles and mortar shells, and inputting fighting-game-style button combos to unleash devastating hidden specials. The N64 version completely shines in splitscreen, handling the chaotic weapon effects and crumbling environments with a level of performance that turned standard couch deathmatches into an addictive, high-octane war of attrition.