The CD N64

What information is know about the CD based N64? At what point was Project Reality confirmed as cart based? Any proto pics?

Did developers receive dev kits after the machine was confirmed as cart?

From that FF7 demo, it seems Square were under the impression the machine would be CD based? Did any other developers have to seriously alter any game concept upon discovering the small and expensive media Nintendo chose to contine using?

I can understand Nintendo weren't too happy after the catastrophe that was the SFami CD, but why limit such a powerful machine to such a tiny and highly expensive media format? Surely CD would have saved the N64. Admittedly you'd probably have to wait 30secs between levels of Goldeneye, but that's a small price to pay on a first gen title. After all, if the machine was CD based there'd be no need for the wasted effort that was the 64DD (could have wasted their time on Ultra R.O.B 64). I just can't understand the decision to go for cart + wierd disk format add-on over cheap, large storage CDs? :death

 

loading times. Nintendo normally wait until a technology is refined before adopting it, See Wi-fi, Colour screens in handhelds, and of course, disk based medium. This idea behind the 64DD was the same as famicom disc system - cheap, large distribution, which can be written multiple times

 

Don't know about any N64 protos that used cd tech, but the reason they went with carts was as simple as:

1. They didn't believe consumers would be willing to accept loading
2. They prefered proprietary media which would help against piracy (at the very least making it so pirated games couldn't be played easily on the original system)
3. They saw that every system ever made using cds up till that point had failed
4. The user base for video games was still largely kids, who would need something durrable to take the beating kids normaly give to most anything they touch

 

1) Correct
2) Again, a very Nintendo way of seeing things. Even the original SnesCD was going to be Caddy Based - you know, like the PSP today
3) Not in Japan - See the PC Engine. Sure as hell it didn't fail. Also, the MegaCD was not the massive failure it was in the States. Saturn and PSX released before the N64 were also very hot in Japan.
4) Again, correct. Cartridges are "Nintendo-Fanbase" friendly media.

Also, the equating of 64DD to Famicom Disk is quite correct. There was also a similar service for the Super Famicom, was there not? You know, blank cartridges with a number of "blocks" to fill with several Nintendo releases in kiosks.
Or am I hallucinating?:drinkers:

64DD was seen as the kind of expansion the FDS, Snes SuperCD, or PC-Engine CD-ROM, or Mega CD were, was it not?
Even the Jaguar CD. Ew.

I wish it would have been more successful. It looked so sweet in the magazines...

 

At least you're not hallucinating more than I am... I think you're talking about the Loppi machine. The Lawson's Konbini in Ichikawa still had one :-D