Rethinking the Nintendo 64

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Samael

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby Samael » May 23rd, 2010, 7:25 am

It's a system that can only be appreciated in retrospect. Nintendo's quality over quantity was harder to deal with when most of the top 3rd parties barely supported it. Has Acclaim ever been so valuable to any other system? Turok and Quarterback Club were quickly forgotten when they were forced to compete with everyone else.

With that said, I, and many others, prefer it's best games over their Gamecube sequels. The lack of storage space forced Nintendo to make use of every single polygon available. Every word mattered. To this day, I've seen Majora's Mask referenced in articles to both Spirit Tracks and the new Wii game as the high standard to which they can't hope to reach.


oldschoolgamer

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby oldschoolgamer » May 23rd, 2010, 7:55 pm

[QUOTE=The Video Game Critic]
Nintendo definitely goofy up by not putting two slot in the controller - swapping between the memory card and rumble pack is a hassle.

[/QUOTE]

I would definitely have to disagree with you about that being a liability.  Granted, my collection is nowhere near as extensive as yours, but I didn't have many games that used both a memory card and rumble pack.  And its not like you were prompted to switch out in the middle of action.

Greisha1
Posts: 707
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby Greisha1 » May 25th, 2010, 1:16 am

3rd parties make combo rumble packs/controller packs, although in my experience 3rd party cards fail pretty badly (remember the "performance plus" memory cards?? Yuck!)

I have fond memories of Goldeneye and Wayne Gretzky's 3d Hockey all-nighters ... where does the time go?




andrew

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby andrew » May 25th, 2010, 9:22 am

[QUOTE=Greisha]3rd parties make combo rumble packs/controller packs, although in my experience 3rd party cards fail pretty badly (remember the "performance plus" memory cards?? Yuck!)

I have fond memories of Goldeneye and Wayne Gretzky's 3d Hockey all-nighters ... where does the time go?



[/QUOTE]

Well aware of those performance plus cards failing all the time. I wish Nintendo would have made larger capacity first party memory cards like they did with the Gamecube. 123 pages of memory was so inadequate especially with surprise surprise EA sports games. They need a serious lesson in memory management optimzation.

oldschoolgamer

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby oldschoolgamer » May 26th, 2010, 2:15 pm

I'm kind of curious.  Do you guys think that if the N64 DD could have brought back the third party developers if it had been released on time, and had been given a more widespread release instead of that $1000 per unit one tied to Randnet.

Greisha1
Posts: 707
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby Greisha1 » May 26th, 2010, 6:17 pm

I was pretty interested in the 64DD, mainly because of Ocarina of Time (2nd Quest), Earthbound 64, Mario Paint 64, and the expansion pack for F-Zero X (you could have made your own tracks using it).

I don't remember the pricing of the DD (or if there were any estimated prices for the US), but I think given the market situation at the time, I think 3rd parties would have simply stuck with Sony.

If the 64DD was all that it was wrapped up to be, they should have went with that instead of the N64!


oldschoolgamer

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby oldschoolgamer » May 26th, 2010, 9:42 pm

Wikipedia had a link to this article.
http://ign64.ign.com/articles/091/091306p1.html

Turns out I was mistaken, the system cost $300 in Japan, but someone trying to import one would probably have ended up spending around $1000.  It came with the expansion pack, microphone, modem, mouse, and keyboard.  I would tend to agree with you that at the time, the N64 was not going to get the third parties, back so Nintendo didn't bother to invest in trying.  But, I think if it had been released a year or two earlier, it would have given the system a less expensive media, and granted developers the ability to squeeze as much money out of a successful game as possible by publishing DD addons.

Michael D

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby Michael D » May 29th, 2010, 11:41 am

You're dead right on the one slot on the controller.  Yeah, they probably didn't know that it would catch on like it did, but not only was swapping the Rumble Pak and Controller Pak a hassle, but I think that the swapping process (even though the screens said that it was safe to do when I was instructed) corrupted my Controller Pak, making it basically unusable.

The only consolation is that the Controller Pak was kind of useless because not many games really required (or benefited from) its use, although I found it unconscionable that many of the ones that did and also, had Rumble Pak support, didn't even have the common courtesy to make it so that I could plug in a second controller and let the game read the Controller Pak from there (so that I could use the Rumble Pak and not swap it out to save).  I remember really being upset with the otherwise great Beetle Adventure Racing on this point.

Hollywood

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby Hollywood » June 6th, 2010, 3:44 pm

N64 is one of my favorite consoles ever. Even though I grew up in the NES/SNES era, in my teen years N64 was where it was at. A ton of great games that I liked, and I didn't think Playstation could compare. I thought N64 games looked much smoother than the PSX games, which were full of aliasing and had that grainy jagged-ey look to it. While time hasn't been kind to the N64 much either, I have always preferred the smoother textures and "distant vasoline" look over the Playstation. And that's not including things like load times. I never had controller pak problems, EXCEPT when you bought third party ones, they could corrupt easily. What pieces of trash they were. I love the controller, probably my favorite controller ever for 3D games .I don't see how you can complain about the rumble, when Nintendo is the company that brought it to the table and it was a welcome addition. Even the joystick as well, although it could loosen with a bit of wear and tear, I loved it.

I could go into why I liked the games more, and what games I played the heck out of later on, if anyone wants to get into an old school system war argument.


NAC1
Posts: 187
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

Rethinking the Nintendo 64

Postby NAC1 » June 17th, 2010, 2:22 am

Have you ever heard of the Chameleon Twist games for the Nintendo 64?
These two games are both very good platformers that I believe are worth a shot. In the game, you play as a Chameleon (as the name would imply) that uses its tongue to launch itself onto platforms, as well as to stick to platforms.
Here is a link if you would like to know more about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chameleon_Twist



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