N64 primarily shined with four player gameplay. Third parties that focused on that tended to do well. However, besides Goldeneye, Banjo-Kazooie, Blast Corps, Super Smash Bros (made by HAL Labs), Mario Party (made by Hudson Soft), Diddy Kong Racing (Rare), MLB feat Ken Griffey Jr, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, WCW vs NWO: World Tour, Wipeout 64, Excitebike 64 (Left Field), and NBA Courtside.
Not a ton of stand outs, admittedly. In the first two years of N64's existence, there were only a few dozen titles even released on the console.
Well I recently learned that Goldeneye was ported to the Xbox Live Arcade but then never released, and a few years ago the ported program leaked. It's widescreen and higher resolution than the original, but otherwise the same I believe. I am still dreaming of the day I can get the Xenia emulator properly running that game on linux, which so far has been problematic for me.
Update: the latest version of Xenia for Windows runs nicely for me in proton (installed as a non-steam game in steam as that's the easiest way for me to run it with proton) and the Goldeneye XBLA remaster ran just fine! I plugged in an xbox controller over USB and it ran wonderfully. That was fun! I played through a few levels and it all went smoothly. It seems theres a couple different versions of the goldeneye leaked remaster out there so make sure to try a couple different ones if you have any issue.
It's not the same as the XBLA remaster. The current Xbox and Switch versions are basically emulated ROMs. The XBLA remaster had a lot more changes and improvements like the Perfect Dark XBLA remaster that was released.
I think your point still stands but I think Goldeneye is obviously an example of a great third party exclusive. Controls dont hold up well but that’s irrelevant.
Not a ton of stand outs, admittedly. In the first two years of N64's existence, there were only a few dozen titles even released on the console.