The Nintendo 64 was Nintendo's first steps into full 3d
gaming. Designed to compete with consoles like the Sony Playstation and the
Sega Saturn, the Nintendo was the only console of this generation to use
cartradges instead of CD's. This led to an interesting moment in gaming
development. Where the Nintendo was capeable of crisper graphics and no loading
times, due to the size limitations of cartradges of the day, it was extremely
limited in game size, limited data for full recorded music and sounds, and no
fully rendered cut scenes. On top of that, the production of cartradges was
both complicated and expensive, not allowing much of the Indi market to develop
for the system. Even with these limitations, the Nintendo 64 was not only a
huge success, but had a vast array of some of the best games the market had
seen to date. Many of which are still beloved and played today.
The Nintendo 64, even with it's graphical limitations, had
an edge on much of the market for several reasons. First, it was one of the cheapest
consoles of it's generation, costing about $100 less than it's closest
competition, the Sony Playstation. On top of that, it was one of the first
consoles to utilize fully 3d rendered worlds, instead of just utilizing 3d
characters and sprites, with pre-rendered backgrounds. This was apperant in one
of the Nintendo 64's launch titles, Super Mario 64. Not only did the fully
rendered worlds create an explorable landscape, it also allowed the users full
control of the camera, something that was nearly unheard of in gaming to that
point. Admitted, sometimes a complete pain, this allowed the players a full
view of the world they were playing in, making the games more emersive than
ever.
The Nintendo 64 was the first console to come pre-built with
4 control ports. No attachments, and built in to support 4 players on almost
every multiplayer game. And of all companies, Nintendo, who lets remind
everyone loves to sell you peripherals and attachments, came up with. This gave
a great many games a strong emphasis on multiplayer. Many of the Nintendo 64's
top titles are heralded to this day for this. Games like Mario Kart 64, Golden
Eye, Super Smash Brothers and many others were staples of the multiplayer
genre, so much in fact, many of the titles developed at this time, are around
in some form or another today.
If there's any 'controversy' surrounding the Nintendo 64, I
would have to say the greatest is surrounding the controller. Loved by some,
and hated by others. This was the one feature on the Nintendo 64 that
galvanized gamers more than anything. I'll start out by saying that I really
liked the 64's controller. Yes, it wasn't without it's faults, but it worked
perfectly for the games designed for the system. And it was one of the only
controllers ever designed that allowed for different options on how to hold the
controller. This, however was one of the main complaints against the
controller. Where Nintendo was allowing 'choice', many saw this as a limitation
as they didn't alway have full access to all the buttons and controlls. The
Nintendo 64 was the first console to have a fully analog controller, which was
out before Sony's Dualshock by almost 2 years, once again giving an edge to
Nintendo in 3D gaming.
Now onto the elephant in the room, the cartradges. Nintendo
use of Carts were possibly it's greatest strength as well as it's greatest
weakness. The use of cartradges allowed for Nintendo to utilize full 3D worlds,
without having to have a loading screen everytime you moved more than 20 yards,
which also allowed for sharper in game graphics than most of it's competitors.
But cardradges are expensive and complicated to make, negating almost any 3rd
party development for the system. In almost all cases, 3rd party developers
were forced to make the games along side Nintendo themselves, just to help
illeviate much of the cost of development. This was a double edge sword, as it
weeded out much of the cheap and crappy titles, and allowed Nintendo a certain
level of quality control. But this also stopped almost and of the indipendent
market from developing titles for the 64. This was also responsible for ending
one of the longest and strongest gaming aliances up to this point, between
Nintendo and Squaresoft (now known as Square Enix). Squaresoft was and is one
of the largest and most successful makers of JRPG's. They saw there were
massive size limitations on Nintendo's cartradges, and Sony had the ability to
switch disks mid game as data ran out, thus allowing them to create games
accross multiple disks increasing their size immensely.
Something that has always haunted Nintendo, is their love
for peripherals. Even with all that's included with the N64 as standard, it was
no exception to this fact. The first well known peripheral is the controller
memory pack. This allowed for players to save times and ghosts in Mario Kart,
Costumes in Bomberman, stuff like that. There were many other peripherals
including, but not limited to, the Rumble Pak, Transfer Pak, the VRU and
notibly the expansion pak (Nintendo seemed to have an evertion to C's in the
90's... who knew). The Expansion Pak was one of the few peripherals that was
necessary to play some games (I.E. Majora's Mask, and Donkey Kong 64). While
only a few titles required the Expansion Pak, it added options of higher graphics
to many others that didn't.
One of Nintendo's great legacy's are it's quality game
titles. With franchises like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda and Star Fox (to
name a few). The Nintendo 64's versions of these titles are so beloved, most
are being ported to modern systems today, with several receiving full graphical
overhauls, and even making the jump to 3D on Nintendo's 3Ds. Because of
Nintendo's quality games, it allowed for the Nintendo 64 to be a heavy weight
in a field it should have really been an underdog. The Nintendo 64 was the
first steps for many of us into the world of 3D gaming. The N64 is a beloved
system for many of us that grew up with the system, and will continue to be
played for many years to come.
