Secrets of the N64 Expansion Pak (Ft. Matt McMuscles) | Punching Weight | SSFF

[@StopSkeletonsFromFighting]

Update on Donkey Kong 64 - Thanks for the clarification everyone! The consensus in the comments is that 6 months before release essentially was the 11th hour when factoring time for cartridge manufacturing. This seems to confirm that DK64 actually did not need the expansion pak for its advanced visuals and lighting, and with some hacking should be possible to play it with the Jumper Pak. We were only putting that question out there because we could not find a definitive answer ourselves. We would love to see DK64 actually running on a Jumper Pak so a true graphics comparison can be done. Until that happens, the case is still open as far as we're concerned. Also, we're aware the Terminator Pak isn't actually empty and does serve an important purpose. We should have clarified our statement more but we just thought it was odd that the Japanese name was "Terminator Pak" and the English name was "Jumper Pak", when terminator is the more technically accurate name. Lastly, very legitimately upset at ourselves for mispronouncing professional wrestler X-Pac's name. It was a quick joke we threw in at the last minute and we didn't think to fact-check it. Please accept our deepest and most sincere apologies. -da

[@dacypher22]

I should have looked up. I just wrote a giant wall of text explaining this very thing. Deleted the comment as it is now 100% unnecessary.

[@mattsisland7101]

X-Pac is pronounced correctly. Don't know what the issue is...

[@charlescampuz5812]

Jesus Christ, this video was horrendously structured. It’s my first video in this series and I’m really shocked how there’s just random, sometimes unrelated, segments passing left and right as you try to explain the Expansion Pack. There’s also lots of misinformation here, like how you didn’t understand what the Jumper pack really did (Thankfully you corrected yourself here) or how you didn’t mention Resident Evil 2’s constantly changing resolution wasn’t apparent on CRTs. I really hope your other videos don’t reflect this clunky mess because it would be disappointing, considering how much potential there is in the series.

[@Jemar_Blount-Golden]

long.... >_

[@daishi5571]

If someone does remove the need for the expansion pack could they also fix the memory leak lol. Personally I doubt it, I would guess (and it's only a guess from an old programmer) that when they decided to use the memory pack they dumped some data that was just easier to access that way, so although it might not have been needed had they fixed the problem and they optimized, why not use it to make life easier if you are going to require the memory anyway. I don't really get into N64 emulation, but isn't there a way to look what being dumped into the 4MB in real time (should also see the memory being used up as time goes by)

[@feepness]

Hi there. I worked on RE2 N64. In fact, I wrote the code that deals with the expansion pack. :) The resolution change you're seeing is entirely intentional and based on the number of enemies in the room. This allows a consistent framerate under the idea when you're fighting you aren't paying that much attention to the graphics and the extra resolution would hamper framerate with enemies active, but when you're cruising around a cleared area you're probably looking more closely at your character and the game elements and with no enemies to draw it's possible to up the res. There are a range of resolutions based on exact number/type of enemy. Also, the menus must have the standard resolution to maintain size so that's why they jump back every time you enter them. Of course a capture card wasn't on the radar at that time so no issues there. A lot of great info in your video here!

[@StopSkeletonsFromFighting]

Thanks so much for commenting this. If only capture cards could keep up with the resolution changes! RE2 64 is one of our favorite ports, and we really appreciate the hard work you guys did on it. Would you be willing to talk some more about it? I'd love to pick your brain about the RE2 port. -gk

[@meleniumshane90]

Is it switching from 240p to 480i?

[@gabrielmassa]

great answer, nice to see someone that worked on it. Congratulations for the great work, I normally liked games on CD because of the CG, and thus, loosing the great N64 graphics, but with RE2 I could have the best of both worlds. I remember playing RE2 a little and I never saw the resolution issue on my CRT TV (yea I still use one of those 29" CRT TV for my retro consoles lol). Thanks for the information. :)

[@NYCJoeBlack]

Chris Fodor - I LOVE the fact that Capcom ported Resident Evil 2 to the Nintendo 64. I still have the cartridge, box, manuals, and inserts. RE2 is my all-time favorite game. I just wished that Capcom went ahead with Resident Evil Zero for the Nintendo 64.

[@milliebunnyz5231]

@@NYCJoeBlack remaster coming out in 2019 :o err remake? For re2.spoooky

[@lauraschantz9058]

Fun fact: My kid brother got Majora's Mask for Xmas when it came out, but at the time, we didn't have $20 lying around for an Exapansion Pak, and our parents refused to buy it. So while we pooled our allowances to get a proper one, we bought a $5 knockoff. The 3rd-party version overheated SO easily, he had to quicksave every half-hour, then he would turn the game off and put the "expansion pak" in the FREEZER for 15 minutes to cool it back down before playing again. And he did this, every single day, for TWO WEEKS, until we had both the money and could get Mom to stop by the store to buy an official Expansion Pak. (Dad was furious that we were putting electronics in the freezer, because "it's going to get frost in it and ruin your N64, and I'm not going to buy you a new one just because you did something this stupid.") Even with that handicap, my brother STILL beat MM with all the masks by Martin Luther King Day, a mere month later. It's one of the weirdest and funniest video-game-related memories we made together as kids.

[@kingyeayea397]

That's fuckin awsome man ! I enjoyed reading that lol

[@misterkaos.357]

Same story, except I removed the outer case and forged a custom waterblock case with some copper refrigerant line and a guerrilla forge, just so the entire pak could be watercooled. In hindsight, it probably would have been cheaper just to buy the official pak.

[@dickmasterson8024]

Damn good memory!

[@coolzoky]

Thanks for sharing that story :D There is nothing like the old days.

[@RoastedLocust]

That's some hardcore dedication to the hobby.

[@Netist_]

It makes sense that the DK64 team wouldn't have improved the graphics. The bug was a memory leak. When the game (or any software) needs to load some data, that data ends up in memory. Then, it's more or less your responsibility as the developer to tell the machine you're done with that bit of memory when you no longer need it. That way, the machine can free up the space and put new data there. A memory leak occurs when you don't properly clear the data you allocate, so it just sits in memory. Eventually your memory fills up, and the game crashes. The DK64 team needed the expansion pack because it meant the game could run longer and leak more memory without filling up. Of course it will still eventually fill up, which is why the game still crashes eventually. Improved graphics would take up more memory, which would eat into that buffer they gained from the expansion pack.

[@zayaannashrid1374]

Holy moly, that's actually kinda terrible. I'm a base level programmer, aka i'm still learning, and one of the first things i learned was to not create a memory leak. Jeez, I assume the devs must've been under severe pressure to make a mistake like that

[@vurpo7080]

If you're working with entirely manual memory management, like you would be when programming in C, then the more complex your software gets, the harder it is to avoid memory problems like this. Languages with automatic memory management (such as Rust, Java, Python, and to some extent even C++, all of which do it in slightly different ways) let you worry less about things like memory leaks, because the easiest mistakes are automatically avoided for you. But when programming in C, and all you have is malloc and free, it is almost inevitable that you'll make memory management mistakes in a program on the scale of DK64.

[@KuraIthys]

Yes, not creating memory leaks is one of the first thing you learn, but if you've ever dealt with manual memory management, (eg C or C++ or even assembly) you'll know it's disturbingly easy to create memory leaks in any non-trivial piece of code. Frankly, memory leaks are among the most common problems in code, and one of the hardest to track down. I swear the browser I'm using as I type this probably has a memory leak. For that matter it wouldn't surprise me if the javascript on quite a few websites technically is full of memory leaks. Memory leaks are among some of the easiest mistakes to make, and the hardest to identify that you have one, where it's coming from, and how to fix it. It's terrible that they fixed the issue in such an awful way, but don't be too quick to blame them. Memory leaks are really easy to create. Often without even realising you've done it, through some subtle quirk of how your code functions or function calls or interactions with libraries... It's not that easy to avoid doing it. It's good to know that it's bad to do, but that's different from actually ensuring you don't do it.

[@alritedave]

Netist It's kinda mind blowing they didn't fix it with the time they had. In those days you didn't get to release a day one patch. A broken launch would mean a recall and that could be devastating financially.

[@NYCJoeBlack]

Mattias Forelli - I like that, because it would almost ensure that the product you are purchasing does not ship with A bugs.

[@d37tae]

OMG. 19 years ago I borrowed perfect dark from a friend for a couple of days and I couldn't play any of the story mode. I didn't know why and I gave it back to him, thinking not too much of it at the time. Today, I just learned that I needed the expansion pack to play story mode. You just closed such a weird memory from my childhood. Thanks for that!

[@King-ci8sk]

100 percent. I remember renting it and having the same problem. I had no idea about the expansion pack

[@jeremyvarner8265]

Same lol

[@fandangobrandango7864]

Did the big "expansion Pak" required on the box not give you any clues

[@d37tae]

@@fandangobrandango7864 Borrowed. I didn't borrow the box. And no, little kid me probably wouldn't have noticed that, actually.

[@sasinhkatanyarat583]

Bought perfect dark a few weeks ago. I went through all the menus and was like hmm this ain’t right. I clearly remember a different game. Then it came to me. I don’t have a expansion pack. So now I have to buy one of those too lol.

[@itsGeorgeAgain]

The terminator pack is called like that because it does just that. It terminates the connections of the RAM bus. The N64 uses RAMBUS memory which needs resistors at the end of the bus in order to keep the signals from jumping/echoing back into the signals. The memory in the expansion does that as well. Think of it like the old SCSI connections where you had to plug a terminator connector to your last daisy chained SCSI accessory on your PC. (Everyone remembers SCSI right? :D)

[@badreality2]

itsGeorgeAgain I never had to deal with that, but I am into RGBs C.R.T.s for retro gaming, and some of those require 75 ohm terminators on the video-out ports, so as to not overdrive the C.R.T.'s video signal. I learned that, from a video phonedork made, but it's sad, even other people that interested in owning professional RGBs equipment, like I am don't know to do this. A few months into the life of their gaming monitor, and they've halved the life of it. That's why when I bought my PVM 1340, not only was the price right, but there are no video-out ports on it, for RGBs. Which means that their was a better chance that the C.R.T.s electron guns, were still within their usable lifespan, and they are.

[@zembryoz]

Thank you. There's a whole generation of kids who grew up with these as toys with no interest in learning how the hardware worked. And so we get ignorant statements complaining about things which aren't a problem.

[@caolila123]

Don't forget bnc networks... oooh the pain :D

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Good old RDRAM, way to expensive and only used on hot Pentium 4 chips. On second thought, it wasn't really that good.

[@Pilotgeek]

I thought so! I had a brief moment of thinking, haha that's a funny name, then I remembered that I swore the N64 used RDRAM and then it made sense.

[@FelipeBudinich]

Sup, Game Dev over here. 6 months before release WAS the 11th hour in a world before day 1 patches (and today it would still be a pretty tight margin), because the games have to go through Quality Assurance and Certification (that includes thousands of things related to an absurd amount of tiny little details, that make console games feel the way they do for the average user), then it has to go to a factory, and then it has to go to stores, and even then you can get fucked because random happenstance. The expansion pack didn't "fix the bug", it just added more ram, so the memory leak was still there, it just had a "bigger bucket" to hold it. That's why I personally adopted the policy of "smoke testing" my games during the weekend. I just leave the office and I leave the project running and come back on monday to see if it is still running.

[@Acorn_Anomaly]

Yup. And since it was a Nintendo console, you only could get product production done by one company - Nintendo. And everyone else was trying to get their products done at the same time. I'd wager even six months is stretching it.

[@davinator1212]

I would also assume because they were carts and not discs makes it also a pain in the butt for last minute tweaks.

[@FelipeBudinich]

@@davinator1212 the whole pipeline was slower back then. Nowadays your dev console is plugged through ethernet, you don't even burn a disc. All those little things add up. For example, now we use "incredibuild", it's a tool that allows you to compile software using a lot of computers in a network. It can bring compile times down from 45 minutes to 2 minutes. And compiling is something you have to do when you want to try the game on actual test target hardware (Multiply that for the hundreds of thousands of times you do that during development)

[@davinator1212]

@@FelipeBudinich sure. I was talking about from a production standpoint though. Upon producing the final copies of the game for retail I would assume that production of carts takes a hell of a lot longer than discs.

[@FelipeBudinich]

@@davinator1212 ah yes, they probably had to deliver it even earlier than if it is for discs, currently that part of the ecuation is a non problem (unless you are on the same launch window alongside a huge seller).

[@erice3933]

"Memory Leak Buffer" didn't sound as catchy as Expansion Pak

[@funposting8912]

Also known as the New 3DS

[@fusionspace175]

Well no it was the 90s, imagine the ad. (Kids sit playing n64) Hey kids, do you have extreme leakage? (Guitar squeal) Well you do now! Stop that memory leak now TO THE MAX! (Mario bursts through wall, throws product into n64) Kids: Awesome! Radical! (whip zoom on kids shocked faces as tv comes to life projecting holograms into the room)

[@funposting8912]

Fusion Space “Donkey Kong 64 is so MASSIVE that if you try running it on a regular Nintendo 64, It’ll LEAK EVERYWHERE” (Shot of fluorescent green goo shooting out all the ports on a N64) “Well, with the all new Ultra Leak Buffer, it’ll take care of that mess for you, so you can play all your games WITHOUT THE MESS!” (Shot of someone jamming a transparent Leak Buffer into the expansion port, all the ejected liquids are violently sucked back into the N64, with the leak buffer now glowing green with liquid swirling inside) (Shot of childs mother opening the door) “You’re not making a mess in here, are you?” “GET YOUR LEAK BUFFER TODAY AND TURN YOUR N64 INTO AN ULTRA 64!”

[@waltercomunello121]

@@fusionspace175 This sounds so exquisitely accurate.

[@THB192]

@@funposting8912 My fucking sides.

[@AbruptAvalanche]

There's a more recent interview with DK64 lead artist, Mark Stevenson, where he debunks the myth of the expansion pack fixing a game breaking bug. The decision to use it was mandated by the higher ups at Nintendo much earlier in development, and so the artists had to find ways to justify its inclusion. One of the DK64 engineers, Simon Craddick, agreed that the myth is false and said that the extra ram was used for vertex lighting.

[@timbrwolf2238]

Mine is STILL in my N64 to this day, for one game, PERFECT DARK! I spent hundreds of hours playing that game alone and with friends. So for...just for one game. HAHA

[@kobeashubailey9952]

I did too man i love that game

[@nathanblades3395]

Same i got the N64 the expansion pack and Perfect Dark the same day and played the hell out of it! The multiplayer was pretty fun me and my son used to make cowboy themed games etc..

[@LowpsCP]

So did I. I loved playing the combat simulator and getting a star on every single challenge. It was an amazing game, still is.

[@alphagamerdragon7027]

Same here my original expansion pack is still in my 64 but I have a second one just in case mine stops working for whatever reason

[@Grisomsun]

Resident Evil is switching resolutions when transitioning between camera angles. Most modern TVs need a second or two to catch up with the change. Not a bug, just TVs being bad at resolution handshaking. CRTs have zero issue here.

[@stevethepocket]

I'm somewhat confused as to why old TVs were capable of handling different input resolutions in the first place. Surely they only needed to be able to handle 480i or 576i inputs, depending on which region they were made for, since for the longest time the only thing they needed to display was television broadcasts.

[@milesedgeworth132]

Pocket Fluff Productions I believe it's because CRTs have less pixels to deal with, whereas modern ones have a ton. CRTs have up to 300k pixels, while modern ones can have up to 2 million. So when the resolution changes, an older model has less to deal. Also, CRTs are much faster than modern television due to the method of display. Cathode guns can be almost instantaneous AFAIK.

[@WednesdayMan]

its because CRTs do not process the image, they mainly just send what they receive straight to the screen without a question, that's why CRTs can handle so many resolutions, they're not something that needs to be Designed or programmed for the TV to support, as long as it's a proper resolution it'll run without an issue.

[@tbb033]

"Surely they only needed to be able to handle 480i or 576i inputs," Surely you've forgotten 240p, which most systems actually display (and don't call me Shirley)

[@ThetaReactor]

CRTs don't have a native resolution, because they don't have pixels in the modern sense of the word. Everything is based on timing. The beam sweeps across the screen, and in that 50 microseconds or so, the strength of the beam is modulated to change the brightness. Thus, the horizontal resolution is completely variable, up to a practical limit of around 720 lines. Whether it's an Atari (160), SNES (256), or hi-res N64 (640), the TV will stretch the signal it's given out to fill the width of the screen. The vertical resolution is fixed at around 480 lines (visible, on an NTSC TV-- multisync monitors can change that, too), so the vertical resolution of the game will ideally be an even factor of that.

[@flowrednow]

as a programmer, you say that "its weird that the announcement for the DK64 expak was 6 months before launch, with 6 months of development left"... you forget, these games came on carts, and from only one manufacturer (nintendo), a production run of carts could take 3+ months if they expected big numbers, as they also had to produce carts for EVERY OTHER GAME coming out on the N64. there is a point where they would have to draw a line and go "hey, we need this done now". months in advanced. commercial software typically has to go gold a few months before release, and thats for MODERN software that doesnt require costly manufacturing processes like a cart does. also consider the fact that production runs were limited for carts compared to modern media specifically because carts were stupidly expensive to produce. you cannot get a game done, or any project done, that requires the logistics for a mass nationwide launch with only a few weeks left to produce everything, package, and ship. this is infinitely more exacerbated if you have to handle logistics for all the other products on your system as well.

[@funposting8912]

As a dev who’s worked on games for the 3DS, I’ll throw in a similar story of my own. I was working on a game I won’t mention for a company I won’t talk about for the original 3DS, digital release only and really, there can be far less than a month in between going “Alright, we’re done, ship it”, and having it available for digital purchase. With a few months left until release, we get news that this new fangled 3DS is in the works, that it’ll be out pretty soon, and that it’ll have significantly more usable RAM and a much nicer processor to work with. Boss invites all the programmers into a meeting and says “Hey, we’ve got plenty of time to tape out, how about you all see if you can use the spare RAM to fit in the master models, rather than the simplified ones! And how about, if it’s on the New 3DS, you up the number of enemies and scenery detai-“ Everyone just got up, walked out, and went home for the day. Boss got the message.

[@lancejohnson3278]

@@funposting8912 As another programmer (much less interesting, full-stack web developer) I find all the insights being offered and your story super entertaining xD I can only imagine!

[@funposting8912]

Lance Johnson the amount of shenanigans that goes on makes me question how the whole video game industry hasn’t collapsed time and time again. The code I’ve seen go into shipping games gives me nightmares even today. “It works, it’s safe, it doesn’t leak memory, who cares if it’s a 3000 line C function, our engine needs it to run and the only guy who wrote it or knows what it does left last year, just leave it, it’s gotten through lot check before, it’ll get through again”

[@austintucker7341]

N64 has less than 300 games in the U.S. though

[@coryallen6818]

All I knew about the “red top” was I needed it to play Majoras mask that was the only reason I knew it existed

[@zedokaiba6047]

You wanna know something funny about majoras mask and it? It doesnt even need it, due to the fact that if you bypass the screen without the expansion pak, you are still able to play the game, albeit in a most likely slower way.

[@alphagamerdragon7027]

Same here but I am happy I got it because majora mask is my favorite Zelda game

[@Johnnydubois]

I just bought Majora's Mask and didn't know I needed this until now. 😫

[@Itsnoahscott]

And Donkey Kong 64

[@jesusramirezromo2037]

For me it was because of Perfect Dark Didn't know all these other games required it, since i already had it

[@Drinkabeerandplayagameofficial]

The expansion pack blew me away as a kid, the difference in graphics and the added video it gave rogue squadron was worth it for that alone

[@Clay3613]

Fucking development for that game fucked with PC users till last year. Totally un-optimized for anything but specific graphics cards.

[@toejamandearl8110]

I agree, Rogue Squadron benefits from the expansion pak. Racer's framerates improved too, nothing in Shadows that I can tell and Battle Naboo has no save features so I'm not even going to play that again, plus it was already featured as it didn't do much. (I just fired up the game - no save feature found. I found and bought another BFN and it has a save feature. Both are for NTFS but one has a save feature ON THE CARTRIDGE, the other I accidentally discovered has one that comes up when a memory card is in the controller instead of a rumble pak. It must have been a first run or something.)

[@moongiggler]

battle of naboo has no save features? what do you mean?

[@SeltsamerAttraktor]

I think your copy of Naboo might be broken. It should behave exactly as Rogue Squadron, being a sequel of sorts. Maybe you need a replacement battery.

[@edsiefker1301]

Clay3613 Yeah, but if you had Voodoo II SLI you could play it in 1024x768 in 1998. Its still gorgeous.

[@zaprodk]

The reason for the Jumper pack to be called the terminator has a very good and sane explanation. The nN64 uses RD-RAM (RAMBUS-RAM) and the data lines needs to be terminated otherwise you will have signal reflections and mayhem. Either a device needs to sit at the data lines (a RAM chip) or it needs to be terminated into a resistor on each of the data lines.

[@grzegorz2606]

It's power was dependent on situation, for example, Pentium III's wasn't so benefitial of it, but N64 was. Also RD-RAM was expensive and really hot (it needs heatsink to operate). I have a dual Pentium III workstation using RDRAM (i840 chipset) and yeah, I prefer my SDRAM machine.

[@Andronicus87]

This thing bricked my n64 and I couldnt find the old jumper pack to put back into it!

[@morbadthworst8148]

Most (all?) DRAM technology requires signals to be terminated in some manner. Older versions of SDR and DDR SDRAM used rows of termination resistors on the motherboard, while newer technologies use on-die termination (ODT). RAMBUS simply decided to put the termination resistors on dummy RIMMs, rather than on the board, which was apparently carried over to the Nintendo setup.

[@cbcates4]

Its not just RAM that needs termination. In the old days, SCSI drives were "daisy chained" together, and required a special SCSI terminator. Addtionally, 10base2 (before modern Ethernet) networks required termination. In all cases, the idea was to attenuate any potential signal reflections with a load of resistors. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_termination

[@moabt.frican7163]

zapro_dk u r a straight G for knowing that son. Dem shitz is tight yo

[@BrandonHall916]

As a kid we called it the Perfect Dark Pak

[@Endeva09]

Me and my friend also called it that, I remember we used to play the absolute shit out of Goldeneye64 and to us, when Perfect Dark came out we were so excited, we genuinely just referred to it as Goldeneye 2, then the hammer blow, it required the ExPack, so we did any job we possibly could to make some money, mowing lawns, washing cars etc (we were about 14 years old at the time if I remember correctly) and bought an ExPack and had to share it between us, this as you can imagine was no problem when we were playing multiplayer but the amount of arguments that occurred when it was “home time” and we had to decide who was gonna keep the Pack for the night so we could play solo was unreal, and of course neither of us wanted to do the random jobs again to get a second one because to us, we wanted to spend our time playing the one we had already got 😊

[@misterkaos.357]

We used to call it the "Majora's Pak" in my hood.

[@EmersonFitts]

Andy Wheale who has it now

[@CleanDeeds]

i called it the cartridge cube

[@hothmandon]

For me it was the Majoras Mask Pack

[@RS-yl8ys]

Christmas 1999 my parents got us an n64, a big used tube tv, and set it all on a rolling entertainment center. Such a cherished memory from my childhood.

[@LycanWitch]

@8:58 May (six months before release) would have definitely been the 11th Hour back in the 1990s for game releases. You're thinking of game development through the lens of modern times, where publishers distribute games digitally these days. You have to remember that these games were on Cartridge.. so it took weeks or even months to create enough copies to meet expected demand, then these games would have to be physically shipped around the world and distributed to each and every single game store, and these games generally shipped from just one manufacturing factory.. Game stores generally received their stock often weeks to months in advanced before the actual release date too, due to distribution/logistical reasons. It's not like today where developers can literally work up to and beyond the day of launch as they just distribute the game files digitally off their servers, or commission random pressing houses who only really need a few days lead time, to burn quick dvd copies of the game files on a dvd disc and package a simple case with artwork, etc... Also many physical copies of games these days in stores don't even have a game disc anymore and are just a game/download code inside the dvd case or gamebox. Then if you add in the manufacturing of the expansion packs to include with every single game bundle, that's even more lead time needed to manufacture and package each DK64 game, thus even less time for the developers to finish the game on time to meet the start of manufacturing the game cartridges deadline, packaging, and distribution. Not to mention, have the game ready for final QA and testing and approval which probably takes weeks+ itself.

[@Grachtnakk]

Matt's voice sounds like he wants to sell me something.

[@FlozzSD]

Grachtnakk maybe he does

[@MattMcMuscles]

buy more expansion paks!

[@TOMMYDACOMMIE]

"I told you he was on to us."

[@MitsuhashiTakashi]

He's on to us.

[@MitsuhashiTakashi]

Tom Atkinson sounds like someone is trying to sell me something!

[@policegking]

I think Pokemon Stadium 2 is missing as an example for a good expansion pak implementation. It increases the resolution and even runs smoother than Pokemon Stadium 1 while doing so!

[@GiordanDiodato]

too bad both Stadium games are so bare

[@policegking]

Sadly never owned Pokemon Crystal but that sounds really nice, good to know they really took advantage of that added RAM

[@kylecampbell565]

Can expansion pak be enabled in emulators?

[@policegking]

I can only speak for Project64 which automatically enables the Expansion Pak for every game you insert (although since it‘s an emulator and not actual hardware the difference might be negligible or none at all (because the internal resolution of the emulator is often already higher than what the expansion pak would allow for)

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Crystal runs on a 2 MiB module, together with the memory used by Stadium 2 itself that should do alot.

[@JP-xw2kf]

20 years later and people still dont understand that the expansion pack was just a ram upgrade

[@takashiph.d.7413]

Exactly!

[@lauraschantz9058]

I knew it was at the time, and I was just a kid. It made sense, since MM had way more detail in the newer graphics and items than OoT did, and even at the time, I knew that the more stuff a computer did at once, the more RAM it needed.

[@timmyp6297]

Do you know what ram upgrades did back then son?

[@cfdeers]

@@timmyp6297 what do RAM upgrades do differently today than they did back in the 90's? They just increase the amount of RAM usable by the system. Nothing more, nothing less unless there was a hidden unadvertised feature. It's up to the *developers* to utilize it, but by itself unused it will sit there doing nothing. You speak as if it was some messiah of improved framerates and graphics and while it could be true, can still be applied to today even when we're in an age where 16 GB of RAM is the standard.

[@timmyp6297]

@@cfdeers Are you f*cking kidding me? Kid, back in the days of edo memory? Going from 32mb to 64mb was incomparable to even going from 2g to 64g today. Yes, it was a "messiah prophecy" or whatever-the-f*ck you think you are being clever about. Memory architecture was SO different back then. They way the operating system treated it was totally different. You would see a game not able to move... get that 150 dollar 32mb upgrade? Totally new experience. Like upgrading every part in your computer.

[@channelthreelive2494]

Quake II looks better and runs MUCH better with the RAM pack. It's night and day, instantly noticeable. So for that game alone it's worth picking it up. Sure it didn't do much for many other games but hot damn, 100% worth the purchase if you want to play Quake II.

[@EcnalKcin]

Wasn't Perfect Dark's bot limit incredibly high with the expansion pak? I think it was like 32 or 64 bots or something completely crazy...

[@TheBoundBowman]

Remember Dark Sims?

[@MrJohnlennon007]

The Bound Bowman I saw one run on a wall once when I used to grind for the higher ranks.

[@johnjoyner6214]

Nah, it was always 8. That just seemed like a lot back then before online multiplayer was the norm and there was only split screen lol

[@uhby6297]

We once tried dark sims with melee only and max bot count. It was hilarious and the melee hit would blur our vision. We were blind at least half the match. To counter this, we added golden guns so we can one hit kill them. Turns out a pistol whip with that gun was 1-hit kill as well and the boys could use it.

[@j_c_93]

Four players, 8 bots, only rocket launchers and n grenades. Ne and my brothers used to do that all the time for some reason. It was worth the motion sickness

[@weirdmindofesh]

The terminator or jumper pack is necessary for the N64's RAM to function. Nintendo used RDRAM for it's higher bandwidth and narrow buses for ease of design (9 bit data bus, likely eight bit data, one bit parity for error checking.) RDRAM however, needs the signals pulled to ground at the end of the bus, otherwise the signal reflects, causing errors. While bypassing the check for some games could work, it would be unstable or just outright crash as the software is expecting RAM to be at the location it's writing to and this is the big reason why those games make the check in the first place. Further, the reason why not many games support the expansion is two fold, if the developer is working with assembly, IE directing the CPU and GPU directly, the developer has to have a precise idea of where everything is in RAM. If they were using a compiled language, the compiler has to know the RAM map as well. If neither of these are expecting anything more than the 4MB RAM the system shipped with, then they will not use anything over it even if available.

[@dntlss]

I dont think hes trying to create artificial life or travel in time,its just a fucking video game,probably 5% of the population has the knowledge you and some of the guys here have about this stuff, worse thing that can happen? "mom,you do need to buy me that expansion pack, fucking game wont work without it"

[@marioman971]

It is exactly that. RDRAM has no on-die termination at all (as Eric explained) and all physical slots must be filled. Early Willamette (Socket 423) boards used RDRAM and had this issue; in fact often a boxed retail Pentium 4 would ship with sticks of terminatiors. It also had a very high latency compared to competing technologies, and very high heat output (All RIMMs needed a heatsink)

[@bisc67]

Quite a number of Acclaim titles (about 20), after 98 used the expanded memory if it was available. We used a VM mapping system for cartridge space->main memory; if the expansion memory was available, all code that would usually be paged in, would be copied directly to the upper memory. The games would run a little bit faster. Also, a number of titles would switch to a higher resolution mode, if it were present. The positioning of frame buffers can be aligned to 1MB boundaries, which causes the GPU to run faster too. I'm not sure, but I actually think ASB99 was the first Acclaim title to use this. I know because I wrote the VM system.

[@LordScout]

holy shit an old n64 dev casually comments on a video and everyone just ignores it? no comments? this stuff is the most interesting to read.

[@jasonxhx7854]

@@LordScout tbh the "I was a dev" comment is his very last line. Another dev commented higher up and has a ton of replies and comments.

[@Kaiesis]

6 months before release IS the "11th hour." Need to commit and give the 'ok' for production to start, solicit to vendors, give vendors time to purchase etc, etc, etc.

[@WTFisTingispingis]

Any time Matt hears that Turok is brought up, he gains more power. It's like his stand.

[@BLOODY__FATALITY]

AtticWarrior1994 So he's a stand user?

[@corazonfeathers8116]

We already have 「CRAZY TALK」as Pat's Stand, so what's Matt's?

[@dunk98]

CorazonFeathers WALK THE DINOSAUR

[@a.g.m8790]

AtticWarrior1994 stop talking about Turok

[@felixdaniels37]

#Hollyhood NEVER

[@finonevado8891]

The expansion pack was worth it for me, just because of Majora's Mask. Damn what a great game

[@CouchMario]

while i am a 2010s kid that means i should play battlefields and call of duties i am more interested in playing majoras mask on my mac via emulator btw should i buy 3ds to play remastered?

[@iamyzdemon5717]

Lego World the remaster is actually different certain areas have been messed with some of the audio tracks were removed and dubbed up, if you want to play the game it’s basically the same but any old school gamer will tell you the old school setup like actually holding the n64 controller makes the experience buddy.

[@finonevado8891]

Exactly what this guy^ said There's nothing like playing it on the n64, on a crt tv. But the remastered version doesn't look bad if you can't manage to get a n64 with the expansion pack

[@CouchMario]

ok guys thanks for telling

[@louisianalive1885]

I have the gold special edition majoras mask with the hologram on it, got it for christmas as a child, and i never even played it more than 2 hours lol. Im 29. Been playing jet force gemini lately

[@DTM-Books]

Segata Sanshiro would like to point out that Saturn’s RAM expansion cartridges received far stronger support.

[@retrocysper3709]

Segata Sanshiro is a Legend! He's THE MAN!

[@RocketPropelledGamer]

Segasatān, shiro! Yubi ga oreru made! *_YUBI GA ORERU MADE!_*

[@AlucardsQuest]

Though not in America.

[@IkesDaddelbox]

Buying an expansion pack to play a game is still better than buying a new console which is just an updated version of the original one just because the game requires the additional extra power to be playable. I'm looking at you, Xenoblade Chronicles 3D.

[@BoleDaPole]

Daddelbox Donkey Kong 64 came bundled with the expansion pack

[@IkesDaddelbox]

Q Z Didn't the pack raise the price of the game though? In that case you were buying it together with the game in a package. You were still buying an addon that is required to run the game. Correct me if I'm wrong here. I honestly don't remember if it raised the price, and I can't be bothered to look it up right now.

[@ZER0punk]

You were incorrect about the expansion pack being bundled. It was bundled with Perfect Dark in united states. That is actually how I got mine.

[@TimeForAReview]

Me too

[@mitchh6471]

@@TimeForAReview here in the great white north i got mine in dk! im sur eit came with a few other games as well (possibly_)

[@traviswreynolds]

Got mine in DK as well

[@henryeden2143]

The reason donkey Kong 64 can't get a remaster because the ownership is split between a ton of different companies

[@DoomPlague]

I suspect the only thing really in the way is that it has one of Rare's earliest games embedded as a minigame. Nintendo pretty clearly kept the rights to DK related properties, including Diddy Kong Racing, except Banjo and Conker (removed for the DS version). Donkey Kong Country has been re-released multiple times too and the DK rap and other music from DK64 have appeared in a number of Nintendo titles.

[@adambrowne9078]

The rest of rare went to Microsoft I believe.

[@davidmcgill1000]

Wii U got the complete game released on VC so licensing isn't that restricted.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

Because Nintendo was dumb enough to let RARE slipping away through their fingers. I think it serves them right. Too bad we ALL have to suffer for that now…

[@AlphaladZXA]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 half the staff left around 1999 during perfect dark anyway to make free radical so rare may have fell apart on Nintendo a few years later but we will probably never know how that could've went

[@Ogxcruz]

Never knew how much people loved perfect dark like I do. Amazing game.

[@raulsalcedo8332]

Thank God for that. I understand the resentment towards the expansion pak requirement for 4 plsyers. But honestly, why would any one put thier 64 through that.

[@JohnSmith-is4uu]

Its a complete classic. How did you not know?

[@Ravix8891]

I'll never forget my first run in with the existence of the expansion pack. As a kid, I played OoT to death! So as soon as Majora came out, I begged my mom to rush us to the store to get it. I poured over the manual on the way home and threw it in the N64 the second we got home. It was then my heart container split in two! I needed an expansion pack to play?? I feverishly pondered "what the hell is that?!". My mom refused to go back to the store to buy me another thing and I didn't play Majora for weeks. It was a tough time for a 12yo Zelda fan. Great video!

[@MrReese]

I remember Turok 2 benefiting greatly from the Expansion Pak as without it you could only see like 20m ahead and there was a thick white fog beyond that when you did not have it installed. I also recall the textures having a higher resolution with the Expansion Pak. btw, on Xbox 360 there are some games that require accounts for all participating players - but they don't have to be Xbox Live accounts, they can be local accounts on your memory card or HDD.

[@green97probe]

Takes me back to 1999 when I needed the Expansion Pak for my Gameshark Pro. I was over grinding through Cruisin World by that point.

[@lost4468yt]

Gameshark probably required it so it could live in memory while being confident it's not going to overwrite/get overwritten by the game

[@BrianBates128]

You could use the Gameshark without the expansion pack, but you would need it for memory scanning and other functions

[@green97probe]

@@BrianBates128 I was all about the Code Generator function.

[@BrianBates128]

@@green97probe same here!

[@wun1gee]

The expansion pack also came with Rogue Squadron. That was how I got mine.

[@raven4k998]

imagine if it was 12 megs of ram and a second cpu what the possibilities could have been like then🤣🤣

[@GapedCeiling]

i legit remember only buying this as a kid JUST to play majoras mask...

[@scottmartin8888]

Same.

[@nikolaskeel1198]

I never bought it and traded in Majora after realizing I couldn't play it (Hand me down. So I didn't care). However, it's the only game I ever had that required it. Such an overrated piece of tech. I somehow managed to play gauntlet, duke nukem, and conker for ten years on mine without ever feeling the need for one.

[@1WEareBUFO1]

I've bought *3* of these boys 😂

[@snowball1988]

Me to!

[@bigmacextrasauce2702]

I bought it for donkey Kong

[@QuestForTori]

It's actually pretty common for older games of that generation to switch between 240p and 480i for things like menus, and modern displays reeeaaallllyyyy don't like 240p being different than 480i. It works fine on a CRT, but modern displays really aren't up to the task.

[@alritedave]

Victoria Dominowski Yup.

[@huttyblue]

Yeah, I ran into this kind of issue with descent3, where opening the map would cause a 3 second delay while windows changed the screen resolution . . .

[@CommodoreFan64]

very true, and because of RE2 on the N64 it's one of the reasons I still keep a massive 27in CRT in my gameroom, as sometimes even on the PS2 the display resolution switching gets annoying on my 47in 1080p Samsung TV.

[@DeathToJihad]

Modern displays need to have specific support for 240p for it to works well. Most don't.

[@CommodoreFan64]

DeathToJihad very true, and while my Samsung does support it, it does take a couple of seconds to switch from the higher resolution causing a blank screen while it figures out what the resolution change is.

[@ProtoMario]

I always thought it was basically what the N64 DD was going to be after the discontuation. Oddly enough OOT has graphics update despite being much older.

[@Dnecrofear]

but proto

[@ZxChrono]

BUT PROTO!

[@spookaj6261]

But Proto?

[@Digiflower5]

You missed one ^^, Star Wars Racer, it has a hidden Low Quality mode for 60 fps when the expansion pack is in. Or you can play High Quality at about 30 or 20 fps.

[@armandomontero2423]

Just been able to play Perfect Dark. was worthy it.

[@girlsdrinkfeck]

games today dont even have dynamic lighting

[@MrJohnlennon007]

Sadly the frame rate isn’t very good nowadays. The Xbox Arcade version is so nice

[@girlsdrinkfeck]

@@MrJohnlennon007 u can ply perfect dark 64 at 60 fPS

[@moefag]

@@girlsdrinkfeck it had dynamic lighting + physics engine too, you could move where weapons would respawn in multiplayer by shooting on them + desctructible objects + dynamic wounds when you shot someone (which most games still lacks nowadays) I remember playing to paint dead ennemies faces in red with the laser *-* ... Best game ever

[@Jamie_Wilson]

3:10 Duuuude....Hella respect for using the Tombi/Tomba soundtrack lol. Legit best game made on Playstation

[@TonOfHam]

For DK64, it's not about optimizing, it's about leaky code, two very unrelated things. Love your video!

[@vineheart01]

"best way to experience majoras mask is on the 3DS port" ohh..ohh man you probably got so much hate mail for that comment. Theres a handful of massive changes mechanic-wise that really pissed people off about that game lol

[@brendangibson8200]

I played it on my brothers 3DS for all of ten minutes before I turned it off in disgust lol

[@590488]

Best way is on gamecube

[@Danbo22987]

There are bad changes yes, but the vast majority of the game is better in the 3DS version. The pros outweigh the cons

[@brendangibson8200]

@@Danbo22987 debatable

[@cfdeers]

​@@brendangibson8200 there's no denying the ease of use and graphical updates (even if too bright in some areas). For better or worse, the game is easier to both play and acquire.

[@Belisarius536]

I had this when i was a kid and had no idea what it done because i couldnt see a side by side comparison but i convinced myself how amazing and turbo charged my rogue squadren looked and told all my friends

[@raven4k998]

that just goes to show it didn't really do much to get you to notice what it did🤣

[@Belisarius536]

@@raven4k998 exactly it done nothing except some sort of weird tech placebo effect.

[@raven4k998]

@@Belisarius536 which is why if they added a second cpu atleast that could have boosted frame rate by helping out with ai as an extra gpu would have helped to pc's have this option sometimes why can't nintendo?

[@niscent_]

as a student in software engineering, let me explain a bit more about the dk bug and the expansion pack. a memory leak is when the software stop using a part of the memory but don't properly tell the system that it's done with it, so the software will repeatedly ask the system for memory without ever telling it that memory space is free to use somewhere else. the result is that memory usage raise until there's no free memory left, and when the software needs more memory and the system answer it has none left to give, a crash happen. what adding more memory do is that it takes more time for that to happen. basically, you're playing an underwater level, but your oxygen meter got buffed so that instead of ~1h underwater you get ~10h. which implies that with their "fix", they couldn't even afford to improve the game's graphics since that would kill the "fix". that would just increase the base ram usage of the game and the crash would happen sooner.

[@RetroPiero]

So the game can still crash with the expansion pak? Is actually playable for around 10 hours?

[@niscent_]

@@RetroPiero sadly, yes. and i believe he said it in the video at some point (not sure though, i've seen it a month ago).

[@Teixas666]

@@RetroPiero yes, it just takes longer than nintendo foresaw any session od dk64 ot last

[@zack9912000]

It wasn't bs, it had a purpose and for example perfect dark absolutely needed it and was advertised it was required to operate the game. Even with it the game could still struggle with frame rates

[@ZombieRommel]

My friend and I used to have sleepovers where we would play Starcraft 64 split screen against the CPU. Thinking back, it really was a thing of wonder, each of us farming minerals, coordinating our strategies and looking at each other's bases. I remember one time I got to go to my friend's grandparents' house and hook up the game to their HUGE CRT TV, and it was like Christmas to be able to see things so much more easily. The frame rate would get hilariously bogged down when Carriers and Battlecruisers started appearing. Eventually, my friend and I went to a LAN center and played the game on PC and we couldn't believe how much smoother and better looking the game was.

[@burningphoneix]

To be honest, I got the expansion pak with Perfect Dark to play it and Majora's Mask I didn't even know it enhanced other games. That being said, I don't think it was a scam to me. I mean....I got to play 4 player perfect dark...

[@WednesdayMan]

you can't really say the expansion pak is a scam... if it came with a game

[@lionfire3359]

The expansion pack doesn’t come with Perfect Dark, you need to buy that separately.

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

I expect the reason some of the text is blurry is since it’s effectively scaled images, which are subject to the N64’s bilinear filtering on top of the antialiasing and VDP blurring

[@XENON2028]

n64 doesn't use bilinear

[@justanotheryoutubechannel]

@@XENON2028It definitely has some kind of bilinear-like filtering, but I can’t remember what it’s called. I think it has some weird 3-point variation?

[@XENON2028]

@@justanotheryoutubechannel ye I think it was that

[@Untouchaable]

I had an extra expansion pack & would bring it over to my friends who looked at me as a life savor ha.

[@customsongmaker]

Intimidation - did you also bring something to pry it out with?

[@SalvableRuin]

Intimidation Saver* not “savor”

[@Cieje3]

The expansion pak and jumper pak were not designed to be repeatedly removed/inserted, and could break relatively easily. The instruction booklet says as much... My friend's little brother had to buy another one after a few months because he didn't know this.

[@nathanhamman418]

customsongmaker just grab a butter knife

[@machscga6238]

Command & Conquer 64 had some amazing game play graphics for 1999 with the 64 expansion pak

[@Jesse12489]

The expansion pack increases resolution of Rogue Squadron also sound and Star Wars Episode 1 Racing.

[@BlackEpyon]

Polygon count too, especially in multiplayer. The cylindrical podracer engines looked cuboid without the expansion pack. That's why I bought it.

[@patrickfoxchild2608]

Yeah, this video saying that it was a bogus piece of technology just meant to scam people out of their money is complete garbage.

[@GiuseppeGaetanoSabatelli]

You can't even see the drivers in the Podracers without it right?

[@Soonjai]

I think Vigilante 8 should deserve a mention for it´s Ultra High Resolution Mode wich makes the game look razor sharp (with very low detail draw distance though), you have to enter the code "MAX_RESOLUTION" to enable it. Can´t remember what resolution it ran at but IIRC it was one if not the highest res a game used ingame on the N64.

[@MajoraZ]

Did 2nd Offense also have it?

[@NigelXW]

indeed

[@KuraIthys]

From what I know of the n64 hardware, (I have studied developer documentation in case you're wondering) The absolute maximum supported resolution is 640x480 interlaced, or 640x240 progressive. (PAL systems can push that to 640x576) That makes sense because that's about the limit of an analogue television signal. Normally the majority of games run at 320x240 or 256x240 though. Some of them run at even lower resolutions than that. Because within the upper limits the n64 can run arbitrary resolutions then rescale them to full screen at the end, so some games apparently can go as low as something like 120x96 at times. Though I assume that's quite uncommon.

[@Heizenberg32]

Jabberwockxeno now I've got the menu screen music stuck in my head!

[@alritedave]

AFAIK the highest the N64 can do is 640x480, same as the PS1. Ironically the Sega Saturn could do 720x480 or around that, which is ironic given it was the weakest 3D machine of the successful 5th gen machines.

[@djmadmax9486]

Starcraft 64's multiplayer mode also seems to depend on the expansion pak, just to clarify. Considering this, its actually four, not three games.

[@DOC_951]

Did you watch the video before commenting... he talks about starcraft🤦🏻‍♂️

[@MoltThug]

There is also a cheat in Vigilante 8 that uses the expansion pack for “Hi-Res Mode” which does drastically smooth the textures of everything. Worth mentioning or covering in a future video.

[@tehaxor69]

Majora's Mask used it for the blurring effect as it requires many older copies of the frame buffer. Normal games would use double buffering, MM used a circular memory buffer of about a dozen frames. It also uses it for swapping in memory for sub divisions of areas. That's why you can kill a Chu-Chu in Termina Field, move out of the division quickly, move back in 10 seconds later and then see the Chu-Chu die.

[@CAPCOM784]

Jeremy X That reminds me of the dreaded fog put in N64 games 😣

[@kaldo_kaldo]

Star Wars: Fogs of the Empire

[@TheSlashTraxNetwork]

i remember renting MM for n64 and the expansion pack was rented out with the game but somebody had kept the red top and just put their jumper pack into the case when they rreturned it so i had to go buy an expansion pack to play my rented game...smdh

[@wepntech]

wow, that thief ruined the rental for other people... how am i not surprised?

[@RoastedLocust]

That's messed up, even though if I hadn't bought DK, I would have thought about stealing an expansion pack that way.

[@Ventilator-4K-Channel]

The Expansion pack were great back then, and people were used to poor framerate in games anyway. PS1 had so slow GPU that perspective correction were laggy in even in big budget AAA games.

[@47KRoman]

Yeah, I dug up my PS2 and a lot of games has really shitty nearly unplayable framerate and do people remember Red Dead Redemption on PS3? That runs like shit as well, entering a saloon gunfight was more about fighting shitty framerate. Yeah but I still love PS2 a PS3.

[@THB192]

Uhh... I don't know what you mean by that. The PS1 doesn't *do* perspective correction.

[@segaboy9894]

You can't optimize for the jumper pak, because the jumber pak just terminate the connection. That's how the Japanese one got its name. It literally just terminates every lead on that connector.

[@ImmaFiringNoLazors]

You *can* optimise a game so that it requires less memory so that it can run with just the jumper pak, or for short - optimise it for the jumper pak.

[@highroller5335]

6 months before release sounds pretty last minute to me. And it wouldn't be 'at least 6 months' it would be 'at most 6 months' because by the time that announcement was made they had probably sent game off to manufacturers to make the cartridges and packaging for the bundle.. and get them shipped to stores. You need a few months time to get that done. Nowadays that time is where early dlc is made but back then it's a deadzone where the developers can't change anything and are probably moved on to other projects.

[@chamoo232]

Thats what I was thinking too. If it was to be the biggest holiday game and made back in the days where they had to produce cartridges then 6 months sounds fair to me. It's not like today where developers can finish a game and send it to have discs printed and in stores worldwide in a matter of weeks.

[@CommodoreFan64]

Very true, and if you really wanted to push a release to the last minute then 2 months at the very least to burn images onto the ROM carts, print the boxes, and get them in the store.

[@highroller5335]

Commodorefan64 Right? And like if they wanna pack it with the expansion pak they better be made in the same facility. Or else the physical production becomes a much more problematic affair.

[@CommodoreFan64]

Luis Macias Yep, and people forget this is not like making a CD/DVD/GD-ROM base game at the time which use glass masters that can be pressed out in a just a few days to get the required numbers need to goto the store, so developers could submit their final release as late as 24hrs before the disc needed to be pressed, which has happened with a fair number of games over the years.

[@Cinicraft00]

The expansion pack was phenomenal, Perfect Dark and Majora’s Mask kicked ass.

[@raven4k998]

not really😆🤣

[@RavenWard]

10:30 Expansions are produced entirely after a game's release and are added to an already complete game, DLC selfishly sells parts of a complete game alongside the core of the game for extra profit.

[@sl9sl9]

Haha, a game ''solving'' memory leaks by being bundled with a 4MB RAM upgrade instead of actually fixing the code - brilliant! Oh 90's me love you long time...

[@jameslawrence8734]

The team was later hired by Google to work on a web browser.

[@ncshuriken]

@sl9sl9: Yea but how many dorrar for sucky sucky babe?

[@electrictroy2010]

Mozilla Firefox also had a memory leak issue, up to 2012. The problem took YEARS for the team to fix, but DK64’s team only had one month, so they just added more RAM rather than fix it .

[@losethegame1991]

@@ERGLupin very true! Plus we will always find SOMETHING to complain about.

[@chrisbeach423]

If it was that easy to fix, then why is emulating DK64 literally 90% impossible to this day?? If that were the case Nintendo and rare would have fixed the bug instead of losing millions to bundle the expansion pack with DK64... The random crashes are why dk64 just wouldn't work, when trying to emulate the game on the Wii or PC it crashes randomly. So whatever it was still hasn't been fixed

[@DwayneHicks426]

Seeing the stack of games made my skin flush. God, I would kill to relive my middleschool years.

[@moabt.frican7163]

DwayneHicks426 I would give it all to go back to middle school, even for a day. For me it was '00 to '03

[@chronicawareness9986]

wow that made me cringe..... you fat hairy fuck

[@moabt.frican7163]

Christopher Sanchez it's not like the thumbnail is a cartoon version of me or anything. More of an interpretation of people like you.

[@DwayneHicks426]

Christopher Sanchez somebody grew up with Dreamcast

[@moabt.frican7163]

Probably more like one of those shitty Jaguar things, being that he's a Dirty Sanchez

[@LexEllis]

Expansion Pak enables Blast Processing!

[@mosser-wm3dx]

64 BITS! YOU DO THE MATH

[@LexEllis]

@@mosser-wm3dx Hahaha!

[@rennegaddefoxxe]

That was the Sega Genesis, of course; specifically Sonic the Hedgehog 2, IIRC

[@mosser-wm3dx]

@@rennegaddefoxxe we know, its called "sarcasm"

[@rennegaddefoxxe]

@@mosser-wm3dx; No, it's not. www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/sarcastic

[@zacharywilliams9848]

I was sooo mad when I finally convinced my mom to buy me Perfect Dark... Only to find out I had to get that little guy too.

[@solamon77]

When you mentioned that the announcement DK64 would need the expansion pack came six months before it's launch and then said this didn't seem like an eleventh hour fix, you are forgetting that in the past, games (especially cartridge games) took a long time to produce. Considering Nintendo expected to sell millions of copies, this meant that they had to actually manufacture millions of cartridges. This would take months to do. This means then that the six month window could have been as short as 2 or 3 months... much closer to an eleventh hour fix.

[@sanchezzz69420]

I loved perfect dark and played around 500 hours on my n64 without any issues ever.

[@RenkoverGG]

Perfect Dark was a awesome Game 😻😻😻

[@eyworld]

you are wrong - it IS an awesome game! Play it today (I have it on the xbox360 and the original of course), you won`t be disappointed :)

[@RenkoverGG]

@@eyworld true my friend, please forgive my ingnorance

[@bartbroekhuizen5617]

Still got my N64 to play this awesome game :)

[@shermhart7617]

Best game ever! Miss those days playing multiplayer

[@ncshuriken]

One of the few classic N64 games I never got my hands on.

[@ezeakiodarmey9448]

The N64 Command & Conquer port had a fairly decent boost from the expansion pack. Its actually my favorite port of the game and is one of 3 N64 carts I will regularly pop in when I want some offline RTS fun.

[@keepchrispy8589]

wait a second... you guys in the USA had Starcraft for the N64???? °_°

[@maximilian200057]

It's an American video game; therefore, the primary market was the US.

[@azza009]

I had it in Australia. First thing I thought was wierd about this game was it has loading screens

[@keepchrispy8589]

more or less all video games are from the USA... following your logic "maximilian2000", we wouldn't have ANY games in Europe! By the way, Starcraft was as popular in Europe, as it was in the US, but only on computers of course! It wasn't possible to play it on a console.

[@danielireland8445]

the PAL region release was only in Australia as it was cancelled for EU release, it's considered quite rare, I'm lucky enough to own a copy.

[@maximilian200057]

@@keepchrispy8589 Maybe the demand for Starcraft on the N64 wasn't very high in Europe, and maybe the creators of the game were much more familiar with making games on US based game consoles?

[@InvidiousIgnoramus]

I would like to point out that there are a lot of games without official support that still experience improvements. One of which (or three, rather) is Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1-3, which don't receive any graphical improvements, but for some reason experience a framerate increase.

[@Cieje3]

I remember Doom64, Quake64 and Hexen having shorter "Building" (loading) times with the Expansion pak!

[@KokoroKatsura]

A N I M E N I M E

[@InvidiousIgnoramus]

A U T I S M U T I S M

[@Gonk373]

Jesus, I've been looking for the name of Midway Arcade Treasures 3 for YEARS. Obviously wasn't trying very hard, but still

[@letsplayerwannabe]

Memory leaks aren't a one line of code thing either, it requires finding everywhere where someone didn't clean up perfectly, and making sure you're cleaning in a way that doesn't break something down the chain

[@JJMomoida]

The way you say "Ocarina" almost sounds like "macarena."

[@Colonel-Llama]

The Legend of Zelda: Macarena of Time

[@DEMIxGODxSHADOW]

He said it correctly... How do you say it?

[@DEMIxGODxSHADOW]

Wait no he only said it right the first time he said it in the video then he screws it up every time after.

[@wokeupinapanic]

TW1ST3D R3DN3CK I’m very much old enough, and he totally says “ocareyna” several times, and it’s super annoying lol

[@stewartplays]

DEMIxGODxSHADOW He is saying Ah-Ca-Rey-Na. You're supposed to say Oh-Ca-Ree-Na.

[@electrictroy2010]

There is an article about RE2’s development. On the PS1 the actual program was only 25 megabytes. The rest of the CD was used for movie cutscenes. The N64’s solution downgraded & recompressed the movies at 160x120 to reduce size to only ~35 megabytes .

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

yeah and it shows. And sounds even worse. The audio was the worst compressed audio i have ever heard. But man oh man did it impress me back then never the less. FMVs on a freaking game cartridge was super rare.

[@electrictroy2010]

On the other hand, N64 was 480i during actual gameplay while PS1 was only 240, so the N64 looks better 99% of the time .

[@somebonehead]

The Expansion Pak can actually hinder performance on games that don't support it. Super Smash Brothers suffers from minor framerate drops when playing with four players with the Expansion Pak and I'm saddened as the omission of this information.

[@somebonehead]

Nathan Hamman I must have missed it, when did he say that?

[@Falnky]

Why would you be saddened by someone not telling you something you already knew lol

[@somebonehead]

@@Falnky Because not everyone knows about this information.

[@skylerrash9154]

Damn, I'm gonna need an expansion pack for the best Zelda game ever

[@noramackey178]

Try playing castlevania: legacy of darkness with the expansion pak and pick the option of higher resolution if you really want to see really bad framerate.

[@KaiserMattTygore927]

I remember this blasted thing for one thing, it was REQUIRED for the Brood war campaigns for StarCraft 64 AND the Two player mode :/ other than that, I had little use for it. Edit: Oh he brought it up, good, this was my first exposure to the game back in 2000, I didn't even know a PC version existed until 2003.

[@patchesmcadams1587]

The Wii U was not just a tablet upgrade for a Wii, it was Nintendo's first High Def system which the Wii wasn't, not to mention it was a big graphical jump, many of the games that run on the switch look nearly identical on the Wii U which you couldn't achieve with the Wii. So many people hate on the Wii U but I feel like most of those people never purchased one, and if they did they didn't actually really explore what it actually had to offer, as a game console and as a media hub.

[@iami3rian394]

It was *really* bad for well over a year mate. It had no library. No one was making games for it.

[@RoastedLocust]

Yeah, it got no love. My only problem with it is that eventually the tablet will die or the control sticks will wear down, and the system won't be much use, but I guess with digital downloads, I could always buy the games that were released on it (even though I already own them and shouldn't have to buy them again). I didn't get many games for it, but I liked the ones I did, except for Star Fox Zero. Pikmin 3 and Wonderful 101 deserve a bigger audience.

[@Mastagamer21]

I loved your entire talk about Perfect Dark! I don't care what nobody says..that game was ahead of it's time! It was the first game I got for my N64 and oh boy did I spend a lot of time in the combat simulator. Come on, 4 player split screen, awesome music, awesome story, so many guns each with their own custom reload animation, Joanna , Elvis, I can go on and on. Did I mention the laptop gun?

[@Howitchewstofeel5gum]

Man Perfect Dark's multiplayer was so ahead of its time

[@ABeardedDad]

Is so frustrating that so many games don't have bots in multiplayer. They're basically saying you're not allowed to play multiplayer maps unless you have Internet. Such a joke. SloMo meat sims with superdragons = cheap fun

[@drakethedragon457]

True fact: The N64 expansion pack added 4Mb to the original 4Mb RDRAM to the N64

[@TauGeneration]

soo.. it turned it to 8 Megabits ?

[@Banzeken]

Boss Studios made some of the most technically advanced N64 games and World Driver Championship deserves a mention for having a letterboxed hi-res mode without the need for the expansion pak! Stunt Racer 64 is their second game and it strangely needs the expansion pak to work in the same letterboxed hi-res mode. What gives?

[@RocNation04]

Perfect Dark was one of those games that needed the expansion pack in order to play 4 player multiplayer with bots. Without it we could only play 2 players with bots. Good times!

[@jong6829]

I used a fork to pull out the jumper pack 😅

[@-dvmakesdo1780]

butter knife for me lol.

[@Billystone90]

I just used the corner of the the cover lol

[@Krystalmyth]

Lol, you literally stuck a fork in it. It's done.

[@alexnelson09]

Billystone90 that’s exactly what I did haha

[@Teixas666]

Nintendo's Jumper pak Removal fork, only $19.99

[@cyanide3263]

4:36 a handful of games? *thats like, what, one N64 game*

[@iami3rian394]

You sir, have small hands.

[@prodos8]

So, basically, the bug in DK64 was a heap stack collision since the game wasn't properly disposing of memory it had previously reserved.

[@kg4boj]

Too many null pointers remaining in memory as is common with C code. By saving all the null pointers and garbage data is wiped.

[@sarconrimors6716]

Donkey Kong 64 lead artist Mark Stevenson was asked about the whole expansion pak story last year and here is what he had to say on the matter: "This one’s a myth. The decision to use the Expansion Pak happened a long time before the game shipped, in fact we were called in by management and told that we were going to use the Expansion Pak and that we needed to do find ways to do stuff in the game that justified its use and made it a selling point. I think the bug story somehow got amalgamated into the Expansion Pak use and became urban myth... There was a game-breaking bug right at the end of development that we were struggling with, but the Expansion Pak wasn’t introduced to deal with this and wasn’t the solution to the problem. My memory is that, like all consoles, the hardware is constantly revised over its lifetime to take advantage of ongoing improvements in technology and manufacture methods to essentially make the manufacture more cost effective and eventually profitable. I think there we’re something like 3 different revisions of the internal hardware by this point and the bug was unique to only one of these versions. We did eventually find it and fix it, but very late in the day." Considering that Rare's teams were extremely segregated back then and that only the members of a specific team had access to their specific barn, I would take Stevenson's word on it over Chris Marlow's, who was on the Conker's Bad Fur Day team.

[@AgentDanielCross]

Know where i can find it?

[@sarconrimors6716]

Afghan Dan www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/11/feature_donkey_kong_64_devs_on_bugs_boxing_and_20_years_of_the_dk_rap

[@AgentDanielCross]

@@sarconrimors6716 Thanks!

[@scottwarren6719]

Dude you forgot shadowman. The ram expansion made the game so much more impressive than without. Other notable titles improved significantly were indiana jones, rogue squadron and hybrid heaven........just kidding about the last one hehe

[@Yuuki-kv3sj]

I bought a n64 and the expansion pack was in it for free.

[@ChrisHanline]

The blurry text on the Majora's Mask "Insert Expansion Pak" screen are images, not vector text. Also, dude, the word ocarina is pronounced "oh-ka-REE-na" not "ah-ka-RAY-na"

[@GiordanDiodato]

it is pronounced "ah-ka-ree-na"

[@MikeyMystery45]

Ah-Ka-Ree-Na

[@Aidyn3000]

As a lonely Turok fan, I really like the Turok segment.

[@xsoxfatalx9721]

Me too, 1 and 2 were my favorite games back in the day

[@musback]

@@xsoxfatalx9721 Same here man. I still play the (remastered) PC versions today. Very elaborate games, really cool and creepy atmosphere in an amazing setting. I can recommend the original "PREY" PC game from 2006 (watch v=Z9YS88h3M0Y for a review) which has a quite similar feel to it all. I mean the introduction alone goes: "The game's story is focused on Cherokee Domasi "Tommy" Tawodi as he, his girlfriend, and grandfather are abducted aboard an alien spaceship known as The Sphere..." Enjoy! No dinosaurs though. Also the PS3 version of Turok is also a really cool game.

[@Antnj81]

I know it's off topic, but I just got to say that I absolutely hate that whoever made that Zelda t-shirt, removed the cross off of the shield. Like, I get that people are easily offended by what a cross represents to other people's faith, but it's part of the original design! That was somebody's artwork that they basically completely stole, to top it off, they changed it. Like it or love it, the cross on the shield was just part of the aesthetic design for that era of Link. It would just be a stupid as changing the hair color or the tunic. 😒

[@jameslawrence8734]

I agree. Making the tunic red or blue would be absolutely stupid.

[@rennegaddefoxxe]

LOL @@jameslawrence8734

[@Antnj81]

james lawrence I was referring to doing away with the tunic. I didn't write anything about changing the COLOR of the tunic... You did. Nice try though, guy.

[@jameslawrence8734]

@@Antnj81 changing the color of the tunic is changing the tunic. Getting rid of the tunic is getting rid of the tunic. Nice backpedal, guy.

[@shockthetoast]

@@jameslawrence8734 He specifically stated the cross was part of the original design for that era of Zelda. The shield never lost the cross in the original game or even any re-release. You could get different colored tunics in that game, so that's a different thing.

[@autonomous2010]

Six months? Daaaaamn. As a seasoned programmer, six months to track down and fix a memory leak is a very long time. If it was one->two weeks before time-to-market then I could see the panic but six months.... Especially if the extended ram prolonged the segfault from occurring for up to ten hours, I would suspect it was just one or two problematic pointer variables.

[@inserthernamehere]

6 months to release. That mean 1-2 weeks from time to market given the tech. Cartridges are complicated to manufacture, Nintendo expected large numbers on launch day so that has lead up time for manufacture has to be large, back then there was probably just one factory that made the carts worldwide so no parallel manufacturing. And then it has to be shipped worldwide that's another monthish and arrive at distributers up to 2 months before release day.

[@homelesssheltervidlogg74]

E=Mc2

[@Hvanudetfornoget]

Perfect Dark was the single greatest game on N64

[@shermhart7617]

Yes it was the greatest ever

[@jeremylawrence6041]

I concur

[@B0BBYGAMER]

Without a doubt

[@gregoryberrycone]

visually yes, but id still rather play mario 64

[@libertyprime5965]

Debatable.

[@procow2274]

Perfect dark is amazing. I feel bad for all the goldeneye fans who never got to play what is essentially a more polished spiritual sequel