How about the iQue Player? It was only available in China, and it's basically a N64 on a chip. The player came with demos and then you could download full games onto the chip through what are called "Ique Depots", which were mostly in gas stations (and apparently, you can still find them, because I don't think it was ever discontinued).
Oddly enough, it was released in 2003, two years after Gamecube's launch. Then again, it is China we're talking about.
I believe Nintendo actually said they were releasing old tech, and (I hear) even then requiring users to use the memory card it shipped with, because they don't trust the Chinese to not pirate it.
That would be 100% correct on that. Nintendo did not trust the Chinese due to the massive ring of piracy of their stuff to their beginnings in the cartridge market(Famicom) out of that country and their territories. By having an N64 on a chip setup with downloads being only possible, the best a thief could do I suppose would not be economically sound. You'd have to either hack the hardware to take a SD card or something with ROMS stolen online and patched to run, or jacked from a kiosk and uploaded online. Either way not likely, and with the nazi like grip the Chinese net censors have on stuff most probably wouldn't want to risk that in their business either.
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Topic: Obscure, rare Nintendo systems
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