The Misunderstood N64

This isn't a top 10 list or fan boy page. This is about a classic console that has a bit of a negative reputation, the Nintendo 64. The question to be answered: "Is the reputation deserved or not?"

Modern gamers tend to apply current gaming rules and expectations and of course the console falls short by those metrics, for example frame rates rarely exceed 30 FPS and 15-20 is common. Gamers that grew up with the system either over look the flaws or spew hatred on the N64.

Everybody has opinions, I'm going to be focused on facts. Honestly I'm a fan of the N64 and feel a little defensive about some of these topics because of the misinformation that is taken as fact. Once in a while, I will "jump to some conclusions" based on publicly available knowledge about the thought process inside of Nintendo. No one at Nintendo was interviewed or talked to about this series. All opinions are entirely my own.

One of the other things that tends to happen during these "arguments" is changing the perspective (manufacturer/publisher/developer/gamer) in order to prove one console is superior to another.

For example: The N64 was better at preventing piracy, then instead of Nintendo winning this topic, it get's flipped around so that N64 gamers lose because they had to pay more for games.

Conclusion

The conclusion is first? I want to be clear I don't expect to change any opinions, if you hate the N64 that probably wont change. This is about getting related facts together to truly understand the console and the era.

I believe that Nintendo mostly made the right design decisions. It would of been nice if more gamers loved the system but I will point out that Nintendo has a lot of smart business people and while the N64 didn't have the same level of sales that the PlayStation had, it wasn't a failure and the console didn't risk the stability of the company.

Timeline - aka History

Game console specifications are set in stone the day the console launches, especially in the 1980's, 1990's.

Desktop Computers

I just want to provide a little more context outside of the home console market. Even today game consoles are often compared to PC's.

http://microstar.net/humor/oldprices.html

• AMD 5x86 @ 133 MHz

• 8 MB RAM

• 540 MB Hard drive

• 1 MB Video RAM

• Keyboard/Mouse/Modem/Case

• $799.00

Compared to the N64's specs

• MIPS R4300 @ 93 MHz

• 4 to 8 MB RAM

• 1 Controller

• $199.99

MIPS processors have a RISC vs CISC design so 93 MHz would perform the same or better than an 5x86 processor at 133 MHz.

Pricing

Sega Saturn Release Price $399.99

$199.99 when N64 was released

PlayStation 1 Release Price : $299.99

$199.99 when N64 was released

Nintendo 64 Release Price : $199.99

These companies don't usually publish their per unit profit margins but it's been clear from the earliest days of Nintendo, they don't like to lose money on the console. That doesn't mean that they make a lot on each console. If Nintendo could make a $0.25 profit on every N64 that was another $7.5 million (based on 30 million units sold). Sony was known to be losing more than $200 on each PS3 console sold, even if they only sold 100,000 at this price, it was a loss of $20 million.

More profit is always better, the real difference is sustainability while selling at a loss. Luckily with sales volume and patience, component prices tend to come down and manufacturing/distribution become more efficient. Large losses can still take a long time to balance out. Some console manufacturers didn't have enough time or sales volume to reduce their costs and eventually went out of business.

Selling the console at a profit is probably more important for Nintendo than it is for Sony, because Nintendo only operates in a single market. By comparison, if Sony takes huge losses in video game systems they can make them up with profit from their Home Electronics or TV/Movies divisions.

Lifespan Units Sold

• PlayStation 1 : 102.49 million

• Nintendo 64 : 32.93 million

• Sega Saturn : 9.26 million

In units sold PlayStation is clearly the winner, but I think there is a little more behind these numbers than raw sales.

Official Availability:

• Nintendo 64 available 5 years and 10 months.

• PlayStation 1 available 11 years and 3 months.

PlayStation was available for nearly twice as long as the N64. This longer lifespan was probably because the demand continued and Sony chose to supply it. Since Sony was a huge company trying to break into the video games market, supporting two home consoles at the same time was relatively easy, where Nintendo chose to focus their efforts and resources on one at a time with just a little overlap.

Based on the available data (which is limited in detail) it seems that during the time both consoles were on the market the PlayStation sold two consoles for every one N64 console.

Some folks argue that the N64 was a failure because it was "so far behind the PS1". In reviewing the consoles and their respective sales, I'd suggest that a better indication of success vs failure is if the company made a console after the one in this generation. Both Nintendo (GameCube) and Sega (Dreamcast) made consoles for the 6th generation. The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was 4th place with 2 million units sold and the last console made by 3DO. Atari released the Jaguar in this generation with less than 250,000 units sold which was also the last console made by Atari.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_of_video_game_consoles#Worldwide_sales_standings

Three Handed Controller

Cartridges vs CD's

N64 Games released on a cartridge ranged in size from 4 MB to 64 MB. Most would be quick to think that 3D games must be large so 64 MB must be more common, while in fact the opposite is true, only 5 North American games were 64 MB.

Many of the best known games were 16 MB or less including: Automobili Lamborghini (4 MB), Batman Beyond - Return of the Joker (4 MB), Bomberman 64 (8 MB), Super Mario 64 (8 MB), Duke Nukem 64 (8 MB), Turok Dinosaur Hunter (8 MB), Mario Kart 64 (12 MB), GT64 Championship Edition (12 MB), Star Fox 64 (12 MB), 007 Golden Eye (12 MB), Quake 64 (12 MB), Super Smash Bros. (16 MB), Banjo Kazooie (16 MB). The sports titles like: All-Star Baseball, FIFA, NBA, NFL, NHL series were all 16 MB or less, most of the wrestling games were 32 MB. The two Zelda games were 32 MB.

I like the example of Super Mario 64, the game world is large with numerous game play actions and styles. The ROM size is 8 MB, would making this game 64 MB (8 times larger) make the game 8 times better? Unfortunately what happens is other bottlenecks get in the way. Super Mario 64 was a launch day title so the developers were still learning about the console and many optimizations were still being worked on. There are only so many triangles that can be drawn onscreen per frame, trying to draw more often reduces the framerate, so adding more 3D objects or texture detail could make the game worse and not better. So the extra ROM size (8 to 64 MB) could of been used to add new areas, well a 500 or 1,000 star version of Super Mario 64 would probably become repetitive and overly long for most gamers. My opinion here is that even doubling the ROM size might of added 10-20% to the gamers experience but even that is very subjective.

Sony made a technical decision to combine CD discs and an MPEG chip into the PS1. This pairing allowed for full motion video cut scenes, which can be very useful for telling a story and was certainly a good combination for most RPG style games. What's interesting is, if you were to remove the cutscenes most of the PS1 games would fit on a cartridge, in fact many of the PS1 multi-CD games had the entire game engine and all of the game data on every disc so only the cutscenes were different between discs.

The manufacturing costs were certainly higher for cartridges, in many cases the consumer actually saw a price difference at retail, if a game had a large ROM size it's price could be as high as $70 or $80 vs the normal retail price of $50. Also when the publishers did a re-release of a high selling game the PS1 price was as low as $20 but N64 games were usually still $30-$40 for their value series. Near the end of the N64 life cycle the ROM chips were coming down in price so most of the larger games were released later in the consoles life.

One thing that many people don't consider is how big could an N64 cartridge be? In the late 90's the cost of chips fluctuated up and down, which had an impact on the price of games and what ROM sizes could be used economically. If the cost of chips had always trended down, then 64MB could of become the default size. The console does support cartridges up to 240 MB in size with no changes. The GameBoy and GameBoy Color by default could only access 32 KB of a game at one time, but they used a Memory Bank Controllers to have games up to 8 MB. Using a similar techniques multi-Gigabyte games could of been released on the N64. Which means one of the biggest arguments that FFVII couldn't fit on a cartridge is wrong, it would be VERY expensive but would of been possible.

One other downside of cartridges for publishers which had to try and predict game launch sales, if they didn't predict well it could take a week or more to produce additional units. The lead time for CD manufacturing was much shorter, as little as a few days.

Summary

The game size difference has little impact on either the amount or quality of gameplay, since most of the additional content on PlayStation CD's is FMV, which means that cartridges generally have a reduction in the "story telling" aspects provided by FMV.

The cost and lead time required for cartridges are both negatives but these would of impacted publishers more than any other involved group.

Game Piracy

This could be considered part of the Disc vs Cartridge debate but I feel like it's bigger than that. In the timeline above I noted the release date of a few devices that could be used to play backed up games (i.e. possibly pirated/bootleg copies).

Note: I use the term GameShark as both a brand and a generic term, in reality there were several very similar products created and some sold under multiple company names.

If you look at the devices release dates relative to the consoles release dates, then the N64 would loose the piracy argument with only 4 months after the consoles release. Although taking a closer look the cost of $450 was more than double the cost of the console itself and additionally required a $200 CD-R drive. Since the Doctor V64 was intended as a low cost development kit the unit wasn't made in large quantities and the firmware had to be modified in order to play backup games. In addition Nintendo sued the manufacturer very quickly, further limiting the available supply of these units, even if you had the money.

Over a year after the N64's release the N64 Gameshark came out. Since N64 games were released on cartridges, there wasn't a good way to copy them to another cartridge to play on the console, so the N64 Gameshark had a limited impact on the piracy of N64 games. The later release of the Gameshark Pro did make it easy to dump a game for playing in an emulator, but the very limited memory (256KB) inside the Gameshark Pro didn't allow for playing these backups on the console itself.

Just over a year after the PlayStation was released the GameShark was released which allowed players to play CD backups of PlayStation games. Later console versions tried to disable this functionality, with limited success. If a player didn't have a GameShark compatible console or wanted an easier way to play backups, about 16 months after the PlayStation's release there was a Mod-Chip that was available for about $80 + Installation (the Mod-Chip eventually dropped to $10). Admittedly backing up PlayStation games still required a $200 CD Writer. One CD-R drive would easily meet the needs of a large group of friends, but the best source became the Swap Meet seller who could profitably sell PlayStation games for just a couple of dollars.

Summary on Piracy

While neither console stopped piracy completely I think Nintendo was more successful at blocking piracy, since it required more money it wasn't as available to the average gamer. To be near the end of the N64's life cycle and the hardware to play a backup is hard to find and costs nearly $400 + ($179 + $200 CD-Burner) vs the PlayStation mod-chips being easy to find and only $10 with Swap Meet games only a few dollars each.

In 2020 this situation hasn't changed much. While "bootleg" PlayStation games can be as low as $1.00, N64 Bootleg games can be found for $15.00-$25.00 each, which is more than many used original games sell for. There are flash carts available that can play backed up ROM's these are generally $100-$200 depending on features and only became common in the past 5 years.

The Muddy Mess aka Anti-Aliasing

Hard to Develop games

RAM

My favorite misunderstanding is "why would Nintendo choose Rambus Memory when DDR memory is so much faster". The first thing is that DDR wasn't available until 1998 almost 2 years after N64 was launched, the common computer RAM that was available when the N64 launched was EDO (Extended Data Out). The EDO memory of the time had an effective data rate of 320 MBps, while the RDRAM used in the N64 was rated at up to 600 MBps. Computers from this era commonly shipped with 16+ MB of RAM while the N64 shipped with 4 MB with an upgrade option to 8 MB.

To be clear the N64 RDRAM does have limitations mostly regarding latency and overall bandwidth.