Why are these a thing? Retro Game Attic takes a look at the secret Controller Pak menus included in many (all?) memory card supporting games for the Nintendo 64. (14 minutes)

The N64 came out after the release of the Sony Playstation, which had already begun its meteoric rise. The Playstation used optical disc media, and had no on-console memory for saving like the Saturn did, so memory cards were a necessity for saving game state. While the N64 didn’t absolutely need them, since the biggest advantage of cartridges as a game storage medium was the ability to include hardware like flash storage in the cartridge (a feature used in Super Mario 64, the first system pack-in), an iconic feature of the N64 was the controller ports, which allowed the use of flash memory cards that could hold save data for multiple games.

As the video demonstrates, memory cards were plugged directly into the controllers, and controller paks allowed for some nice features. My favorite was how Gauntlet Legends allowed players to save characters to their own memory card, so you could maintain state between games played on different cartridges. (This feature would be retained in the Dreamcast version of Gauntlet Legends, which also had controller port memory cards.)

The Nintendo 64 didn’t have a BIOS or other internal boot time code. Like with the SNES, all of its executable code was contained withing the cartridges, or “Game Paks.” (Nintendo certainly loved to call hardware “Paks.” Pak Chooie Umf!) This meant that controller management features couldn’t be included in the console itself as with the Playstation, and any management would have to be done in the cartridge itself.

I don’t know if it was a Nintendo mandate that all games that used memory cards had to include their own menu to manipulate saved data, but in practice that’s what happened. All those games with their own controller data managers! And many games didn’t even expose them in the menus. I suspect that to this day many former and current Nintendo 64 owners don’t know, if they want to check what data is on a card or delete something, they have to insert a card-supporting game and hold Start while turning the system on.

Not all games! Just games that use memory cards! And the weirdest thing, which the video makes a deal out of, is that every game uses its own assets to implement the menu: graphics, backgrounds, fonts and sounds. Dozens of bespoke UI implementations, all to provide the same functionality. Some games add extra features, like exposing a little extra data or letting you switch between controllers. Some games have separate menus available after their normal startup; Rare did this, and sometimes those used completely different menus. But as far as I know, if a game used memory cards, you could hold Start at boot time to manage them.

It’s just another oddity with what, in retrospect, has become one of Nintendo’s oddest consoles. More information on N64 controller pak management menus can be found at consolemods.org. Information on N64 controller paks themselves is at ultra64.ca, which includes Nintendo’s policies on what cartridges should do to facilitate N64 memory cards.

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I still don’t know how Jeremy Parish can finish all of his video game history subseries before the year 2084, when the Robotrons revolt and destroy human-kind, but he’s making good time. He’s at last started on his examination of the Nintendo 64 era, with N64 Works #000. (22 minutes)

He admits that the N64 era was one where he originally didn’t have the Nintendo console for that generation, opting instead for the Playstation. I was in college at the time and had both, but got the N64 first, and got far more use out of it overall. Maybe I had weird tastes? Jeremy does admit that Super Mario 64 looked really impressive on all those demo kiosks.

Back then, Mario 64 looked like an impossible feat. Nowadays, through the efforts of people like pannenkoek, Kaze Emanuar and others, we know that Super Mario 64 was a creation combining long cycles of iteration, a bunch of outright hackery, and a whole lot of work. I hope someday that the full story of Mario 64’s creation can be told. Maybe Jeremy’s eventual examination of the game will help to pull back the curtain?

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The growing number of fan-made decompilations of classic games is what make these hilarious affronts to the very idea of console exclusivity possible. But while ports of such games to PC platforms allow for much greater visual clarity and the resolution of long-standing deficiencies, this is almost a celebration of the idea of technical limitations—and I, for one, am all in favor. But you have to understand, I’ve given serious thought to the idea of picking up an old CP/M machine and coding on it in assembly. I’m crazy pants, is what I’m saying, and on things of this nature you probably shouldn’t be listening to me.

Just look at the footage in that video, and how it’s more glitch than game. It seems impossible that it’ll ever run like the N64 original, but we can dream, can’t we?

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Video Games 101, a side channel of a Let’s Play channel, covers much the same ground as U Can Beat Video Games. Some of the specific games are different. VG101 is a bit more about entertainment than the specifics of beating games and the strategy involved. Professor Brigands has three “TA” characters that assist him: Scary Gary (covering bosses), Blaze (a surfer who goes over the available items in each game) and Fluff the cat puppet, the most fun of the group, who explains game trivia and history.

I’m just putting it off still further at this point. Here is the intro video to the channel, followed by the list of every walkthrough VG101 has posted to date.

NES

Nintendo

Donkey Kong(10m)
Donkey Kong Jr.(11m)
Super Mario Bros.(39m)
Super Mario 3 (Full Walkthrough)(2h58m)
Super Mario Bros 3 (with warps)(21m)

The Legend of Zelda
First Quest(1h28m)
Second Quest(2h2m)

Zelda II(2h13m)
Kirby’s Adventure(2h2m)
Metroid(1h32m)
Kid Icarus(1h27m)
Punch-Out!! NES(47m)
StarTropics(2h8m)
Tetris (Strategy Guide)(23m)
Yoshi’s Cookie (Strategy Guide)(18m)
Dr. Mario (Strategy Guide)(20m)
Yoshi(14m)
Baseball(26m)
Tennis(29m)
Golf(14m)
Pro Wrestling(34m)
Ice Hockey(14m)
Volleyball(23m)
Excitebike(12m)
Pinball(26m)
RC Pro-Am(28m)
Rad Racer(31m)

Capcom

Ghosts ‘n Goblins(39m)
Mega Man(43m)
Mega Man II(1h2m)
Mega Man III(1h4m)
Mega Man IV(1h10m)
Ducktales(30m)
Duck Tales 2(34m)
Darkwing Duck(43m)
Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers 2(44m)
Legendary Wings(38m)

Konami

Gradius(21m)
Castlevania(26m)
Castlevania II(1h3m)
Castlevania III(1h39m)
Contra(21m)
Super C(26m)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES(47m)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game( 1h4m)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III(1h3m)
Metal Gear(1h29m)
Track and Field (all World Records)(15m)
The Goonies II(43m)
Top Gun(38m)
Tiny Toon Adventures(30m)
The Adventures of Bayou Billy(42m)
Blades of Steel(25m)
Sid Meier’s Pirates! NES(1h22m)

ICOM

Shadowgate(42m)
Deja Vu(47m)
Uninvited(35m)

Tecmo

Ninja Gaiden II(52m)
Ninja Gaiden III(51m)
Rygar(43m)

Sunsoft

Batman NES(30m)
Batman: Return of the Joker(25m)
Blaster Master(1h45m)

LJN

Friday the 13th(24m)
A Nightmare on Elm Street(42m)
Jaws(22m)
T&C Suft Design (18m)

RPGs and Related

Faxanadu(1h36m)
Legacy of the Wizard (Dragon Slayer IV NES)(1h16m)
Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest NES)(1h51m)
Final Fantasy(4h)
Crystalis(2h2m)

Brawlers

Double Dragon(24m)
Double Dragon II(23m)
Double Dragon III(29m)
River City Ransom(47m)

The Guardian Legend(1h54m)
Adventures of Lolo(42m)
Adventures of Lolo 2(47m)
A Boy and His Blob(21m)
The Battle of Olympus(1h9m)
Adventure Island(1h7m)
Bubble Bobble(1h2m)
Maniac Mansion(1h1m)
Low-G-Man(41m)
Robocop(25m)
Battletoads(57m)
8 Eyes(49m)
Paperboy(18m)
Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu(37m)
Gremlins 2(25m)
Shatterhand(54m)
Beetlejuice(31m)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde(56m)
Rockin’ Kats(50m)
Magician(1h19m)
Vice: Project Doom(43m)
The Three Stooges(26m)
Super Dodge Ball(21m)
King’s Quest V(1h10m)
Kick Master(39m)
Puss ‘n Boots(15m)
Home Alone 2(25m)
Burgertime (Strategy Guide)(11m)
Dr. Chaos(1h7m)
Werewolf: The Last Warrior(1h39m)
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary(1h15m)
Bart vs The Space Mutants(48m)
Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout(50m)
Bad Dudes(24m)
The Flintstones(36m)
Total Recall(25m)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves(1h7m)
Ghostbusters(24m)
Back to the Future(23m)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?(56m)
M.U.S.C.L.E.(15m)
Ninja Kid(19m)
The Legend of Dino Riki(24m)
Narc(25m)

GENESIS/MEGA DRIVE

Home Alone(56m)

SNES

Super Mario World
Part 1(44m)
Part 2(41m)
Part 3(45m)
Part 4(52m)
Ghoul School(34m)
Illusion of Gaia(7h4m)
Super Metroid(2h46m)

Super Mario RPG
Part 1(3h2m)
Part 2(3h2m)
Part 3(2h42m)
Part 4(2h41m)

Secret of Mana
Part 1(2h29m)
Part 2(1h59m)
Part 3(1h59m)
Part 4(1h48m)

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past(3h57m)
Super Punch-Out!! SNES(34m)
Mega Man X(1h25m)
Mega Man X2(1h29m)
Final Fight(43m)
Sunset Riders(34m)

NINTENDO 64

Star Fox 64
Easy Route(47m)
Medium Route(43m)
Hard Route(51m)

Super Mario 64
Part 1(1h13m)
Part 2(59m)
Part 3(1h7m)
Part 4(51m)

Goldeneye 007(1h52m)

MISCELLANEOUS

Oregon Trail(26m)
Quest for Glory(1h4m)
Myst(1h29m)
Alley Cat(17m)

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On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

Another romhack! There’s lots of hacks and it’s not always easy to find one I consider notable enough to present. This week’s definitely has technical skill on its side.

Mario Adventure 2 might sound like a successor to Mario Adventure, a 2001 hack of Super Mario Bros. 3 that remakes it into an almost entirely different game. That would be great, but that’s not what this is. (And neither, I think, are related to this Mario Adventure 2.)

Mario Adventure 2 gets its name from Sonic Adventure 2. It’s a port of that game’s levels, fairly closely, into the Mario 64 engine, with some chances to Mario’s handling to accommodate 3D Mario and 3D Sonic (and his 3D friends) differences. That’s a pretty tall order!

The hack is not complete (its creators call it a demo), but unlike many WIP hacks that modify a level or two and then remain in limbo forever, Mario Adventure 2 has already converted around half the levels, the whole “Hero Side” story, starring Sonic, Knuckles and Tails. The “Dark Side” story, centering around Shadow, Rogue and Dr. Eggman, is not yet ported, but even if nothing is ever released from that, there’s a great deal to play.

Now if you know anything about these two games, your curiosity is probably piqued, not so much by how the levels from Sonic Adventure 2 were made completable by Mario, but how Mario 64’s engine could handle them at all. Sonic Adventure 2 is a Dreamcast game, but Mario 64 was made for the Nintendo 64! And it doesn’t pull emulator tricks to make them work: the game works on actual N64 hardware!

I don’t know for sure, but it seems like the game splits Sonic Adventure 2’s large levels into sections, that are loaded in as separate maps. And while the main sections of SA2’s maps are rendered in full, the many areas off the main route, that can’t be entered, are missing a lot of polygons (one of my screenshots shows this).

Replacing the emblem goals in SA2, Stars have been placed throughout each levels. The levels have far more than Mario 64’s eight Stars each, and the early levels, at least, have at least 25 of them. Some short sections of map have three stars to collect, visible at once. The remakes of Knuckle’s stages, which I remind you are non-linear and exploreable, are dense with them. Collecting a Star doesn’t kick you out of the level either, so it’s possible, though difficult, to get all the Stars in one go.

Mario 64’s engine has been changed to remove fall damage, and to allow for grinding on rails, which you’ll remember was a pretty big selling point of SA2. It hasn’t been changed to allow for rolling up steep slopes though, and Sonic’s loops had to be cheated in various ways, although you’ll also remember, I’m sure, that SA2 did some cheating of its own. Mario Adventure 2’s handling of them is probably a little less janky.

Those who’ve played Sonic Adventure 2 will remember a considerable amount of jank, and its Mario-focused counterpart reflects that. The first level, City Escape, is one of the most janky, with invisible walls blocking side-streets, and even some places that you’d assume could be passed. It’s still playable, for the most part, but there are a couple of places in Tails’ first level, Prison Lane, that rely on specific jumps to get through. Tails’ levels involved shooting enemies to open gates to progress. That aspect has been kept in Mario Adventure 2, but Mario doesn’t have missiles, sometimes the enemies are difficult to reach, and you’ll have to find an alternate way through. You’ll get stuck near the beginning of the third level unless you take advantage of a lifting platform to make a jump that doesn’t quite look possible.

If those sticking points can be fixed, then this could easily become a romhack for the ages. Let’s hope that its makers can get enough playtesters to find them all, and have enough energy to fix them. Until then it’s worth a try, but you might want to refer to a video that plays through Level 3 (like this one, two hours long) to find a way across that gap without killing all the bats.

Mario Adventure 2 Demo — requires Parallel Launcher and a Super Mario 64 rom image to play

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The Sony Playstation (16m):

The Nintendo 64 (18m):

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I’m not one of the people who complains about not understanding the controller or how to hold it. That part’s pretty easy to understand: you hold it one way, with the central prong in your left hand and the right handle in your right, for games that use the control stick like Super Mario 64; you hold it with one handle in each hand for games that instead use the Control Pad. It makes sense that Nintendo still wanted to feature the Pad prominently since it was one of the defining characteristics of the NES and SNES era.

The Control Pad is durable and easy to use, even if it does result in bruised thumbs when pressed with force, as can happen in challenging games. What’s not so durable is the N64’s signature control device: the Analog Stick. A special design that didn’t see much update after the Nintendo 64, because of the “white dust of death,” a mysterious fine powder that emerges from the inner workings of the stick after heavy use. Along with the powder always came degraded control performance: the stick would lose some of its tight feel, wobbling when shaken, and would no longer recognize the full extend of its range. All official N64 control sticks would succumb to the dreaded dust with time.

During the console’s life the source of the powder wasn’t common knowledge. It turns out it’s the result of the control stick grinding against its housing and actually rubbing itself in a fine dust. The looseness came from the powder getting into the tight confines of the stick’s mechanism, and from the pivot chamber getting looser as it was ground away by the joystick.

Some games were notorious for decreasing a controller’s working life. The Mario Party series was infamous for demanding rapid spins of the control stick, that could produce the dreaded dust and wobble after surprisingly few games. But with use, it seemed that all the official joysticks would succumb to it eventually. Third-party sticks, such as the then-ubiquitious MadCatz sticks, didn’t suffer from the problem, but their control sticks weren’t as sensitive, and required a smidge more force to push. For demanding play, the official sticks are a must.

This has resulted in a big problem. Since all the Nintendo-made N64 sticks degrade eventually with use, and Nintendo isn’t making them any more, speedrunners playing on original hardware have few options for playing games the way they were intended by their designers. Some jealously hoard pristine sticks, which have become expensive, while others work to make replacements.

Retromeister on Youtube has made a 24-minute video explaining the problem, and the lengths to which runners have resorted to keep themselves playing. And this, following, is that very thing:

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Explaining the Ways in Which Mario Kart 64 CPUs Cheat (Youtube, 12 minutes)

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A good old-fashioned website! It’s hope to information on the construction of a wide variety of console platforms! Docs on the NES, the Sega Master System, the PC Engine (a.k.a. Turbografx 16), the Mega Drive (a.k.a. Genesis), Gameboy, SNES, Saturn, Playstation, Virtual Boy (yes), Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, GBA, Gamecube, Xbox, DS, PSP, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii and Wii U.

The Copetti site: Architecture of Consoles

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He made a Youtube video detailing his most recent optimization find: getting the game’s trigonometric functions executing at their speediest. What is interesting is that the Mario 64 code already uses a couple of tricks to get sine and cosine results in a rapid manner: the game only uses 4096 discrete angles of movement direction, and contains a lookup table that covers each of those angles. But it turns out that this optimization is actually a mis-optimization, because the RAM bus hits incurred to read the values into the cache are actually more expensive than just figuring out the values in code on the N64’s hardware!

The video starts out decently comprehensible, but eventually descends into the process of figuring out sine and cosine on the fly, and the virtues of the various ways this can be done, so you can’t be faulted for bailing before the end, possibly at the moment the dreaded words “Taylor series” are mentioned. But it’s a fairly interesting watch until then!

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While it couldn’t save the system in the face of competition from the Playstation, there is no denying Rare’s Goldeneye 007 moved an awful lot of Nintendo 64 consoles, and until now, 25 years later, unless you wanted to pirate it, the original cart and system was still the only way to play it. It remains the most iconic James Bond video game ever made, and it may still be the most popular. They got so much right when making it, both with respect to the franchise and to doing a console-based first-person shooter right.

WARNING: the following paragraph will make little sense to people who weren’t both N64 players and internet readers at the time when it was new:

The spirits of countless N64 IGN readers rejoice this day. a golden eye is an eye tat is golden! Sadly, all record of eye tat boy is gone from their current website, Google is of no use at all in ferreting record of it out of the present-day web, and it’s too much trouble to dredge its memory up from the Wayback Machine. So it goes.

The gaming landscape has changed so much since then. When shrinkwrapped Goldeneye 007 boxes first saw store shelves, Rare was on their way to becoming one of Nintendo’s most beloved second parties. People largely came to see them as like a British branch of the company, then the Stamper brothers wanted to sell, Nintendo somehow said no to buying, and as a result the company began largely to languish, until around the time Viva Pinata came out. Since then, the people who made it left Rare and went on to make the Timesplitters games, which are still fondly remembered.

Such is N64 Goldeneye’s legend that Activision once actually released another James Bond game by that name, that actually wasn’t a port or remake of the original but was more of a reboot of it, with the Daniel Craig version of James Bond included.

Goldeneye 007’s twin release on both the Switch and Xbox platforms must have required some deep licensing mojo, but perhaps not even as much needed to wrest the rights for a rerelease of a James Bond movie tie-in game from the Broccoli family, as well as the likeness rights from Pierce Brosnan. With that many owners looking for their pieces of the financial pie, the stars must have aligned mighty right for the game to see the legal light of day again. Someone, please go check R’lyeh! Cthulhu must be about to awaken!

GoldenEye 007 Shoots Its Way Onto Nintendo Switch Online This Week (Nintendo Life)

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“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

I’m back! I’ve been bobbing and blobbing around internet slimepools and have dredged from their murky depths the latest gaming information for your consumption! Yum!

Engadget’s Kris Holt tells us that the graphic-based Steam version of Dwarf Fortress is on the way! It’ll cost $30, which it is possible to be dismayed by, except that if there’s any game that offers depth and content worth at least $30, it’s Dwarf Fortress. The version will have not only graphics but a tutorial and updated UI! And the free version will continue to be updated! Dwarf Fortress is going with a paid version because its creators, being not electronic dwarves but actual human being people, need money to live. Please, help them to live!

Liam Doolan at Nintendo Life: Mario Party 1 and 2 are coming to Switch Online’s Expansion Pack. I wonder if the games will destroy Joycons as thoroughly as it did N64 joysticks?

K. Thor Jensen for PC Magazine writes about what he considers the 10 worst arcade conversions of all. They cover a number of likely suspects. Atari 2600 Pac-Man, NES 720°, GBA Mortal Kombat, GBA Marble Madness, PC Thunder Blade, Amiga Street Fighter II, NES Ikari Warriors, 2600 Double Dragon, PS1 X-Men vs Street Fighter, and C64 Cisco Heat. But, I dunno, there are a lot of awful computer ports of arcade games floating around out there. Given the time I could probably redo the whole list, but PC Magazine isn’t paying me to do it. Plus, that kind of negativity is more the Gripe Monster’s lawn.

Ryan Dinsdale at IGN tells us that Microsoft loses from $100 to $200 on every Xbox X and S they sell. Aaahahaha! Yes my minions, exult with me in the misfortune of a major console manufacturer, for no good reason than sheer ill will! Er. Sorry, I let the evil out of my brain for a moment there.

At Kotaku, John Walker says that Playstation Plus has lost two million subscribers after its relaunch! Haahaha! Revel in their misfortune! Giant corporations will destroy the earth, at least they suffer very slightly every once in a great while! Oops, sorry again, I really need to get my bile gland emptied more often. The article mentions that the higher-priced tiers mean Sony is actually making more money now anyway.

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