Nintendo 64 Game Pak

Nintendo 64 Game Pak (part number NUS-006) is the brand name of the consumer ROM cartridge product that stores game data for the Nintendo 64, released in 1996. As with Nintendo's previous consoles, the Game Pak's design tradeoffs were intended to achieve maximal system speed and minimal base console costwith lesser storage space and a higher unit cost per game. Integrating a CD-ROM drive, with its expensive and slow moving parts, would have drastically increased the console's base price by 50% and reduced its performance.
As with the Famicom Disk System floppy drive of the 1980s, Nintendo's strategy with the Nintendo 64 had always been to develop a higher-capacity and cheaper medium to complement the Game Pak. This strategy resulted in the 64DD, a floppy drive which was launched two years late in 1999 and only in Japan, leaving it as a commercial failure and the Game Pak as the Nintendo 64's sole storage medium. In the console's first year from late 1996 through 1997, Game Pak sizes were with a typical third party retail price of , then reached in 1998, and finally from 1999 onward.
Some developers such as Factor 5, Rare, and Nintendo, were fanatically supportive of the high-speed solid-state medium because it is the most effective solution to the universal video game development problem of having preciously limited system RAM. A few developers had vastly heavier designs, especially the cinematic full motion video of Square's "Final Fantasy VII" (1997)but sufficient data compression techniques had not yet been invented and ROM chips were not yet capacious and affordableso they reluctantly had to target CD-ROM based platforms instead. Many developers preferred the cheaper and more rapid prototyping software development time of cartridge, and others the quicker and cheaper final delivery of the retail CD-ROM disc product. Some development teams eventually achieved ingenious software tactics to avail of the slowly increasing Game Pak ROM sizes, such as the more than 90 minutes of real-time rendered cinematic scenes in the 32-megabyte "" (1998) or the two CDs worth of pre-rendered full motion video converted to the 64-megabyte "Resident Evil 2" (1999), considered the best version of the game and one of the most ambitious console ports of all time.
The Nintendo 64 is the last major home console to have cartridge as its primary storage format until the release of the Nintendo Switch in 2017. Portable systems such as the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS also use cartridges.
History.
Development.
To complement the company's two previous high-speed cartridge-based console generations, Nintendo had already developed high-capacity secondary storage devices such as the Famicom Disk System and the canceled SNES-CD. The company had always intended to do likewise with this generation. In a 1994 interview, Nintendo summarized its analysis of the continued advantages of cartridges for its upcoming console, eventually known as the Nintendo 64.
That sentiment was soon revised in the same year when Nintendo's vice president of marketing Peter Main stated that "The choice we made is not cartridge versus CD, it's silicon over optical. When it comes to speed, no other format approaches the silicon-based cartridge."
The Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995, which destroyed a major RAM factory in Japan, increased the prices of RAM in the 1990s. Nintendo planned to continue to supplement the use of system RAM through innovations in high speed ROM cartridges. SGI suggested that Nintendo should utilize cartridges to keep the console's costs low and performance high.
At Shoshinkai of 1995, Nintendo announced its development of the complementary 64DD, a rewritable magnetic disk based peripheral with several times faster transfer rates and seek time than competing CD-ROM consoles. In 1997, Nintendo game designer Shigesato Itoi explained, "CD holds a lot of data, DD holds a moderate amount of data and backs the data up, and [cartridge] ROMs hold the least data and process the fastest. By attaching a DD to the game console, we can drastically increase the number of possible genres. ... I think we'll make the game on a cartridge first, then ... finish it up as a full-out 64DD game." Many Nintendo 64 games were developed in a way that depended upon or were expanded by that device. However, after the device's launch had been delayed several years until 1999 and restricted to Japan, it was discontinued early as a commercial failure.
In 1996, prior to the Nintendo 64's launch, President of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi praised the user experience of the cartridge format:
Until the launch of the Switch in 2017, the Nintendo 64 was the latest major home console to use the cartridge as its primary storage format, and most handheld systems except the PlayStation Portable use cartridges. Most home systems since the fifth generation use disc, flash, and online formats. The succeeding GameCube uses an optical disc format, in a boon to some developers. The company stated its goal was to reduce manufacturing costs and did not cite storage space as a rationale. Because the new console lacks backwards compatibility with Nintendo 64 Game Paks, Nintendo said players could simply keep their Nintendo 64.
Features.
Save files.
Some Game Paks include internal EEPROM, flash memory, or battery-backed-up RAM for saved game storage. Otherwise, game saves are put onto a separate memory card, marketed by Nintendo as a Controller Pak.
Copy protection.
Each Nintendo 64 Game Pak contains a lockout chip (conceptually similar to the 10NES) to prevent manufacturers from creating unauthorized copies of games and discourage production of unlicensed games. Unlike previous versions, the Nintendo 64 lockout chip contains a seed value which is used to calculate a checksum of the game's boot code. To discourage playing of copied games by piggybacking on a real Game Pak, Nintendo produced five different versions of the chip. During the boot process, and occasionally while the game is running, the console computes the checksum of the boot code and verifies it with the lockout chip in the Game Pak, failing to boot if the check fails.
On June 2, 1997, a U.S. District Court issued a temporary restraining order against Games City for its Game Doctor and Doctor V64 products, which allow users to copy from a Game Pak to a CD or hard disk drive. Games City was ordered to stop importing, distributing, advertising, or selling any such devices.
Analysis.
The Nintendo 64 Game Pak medium provides essential benefits alongside a number of drawbacks, in a deliberate tradeoff. While it provides the fastest possible load times and greatest durability, its solid-state silicon is more expensive to produce and has less storage space than the competing CD-ROM format. In 1997, journalist Alex S. Kasten observed that the issue "goes beyond the economics of the media [because] market strategy and style of game play also factor into the cartridge/CD decision [so] Nintendo has remained cartridge-based for two main reasons: economics and performance."
Console cost.
Nintendo knew that a CD-ROM drive would greatly increase the cost of the console in a price-sensitive market. Nintendo software engineering manager Jim Merrick said, "We're very sensitive to the cost of the console. We could get an eight-speed CD-ROM mechanism in the unit, but in the under-$200 console market, it would be hard to pull that off."
Performance.
Specified at 5 to 50 MiB/s, Nintendo cited the ROM cartridges' very fast load times in comparison to disc-based games. Few contemporary CD-ROM drives have speeds above 4×, and the competing consoles Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation have 2× drives running at about with high latency. This can be observed on the loading screens that appear in many PlayStation games but are typically nonexistent in Nintendo 64 games. ROM cartridges are so much faster than contemporary CD-ROM drives that data can be streamed in real-time from cartridges as if they are additional RAM, thus maximizing the efficiency of the system's RAM. This was a common practice for developers in many games, such as Nintendo EAD's "Super Mario 64" or Factor 5's "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine". Howard Lincoln said, "[Genyo Takeda, the Nintendo engineer working with Silicon Graphics to design Project Reality] and those guys felt very strongly that it was absolutely essential to have it on a cartridge in order to do the kind of things that we wanted to do with "Super Mario"."
Sega countered by claiming that load times on CD-ROMs could eventually be minimized. "We are finding more and more ways to mask the load factor," Ted Hoff, vice president of sales and marketing at Sega, said. "We are working out ways to overlay or leapfrog the loading time."
Durability.
Game Paks are far more durable than compact discs, the latter of which must be carefully used and stored in protective cases. It also prevents accidental scratches and subsequent read errors. While Game Paks are more resistant than CDs to physical damage, they are sometimes less resistant to long-term environmental damage, particularly oxidation (although this can be simply cleaned off) or wear of their electrical contacts causing a blank or frozen screen, or static electricity.
Manufacturing cost.
Due to complex manufacturing processes, cartridge-based games are more expensive and difficult to manufacture than their optical counterparts. PlayStation CD-ROMs reportedly cost $1 to manufacture, while cartridges for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System cost $15 and Nintendo 64 cartridges reportedly cost more than $30.
Publishers had to pass these higher expenses to the consumer and as a result, Nintendo 64 games tended to sell for higher prices than PlayStation games. The maximum price of most PlayStation games was US$50, and Nintendo 64 cartridges could reach , such as the first pressing of "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time". Games in Sony's line of PlayStation Greatest Hits budget line retailed for US$19.95, while Nintendo's equivalent Player's Choice line retailed for US$29.95. In the United Kingdom, Nintendo 64 games were priced £54.95 at their time of release, while PlayStation games were priced at £44.95. In the United States, the typical price of a third-party game was around in the system's first year on the market, though this dropped incrementally after Nintendo reduced wholesale prices on the cartridges. In August 1997, Kelly Flock, president of Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA) said "Most N64 carts are costing consumers $55 to $70, compared with $20 to $50 for a PlayStation CD."
Manufacturing time.
Game Paks took longer to manufacture than CDs, with each production run (from order to delivery) taking two weeks or more. By contrast, extra copies of a CD based game could be ordered with a lead time of a few days. This meant that publishers of Nintendo 64 games had less flexibility to forecast demand. Publishers had to attempt to predict demand for a game ahead of its release. They risked being left with a surplus of expensive Game Paks for a failed game or a weeks-long shortage of product if they underestimated a game's popularity.
Sony used this shortcoming to appeal to publishers. Andrew House, vice president of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America, said "They can manufacture the appropriate amount of software without taking a tremendous inventory risk associated with the cartridge business." Sony's Kelly Flock added, "And the CD allows smaller manufacturing runs with very short lead times. ... The CD allows the publisher to take creative content risksnot inventory risk."
Storage space.
During the Nintendo 64's development in 1995, Nintendo reported that the deliverable maximum cartridge size was 96 megabits (12 megabytes), with a theoretical maximum of 256 megabits (32 megabytes). As fifth generation games became more complex, they pushed Game Paks to the limits of their storage capacity. In practice, the few largest vintage Game Paks can hold up to 512 megabits (64 megabytes) of data, whereas CDs can hold more than 650 MiB. Storage sizes range from 4 MB (32 Mbit) such as "Automobili Lamborghini" and "Dr. Mario 64", to 64 MB (512 Mbit) such as "Resident Evil 2" and "Conker's Bad Fur Day". Games ported from other platforms may utilize more aggressive data compression (as with "Resident Evil 2") or altered content (as with "Spider-Man" and "") so that they may be released on the Nintendo 64. Exceptionally large games on CD-based systems can be made to span across multiple discs, while most Nintendo 64 games are contained within one Game Pak, as the use of an additional Game Pak or of one maximally sized Game Pak was often considered prohibitively expensive, and the 64DD expansion drive was released late and discontinued early.
Due to the Game Pak's space limitations, full motion video is not usually feasible for use in cutscenes. A notable exception is "Resident Evil 2#Releases and ports", which contains the equivalent material of the two CD-ROM discs of the original PlayStation version, plus some expanded content, plus higher quality audio samples and unique surround sound technology, making it what IGN called "the best version of the game" and what Eurogamer called "one of the most ambitious [and impressive] console ports of all time". Some games contain significant cinematic scenes with graphics generated by the system in real-time, as with "". Nintendo downplayed the importance of studio-prerendered videos, with software engineering manager Jim Merrick saying, "Full-motion video demos really well on a CD-ROM, but once you get into the software, as a gamer, you're thinking 'let's get on with the game.'"
Nintendo also countered that developers did not generally use the full 650MiB capacity of CD-ROMs, stating that the smaller storage space encouraged developers to focus on gameplay rather than flashy visuals. Many CD-ROM games are known to simply consist of cartridge sized games alongside a prerendered audio track, or just a copy of a game already released on cartridge. The relatively few games that have ever been released based on full motion video typically have very high production costs and timeframes.
Copy protection.
CD-ROMs are known for relative ease of illicit copying on personal computers, whereas Game Paks are physically proprietary and more difficult to copy.
Reception.
Critical reception.
John Ricciardi, writing for "Electronic Gaming Monthly", called Nintendo's decision to stick with a cartridge format for the Nintendo 64 "stubborn". The author called it a major contributor to the company's competitive disadvantages, even more so than the failed partnership with Sony to create a CD format and console. Brian Dipert, writing for "EDN Magazine", said that the Nintendo 64 Game Paks are "bulky and expensive, eating into Nintendo's profit margins compared with competitors’ inexpensive CD and DVD plastic discs". On a more positive side of the topic, Aaron Curtiss of The "Los Angeles Times" praised Nintendo's choice of the cartridge medium with its "nonexistent" load times and "continuous, fast-paced action CD-ROMs simply cannot deliver", concluding that "the cartridge-based Nintendo 64 delivers blistering speed and tack-sharp graphics that are unheard of on personal computers and make competing 32-bit, disc-based consoles from Sega [Saturn] and Sony [PlayStation] seem downright sluggish". Describing the quality control incentives associated with cartridge-based development, Curtiss cited Nintendo's position that cartridge game developers tend to "place a premium on substance over flash", and noted that the launch games lack the "poorly acted live-action sequences or half-baked musical overtures" which he believed were usually found on CD-ROM games at the time.
Industrial reception.
As part of the controversial technological tradeoffs between storage and performance, which has been endemic to the entire computing industry, and which Nintendo had faced since the Famicom's cassette and floppy disk systems, the selection of a cartridge format for the Nintendo 64 was essential to several developers' ability to deliver top quality games. However, the choice of cartridge format coupled with the commercial failure of the supplemental 64DD were also key factors in Nintendo losing its dominant position in the gaming market. Some of the Game Pak's advantages are actually nullified by its disadvantages.
That generation's primary competitors, the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn, rely completely upon 2× CD-ROM drives for game storage. These discs are much cheaper and faster to manufacture and distribute, resulting in lower manufacturing costs to third-party game publishers. As a result, some game developers who had traditionally supported Nintendo game consoles prior to Nintendo 64 were now developing games for the competition.
Some third-party developers switched to the PlayStation. This includes Square which had produced a "Final Fantasy" technology prototype using the same SGI-based development platform used by Nintendo, and Enix which had initially pre-planned "Dragon Warrior VII" for the Nintendo 64 and its yet-unreleased 64DD disk drive peripheral at least by 1996, but reluctantly migrated due to the developers' increasingly ambitious use of storage space with their fundamentally cinematic game format. Shiny Entertainment had been planning to develop "MDK" for the Nintendo 64, but switched to PC when they found the cartridge space was insufficient for their plans for the game and Nintendo failed to produce the promised 64DD in a timely manner.
Some developers who remained on Nintendo 64 released fewer games for the system. Konami was the biggest example of this, releasing 29 Nintendo 64 games but more than 50 on the PlayStation. Overall, new game releases were less frequent for the Nintendo 64 than those for the PlayStation.
Aside from the difficulties with some third parties, the Nintendo 64 supports some of the most popular, genre-defining, and critically acclaimed games such as "Super Mario 64", "", and "GoldenEye 007", having given the system a long market lifespan. Much of this success was credited to Nintendo's strong first-party franchises, such as "Mario", which had strong name brand appeal, and by Nintendo's own second-party developers such as Rare.
When interviewed by "Computer & Video Games" at Shoshinkai of 1995, about how the theoretical use of CD instead of cartridge could have impacted its past game development, Rare reportedly said that ""Blastdozer" would require more time and much more RAM", and that ""Goldeneye" would require twice the RAM". In the 2013 Director's Commentary video about "Conker's Bad Fur Day", after observing the imperceptible loading times and the "seamless" transitions between major scenes of the game, Rare programmers declare that "the thing about cartridges is … it's solid state ... so it's actually a much more advanced, better medium than discs. You can't have as much [content] on there—or, rather, you can but it's very expensive—but as a medium, cartridge is [vastly] ahead in superiority to any blu-ray or disc … [or] hard drives."
Upon Factor 5's introduction to the Nintendo 64, the developer had already delivered highly optimized multiplatform games for almost a decade, ranging from 8-bit home computers to 32-bit CD-ROM. After having developed innovative techniques for CD-ROM media in two different LucasArts releases for PlayStation, Factor 5's cofounder Julian Eggebrecht said this:
Eggebrecht identified RAM, not storage, as the key bottleneck for any console; so he identified CD-ROM performance of the day as exacerbating that bottleneck and favored cartridges to virtually eliminate the bottleneck. Even after having designed "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine" for personal computers equipped with hard drives, Eggebrecht significantly attributed the technologically and aesthetically superior nature of Factor 5's Nintendo 64 port, to his programmers' aggressive utilization of the cartridge format.