Nintendo 64

The Nintendo 64, named after its 64- bit main processor, is the third stationary video game console from Nintendo. It is the successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Atari Jaguar after the second 64 -bit game console. As part of the fifth generation of consoles, it competed mainly with the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn.

It was published in June 1996, initially in Japan. In Germany, the console came on 1 March 1997 at a price of 399 DM on the market, but was reduced to 299 DM after only eight weeks. For the launch had with Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 two games available in Germany, a few weeks later followed by other titles.

Nintendo applied for the device as the fastest video game system. Particular emphasis here was the 64 -bit technology, its competitors Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn were working only with 32 bit. As the storage medium for the games modules were, as with the previous consoles used. These enabled compared to the consoles from Sony and Sega, used the CD -ROMs, although very short loading times, but offered very little memory and were also expensive to produce. This was reflected in the - down high prices for the games - in comparison to its competitors. The Nintendo 64 was the last home console from Nintendo, the game modules used as a storage medium.

The controller of the Nintendo 64 as a significant innovation introduced a modernized version of the digital meantime outmoded analog sticks, which enables precise control especially in 3D games. Another innovation was the in the controller plug-in Rumble Pak, which triggers when special events occur in the game vibration effects. The analog stick as well as the effect of vibration were taken with controllers subsequent consoles and established themselves as a solid standard.

After the separation in 2001 by the successor GameCube console was manufactured until the year 2003. Worldwide 32.93 million units were sold.

Origin and development

The Nintendo 64 ( N64 abbreviated; notation on the console: Nintendo 64 ) was from 1993, initially together with the workstation manufacturer Silicon Graphics under the project name " Project Reality " - developed - which was later renamed the "Ultra 64 ".

By the use of plug-in modules, the black copy problem should be avoided. In addition, accounted for long load times and saving the game was made possible by a battery- backed memory on the module itself. Compared to the CD -ROM, however, the production costs of the modules were much higher and because of the much lower capacity of only up to 64 MB ( 512 Mbit ) could hardly pre-rendered video and audio elaborate sequences are integrated into the games. For these and other reasons, such as the complicated game programming, the Nintendo 64 was considered from the start rather sparse of the game companies. The best-known developers here is Square, who published his important especially for the Japanese market role plays the Final Fantasy series is not for the Nintendo 64, but for the PlayStation. Nintendo itself was with Rare by far the largest supplier of high quality N64 games.

2001 ended the software development for the Nintendo 64 to worldwide about 400 titles (over 250 in Germany ), about 225 million sold games and nearly 33 million sold consoles. One of the last commercial success was the game Paper Mario, which also appeared in 2001. The last and only game that was released in 2002 for the console, was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, but only in the U.S..

Extensions and peripherals

The controller, which takes place at one of the four ports on the console space, has an unusual shape with three handles: The left handle provides the directional pad used since the NES days and the " L" shoulder button, the right grip most of the ten keys ( striking: the four smaller "C " buttons ) and the mean grip the trigger -like " Z " button and then novel analog stick, from which most of the games made ​​use, as it allowed a sensitive control in 3D games. Due to the selective springback this analog sticks wear the risk was quite high if misused. Especially when playing the Mario Party series had to repeatedly turn the stick in the various mini-games intensively in a circle, which inevitably led to a loss of strength of the rear suspension and deposition of abrasive material. For this reason, we changed the analog stick suspension of succession console, the GameCube, to minimize potential wear.

On the bottom of the controller, a so-called Controller Pak to save Scores or a Rumble Pak be used for generating Rüttel-/Vibrationseffekten. The Rumble Pak was also sold in 1997 along with Lylat Wars in a bundle and later individually. This force feedback similar feature has been copied by other manufacturers and is now in every console controller standard (apart from the lack of rumble feature of the PS3 controller " SIXAXIS " and the Wave Birds for the GameCube ). Nintendo never offered a Pak to which combined the functions of Rumble Pak and Controller, so that the player looked sometimes forced to choose between rumble effect and storage facilities - if a game can not be saved on the module supported - to choose. To work around this problem, in later games were given the opportunity to replace the Paks for a moment. Other manufacturers offered modules that could be switched between saving and vibration, but this was not an optimal solution, because these modules were not working properly with some games.

A special extension represents the expansion Pak, which can be inserted into a small slot on the top panel, whereby the memory of 4 MB is increased to 8 MB. In some games, optionally, a higher texture size ( "Hi- Res" ) can be selected. However, the higher texture size requires more computing power, so you also get a lower refresh rate. For three titles ( Donkey Kong 64, The Legend of Zelda: Majora 's Mask as well as large parts of Perfect Dark ), the Expansion Pak is even imperative, therefore, it also came with Donkey Kong 64. There was also Nintendo nor the Transfer Pak to transfer Game Boy data into an N64 game and never released in Europe Microphone Pak for voice recognition and control.

Furthermore, the end of 1999 a special floppy drive was launched as an extension in Japan on the market, the 64DD.

Variants

Originally, the Nintendo 64 was only available in black, later followed by different colored housing options (blue, green, purple, orange and red), mostly semi-transparent. However, the execution corresponded in each case to the base unit. These variants were available only in special offers along with an advertised game. In addition to the basic console hand controller was often modified in color. There was also a version with the game GoldenEye 007

2000 was followed by a new housing option in the blue- yellow Pokémon Pikachu design with a raised figure on the right upper side and a Poké Ball as a power switch. The right foot Pikachu serves as a reset button. In addition there was a correspondingly colored controller with the words Pokémon. This is not to be confused with the Pokémon edition of 2001, which with a Pokémon sticker represented only a normal basic unit on the left side.

Furthermore, there were in Japan and the U.S. also a golden console. In Europe, people had to make do with a golden controller.

2003, the entire hardware is housed in a controller and published as iQue Player exclusively in China.

Emulation

As with the NES and SNES two predecessors, it is also the Nintendo 64 possible to copy the games using special readers of the plug-in modules to a computer and play via emulator. However, the hardware of the N64 is more difficult to emulate, so far no emulator a completely error-free result. This is particularly striking in the audio emulation, where it quite often comes to clicks and drop outs of sound. Also graphical glitches such as missing or disappearing textures or polygons are frequently observed.

In the N64 emulation scene it has established itself, resorting to plug-ins in terms of the individual components to be emulated. Thus, it is possible to replace the complete video, audio and controller emulation, so may quickly bring about a solution for problems.

Available emulators

• Project64
• 1964
• UltraHLE
• Nemu64
• Corn
• Mupen64
• SupraHLE

• UltraHLE 2064
• Sixty Force
• Daedalus
• Apollo
• TR64
• TRWin
• True Reality

Homebrew and backups

Even in 1996, the first devices with which it was possible to create backup copies of the modules published. This could then, as well as homebrew software, running on the console. The price for this technically a PC resembling devices was between 500 DM and 800 DM as media were CD-R, 100 -MB Zip disks or flash memory. Subsequent modifications of hobby developers made ​​it possible to use hard drives or Compact Flash memory. The connection types for N64 were different. Some used the expansion port on the bottom of the N64, the other module bay. Compared to the PlayStation homebrew scene was relatively small on the Nintendo 64.

Specifications

• Processor: SGI ( NEC) 64- Bit MIPS RISC R4300i ( 93.75 MHz), 24 KB L1 cache, 125 MIPS, 250 MB / sec bus
• Co-processor SGI 64- bit RCP (62.5 MHz ), 100 MFLOPS, 150K Polygons / sec, 32- bit color, 500 MB / sec bus " Reality Co - Processor " for graphics and audio calculating / playback
• Consisting of two integrated processors: RDP ( " Reality Drawing Processor " ) and RSP ( " Reality Signal Processor ", vector processor )

• Signal: Composite and S- Video
• Color Depth: 32- bit
• Skills (selection): flicker free interlace mode
• Z -buffering
• Real-time anti-aliasing
• Motion blur
• Realistic Texture Mapping ( trilinear mipmap interpolation, Environment mapping, perspective correction )

Games

For games see List of Nintendo 64 games.