A Salute to Nintendo: Part V: Nintendo 64

Ah, the Nintendo 64, the beginning of 3d games for Nintendo consoles. Even though it uses cartridges, the lamest storage type of video games, it was still awesome. Was. It isn't right now.

Now, what's up with that title, 64? If you were a video game expert, you'd know that the 32/64 bit era was in the mid-90's. It was a 64 bit console...very ::sarcasm:: creative. The developers must have been ffeling lazy. Now, what about the N64's (let's call it that)

history? Well... it was originally called the Ultra 64 or in Japan, Ultra Famicom. It's code name was Project Reality. Why the moniker? I don't care. Today I'm too lazy to do research.

One of the launch titles was Super Mario 64. Probably one of the greatest games ever, and at least I know a thing or two about it.

Super Mario 64 is a 3D platformer, the first one in the Mario series, where the player controls Mario through several courses (but no Luigi...crud!) Each course is a little world in which the player is free to wander about in all directions and discover the environment without time limits. The worlds are filled with enemies that attack Mario as well as friendly creatures that offer information, or ask a favor (such as pink Bob-omb Buddies). The player looks for stars in each course; some stars only appear after completing certain tasks, like beating a boss, solving puzzles, racing an opponent, and grabbing coins. As more stars are collected, more areas of the castle become opened.
Some courses have special cap power-ups which augment Mario's abilities. The Wing Cap lets Mario fly; the Metal Cap makes him immune to most damage, allows him to withstand wind, walk underwater, and be unaffected by gases; and the Vanish Cap makes him partially invisible and allows him to walk through some stuff, as well as invincible to some forms of damage. Some courses have cannons that Mario can access by speaking to a Bob-

omb Buddy. After entering a cannon, Mario can be shot out to reach places he couldn't normally access. When the player has the Wing Cap, cannons can be used to reach high altitudes or fly across most levels quickly. Oh, and there's a lot of awesome stuff he can do, too! You can make Mario walk, run, crouch, crawl, swim, climb, and jump using the game controller's control stick and buttons. Special jumps, like a double and triple jump, the long jump, and the backflip can be done by pressing combinations of buttons. There are also special moves, such as wall jumping; jumping from one wall to another in to reach areas that would be too high.

But enough about freakin' launch titles. Lets get to the N64 stuff!

Nintendo noted several advantages for making the N64 cartridge-based. ROM cartridges have very fast load times compared to disc-based games, as CD-ROM drives rarely had speeds above 4x. This can be observed from the loading screens that appear in many Sony PlayStation games but are typically non-existent in N64 versions. ROM carts were so much faster than the 2x CD-ROM drives in other consoles that developers could stream data in real-time off them. Also, ROM cartridges are difficult and expensive to duplicate, thus making it harder for piracy. Compared to the N64, there was a lot of piracy on the PlayStation. The cartridges are also far more durable than compact discs, which must be carefully used and stored in protective cases. It also prevents accidental scratches and read errors from dust and dirt. Whoo hoo! now the bad stuff about cartridges!

While game cartridges are more resistant than CDs to physical damage, they are sometimes less resistant to environmental damage, particularly wear of their electrical thingies inside causing a blank or frozen screen, or static electricity (KA-BOOM!!!). Console cartridges are usually larger and heavier than optical discs and take up more room to store. They also have a more complex manufacturing process, which meant that games were usually more expensive than their optical versions. The cartridges held a maximum of 64 MB of data, where CDs held over 650 MB. As games became more complex in content, sound, and graphics, it pushed cartridges to the limits of their storage capacity. Games ported from other consoles had to reduce content in order to be released on the N64. Extremely large games could be made on multiple discs on CD systems, while cartridge games had to be contained within one unit since using an additional cartridge was expensive (and was never tried).

The controller for the Nintendo 64 could be held in several different positions. It could be held by the two outer grips, allowing use of the D-pad, face buttons and the L and R shoulder buttons (but not the Z trigger or analog stick). It could be also held by the center and right grip, allowing the use of the analog stick, the face buttons, the R shoulder button, and the Z trigger on the rear (but not the L shoulder button or D-pad). More often than the analog stick was not used in games, the analog stick was used in games while in some, both the analog stick and directional pad could be interchangeable. Very few games used the directional pad exclusively; two examples are Tetrisphere and Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards.
The controller also included four C buttons, which were yellow and originally intended to control the camera in the N64's 3D environments. However, since the controller only contained three other face buttons, the C-buttons often became assigned to functions. An example of this is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, which I own for the Wii Virtual Console, where the C-buttons can be assigned to secondary items and the Z-trigger is used to move the camera.

Well, that's about it for the Nintendo 64. See you next time for A Salute to Nintendo: Part VI: Nintendo GameCube! Thanks for reading!