Random: Fan Finds a North American N64 DD Development Unit

Nice!

Could they release 64DD games such as Mario Artist on virtual console?

I saw one of these at the National Video Game Museum in Frisco, Texas last weekend. I initially thought the "DD" stood for "Double Decker" before I read the fine print.

Very cool find! But it's not Nintendo's first attempt at using disc-based media in consoles, that honor goes to the Famicom Disk System add-on which was fairly successful in Japan. They even released a combo system that played cartridges and disks, it was manufactured by SHARP in 3 different Colors!

Maybe it's my cynicism coming through, but who in the world obtains something as rare and unique as a US N64DD and hook the thing up to a flat screen? I wish I had a DD just as a novelty as I love everything N64 and collecting peripherals is on my list of 'after the divorce is finalized' projects.

I have a Japanese 64DD. F-Zero X Expansion Kit is amazing, and Doshin the Giant and Sim City 64 are pretty interesting. I might get the Mario Artist games soon.

Nice! And imagine... There were talks of releasing Final Fantasy VII on this...

@MrPuzzlez Imagine where Nintendo would be now if they went with discs from the get go. N64 was fine, but I think axing cartridges would've been the right move at the time.

Also I think this post meant Majoras Mask was originally meant for it. as it was gonna have more days as well as a real time system, built onto it.

@MitchVogel Disks arent that much powerful then cartridges, they were just cheaper to make. Heck the Gamecube shows us this with its smaller more compact disks. I mean their were some limitations, but compare Ps1 games to N64, and their isn't much of a diffrence in terms of graphics. Only other differences would be controles and content. Both of which N64 games seemed to surpass at

Wow, so that's one of the fabled NA N64DD units I saw in pictures back almost 20 years ago in Nintendo Power... I would have loved to visit the Nintendo offices back then, or at least hear stories about people familiar with the place. The seller in this case must have known someone who worked there.

Those disks look like Zip drives... So they could have had maybe 250-750 MB of space on each drive?

What has this got to do with Pokémon Go??

@KJW90 Mew is under the NA N64 DD. Niantic is my uncle.

@MitchVogel It also makes me wonder about the loading times... I remember that the PS1's average loading times were between 8 - 12 seconds, or at least somewhere in the ballpark of that.

@patbacknitro18 True, but the move to cartridges alienated a lot of third parties. If I'm remembering right, it's the reason FF VII moved to PS1.

@patbacknitro18 I thought it was also a data issue too. That was why FF7 was released on the PS1 instead, and as they say, the rest is history. Disc held more data than catridges. FF7 was a three disc game. I remember a lot of what about N64 questions being asked in articles about high profile games coming to PS1. I remember it being a big deal when Residebt Evil 2 came to the 64. People didn't think it could be done. This whole era was the beginning of the Nintendo we have today. Not only when it comes to third party support, but also the kiddie image. I remember the, "look where mature too" marketing hype for Conkers Bad Fur Day. Which came when it was too late. It was around the time when the 64 was on the way out, and people didn't really care anymore. Most people's minds were already made up. Sounds familiar? I think the data expansion pack came a little late too.

@AshFoxX Just like with the SNES Playstation, I have to quote Indiana Jones for this one, too: "It belongs in a museum!"

@PlywoodStick the smallest and standard size for a dd game was 64mb. Kinda pointless, when games like cookers bad fur day were a similar size, yet came on cartridges

@Don There are videos of N64 DD games being run via emulation, so, I will say, yes, it is possible, but knowing just how well-invested NOA is with the Virtual Console..yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath.

But what about Pokemon go

@patbacknitro18 I kinda Love cartridges. I've ruined many a cd/dvd just by handling them all the time.

@MitchVogel Discs didn't save the Saturn. The problem wasn't cartridges, it was Sony buying a big part of the industry with their big wallet. FFVII could have been possible on the N64. It would have probably been a different game though, with full 3D environments instead of still images.

I'll be honest... I'm even more interested in the reference to the Ocarina of Time 64DD codebase existing. I wonder if any part of the fabled and much wanted Ura Zelda was implemented.

The point of the 64DD wasn't the size of the disks. It was the realtime clock and the fact the disks were designed so that part of them was rewritable with user data.

Almost like early Mii or amiibo features really.

Nintendo Playstations ..Nintendo Ultra 64 Disk Drives .. it never ends !😃😃😃

@Pac-Fan But Conker's was the biggest N64 ROM, at 64 MB. I think Stadium 2 was also a 64 meg, but that was 8 times the size of early titles like Mario 64. If the DD used a similar format to ZIP or JAZ they could have gone up to a gig or 2 in size.

@Stalkid64 I wonder, too. I remember watching this Youtube video on the history, and it sounds like a sizeable chunk of the game was chopped. Considering how well it turned out doing, imagine if OoT launched with all that content.

@FatherChesz but when the dd was finally released it was nearing the era of larger n64 carts