@@imspiritual5590 But The N64 had the harder to develop for Hardware due to the cartridges, You need 20 N64 cartridges to run FF7 on the thing, On Ps1 only 3 cd,s nuff said.
There's also some rumors floating around that Nintendo stuck with cartridges since they invested a lot of money in a circuit and cartridge manufacturing plant
I think they are more reliable too. People rarely mention that. Sometimes a disc gets a tiny scratch on it and that ruins the game's ability to work. I remember I had a FF9 disc that looked perfect, and yet it would freeze at a certain cutscene and prevent progress. Cartridges don't have this issue.
That and the loading. In interviews with hardware designers for the N64, they usually state shorter load times and harder piracy was why they went with cartridges, and harder piracy was the sole reason they chose to make mini, proprietary discs for the GameCube instead of just using CDs or DVDs by then. Unfortunately, all their attempts to stop piracy more so just hurt themselves worse than piracy ever had hurt them.
I was 6 in 2000 and the frame rate never bothered me. I don't really recall anyone older calling it slow either. I think it might just be modern expectations clashing there.
@MrMarcodarko Speaking of both: Quake 1 for the Nintendo 64 plays great, fast and responsive. And you have the video option to disable the "filter", which means, you get more defined graphics, less blurry. I find curious how Quake 1 is seldom mentioned when addressing N64 game library, because it was one of the most important PC games in the 90's, and since the Saturn port is flawed and doesn't even use the real Quake engine, the only way to play Quake without a properly upgraded PC, back then, was on the N64.
@MrMarcodarkoyeah but back when those were the main consoles, that was the most realistic shit you’ve ever seen so yet another standard from modern times
N64 lost because of 5 main reasons: * Launched way too late * Used cartridges instead of CDs * Had one of the worst controllers ever * Limited 3° party support. * Had to compete against a titan
The N64 controller was exciting and revolutionary for it's time. As a teen when it came out I can tell you no was loving any controller more than the n64 controller.
I used to skip school to play the demo version at toys r us. Literally Years (in my child mind) before it was available for purchase. The demo reset every 10 minutes. I didn't care.
@FREEDOM_OR_DEATH_ true, but the Playstation controller won the game. Now we all have x-box idiots messing with the configuration. I dislike the x-box dead switching of orientation. I bought an 8bitdo pro 2 because the x-box controller is a p.o.s. design.
@@AkirathehuskyNot for game devs as they were more expensive to make, and there was a lot more risk if your game didn't sell well. The limitations were showing towards the end of the N64s life needing the expansion pack as well.
lack or rpgs, fighting games, arcade ports and 3rd party support really hurt the system. The first party titles were god tier though and up there with ps1's best games
NES was a big success. SNES the restrictions on third party made them start looking elsewhere. N64 was the moment old third party said enough is enough and stopped focusing on Nintendo as their preferred machine.
And now in the long term they are paying the price of making the wrong decision. They made the best decision for short term profits but now look where they are. Konami, Capcom, Square, just a shell of their former selves. Their game franchises were once seen by Nintendo consumers as synonymous with Mario and Zelda. Now they can't even be found in the bargain bin, a total disaster.
NES was a big success in North America and Japan. Other regions, like South America, Europe, Asia (excluding Japan), or the Oceania weren't fond of the NES for it's exorbitant price point and Nintendo's disinterest in advertising it. In all of those regions, the Sega Master System actually was much more popular, a household name, especially in Europe and South America. The problem was even worse for SNES, even less people in those regions were attracted to it, and so the Genesis (Mega Drive outside of North America) was much more popular than the SNES.
@@graalcloud I'd say most of those companies are doing alright, excellent in the case of Capcom, but the thing is that not having the major support of third-parties made Nintendo work harder in developing their own software, in various aspects is kind of incredible how well Nintendo's own games sell, any other company would kill for those numbers
The N64 definitely wasn't a commercial failure, or really a failure in any other way than it got vastly outsold by the PlayStation. Considered on its own merit though, it actually sold pretty well (more than the Saturn, Master System, PC Engine, Neo Geo, Dreamcast, GameCube, original Xbox, Wii U, etc, and in fact sold around the same number of units as the Sega Genesis), was a revolutionary console in many ways for its time, and it gave us some of the greatest games of all time too. So, yeah, sales weren't mind boggling, but in every other way it was a success.
I was a psx kid and I remember that every kid that had a console, it was the ps1. It arrived in just the right time and got very popular towards the late 90s. Nintendo lost but later recovered even with the Gamecube, which didn't sold well but Seg was out of business and the new competitor (Xbox) wasn't that tough
One of the additional pros of the N64 cartridges was that many of the games allowed players to save their progress right there on the cartridge. Of course, that depended on the game, but from what I recall, many of the popular titles allowed it. It didn't take much to save a for PS1 game - just buy a Memory Card - but Memory Cards had limited space.
I think a huge issue was that other companies focused on games for older people with an income, and Nintendo focused more on games for kids and weird controllers.
The N64 was a moderate success, but the choice to stick with cartridges was a mistake in terms of business. Some great games on the N64 no doubt, but I reckon it would’ve been more successful had it taken the CD format route.
One discrepancy at 12:00, not every N64 game is 64MB in size. N64 cartridges at launch were 8MB (including Super Mario 64) which is quite small, and then 16MB was introduced in 1997 or 98, used for games like Banjo-Kazooie, then 32MB was introduced in 1998 for games like Ocarina of Time. Only three games ended up using 64MB, since the bigger the cartridge size, the more expensive it gets and 64MB was only available late in the lifecycle. Most games were between 16MB and 32MB. 64MB is quite rare Imagine trying to cram Final Fantasy VII onto an 8MB or 16MB cart
Good information but he didn't say that every game was 64MB in size. He said "games could hold up to 64MB" not that every game was that size but in the end that is all they had to work with. He actually said kilobytes but we don't need to be pedantic as we know what he meant.
This is insane, and even if you remove all CD music and videos, most PlayStation games wouldn't fit in 64 Megabytes, let alone LESS than that. What did Nintendo expect? No wonder their console only sold in one (1) country. Did anyone actually see a Nintendo 64 in Europe? As in, not a picture online but physically. I never heard about it until angry reviews of Superman 64 and the like, it seems N64 was a USA-only thing like the country or a baseball.
@@KasumiRINA not from Europe, but Nintendo kept selling their consoles here in Latin America, while the original PlayStation became a huge hit due to how easy was to pirate its games, Sony didn't actually had any official presence, but Nintendo did actually air commercials for their games in Spanish (despite their games not having official translations into Neutral Spanish until 2007) and you could rent Nintendo 64 games on Blockbuster until the mid-2000s
I think if they had made FFVII on N64 it would have possibly sold even better than it did. Since most of Square's loyal customer base were Nintendo enjoyers at that time. I know I had to wait 1 year for the PC port of FF7 since I greatly preferred N64 (no way in HELL was I gonna miss out on Mario 64, Star Fox 64, etc)
Turok didn’t age well, but when it was released, it was amazing. The controls were perfect. I still think the N64 controller is the best controller for FPS type games. I actually hate playing first person shooters on the Xbox and PlayStation controllers, but I game on a PC now. Keyboard and mouse is better than any controller.
Yeah in terms of number of units sold it was a "failure" compared to PlayStation, but in terms of influence (basically writing the book on how 3D platforming should be done) and franchises (we wouldn't have Smash without it) and legacy (Ocarina and Majora's Mask are now hailed as classics) it's a HUGE WIN. I can't help but think Nintendo was more than happy with the profit and continues to milk the IP from the era to this day.
But that's the thing aside from the platforming (and frankly most of the big improvements came with Sunshine and Galaxy) which is minor (I loved Astrobot/Galaxy 3) its influence was largely confined to Nintendo and not the industry as a whole.
N64 launched 6 months too late. to give playstation a year head start in USA was a big mistake by Nintendo. March 1996 would have been a great time to launch N64 in USA.
This wouldn't have done too much eitherway. Yeah nintendo would've gotten better initial sales, but third parties wouldn't really work in their restrictions, a CD-ROM was ten times bigger then the biggest n64 cart.
And it was also supposed to Launch in 1995 as the Ultra 64... and in 1994, the N64 hardware was already there, (with the additional Hard Drive for KI's and later KI-2's Graphics & Animations). The Hardware for "Killer Instinct" & later "Killer Instinct 2" was in fact a coin-operated version of the N64's hardware, before they started tweaking it for a home release. Even though Cruisin' USA was also slated for the N64, the arcade hardware for that game was completely different as MIDWAY developed the game in-house on their own hardware (The MIDWAY V-Unit) for Nintendo and would later port it to the N64. (Little known fact: The Trophy Girl in that game, is Anutza Herling aka XXX Actress Shyla Foxxx).
But USA is the only country where Nintendo 64 was actually successful, like half of N64 sales were in United States... Americans have their own bubble where people actually played GoldenEye and Mario 64, like outside of one country, these games were absolutely unknown until the modern times. I haven't seen a single N64 and I live in Europe, in other places it's worse. It just wasn't a thing outside of USA. It had zero chances in countries that didn't even get Super Nintendo. Which is most countries.
@@SpiffyoNintendo never gave third parties any favourable terms during the NES and SNES era too, so with Sony offering third parties a much favourable terms, that’s when Nintendo lost support.
@@KasumiRINA in fact both The Gcn and og Xbox had simillar sales in Europe(4.7 MY Gcn, 5.5 My Xbox), but those were really really low compared to the sales of the ps2 at like 25 million.
N64 was the last Nintendo console I played. I had a blast with it! I think marketing made me switch over to Playstation. I was in my teens & I saw the Nintendo GameCube like "that's for kids". Been a Playstation guy ever since.
In a way, carts actually made sense. People forget that before the ps1, LITERALLY EVERY OTHER CD-BASED CONSOLE FAILED with the exception of possibly the PC Engine in Japan. How was Nintendo supposed to know Sony would be the first company to actually use the CDs for something other than FMV games?
You're forgetting a big factor: cost. CD drives were expensive when those earlier consoles had released, but by the time the Playstation came out, they had dropped in price a bit. Plus, Sony were manufacturing their own drives, rather than buying them from other companies like Sega and others had to do. The biggest problem with cartridges back then wasn't storage space, but cost. N64 carts cost well over 10x per cartridge to manufacture versus pressing a disc. Thus while the format made the system itself a bit cheaper, the games were much more expensive. While Sony was selling games for $40 or less, N64 games were $50 or more. It was pretty obvious based on memory prices alone that CDs were the better media to use at that time, but Nintendo wanted to maintain their manufacturing control, which is ultimately why they chose to stick with cartridges. They even wanted the Gamecube to be cartridge-based.
I think Nintendo put much faith in people's intelligence. When the Playstation came out, PC's were already affordable, and had a ton load of great games available. If you had a PC, which obviously wasn't only for gaming duh, to buy a Playstation didn't make much sense, in comparison to buying a N64, looking at the exclusive games.
Wrong. Growing up in a high middle class family barely anyone had PCs and the people that did used it for work stuff. Almost all gamers played console games. In the 90s PCs were still very expensive it wasn't until the super early 2000s that you had Dell and eMachine PCs for less than 1000 with celeron CPUs.
@@AlexRoivas Are you an American? I ask because I'm Portuguese, and my country was never a strong economy, to say the least, and in the 90's, plenty of people here had PC's. Actually, due to how easy it was to pirate games, most gamers here were PC gamers until the 2000's, when living standards improved, and consoles became more popular.
@@AlexRoivas I suppose it depends on where you lived. I was middle class, and my family didn't have a PC solely because my mother was convinced we'd do nothing but play games on it (so we got to struggle with writing school papers using all manners of mechanical and electrical typewriters and overpriced word processor machines until she finally caved when I was in high school). My friends ALL had computers in their households some of them several. My one friend had a 386 in his bedroom, which was the machine I played Doom on for the first time. His parents let him have it when they replaced it with a 486. Still, I disagree with the idea that PCs were affordable. Attainable, sure, but they were not cheap. Most of those systems cost $2000-3000 new, which was a lot of money back then. Even if you had a PC back then, a Playstation was about a tenth of the cost, and therefore not a terribly large expense in comparison. Buying a cheap console was a good way to keep the kids off of the work PC, as well (with the danger being that they'd do something to screw it up and lose the important information that was stored on it).
I think the N64 is a failure. There were only around 300 games for it. There should have been something for everyone. Sony PS Vita is also considered a failure but it has 1500 games. They are both cool failures. N64 is not as big a failure as the Amiga CD32.
@@newmediadenmark_ but the SEGA Saturn had over a thousand games and sold way less consoles compared to the N64, and I know that people mention that the Saturn sold much better in Japan, but if you look at the official numbers, the Saturn only managed to sell a couple hundred thousand more units compared to the Nintendo 64 there
Personally, I don’t think N64 was a failure, sure it didn’t have as many games as the PS Vita but it succeeded because of the Nintendo’s first party games and also because of Rare’s games as well.
I honestly don't get that obsession with number of games available for each system. Who the hell owns or even wants to own 300 games for a system? The Nintendo 64 has great games for all sorts of tastes, genres and preferences.
Going all the way back to the mid 1990s I remember thinking Nintendo sticking with cartridges was a mistake. It felt like they weren’t embracing the new generation of gaming consoles.
Actually, the Data in the cartridge is streamed in and out of memory faster which enabled you to add/remove stuff on demand (for example, the Zelda 64 overworld). This wouldn't be possible with CD because its likely the whole overworld wouldn't be able to fit in memory so with a CD after you reach the memory limit and it needs to load the next part of the overworld, the game would have to stop to load the next part of the overworld. Can you imagine you riding around the Zelda 64 overworld on Epona and the game just stops and throws up a loading screen? It would be comically ridiculous.
It's fascinating how TH-cam is so USA-dominated there's things like Nintendo vs SEGA (instead of it being just SEGA until PlayStation arrived), or N64 games being influential, even tho barely anyone played them outside of United States... Seriously, look up sales of other Nintendo consoles outside of USA. Famicom CLONES were big, sure, but official NES? Nope. And after that? The next Nintendo console that had major international appeal was the Switch! Their handhelds did sell, but on home console market Nintendos were virtually unknown outside of America and Japan.
@@callumbush1 Yeah Sega was founded in the 1940's as an American Company but later on the Japanese branch came to dominate Sega and maybe that's why the 2 branches fought against each other more often than trying to fight Nintendo or Sony.
The COD and Fortnite of the PS1 and N64 era was Tomb Raider, FF7, MGS2, Resident Evil and games like Crash Bandicoot. The PS1 had all those games and a lot of them as exclusives. The N64 couldn't even make some of those games work because of the limitations in cartridges. That is why the PS1 had over 100 million consoles sold and the n64 had 30 mil and saturn less than 10 mil. Almost the entire video game player base jumped on the PS1. It was crazy when you think about it.
13:22 Actually, I can think of a few. Snowboard Kids 1 & 2. Shadows of the Empire. WWF No Mercy. Gex 2: Enter the Gecko Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Shadow Man. Doom 64. Mega Man 64. Mischief Makers. Just to name a few I will not accept this N64 Slander and you can make up for it by considering these as ideas for a potential future video.
The Nintendo 64 was a great console, and it was particularly good at McDonald's where it could be hooked up in the play area. I remember seeing Mario drunkenly stumble around when no one was using the console because the joystick was broken.
Alot of great 3rd party games that are better on 64 than on ps1 such as the world is not enough, mission impossible and madden 2000 are just good examples
the Nintendo 64 was NOT a failure. Hiroshi Yamauchi was starting to lose his touch. He was slowly starting to retire, but he couldnt quite do it just yet. He was starting to let his subordinates make decisions for him, partially to figure out who will succeed him. Genyo Takeda was the one making a lot of the decisions on the hardware side of things, and the N64 hardware was basically his call. What it did is scare off the third party support. Nintendo and Rare kept that console alive with their top notch games, but thats about it. When you think about the top games for the N64, almost all of them were Nintendo or Rare titles.
Great video, tho I always cringe a bit when people blame cartridges for the N64's "downfall" because I and many others specifically bought an N64 because the load times on the PS1 were unbearable. SONY's 3rd party assistance and the fact that the PS1 commercials of the time always looked better due to using cut scenes instead of actual gameplay is what suckered me into buying one. But of the two I much prefer the N64.
The SNES was the console to own with all the biggest companies creating for it. That changed for the next generation, id say mainly due to Nintendo using cartridges and the playstation using cds. Cds cost pennies to make, cartridges many dollars so far leas risk for game companies
Good video! When I was a kid, I only was able to get one console per generation. I chose the N64 over the PS1 and Saturn, but I loved it despite it having more limited game releases. Super Mario 64 hooked me and I enjoyed a lot of the N64's games. Also, the 4-player local multiplayer was a huge draw for my family and friends! I still love N64 games to this day and I even revisit some of them occasionally. I do agree that the cartridge format ultimately hurt Nintendo's support, but there are still some excellent exclusive third party games on it. Though, I think Nintendo and Rareware's games drew my attention the most. I've always had a blast playing Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing, Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, the Mario Parties, Kirby 64, Star Fox 64, Wave Race 64, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask.
I prefer N64 cartridges for the instantaneous loading times. Most of what PS1 discs were used for was a total waste anyhow, the FMV movies looked bad then and have aged even more poorly than I even imagined. And story in video games is rarely ever any good.
I see a lot of people forgetting those iconic wrestling games that came out on 64. They should also be on your list. WCW revenge, wrestle mania 2000, and No mercy. Thq was on fire.
I bought one as a teenager. It was commercially a failure and culturally successful and impactful. Goldeneye 007 and Mario Kart 64 saved the console from obscurity. Zelda and Mario kept it alive amongst fans. A lack of third party games was its death knell and using cartridges was the primary cause for this. They wouldn't be relevant again until the Nintendo Wii, which was the least console launch done. The Switch is a great compromise between the Wii audience and the N64 ones.
Bingo. No one I knew had an N64 until like Christmas 1998 for those two games exactly (plus wrestling games), by which time the PS2 was already only a year away. Funny enough the N64 - my original one from that Christmas - is the only one of my old consoles I keep plugged in and play regularly.
1:35 Only in USA and Japan. In all other countries (about 190) SEGA was the only 16-bit console that was a thing. There was no console war here, it was Famiclones > SEGA > PlayStation, we didn't even say Mega Drive, there was just THE Sega, though I heard South America and Western Europe did have popular Segas before and after that. Also official data on sales of NES/Famicom are only ones that Nintendo sold officially, most of the world had Chinese Subors, Dendys and Dynavisions plus various noname Famicom clones, so in reality, there were hundreds of millions of consoles that play Famicom cartridges and PCBs, still sold to this day in fact! So the discrepancy between NES and SNES exposure was WAY higher than data shows. Everybody's family had a Famiclone at some point. Just want to add my 5 cents as a person not from USA, the country Nintendo always had most success. American view on their popularity is majorly skewed, they weren't big worldwide before Switch. Their games were but only during 8-bit era, on those yellow multicarts.
I don't know, Nintendo did have an official presence in many Latin American countries during the '90s and early 2000s, they left during some economic crisis, but came back later and now their games are even dubbed into Neutral Spanish In regards to piracy, yes, many people in countries like Chile and Argentina tended to play Famiclones, Genesis clones and later pirated POne games. But it wasn't like Nintendo was super obscure, I live in Argentina and I my parents bought me a Nintendo 64 and I was able to rent games at Blockbuster
Even in the United States, the Sega Genesis won the 16-bit console war against the Snes by any objective measure. Revisionist history is strong because Sega failed after the 16-bit era in the home console market. Both Genesis and Snes sold about 20M units in the United States. Genesis sold more software and dominated the rental market, which was massive in the U.S. Sega went into the 16-bit era with less than 1% market share, and Nintendo went into it with 95%+ What you will get from people who support the Snes narrative is a bunch of sales numbers "predominantly" from Japan that show very impressive sales numbers. That's a reflection of the Japanese market not the American market.
The difference with that stuff in the second paragraph is that Nintendo never officially licensed the Famiclones and such, those were unofficial products being run without Nintendo's approval.
I’m from Peru and had SNES, and most people I know owned SNES, nobody I knew owned a Genesis, I only ever played it in a special event in my school once.
It’s so interesting to talk about frame rate as it relates to this era of gaming. We didn’t have that term then. There was something about N64 games I didn’t like, but there was no way to articulate exactly what I didn’t like! Now, thanks to you, it’s clear. Thanks for the retcon.
Nice video as always. I felt that PlayStation really took the lead during this period, as Nintendo still relied on Cartridges, and another thing being that Square thought the Cartridge format would not be enough for Final Fantasy VII, so they went to Sony, seeing how the CD-ROM Format was essential for developing said game, as well as their future titles, and Working Designs doing the English Ports of The Lunar series released on SEGA Saturn in Japan for U.S. PlayStation users. Also, for the N64, you had your Mario and Zelda entries, but there was no Metroid entry, and the lack of RPGs on the N64, which is where the PlayStation shined. Both systems used RISC Processors, so programming should not have been that hard, except when you were trying to squeeze so much data into one of Nintendo's Cartridges. Also on the N64, some times games would freeze if you didn't have the Expansion Pack to update RAM and Display. BY the time I was ready to buy a console in 1998, I had been favoring The PlayStation as The SEGA Saturn was Discontinued in the States of that year due to poor sales figures, and The N64 just wasn't doing anything for me except bore me. So, I took The PlayStation as the winning console that Holiday Season. Just a personal opinion, but Nintendo also lost fans because in Japan, they have no "Fair Use" clause in their copyright acts, which is why they love to target fans of their IPs when the fans make tributes to them, no matter where in the world they hail from, and sue them for Copyright Infringement, over something as simple as a Fan-Fiction. And as I see it, the company is run by "Old Men" and as of this moment, many players are seeing the Switch as being obsolete. But to answer the question, IMHO, The N64 was a failure, mostly because Nintendo wasn't completely getting with the times by sticking to the Cartridge format, when SEGA had moved on to the CD-ROM Format... and lest we forget... the PlayStation was born out of Nintendo backing out their deal with Sony for a CD-ROM add-on for the Super NES, and that came back to haunt Nintendo.
Lack of fighting games too. No Street Fighter, Marvel, Tekken, or SNK versus fighters. It's a shame too cuz the N64s 6-button face layout would've been perfect for versus fighters. It did make up for it with Smash Bros and THQ/AKI wrestling games. And at least it had Mortal Kombat.
Pojr has a sponsor????? CONGRATULATIONS!! Something that didn't help the N64 competing with the PlayStation was demo discs. I tried so many new types of games I purchased because of those discs.
I got an N64 for Christmas the year it came out. My mom woke up REALLY early to go to KB Toys in the mall to buy one when word got out that they were going to get a small shipment of them. That was a good Christmas gift.
Nintendo 64 is a success, but not a major success like Sony playstation. What hurt Nintendo is the 3rd party licensing fees, the cartridge and the loss of Japanese dominance. What Nintendo should have done is use zip drives as storage solution instead of expensive cartridges, while not as cheap as cds, and but far more cost effective than cartridges, zip drives hold 64 to 128 Mb of storage allowing for better audio and fmvs cgi and even faster load times, while being difficult to pirate. The 64dd which is a zip drive attachment to n64 should have been the main console of the n64. Even though ps1 used cds. Not all games took up 700 mbs. Also ps1 games had outrageous load times. I remember some games taking a minute or two to load. The same thing happened to the ps2 with load times. But back than in Japan and USA, people are alot more patient with lapd times vs instant culture we have now I'm tech.
4:38 firstly, great looking clean bottle green N64, really stylish! The problem with this controller is how horribly it maps unto other things, it comes up when you try to emulate Nintendo stuff after Super Famicom, bloody GameCube has to use awkward start + A combination to access coded in MGS Twin Snakes, while Dreamcast, Xbox and Dualshock controllers have interchangeable layouts... it also doesn't help that Nintendo don't know English alphabet and have buttons in wrong order (if you're used to Microsoft OR SEGA pads especially). Fun fact, X button is in one of three spots, except on the right.
As us Nintendo fans became teenagers, i thought "why not have music or movies like PS/PS2?" I like that Nintendo mainly stays in its lane game wise but hate that it seems to always lag behind outside of gaming
It did not sell as well for one simple fact, lack of a CD 💿 drive to store media! which in that era was becoming the new cutting edge standard. it made game manufacturing affordable, allowed for bigger higher ambition games. and offered full motion video cinemas.
@ Absolutely agree with you. going from a wonderfully rendered cinema scene to blocky looking characters. but it was all we had back in the day and we loved it. Look at what a success Final Fantasy seven was.
if just the CD were the only problem, then the Sega CD, the CD-i, the 3DO, the CD32, the Playdia, even to some extend the Saturn, would all like a word as to why they weren't smash-bang successes.
@@plaztik767 I’m just grateful that technology has now progressed to a point where hardware is now more than capable of delivering a cinematic experience these days.
@ It was the CD.. N64 was the last major home console that played games off of a standard cartridge that Nintendo released. Nintendo also had the most 3rd party support of any console in that generation. The lack of 3rd party support is what killed the Saturn, 3DO, and Atari Jaguar. When Nintendo went officially to cartridges for N64, many 3rd party developers went to the PlayStation. That is why it was the reigning king of that specific generation of consoles. And was Nintendo’s downfall (then)
In a nutshell, PSX kicked its butt. The N64 was a very good console but failed so hard in Japan that Saturn sold better over there. USA saved the N64 but even then it was a failure, later on, Gamecube would also be a flop and Nintendo really recovered and did an amazing job with the WII sales.
What pulled me from Nintendo was they stay in the past. Look at N64: blurry filters, cart based games. PLAYSTATION: CD based games that looked sharper and played CDs. Memory Cards. Then GAMECUBE: tiny CD based games but a system that can't play CDS or DVDS. Limited to 480P. PS2: DVD and CD playback. Backwards compatibility with PS one. Up to 1080i on same games. Xbox: Hard drive and CD based games, DVD playback (with extra part) also 1080i playback, multiplayer games. The pattern continues with the Wii. I just feel the others give you more for your dollar.
The question that should be asked to determine if the N64 was a commercial success is whether or not Nintendo made money from the N64. In 2012, Nintendo reported its first loss in over 30 years. This is over a decade after the GameCube replaced the N64 as Nintendo’s primary console. It would be hard to blame the N64 for their 2012 operating loss. Simply because of the fact that Nintendo was profitable the entire time the N64 was their primary console and the company remained profitable for over a decade after it was replaced seems like a commercial success to me.
@xnetpc it was definitely a successful console if Nintendo managed to profit off it!! Anyone who disagrees is gonna have an extremely hard time convincing me different!! If they broke even or lost money then yes I'll say it failed but if they profit off it even if it sold worse then the Snes the fact that they still made profit tells me it was successful!!
I had been an almost religious NES enthusiast, a bit less so with the SNES, and then this one lost me to Sony. I hated the controller and Playstation had so many more exciting games. Had you told me in 1992 that the SNES would be the last Nintendo hardware I'd ever buy, I wouldn't have believed it.
Actually, the N64's "region locking" is easy to get around (at least when it comes to NTSC regions): it uses a same tab and slot setup as its predecessor. You'll have to disassemble the system to do it safely (which just means buying an inexpensive security bit), but it's simply a matter of drilling a couple holes in the inner casing of the cartridge slot or installing a 3D printed replacement. That being said, it's not really worth it (unless you're looking to save money by buying the Japanese versions of games, which are generally a lot cheaper, like MK64). There are only a handful of games that Japan got that North America didn't that A: don't require knowledge of the Japanese language, and B: are worth playing (most notably "Sin and Punishment").
whats crazy, as a middleschooler.... i didnt know many people with a ps1. it was all about n64. mario kart, mario party, the wcw and wwf games were insanely fun. It may have been a worldwide failure but where i lived, it was so much fun. 4 people playing games together.
12:23- This is a lie. Developers loved cartridges, because it made their work easier & faster. Publishers hated cartridges, because of how expensive the media was compared to cds.
N64 was not a failure. It sold a lot of units and had great games. It had its own "Nintendo market" that Sony could never satisfy. It fell short in 3rd party rivalry, but its 1st party games were more than enough to warrant a purchase. Smash Bros. 64 and Star Fox 64 come to mind personally, but there were dozens of AAA games you couldn't get on PS1. PS1 similarly had its own market of games you couldn't get on N64, but they were both good enough to warrant coexistence.
Tactically these were not region locked. If you were able to get the cartridge in their it can it won't play it it comes down to a hardware issue not a software issue the notches on the bottom of the cartridge means something basically they're just not the same for each country you could either swap the boards with a different cartridge is one option or I think things online showing how you can fix your 64 so we can play everything. Pause is also with 3D printed model option I've seen. Bottom line is you can easily play any countries game on any system it's just a matter of getting the cartridge in there. For an example if you have a ROM cart can you put a Japanese rom on there it will play no problem. Cuz just like I said it's a hardware issue not a software issue so that's only half true that it's region locked
This is true, Nintendo utilized a very primitive way to keep the console region lock, just like the Super Nintendo. I didn't go into enough detail about this.
@@pojr you should make a video about various methods of region-locking later, when I was a kid I always heard about "chipped" consoles, I think that was to remove dev limitations on them. Like to play burned CDs and Japanese stuff.
I was joked on for having a Sega. Everyone else had a Nintendo. I wanted to be different though and try something new. The Sega games did look better, but there were more games I wanted to play on Nintendo and eventually got a Super Nintendo after the first Sega disappointment. I never remember many games for the Sega either and Nintendo kept releasing more and better games.
to offer a perspective on why i think the N64 failed in the UK... the UK was in a recession in the 1990s, and video game consoles were much more expensive in Europe than in the US and Japan. a video game console was once regarded as an expensive machine in the UK. on top of that, N64 games were £50 - £60, which was huge at the time. the console was far too expensive for most people. on top of that, it needs to be added that piracy was a problem on the PS1, which made the console even more attractive to UK games because it was easy to obtain dozens of pirated games. most people i knew with a PS1 had a chipped console and a pile of copied games.
I'd have to say it was the game selection. PSX was far superior to N64 for games. Its a generation thing too. All of us that were children during NES and SNES were now teenagers for the N64. We weren't into kids games anymore. We wanted the Tomb Raiders and Metal Gear Solid type games.
The N64 controller was a terrible controller. Here's the two reasons why. 1. You spent 99 percent of the time holding it for analog. Maybe even 99.9%. , second and the biggest one of all, no one has ever used the design again. I was there when it came out and we all tried to not talk about how it sucked. But it did. Lol
I - and a lot of kids in the suburbs I knew - went NES - Genesis - PlayStation - N64. Only one or two kids I knew even had an SNES and it was GoldenEye, Mario Kart and the wrestling games that got us interested in picking up N64 around 1998.
Its not like the N64 sucked its just that it was the first Nintendo system to face really strong competition. Sega didnt push them anywhere close to as hard as Sony.
It's a good video, also you have to know, that the super nintendo was not in the best of situations, due to no CD support, absurd censorship policies and also making life impossible for developers since the NES. 👻👻
The N64 was ass. The lack of storage made everything look terrible. The fog and short draw distance on everything was just terrible. Sticking to cartridges was a stupid mistake. Also, 79.99 for a game? Really? 79.99 in 1997 is 155 dollars today. I bought one, and only purchased mostly 1st party titles. I don’t regret buying one but got far more out of my PS 1. I got more out of my Sega CD than my N64.
Nintendo was all too willing to hamstring itself and its third party devs, not to mention driving up the cost to the end user in order to temporarily thwart pirates. You can't inconvenience LIT-TER-RUH-LY EVERYONE and still expect to stay on top
Dear pojr, I’ve been enjoying your videos more and more as your flow and editing skills keep improving. I really love watching videos about the gaming consoles of my youth, and you do a fantastic job of keeping things interesting by choosing great topics. Thanks, man! 😊 I have a slightly different take on the concept of 'popularity' you discussed. While it’s true that Nintendo sold fewer consoles with each generation after the NES era, I think the number of games available for each console also played a big role. I got my first NES in 1999 (a very late time for it), and I was aware of other consoles of the time; SNES, Genesis, and PS1 were all common around me. But I NEVER felt the need to have them because there were already SO MANY games to explore on the NES. I think a lot of people might’ve felt the same way. For example, many people might not have considered buying a PS2 if their PS1 was still satisfying their needs. The same could be said for NES > SNES and Genesis > Saturn transitions. In my opinion, the difference in sales was mostly driven by the innovations each company brought to the table. Even after all these years, I’ve played most of the games on various consoles through emulators, and there are still tons of NES games I want to check out. They feel both nostalgic and genuinely fun! :)
Everyone remembers their 1st, and N64 was king in our circle.❤ When it comes to 5th gen consoles, it feels like a matter of style vs substance. Yes, PlayStation games had rich audio and detailed textures thanks to CDs having way more memory than carts. However, with non-existent load times on carts on a console with twice the muscle ment N64 games could run buttery smooth at blazing speeds. To this day, 1st & 2nd party devs pull it off by keeping their model designs simple and not let photo realism hog the RAM. (Also PlayStation hardware couldn't do fractions resulting in 3D models with janky animation.) Anoth factor where the respective consoles' target audience. PlayStation was cast as the ambitious cool kid while N64 remained family friendly like its predisessors. (Sega was neither and the odd one out.) There's also Nintendo's enduring philosophy of applying new ideas with what's already available rather than race for cutting edge tech. CDs are cheap, but would a CD based N64 be more expensive to both make & sell? (Yet in retrospect it was proof that cartridge consoles could still be bad asses.) Naturally greedy publishers want to make games as quick and easy as possible; unlike Nintendo's GEOLOGIC patience that can wether out any storm of beefy competitors. I reckon the Big N knew what it was doing sticking to carts, and with devs flocking to Sony's wonderbox, Nintendo was forced to make its 1st party titles more crutial than ever. N64 competed on price and quality over quantity. The Big N's short term sacrifices for long term benefits keep them in the game long term. They avoided Sega's mistake trying to make their mascots grow up with their fans; they remain the same simple kid friendly safe haven. With PlayStation & XBox as hardware trailblazers, Nintendo seems to have more elbow room in the back seat.
I played the demo at Wal-Mart. The controller was a hard no for me. First Nintendo console I didn't buy. I tried mario 64 later through emulation. Not a fan.
the n64 was released on september 26, 1996. I remember picking it up from the electronics boutique in king of prussia, pa. I had to buy pilotwings 64 and mario 64 separately. Then it was over a month later they released the 3rd game, wave race 64. One of the main reasons I think nintendo fell behind was... NOT ENOUGH GAMES.
While I have no opinion if the N64 was a commercial failure or not I find it better then the OG PlayStation. Because of the CM of Super Smash Bros. Happy together by the Turtles is permanently associated with that Super Smash Bros. CM
N64 only lacked in quantity of certain genres like RPGs. But it did not fail to provide excellent quality for fans of that genre. Paper Mario is nowadays seen as one of the all time great ones.
In my case I went from Nintendo, SNES, a little N64 into online computer gaming and never went back to console, so it was the internet that beat Nintendo for me.
Nintendo locked out third parties from Sega's consoles during the 8 bit era. The master system would have competed much better if third parties were allowed to make for it too. Luckily it was deemed illegal and so Genesis got third party support.
The N64 was definitely a console that can be described of "something that allows for better stuff but is more expensive to produce". Sure, cartridges allows the N64 games to have shorter load times, but unfortunately, they were more expensive to produce. But boy, the fact that it failed commercially in Japan because of lack of RPGs is really surprising in my opinion. Oh yeah, not only RPGs ended up moving onto the PS1 or Saturn - fighting games ended up moving to these platforms too, though there was still a decent amount of fighting games for the N64.
Nintendo lost its market lead during this time but it also successfully carved out its niche as a console developer that has enabled the company to survive against the muscle of Microsoft and Sony. Sega failed to carve out a niche with the Saturn or Dreamcast which is one of the reasons Sega is no longer a console developer.
The controller looked and felt wierd but as soon as you appreciate jumping into 3d with zelda for the first time and having a thumbstick instead of a dpad it rounded out perfectly.
I always loved the N64 personally. It has some of my favorite games ever, like Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time, and Starfox 64. Oh yes, Mario Kart 64. Failure? In my eyes as a young teen I would have said hells no bruh
Nintendo should take a risk and capitalize on the mistakes of Microsoft’s and Sony and come out with a powerful console that is user friendly with third party developers and have an all in one entertainment system. Nintendo isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and needs to get back to their dominance. Sony has the lead due to hype this generation but has made many mistakes and has people questioning why they even bought a ps5, Microsoft is still reeling from their disastrous Xbox one reveal, meanwhile Nintendo is still loved for the most part. They need to just throw it all out there and stop being stingy with their older IPs
Maybe, but there’s no doubting the cultural impact of the N64 and its lineup of games. Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time & Majora’s Mask, Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Smash Bros, Turok, and others are all deeply beloved games.
N64 became third place and NIntendo stayed third place throughout the 2000's.. I didn't like it when it debuted and only got one because someone was selling me their console with some games and I said 'sure' as it was very cheap to get it, the memory pack, and a few games, for a budget price. I wasn't even wanting one.. and the only other game I ever bought for it, was Bad Fur Day.
5:46 why is this anyways I always hear about how certain shows are only shown in certain areas and they constantly switch them and all that other junk why can't everyone just have access to the entire Netflix library at all times why do they got to switch it around like that. The only excuse for that should really be if it was a show that was specifically made for that country but even if that is the case everything has subtitles nowadays and make a dub the voices so even if it is the case who cares we're paying for it on top of it all too. People shouldn't have to do stuff like get a VPN just to watch what they want. It's kind of a dumb system if you ask me
Licensing issues - different IPs may have different licensing (or lack thereof) for different countries. Also governments may censor certain shows/movies.
It's about distribution rights. For example, Netflix gets exclusive rights to show WWE in Europe, so other platforms can't host their shows anymore. Imagine the opposite situation. Or Peacock got license to show some series in USA, but HBO got to show in UK, so you got to jump loopholes... A lot of times distributors pay for the rights, so public broadcaster like BBC or Suspilne will pay budget money to show Olympics in their home countries, and put their own ads on top, so they can't allow other services to do the same. But countries that didn't pay for rights had free streams on TH-cam.
The N64 is multiplayer mekkah. I recall PS2 games that attempted to be multiplayer / arcade experiences that fell short of what the N64 accomplished in the 90s. Everybody do yourselves a favor and give the Battletanx games a try--1 for the story, and 2 for the superior gameplay.
Released to late but more importantly, Sony killed them with 3rd party games. There was something for everyone with the PS1, that was the first console that achieved that. The cartridges were fantastic for 1st party N64 games but CDs were easier for 3rd parties. It could hold a lot more data and sound could be used off the track. What a generation though, the only way it could have been better is if SEGA supported the Saturn until the Dreamcast launch
I bought the original NES, Super NES, but didn’t buy the N64. One of my friends bought it but didn’t buy many games for it. Other friends bought the Sony PS.
Yeah I remember I first got a N64...Then later I got a PS1 for christmas. I literally never went back to play N64 besides maybe maybe 2 games. Playstation beat N64 in almost every way. The Game selection for N64 got old fast.
Carts were just plain faster for throughput and the N64's architecture was and still is advanced in its own unique way. Most Playstation games padded out the disc space with CD audio and FMV scenes, actual game data was often around 200mb. Some conservative thinking and clever programming could optimize that down to about the size of an N64 cart, which is why there were /some/ cross platform games like Ms. Pac Man Maze Madness.
This was the first time Nintendo got what I like to call "Big Head Syndrome", when just because they were industry leaders, they knew best(nothing could be further from the truth) . First off, Nintendo ruled 3rd parties with an iron grip, and most saw the medium of CDs as a way to not only make better games, but make them cheaper to boot. We have all seen for 20+ years how slow Nintendo is when it comes to adopting industry standards, and the N64 was no different. They said they kept cartridges due to better speeds, and whatnot, but that was just them saying we want to stick with carts, as it makes us the most money and we can best control 3rd parties this way. The 3rd parties rebeled and the rest is history. Even when they finally took a step forward with using CDs with the GC, they took two steps back by using mini disc to be different for differents sake. While no one likes loading times, it was a small tradeoff for all the amazing new things the medium brought to the table and the PS1 dominated. It took Nintendo several generations to get companies back like Square Enix who they pissed off with their bullish behavior. When given the chance, Nintendo will always do what they want, if its good or bad, they don't care, just so long as they can say we know best, the outcome really doesn't matter.
I don’t think the Nintendo 64 commercial failure given I remember being able to buy games for it for at least 5 years. It was the second bestselling console for the fifth generation. The N64 definitely had a smaller game library than the PlayStation.
Actually, the Data in the cartridge is streamed in and out of memory faster which enabled you to add/remove stuff on demand (for example, the Zelda 64 overworld). This wouldn't be possible with CD because its likely the whole overworld wouldn't be able to fit in memory so with a CD after you reach the memory limit and it needs to load the next part of the overworld, the game would have to stop to load the next part of the overworld. Can you imagine you riding around the Zelda 64 overworld on Epona and the game just stops and throws up a loading screen? It would be comically ridiculous.
2 things that might've helped Nintendo get out to a better start with N64 would've been to cancel DKC3 for SNES & have an N64 enhanced version of what they had already developed on SNES ready for N64 launch. 2nd- UMK3 should never have been released for SNES. If they had the team that did UMK3 on SNES focus solely on getting a perfect (aside from the CD-quality music which would've required a much bigger cart) port of it ready for N64 launch plus making Motaro & Kahn playable from the character screen with Rain & Noob & maybe adding a background or 2 from the 1st 2 MKs (Courtyard, Goro's lair, Kahn's Arena, Wasteland, Dead Pool) along with Rayden, Baraka & Goro being hidden fighters, it would've been just as good as what MK Trilogy ended up like & there would've been a couple more good options at launch with Mario 64 & Pilotwings. Nintendo also wasted time & money on the Virtual Boy, but I don't know if that contributed to delaying N64 development
Go to piavpn.com/pojr to get 83% off on Private Internet Access! That’s just $2.03 a month, and you also get 4 extra months completely for free!
L
Mario 64 was not revolutionary watch Kurriochi's videos about the N64. The ps1 was objectivally better.
No
@@theothenintendomaster3717 the ps1 ran off of a duo 32 bit chip system no it was not lol
@@imspiritual5590 But The N64 had the harder to develop for Hardware due to the cartridges, You need 20 N64 cartridges to run FF7 on the thing, On Ps1 only 3 cd,s nuff said.
I think Nintendo liked cartridges because they were harder to pirate. Even more than their impact on load times.
There's also some rumors floating around that Nintendo stuck with cartridges since they invested a lot of money in a circuit and cartridge manufacturing plant
I think they are more reliable too. People rarely mention that. Sometimes a disc gets a tiny scratch on it and that ruins the game's ability to work. I remember I had a FF9 disc that looked perfect, and yet it would freeze at a certain cutscene and prevent progress. Cartridges don't have this issue.
@@graalcloud yeah true
Sony (alongside Phillips) also owned the CD-Format too, so Nintendo would likely have to pay Sony to use CDs as the main format on their N64.
That and the loading. In interviews with hardware designers for the N64, they usually state shorter load times and harder piracy was why they went with cartridges, and harder piracy was the sole reason they chose to make mini, proprietary discs for the GameCube instead of just using CDs or DVDs by then. Unfortunately, all their attempts to stop piracy more so just hurt themselves worse than piracy ever had hurt them.
I was 6 in 2000 and the frame rate never bothered me. I don't really recall anyone older calling it slow either. I think it might just be modern expectations clashing there.
@@Digiflower5 low frame rate not as big a problem on CRT
We never complained about the frame rate when throwing tons of Nbombs on Perfect Dark ether.
frame rates were always fine. Shytty blurry graphics was always the issue
@MrMarcodarko Speaking of both: Quake 1 for the Nintendo 64 plays great, fast and responsive. And you have the video option to disable the "filter", which means, you get more defined graphics, less blurry. I find curious how Quake 1 is seldom mentioned when addressing N64 game library, because it was one of the most important PC games in the 90's, and since the Saturn port is flawed and doesn't even use the real Quake engine, the only way to play Quake without a properly upgraded PC, back then, was on the N64.
@MrMarcodarkoyeah but back when those were the main consoles, that was the most realistic shit you’ve ever seen so yet another standard from modern times
N64 lost because of 5 main reasons:
* Launched way too late
* Used cartridges instead of CDs
* Had one of the worst controllers ever
* Limited 3° party support.
* Had to compete against a titan
The N64 controller was exciting and revolutionary for it's time. As a teen when it came out I can tell you no was loving any controller more than the n64 controller.
Cartridges were an advantage. No loading times.
I used to skip school to play the demo version at toys r us. Literally Years (in my child mind) before it was available for purchase. The demo reset every 10 minutes. I didn't care.
@FREEDOM_OR_DEATH_ true, but the Playstation controller won the game. Now we all have x-box idiots messing with the configuration. I dislike the x-box dead switching of orientation. I bought an 8bitdo pro 2 because the x-box controller is a p.o.s. design.
@@AkirathehuskyNot for game devs as they were more expensive to make, and there was a lot more risk if your game didn't sell well. The limitations were showing towards the end of the N64s life needing the expansion pack as well.
lack or rpgs, fighting games, arcade ports and 3rd party support really hurt the system. The first party titles were god tier though and up there with ps1's best games
NES was a big success.
SNES the restrictions on third party made them start looking elsewhere.
N64 was the moment old third party said enough is enough and stopped focusing on Nintendo as their preferred machine.
And now in the long term they are paying the price of making the wrong decision. They made the best decision for short term profits but now look where they are. Konami, Capcom, Square, just a shell of their former selves. Their game franchises were once seen by Nintendo consumers as synonymous with Mario and Zelda. Now they can't even be found in the bargain bin, a total disaster.
The SNES in other words signalled Nintendo’s demise with the N64 officially breaking the camel’s back.
NES was a big success in North America and Japan. Other regions, like South America, Europe, Asia (excluding Japan), or the Oceania weren't fond of the NES for it's exorbitant price point and Nintendo's disinterest in advertising it. In all of those regions, the Sega Master System actually was much more popular, a household name, especially in Europe and South America. The problem was even worse for SNES, even less people in those regions were attracted to it, and so the Genesis (Mega Drive outside of North America) was much more popular than the SNES.
@@koolaid33 I'm from Brazil, officially Master System was the more popular, but for each kid with one there was 5 with NES clones (me included lol)
@@graalcloud I'd say most of those companies are doing alright, excellent in the case of Capcom, but the thing is that not having the major support of third-parties made Nintendo work harder in developing their own software, in various aspects is kind of incredible how well Nintendo's own games sell, any other company would kill for those numbers
The N64 definitely wasn't a commercial failure, or really a failure in any other way than it got vastly outsold by the PlayStation. Considered on its own merit though, it actually sold pretty well (more than the Saturn, Master System, PC Engine, Neo Geo, Dreamcast, GameCube, original Xbox, Wii U, etc, and in fact sold around the same number of units as the Sega Genesis), was a revolutionary console in many ways for its time, and it gave us some of the greatest games of all time too. So, yeah, sales weren't mind boggling, but in every other way it was a success.
Saturn was a failure
greatest games of all time....thats like maybe 4 games. Everything else sucked
@MrMarcodarko When people like you speak, you waste everyone's air.
@MrMarcodarkoyea kid ur buggin , way way more than 4. Some of the greatest games of all time atleast 15 of them came out on the n64
I was a psx kid and I remember that every kid that had a console, it was the ps1. It arrived in just the right time and got very popular towards the late 90s. Nintendo lost but later recovered even with the Gamecube, which didn't sold well but Seg was out of business and the new competitor (Xbox) wasn't that tough
One of the additional pros of the N64 cartridges was that many of the games allowed players to save their progress right there on the cartridge. Of course, that depended on the game, but from what I recall, many of the popular titles allowed it. It didn't take much to save a for PS1 game - just buy a Memory Card - but Memory Cards had limited space.
I think a huge issue was that other companies focused on games for older people with an income, and Nintendo focused more on games for kids and weird controllers.
The N64 was a moderate success, but the choice to stick with cartridges was a mistake in terms of business.
Some great games on the N64 no doubt, but I reckon it would’ve been more successful had it taken the CD format route.
graphics would have actually looked good. N64 had good 3d at the expense of ugly blurrt graphics
One discrepancy at 12:00, not every N64 game is 64MB in size.
N64 cartridges at launch were 8MB (including Super Mario 64) which is quite small, and then 16MB was introduced in 1997 or 98, used for games like Banjo-Kazooie, then 32MB was introduced in 1998 for games like Ocarina of Time.
Only three games ended up using 64MB, since the bigger the cartridge size, the more expensive it gets and 64MB was only available late in the lifecycle.
Most games were between 16MB and 32MB. 64MB is quite rare
Imagine trying to cram Final Fantasy VII onto an 8MB or 16MB cart
This is true, I didn't go into enough detail. The maximum was 64 MB, but many games were under that.
Good information but he didn't say that every game was 64MB in size. He said "games could hold up to 64MB" not that every game was that size but in the end that is all they had to work with. He actually said kilobytes but we don't need to be pedantic as we know what he meant.
This is insane, and even if you remove all CD music and videos, most PlayStation games wouldn't fit in 64 Megabytes, let alone LESS than that. What did Nintendo expect? No wonder their console only sold in one (1) country. Did anyone actually see a Nintendo 64 in Europe? As in, not a picture online but physically. I never heard about it until angry reviews of Superman 64 and the like, it seems N64 was a USA-only thing like the country or a baseball.
@@KasumiRINA not from Europe, but Nintendo kept selling their consoles here in Latin America, while the original PlayStation became a huge hit due to how easy was to pirate its games, Sony didn't actually had any official presence, but Nintendo did actually air commercials for their games in Spanish (despite their games not having official translations into Neutral Spanish until 2007) and you could rent Nintendo 64 games on Blockbuster until the mid-2000s
I think if they had made FFVII on N64 it would have possibly sold even better than it did. Since most of Square's loyal customer base were Nintendo enjoyers at that time. I know I had to wait 1 year for the PC port of FF7 since I greatly preferred N64 (no way in HELL was I gonna miss out on Mario 64, Star Fox 64, etc)
Turok was actually a fun FPS shooter for the N64, in fact it was the first game on the system not published by Nintendo to have sold 1 million copies!
Isn't fps short for first person shooter? You kind of doubled it lol
Turok was mind blowing at the time. Such a good game. The ps5 remaster is awesome. Same with Turok 2?
sure as a n64 games, but compared to other shooters on pc and ps, game sucked and had blurry ugly graphics
@@matejalabshave you ever heard someone say ATM machine?
Turok didn’t age well, but when it was released, it was amazing. The controls were perfect. I still think the N64 controller is the best controller for FPS type games. I actually hate playing first person shooters on the Xbox and PlayStation controllers, but I game on a PC now. Keyboard and mouse is better than any controller.
I remember asking my mom if she heard Mario say “so long gay bowser” as a kid, always been nostalgic
Yeah in terms of number of units sold it was a "failure" compared to PlayStation, but in terms of influence (basically writing the book on how 3D platforming should be done) and franchises (we wouldn't have Smash without it) and legacy (Ocarina and Majora's Mask are now hailed as classics) it's a HUGE WIN. I can't help but think Nintendo was more than happy with the profit and continues to milk the IP from the era to this day.
i hated majora's mask
As far as influence, it also put multiplayer FPS into the mainstream, setting the stage for Halo and eventually the Maddening of the genre.
But that's the thing aside from the platforming (and frankly most of the big improvements came with Sunshine and Galaxy) which is minor (I loved Astrobot/Galaxy 3) its influence was largely confined to Nintendo and not the industry as a whole.
@@NoahAlcantarSUCKS-jf8so ahh but Majoras Mask is my personal favorite Zelda game!! Lol
N64 launched 6 months too late. to give playstation a year head start in USA was a big mistake by Nintendo. March 1996 would have been a great time to launch N64 in USA.
This wouldn't have done too much eitherway. Yeah nintendo would've gotten better initial sales, but third parties wouldn't really work in their restrictions, a CD-ROM was ten times bigger then the biggest n64 cart.
And it was also supposed to Launch in 1995 as the Ultra 64... and in 1994, the N64 hardware was already there, (with the additional Hard Drive for KI's and later KI-2's Graphics & Animations). The Hardware for "Killer Instinct" & later "Killer Instinct 2" was in fact a coin-operated version of the N64's hardware, before they started tweaking it for a home release.
Even though Cruisin' USA was also slated for the N64, the arcade hardware for that game was completely different as MIDWAY developed the game in-house on their own hardware (The MIDWAY V-Unit) for Nintendo and would later port it to the N64. (Little known fact: The Trophy Girl in that game, is Anutza Herling aka XXX Actress Shyla Foxxx).
But USA is the only country where Nintendo 64 was actually successful, like half of N64 sales were in United States... Americans have their own bubble where people actually played GoldenEye and Mario 64, like outside of one country, these games were absolutely unknown until the modern times. I haven't seen a single N64 and I live in Europe, in other places it's worse. It just wasn't a thing outside of USA. It had zero chances in countries that didn't even get Super Nintendo. Which is most countries.
@@SpiffyoNintendo never gave third parties any favourable terms during the NES and SNES era too, so with Sony offering third parties a much favourable terms, that’s when Nintendo lost support.
@@KasumiRINA in fact both The Gcn and og Xbox had simillar sales in Europe(4.7 MY Gcn, 5.5 My Xbox), but those were really really low compared to the sales of the ps2 at like 25 million.
N64 was the last Nintendo console I played. I had a blast with it! I think marketing made me switch over to Playstation. I was in my teens & I saw the Nintendo GameCube like "that's for kids". Been a Playstation guy ever since.
I had the N64 and PS1 both and I loved my N64. I owned a Gamecube and loved it as well too, but the N64 is still one of my all-time favorite consoles.
@@quann06 I wish they would make another console. I couldn't get into the Wii & the Switch wasn't for me. I'd get one for my son though.
"Nintendo GameCube for kids." Metroid Prime series.
In a way, carts actually made sense. People forget that before the ps1, LITERALLY EVERY OTHER CD-BASED CONSOLE FAILED with the exception of possibly the PC Engine in Japan. How was Nintendo supposed to know Sony would be the first company to actually use the CDs for something other than FMV games?
You're forgetting a big factor: cost. CD drives were expensive when those earlier consoles had released, but by the time the Playstation came out, they had dropped in price a bit. Plus, Sony were manufacturing their own drives, rather than buying them from other companies like Sega and others had to do.
The biggest problem with cartridges back then wasn't storage space, but cost. N64 carts cost well over 10x per cartridge to manufacture versus pressing a disc. Thus while the format made the system itself a bit cheaper, the games were much more expensive. While Sony was selling games for $40 or less, N64 games were $50 or more. It was pretty obvious based on memory prices alone that CDs were the better media to use at that time, but Nintendo wanted to maintain their manufacturing control, which is ultimately why they chose to stick with cartridges. They even wanted the Gamecube to be cartridge-based.
I think Nintendo put much faith in people's intelligence. When the Playstation came out, PC's were already affordable, and had a ton load of great games available. If you had a PC, which obviously wasn't only for gaming duh, to buy a Playstation didn't make much sense, in comparison to buying a N64, looking at the exclusive games.
Wrong. Growing up in a high middle class family barely anyone had PCs and the people that did used it for work stuff. Almost all gamers played console games. In the 90s PCs were still very expensive it wasn't until the super early 2000s that you had Dell and eMachine PCs for less than 1000 with celeron CPUs.
@@AlexRoivas Are you an American? I ask because I'm Portuguese, and my country was never a strong economy, to say the least, and in the 90's, plenty of people here had PC's. Actually, due to how easy it was to pirate games, most gamers here were PC gamers until the 2000's, when living standards improved, and consoles became more popular.
@@AlexRoivas I suppose it depends on where you lived. I was middle class, and my family didn't have a PC solely because my mother was convinced we'd do nothing but play games on it (so we got to struggle with writing school papers using all manners of mechanical and electrical typewriters and overpriced word processor machines until she finally caved when I was in high school). My friends ALL had computers in their households some of them several. My one friend had a 386 in his bedroom, which was the machine I played Doom on for the first time. His parents let him have it when they replaced it with a 486.
Still, I disagree with the idea that PCs were affordable. Attainable, sure, but they were not cheap. Most of those systems cost $2000-3000 new, which was a lot of money back then.
Even if you had a PC back then, a Playstation was about a tenth of the cost, and therefore not a terribly large expense in comparison. Buying a cheap console was a good way to keep the kids off of the work PC, as well (with the danger being that they'd do something to screw it up and lose the important information that was stored on it).
I think the N64 is a failure. There were only around 300 games for it. There should have been something for everyone. Sony PS Vita is also considered a failure but it has 1500 games. They are both cool failures. N64 is not as big a failure as the Amiga CD32.
@@newmediadenmark_ but the SEGA Saturn had over a thousand games and sold way less consoles compared to the N64, and I know that people mention that the Saturn sold much better in Japan, but if you look at the official numbers, the Saturn only managed to sell a couple hundred thousand more units compared to the Nintendo 64 there
Personally, I don’t think N64 was a failure, sure it didn’t have as many games as the PS Vita but it succeeded because of the Nintendo’s first party games and also because of Rare’s games as well.
I honestly don't get that obsession with number of games available for each system. Who the hell owns or even wants to own 300 games for a system? The Nintendo 64 has great games for all sorts of tastes, genres and preferences.
Going all the way back to the mid 1990s I remember thinking Nintendo sticking with cartridges was a mistake. It felt like they weren’t embracing the new generation of gaming consoles.
Sticking with cartridges, and not growing up along with their fanbase. N64 had a reputation as a kid's console for babies.
Censored Mortal Kombat drove me to buy a Genesis alongside my SNES, and Nintendo's previous hold on me never recovered.
Actually, the Data in the cartridge is streamed in and out of memory faster which enabled you to add/remove stuff on demand (for example, the Zelda 64 overworld). This wouldn't be possible with CD because its likely the whole overworld wouldn't be able to fit in memory so with a CD after you reach the memory limit and it needs to load the next part of the overworld, the game would have to stop to load the next part of the overworld. Can you imagine you riding around the Zelda 64 overworld on Epona and the game just stops and throws up a loading screen? It would be comically ridiculous.
It's fascinating how TH-cam is so USA-dominated there's things like Nintendo vs SEGA (instead of it being just SEGA until PlayStation arrived), or N64 games being influential, even tho barely anyone played them outside of United States... Seriously, look up sales of other Nintendo consoles outside of USA. Famicom CLONES were big, sure, but official NES? Nope. And after that? The next Nintendo console that had major international appeal was the Switch! Their handhelds did sell, but on home console market Nintendos were virtually unknown outside of America and Japan.
Watch Kurriochi's videos(he is European) and shows that the perspective of the US gamers is very very wrong.
Agreed here in the UK Sega dominated in the early 90’s and then it was Sony, Nintendo wouldn’t dominate the home market until the Wii
It's an American company
@@callumbush1 Yeah Sega was founded in the 1940's as an American Company but later on the Japanese branch came to dominate Sega and maybe that's why the 2 branches fought against each other more often than trying to fight Nintendo or Sony.
@@theothenintendomaster3717 I meant TH-cam is an American company.
The COD and Fortnite of the PS1 and N64 era was Tomb Raider, FF7, MGS2, Resident Evil and games like Crash Bandicoot. The PS1 had all those games and a lot of them as exclusives. The N64 couldn't even make some of those games work because of the limitations in cartridges. That is why the PS1 had over 100 million consoles sold and the n64 had 30 mil and saturn less than 10 mil. Almost the entire video game player base jumped on the PS1. It was crazy when you think about it.
Oh they could make those games work, it just wasn't worth it. RE2 n64 edition provides the proof.
13:22 Actually, I can think of a few.
Snowboard Kids 1 & 2.
Shadows of the Empire.
WWF No Mercy.
Gex 2: Enter the Gecko
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.
Shadow Man.
Doom 64.
Mega Man 64.
Mischief Makers.
Just to name a few
I will not accept this N64 Slander and you can make up for it by considering these as ideas for a potential future video.
Yeah N64 has the best wrestling games of any console. NFL Blitz, NBA Showtime, also classics.
@patrickwright8552 those are literally multiplats on other consoles
Snowboard kids, turok and mischief makers are literally the only exclusives on this list
The Nintendo 64 was a great console, and it was particularly good at McDonald's where it could be hooked up in the play area. I remember seeing Mario drunkenly stumble around when no one was using the console because the joystick was broken.
Alot of great 3rd party games that are better on 64 than on ps1 such as the world is not enough, mission impossible and madden 2000 are just good examples
the Nintendo 64 was NOT a failure.
Hiroshi Yamauchi was starting to lose his touch. He was slowly starting to retire, but he couldnt quite do it just yet. He was starting to let his subordinates make decisions for him, partially to figure out who will succeed him. Genyo Takeda was the one making a lot of the decisions on the hardware side of things, and the N64 hardware was basically his call.
What it did is scare off the third party support. Nintendo and Rare kept that console alive with their top notch games, but thats about it. When you think about the top games for the N64, almost all of them were Nintendo or Rare titles.
Great video, tho I always cringe a bit when people blame cartridges for the N64's "downfall" because I and many others specifically bought an N64 because the load times on the PS1 were unbearable. SONY's 3rd party assistance and the fact that the PS1 commercials of the time always looked better due to using cut scenes instead of actual gameplay is what suckered me into buying one. But of the two I much prefer the N64.
The SNES was the console to own with all the biggest companies creating for it. That changed for the next generation, id say mainly due to Nintendo using cartridges and the playstation using cds. Cds cost pennies to make, cartridges many dollars so far leas risk for game companies
The NES and SNES era were times third parties grew to resent Nintendo then, so with Sony’s arrival it’s no wonder why they immediately jumped ship.
I cant imagine what it must have been like in Nintendo HQ every time Square launched a new playstation game.
N64 is my favorite console of all time, the multi-player and RAREWARE lineup alone is goated
As you said, I passed on the Nintendo 64 because of the lack of RPGs, especially from SquareSoft.
Good video! When I was a kid, I only was able to get one console per generation. I chose the N64 over the PS1 and Saturn, but I loved it despite it having more limited game releases. Super Mario 64 hooked me and I enjoyed a lot of the N64's games. Also, the 4-player local multiplayer was a huge draw for my family and friends! I still love N64 games to this day and I even revisit some of them occasionally.
I do agree that the cartridge format ultimately hurt Nintendo's support, but there are still some excellent exclusive third party games on it. Though, I think Nintendo and Rareware's games drew my attention the most. I've always had a blast playing Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing, Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, the Mario Parties, Kirby 64, Star Fox 64, Wave Race 64, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask.
I prefer N64 cartridges for the instantaneous loading times. Most of what PS1 discs were used for was a total waste anyhow, the FMV movies looked bad then and have aged even more poorly than I even imagined. And story in video games is rarely ever any good.
I see a lot of people forgetting those iconic wrestling games that came out on 64. They should also be on your list. WCW revenge, wrestle mania 2000, and No mercy. Thq was on fire.
@@Hingle_McCringleberry87 I didn't forget them. I just was never a fan of wrestling or wrestling games.
I bought one as a teenager. It was commercially a failure and culturally successful and impactful. Goldeneye 007 and Mario Kart 64 saved the console from obscurity. Zelda and Mario kept it alive amongst fans. A lack of third party games was its death knell and using cartridges was the primary cause for this. They wouldn't be relevant again until the Nintendo Wii, which was the least console launch done. The Switch is a great compromise between the Wii audience and the N64 ones.
Bingo. No one I knew had an N64 until like Christmas 1998 for those two games exactly (plus wrestling games), by which time the PS2 was already only a year away. Funny enough the N64 - my original one from that Christmas - is the only one of my old consoles I keep plugged in and play regularly.
1:35 Only in USA and Japan. In all other countries (about 190) SEGA was the only 16-bit console that was a thing. There was no console war here, it was Famiclones > SEGA > PlayStation, we didn't even say Mega Drive, there was just THE Sega, though I heard South America and Western Europe did have popular Segas before and after that.
Also official data on sales of NES/Famicom are only ones that Nintendo sold officially, most of the world had Chinese Subors, Dendys and Dynavisions plus various noname Famicom clones, so in reality, there were hundreds of millions of consoles that play Famicom cartridges and PCBs, still sold to this day in fact! So the discrepancy between NES and SNES exposure was WAY higher than data shows. Everybody's family had a Famiclone at some point.
Just want to add my 5 cents as a person not from USA, the country Nintendo always had most success. American view on their popularity is majorly skewed, they weren't big worldwide before Switch. Their games were but only during 8-bit era, on those yellow multicarts.
I don't know, Nintendo did have an official presence in many Latin American countries during the '90s and early 2000s, they left during some economic crisis, but came back later and now their games are even dubbed into Neutral Spanish
In regards to piracy, yes, many people in countries like Chile and Argentina tended to play Famiclones, Genesis clones and later pirated POne games. But it wasn't like Nintendo was super obscure, I live in Argentina and I my parents bought me a Nintendo 64 and I was able to rent games at Blockbuster
Even in the United States, the Sega Genesis won the 16-bit console war against the Snes by any objective measure.
Revisionist history is strong because Sega failed after the 16-bit era in the home console market.
Both Genesis and Snes sold about 20M units in the United States. Genesis sold more software and dominated the rental market, which was massive in the U.S.
Sega went into the 16-bit era with less than 1% market share, and Nintendo went into it with 95%+
What you will get from people who support the Snes narrative is a bunch of sales numbers "predominantly" from Japan that show very impressive sales numbers. That's a reflection of the Japanese market not the American market.
The difference with that stuff in the second paragraph is that Nintendo never officially licensed the Famiclones and such, those were unofficial products being run without Nintendo's approval.
I’m from Peru and had SNES, and most people I know owned SNES, nobody I knew owned a Genesis, I only ever played it in a special event in my school once.
It’s so interesting to talk about frame rate as it relates to this era of gaming. We didn’t have that term then. There was something about N64 games I didn’t like, but there was no way to articulate exactly what I didn’t like! Now, thanks to you, it’s clear. Thanks for the retcon.
Nice video as always. I felt that PlayStation really took the lead during this period, as Nintendo still relied on Cartridges, and another thing being that Square thought the Cartridge format would not be enough for Final Fantasy VII, so they went to Sony, seeing how the CD-ROM Format was essential for developing said game, as well as their future titles, and Working Designs doing the English Ports of The Lunar series released on SEGA Saturn in Japan for U.S. PlayStation users.
Also, for the N64, you had your Mario and Zelda entries, but there was no Metroid entry, and the lack of RPGs on the N64, which is where the PlayStation shined.
Both systems used RISC Processors, so programming should not have been that hard, except when you were trying to squeeze so much data into one of Nintendo's Cartridges. Also on the N64, some times games would freeze if you didn't have the Expansion Pack to update RAM and Display.
BY the time I was ready to buy a console in 1998, I had been favoring The PlayStation as The SEGA Saturn was Discontinued in the States of that year due to poor sales figures, and The N64 just wasn't doing anything for me except bore me. So, I took The PlayStation as the winning console that Holiday Season.
Just a personal opinion, but Nintendo also lost fans because in Japan, they have no "Fair Use" clause in their copyright acts, which is why they love to target fans of their IPs when the fans make tributes to them, no matter where in the world they hail from, and sue them for Copyright Infringement, over something as simple as a Fan-Fiction. And as I see it, the company is run by "Old Men" and as of this moment, many players are seeing the Switch as being obsolete.
But to answer the question, IMHO, The N64 was a failure, mostly because Nintendo wasn't completely getting with the times by sticking to the Cartridge format, when SEGA had moved on to the CD-ROM Format... and lest we forget... the PlayStation was born out of Nintendo backing out their deal with Sony for a CD-ROM add-on for the Super NES, and that came back to haunt Nintendo.
Great analysis
Lack of fighting games too. No Street Fighter, Marvel, Tekken, or SNK versus fighters. It's a shame too cuz the N64s 6-button face layout would've been perfect for versus fighters.
It did make up for it with Smash Bros and THQ/AKI wrestling games. And at least it had Mortal Kombat.
Don't really get the mention of the Switch here. It's being replaced next year
Pojr has a sponsor????? CONGRATULATIONS!!
Something that didn't help the N64 competing with the PlayStation was demo discs. I tried so many new types of games I purchased because of those discs.
Hey dude. Love your videos. May i suggest using a de-esser on your voice? The S sounds are quite harsh with your mic
I concur
I got an N64 for Christmas the year it came out. My mom woke up REALLY early to go to KB Toys in the mall to buy one when word got out that they were going to get a small shipment of them. That was a good Christmas gift.
good console . til this day Killer Instinct Gold is one of my fav titles.
Just goes to show that you don’t need to “be in the lead” of the console wars to have a MASSIVE impact on the market, as long as you do things right.
Thanks, pojr, for coming at me with another video.
Nintendo 64 is a success, but not a major success like Sony playstation. What hurt Nintendo is the 3rd party licensing fees, the cartridge and the loss of Japanese dominance. What Nintendo should have done is use zip drives as storage solution instead of expensive cartridges, while not as cheap as cds, and but far more cost effective than cartridges, zip drives hold 64 to 128 Mb of storage allowing for better audio and fmvs cgi and even faster load times, while being difficult to pirate. The 64dd which is a zip drive attachment to n64 should have been the main console of the n64. Even though ps1 used cds. Not all games took up 700 mbs. Also ps1 games had outrageous load times. I remember some games taking a minute or two to load. The same thing happened to the ps2 with load times. But back than in Japan and USA, people are alot more patient with lapd times vs instant culture we have now I'm tech.
4:38 firstly, great looking clean bottle green N64, really stylish! The problem with this controller is how horribly it maps unto other things, it comes up when you try to emulate Nintendo stuff after Super Famicom, bloody GameCube has to use awkward start + A combination to access coded in MGS Twin Snakes, while Dreamcast, Xbox and Dualshock controllers have interchangeable layouts... it also doesn't help that Nintendo don't know English alphabet and have buttons in wrong order (if you're used to Microsoft OR SEGA pads especially). Fun fact, X button is in one of three spots, except on the right.
As us Nintendo fans became teenagers, i thought "why not have music or movies like PS/PS2?"
I like that Nintendo mainly stays in its lane game wise but hate that it seems to always lag behind outside of gaming
One thing you forgot to mention was the limited texture cache which made textures look rather muddy as a result.
Oh! that what it was? I could not really put a finger on it and why the games on N64 were always nauseating to look at
It did not sell as well for one simple fact, lack of a CD 💿 drive to store media! which in that era was becoming the new cutting edge standard. it made game manufacturing affordable, allowed for bigger higher ambition games. and offered full motion video cinemas.
FMVs were cool, but with the games transitioning to a much lower poly count during actual gameplay, the immersion is immediately broken for me.
@
Absolutely agree with you. going from a wonderfully rendered cinema scene to blocky looking characters. but it was all we had back in the day and we loved it. Look at what a success Final Fantasy seven was.
if just the CD were the only problem, then the Sega CD, the CD-i, the 3DO, the CD32, the Playdia, even to some extend the Saturn, would all like a word as to why they weren't smash-bang successes.
@@plaztik767 I’m just grateful that technology has now progressed to a point where hardware is now more than capable of delivering a cinematic experience these days.
@
It was the CD.. N64 was the last major home console that played games off of a standard cartridge that Nintendo released. Nintendo also had the most 3rd party support of any console in that generation. The lack of 3rd party support is what killed the Saturn, 3DO, and Atari Jaguar. When Nintendo went officially to cartridges for N64, many 3rd party developers went to the PlayStation. That is why it was the reigning king of that specific generation of consoles.
And was Nintendo’s downfall (then)
In a nutshell, PSX kicked its butt. The N64 was a very good console but failed so hard in Japan that Saturn sold better over there. USA saved the N64 but even then it was a failure, later on, Gamecube would also be a flop and Nintendo really recovered and did an amazing job with the WII sales.
What pulled me from Nintendo was they stay in the past. Look at N64: blurry filters, cart based games. PLAYSTATION: CD based games that looked sharper and played CDs. Memory Cards. Then GAMECUBE: tiny CD based games but a system that can't play CDS or DVDS. Limited to 480P. PS2: DVD and CD playback. Backwards compatibility with PS one. Up to 1080i on same games. Xbox: Hard drive and CD based games, DVD playback (with extra part) also 1080i playback, multiplayer games. The pattern continues with the Wii. I just feel the others give you more for your dollar.
The question that should be asked to determine if the N64 was a commercial success is whether or not Nintendo made money from the N64. In 2012, Nintendo reported its first loss in over 30 years. This is over a decade after the GameCube replaced the N64 as Nintendo’s primary console. It would be hard to blame the N64 for their 2012 operating loss. Simply because of the fact that Nintendo was profitable the entire time the N64 was their primary console and the company remained profitable for over a decade after it was replaced seems like a commercial success to me.
@xnetpc it was definitely a successful console if Nintendo managed to profit off it!! Anyone who disagrees is gonna have an extremely hard time convincing me different!! If they broke even or lost money then yes I'll say it failed but if they profit off it even if it sold worse then the Snes the fact that they still made profit tells me it was successful!!
I had been an almost religious NES enthusiast, a bit less so with the SNES, and then this one lost me to Sony. I hated the controller and Playstation had so many more exciting games. Had you told me in 1992 that the SNES would be the last Nintendo hardware I'd ever buy, I wouldn't have believed it.
Actually, the N64's "region locking" is easy to get around (at least when it comes to NTSC regions): it uses a same tab and slot setup as its predecessor. You'll have to disassemble the system to do it safely (which just means buying an inexpensive security bit), but it's simply a matter of drilling a couple holes in the inner casing of the cartridge slot or installing a 3D printed replacement.
That being said, it's not really worth it (unless you're looking to save money by buying the Japanese versions of games, which are generally a lot cheaper, like MK64). There are only a handful of games that Japan got that North America didn't that A: don't require knowledge of the Japanese language, and B: are worth playing (most notably "Sin and Punishment").
The thumbnail is interesting but when you compare it to the NES (61 million units) both systems underperformed.
The N64 had no games and the controller wasn't quality. Heck, nobody was even done with the SNES.
whats crazy, as a middleschooler.... i didnt know many people with a ps1. it was all about n64. mario kart, mario party, the wcw and wwf games were insanely fun. It may have been a worldwide failure but where i lived, it was so much fun. 4 people playing games together.
12:23- This is a lie. Developers loved cartridges, because it made their work easier & faster. Publishers hated cartridges, because of how expensive the media was compared to cds.
N64 was not a failure. It sold a lot of units and had great games. It had its own "Nintendo market" that Sony could never satisfy. It fell short in 3rd party rivalry, but its 1st party games were more than enough to warrant a purchase. Smash Bros. 64 and Star Fox 64 come to mind personally, but there were dozens of AAA games you couldn't get on PS1. PS1 similarly had its own market of games you couldn't get on N64, but they were both good enough to warrant coexistence.
Tactically these were not region locked. If you were able to get the cartridge in their it can it won't play it it comes down to a hardware issue not a software issue the notches on the bottom of the cartridge means something basically they're just not the same for each country you could either swap the boards with a different cartridge is one option or I think things online showing how you can fix your 64 so we can play everything. Pause is also with 3D printed model option I've seen. Bottom line is you can easily play any countries game on any system it's just a matter of getting the cartridge in there. For an example if you have a ROM cart can you put a Japanese rom on there it will play no problem. Cuz just like I said it's a hardware issue not a software issue so that's only half true that it's region locked
This is true, Nintendo utilized a very primitive way to keep the console region lock, just like the Super Nintendo. I didn't go into enough detail about this.
@@pojr you should make a video about various methods of region-locking later, when I was a kid I always heard about "chipped" consoles, I think that was to remove dev limitations on them. Like to play burned CDs and Japanese stuff.
Not true on pal consoles. Ntsc games wont run on that
@@goemon74 touche
I was joked on for having a Sega. Everyone else had a Nintendo. I wanted to be different though and try something new. The Sega games did look better, but there were more games I wanted to play on Nintendo and eventually got a Super Nintendo after the first Sega disappointment. I never remember many games for the Sega either and Nintendo kept releasing more and better games.
to offer a perspective on why i think the N64 failed in the UK...
the UK was in a recession in the 1990s, and video game consoles were much more expensive in Europe than in the US and Japan. a video game console was once regarded as an expensive machine in the UK. on top of that, N64 games were £50 - £60, which was huge at the time. the console was far too expensive for most people. on top of that, it needs to be added that piracy was a problem on the PS1, which made the console even more attractive to UK games because it was easy to obtain dozens of pirated games. most people i knew with a PS1 had a chipped console and a pile of copied games.
I'd have to say it was the game selection. PSX was far superior to N64 for games. Its a generation thing too. All of us that were children during NES and SNES were now teenagers for the N64. We weren't into kids games anymore. We wanted the Tomb Raiders and Metal Gear Solid type games.
N64 a massive success for me personally, based on titles like Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, Goldeneye, WCW/NWO Revenge & WWE No Mercy.
The N64 controller was a terrible controller. Here's the two reasons why. 1. You spent 99 percent of the time holding it for analog. Maybe even 99.9%. , second and the biggest one of all, no one has ever used the design again. I was there when it came out and we all tried to not talk about how it sucked. But it did. Lol
SUper Nintendo Forever 💯
I - and a lot of kids in the suburbs I knew - went NES - Genesis - PlayStation - N64. Only one or two kids I knew even had an SNES and it was GoldenEye, Mario Kart and the wrestling games that got us interested in picking up N64 around 1998.
0:00 and i'm already angry. I LOVE THE N64 AAAHHHH
The N64 suffered from "third console syndrome" where it was a difficult time for its developer, just as the Saturn, ps3, and Xbox One did.
Its not like the N64 sucked its just that it was the first Nintendo system to face really strong competition. Sega didnt push them anywhere close to as hard as Sony.
It's a good video, also you have to know, that the super nintendo was not in the best of situations, due to no CD support, absurd censorship policies and also making life impossible for developers since the NES. 👻👻
Anyone just tired of the N64 getting shat on ? Where are my 90s babies at who lived through the launch and know how great 96-99 was ?
The N64 was ass. The lack of storage made everything look terrible. The fog and short draw distance on everything was just terrible. Sticking to cartridges was a stupid mistake. Also, 79.99 for a game? Really? 79.99 in 1997 is 155 dollars today.
I bought one, and only purchased mostly 1st party titles. I don’t regret buying one but got far more out of my PS 1. I got more out of my Sega CD than my N64.
Nintendo was all too willing to hamstring itself and its third party devs, not to mention driving up the cost to the end user in order to temporarily thwart pirates.
You can't inconvenience LIT-TER-RUH-LY EVERYONE and still expect to stay on top
Dear pojr, I’ve been enjoying your videos more and more as your flow and editing skills keep improving. I really love watching videos about the gaming consoles of my youth, and you do a fantastic job of keeping things interesting by choosing great topics. Thanks, man! 😊
I have a slightly different take on the concept of 'popularity' you discussed. While it’s true that Nintendo sold fewer consoles with each generation after the NES era, I think the number of games available for each console also played a big role. I got my first NES in 1999 (a very late time for it), and I was aware of other consoles of the time; SNES, Genesis, and PS1 were all common around me. But I NEVER felt the need to have them because there were already SO MANY games to explore on the NES. I think a lot of people might’ve felt the same way. For example, many people might not have considered buying a PS2 if their PS1 was still satisfying their needs. The same could be said for NES > SNES and Genesis > Saturn transitions. In my opinion, the difference in sales was mostly driven by the innovations each company brought to the table.
Even after all these years, I’ve played most of the games on various consoles through emulators, and there are still tons of NES games I want to check out. They feel both nostalgic and genuinely fun! :)
Everyone remembers their 1st, and N64 was king in our circle.❤
When it comes to 5th gen consoles, it feels like a matter of style vs substance. Yes, PlayStation games had rich audio and detailed textures thanks to CDs having way more memory than carts. However, with non-existent load times on carts on a console with twice the muscle ment N64 games could run buttery smooth at blazing speeds. To this day, 1st & 2nd party devs pull it off by keeping their model designs simple and not let photo realism hog the RAM. (Also PlayStation hardware couldn't do fractions resulting in 3D models with janky animation.)
Anoth factor where the respective consoles' target audience. PlayStation was cast as the ambitious cool kid while N64 remained family friendly like its predisessors. (Sega was neither and the odd one out.)
There's also Nintendo's enduring philosophy of applying new ideas with what's already available rather than race for cutting edge tech. CDs are cheap, but would a CD based N64 be more expensive to both make & sell? (Yet in retrospect it was proof that cartridge consoles could still be bad asses.) Naturally greedy publishers want to make games as quick and easy as possible; unlike Nintendo's GEOLOGIC patience that can wether out any storm of beefy competitors. I reckon the Big N knew what it was doing sticking to carts, and with devs flocking to Sony's wonderbox, Nintendo was forced to make its 1st party titles more crutial than ever. N64 competed on price and quality over quantity.
The Big N's short term sacrifices for long term benefits keep them in the game long term. They avoided Sega's mistake trying to make their mascots grow up with their fans; they remain the same simple kid friendly safe haven.
With PlayStation & XBox as hardware trailblazers, Nintendo seems to have more elbow room in the back seat.
I played the demo at Wal-Mart. The controller was a hard no for me. First Nintendo console I didn't buy. I tried mario 64 later through emulation. Not a fan.
the n64 was released on september 26, 1996. I remember picking it up from the electronics boutique in king of prussia, pa. I had to buy pilotwings 64 and mario 64 separately.
Then it was over a month later they released the 3rd game, wave race 64. One of the main reasons I think nintendo fell behind was...
NOT ENOUGH GAMES.
Weird because growing up it deemed like the N64 was just as popular as the Nintendos that came before and PlayStation
While I have no opinion if the N64 was a commercial failure or not I find it better then the OG PlayStation.
Because of the CM of Super Smash Bros. Happy together by the Turtles is permanently associated with that Super Smash Bros. CM
Good point. I still loved the N64. It still had an excellent lineup of games. I didn't even own a PlayStation as a kid
N64 only lacked in quantity of certain genres like RPGs. But it did not fail to provide excellent quality for fans of that genre. Paper Mario is nowadays seen as one of the all time great ones.
In my case I went from Nintendo, SNES, a little N64 into online computer gaming and never went back to console, so it was the internet that beat Nintendo for me.
Nintendo locked out third parties from Sega's consoles during the 8 bit era. The master system would have competed much better if third parties were allowed to make for it too. Luckily it was deemed illegal and so Genesis got third party support.
The N64 was definitely a console that can be described of "something that allows for better stuff but is more expensive to produce".
Sure, cartridges allows the N64 games to have shorter load times, but unfortunately, they were more expensive to produce. But boy, the fact that it failed commercially in Japan because of lack of RPGs is really surprising in my opinion.
Oh yeah, not only RPGs ended up moving onto the PS1 or Saturn - fighting games ended up moving to these platforms too, though there was still a decent amount of fighting games for the N64.
Nintendo lost its market lead during this time but it also successfully carved out its niche as a console developer that has enabled the company to survive against the muscle of Microsoft and Sony. Sega failed to carve out a niche with the Saturn or Dreamcast which is one of the reasons Sega is no longer a console developer.
The controller looked and felt wierd but as soon as you appreciate jumping into 3d with zelda for the first time and having a thumbstick instead of a dpad it rounded out perfectly.
I always loved the N64 personally. It has some of my favorite games ever, like Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time, and Starfox 64. Oh yes, Mario Kart 64. Failure? In my eyes as a young teen I would have said hells no bruh
I had the NES, SNES, then the Playstation. The N64 pissed me off. The playstation is way more impressive that the N64 in every way. Fight me on that.
Nintendo should take a risk and capitalize on the mistakes of Microsoft’s and Sony and come out with a powerful console that is user friendly with third party developers and have an all in one entertainment system. Nintendo isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and needs to get back to their dominance. Sony has the lead due to hype this generation but has made many mistakes and has people questioning why they even bought a ps5, Microsoft is still reeling from their disastrous Xbox one reveal, meanwhile Nintendo is still loved for the most part. They need to just throw it all out there and stop being stingy with their older IPs
Maybe, but there’s no doubting the cultural impact of the N64 and its lineup of games. Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time & Majora’s Mask, Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Smash Bros, Turok, and others are all deeply beloved games.
N64 became third place and NIntendo stayed third place throughout the 2000's..
I didn't like it when it debuted and only got one because someone was selling me their console with some games and I said 'sure' as it was very cheap to get it, the memory pack, and a few games, for a budget price. I wasn't even wanting one.. and the only other game I ever bought for it, was Bad Fur Day.
Nintendo screwed up with the N64 by not providing side scrolling platformer Metroid games for it! The SNES was just better.
5:46 why is this anyways I always hear about how certain shows are only shown in certain areas and they constantly switch them and all that other junk why can't everyone just have access to the entire Netflix library at all times why do they got to switch it around like that. The only excuse for that should really be if it was a show that was specifically made for that country but even if that is the case everything has subtitles nowadays and make a dub the voices so even if it is the case who cares we're paying for it on top of it all too. People shouldn't have to do stuff like get a VPN just to watch what they want. It's kind of a dumb system if you ask me
Licensing issues - different IPs may have different licensing (or lack thereof) for different countries.
Also governments may censor certain shows/movies.
It's about distribution rights. For example, Netflix gets exclusive rights to show WWE in Europe, so other platforms can't host their shows anymore. Imagine the opposite situation. Or Peacock got license to show some series in USA, but HBO got to show in UK, so you got to jump loopholes... A lot of times distributors pay for the rights, so public broadcaster like BBC or Suspilne will pay budget money to show Olympics in their home countries, and put their own ads on top, so they can't allow other services to do the same. But countries that didn't pay for rights had free streams on TH-cam.
The N64 is multiplayer mekkah. I recall PS2 games that attempted to be multiplayer / arcade experiences that fell short of what the N64 accomplished in the 90s. Everybody do yourselves a favor and give the Battletanx games a try--1 for the story, and 2 for the superior gameplay.
Released to late but more importantly, Sony killed them with 3rd party games. There was something for everyone with the PS1, that was the first console that achieved that.
The cartridges were fantastic for 1st party N64 games but CDs were easier for 3rd parties. It could hold a lot more data and sound could be used off the track. What a generation though, the only way it could have been better is if SEGA supported the Saturn until the Dreamcast launch
I still play my N64 in 2025. Got the entire library and rom hacks on an Everdrive X7. Love my console.
I bought the original NES, Super NES, but didn’t buy the N64. One of my friends bought it but didn’t buy many games for it. Other friends bought the Sony PS.
Yeah I remember I first got a N64...Then later I got a PS1 for christmas. I literally never went back to play N64 besides maybe maybe 2 games. Playstation beat N64 in almost every way. The Game selection for N64 got old fast.
@ yeah I had kind of moved onto playing only on the PC at that point.
Carts were just plain faster for throughput and the N64's architecture was and still is advanced in its own unique way. Most Playstation games padded out the disc space with CD audio and FMV scenes, actual game data was often around 200mb. Some conservative thinking and clever programming could optimize that down to about the size of an N64 cart, which is why there were /some/ cross platform games like Ms. Pac Man Maze Madness.
This was the first time Nintendo got what I like to call "Big Head Syndrome", when just because they were industry leaders, they knew best(nothing could be further from the truth) . First off, Nintendo ruled 3rd parties with an iron grip, and most saw the medium of CDs as a way to not only make better games, but make them cheaper to boot.
We have all seen for 20+ years how slow Nintendo is when it comes to adopting industry standards, and the N64 was no different. They said they kept cartridges due to better speeds, and whatnot, but that was just them saying we want to stick with carts, as it makes us the most money and we can best control 3rd parties this way.
The 3rd parties rebeled and the rest is history. Even when they finally took a step forward with using CDs with the GC, they took two steps back by using mini disc to be different for differents sake. While no one likes loading times, it was a small tradeoff for all the amazing new things the medium brought to the table and the PS1 dominated.
It took Nintendo several generations to get companies back like Square Enix who they pissed off with their bullish behavior. When given the chance, Nintendo will always do what they want, if its good or bad, they don't care, just so long as they can say we know best, the outcome really doesn't matter.
They lost because they never released the "Nintendo Playstation" Almost like it was karma for dirty dealing.
I don’t think the Nintendo 64 commercial failure given I remember being able to buy games for it for at least 5 years. It was the second bestselling console for the fifth generation. The N64 definitely had a smaller game library than the PlayStation.
They wanted to keep it cartridge because they thought it was more kid friendly and not as easily damaged as a CD.
Actually, the Data in the cartridge is streamed in and out of memory faster which enabled you to add/remove stuff on demand (for example, the Zelda 64 overworld). This wouldn't be possible with CD because its likely the whole overworld wouldn't be able to fit in memory so with a CD after you reach the memory limit and it needs to load the next part of the overworld, the game would have to stop to load the next part of the overworld. Can you imagine you riding around the Zelda 64 overworld on Epona and the game just stops and throws up a loading screen? It would be comically ridiculous.
@@Akirathehusky a cd could hold far more than the cartridge could have.....
@defpixel ocarina of Time was a huge game and so was Mario 64. They fitted fine on the cartridge.
2 things that might've helped Nintendo get out to a better start with N64 would've been to cancel DKC3 for SNES & have an N64 enhanced version of what they had already developed on SNES ready for N64 launch. 2nd- UMK3 should never have been released for SNES. If they had the team that did UMK3 on SNES focus solely on getting a perfect (aside from the CD-quality music which would've required a much bigger cart) port of it ready for N64 launch plus making Motaro & Kahn playable from the character screen with Rain & Noob & maybe adding a background or 2 from the 1st 2 MKs (Courtyard, Goro's lair, Kahn's Arena, Wasteland, Dead Pool) along with Rayden, Baraka & Goro being hidden fighters, it would've been just as good as what MK Trilogy ended up like & there would've been a couple more good options at launch with Mario 64 & Pilotwings. Nintendo also wasted time & money on the Virtual Boy, but I don't know if that contributed to delaying N64 development