Nintendo 64DD - Gaming Historian 

Cartridges were so durable though I kinda miss that.....You know many CD games got ruined by a few light scratches? I don't ...Think I lost count.

At least the Disk Drive didn't need its own power adapter, unlike the Sega CD, 32X and Jaguar CD.

actually N64 carts could hold 96MB Also, I'm still shocked Capcom was able to put the full Resident Evil 2 on the N64, FMV and all. Yeah it's compressed to hell, but think about it: a 2 disc PS1 game on a single N64 cartridge. Mind = blown.

I have watched almost your entire library. A well spent binge. Keep making great videos

If only Nintendo released this in 1998 worldwide we could've had Super Mario 64 2, banjo Tooie (possibly with more gameplay and better graphics), Ocarina of Time (more gameplay and better graphics) and so much more. The N64DD will remain just one huge "What if" question forever.

While the early N64 games were 12-16 MB's, later games were around 32 MB, and the impressive-for-its-time Resident Evil 2 held 64 MB. For those who don't recall, Resident Evil 2 was quite an achievement because it had the complete 2-disc PlayStation game, including the FMV's, on a cartridge, using compression techniques not commonly used in the late 1990's. Of course, 32 and 64 MB is still pretty small compared to what CD-ROM's were capable of doing, and the N64 version of RE 2 had some compression artifacting. I miss cartridges, though. They're bulky, and Nintendo made sure to pass the extra expense of them onto consumers, but they also meant that you could supplement the hardware by adding specialty chips in the cartridges to enhance the games. Nintendo and Sega both took advantage of this feature of cartridges in the 16-bit era.

Holy crap Mario 64 was only 16 megs max??? That's amazing an entire 3D World with no load time within 16 megs, whoever was apart of making that game is extremely talented.

2:14 *looks at bookshelf* "Wow it looks like he's got some cool SNES games over there." *squints* "What's that one standing upright-" *sees Starman* "..."

To be honest, I've perfered the cartridges times.

"A step in the right direction, to bring gaming online" Seems like everybody but Nintendo actually took the step. *Looks at Nintendo Online*

I think that if Nintendo would have used a CD-ROM on the N64 it would have been much more successful.

2012: "About $500 on eBay" 2020: $1,500

Earthbound 64... I cri everytiem

I think the 64 and the 64DD should have been fused into one giant console.

Hmm....what should I do with my $500? Should I buy an Xbox One, a Ps4 with a couple new games, or a Nintendo 64 add-on that can do next to nothing useful?

"$500 on ebay." I had to look at the date of this video. Try $1500.

Funny thing, cartridge games could make a come back because flash storage is stupid cheap nowadays. A 32GB MicroSD costs $10 or less now ( March 2016). Load times would be efficient as well.

The Dreamcast had much more to do with Online Gaming than the N64. Doesn't matter what you say, it brought the internet to gaming and more people have played the Online games on the Dreamcast than the entire library for the N64DD. The Dreamcast even came PREPACKAGED with a modem, unlike the N64.

nintendo 64 is my favorite console of all time.

I love your channel so much. I just got a 3 days marathon watching your videos. Your voice is so relaxing.... You are doing an amazing job....

I remember the 64dd being like $700 via import. Had nothing to play on it though. What a complete waste, smh.

Nintendo really started to lose traction with the N64. - Cartridges instead of CDs, even though CDs were finally useful and games actually profited from them (before, developers used to just cram them full with videos so to max out the storage while the actual games were little more than regular 16-bit titles). The Gamecube did use optical media, but only the unpopular miniDVDs, which held only a third of the space of a regular DVD (1,4 GB vs. 4,7 GB). So devs had to either reduce the quality of games in order to get them on one disc, or split the game into several discs. - They did notice that the internet was becoming a thing, but even the Gamecube could only go online via adapter (modem or LAN). The Wii was their first console to go online out of the box (only through wifi), but even that was pretty lackluster in comparison to what Sony and Microsoft were offering.

the n64 game cart was capable of 64mb storage (like conkers bad fur day)

And it's still not as rare as the 3.5" floppy drive for the SEGA SATURN!!!!

Congrats on the new video, it's very well researched and presented (as always!) You do great work, keep it up.

That is the most I have ever learned about the N64DD! Heck I had honestly forgotten about it!

i would still love to use cartriges

I remember wondering what all the different slots were for in the 64. All I ever had at my own house was a TurboGFX. But all my friends had all of them. Accept the one I had. But they really made the 64 ready for upgrades. It’s kinda sad it didn’t take off. What a battle field Nintendo was.

I'm glad you posted this Vid!! I was always a Nintendo kid, well Nintendo and PC. I love the 64 and I was so excited for the DD, unfortunately it was just another unrealized dream. However, I still am a huge Nintendo fan, the 3DS is untouchable and the Wii U is much better than the market's current perception of it. The Wii U suffered more because of branding & marketing issues, than actual software/quality issues. We'll see if it can turn itself around here in the next few months with their heavy hitters releasing soon.

How was this video made in 2012?! The quality is nuts for such an old video.

So America didn't want the N64 DD, and yet the Virtual Boy got the greenlights? To quote the AVGN "What the f**k is wrong with this f***ing world??", I mean, the DD held so much potential! :(

Fun Fact: Capcom, Hudson Soft, and Konami also made Mega Man, Bomberman, and Castlevania games for N64.

"The cartridges could now hold 64 megabytes of data." Is that some sort of creepy coincidence!?

N64DD is proof that Nintendo shouldn't ditch their consoles halfway through the lifetimes and stay the course

PLEASE tell me what song you used at the end of the video please!!!!! PLEASE tell me what song you used at the end of the video please!!!!!

One of the DD's biggest fails was the floppy style like disk. Nintendo didn't shield them properly and could be completely erased if placed near a magnetic source. CRT televisions had a large enough field around them to damage data on disk.

Cripes, was there EVER a system released that didn't suffer from a chip shortage??

These videos are great. Very professionally done. The Kokariko Village music was a little hot. I'd mix it lower.

2:22 Earthbound in the background. love that game

DAMN YOU NINTENDO 64DD FOR MAKING MARIO 64 2 GET CANCELLED!!!!

Nintendo Pulled a Sega with the 32x running out of ideas huh

Isn't the intro music kevin macleod royalty free music? Machinezealots channel uses this music for their intros too. I knew I heard it somewhere.

I remember being so hyped for this and so sad when it wasn’t released. Now for the first time I am seeing it in action and I’m even sadder.

Really enjoy listening and watching your videos. Please keep up the good work. It is greatly appreciated and enjoyed!

As a self-proclaimed Nintendo fanboy, I'm ashamed I didn't know this existed. Thanks Gaming Historian! One of your most informative shows to date.

And GREAT job using the Super Mario 64 track at the end. It's one of the best ever

I had a 32x. Not that horrible.

Are The Kefling Games Based on Doshin The Giant?

DD Stands for Dynamic Drive, not disc drive.

Could u talk about online for the GameCube BC at the time when it was popular I never knew it had online.It would be nice to learn about it.

N64 graphics were always much clearer to me. The Playstation was good, but it just wasn't as pretty to look at.

I can't believe they fit Turok 2 on a cartridge. That game was enormous

N64 cartridges hold up to 512Mb (64MB). Where did you get 12-16 MB from? The Mario 64 cart you showed in that graphic is itself only 8MB. Also, the N64 did not feel "dated" at all when it was released, it is the most groundbreaking, and awe inspiring console ever, in terms of graphics and control improvements over a previous generation. Consumers didn't really care about the storage capacities back then when buying a video game. The additional space on CD-ROM based games was almost exclusively used for video and audio, which was nice, but the game itself was more important to consumers. Which is no longer the case, probably because of increased storage capacities as well. It has turned video games into video productions, and is for the most part, mind numbing junk.

Thanks for the video, really like how you make, edit and talk with your vids. You are one of the channels where I click your video grab myself an cup of thee and relaxing enjoy your awesome video's.

So technically with paying (via subscription) for and downloading small updates to games you already owned Nintendo invented DLC? Damn.

Enjoyed this a lot mate. Wanted learn more on the DD. Nailed it.

The 32x was actually a good device. Just ill timed and advised but at least it was a big upgrade unlike the 64DD

benefits of carts: think of carts as ssd and disks as hhd’s in 96 ssd didn’t even exist so you can already see how much a cart costed in 96 and because ssds and other ssd based tech (sd cards usb flash drives etc) not being around in 96-01 they couldn’t store as much as today so today carts which were brought back on the switch are way better than disks but from the release of the playstation till maybe the release of the ds definitely by the switch though, carts are better than disks

I'm wondering if this might be why Nintendo is so reluctant to have a robust online service. They probably keep thinking "we tried it before and it was a huge failure!" The DD was ahead of its time, but if that tried pioneering the online market again instead of trailing behind, I'm sure they could do amazing things. I love the idea of a weekly online newsletter. I guess the miiverse is kind of like that system of swapping messages and photos though.

Oh Earthbound 64. I feel a episode dedicated to that saga should be in order, if it hasn't been already.

Personally I feel that N64 won the 5th generation video game console war.( pros : Fun Games, four player console,joystick,rumble pack,transfer pack,no load⌛ng, variety of color consoles and controllers, expansion pack. ) ( cons : lack of MB,Audio CD capability )🙄

One game that was planned to be released on 64DD was the follow up to Ocarina Time, tentatively titled “Ura Zelda” in Japan. However, that was scrapped, and parts of that game were contributed to Majora’s Mask. The main body of the game is now referred to as Zelda: Master Quest, and that has been released on GameCube and Nintendo 3DS, paired with Ocarina of Time and Ocarina of time 3D. I appreciate the ingenuity of the game and I wish that Nintendo would do similar experiments with some of the other Zelda games.

Still love the Nintendo 64.

i remember seeing this thing all the time in old gamepro magazines in the 90s and I was really excited for it

Its funny, but sad, how Nintendo is still selling them short and having a dated "brand new" console. My Wii U is a dust magnet...

6:34 "It was the first Nintendo console to use a disk-based system." Not *quite*. Technically the Famicom Disk System was a disk-based system, by the most literal interpretation of that statement. But I respect that you meant of the current generation at the time, and "disk" being optical media. :)

When the 64DD has way better online features than the Switch.

Most of us realized that the cartridge was superior in terms of load times but the game density was limited. I remember specifically the gaming community complaining about that and would have preferred cartridges but great game titles were coming out much faster on Sony PS1 than on N64. Plus we could play our music CDs on the PS1 that also gave us those cool screen savers that reacted to the music :) Much simpler times in those days ...

*sighs* if only the 64DD was a success.

I spent almost a month's wages on an imported super wildcard 32, now that was a great DD add on and the importer had a PS one in his living room, this was just a few weeks after Sonys Japenese launch it really was like seeing the holy grail of gaming at the time, but the Wildcard was amazing it even played DK Country and also gave you your horoscope in one unit.

I hope in the future we go to a SD card based console.

That mario cart music has me so hard for the past rn.

Hate to say it, but although the PSX was a lot more powerful and offered a lot more storage space on the game discs, It was still a rather difficult system to develop for as anyone who had a Net Yaroze can attest to. The way the PSX handled memory and reading from discs was extremely specific, to the point that most devs quickly learned that the actual physical location of data on the disc could make a huge difference in loading and allow for dynamic loading off the disc in-game. Keep in mind that the PSX had a very small amount of executable memory, and graphics memory, and sound memory that all had to be handled carefully. Add in the proprietary programming language and time-to-triangle (the time it takes to make an engine that can render to the screen) was upwards of 6 months to a year for most publishers. Sony was very good with developer support though, and specifications and dev kits and whitepapers were made available quite early on to ensure that there were a good number of launch titles. Later in the PSX's life, dev kits were even more robust and it was designed to make the memory management a lot easier, and the system had many many titles released for it because of this. The PS2 and PS3 were similarly exotic hardware and difficult to develop for, but the PS4 has taken a more standardized approach and is far easier to develop for than many consoles (save for maybe the xbox 360 which is more or less a PC, and the nintendo DS which has one of the best dev kits I've used). Personally, I like coding and developing for PC, but the lines are quite blurred in that respect these days, and developing for one system and porting to another is a far easier task than it has ever been.

are you sure it wasn't like 100mb instead of 12-16mb on n64?

Nintendo has just as many screw ups as Sega has. If it wasn't for the random success of the Wii and 3DS, this company would be hurting.

On the SNES, N64 and Gamecube, why were there ports at the bottom before additional hardware? why would nintendo include the ext port on the n64 if they didn't have anything planned for it yet? can anyone tell me what the point was? and what accessories were there for the SNES/NGC that would stick to the bottom (other than NGC GB player)?

anybody know why this new stupid google minus frankenstein youtube won't let you reply to anyone who doesn't have the 2 most recent comments?????

Great video! I can't believe they only ever sold 15K of them! I never got excited about this thing because the storage capacity increase seemed like a drop in the bucket when compared to CDs. The N64 was a great platform for Nintendo games, but it was a pipe dream to think that 3rd parties would still be willing to put up with Nintendo's BS when Sony was making it so much cheaper & easier for them to develop games and PROFIT from them! As much as I admire Hiroshi Yamauchi, I'm glad he finally stepped down in the early 2000's. His mindset was definitely stuck in the 80's when Nintendo reigned supreme

Imagine if this addon was successful. I mean The games would be Bigger and Nintendo would of beaten The Dreamcast to the Punch to Bringing Game consoles online.

I've always wondered what if Nintendo released a CD add-on instead. I see it this way: - cartridge = main game data, game saves - CD = FMVs, music (non-midi), voice overs No loading times off the cartridge and 700MB of storage off the CD.

so basically they tried to pull off a sega cd and failed just the same way

You misspoke. What you mean to say is the first to use Optical discs. Or do magnetic disks not count?

but to me Nintendo knew what it was doing. They knew it was still too early for CD games. You see all the poor live acting that some games got and Street Fighter the movie could have done without that cheesy music video when you beat it difficult. They waited until loading time was less to go into CD games them Fighting games and Sports games made you mad with that loading time. You saw that Shang tsung need a special option for his morphin ability in MKT on Playstation when you picked him. And I think the N64 could have played them Marvel VS Capcom games

What game is this at 2:54? The video seems to imply that it was cancelled but it looks unfamiliar to me. Does anyone know what it is?

and i thought the sega 32x was a failure...

Dude, I remember reading about thus in the tips and tricks magazine too

I never knew Nintendo had such a large bust size! O_o

I love the Mario 64 underwater level music you played at the end of the episode

I'm probably gonna get a lot of shit for saying this but am I the only person who wasn't a fan of the N64? I love all of Nintendo's other systems though, but for some reason I never got into it other than Smash Brothers

So, I take it, as the LaserDisc was ultimately to be a precursor for DVD's, this, was meant to be same-type thing for Nintendo GameCube?

500 bucks for a worthless piece of junk with no games? Ya Im so buying one of those for my N64... Where people get the value on pieces of crap is beyond me, its like how Cheetahmen 2 sells for over 200 bucks and its a broken game and is horrendous..

I loved how you used the StarFox 64 music in the beginning

When is Nintendo going to try going online again?

what was that last piece of music from?? I recognize it, I can sing it by heart but where is it from? ff? klonoa? lba?

Wash your mouth kid. I still play with my n64

I find it kinda surprising that we never got a Star Wars game that would come out on both the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64, unless you count Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, in which featured Darth Maul as a guest character.

what's the name of the song at the very end? Where do I remember that from?

I bought something that looked like this back in 2000 but it was called a DR64 and stacked in the same footprint - ever got your hand son one GH? It added an CD drive and it came with about 10 CD's full or ROMs. There were literally hundreds of games on some discs but most were Japanese or variants of other games, probably only 30 or so UK ones. You could save a game at any point though which was very cool.

Wow I didn't know this thing was actually released in Japan, I assumed it never saw the light of day. I remember being so excited for Earthbound 64...

From wich game is the song that starts at 6:26 ?