Nintendo Has No Plans For A Nintendo 64 Classic

Nintendo's already made an NES Classic console, which it followed up soon after with an SNES Classic. So the company must be thinking about showing the Nintendo 64 some love at some point, right? Not so fast, according to Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime.

Kotaku's Stephen Totilo sat down with Fils-Aime in New York, where the Nintendo of America head was on hand to promote Nintendo's upcoming holiday games. The interview touched on a variety of topics, but one of the more interesting areas covered had to do with retro games and systems.

And Fils-Aime made it known that a Nintendo 64 Classic is not something that's on Nintendo's roadmap as of now.

"We were clear when we did the first two Classic series that, for us, these were limited time opportunities that were a way for us as a business to bridge from the conclusion of Wii U as a hardware system to the launch of Nintendo Switch," Fils-Aime said.

So basically, the NES Classic and the SNES Classic were fillers. The Wii U was on life support, and Nintendo needed products it could sell to fill the gap until the Switch arrived. It makes sense. But they were huge sellers. Why not keep the money train chugging? Is Nintendo really going to say a Nintendo 64 Classic is never coming?

Kotaku posed that last question to Fils-Aime, and he managed to provide an answer that could both inspire hope and break hearts.

"I would not ever rule something out," Fils-Aime responded, "but what I can tell you is certainly that's not in our planning horizon."

So there you have it. The Nintendo 64 Classic could happen someday — but Nintendo has no plans to do it right now.

Fils-Aime did drop a hint about where the future of Nintendo Switch Online is headed, though, and it could mean that the service eventually expands past the classic Nintendo titles it currently offers. He noted that the library of NES games in the Nintendo Switch Online service is growing, and that, in the future, "Nintendo Switch Online is going to be the place where you can play our classic content."

Here's hoping that, someday soon, we're all playing N64 games on our Nintendo Switches.