Even though its cartridge format was a complaint from the first day, Nintendo did not suffer too badly from the format's limitations thanks to good development. The launch was very successful, even though there were only two games at launch: Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64. Those two were all it took for units to fly off shelves, and eventually more great first party games would be released.

  Nintendo lost some great allies by sticking with cartridges, including Squaresoft, Konami, and Enix; all went on to produce games that could only have been done on the PlayStation, such as Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, and Star Ocean 2. The remaining third party developers produced mediocre games for the most part, and the Nintendo 64 only survived on titles by Nintendo and its new best friend, Rareware.

  The controller was certainly groundbreaking, because of its unusual design. It was apparently designed for gamers who have three hands. However, the third-hand-challenged gamers could hold the analog and button prongs and ignore the D-pad prong, or they could hold the D-pad and not use the analog stick. The analog stick was a new feature of game controllers; soon after, analog controllers for PlayStation and Saturn emerged.

  The N64 controller was also unusual in having an expansion port in the back. One could insert a Memory Pak or Rumble Pak, Pak intentionally spelled incorrectly by Nintendo. There was also a Transfer Pak that could copy savegame data from Game Boy cartridges such as Pokémon. It cannot be used as a ROM backup device, so don't ask if it can. Memory Paks were a kind of oddity on the N64; most games had internal save RAM, but a few required a Memory Pak. It would be less confusing if Nintendo had stuck to just one save method. Of course, the advantage of using the Memory Pak is being able to bring it with you to others' houses to use your own save.

Top

The Adaptoid and Boom adapters.

  Lik-Sang sells the Boom adapter, which doesn't have any of the features I mentioned above for the Adaptoid. All it does is adapt N64 (or PSX) controllers. The problem is there are apparently two versions of the N64 controller, and the more popular version does not work on the Boom. Instead you get erratic behavior. I have tried the method that is claimed to solve the problem, leaving a PSX controller plugged in, and proven that it does not work. The only hope is to get another controller until you find one that works. Since the Adaptoid is no longer being produced, this is the only option left. There is a PSXPad driver for N64 controllers, but the interface you have to build is ridiculously complicated. (The page is a 404 error, but I have a copy of the schematic here.) If any of you have tried it, please E-mail me and tell me how it went. Is it more compatible than the Boom?

Top