Nintendo 64

Every console maker has its own ups and downs,

moments of total success, and moments of failure,

and anyone capable of seeing beyond their own

biased tastes will be able to agree with that.

Sometimes these times are caused by external factors

that complicate or help indirectly, although I'd argue

that most of the times, the reasons for this are often

just the result of these companies' own actions.

And if you look closely enough, you will find

that many times, those good times of great

sales and profits are actually one of the

elements involved in the later failures.

While this blog will limit itself to what I call

"Standard Definition Consoles", these stories

keep repeating throughout the ages, usually

rotating the company doing the blundering.

But at the same time, that doesn't mean 

that those "less than stellar" times can't 

give us many good things in the end, or 

that they can't hold a huge importance

in the overall history of the medium.

So let's talk about the Nintendo 64!

The Nintendo 64 was the successor of the Super Nintendo released in 1996, and it also was the jump of the company into fully 3D video game development, having previously experimenting a bit with it with through things like the FX Chip for the Super Nintendo, and games like Star Fox or Stunt Racer FX among others.

In fact, the first informations about the development of the Nintendo 64 appeared in 1993, only two years after the Super Nintendo was released. While working on a new system usually starts right after the previous one is launched, actually informing people about it it's not as common!

Silicon Graphics Inc. was a leader in graphic visualization and supercomputing, and by that time they wanted to expand into more consumer level products, and one of the first interests was in the video game medium. They approached Sega in an attempt to collaborate in the creation of a new system, but it didn't work very well, as it seems Sega wanted full ownership of everything, which wasn't all that appealing for Silicon Graphics. After that, they went to Nintendo, which would show interest in the idea, and unlike Sega, they would be okay with just licensing.

By 1995 Nintendo was facing a few problems. In a general level, Japan was going trough a recession, aptly named "The Lost Decade", caused by the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble. While the Super Nintendo (Super Famicom in that country) did really well specially worldwide, this recession made it so the system wasn't as successful as it could have been ideally in their home market, but of course, this affected pretty much everything.

More problems specific to Nintendo were the rise of new competition, with Sony wanting to get into the video game market with a system of their own, and one very close to Nintendo as this move was produced by the combined attempt of both Nintendo and Sony to make a CD based add-on for the Super Nintendo, known as SNES CD, or, the PlayStation.

That blue box is a Development Kit Unit of the Nintendo 64!

So that complicated things enough, but third party studios and companies started getting tired of some of the policies of Nintendo, specially the western side towards Nintendo of America.

With this scenario the development of the console started, under the name Project Reality. Just like Dolphin was a big part of the GameCube development story, "Reality" would be for the N64. Silicon Graphics in fact gave to the core components of the system the name of "Reality Immersion Technology" and even the CPU, the MIPS R4300i would be named the Reality Processor. That said, they weren't the only involved companies, as NEC (yes the PC-Engine guys), Sharp and even Toshiba contributed to its creation.

This new console would be officially announced as the Ultra 64 in 1994, and intended to be named Ultra Famicom in Japan. It showed a bit latter, and its design would be kept for the final version of the system although, curiously enough, it did so without showing its controller. What was showed though, it was the format in which the games would come in, and they were still Cartridges.

Man, it has no shortage of advantages, but it also had one big weakness for its time...

It was a pretty big topic during its announcement, as you may imagine, and the press wildly speculated as much as they wanted with it. There were informations before the reveal that this system would use CDs as a format, so when cartridges were shown a lot of doubts popped out. These cartridges could store much more information than previous 16-Bit generation cartridges, going from 4MiB (Mebibyte), up to 64MiB.

Nintendo's vice president of marketing at the time, Peter Main, would declare that they chose cartridges in order to maintain faster access and higher speed reads, as compared with CDs, were much better; but the company also wanted to appease people by also saying that they were working on an add-on that would use CDs and was set to be complementary to the system's cartridges.

The system would be fully announced and showed, controller and everything, in late 1995 in Japan, and 1996 in the United States, and it was also renamed to its final name, Nintendo 64. And It blew the mind of many people by showing them what 3D games could become.

If you look carefully, you can see gestures of excitement and the reaction of the public. This had to be really special to see live.

Games like Star Fox 64, Wave Race (although it was rather different in its prototype form, for more info look here!), and of course, the "megaton" Super Mario 64 impressed people a lot, which is to be expected, as 3D gaming opened up so many possibilities back then that made us daydream quite often!

Long story short, the Nintendo 64 had a pretty great launch, becoming a very desirable system with high demand early on, and in fact sold better initially than both Sega's Saturn and Sony's PlayStation.

The problems started to appear, though, when the cartridges started making difficult for third parties to get aboard and create games for the system. While they had their shortcomings, CDs were really the next step thanks to the big leap in extra space, and by keeping carts, combined with the aforementioned companies tired of some of Nintendo's policies, the Nintendo 64 would get hit hard by a slow release schedule of games that would hurt the system overall success down the line, specially with Sony's Playstation becoming so popular for both consumers and developers.

The system would go on to sell between 32 and 32 million units, which would fall short in comparison with the previous system, the Super Nintendo, and Sony's Playstation.

Funny enough, while it's success seen as a business was rather moderate, to say something, at the same time it's also seen as one of the most iconic consoles from a historical viewpoint, specially regarding video game development and design, as its the holder of a good chunk of the most inspirational early 3D video games, games that would pave the way and basic design ideas for years to come. Heck, even today they still serve as inspiration for current games, specially for smaller studios and indie developers.

Not only that, but the Nintendo 64 controller would also change things going forward.

It's a controller of both great strengths, and great weaknesses.

Before I mentioned that the controller was not initially shown when the system was unveiled. While I did not find information about this, I speculate that they didn't want to show it in fear of other companies trying to copy its overall design, and more specifically a certain element. After all, Sony would end up releasing their PlayStation with what was pretty much a carbon-copy of the Super Nintendo controller, so it makes sense they were secretive with it.

The N64 controller is a pretty big change compared to the previous Nintendo system. Two of the frontal Buttons, X & Y disappeared, and in their place for new ones, named C Buttons appeared, often relegated for menu and camera movement. Select was also gone, and a new Z Button, or Trigger I should say, was added.

The other big, new element and the most important aspect of this controller was the Analog Thumbstick positioned in the center of the controller. Video Game Sticks before it were designed to be controlled with the entire hand, like your usual Arcade Sticks.

This one pretty different from those. Obviously instead of an entire hand, you only needed one finger, which made it leagues more comfortable to use. Another big improvement over D-Pad movement is the fact that it was capable of detecting 360 independent grade directions, instead of the usual 8 that a D-Pad can offer. This was a huge, huge change, specially when games entered the third dimension, as it offered unparalleled control, something shown early with Super Mario 64. It used a pair of optical encoding disks similar of computer mouses from the time, which offered a very accurate movement.

Its relevance is such that pretty much every single controller that came after added a thumbstick and was used as the main way to move around. Just like the Triggers on the Super Nintendo controller, it became a basic necessity.

Besides all of these changes, the back of the controller also had a slot for a variety of accessories.

These are the Controller Pak, the Expansion Pak and the Transfer Pak.
The Expansion Pak was inserted into the console, not the controller!

Some of these were the Controller Pak and the Transfer Pak.

The first one was, basically, similar to a Memory Card that you would use on the PlayStation. It allowed you to create save files to be stored in it, with the difference being that pretty much every single game capable of saving, didn't need it, as cartridges had RAM saving. This was most often used to create saving backups or to save extra data, like racing ghosts on Mario Kart 64.

If you wanted to copy a savefile onto another cartridge, you could use this. Later on, third party models appeared with much more memory available, too.

The Transfer Pak let you connect Game Boy games with Nintendo 64 games. The compatible games and their functions differed from game to game, but some of the most interesting uses came from Nintendo games, like Pokémon Stadium, Mario Tennis and Mario Golf. It had much more use in Japan, with many more games compatible (games that weren't released outside of Japan, sadly!).

Later on in the life of the N64, it was released the Expansion Pak. This thing was plugged into the console, and it expanded the RAM of the system with 4 Megabytes more, making for a total of 8MB. Sega Saturn had something similar too.

It's original use is something I'll talk later, but it was also used to boost some games, both visually and performance-wise, which was a pretty great thing to have. Certain games used it for having more visual pizazz, with added effects and better textures; others would increase or improve the frame rate, certain games would double the resolution of the image and make it look much better, and then you had games that worked without it, but if you wanted to play them fully, needed the extra RAM of the Expansion Pak, like Perfect Dark or Starcraft 64, the last one giving access to the Brood War expansion. Only two games needed this Pak to work, those being The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Donkey Kong 64.

There's more stuff than this, but as a basic look on the system I think it's enough. Let's get to the interesting stuff, the games!

While not the most extensive library it certainly has many great games to play and quite a few true classics.

I already mentioned this, but while the system has a good chunk of great games, the overall support for the system is rather small in comparison with the PS1, but as far as overall number of games it's also a low point for Nintendo, specially looking to both the previous and next systems released by Nintendo,  the Super Nintendo and the GameCube, which had much larger support.

With this I mean that the N64 library really is lacking in certain genres, most importantly in my eyes, RPGs. Coming from the Super Nintendo, with its gigantic library and huge collection of great role playing games, the library of the Nintendo 64 feels like a big change of pace. But when you start delving into the library yourself and checking games, you start to see that while not as many as in other places, you certainly have no shortage of good and fun stuff.

Nintendo 64 was available in a variety of colors, and they look pretty neat for me even today.

Nintendo 64 offers a good deal of racing and sport games, with titles like Wave Race, Mario Kart, Excitebike or F-Zero X coming from Nintendo themselves, but with strong entries from second and third parties like Diddy Kong's Racing, the Cruisin' games, the San Francisco Rush series, and even an exclusive Wipeout title for the racing genre.

Nintendo 64 sports game selection has you covered with, again, Nintendo stuff like 1080º Snowboarding, Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, and Pilotwings 64, with third party stuff going from NBA games, to Snowboard Kids, and some of the most celebrated Wrestling games ever, even today, like WWF No Mercy.

The system also had a decent number of Action games from different sub-genres, with Third Person Action games like Jet Force Gemini, Body Harvest, Duke Nukem: Zero Hour, both Sarge's Heroes games, and Winback, which while not very well known, started many of the things that later TPS would endlessly and tirelessly recycle time and time again.

For First Person Shooters, it has its own exclusive Doom, an exclusive version of Quake II (and a pretty good port of Quake I), Forsaken 64 is phenomenal and much better than on PS1, you the Turok trilogy, etc...

Going away from specific genres, stuff like Space Station Silicon Valley is great,  it has two fun and memorable Goemon games from Konami, Blast Corps it's a really fun game about destroying everything with a selection of vehicles, the Battletanx and Vigilante 8 series offer you vehicular combat similar to PS1's Heavy Metal, the Star War games like Rogue Squadron and Battle for Naboo are also pretty great, and there's some pretty great Bomberman games too!

But of course, with this system more than others, people get the N64 in their sight for the games that made the system classic, and they're not few.

It has a slew of classic platforming games, from Star Fox 64 and Super Mario 64 to the Rare games, Banjo & Kazooie and its sequel, Donkey Kong 64, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Killer Instict Gold, Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, Kirby had a pretty sweet and charming game with The Crystal Shards, we got two amazing The Legend of Zelda titles, the Pokémon Stadium games were also packed of content and were amazing companion pieces for the GB titles, we got Paper Mario which is charming as hell, a very, very impressive port of Resident Evil 2, and some awesome 4 Player games like the Mario Party games, Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart 64, and many more.

And as I mentioned, it has some of the most inspirational games ever put out there. Super Mario 64, just like other games of the plumber previously, really would become a staple in 3D platformer design. The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time has been inspiration for many different studios to make their games, and its contributions to gaming are still visible. Mario Party was a game-changer, as it was Super Smash Bros.

In fact, thanks to the cartridge format used and the 4P support from the get-go, "multiplayin' on the N64" was always the first option back in the day whenever me and my friends got together. No load times, four people, quick and direct, racing, sports, fighting, mini-game collections and even the odd shooter. Heck, the Pokémon Stadium games covered both, quick random battles and mini-games! We always had far more fun with the N64, specially if we tried to play similar games from one system to the other, like, I don't know, Mario Party and Crash Bash.

If you ask some of my favourite games on the system trying to avoid the most popular ones, I'd say a handful of them would be Ogre Battle 64, Pokémon Snap, Bomberman 64 and Bomberman Hero or Chameleon Twist 1.

Early 3D gaming has a very curious effect on me, seeing these games still makes me happy. Seeing gaming growing, learning and adapting to these new dimensions and how gameplay changed and evolved was nothing short of exciting. It was a very special time to see first person, and I'm actually really, really glad I was born in the right "time" to see gaming evolve and take all these different forms, it really gave me a deep appreciation for this stuff. It's kinda hard to talk to people of today that take everything for granted about this stuff.

But anyway, it's better if I start finishing this, don't you think?

Well, there's one last thing to comment. Remember what I said about CDs, and how Nintendo was working on a peripheral for that? Yeah, it existed, and it was called the Nintendo 64DD.

This was a very rare find, a US version of the N64DD. Nothing short of a mesmerizing find!

The 64DD is a magnetic disk drive and it was meant to be put under the Nintendo 64 to become a "single" unit. It had a Real Time Clock, could connect to the Internet, and with special software was capable of being used to create video clips and other stuff.

It was launched in Japan for little to no response, and only 10 titles were released for this. Several titles under the name Mario Artist, which were curious things but not really games. More interesting, though, was Simcity 64, which seems like a port of Simcity 2000 with some neat things (like night time, or being able to free-roam your city!), the F-Zero X Expansion Kit, which had a lot of content added to the original game, like a circuit editor, and even a Stereo rendition of the soundtrack with extra themes. Original games were only one, Doshin the Giant and its... sort of sequel-but-not-really. Doshin would be rescued from this failed peripheral and remade on the GameCube with extra content and better visuals and frame rate.

the N64DD sold very badly and was retired two years after its release, which only took place in Japan. Now, it's weird to me that this was the supposed answer to CD support. Why?

Well, those magnetic disks could only support 64MB of data. That's pretty much the same as the largest cartridge. It really resolved nothing development-wise. a CD could have more than 10 times the data than that. Those magnetic disks were rewritable, which could be useful, but for the majority of consumers may very well mean nothing.

It's a very fascinating piece of hardware to look around, but it didn't work and it's not hard seeing why.

But anyway, that's the N64. It's a cool system that sadly didn't have all the support it could, and while it suffers from that, it also got the strongest First and Second Party support of the generation, at least in my opinion. It's a system that I never owned, but I played my fair share of games growing up, and thanks to the Wii's Virtual Console I got to play a good selection of games later in my life.

I don't know how often I'll talk about N64 stuff, seeing how my possibilities to play stuff from it without resorting to emulation are kinda small, but certainly there's quite a bit to talk!