Nintendo 64 Review

Overall Rating

Well designed Joypad
Introduced rumble packs
Very reliable
Some excellent games
Now very cheap

Many games graphically poor
Not a massive software collection
Dogged by Playstation Conversions

The N64 was one of the most eagerly anticipated consoles in gaming history. Rumours of a super powerful new console from Nintendo started The Nintendo 64 began Doing the rounds in early 1995, just as the world was gearing up for the Eastern launches of the new 32-bit consoles. Nintendo kept their cards very close to their chest amid all the excitement surrounding Sony and Sega's new projects, and many were sceptical that maybe Nintendo hadn't announced anything because they had nothing to announce - i.e. they had been left behind. Those fears were laid to rest when Ultra 64, formerly Project Reality, was officially unveiled in late 1995. The gaming media went into hype over-drive, making all sorts of ludicrous claims about the power of the system. Apparently able to produce visuals of the same quality as the Dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (that we now know is a lie!), the console was indeed part developed by Silicon Graphics.

Excitement grew and the PSX and Saturn were launched, but by reading the letters pages of the Nintendo Magazines, it was evident that those loyal Nintendo fans that hadn't jumped ship and bought a new machine, were hanging on in the hope that Nintendo delivered.

Ultra 64 became Nintendo 64 and the system was launched in Japan in 1996, along with some of the finest games ever made. Super Mario 64 blew the gaming press away - many journalists and gamers claiming it was the best game ever created. Other titles like Pilotwings brought to the stage visuals unrivalled on the 32-bit consoles. The joypad was a totally new and revolutionary design, and featured analogue control as standard (a rumour suggests that upon the launch of the N64, Sony 'let go' many of the team that designed the Playstation control pad). The launch was a total success, as was the US launch several moths later.

The US launch saw a handful of new games trickle out of the wood work, most notably Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and Blast Corps; most forgettable Cruisn' USA.

The N64 was launched in the UK on March 1st, 1997 and sold out across the country just after 9am. Many city centres saw sleeping bag lined streets that night, as eager games fans camped outside stores. I even heard from a friend that was in one of those lines in Manchester City Centre that a fight broke out in the Market Street Virgin Megastore after two punters tried to buy the last machine in stock.

After the initial shortages of stock (that may have been part of a publicity stunt) were rectified, there followed several months where only a handful of games were released for the N64 and gamers grew tired of having to play the same games over. Several lacklustre titles appeared (like MRC, Fifa 64 and Doom64) but it wasn't until the big guns appeared that the N64 looked like it was going to be a massive hit.

Konami released what many believe to be the finest football game created -ISS64, and Rare released the title that is synonymous with the N64 - 007 Goldeneye. Featuring awesome visuals, locales straight from the film, weeks and weeks of replay value and the coveted 4-player split screen mode, Goldeneye was the one game that launched the N64 into the living rooms of a million households.

After that, the top-notch titles kept coming - Lylat Wars, Banjo Kazooie, the untouchable Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Turok 2, Diddy Kong Racing, World Driver Championship, Resident Evil 2 et al.

The N64 was something of a success for Nintendo, although nowhere near as big as the Playstaion was for Sony. Several problems did present themselves to Nintendo. Firstly, the machine wasn't as powerful as first thought and many promising titles were cut down or cancelled altogether. The choice by Nintendo to use cartridges rather than CDs was unpopular with developers for a number of reasons - primarily, Nintendo require a percentage of the profit from a game in return for a license to produce cartridges; secondly, cartridges have a much smaller memory capacity than CDs meaning video sequences are virtually impossible without expensive compression techniques. These problems became even more evident when certain big name developers jumped ship due to the restrictions of the format (Square being one of the biggest as Final Fantasy 7 was originally planned for the N64).

However, Nintendo battled on and in ultimately didn't fare too badly with the N64. Toward the end of its life before the Gamecube was rumoured, the N64 played host to several more very good games, namely Perfect Dark (the psuedo sequel to Goldeneye; and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask). Few people actually played these games due to the N64's decline unpopularity and Nintendo's non-existent advertising.

The N64 enjoyed a rather successful part in the console wars of the late 1990s, beating the Saturn into 3rd place and playing host to some excellent titles along the way.

Add ons:

The 4mb expansion pak slotted into the memory expansion hatch at the front of the console and expanded the overall video memory to 8mb. This enabled several games to be run in a slightly jerky hi-resolution mode. Some games won't even work without one.

The 64DD was announced several months after the launch of the N64 and was designed to sit underneath the console, a bit like the Mega-cd with the Mega Drive. It had a disk drive and games were in the form of magnetic disks. It also featured a modem. The 64DD was launched in Japan with a handful of expansion disks and a bizarre Giant simulator called 'Doshin the Giant.' Never released in the west.