The Rise and Fall of the Nintendo 64DD | Gaming History
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
- The 64DD was an expansion for the Nintendo 64 that Nintendo planned to release as a method to provide larger storage for game developers. However it was a commercial failure. But why? Today we explore that side of history
#nintendo #nintendo64 #zelda64 - เกม
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With rumors of a new Nintendo console to release next year, people have been curious whether Nintendo would continue to use cartridges like the Switch, or return to using CDs. Shigero Miyamoto commented on the matter in an interview, stating, "CD's nuts lol." It's moments of transparency with their fans like this that really makes Nintendo the greatest gaming studio of the generation.
Considering the rumours are of another hybrid (which Nintendo would be crazy to not do the hybrid again) carts would only make sense
To be fair CDs gave the risk of being scratched and can freak out the disk lol like my copy of Threads of Fate being the fine example of why there is a downside of CDs…Gosh damn Rod’s area won’t even load because of a scratch!
Best thing I’ve read all day. Thank you good sir 😂🤣
@@TheObsessiveGamer
If Nintendo would do things that make sense we wouldn't have the N64, the Wii, or even the switch.
"CD's nuts lol" is one of the single best things I have ever read...
I picked up a 64DD a few years ago off eBay and the person who sold it to me included the 64 console it came with, the clear black one. So, whoever I ended up getting it from, bought the full bundle back in the day. I ended up getting the 64, 64DD, a controller and Mario Artist Paint Studio and Doshin the Giant.
That must be one of the most expensive console add-ons on the collector's market! :O
The DD was murdered. It came out, mail only, basically already in the year 2000 (a year ahead of the GameCube launch), only in Japan (its host console's worst territory globally), and you *needed* to also sign up for RandNet. It didn't die of its own merits.
And despite this, it *still* managed to move at least 35,000 units.
Yeah if this isn't the definition of mismanagement, I don't know what is
Do you know where that 35000 units figure came from? Every source I've seen said 15000
@@SonofSethoitae Yep, I looked into myself and can only find 15,000 units sold. Not anywhere near 35. Misinformation from one account or another.
35,000 units is nothing when you look at the bigger picture. The Virtual Boy was a similar disaster from roughly the same time period, & that lasted about as long as the N64DD did, & still amassed 770,000 units, which is already puny compared to Nintendo's other handhelds like the Game Boy for instance which is currently the 4th bestselling videogame console ever with nearly 120 million units by the time it was discontinued. If you can imagine, Japan had a population of 126.6 million citizens in 1999, so if you do the math, approx. 0.027% of the population of Japan bought the N64DD. That is not a number to gloat about.
@@koolaid33 Notice the "at least". Estimates range up to 70,000. For a console that was failing to compete with the SNES in 2000 in Japan, I feel like that's not an insignificant number.
I translated 3 of these 64DD games; Doshin 1 & 2, both on IGN. Sadly, IGN seemed to delete the guide I made for Japan Pro Golf Tour 64. One of the possible reasons for my putting the Yakochu II: Satsujin Koro translation {for regular N64} in video form with text imbedded. I also translated the first "Doraemon Nobita to 3 Tsu no Seirei Ishi" for N64. I wanted to be the first to beat every game, and write guides to each of those games, lol. I never got very far, but came out with some pretty helpful stuff, and lots of other people have helped beat the games I never bothered to try and beat. lol. I always worried the 64DD would have the read/write, drive break if I used it too much. For Japan Pro Golf Tour 64, I tried resetting each time at one hole to get a hole in one, but after doing that about 100 times, I realized, if I didn't stop trying to do that, I'd end up with an expensive paper weight, lol. I also really liked Doshin the Giant for GameCube, and bought a converter disk to play Japan, and Europe Gamecube games on my USA system. The last 64DD thing I bought was the newsletter flyers, about 2 years ago. Last time I checked someone had scanned them and uploaded them to Internet Archive. Lots of fun memories playing my 64DD. :)
Oh wow, if you have your old translation notes, I would think the modding community would love it in order to build patches for those games in order to have people play them nowadays
@@TheObsessiveGamer Ironically the only game translation that I made, that got converted into a patch was the German version of "Banana Prince", for the NES. My translations are more literal, and probably not as good at making patches. Imagine sitting through trying to code all 9 hours of text from my "Yakochu II: Satsujin Koro, with Complete English Translation" video, and having to put in the less than perfect word order. I wrote the translation trying to keep the word order as close to Japanese as possible, so readers could follow the story, and recognize when certain words would reappear. Here is a link to that video th-cam.com/video/HUy-Q89r5sQ/w-d-xo.html My Japan Pro translations are under each video for each course, while the Doshin, and others are on IGN. So they are out there, its just people probably want better translations. As for me, I just wanted to get 100% of the game beaten, and find any secrets. I think, I'm still the only person outside of Japan to go through Doshin expansion, "Kyojin no Doshin, Kaihou Sensen Chibikko Chikko Daishuugou", and complete all the various tasks and record all the" More Than Giant" video clips and endings. I always hoped to do something like 'N64 Glenn Plant' and give full story, and gameplay tips to each N64 game, or even make something like the "N64 Anthology" book, but I'm satisfied with enjoying those things. The "Yakochu II" translation took probably about 4 years from start to finish, and Doshin games took another year or two. So, they are really time consuming projects.
I used to love reading your guides to Doshin 1 and 2 as a fourteen year old boy! I never had a 64DD, but I always wanted one, primarily to play 巨人のドシン, one of my favorite GC games. Your guides also contained stuff I didn't know about that game either, like the ability to tame a bird.
@@justapickedminfan A lot of my old raw footage of Doshin 1-2 and Gamecube games I posted on Internet Archive, so you can see some of the things I was still figuring out on the guides. I liked to rewatch them from time to time, seeing how I learned to play, and what I still didn't seem to understand about the games. I'm glad the guides helped.
@@TearyEyesAnderson yeah that's fair. Though I still suggest you upload them somewhere like the Internet archive or Gamefaqs, as I feel this hard work deserves preservation
I think I've seen this 64DD documented many times before, but somehow learned more from this one. Theres always something new to discover. Very nice job! 👍
Thanks! And yeah one of the reasons I made this is that alot of the other docs I feel didn't cover it as thoroughly and I wanted to make one that went much deeper into it
Also Silicon Graphics suggested cartridges to nintendo because of their faster acces time. So it wasn't nintendo's decision alone
The n64dd is like the holy grail of failed peripherals
Did it ever truly "rise" in the first place?
It did rise in hype lol
My take on improving the N64 at launch would be this.
1. Make the Magnetic Zip Disks the official media of choice
2. The Magnetic Zip Disks should have at least 128MBytes(1024MBits) of storage data than just 64MBytes(512MBits). Just enough for RPGs and other big releases to have less pressure, strain, and a bit more storage reasonable enough to warrant more support.
3. SNES backwards compatibility via a peripheral akin to that of what the Super Gameboy was for the SNES for at least $49; and if said owners have an SNES of their own and want an SNES peripheral for their N64, allow retailers to have customers trade in their SNES console for the SNES peripheral free. Like how Sega did with the Power-Base Converter if consumers wanted to play Sega Master System games on their Genesis/Mega-Drives!
4. Increase the internal RAM just slightly from 4MGS to at least 6MGS; along with having a 6MG RAM expansion pak sold seperately
5. Increase Texture swap cashe from 4kbytes to 6kbytes
6. Price it at $299.95
7. Launch it Worldwide in the Spring or early Summer of 96; instead of the Fall!
Probably using older but lower latency RAM would have been a big improvement, as the latency of RDRAM was extremely high, and made efficient programming far more difficult, which was a major downside of the RDRAM, whereas the higher bandwidth of the RDRAM was much faster than it needed to be.
64 MB disks would have been fine too, as it would have been pretty affordable and feasible to just release games on multiple disks any time a developer wanted more capacity. These disks were far cheaper to make than cartridges, especially in terms of the cost per MB, and as long as Nintendo wasn't charging significant additional licensing fees for each disk, the per unit cost of using additional disks for big games (like FF7) would have been pretty low and easy to justify, though it would have still been a lot more elegant if the user didn't have to switch disks during gameplay.
@@syncmonism You make good points there.
What I believe would've been a major game changer in addition Nintendo chose to just stick with the Zip Disk technology from the start, also incorporating backwards compatibility with SNES games with the cartridge slot still being used for that function alone. Sega wasn't employeeing backwards compatibility with Genesis/Mega-Drive games with the Saturn, so things could've been very interesting at that time.
Maybe they did in an alternate timeline!
8:18 : That was the idea for Mario Party: There's code for the 64DD in the game's code. What the 64DD can do? Implement new stuff within the game of course. So imagine, maybe Mario Party 2 and 3 would've been 64DD games instead of standalone cartridges.
Yeah a number had that coding in them. OOT of course being the most famous example. Mario Party DD I imagine would have brought in new maps or maybe a board builder?
I'm glad we ended up getting full sequels instead of map packs. Mario Party 1 is nice but 2 and 3 build on it in better ways than just "more boards and minigames"...though their boards and minigames are better too lol.
I love videos like these. Informative and fun to watch with snacks 😆
We still got ura Zelda, its contents were repurposed in Majora's Mask and Master Quest
I have to point out a misconception right at the start. The 64DD didn't provide massive storage space. It was large compared to the early N64 games but it was still less than 10% the capacity of a CD. Eventually, N64 games such as Conker's Bad Fur Day and Resident Evil 2 reached exactly the 64DD capacity.
The advantage of the 64DD was being able to provide massive REWRITABLE storage space for saves, much bigger than cartridge or memory card space for saving. This allowed for 64DD disks to save highly customizable games with user-created tracks on F-Zero, edited image files, polygon models and others. Another advantage, of course, was being able to expand cartridge games.
I'm really not sure how much cheaper they would have been, but it's my understanding that the disks also would have been far cheaper to manufacture per MB than the cartridges, reducing the financial risk involved in publishing games (which scared off a lot of developers for the N64, because cartridges were quite expensive, especially because it included a hefty licensing fee by Nintendo). The lower cost of the disks would have made it far more feasible to release multi-disk games for any developer who wanted more capacity, though the per MB cost of making cartridges did go down a lot over the years as well.
Nintendo would have still been charging a licensing fee for each disk that likely would have been much higher than the cost of the disk itself, but if Nintendo was smart, they would have not charged any additional licensing fee, or at least a much smaller licensing fee, for each additional disk used by any developer who wanted to make a higher capacity game, so the cost of the first disk might have been like 10 or 15 bucks including the licensing fee, but the cost of each additional disk might have only been a couple of dollars.
Most games would have only used one disk, but higher budget RPGs and adventure games likely would use two disks, or even more than two in rare cases.
With as much as we know now about the 64DD, it feels like Nintendo got so swept up internally with the struggles to even get the thing to a desirable state and on the market that it just dragged down everything else they were trying to accomplish. Not only did their big third-parties walk away over them using cartridges, there was also a chip shortage at the time that was driving up the cost of production and lowering output.
The same thing happened in the 80s which prompted them to make the Famicom Disk System. Difference was, that chip shortage went long enough for it to get a foothold and the prospect of larger games on a floppy disk for a console sounded great. But once chip prices came down, they went back to cartridges which now came with ROM sizes as big and bigger than the FDS disk format could handle and the disk drive had then pretty much done it's job as a stopgap. Before and after the add-on was relevant, the Famicom saw a solid 11 years of life.
It seemed like Nintendo just fell back on that strategy again and hoped it would work out a second time. The N64 lasted about half as long as the Famicom though and the massive leaps the Dreamcast and PS2 were about to show off at that point so soon still would have likely killed the 64DD on arrival regardless of how promising it turned out.
Oooh didn't know about the FDS being during a chip shortage. I mean by this logic, Nintendo releasing a CD add-on might have actually been a better idea then as that would have more aligned with the floppy disk drive of the Famicom then and would have been easier to develop and have a lot bigger storage
I could be mistaken, but I believe that the disks still would have been far cheaper to manufacture than the 64MB cartridges, even after the ROM chip prices came way down again, which also would have made it a lot more financially viable for developers to release multi-disk games if they wanted more storage, especially if they didn't have to pay any additional licensing fee for each additional disk. A lower cost per disk would also reduce the financial risk of developing a game, and make it easier to make higher profits. Assuming I'm correct about the lower manufacturing costs for the disks, if Nintendo had actually managed to get the disk drive to market in like, early 98, and released with say, an expansion disk for both Mario 64 AND Mario Kart 64, it would have been an instant success, and even before it launched, if they could have shown developers that they were definitely committed to a major release of the disk drive by early 98, or perhaps even earlier than that, they could have gotten more developers on board with it.
I'm sure it would have been possible for them to have released the disk drive even as the main storage media for the system from the beginning, if they had just started planning and investment for it early enough.
@@syncmonism Weird thing is they were already starting to reveal info about the DD in Japan and saying it was on the way before they even got the base system out the door. That was after they firmly decided to use cartridges over concerns of piracy of CD-ROMs but still within the same window of time pre-release. I feel like the constant delays of the N64 itself were the start of the problems, they probably were deciding all this stuff provided conditions were ideal and they were certainly not.
it should’ve been on the n64 on release but only for expansions for first party games and third party games could’ve had disk only…
Yoooo, only 7min left for the video to start, been waitin' since yesterday bruh.
Hope you enjoy it!
Great video! I can't imagine myself buying one since there were so little games on it hahaha
Imagine if they had released the disk drive in like, late 1997, included with expansions to Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64, adding more levels and more tracks to both games. It would have sold extremely well, and developers would have then felt more confident in actually investing in developing for the N64 and for the disk drive.
Nintendo was wayyyy too slow with releasing the disk drive, and they screwed over some of the third party developers who had been making games for it, though I think most games which had been in development for the disk drive ended up being released on higher capacity cartridges instead.
The floppy disks were also far cheaper to manufacture per MB than cartridges, I believe, which would have reduced the financial risk involved in publishing N64 games, and would have made using multiple disks for games far more financially feasible, especially if publishers didn't have to pay any additional licensing fees to Nintendo for each additional disk used.
I always found it genuinely impressive that Ocarina of Time ran on a stock N64, sure they had to do a lot of cutbacks and optimizations like with the frame rate and stuff but they really did the game justice where it can still be played today and feel like it did back then. Although I was on PAL so I was unknowingly playing the slowest version of the game and even then I got countless hours out of it and have since moved on to playing it either on the GC version or Wii VC on my homebrewed region swapped Wii. Not to mention there is now a PC port of Ocarina of Time called Ship of Harkinian that can run OoT at 60fps with other QoL changes :D
Yet I have so many memories of long loading times on PS1 and then if you had a smudged disc that would somehow make it EVEN LONGER 😂N64 just needed a good old blow and you're good to go 😏
It's hard to imagine how well this would have done even if it was released in 1996 at the N64 launch. I think that Nintendo would have done better with three options, from best to worst: 1.) went with regular CD, 2.) went only with DD games and no cartridge, or 3.) went only with cartridge and immediately stopped development of DD. I think that your summary that the DD was Nintendo's 32X was very apt.
Option 1 would win them the generation and pretty much halt the PS1 back then. Option 2 might have kept them in a decent position as it would have been the best of both worlds as it would have at least kept third party for the most party
@@TheObsessiveGamer The problem is that it wouldn't have made much of a difference if Nintendo went with CDs because many 3rd parties like Squaresoft, Namco, and EA(to name a few), had already made it clear that they were sick and tired and fed up with Nintendo's(as well as Sega's) nonsense at that point; and they were already looking for a new competitor to jump ship to who could give them what they want. Many 3rd parties wanted a system that catered to them and represented them, instead developing for a system that catered only to 1st & 2nd party games; whereas 3rd parties were 2nd class on both Nintendo's and Sega's hardware!
Think about it for a moment. Starting with Sega: Why would Sega bother making a console that catered only to 3rd parties the exact way that Sony did, when they were the kings of the arcades and could just convert their arcade hits into home console gaming experiences? They couldn't do it the same way Sony could; why? Because a.) they didn't have the same financial resources/structure that Sony had to keep up with the competition to justify losing so much money on hardware sales compared to Sony; and b.) it wasn't in Sega's DNA.
Same thing applies to Nintendo: Why would Nintendo of all companies bother making a console that catered only to 3rd parties the exact same way that Sony(and eventually Microsoft) would, when a.) Nintendo didn't have the same financial resources/structure that Sony did to keep up with the competition to justify selling losing so much money off of hardware sales compared to Sony(a trap Sega fell into); but b), it wasn't(and still isn't in some capacity) in Nintendo's DNA!
Bottum line, even if Nintendo went the same route as everyone else that generation, it wouldn't have made much of an impact because Sony had the financial influence and wherewithall to lure 3rd parties away from the competition just like in our timeline. The only real differences we would've been able to see were more squels to Nintendo's 1st and 2nd party offerings!
@@G.L.999
You are right, people that say Nintendo would win that generation with a CD don't know the history.
And I think in retrospect the carts were better. With CD we would have a Ocarina of time or Mario 64 because they would be unplayable on slow CDs.
The 32X was so much worse though, because the announcement and release of the Saturn so soon after the 32X really screwed over both customers of the 32X, as well as developers of the 32X. The 32X really alienated a lot of Sega fans.
Nintendo's disk drive never screwed over anywhere near as many consumers, and at least some games that were in development for the DD could still be switched to high capacity cartridges, though I don't actually know much about which developers got screwed over by the cancellation of the global 64DD release, or how bad it was for them. I'd be curious to know more about that.
I wish the n64 would have did 8mb with a 8mb expansion seeing as how 8mb wasn't enough still! I also feel like they should have still released the n64 dd and that the GameCube should have been held back at least a full year.
The Playstation had 1MB of RAM and sold like 100 units and a ridiculous number of games. The N64's RAM had 100 times more bandwidth (yes, really), but it had significantly lower latency, which was probably a much bigger limiting factor than the capacity (one of the biggest issues being that it was a lot more difficult for programmers to efficiently program games which avoided being slowed down by much higher latency of this type of RAM). That being said, 8MB from the beginning may have still proven to have been a better design choice, especially if they had also chosen the slower but lower latency RAM that was available at the time.
Great video! I am of the unorthodox opinion that using cartridges instead of optical discs was the right move at the time. Yes, cartridges were more expensive and took longer to manufacture than discs, but the near instantaneous loading and durability of cartridges meant that the Nintendo 64 could offer gameplay experiences that the PlayStation and Saturn could not. And while the storage space was pathetically low compared to discs, games like Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were proof that you can design massive 3D worlds brimming with content while using relatively low storage space.
That's not to say Nintendo didn't make mistakes, they surely did. But in my humble opinion, the biggest mistake Nintendo made with the 64 was the 64 DD. If it weren't for the 64 DD, then MOTHER 3 may not have been canceled...
From a consumer and from a first party perspective, I agree that the cart choice was the best idea. But from a company perspective, it did make Nintendo lose a lot of market share and only built up their biggest rival yet.
That's not an unorthodox opinion, just the opinion of people who are not computer illiterate.
All optical and magnetic discs will disappear soon, they were just a temporary necessity, not the future.
It would've made more sense for Nintendo to have just simply bundle the N64 with the console itself at launch. I think it only would've cost about $249.99(which doesn't include taxes). Because many games that got cancelled for the N64 at the time depended heavily on the N64DD to be available for customers to purchase either at launch or at least less than 7 to 8 months after the console's launch.
Though fun fact, had the N64DD been bundled with the console itself at launch from the get go and became successful, we would've been able to play games from 64mgbytes, to 128mgbytes. And that is because the N64DD had 64mgbytes of internal memory inside the add-on itself! I think that should paint a pretty clear picture as to why alot of N64 games got cancelled and its success was depended upon to make most of those games a reality!
Liked before watching
Wow, if the Disk Drive did release, it would have been crazy. Like, the giant Lost Woods and overall bigger areas from Zelda OOT's beta could have worked, and this already incredible game could have been better, and just the thought of the possibility of an even better OOT blows my mind.
And according to what you're saying, we'd have an actual full 3D Earthbound game, but also probably more underrated games like the cancelled Panel de Pon 64 game actually existing.
Alot could have been possible. If only they made it as the default console, we could have gotten so much more that way
@@TheObsessiveGamer Yeah it's a shame. If alternate universes exist, we need to find the one where thdme 64 DD wasn't a flop.
Panel De Pon 64 does exist. It was cancelled in Japan but the game was finished, and the newly formed Nintendo Software Technology was tasked with reskinning it into a Pokémon game for North America. It released as Pokémon Puzzle League in the US, and was eventually released in Japan on the GameCube on a disc alongside Dr Mario 64 - which was also originally never released in Japan on N64.
@@ShadowEl Oh yeah. I mean I knew about that, but for some reason, I thought the 64 version had the OG characters of something instead but no, it is the same game. (My headcanon is that Furil and all the new fairies are the daughters of the fairies from the first game)
The slower load times could have come with some trade-offs still vs. the cartridge, but I do think the disk drives would have resulted in better games overall if Nintendo had managed to get it to market soon enough, especially if they released it with expansions for one or two of their first party titles. Imagine if the disk drive came out in late 1997 with an expansion which added extra tracks and extra GP cups for Mario Kart. That would have caught on instantly, and it would have given 3rd party developers the confidence to actually start investing in making games for it, and would have attracted more developers to making games for the N64.
I will always say that carts are the way to go for physical games imo, especially nowadays since storage isn't as big of an issue
Discs kinda suck, they're MUCH more likely to get damaged
Yeah nowadays it makes sense since it uses flash memory and much cheaper and larger as a result. Thus I hope Nintendo keeps going with them here on out. Flash carts do also last longer since they aren't prone to disc rot
@@TheObsessiveGameragreed completely to the point that i think Xbox and Sony should start using carts themselves.
The decision regarding not using optical media was a double wammy. The original agreement with Sony was a factor, as was the attorcious titles that resulted from the partnership with Panasonic.
Marketing spin doesn't align with decision making. It was less the loading times and more the licensing agreement. Thats why both Dreamcast used GD-ROMs and GameCube used the mini optical disks.
Both storage mediums were not in par with DVD ROMs which were used by Xbox and Playstation 2.
CD ROM 700 MB
DVD ROM 4.7 GB yo 8.5GB (dual layer)
GD ROM 1.2 GB
GC Optical format 1.46 GB
The problem with the DD seems to be that it just loaded too slow, it may have had more memory than the initial carts and was cheaper, but that loading got in the way of development.
Master of nothing after all lol. Should have at least been an actual CD unit instead to offer an alternative means. Then the console has both a means of faster loading and high storage
I mean... it was technically a floppy disk drive. lol. Standard floppies ran at about 250 rpm. So we're talking about 2 to 3mb per second. Unless the DD could spin and read faster, this thing was much slower than CD roms of that time.
The N64DD did load faster than PS1 and Saturn games in the end though. Was it instantanious? No, but it loaded decently enough to not be too much of a burden on gameplay!
That definitely wasn't its biggest issue, as it was still significantly faster than the CD load times of competing consoles.
@@Choom2077 It was much faster than that, much faster than CD ROMs of the time, but still much slower than cartridges for sure. Nintendo never would have considered using something slower AND with a lower capacity than optical disks.
still waiting for the "rise" part of the story :p and yes I would have bought one back then. was eagerly awaiting it honestly. until they delayed it to the point that the entire console was pretty much obsolete and decided not to release it in america at all.
The rise simply refers to the hype, the expectations, and development for it before it "fell" when everything collapsed around it
Nintendo just didn't want to pay a small licensing fee to make a CD system, also it meant they would lose the massive manufacturing profits from controlling 3rd parties.
True though they could have made propriotory discs as they did with the GameCube and onwards
@@TheObsessiveGamer Yea, good old Nintendo struck a deal with Panasonic to use Mini-DVD so they could avoid paying licensing fees, in return Panasonic were allowed to make a DVD player with GCN tech. 😎
The Panasonic Q. Expensive and rare though, compared to a regular Gamecube.
Zelda 64 beta🥺 and i would have bought a N64 DD
is there a version of sim city 64?
Yes
They should have made the N64 with the disk based storage medium in mind in the first place...
Oh what could have been...
funny how load times were such a concern then they torpedo'd and entire generation, and current day we get tears of the kingdom, the pinnacle of loading screen simulators.
The system was still a success for them. They made lots of money off of licensing fees as well as from their own game and peripheral sales. So, if they torpedoed themselves, it was a torpedo hit that didn't sink their system, but only rather slowed them down, causing them to miss out on a lot of growth potential, and making it easier for Sony to grow more instead.
This was a period where the videogame market was growing quickly, so it was a major missed opportunity for them to have not offered publishers higher capacity media options, but the N64 was still far from being a commercial failure.
Biggest disappointment of my childhood 😢 I saved up money for it and it never arrived. I still want to buy one some day.
Ura Zelda already came out, and it's called "Master Quest". If you don't believe me, the Gigaleak had prototype Master Quest dungeons in the Ura Zelda repo & they sucked!
I made a whole video on this topic lol you can check out my Ura Zelda video on that
can you do DK64 VIDEO ON BETA The Obsessive Gamer
I have been considering this actually. So stay tuned :)
DK64 has some interesting history to dig up for sure, what with the original development team having basically been making DKC4 before a bunch of other Rare team members were brought on board to reboot development.
can you please talk about sonic mars and I'm not talking about the development history I'm talking about the game himself
I don't know man, the Nintendo 64DD was definitely not revolutionary. Floppy disk technology had existed for a long period of time beforehand, like you yourself stated, Nintendo was using it for the Famicom Disk System & that was a massive success with many popular NES titles in the west being Disk System exclusive in Japan. That was in the 1980s, then in the 1990s they were making the Nintendo PlayStation which would've also used the format, & although cancelled, the Nintendo Satellaview did make it to market in Japan & you were able to transfer software onto the service via floppy disks at stores that contained content. Even then, most computers were using floppy disks in the late 1980s, & most PC games were made for floppy disks like DOOM in 1993, which means this format was already old news & treating it as innovative is definitely giving it too much credit. Also to say it could've pushed the N64 & done wonders is also overrating it in my eyes. The hardware was nothing special, it still couldn't compare to the Sega Saturn or PS1 with it's extreme lack of storage still being prevalent. It also would've gone exactly as how the Sega 32X, Sega CD, TurboGrafx CD & Neo Geo CD went, which is to say they sold horribly, & none of them amassed a library above 100, nor have compelling games that make the exorbitant prices for the hardware worth it. The fact they soft-launched the 64DD, the fact they didn't put too much effort into it & the fact they discontinued it fairly quickly was probably for the best, as if they tried to push it way more they likely would've just lost more money on the product, & at that time with Nintendo being at it's lowest (for the time) the failure of the N64DD could've been way worse if they had banked on it more.
Excellent video. It really shows how having cartidriges from the get go screwed over nintendo, losing third party devs and such.
Yeah indeed. They likely could have won the generation if they hadn't went with the carts they did. heck if they even made the magentic disks the default, that would have done it well enough for them.
🤔 - I always wondered about the DD and it's historical value...
I've watched other TH-cam videos about it before...
It being a failed attempt at launch in Japan; No Western release, a very early version of Legend of Zelda game and then which would eventually become OoT!
Yeah which isn't wrong but I feel too much is missed out of those. Thus this was made to cover it in a more in-depth manner
@@TheObsessiveGamer - Very well done!
I feel like the Mario Art Studio (Whatever it's actually called) it reminds me of a very scuffed Mii Maker that was introduced on the Wii and onwards!
IMO: C-Man on the Sega Dreamcast; Just the name sounds kind provocative...
It's nowhere near made for the same thing, but the DD reminds me of the Gameboy Advance Player for the GameCube; The GC would be set on top of the GBA player!
I have would most definitely bought a DD, but I wasn't even born until the year of 1997; Even, then I was just a baby and I wouldn't be able to do much anyways...
The N69420 would go on to use cartridges as well
N69420??
@@TheObsessiveGamer The Nintendo 69420 named because it will use 69420 bit graphics
There was a rise? 😂
bro, no... There is no such thing as a rise and fall of the N64 DD, ultimately it has been revealed recently that the 64DD was fully complete and ready for production/shipping. what held them back? The sales, in order for them to release the 64DD the N64 had to sell around 25 million copies or so, and the console never reached that mark, so instead, having a finished consoled they decided to give it a limited release. This was in a recent translated interview just recently revealed. There was no failure, honestly it was just a shift of focus from giving the N64 expansion options to focusing on a brand new console (the cube). Come on man you're better than this
I am so happy that this system failed. All because of the price of the disc vs the cartridge which would sale for the same price at retail either way. Nintendo used to punish companies that made games for their competitors. With the low prices of CDs companies like Capcom , Konomi ,Square soft and damn near everyone else started making games for PlayStation. The developers were free to make games for whoever they wanted and they didnt have to pay for the expensive cartridges from Nintendo. Those companies got their revenge on Nintendo by leaving the N64 high and dry. Nintendo still hasnt fully recovered from that loss. With a pathetic library of only 280 something games.Not to mention the controller was trash.
The Nintendo 64 was still a commercial success. Nintendo was making HUNDREDS of millions of dollars per year in profits from Nintendo 64 games, accessories, and licensing fees. When someone else succeeds more than you, that doesn't mean that YOU are a failure. Your logic is unsound.
The lack of higher capacity media options for developers contributed to significantly hurting their potential to attract third party developers, which contributed to losing market share to Sony, and reduced their potential for growth, but the N64 still made them literally BILLIONS of dollars in profits over its lifetime.
I'm pretty sure the N64 had 4Megabit and not Megabyte of RAM. N64 cartridges in the other hand stored in megabytes
Nope it's 4 Megabytes or in Megabits that's 32 Megabits
@@TheObsessiveGamer OMG!!! you replied!
What rise? 😂
The N64 was outdated on the very first day. The 64DD just showed how outdated the N64 was even more.
Shame how flawed Nintendo make the N64 from the get go
Nintendo was about to become the next Sega Genesis by adding all that BS to it to make it more powerful.
And that was the reason they didn't, they didn't want to end like Sega.
@@pafoneto1275 It was mostly Nintendo's American and European branches that argued against its release in the west. They didn't want Nintendo as a whole making the same mistake worldwide like Sega, Atari, and NEC did with their add-ons. Plus, Nintendo's American and European branches argued that the N64DD should've been bundled with the console at launch; rather than being sold seperately!
@@G.L.999 Yes, they needed to have released it as early as possible, or not at all.