The Controversy of the N64 Expansion Pak
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2024
- Today we explore the many controversies of the n64 expansion pak. Why it has been a topic that has generated tons of discussion over the years. Especially surrounding donkey kong 64.
The expansion pak bug is quite a famous myth that we will be exploring and presenting today, as well as explaining why the expansion pak was even needed to begin with. Games like Majora's mask, Perfect dark and Donkey Kong 64 will be highlighted along with a few other titles.
Hope you enjoy!
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:15 Nintendos aspirations
2:30 What is RAM?
3:35 N64 Optimizations
5:20 Majora's Mask
6:20 DK64 Controversy
7:05 Origins of the Myth
8:10 DK64 Bug?
8:55 What is a memory leak [Simple explanation]
10:40 DK64 Other side of the story.
12:00 Vertex Lighting Explanation
12:20 My opinion
13:30 Other Games that used the Pak
14:40 The strange case of perfect dark
16:50 The game that broke
17:41 Conclusion
#questgamer #n64 #expansionpak - Ігри
The main reason Majora's Mask used the expansion pack was actually to keep track of all the different variables in characters' schedules across the 3-day timeline. The extra resolution and polygons were more of an added perk.
Never fixed the lag in the Deku kingdom, though. Even Gamecube still lagged in that area.
ok
@@frikyouall The GameCube was emulating the game though.
@@michaelmoores2654 Surely the hardware was far and above the N64 and should have been able to handle the emulation?
I’ve never played this game and this sounds pretty interesting
I bought the memory pack along with PERFECT DARK, it cost if I recall correctly nearly $100 for both.
Turned out to be a bargain for the amount of playing and fun I got from that game.
@@confusciouspuff5701 perfect dark zero was godly.
Such a good game.. Great times
Giving a like because of your name. Love Mr. Bungle.
@@minton5388is it? How so? Never played it
I got mine free with Donkey Kong 64. The pak was worth more than the game, which I quickly sold.
There was also Turok 2, 3, Resident Evil 2, Star Wars Rogue Squadron and Shadow Man which at the time looked amazing with the expansion pack
Also Rayman 2
I remember buying my first N64 along with Perfect Dark. I was excited to get home so I could play. Only once I got home I found out that most of the game was locked without the expansion pack. I ended up going back to the store and spending even more money. In the end it was worth it and I stayed up all night playing Perfect Dark.
Reading through the comments there is so many perfect dark comments it brings me back to my childhood
I remember getting my n64, and I bought the expansion and extra controllers at the same time. Cost a pretty penny back then.
@@nate_d376 It really did, and the N64 was the first console that I bought with my own money, so I really felt it. It was worth it in the end though.
@Ted Charter same here, had finally gotten my first 'good job' after HS and saved up for it, lol. Had a lot of fun playing 007 too!
Was it though? Even with the pack, the game is so low-res and low framerate.
Technically, Majora's Mask needed the expansion pak in order to store its very large event tree. The graphics optimizations you refer to, as seen in late-life titles, are the result of microcode optimizations. If you're familiar with the SDK, you'll recall that early version suggested the use of FAST3D - and that's what everyone used until nintendo realized they were leaving some performance on the table (thanks to the likes of Factor 5 and Iguana, for example)
Iguana entertainment? I... AM TUROK
I remember the same being for Rogue Squadron, the programmers basically used microcode optimizations to be able to render that kind of graphics and lightning effects as well as very optimized compressed audio without degrading the performance...
The expansion pack only served for a higher resolution and even then it was not recommended as the game will drop in FPS...
I was always blown away by how much better Iguana’s QB Club series looked compared to the Madden games of the era. Night and day! they also had tons more play-by-play announcer audio at higher fidelity.
It’s too bad the N64’s memory bandwidth is so poor, it bottlenecks the RDP and essentially guarantees that higher resolutions have much worse performance
The memory bandwith is not poor by any mean....its 3 times the amount the PSX had.......the problem was that N64 was trying to do too much at once and also the poorly designed memory subsystem that was the culprit of destroying bandwith due to its slow response and having a unified memory pool only accesible by the CPU via the GPU, so you had the CPU standing idle 50% of the time waiting for the GPU to do its thing...
The idea that the expansion pak was shipped to fix a bug was always ridiculous. You can't make a decision to manufacture that many expansion paks on a whim. Even if it would take weeks to fix a bug, that would still be faster than waiting for a last-minute production run.
If you could find the source of the memory leak.
Even more so, if the leak could eat 4mb of RAM, it's well a memory leak. It'll keep on eating memory.
@@Underskore -It doesn't eat the whole 4k. It's writing to a particular space in memory and then when that location gets filled it just writes over the next location instead. Unfortunately that next location in memory is being used for something else. (Or not and it's just adding values until it reaches a location that is being used.)- Brain fart. John Smith is correct. I described an overflow error, not a leak. Similar concept in that the program is writing data in more spaces than intended, but different cause.
With how production runs worked back then, you needed to have the game complete months before the game is released so there was enough time for the production of enough carts. No updating the code day of release with patches. With that time, you could also make enough expansion paks at the same time you are making the carts, but you can't fix a bug in the code while producing the carts.
@@pigs18 You're describing a buffer overflow, not a memory leak. A buffer overflow is when you read or write data past the end of the space allocated for the data to reside. Like have a buffer of 8 bytes, but write 12 bytes to it, which overwrites adjacent memory.
A memory leak is when memory is repeatedly dynamically allocated, but the reference to the memory is lost, so you can't free up the memory later. If the program keeps doing that, you eventually run out of free space, as the program still thinks the memory you lost the references to is still in use. The program then crashes when it can't get any more memory for things it needs to store.
Here I am working on a personal model, trying to keep it under a 100,000 tris and I see how Nintendo optimized their models back in the day! All I can say is we've come a long way!
It's insane the leaps we have taken in 20 years.
I understand how it works but it still amazes me that pretty much all CGI is just a bunch of triangles. I wonder if that will ever change.
@@theFLCLguy Doesn't have to be triangles, technically. The Sega Saturn rendered stuff with four-sided polygons. :-) But I don't think that's what you mean... in terms of geometry though, what other shape would work? Make everything out of spheres (which are enormously more complex than polygons...)? EDIT: Also, 2D games are made with bitmaps, and some video games use vertices.
@@mercster reminds me of those "Euclideon" engine videos promising "infinite detail" (which UE5 nanite might actually come close to)
Also yeah, a lot of game engines, including Unity, use square/plane meshes for 2D sprites in games, so they are not actually 2D, they just look like it because of camera perspective.
@@nekoimouto4639 Theres a video about Euclideon vs Hyperbolic geometry & DMT trips on youtube. I think its a Harvard lecture by memory... But I think youll enjoy it from your perspective!
ua-cam.com/video/loCBvaj4eSg/v-deo.html
As a kid, I actually was excited by the prospect of N64 hardware upgrades. The 64DD had a certain mystique to it, especially since information on new games or hardware was scarce, with just a few tiny screenshots in the corners of gaming magazines here and there every few months. Earthbound 64, for example, is just one of many mystery titles we never got (although later that developed into something else that did eventually release). For me, gaming back then was rife with feelings of mystery, wonder, and longing - some of which lingers to this day.
If the many-worlds theory is correct, there's a universe out there where Ura Zelda, Super Mario 64 2, Earthbound 64, and even the 64DD, were all released. Too bad there wouldn't be a way to travel to these universes….
Earthbound 64 became what?
Having the expansion pack bundled with DK64 allowed me to enjoy one of my favorite games. The story and gameplay of Majora’s Mask was just so top notch.
Yeah, I got Donkey Kong 64 so I could play Majora's Mask and I just hoped DK64 would be worth it (and I didn't beat it until years later so evidently it wasn't...)
Does this video use an ai voice?
12:34
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet: and I took that personally
I also thought about Pokemon there. Similar to how Nintendo claims to want to make new games instead of iterative sequels while making a million 2D Mario games. In both cases, money is certainly the reason they are fine with that.
I mean, to be fair, he was probably talking about back in the day.
@@BlazeHeartPanther most people Still associate Nintendo games with quality (it's what kept them in the business for so long despite lackluster hardware). Also, Nintendo still delays games for ages if it doesn't meet a certain standard (The BOTW sequel, for example). Pokemon S/V are the anomalies here. But as someone else mentioned, money took precedence over quality this time. I hope the 10 million sales in 3 days doesn't set a new standard in the "they'll buy it anyway" mindset.
Wait, wouldnt that be the separate entity known as Game Freak who is in charge of pokemon and not nintendo?
On a different note, the 64DD needed the expansion pak's extra 4MB pool to buffer data from the PI bus (ie data from games that were loaded from a 64DD disk). This was referred to as "burst access" memory, due to the fact that only a single device on the PI bus could be read at any given time - either the gamepak on top, or the DD unit (ROM or Disk) on the bottom.
The extra space afforded by the expansion pak, of course, allowed developers to store more information, in due course, when the 64DD was axed. Some used it towards a larger framebuffer (ie the hi-res options in some games), whereas other games made use of the extra space to hold more logic/gameplay related data.
I didn’t know the DD used the expansion pack to buffer data from the PI bus, that’s really cool!
Another game that crashes when using the expansion pak is Mischief Makers. I had two copies of the game and two N64s, and I couldn’t figure out why it was happening to me at first, but I did notice that one N64 wouldn’t crash. I was starting to think my N64 was just broken, but I eventually realized another difference between the two was the expansion pak. After I put the jumper pak into the other N64 it stopped crashing.
I guess it’s possible it was just an isolated incident with me, but it does lead me to believe it was actually the expansion pak not working correctly with the game.
The expansion pak was for that DK rap, just cause it was so damn much 😭😂 great video.
My 64 came with the expansion pak. I lost it and thought my 64 broke but it needed the pak to run
@@jessevargas3289 ahh bummer :( my n64 (which I still have and play) didn’t have one originally, I got mine with my Dk64! Haha
I wish DK 64 was playable without the expansion pak. Bad move by nintendo and rare.
For Space station Silicon Valley, the 4mb limit could be because the start address of usable RAM will most likely change when RAM is added. They probably failed to account for this and that's why it crashes- they start overwriting important bits of memory. Another possibility is they is they DID update the start address, but failed to update the maximum address past 4mb, and so it very quickly runs out of memory.
Kinda off topic, but I have a fond memory of using the Rumble-Pak back in the day! That was an 'expansion' that blew me away.
I got that memory pack when I got Perfect Dark. My friends and I played PD for maybe a couple months and that was about it for the N64. The console was clinging to life by that point. It had probably been a whole year since we played Goldeneye. To 18 year old me it felt like a gimmicky cash grab at the end of the N64 life cycle.
We were already playing Unreal Tournament heavily at that point. We also played various Half Life multiplayer mods like Day of Defeat and eventually Counter-Strike. These PC titles were leagues ahead of N64 capabilities. And they were coming out at the same time as PD, roughly. Then consider that merely a year later Halo comes out on a new console.
Perfect Dark never quite generated the reverence for me as as it did for many others. If it came out in 1998 or so, it could have had a year to shine before other FPS titles outclassed it. All I truly remember of PD was the first level. I can still recall most, if not all, of the Goldeneye levels a quarter century later.
What a great vid! I had no idea there was so much controversy over the expansion pak. So much nostalgia for me though. I got the expansion pak separately for Perfect Dark's release. My parents didn't seem to mind coughing up the extra 30 bucks to upgrade the system.
It worked very well with Rayman 2, RE2 and Quake 2 which didn't seem to suffer from the usual framerate trouble when it was used. If there is a memory leak then it doesn't matter how much memory you have - it will eventually crash as it runs out of memory.
I have heard that DK64 crashes after about eight hours of running at once, which means savestates would be a problem.
@davy_K I suspect you're correct, but maybe if you finish an area within a few hours while using extra RAM, you're OK. Maybe factory RAM only gives you 15 minutes before a crash, as an example, so more RAM is useful in nearly all cases.
@@andycraig7734 Extra RAM only delays the inevitable. If memory isn't reclaimed then the game will eventually run out sadly. Of course it depends how long you play for and how bad the leak is. 😀 If a garbage collection occurs at the end of a level say which is coded in such as way as to put the leak right then it may be reclaimed but that depends on how the code is written.
The Cutting Room Floor has the Space Station Silicon Valley bug.
"The PAL version does not have this problem because it has a check to avoid it. Playing the official NTSC cart on an N64 with the Expansion Pak sometimes causes crashes during videos. The problem is a variable check that was removed for the NTSC version. The variable is pulled from a table where it is usually 0x00?? (where ?? is the value expected). Sometimes this value is 0X7FFF though. This causes a problem because that variable is multiplied and added to a variable that is 0x803E0000. This variable in turn is used to load a value, so it was attempting to load a value above 0x80400000. Without an Expansion Pak, the N64 returns 00000000 which is actually the correct response. With the Expansion Pak, the N64 returns the value at that location. Now SSSV does not check for an Expansion Pak and so never clears the old data on the Expansion Pak. The value returned is usually left over from previous games and most of the time is not an acceptable value."
This makes so much sense! I loves SSSV as a child and bought it from EBay years ago and in the very beginning it crashes unless I skip all of the beginning videos!
I discovered perfect dark’s missions unwittingly since I had a loose cart of it so I never saw the box back then to tell me I needed the expansion pak. As a result I beat 29 combat challenges, gave up on the 30th cause it’s impossible, then moved on to other games until I got majora’s mask. Yet again it was a loose cart gifted to me so I only found out I needed the expansion pak when I tried to boot the game up. My mom eventually buys me it and I play through majora’s mask over the course of maybe a month or 2 until I beat it with the guide book and finally got bored enough with it to go back to my other games. At some point I give perfect dark another go and out of nowhere it had a new menu which confused me yet I was intrigued to find out more. So I explored the menu and found out the game did indeed have missions and more as I always wished since I loved goldeneye’s missions. I was happy but still wondering how it was possible….then it hit me. THE EXPANSION PAK! Of course! It works for other games! My 12 year old mind was blown and I had a blast with perfect dark’s missions. Eventually even got the guide book for it too and beat all the missions on perfect agent. Amazing experience.
Always down for N64 deep dives thank you checking out more
I reverse engineer N64 games. I can confirm the 4MB crash was a memory leak. People have fixed themselves to confirm. Technically, it will still crash on the 8MB version, it would just take years.
The fact the modern games are back on cartridges (Or SD cards, at least) is crazy, we’re at the point where triple A games just don’t fit on CDs anymore.
I don't remember the expansion pak being controversial, we all just got it shortly after it was released. I was a teen at the time, but it might have been a hassle for the younger kids at the time, that had parents that didn't know wtf was going on with the upgrade.
I wouldn't call it controversial either, but I didn't personally know anyone who had it
No Mercy runs slow as can be without it. That is something I don’t hear enough about. Especially during cage and ladder matches. Perfect Dark, DK, and Majoras Mask all used it someohow. It all impressed me, CV Legacy of Darkness had a high res mode from it too. RE2 Maybe as well? Love it.
Great analysis of a contentious issue in retro history.
The game that breaks using the expansion could be addressing memory in a silly way, or doing special tricks with memory addresses.
I'm pretty sure the issue with DK64 really was a memory leak. I've heard that if you hack the ROM to play without the Expansion Pak, it'll run for a few minutes before crashing. But even with the Expansion Pak, even if the game is paused, it'll still crash after about 12 hours. As for Silicon Valley, apparently there's a check done on a part of memory that is out of bounds of the normal 4MB, and this check will always give the expected result if the EP is not installed. But if you do have it installed and something is written to that memory, the check will fail and the game will crash. There is a very simple ROM hack that bypasses the issue if you have an EverDrive though.
Agreed; DK64 still crashes with the Expansion Pack, but it takes north of 10 hours to do so. Emulator users run into it because they tend to use save-states to store progress, so the game never gets shut down and they run into the problem.
I've also heard how users have bypassed the Expansion Pack check and the game ran fine...for about an hour or so.
So yeah, there's either a memory leak or a null pointer somewhere in DK64, and the Expansion Pack has the net result of hiding the problem.
IIRC, the initial plans for the game did not involve the expansion pack so the game has some internal code and a graphics/game engine to handle its lighting and camera functions without it. But for certain areas of the game, it will call for memory locations only found on the pak (or needs arrays or a variable set too big for the 4MB base RAM) and it does crash. The expansion pak isn't just generic RAM space - the game creates variables and arrays for handling graphics and other visuals in the expansion RAM the moment it boots up. It was definitely a middle-of-development decision though, and I think it almost was optional, but they decided it was easier and faster to have the extra memory and try and use it as a marketing ploy.
Now there may certianly still be some issues within the code for garbage collection or running calculations or something, but I don't think it's fair to say "It boots and runs for a bit without the pak ergo, it was just to bandaid over poor coding". It was an intentional addition and was used accordingly.
@@gamerk316 Eeeehhhhh.....I think the "10 hours = crash" statement is getting more and more debunked as the years go on. People are still submitting 10+ hour 101% single segment runs on console. Hell, someone has a 30 hour marathon run from a casual stream they did with friends. More than likely, it's an emulation issue and not a code issue. Or a bit from both. THere are multiple comments from Rare employees at the time about how quickly their work would get undone by new revisions of the N64 coming out almost every year.
It's a flag that you can toggle with a gameshark. I've personally done it and the game crashes within 30 minutes to an hour of gameplay at 4mb, and 10-14 hours with expansion pack. It's a memory leak.
@@themanwithsauce New revisions of the N64? Were Nintendo actually changing up the way the N64 worked underneath the hood, so an N64 you bought on console release wasn't quite the same machine as a new N64 bought 3 years later, or am I misunderstanding you?
Blown away this channel doesnt have more subscribers, the content is always amazing! Thanks so much for all your hard work!
Thank you for the kind words. Means a lot!
Yeah, same.
What they said, this channel kicks ass.
is it text to speech though ?
Yeah it is but at least the choice chosen isn’t too annoying
I remember basically buying DK64 JUST so i'd get that expansion pack. I am not sure if i would have gotten it if it didn't bundle, but I assumed other games would require it. And I am glad I did as Perfect Dark was worth it
DK64 was worth it.
As a 3d animator since the 90s, I absolutely can confirm how badly you wanted more RAM to work with. 3d graphics just eat RAM, the more, the better, and a total of 8 MB was HUGE in the 90s. I've seen people claiming the Expansion Pak was a gimmick, a forgetable mistake. Nope, the only mistake here is Nintendo had the brilliant add-on idea, but didn't force all developers to use it on all games properly. When people think the Expansion Pak was pointless, it was either 1) the developer didn't use it for any significant improvement (developer's fault) or 2)the person criticizing has no discerning eyes to understand the graphical difference. Because yeah, 8 MB of RAM was massive and super needed.
The Nintendo Switch needs it's own Expansion Pak.
Is the voice synthesized? It sounds pretty realistic, but the cadence of speech just sounds off.
I never had any console peripherals, I remember going to my buddy's house and playing pokemon emerald on the big screen with the gamecube gameboy player and I had never even seen it before at the time. Shit was magical.
I think what really made expansion pack requirement a non-starter for third party developers was that the Nintendo 64 was a second place console (as much as I and so many others loved it), so it just didn't make good business sense to even further limit your potential audience to N64 owners who had the accessory.
Got it. So the reason we're born and then we die is to prevent that universe from incurring a memory leak
i remember renting DK64 from Blockbuster without also renting the expansion pack and being so mad when i got home to a completely unplayable game
I rented mostly from Golden Videos at the time and they always handed out the expansion pak for the games tht needed it along the rent of said game.
Was very thankful.
'Nintendo don't don't ship games if they aren't completely ready to be shipped"
*E.T. has entered chat*
Green shells in Mario Kart 64 DO ricochet around until they hit something, either a player or another item (banana, shell, etc.). They later changed it in Double Dash to only ricochet 3 times (if my memory is correct).
The first example of a memory leak with the turtle shells bouncing forever is not a memory leak because the shells are still being actively used by the program. The second example of them still existing on another stage is more accurate although they if they are still bouncing around it technically wouldn't be a memory leak either. A memory leak occurs when a program basically stops using some memory without telling the system so the system thinks it's still in use. The memory then builds up with references to things that don't actually exist anymore.
I like the part where it says Nintendo doesn't ship games if they aren't ready for release and we have Pokémon Scarlet and Violet being best-sellers. Jokes aside, we have conflicting developer testimonies and also experimentation showing that the game crashes in a matter of hours vs half a day with and without the Expansion Pak respectively, so there has a memory leak somewhere.
But also, the decision to include the Expansion Pak was also made well in advance so they probably did have time to fix a more extreme version of the bug that made the game outright unplayable without the Pak and take "too long to test if it still crashes, who would leave their console on this long" with the Pak. This would probably fit both narratives.
I think this mystery might not be definitively be solved until Nintendo releases Donkey Kong 64's source code when pigs fly, or when fans decompile the game and port it to PC much like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, for easier examination.
Blame Game Freak for not resisting fandom impatience and their own greed...
...AND nintendo for allowing it to happen.
@@theextremeanimator4721 Gamefreak may not be great programmers (and they never have been), but I don't think they're to blame for this. It's the Pokémon Company _forcing_ GameFreak to rush in order to stay synced with the anime, card game, and other merch. Meanwhile GameFreak seems to want to be an indie studio.
@@angeldude101 Wreally?
@@theextremeanimator4721 Pokémon isn't just a video game franchise, but a multimedia one. The Pokémon company tries really hard to make sure that all their revenue streams stay in sync, even if that means pushing Game Freak too hard.
As for Game Freak themselves, I forget where I saw that, but I heard that they want to keep a small studio feel and tries to limit the number of core developers even if it's unsustainable for the scope of the games they're working on.
Is this narration TTS? It sounds like it might be, but it's hard to tell.
I'm quick to pick up in social situations when someone seems to be making exaggerated generalizations or bold claims based without much thought into it, and while I obviously cant say that was what happened, when listening to the audio of them speaking, it did give me that feeling.
When I bought Perfect Dark, it had the expansion pack bundled with it. I bought it in Ireland, so maybe Europe was treated the same as Japan.
Australia had an edition with perfect dark that had the standard game box, a box with the expansion pak, and a long Perfect Dark themed sleeve that covered both side by side. It probably cost more than the standard edition of Perfect Dark but less than buying separately, I can't recall though.
Rare was a second party for Nintendo at the time of the N64. So, as you mentioned Quest Gamer, there is no way that the Big N would have shipped DK64 with the expansion pack just to cover a bug.
They wanted DK64 to be a Holiday release, so they had to rush it for the bug
True. I remember an interview in Nintendo Official Magazine quite a few months before release, it looked at the crazy amount of lighting and Rare stated the expansion pak was required to handle all the lighting effects.
I got dk64 for Christmas and It didn't come with expansion pak. My mum wouldn't buy me the expansion pack as she spent enough on the game. Thus as a kid I hated nintendo for not including in with the game. I also cried on Christmas morning when I couldn't boot the game.
@@yommmrr can't believe they sold it without bundling it with a rampak
It was to make the Christmas deadline. I think they realized they didn't have enough time to debug it before getting it out on Christmas.
Apparently, because they were cartridges, it took a whole lot longer to actually make and ship the carts, too
Perfect Dark didn't NEED the expansion pak, but without it the game was incredibly crippled. Only a few game modes was allowed without it
It didn't need it yes but too get the full experience out of the game the expansion pack was definitely needed then..the game was best played with it..
The dk memory crash i remember a channel here on youtube tested it. Forcing the game to lunch on a non expanded n64 will chrash the game in a couple of hours but run it with no problem untill the crach, so it would be a problem for people gaming longer sessions. The expansion pack will prolong the run time for a couple of days. They could trigger it easely by using save states. You do not restart the game using a save state so for example wii would crash if you save stated a game and the original save state had 40+ hours already active. It would eventualy crach unless you manualy restarted the game. Normal players would newer get this problem on original hardware.
I'd love to see this! Do you know where the video is?
I remember buying the expansion as a kid. They advertised that it would make every game look better, but I noticed zero difference.
If you noticed a difference in resolution, then you'd def also notice the shittier framerate.
the difference depends on the game you played... games like star wars rogue squadron for example the difference is huge in hi rez mode.
@@TheFred128 If I remember correctly, that's actually one of the rare times when the "high res" mode didn't actually have crazy slow frame rates.
@@Marc_Araujo yes, but if I remember rayman 2 and resident evil 2 are also other examples of games that the frame rate remains "good" even in hi rez.
Perfect dark is such a beautiful game. I remember man hours against sims as a child.
Those guys saying the Expansion Pak was shipped with DK64 for free is wrong. I remember paying $80 for that game at the time. I bought it new at Target. It was like all my money at the time.
When I was 10 or so I got majoras mask for my birthday, and then discovered we needed this fucking thing in order to play. We went around looking in many gaming stores but it was not available anywhere, so we had to return the game...
Dude this video was very informational but the mind blowing part for me is your voice reminds of the voice acting in the overlord anime as chief warrior Gazef Stroanoff and I mean exactly like it
Actually, around -97, Nintendo was still going to release Expansion Pack only with the 64DD.
On mid -98, at E3, some companys (Iguana/Factor 5) wanted Nintendo to release Expansion Pack on the same year, as they had games to support it, as it was clear that 64DD was going to be delayed into year -99.
Sadly, just before mid - 98, Nintendo already had decided to port Zelda:OOT into cartridge, and had changed the game to utilize only 4MB RAM. So, while they agreed to release Expansion Pack separately, they did not have game to bungle with it (Unlike Starfox 64 & Rumble Pack). So releasing Expansion Pack before 64DD was not Nintendo's idea.
But since release did happen, many gaming studios were afraid to utilize pack, as the user -base for it was still small. It might sound silly to think that player without Expansion Pack would not get a game that supports hi-rez mode with it, while rather get the Pack first and eventually get the game that supports it. Or not get Expansion Pack nor a game that supports it at all. -But this was exactly the scenario many publishers thought. After the release of DK64, there was more faith to go for Expansion Pack support, due larger user -base.
However, Nintendo did some miscalculations, as during the release of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Expansion Packs were out of stock.
Many gamers were unable to purchase Expansion Pack at the same time on year 2000 as the release of Zelda:MM.
We all know, that success of Memory Expansion Pack would had been enermous, if Zelda: OOT had supported & included Pack for free, unlike year gap there was with the release of Expansion Pack and release of DK64.
Subbed and clicked the bell.
Thank you, And keep up the good work.
I don't know what impact Nintendo thought that the N64 expansion pack would have beyond mildly better resolutions/frame rates or a couple more graphical effects.
Eventually Nintendo had to give developers bonuses for making optional use of the expansion pack because so few developers were using it. Aidyn Chronicles, one of the 4 RPGs released on the N64 had a troubled development for numerous reasons, one of the reasons stated by one of the developers was finding a way to make use of the expansion pack so that they would get the bonus from Nintendo.
And games that got higher resolution support from the expansion pack often had worse frame rates in comparison to not using the expansion pack at all meaning it was arguable that the best way to play the game was without making use of the expansion pack. The failure of the N64 DD, Nintendo stubbornly sticking to cartridges due to fears of piracy, and the expansion pack I feel were all signs of Nintendo faltering during the 5th generation. That lead to issues like Nintendo ranking 3rd place out of four consoles in the 6th generation, and the Dreamcast pulled on half way through that generation meaning beating it in sales was not all the impressive.
The expension pack didnt increase framerates, it cant, its just RAM.
It was needed for some games, MM as example was programmed for thr N64DD and after it got cancelled, they needed more RAM to get the games to work. And other games used it to use better textures
It was needed after they messed up with the DD
@@otozinclus3593 Well only three games required the expansion pack. Majora's Mask, Perfect Dark, and Donkey Kong 64.
Almost all other N64 games that support the expansion pack just had slightly higher resolution support if you were willing to potentially hurt the frame rate.
I'm not saying you're wrong about your N64DD theory, but a ton of large profile games were planned for the N64DD including games like Ocarina of Time of Conker's Bad Fur Day, neither of which required the expansion pack.
While it wasn't one of the two games that absolutely would not boot without an expansion pak, Perfect Dark was absolutely useless without it.
The reason systems required these "upgrades" or at least, why manufacturers thought they were a good idea you have to go back to the time frame. People still didn't fully understand the idea of console generations. There was actually a bunch of backlash against Nintendo with SNES release because parents didn't understand why you needed new hardware, why could games just be made better for the NES. The concept of CPU speeds and RAM etc... were not understood by the masses. The Genesis tried to capitalize on this in the NA market by addon's so they could claim you didn't need to change your hardware just upgrade it. This didn't pan out. The 64dd and the expansion pack was a throw back to this concept.
I remember watching a video years ago about a software engineer talking about why the 8MB of RAM for the Nintendo 64 didn't work the way you'd expect it to work, and that it was hard to optimise code for? I can't remember if it was someone in the industry or if it was Kaze Emanuar, but if I find it, I'll post it in the replies to this comment.
I found it. It's this video (4:10 in) ua-cam.com/video/gRslfM-MOOw/v-deo.html
But it's about texture caching
"It's also important to note that the 4 [megabyte] RAM expansion doesn't help here at all. One Nintendo 64 developer was quoted as saying: 'It's like adding a new fuel tank, when there isn't enough gas at the pump'."
As a kid I had no idea what a RAM was, or what the upgrade pack even did, but all I knew was that it meant I could properly play Perfect Dark and that's all that mattered. I spent hours playing through that game with my cousins and friends. In hindsight it's kind of cool that it was even something that you could do. Shows that there was some serious forward thinking in the design of the N64, kind of a shame Nintendo sort of gave up on that mindset afterwards.
I really like the monotone robot voice
Really well produced. I'll take a look at your other videos.
I have owned Space Station Silicon Valley since I was a kid. The expansion pack doesn't completely screw you. The game freezes shortly on boot with an expansion back but if you press start fast you can get to the menu and select your save file. Thankfully, I completed the game before I installed the expansion pack all those years ago. The only level you cannot play is Stage 5, the factory level or whatever it was with the fox. This is a wonderful game and more people should play it.
Subbing for good overall quality. Looking forward to seeing more
I find it odd that... in this day and age, it should be known if DK64 truly requires the expansion pak. Why? ROM Hackers and decomp projects. Seriously. There is certainly someone with the skil/timel out there to simply hack the DK64 rom, disable the expansion pak check, and allow it to proceed with gameplay without the 8MB pak. The same person could likely use their debugging tools to trace down any supposed memory leaks, and quite possibly fix them. Or at least, they could probe the ROM to see if the vertex lighting claim holds up.
12:30 "Nintendo doesn't ship games if they aren't completely ready to be shipped"
Meanwhile: Pokemon Scarlet/Violet
I consider three games that required the expansion pack not two.
Donkey Kong, Majora’s Mask and Perfect Dark.
Rouge Squadron would be a number four of it didn’t already run very well but it’s much better with it.
You can still play perfect dark without it.
The expansion pack did its job and a lot of games used it to either make them run at all or make them better. To me that is a success.
Very successful accessories/add-on
I remember Perfect Dark always needing that stupid expansion pack plugged in otherwise you couldn’t start anything but multiplayer.
Even with the pack it had low framerates, but still one of my favorites
Low framrates due to via higher resolution mode.
Good and interesting video. Provides some clarity into a very often cited rumor about DK64 needing it to fix a bug, although I'm baffled as to why the contradicting stories, especially if the first guy was supposed to have been a programmer. Who was this programmer anyway? Was he a fake? A follow-up with him would be nice.
Hard wiring the expansion pak would've saved them a headache or release the 64dd along with it or release it once it's available in Japan, but some things seem to be a privilege only for the Japanese.
Nintendo waist time releasing the 64DD in japan. I wish Nintendo included Disk Drive (expansion up to 750 MB like the zip drives) on the n64 prior to its launch
I believe the memory leak issue with Donkey Kong 64 because the same issue occurs with the Wii U Virtual Console version. If you use save states, the game will crash after loading the save state a few times. It doesn't happen if you close out the game and load your save. But I could be wrong about it being related. It just made sense to me.
Very informative, subbed, thank you! 🙏
Majoria's mask did come bundled with the expansion pak in the US as I own a copy.
As for the Donkey Kong 64 bug it does cone from the differences in 64 model. If you have the original 2 chip ram 64 the bug will not surface but if you have the redesign 1 chip ram the bug appears. The bug happens because the game is designed to use both chips on the older versions of the n64 by loading the lighting effects to one chip then the game play or cut scenes on to the other.
The only other game that really requires the expansion pak is Banjo Kazooie which does have a memory leak where if the console is left on for too long it will freeze and corrupt save files. The expansion pak in that case adds memory to system to allow players more time to play and shut down the console before the bug appears.
Let’s be real. The 64DD was a contingency plan in case Sony shipped something faster mid generation. The expansion pack was always going to be there just so that the evolution of graphics continued for marketing reasons.
Took me way too long to realize this is text to speech lmao
Awesome information as always. Great work!👍👏👏👏
One tech dude to another, I like your attic analogy in regards to the use of RAM.
The only reason I got Donkey Kong 64 was for the expansion pack. While the game had fun elements, I never really played it much do to the tedious amount of collecting involved with the character swap gimmick.
if you look at the sales numbers of n64 consoles in the Americas compared to Donkey Kong 64, 1 in 4 players in the Americas region would have received the expansion pack with DK64 already, making additional bundles entirely pointless for those players as well as either making the other hypothetical bundle games more expensive, or creating confusion for consumers (probably parents of young kids) as to which version they needed to buy. Nintendo doesn't want those customers angry that they either purchased an unnecessary bundle at a higher price point or buying a game that either doesn't work or is severely reduced in quality unless they ALSO buy a $30 expansion pack. If you look at the news coverage at the time, you will see stories about parents confused and angry that their child is asking for SNES when they already had NES and N64 when they already had SNES. The idea of periodic hardware updates was new back then and this would have just been more fuel to add to that fire
I don't agree how the expansion pak was not a success, third party games and first party games profit the thing while cheaper studio didn't exploit it to it's max, it proved the quality of studios developper to use it. Of course it wasn't bundle with other games than dk64 but I rather buy it separetely than having 2 or 3.
It’s all fun and games until that one person who rented Majora’s Mask from Blockbusters before you “forgot” to give back the Expansion Pack when they returned the game . . . 😠
what was that fps game at 1:10?
It's interesting, I really believed the story about the dk64 bug. In fact I heard several rumors like this for those games requiring the expansion pak and I am pretty sure I have seen a video about one of those where they prove the existence of the error using a gameshark or whatever that removes the expansion pak requirement. I just can't remember the game but in that game they have proven the existence of the bug, I just can't find the video anymore :(
The game could run about a while without the expansion pak until it eventually crashes but with expansion pak it would run about (i think) 400 hours. But they really could reproduce this error in the final game by leaving it running for that long time.
With regard to DK64, it wouldn't even boot. Someone wrote a ROM Hack recently which disables the game reading from expansion pak memory. In this modified version, the game crashes on boot as it's trying to dereference a pointer from the expansion pak memory
I love videos that debunk internet repeated myths about something that wasn't even true just because nobody does their proper investigations, nice video!!!
Conker's Bad Fur Day neither uses or requires the expansion pack. The only game that i think genuinely needed it was Perfect Dark. DK64 only needed it because of a ram leak.
Thanks for breaking things into simple Nintendo related example!
Memory pack was a great move, we forgot how much Ram price was on these way, altough they made $$ from this, I think it was necessary to cut down the N64 price a its release and bump the power later.
Far better than putting FX/FX2 chips in cartriges...
Best part n64 never needed super fx 1 and 2 like chip since it is powerful console.
When Perfect Dark for the N64 was released, I was a teenager in a small town in South Eastern, Ohio. My brother and I received it for Christmas. Our mother was a bit of a penny pincher. She would not have purchased Perfect Dark for us, knowing she would have to purchase another product in order for us to play the game. Especially because of the price point. It had to have been a bundle deal. In fairness, I could see how perhaps this was a special deal exclusive to only some stores. For instance, I assume she purchased it at Sam's Club. I know from visiting the store myself around that time that they ran a ton of video game bundles that were exclusive deals to their store. My Sega Genesis came bundled with not just Sonic the Hedgehog but Evander Holyfield's Heavy Weight Boxing. I also got Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time in a bundle with the strategy guide from that store. It is possible, too, though that we had a bundle with Majora's Mask instead. We got it that same Christmas. My brother and I never had Donkey Kong 64, either.
TLDR: -Didn't have Dk64 but had Expansion Pack
-mom was a penny pincher
-Sam's Club is likely where she got Perfect Dark and Majora's Mask
-Sam's Club was known to have videogame bundle deals exclusive to their stores at the time.
-CONCLUSION-Sam's Club may have bundled Perfect Dark or Majora's Mask with the Expansion pack.
@12:30
Watching this in January 2023 and immediately looking at the recent Pokemon Violet/Scarlet release.
Nintendo let the game release with lots of bugs and performance issues. (I'm not talking about the hardware in this case. I'm only talking about game optimization.)
My copy of Turok 2 Seeds of Evil came bundled with a expansion pak. The game could be played without it no problems, but the pak allowed for higher resolution and better framerate. (In menu, the resolution options were: lo-rez, Hi-rez, and Hi-rez Letterbox. For Hi-rez and Hi-rez Letterbox you needed the pak.)
BRO! You just solved my issue with Silicon Valley! I got a copy of it, but it always crashed at the first video and I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned the cartridge to no avail... I thought the copy was just broken so I gave up! Im going to get that out and play it now with the original pak! :D SO STOKED!
Google has existed for a long time.
@@bradleyhoward9638 Bro, why would I start googling hardware conflicts for old video games because my old, worn-as-fuck cartridge crashes at the main menu? It's the same premise as having a scratched disc at face value.
12:35 Pokemon Scarlet/Violet say Hello
Even with the expansion pak, Perfect Dark still had a horrible framerate.
Yet I still spent hundreds of hours playing it 🤣 The game was a blast.
Really glad they did the xbox live arcade version of it
@@GenericPast Yes, that version of the game is amazing.
Due to using hi resolution mode which should've been removed on the expansion paks cause it slows and reduces framerates every single game.
"nintendo doesn't ship games that aren't ready*" (*besides Pokemon Scarlet and Violet) -- just messin around, great vid. super interesting!
8:23 I like how the TTS man says "bug".
It's such a shame the 64DD didn't have a chance to be what it could have been, had that hardware shipped with the console and been given time for utilization it would have blown everyone away.
Yeah, especially with the internet capabilities it was trying to include.
Hard4Games did a great video on this subject. The 64DD hardware was done and ready to go. Its failure was a self fulfilling prophecy on Nintendo's part: the N64 undersold in Japan, so they didn't have the confidence to release a peripheral without the customer base to support it. The more DD games came out on cartridge as a result of its delays, the fewer DD exclusive software there was to support the add-on.
@@ShadowEl I think N64 should've used Disk Drive instead of a cartridge port. Add-on idea kept getting delayed and eventually cancelled altogether. I think 64DD needed different genres of games and arcade/ps1/Saturn ports to make it standout from the n64. I believe Nintendo was too deep into 3D craze of the 90s.
Star Wars Racer was amazing with or without, but the expansion pack was worth it, so smooth!
If you guys think about it, the only thing that saved nintendo was their handhelds. The N64’s expansions failed (both of them), then the GC flopped because they failed to advertise it correctly, and then they did that same mistake with the Wii U. It’s been the GB,GBC,GBA, DS & 3DS that kept them alive imo.
Also, GC lost 2nd party support and 3rd parties avoided it due to its limited mini dvd disc. GC should've been compatible with the dual layer mini dvd discs which increase gc disc size up to 5.6 GB.
@@maroon9273 yup ! That was another big reason why people didn’t wanted to make games for it.
Every N64 that I have seen for sale second-hand lacks both the memory expansion _and_ the jumper pak -- there is always just an empty slot. I assume that these are removed and sold separately (even though the console will not work without one or the other in place).
Originally, the jumper pak was included with the system. It is nothing more than an end of line resistor.