In all its glory
Image: Evan Amos / Vanamo Media

Nintendo has come a long way in terms of openness with developers for its consoles. Nowadays, anybody with a laptop and some time is welcome to submit a game on the eShop, and there are more tools than ever to help realize this goal. It hasn't always been that way, however, as Nintendo used to require certain standards of individuals that wished to develop for their consoles. Back in the day of the N64, a dev kit for the platform wasn't nearly as easy to obtain, but this interesting device from a third party company allowed some people to neatly sidestep the issue.

The device is called the Bung Doctor V64, and it functionally was a way to develop for the platform without having to buy an official dev kit and go through the lengthy approval process. It cost $450, which was still cheaper than a legitimate dev kit, and included a CD drive that also played video CDs, bizarrely enough. Our good friends Adrian and Phil from the excellent Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, UK recently picked one up so we can learn about this fascinating device:

What do you think? Are you glad Nintendo has loosened its restrictions on developers? Have you ever seen one of these? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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[source youtube.com]