Discovering (And Modding!) The N64

[@goemon74]

The n64's region locking was very advanced. The only thing your bay does is my every cartridge fit. It does not mean everything plays.

[@mogwaay]

Nice video! Although I was a PC owner when we got our N64, we were stuck on an aging, 3Dfx-less 486 and I remember how blown away me and my little brother were with the intro to Mario 64 and just how immersive the 3D world of Mario felt. It was probably the last machine I got really excited about... Ta for showing off the mods, if I get my old N64 back from my mums, the RGB mod looks like a nice, easy, quality of life upgrade for sure. Really nice prodcution here too, hats off!

[@prawnk1ng]

I loved my n64. Golden eye and Mario kart were my most played. The wrestling games were top notch too.

[@theblowupdollsmusic]

Really great video. Thank you for taking the time to make this. I love the Nintendo 64.

[@hunter371]

Very thorough with your modifications and commitment to enhancement to the max of the system. Nice soldering skills too!! I felt compelled to comment seeing you holding the controller playing Doom 64. Just wanted to say I never understood holding the controller that way. The N64 was the only controller that had this dynamic where there were different ways people would hold the controller, even for different games. I always held it with hands on each side, stretching my thumb towards the joystick which has always worked well enough.

[@tabsntoot]

My favourite system. I was 14 in Xmas 1997 when I first got one with shadows of empire. I’m 40 now and still playing n64.

[@shaun8062]

I'm 37 and I play my n64 frequently!

[@alex13stone]

Was a playstation kid, but one of my friends had one, we played hours and hours of banjo and tooie & banjo and kazooie. I bort my own n64 a few years later. I still have all my gaming consoles. Except pc.

[@Skippy19812]

You really do need to play Turok 2. It's another great N64 game that isn't quite as revered as I think it should be. The soundtrack alone is worth the price of admission. Also, Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Kazooie and Perfect Dark are must-haves. Basically anything Rare put out during that era was solid gold (although I personally find Blast Corps to be an acquired taste.)

[@MrRetrostage]

This was my setup in 1997: Pentium 200MMX + 3Dfx Voodoo and a N64 from PAL launch. What a wonderful year of gaming... 🤤

[@Lawnie10]

A wonderful Red Dwarf poster right at the beginning there. No Mercy for the N64 is still glorious. I remember playing Goldeneye at my neighbour's house back in the day with four player split screen. Also glorious.

[@sonic2000gr]

We were selling the N64 in the shop I was working back then. We had a demo unit always on with The Legend of Zelda: Occarina of Time running. To this day the title song plays in my head!

[@olevet75]

It looks stunning on 3dsxl in 3d stereoscopic

[@DenkyManner]

There's a weird contingent of N64 haters who talk about it like it was self-evidently awful. I had one at the time and loved a lot of titles on it, even though Mario 64 and OoT didn't quite hit the spot for me like it did for so many others (I actually appreciate those two games more now than at the time.) It was a g truly reat system with some of my favourite games ever. It has an atmosphere because of the slightly dodgy image quality which I enjoyed at the time and am very nostalgic for now

[@keyserxx]

N64 were £99.99? That's actually really good when you consider the Amiga 500/1200 were £499 back in the day. I was either PS1 or A1200 back then, then all PC/Quake 2 from 98 onwards.

[@emmettturner9452]

Regarding the specks that disappeared, you probably had alcohol-based flux that took some time to dry out after getting pulled under chips by the capillary effect.

[@c1ph3rpunk]

Still have my N64 we got for the kids back then, it’s down in my basement playground. A bunch of my team was over last week, we had a Mario Kart competition, loser has to do a Malört shot. Yes, it’s a Chicago thing.

[@whatamalike]

I remember as a kid being so hyped for the n64, but got a ps1 instead on Christmas day 1997 because there were just simply more varied games for it. I got an n64 the following Xmas (lucky kid I know 😅) with mario 64, Kart 64 and lylat wars and didn't get any more games for it until the following Christmas (goldeneye I think) cos the ps1 just had way more games. So as much as I love the system I never actually had too many games for it during its lifetime

[@ShaunOHalloran-lc1qi]

Awesome video, instantly subbed, about to binge, f zero is the best !

[@CheshireNoir]

Talking of banging soundtrack, we used to play a lot of Tetrisphere on the old Ninty64. The game was hugely popular in our local social circle and... not anywhere else by all accounts.

[@keyserxx]

Based on how my over heating voodoo 2 card used to behave I would say sparkles are due to over heating vram. I believe it can still happen when overclocking vram on gfx cards today.

[@thisisapen]

Yup still happens, “artefacts” from corrupt memory from dodgy clock speeds. The 3DFX technology was absorbed into NVidia, which is why they suddenly became ‘good’ over AMD (edit; or ATI if you prefer)

[@joebadger]

That PC setup you had was an ergonomic nightmare!

[@ctrlaltrees]

Haha, we'd only just moved in to that house so everything was all over the place (hence the awful wallpaper too!)

[@RetroSegaDev]

Never had an n64! I was also firmly in the PC camp at this point...oh and Mega Drive still 😂

[@HollowRick]

Just so people are aware NTSC n64s does support S video as the highest quality output without modding and it's a big jump from composite Nintendo removed S video support from PAL consoles so it's composite only If you're using one stock

[@dant5464]

My PAL N64 outputs svideo without mods.

[@HollowRick]

​@@dant5464strange indeed as pal consoles are composite only

[@olevet75]

Who told you that, only 2-3 variations don't output svideo , 95% of pal N64 output svideo signal

[@AfterBurnerTeirusu]

The N64 is one of my all time favourites alongside the Dreamcast. It has a ton of great racing games. Especially atari/midway arcade ports. Such a shame it's Japanese library is pretty small. JPN releases are very cheap, but most of the better titles were only released in the west. As an European, I usually have to buy carts from the states, which is expensive. Most PAL releases are rubbish.

[@HollowRick]

And the the whole 50hz thing also sucks not that 50hz Is bad is just the conversions were terrible

[@AfterBurnerTeirusu]

@@HollowRick That's why I mentioned most PAL releases are rubbish. There are a few that play perfectly fine like Banjo Kazooie and South Park, but most are pretty bad.

[@olevet75]

​@@AfterBurnerTeirusu cart from Ali eth games play it 60hz on pal console with no black bars

[@bioshock6935]

I played the N64 doom on the very first day it game out as that was the only reason why i went out a bought the console just for that one game i remembered when i bought the magazine showing the game visuals center pages and it was the main exclusive story on it. Goldeneye was just meh game for me lol was interested i just thought it was boring as i was never a bond fan or liked the films but for me n64 doom was the best game that the console made and the 3D Mario which was there selling point marketing pitch

[@Trusteft]

Don't you love it when something gets fixed, when there was no real reason or attempt to fix it? Just by luck? And we just accept it and move on. It feels so weird that it happens so often in our lives, and even more weird when it happens in areas that shouldn't be happening like computing, electronics, etc. Fascinating how the RNG of life is. I love a bit of ST bit in random videos or posts. :) I almost always mention Midi Maze when people discuss the "first" FPS and all that. I admit I never owned a N64 and never cared for it, even made fun of the claims of the awesomeness of N64 games like Goldeneye and how they compared to PC releases. BUT, the older I got the more respect I developed for the system, even again I never got one. Well into the 21st century and if extreme luck willing I ever have money again, I do plan on acquiring one and games for it. Being the most powerful home console with a cartridge is something very cool. Plus of course the awesome colors you could find one in. Cool video man. Happy gaming.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Thanks for the kind comment! Of course I had to mention the ST connection when I came across it in my research 😁

[@dant5464]

The stretch mode will be for the very few games with anamorphic widescreen support. And perhaps if you have a 4:3 monitor?

[@Zycthe]

Woah. Rare are based in twycross? Thats crazy, really close

[@nesmaster14]

Sweet Red Dwarf poster :)

[@loganjorgensen]

Fun to get a fresh perspective, well technically the consoles were inferior but the game designs could still be good. It was an era where without the rise of 3DFX-Voodoo things like N64 could have still had some advantage over PC gaming. When Quake came out on the N64 reviews did emphasize how collectively between platform & game cost that it was a much cheaper option for approximately a GLQuake experience.🙂 4:00 Lol yeah NA had a long running blocking strategy for better AV for no logical reason Ie. "RGB video TV and devices, nooooooo!", it was like they wanted the best a CRT could do to go completely to waste in it's lifespan but then finally adopt it just before the rise of LCD screens.😒 9:02 Slight blur, that's subjective, frankly I love the new option to turn it off because it's more than slight to my eyes. It was a bizarre choice by Nintendo as the default AV options were soft and blurry already so putting more blur on top baffles me. Scanline options are always good since it's a hard thing to simulate well that to have multiple takes on the aesthetic is good. 9:58 The biggest thing I can say to the three-hand meme junkies is that the N64 is ambidextrous in it's mostly symmetrical layout, meaning you can grip it to either dominant hand. The main thing missing is two buttons next to the D-pad, see Virtual Boy for how that might have looked. Mainly the games optimized for no B&A buttons and one shoulder button work best such as FPS titles, plus every button isn't necessarily used by every game ijs. Lastly it's the only design where a single analog joystick actually works(FPS especially.), see Saturn, Dreamcast and PSP for weird redundant directional controls in games Eg. Walk-Digital & Walk-Analog right next to each other. I have an N64 now but bitd my cousin was how I enjoyed that platform, lots of Goldeneye deathmatches.😁 I think Super Mario 64 was what I felt the most left out on going with the PS1 instead as I didn't find many that controlled as well as it. Yeah Doom-Quake 64 didn't get much respect in the past but lately it's gotten more love. Got to get Pilotwings 64 myself.😉

[@DavidWhitley]

never had a problem with the N64 controller, i guess you either love it or hate it, great video.

[@mattsword41]

remember hrs of 4 player goldeneye and lylat wars at a friend's aged about 15- great system for couch multiplayer!

[@AZBCDE]

Really wish Nintendo included an RGB signal in the N64

[@olevet75]

Dude do you read japanese, those jp games voxes look so cool

[@magicknight8412]

The N64 totally passed me by. None of my friends had one either, so I had no desire to get one.

[@ctrlaltrees]

Same, even the friends that had them seemed to barely play with them. Everyone moved on to the PlayStation pretty quickly, at least in my circle of friends.

[@joetheman74]

I'll stick with my emulator. I'm going to play GoldenEye at 1080p with a texture pack, FXAA and 8x Anisotropic Filtering and use my mouse and keyboard as the input controller for more precision control. I think the last time I played on my console was back in 2003.

[@olevet75]

Ok

[@michaeldemers2716]

I recommend Resident Evil 2. You don't need to worry about scratches on the N64.

[@RetrogradeScene]

Nice looking mod. I'll keep my eye out for a reasonable NTSC one to give it a go. My wife had a Japanese one as a kid but her and her brothers fried it by plugging it in to a UK socket. should have been mine!!

[@nickwallette6201]

SNES is still tied for my all-time favorite console, but I skipped over the N64. It coincided with the time in my life where I had started college, moved in with my GF, and otherwise had other things going on. I didn't get back into Nintendo consoles until the second act of the GameCube, which I got as a present. Accordingly, Mario 64 still feels like an imposter in the Super Mario universe. The late-90s menu design, the music, the low-detail worlds -- none of it feels like I expect a first-party Mario game to feel. I can chock some of that up to "first-gen 3D game" but it's still hard to correlate all the love that game gets. I guess I just need to spend more time with it. :-)

[@olevet75]

I think it's pretty tough, unforgiven and you'll can get lost not knowing what to do next to get that yellow start on level

[@joebadger]

I still have my original N64 in the loft. I loved it at the time, some fantastic games but it has not aged well. If I want to revisit say TLOZ Majora's Mask, I'd do so on an emulator, and probably play the Gamecube version with it's more modern control scheme.

[@joshshanks4550]

From washington state tacoma and love red drwarf

[@jinxterx]

You're lucky you haven't had a DMCA takedown notice just for mentioning the name Nintendo😂

[@markanne54]

I got one when they were first new and couldn't believe how much I disliked it after utterly loving the SNES. Didn't like the graphics and hated the controller so it never really did get any love. Almost put me off Nintendo completely, but still ended up with a few of their hand-helds over the years, and only very recently got a Switch to play Zelda (and so far being disappointed with that too). I think Sony just do things better.

[@Anyonewhos]

Hey, do you sell modded n64s? I've just bought a pc but got into speedrunning mario 64. And I'd rather get a console to plug into the pc to stream on twitch etc. But unlike you I'm completely clueless when it comes to this stuff. So are you able to help in anyway? I want it to play Japanese and american cartridges. And yes I'm on the uk hence why im specifically asking you haha. Let me know please 😊