|
This is the Nintendo
64 section. I have a great selection of Nintendo 64 Games
including all the classics, as well as Nintendo 64 Consoles and
replacement hardware. Click any of these links to take you to the appropriate
section.
The Nintendo 64,
commonly called the N64, is Nintendo's third home video game console. The N64
was released on June 23, 1996 in Japan, September 29, 1996 in North America and
Puerto Rico, 1 March 1997 in Europe/Australia and September 1, 1997 in France.
It was released with only two launch games in Japan and North America (Super
Mario 64 and PilotWings 64) while Europe had a third launch title in the form of
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (which was released earlier in the other
markets). The Nintendo 64 cost $199 at launch in the United States.
The N64 was first publicly introduced on November 24, 1995 as the Nintendo Ultra
64 at the 7th Annual Shoshinkai Software Exhibition in Japan (though preview
pictures from the Nintendo "Project Reality" console had been published in
American magazines as early as June, 1993). The first published photos from the
event were presented on the web via coverage by Game Zero magazine two days
after the event. Official coverage by Nintendo soon followed a few weeks later
on the nascent Nintendo Power website, and then in volume #85 of their print
magazine.
During the developmental stages the Nintendo 64 was referred to by its code
name, Project Reality. The name Project Reality came from the speculation within
Nintendo that this console could produce CGI on par with then-current
supercomputers. Once unveiled to the public the name changed to Nintendo Ultra
64, referring to its 64-bit processor, and Nintendo dropped "Ultra" from the
name on February 1, 1996, just five months before its Japanese debut due to the
word "Ultra" being copyrighted to another company.
After first announcing the project, two companies, Rareware (UK) and Midway
(USA), created the arcade games Killer Instinct and Cruis'n USA which claimed to
use the Ultra 64 hardware. In fact, the hardware had nothing to do with what was
finally released; the arcade games used hard drives and TMS processors. Killer
Instinct was the most advanced game of its time graphically, featuring
pre-rendered movie backgrounds which were streamed off the hard drive and
animated as the characters moved horizontally.
Nintendo touted many of the system's more unusual features as groundbreaking and
innovative, but many of these features had in fact been implemented before. The
first game console to bill itself as "64-bit" was actually the Atari Jaguar
(although the truth of this is disputed, as the Jaguar merely had two 32-bit
processors- albeit its graphics processor was 64-bit). The Vectrex in fact had
introduced analog joysticks, while the first to feature four controller ports
was the Bally Astrocade. Regardless, the Nintendo 64 was the first popular
system to have these features.
The system was designed by Silicon Graphics Inc., and features their trademark
dithered 32-bit graphics. The early N64 development system was an SGI Indy
equipped with an add-on board that contained a full N64 system.
The Nintendo 64 was the last mainstream home video game console to use ROM
cartridges to store its games. (Although the last real cartridge based system to
have still continued production was SNK's Neo Geo MVS hardware until 2003)
Nintendo's choice had several advantages:
1. ROM cartridges have very fast load times in comparison to disc based games.
This can be observed from the loading screens that appear in many PlayStation
games but are virtually non-existent in N64 versions.
2. ROM cartridges are difficult and expensive to duplicate, thus resisting
piracy (albeit at the expense of lowered profit margin for Nintendo). While
unauthorized interface devices for the PC were later developed, these devices
are rare when compared to a regular CD drive as used on the PlayStation.
3. It is possible to add specialized support chips (such as coprocessors) to ROM
cartridges, as was done on some Super Nintendo
games.
4. Most cartridges store individual profiles and game progress on the cartridge
itself, eliminating the need for separate and expensive memory cards. Storing
data at first required a cartridge battery whose energy would diminish over
time, though the battery generally lasted for years, and in subsequent games
EEPROMs were used instead.
While Nintendo chose the cartridge format for the N64, the company originally
signed a contract with Sony in 1988 to develop a CD-ROM drive add-on for the
SNES. When Hiroshi Yamauchi read the (already
signed by Nintendo) original 1988 contract between Sony and Nintendo and learned
that it allowed Sony 25% of the profits from the machine, he was furious. He
deemed the contract totally unacceptable, and secretly cancelled all plans for a
joint Nintendo-Sony SNES CD attachment. Indeed,
instead of announcing their partnership, at 9 AM the day of the CES, Nintendo
chairman Howard Lincoln stepped onto the stage and revealed that they were now
allied with Phillips, and were planning on abandoning all the previous work
Nintendo and Sony had accomplished. Lincoln and Minoru Arakawa had (unbeknownst
to Sony) flown to Phillips headquarters in Europe and formed an alliance.
In addition to the CD-ROM add on, Sony would release a combination Super NES/CD-ROM
system in one unit, which would have been called the PlayStation. Initially,
Nintendo's abandonment of the joint project caused Sony to consider halting
their research, but ultimately the company decided to use what they had
developed so far and make it into a complete, stand alone console. This led to
Nintendo filing a lawsuit claiming breach of contract and attempted, in U.S.
federal court, to obtain an injunction against the release of the PlayStation,
on the grounds that Nintendo owned the name. The federal judge presiding over
the case denied the injunction.
Graphically, benefits of the Nintendo cartridge system were mixed. While N64
games generally had higher polygon counts, the limited storage size of ROM carts
limited the amount of available textures, resulting in games which had a plain
and flat-shaded look. Later cartridges such as Resident Evil 2 featured more ROM
space, which demonstrated that Nintendo 64 was capable of detailed in-game
graphics when the media permitted, but this performance came late in the console
war and at a high price.
At that time, competing systems from Sony and Sega (the PlayStation and Saturn,
respectively) were using CD-ROM discs to store their games. These discs are much
cheaper to manufacture and distribute, resulting in lower costs to third party
game publishers. As a result many game developers which had traditionally
supported Nintendo game consoles were now developing games for the competition
because of the higher profit margins found on CD based platforms.
The cartridge vs. disc
debate came to an infamous climax during the release of Final Fantasy VII.
Despite the fact that all six previous Final Fantasy games had been published on
Nintendo systems, the series' producer, Squaresoft, chose to release Final
Fantasy VII on the Sony PlayStation. This incident provided a highly-publicized
denunciation of Nintendo's cartridge-based system which caused negative
publicity for Nintendo. The incident also led to Square and Nintendo not working
together on a project until Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles was released on
the Nintendo Gamecube in 2004.
The cost of producing an N64 cartridge was far higher than producing a CD: one
gaming magazine at the time cited average costs of twenty-five dollars per
cartridge, versus 10 cents per CD. Publishers had to pass these higher expenses
to the consumer so Nintendo 64 games tended to sell for slightly higher prices
than PlayStation games did. While most PlayStation games rarely exceeded $50,
N64 titles could reach $80.
Despite the controversies, the N64 still managed to support many popular games,
giving it a long life run. Nintendo 64 took second place for its generation of
consoles while the PlayStation finished first, with 40% and 51% of the market
respectively. Much of this success was credited to Nintendo's strong first-party
franchises, such as Mario and Zelda, which had strong name brand appeal yet
appeared exclusively on Nintendo platforms. The N64 also secured its share of
the mature audience thanks to GoldenEye 007, Resident Evil 2, Shadow Man, Doom
64 and Quake II.
In 2001, the Nintendo 64 was replaced by the disc-based Nintendo GameCube,
although even with this system they refused to use mainstream CD/DVD technology,
opting for the DVD-based but incompatible GameCube Optical Disc. The Nintendo
Revolution uses "12 cm discs" for storage, which are just encrypted DVDs, thus
making it the first Nintendo console to use a standardized storage format.
|
