Hey, guys. I'm the Metal Jesus. Now, I've
been very fortunate here on my YouTube channel to be able to share with you some amazing
game finds in the past. Specifically what comes to mind is when Emilio found that one-of-a
kind, ultra-rare, orange halo Xbox at a garage sale. How amazing is that? Now, the thing
to know about my area here is that I live in Seattle, specifically the Puget Sound.
And in our area, we have a bunch of game development places, like Nintendo of America is here,
Microsoft, Valve. We actually have 300 game developers, both big and small, in our area.
So, there's a lot of game development that's happening. And so, it's not out of the realm
of possibility that you might find something kind of interesting or rare around here. It
does happen. Well in this video, I'm going to share with you something that I have recently
acquired that is pretty dang rare. Now, that is a Nintendo prototype that they made for
our market that never came out. It's actually for the Nintendo 64 and most people, including
me, didn't even know this thing existed until this week. And, it came with a disk on the
inside. And I'm going to have more information about that because that's also kind of interesting
and exciting. So what is the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, the 64DD, as it was called? A lot of
you are kind of wondering what that is. Well, that's because it never came out here. It
only came out in Japan. Now the history of it was that, around 1995 or 96, Nintendo announced
that they were going to make a disk drive that would fit on the bottom of the N64 and
basically expand that console quite a bit. And what was really cool about it is that
they were going to use basically floppy disks that were specific to this machine. And I'm
going to show you those in a second. So, it was actually kind of exciting at the time
because here is this add on that hopefully will take off, and they had big plans for
it. They actually did announce that this thing would come out in the U.S. However, it flopped
terribly in Japan. It came out in December 1,1999, so it took awhile to develop, and
it just tanked. They only made 10 titles for it, I have a couple of them here I'm going
to show you, and it just bombed. And nobody heard anything of a U.S. version at that point.
It was pretty much assumed that they never made one, or if they did, it was only developer
units. So, along comes this machine right here. So initially, I just assumed this was
a development unit because the development units were, while rare, they do exist. They're
out there. And Nintendo created them for a bunch of partners to potentially make games
for this device. But when I got home, and I started searching, I couldn't find any matches
to this. And there's a couple things that are very unique about this. For one, it did
not come with a partner cartridge. That's a development cartridge that you would put
in the top of your N64 that would then boot up the drive. What's really interesting about
this one, it doesn't need it. It actually...you just turn on the N64 with it attached to the
bottom, and the screen comes up. So, it's like it's ready for retail. It's really interesting,
right? So I was like, "Well that doesn't sound right" and then I noticed something kind of
peculiar about it. Well, it was in English. See, I didn't know that I had an American
disk drive yet. And so it comes up, and it actually is asking you to put in a disk. And
I knew that was kind of unusual because again, all of the retail units that came out were
only in Japan. They only have Japanese on the actual splash screen. There are some other
unique features about it as well. Let's take a look at the front here. So you'll notice
it says, "NUD No.1 USA, Lot Check." Now, I don't know necessarily what that means, I
don't work at Nintendo. I can probably guess what some of it means, but I went out to a
website for research called assemblergames.com. Now these are the guys who authenticated the
orange Xbox, so I knew them. I trusted them. And they did not disappoint because they reached
out to the actual guy who supported this at Nintendo for their partners. Now, his name
is Mark DeLoura, and when he first heard about this, he flipped out. He was super excited
because he basically was like, "Yeah, that's the retail unit." He hadn't seen it in almost
20 years, and his job was to support this for the partners. He wrote code for it, and
he demoed it back in the day. And he hadn't seen it in all this time, so he was really
excited. So, what this actually means is, Nintendo Ultra 64 Disk Drive Number One for
the USA market, and then the lot check. And I asked him, I'm like, "What does the lot
check mean?" Well, this is cool. Lot check is actually the part of Nintendo that tests
hardware and software, right before it goes to market. So, think of it as QA people, who
would take an N64, and there's multiple versions of the N64, and they would put it on top of
there, and then plug it into a television, and make sure everything works. Or they would
plug it into different types of television, again, to make sure that it works. Now, what's
really interesting about this, and we're going to get to it, it came with a disk in here
that could be pretty interesting. So, some other unique things about it. Well, let's
flip it over here. For one, you'll notice this label says, "Nintendo 64 Disk Drive."
That's kind of odd because actually, when it came out in Japan, it was called the 64DD.
Also the copyright is "1996, 1997." The retail version in Japan came out in 1999, so this
is clearly a couple years before the Japanese version even came out. Also, the serial number
on the back here says, "NDJ," and then it has a number, basically. All of the ones that
came out, do not have that N there. They actually start with just D. Now again, I don't work
at Nintendo, so I don't know what the whole plan was there, but clearly, this is kind
of unique. Also, another thing to...you know I mentioned originally, I thought it might
be a dev unit. If you look on the web, you'll notice that all of the dev units actually
have blue drives here, and this one, again, looks like a retail ready version because
it's black. It matches the case. However, the most telling thing about it is that it
boots up in English with no disk in there, and again, no one had ever seen that before.
Now I'd love to tell you it does, you know, something more than that, but really, it's
just booting up ready for a disk. Mario comes out, he runs around the N, the N changes a
little bit, and that's pretty much it. Now, okay so, what about games for this? Well,
this model was designed for the U.S. market. I didn't know that when I first got this,
and so the first thing I did was, I tried to play F-Zero X. So, this is the Japanese
release of F-Zero X. And I was like, "Well let's see if it'll play a Japanese game."
It doesn't. Then I was like, "Well that's weird. Is the drive defective? I mean, it
shouldn't do that right?" Well, Mark quickly corrected me with that. See, Nintendo cares
about region locking, and therefore, this is region locked to the U.S. It's designed
to only play U.S. games. And so I was like, "Ah! That makes total sense. It's not broken.
Okay, cool. It just won't play Japanese games because it assumes you've imported them."
It doesn't want to support that, right? So, what about that blue disk that was in it?
So, here it is. This is the mysterious blue disk that was in the drive, and it's got a
serial number here on the back, so for those of you who have been on eBay, and buying these,
and keeping track of what serial numbers have already been sold, that's the serial number.
As far as I can tell, this has never been sold before. No one has ever seen the contents
of this. Now, when I was talking to Mark, he was very excited about this because, remember
how I said that Nintendo would be testing games for the U.S.market? This most likely
contains software for the U.S.market. Now, I'd love to tell you it would boot up. It
doesn't. And again, he wasn't surprised. Again, this is a developer release of a game. This
is technically unfinished. It's probably very close to being finished. But the way that
they would have tested this is they would have had one of those N64 partner cartridges.
Now they're very long. They pop in the top, and so the testers would have had one of those
because you need that to boot this up, and that's probably what I'm missing. I don't
know for sure. Now, I asked him, I was like, "You know, speculate, like, what do you think
is on here, right?" See the thing is, is that there were a lot of games planned for this,
and a lot of games that gamers were very excited about. And they actually demoed and showed
some of this stuff in Nintendo Power magazine. A lot of people were very excited to see...well
they were basically going to release a Zelda on here, also an expansion to Zelda, I think
it was like, Zelda Ocarina of Time. They were also going to...probably one of the holy grails
is that they were going to release Mother 3 on the disk drive. That was going to be
sort of it's killer app. There's actually a bunch of stuff that was originally planned
for this. Conker, there was a Fire Emblem game planned for this. There's all sorts of
stuff. I don't know what's on here. Mark suspects it's one of two things. It's either a U.S.
retail-ready version of a game, or it is potentially some of his demo code that he used to show
people what this thing could do. We don't know. He doesn't know for sure. I can't read
the disk. So, I would love to know what is on this disk. There's got to be somebody out
there who has the know-how, the hardware, the means to read the contents of this, and
also maybe copy off the firmware of the U.S.version of the operating system. Wouldn't that be
interesting for homebrew games? The possibility is kind of interesting. So
please post on the comments below if you know somebody who can help me do that. I'd love
to do a follow-up video after I know what's going on with this. It'd be really cool if
it was EarthBound 64, or Zelda, or whatever. It could be anything. It'd be pretty cool.
Alright guys, thank you very much for watching my channel, thank you for subscribing, and
take care. I want to give a huge shout out and thanks to Mark DeLoura, who talked to
me on the phone for probably half an hour, 45 minutes, just to help me figure out exactly
what I've got here. Such a cool guy, so nice. I actually want to have him on my channel
at some point because the guy is a fountain of knowledge, and it extends actually beyond
Nintendo, so that'd be very cool. Also a huge shout out and thanks to assemblergames.com.
That is a really awesome site. It has some of the smartest people in probably all of
game collecting. If you want to have your mind blown, go over to that site, and check
out some of the things that get posted there. It's amazing! Alright guys, thanks for watching.
Hey, I'm gonna against the grain and say I found this guy's exploration of the unit pretty interesting. Just because he didn't show it actually playing a game doesn't mean there isn't something interesting here. We're getting a look at the inside of the Nintendo process due to this guy's research. Just because you knew about the 64DD before everybody else doesn't make this uninteresting.
Somebody REALLY had an uncle working for Nintendo?!
Why is Redmond such a tech Mecca? I always wondered that. I knew even as a kid Nintendo has offices there, now EVERYBODY is based there it seems. Is it some tax thing?
"LOT CHECK" refers to testing Nintendo specific messages.
For example, the Analog Stick needs to be called the Analog Stick, not the gearstick.
This also applies to error messages, every message from pulling the cart out while the game is running, inserting or removing controllers, "Please don't remove the Game Cartridge while saving", etc - This all needs to be EXACTLY as Nintendo states. Not one letter off.
If ONE of these terms are wrong, the game will instantly fail LOT Check. So the dev will need to fix the error and submit the game again which costs money.
The whole theory behind it is standard naming conventions and avoiding lawsuits if for example someone pulls a cart while they are saving and loses their 100 Hour Goldeneye save file. As you can imagine, there are full teams of staff dedicated to this kind of test.
Also, this is one of the most preliminary checks any hardware goes through, so it makes sense LOT Check units were made and sent for testing far ahead of release.
I would hazard a guess and say that the text "Error: 01" means he can plug in a controller and cycle through error messages. That's all that cart would be for.
From the author in the YouTube comments:
meh forget the haters... I was glad you made the video and all the extra details about it as I have honestly never seen or heard of this before
Was anyone else nervous watching him throw around the console on his finger tips the whole time? Dude! Careful! Its the only one in existence and you're gonna drop the fucking thing!
Hah, I totally knew the N64DD existed, and I was SUPER excited about it back in the day. I was subscribed to the Tips & Tricks magazine back then and they had quite a few articles about it where they were really hyping Hybrid Heaven, which IIRC was supposed to require the N64DD addon because the graphics were gonna be so sick.
that was really cool. Always appreciate people who go the extra mile for stuff they love to do