The Best N64 Game Facts on YouTube

[Music] did you know in 1999 a 3d platforming game called 40 winks was released by gt interactive for the original playstation while a version was planned for the nintendo 64 negative reviews and poor sales of the playstation game led to the n64 release being scrapped the cancellation came at the last minute as the n64 game had already been reviewed by publications and a strategy guide had been featured in nintendo power in 2017 game developer pico interactive acquired the intellectual property rights to 40 wings pico interactive specializes in releasing titles for retro consoles both by making new games or by acquiring the rights to unreleased ones in february 2018 the company launched a kickstarter campaign to fund the release of 40 winks on n64 the campaign initially sought to raise twenty thousand dollars a goal which was met in its first day the campaign closed after raising a total of one hundred thirty one thousand two hundred fifty two dollars from over one thousand seven hundred backers in november 2018 almost 20 years after its release on the playstation 40 winx was finally released on the nintendo 64. besides cancelled games the n64 had many games that were censored including nintendo's own games cruise in usa was originally released in arcades and later came out on the n64 with both versions being published by nintendo this was unusual as the arcade version was far from family friendly resulting in the n64 game being censored one difference between the two versions is the trophy girl who wears more clothes in the n64 release interestingly this trophy girl is actually adult film star shyla fox who's credited in the game as anutsa hurling the game's gear shift was reworked in the n64 build 2. the arcade version called it the xl power shaft which may have been too raunchy for a home release so it was renamed the xl power for the n64 some of the arcade versions courses have animals walking across the streets such as deer and cows whenever the player hits them they explode into bloody pieces and slow the player's car down these animals were removed from the n64 version entirely during the final race through washington the player drives through a tunnel pasted with money in the arcade release players can see what appears to be hillary clinton's face on the bills smoking a cigar this seemed to be too much for the n64 where the faces were switched for a more inconspicuous benjamin franklin in the arcade version former us president bill clinton appears in a whirlpool with half naked women waiting for the player to join in the n64 version instead shows the player's car on a pedestal one of the most heavily censored games on the system was duke nukem 64. this title which is a port of duke nukem 3d had many alterations the game's pc version is littered with babes who were captured by aliens and could be freed by the player in the pc game pushing the action button makes the moan kill me the player can fulfill their wish resulting in the babes exploding the babes are still in the n64 version but they have a more modest look and can't be killed interacting with them on n64 just prompts the message babe saved alcoholic beverages were also replaced in the n64 game with more kid-friendly drinks such as cola the mention of steroids was also swapped out for vitamin x in an effort to remove all references to real-world drugs another game censored from its pc release is battlezone with the n64 game removing all blood effects if the player kills a pilot in the pc version part of their body flies through the air but in the n64 version only the explosion itself is shown another censored n64 game is forsaken the game's european version is censored to have no blood splatter effects whatsoever players mainly fight against mechanical enemies in the game but there's several missions where humanoid looters attack the player in the north american version the bodies of human looters fly apart whenever they're destroyed there's even splatter sound effects when their bodies tear apart however this is all removed from the eu versions of the game another n64 game censored in europe was daikatana whenever an organic enemy is attacked in the north american release purple blood is splattered around however the eu version shows sparks flying out of the enemies the player also meets civilians and prisoners throughout the game these npcs can be killed in the north american game but they're invulnerable in all european releases some of the n64's most unique peripherals were only released in japan the surikan 64 was a fishing rod controller with a reel and was compatible with japan exclusive fishing games such as the legend of the river king 64. a controller by taito was specifically for its train simulation game densha daigo the unique controller would plug into slot 3 a microphone in slot 4 and a standard controller in slot 1. the two levers control the train's speed emergency brakes and doors between the levers is also an indent where players can put a pocket watch to keep the time the controller has the a b c and start buttons as well as select which can act as the z button to show how far the next stop is the company reality quest also made a video game control glove for the n64 as well as the original playstation reminiscent of the nes power glove the control glove had motion controlled inputs with three sensitivity settings and was designed so every button could be pressed by one hand perhaps the most unique peripheral for the n64 was the bio sensor created by sata the bio sensor plugged into the controller and had an earpiece that clipped onto the player's ear from there the biosensor could monitor the player's heart rate the biosensor was compatible with a single game tetris 64 which released only in japan the title included a special mode known as bio tetris where the tetraminos would fall faster or slower depending on the player's heart rate in addition to the biosensor sata also made an arcade cabinet based on the n64 hardware known as the alex 64. the device was first made in 1998 and discontinued in 2003 but was never available outside japan the alex 64 failed to find much success as only 11 games are known to be made for it this included the soccer game 11 beat world tournament the platformer tower and shaft the shoot em up star soldier vanishing earth magical tetris challenge featuring mickey mouse multiple mahjong games and an erotic action puzzler called vivid dolls the n64 also had some unique add-ons a company called ems production released an add-on called the gb hunter that could play game boy games on the n64 the gb hunter came with a built-in cheat device and let players add color palettes to their game boy games the peripheral needed an actual n64 cartridge plugged into it otherwise the system couldn't boot the game the gb hunter also couldn't emulate any of the sound from the games it played and would play its own piece of music on an endless loop another device known as the tristar 64 was released by a hong kong company called future laboratory the device allowed nes and super nintendo cartridges to be plugged into the n64 making the system backwards compatible with the nes and snes the tristar 64 also included built-in cheat software as well as a save editor the n64 was home to many unlicensed cheating devices the most popular of which was the game shark an expanded version of the game shark known as the shark wire featured internet connectivity the device plugged directly into the n64's cartridge slot and had ports for a keyboard and telephone cable with a paid subscription players could access the shark wire website to download cheat codes and transfer save data through their n64 the site also had articles on a variety of media topics and an email service sharkwire was geared towards children aged 7 to 14 and there were plans for unrestricted web browsing and online multiplayer in the future however the service ran for just three years before it was discontinued in 2003 one type of third party accessory that became important to many n64 fans was the backup unit such as the cd64 this was an add-on that could save and run custom mode as well as modify save data and emulate games although the most common use of these devices was to play pirated games they became popular as a tool for developing home brew games though the homebrew community on the n64 isn't as big as some other platforms several complete and unique games have been made such as ports of flappy bird and the paioro mini game from warioware one of the most fleshed out homebrew games for the system is an arkanoid clone called dexanoid which includes 50 different levels in june 1998 nintendo announced a 10-year deal with lodge net an american company who supplied services like on-demand movies and high-speed internet to hotels as part of the agreement lodge net would install nintendo 64's and thousands of hotel rooms across north america allowing guests to play a selection of first party nintendo games for 6.95 cents per hour the lodge net systems came with a unique n64 controller with several extra buttons to navigate the lodge net menus and the controller itself could be used as a tv remote these lodge net controllers weren't compatible with normal n64 consoles but because most were only gently used while in service the controllers have become popular items with collectors as a reliable source of replacement parts the nintendo 64's unique three-pronged controller allowed for several grip types the most used grips were to use the middle and right prong or the left and right prong but there are a few less used methods of holding the controller holding the left prong in the left hand and the middle prong in the right hand was used for a small handful of games such as turok dinosaur hunter which used this style as an optional left-handed control layout and pokemon stadium which used it for the ekkons's hoop hurl mini-game there was also a fourth controller grip method supported by some n64 games which had players using the middle prong on two controllers at once because each controller had one analog stick using two controllers allowed a game to emulate dual stick shooting making this grip popular in several first-person shooter games it also appeared in star wars episode 1 racer where the two sticks were used to control the twin engines of the player's pod racer in a similar style to what was shown in the phantom menace nuts and bolts wasn't the first game in the series that had a difficult development process the story of the first banjo-kazooie game's development is just as interesting starting life as an isometric adventure game for the super nintendo codenamed project dream inspired by the likes of the zelda series and lucasarts point and click games dream was going to be rare's magnum opus on the system with acm graphics going beyond that of donkey kong country taking place in a fantastical world the game start a boy named edison and his dog dinger the two embark on an adventure and get tangled up with a group of pirates led by the infamous captain blackeye who had a dog of his own named ripper this build of the game was only worked on for a few months before development shifted to the recently released 1064 and the game changed drastically after the move to new hardware it received a more mature tone to reach a wider audience with the pirate motif gradually replacing the fairy tale themes and it wasn't long before edison himself fell out of favor with the team as well as designer greg males put it edison over this time kind of started to lose his relevance the world was changing around him and we still had this young guy with a wooden sword we started exploring alternatives to a boy originally starting off with a rabbit to which greg thought was a bad idea they soon settled on the design of a humanoid bear with a backpack to store his equipment this character would go through a few iterations before becoming the banjo we know today development on dream continued for another 16 months in which time rare realized that the title was becoming too ambitious for the small team to handle the game was mostly scrapped safe for banjo as the team grew fond of him it was then decided to reimagine the game completely centering it around the new protagonist the game took on the form of a two and a half d platformer following the formula of rare's donkey kong country games and the game's title changed from dream to kazoo a snapshot of this build even showed up in the final product previously thought to have been from a scrapped level called fungus forest when experimenting with banjo's character design the team thought of giving him a skateboarder look and even made some of his animations reflect the aesthetic but these didn't stick for long this build would have also used balls as power-ups and had a fruit based system which featured five different fruit houses integral to solving jigsaw puzzles kazooie didn't exist at this point but her creation stemmed from the idea of giving banjo a double jump the team wanted a double jump that could believably be done anywhere giving players more flexibility they had the idea of wings sprouting out of banjo's backpack which soon led to a set of legs for traversing areas and eventually a full character who lived in the backpack itself the game then became known as banjo-kazoo but kazoo gave the team trademark issues so adding an ie to the name it became banjo kazooie it was at this point that the team got a true sense of direction for their game after being inspired by an early build of super mario 64 rare changed direction one last time and redesigned banjo-kazooie to be more in line with what mario was doing and within one week of scrapping the old game an entire level of the new game went from concept to completion that level being mumbo's mountain the first stage in the final release of banjo-kazooie and in another 16 months the game was done as the banjo-kazooie series evolved each game left its share of mechanics on the cutting room floor the most well known of these being the fabled stop and swap feature rare discovered by accident that if you took a cartridge out of the n64 while the power was on remnants of the game's data would still be in the console's ram for a short time rare wanted to reward players with unlockable items by swapping the cartridges between certain games hinted at with donkey kong 64. performing a specific glitch triggers an unused cut scene panning to a corner in dk's treehouse and transporting the player to crystal caves an early screenshot of the game showed that same corner once had a banjo-kazooie themed shower stall there's also text in dk64's data referring to the ice key an item linked to banjo-kazooie's stop and swap because of these connections it's thought that the key would have been used to access a secret area from dk's treehouse rare didn't tell nintendo about this feature until banjo-kazooie was nearly finished thinking nintendo wouldn't need to know to which nintendo told them the idea wasn't guaranteed to work in all cases for the n64 due to variations in newly manufactured consoles this coupled with concern of players damaging their cartridges led to the feature being dropped which is why remnants of it are still in the games albeit useless stop and swap wasn't the only major feature to be cut in a banjo game the final world from banjo-tooie was greatly cut down from its initial design cauldron keep would have been a more fleshed out castle level featuring a graveyard and treasure chamber it would have also had 10 jiggies to find but the team ran out of time and had to scale the level back this is why banjo-tooie has only 90 jiggies total compared to banjo-kazooie's 100. banjo-kazooie was also planned to have full voice acting but the team realized recording speech would greatly increase development time to counter this they initially had an idea called bubble speak where dialogue was conveyed via thought bubble being a funnier alternative to text and more unilingual eventually they spliced up sound clips to make the noises most being done by the game's composer grant kirkhope dream was heavily themed around its music and as a carryover banjo had a musical motif as well characters were even going to sing to introduce themselves in the game's opening but that idea was dropped this intro was also originally done in motion capture but it was decided animating it by hand would make a better product the little shimmy banjo did was kept in though as the team liked it while the main characters were named after musical instruments several other names came from members of the team simply messing around with each other the name of banjo-tooie's boss wu fakfak is a reference to a rare programmer who according to colleagues would swear when he was having programming issues and when overcoming a problem would exclaim banjo's goldfish roystein got his name from one of the game's artists who had that as a middle name so they put it in the game out of pity and at his expense royston's also made surprise appearances in other rare games such as ghoulies and viva pinata even banjo-kazooie's spiritual successor yooka-laylee has a nod to the fish in the character dr puzz both of which were designed by ed bryan did you know though conker's bad fur day came out near the end of the n64's life the first version of conker was slated to be rare's first platformer on the console even predating banjo-kazooie first unveiled at e3 1997 conker's quest was being made by members of rare's killer instinct team who had said they were taking a break from the usual violence and destruction the game was coming along nicely with a rather expansive demo and magazines even featured fleshed out strategy guides to early parts of the game through the game's playable characters conquer and barry it featured varied styles of gameplay for its single player and the game also had multiplayer built in via co-op and a four-player match mode though one feature that was rather unique to this game was its emotional aspect characters had a wide range of emotions they could convey and would accordingly interact to things around them which also spoke true for the enemies this along with the game's cheery scenery and themes was supposed to give off the feel of an interactive cartoon a similar feature was seen with toon link in zelda's wind waker and the reason nintendo hadn't done it before then was said to be due to system limitations during conker's development another team at rare who was working on the super nintendo rpg project dream had seen the conquer demo in action dreaming it's rpg state wasn't coming along too well after switching hardware so it was eventually decided to be reworked as a platformer in the vein of conquer the end result of course being banjo-kazooie conker's quest was planned for a holiday 1997 release but rare pushed it back to make room for diddy kong racing which in turn was filling a gap made by a delayed banjo-kazooie and also featured banjo and conker as playable racers to promote both series renamed it 12 tails conker 64 in 1998 it was then slated to come out in october of that year with banjo-kazooie releasing earlier in june with that 12 tails was delayed once more this time undergoing a complete overhaul to differentiate itself from the competition in the meantime conker's pocket tales released as planned in 1999 for the game boy pocket tales is interesting in that the game is on a dual format cartridge meaning depending on what version of the game boy you play on certain layouts and features will differ from each other the game also has several 8-bit conversions of music heard in 12 tales so it's possible the game could have been a counterpart to the original title similar to rare's perfect dark and mickey's speedway games also if left idle conker pulls out his own game boy much like he would in bad fur day and he can be heard playing a bonus level from donkey kong land with this release it would be the last time we saw conker as anything but mature conquer began its new life when designer chris seaver decided to take charge previously working on art for 12 tails siever had an idea for the game's new direction and was issued a challenge to see if it would work rare co-founder tim stamper came up with the idea early on where conker has to retrieve a beehive stolen by a gang of wasps and he gave chris the responsibility of adding a narrative in the words of siever himself what can we do with that oh i know we'll make it violent he presented his demo to the stampers and they gave him the go-ahead it was also done to exemplify the new controls and the idea of players being rewarded with cut scenes they're equivalent to mario's power stars when it came to scripting the cut scenes bad fur day had no real script whatsoever being more or less completely improvised by siever and the game's composer robin beanland which was said to make things more fluid and spontaneous bad for day's marketing was rather sparse though there were some wild approaches to how they got the word out one instance involving playboy teaming up with nintendo the two companies went on tour to 20 college campuses across the us to have students play conker's multiplayer and win various playboy and nintendo prizes one noteworthy winner was florida state u student neil druckmann leading his team to victory in beach mode due to his dodging skills as a frenchie and earning himself a conquer t-shirt druckman later went on to be lead director for naughty dogs the last of us in uncharted 4. even more contrary to their image nintendo was also very lenient and supportive of bad fur day in general at e3 2000 nintendo had a separate booth for conker where people had to show id to get in and play the game they even had a bar set up in the booth serving beer to whoever wanted one and gave out conquer-themed plastic mugs and condoms as swag despite the game's new facelift a few elements from conker's earlier outings still remain such as the bouncing mushrooms and sunflowers windmill and barn areas and mini-game music recycled for the track the old chap named that way as a remnant of 12 tales 12 tales also had a gladiator track which would be reappropriated for rare's jet force gemini and bad fur days count bachelor theme was actually taken from killer instinct 2 from an unused vampire character some of conker's most iconic moments have interesting backstories to them the scarecrow birdie was based off rare veteran paul mckell who had the nickname beardy due to his beard and was known for drinking pepsi max by the gallon both of which were referenced early on in the game the origins of the great mighty poo appropriately enough came from a toilet incident from software engineer chris marlowe he apparently took a legendary stool during work hours and siever and the team were so pleased with it they encapsulated it into the game with marlow providing its voice bad for days movie parodies came about when they were designing the levels and they really complemented the game helping shape cues for music and new gameplay ideas the team also made sure they captured the feel for the movie's parodied animator louise o'connor had spent months working on the saving private ryan portion of the game to the point where she had nightmares of squirrels on fire as a result though their hardships paid off because according to siever had the parodies not been there the gameplay would have been completely different and likely wouldn't have been as good as it was this new direction for conquer all stems from the fact that the banjo and conquer teams tried to outdo each other and references to each other's games were also statements of that friendly rivalry most evident with banjo's head mounted on the wall and kazooie's head as an umbrella handle in the bar this was taken a step further for conker live and reloaded where they referenced 2003's grabbed by the ghoulies another game from the banjo team if you start a new game in file 3 the game's protagonist cooper can be seen in the bar's bathroom throwing up in the toilet did you know the first 3d kirby game wasn't planned to be kirby 64. the first 3d game was going to be a title called kirby bowl 64 which was planned as a launch title for the nintendo 64. the game was a direct sequel to kirby's dream course and it featured a multiplayer mode where four players competed to knock each other out of a small arena the title kirby ball 64 is actually an extension of the japanese name for dream course which is called kirby bowl in japan there were also segments in kirby bowl 64 where kirby wrote a star like a surfboard this feature was expanded as development progressed and the title morphed into the unreleased nintendo 64 version of kirby's air ride air ride was shown at trade shows and had several magazine previews but the release date was continuously delayed until the project was put on hiatus according to satoru awata the technology developed for kirby's air ride was incorporated into other games by nintendo leftovers were used for a golf game and the camera movement was somehow implemented into the jack and beanstalk project which eventually became pokemon snap after the hiatus kirby's air ride director masahiro sakurai went on to develop super smash brothers and left the kirby franchise in the hands of other hal developers years later sakurai revealed in an interview with nintendo dream that he was tired of making sequels and was worried about the direction of the game's industry sakurai said it was tough for me to see that every time i would make a new game people automatically assumed that a sequel was coming even if it's a sequel lots of people have to give it their all to make a game but some people think that the sequel process happens naturally when i look across the entire games industry i think we're at that point where we can't get away with being lazy aside from voicing king ddd massive hero sakurai had almost nothing to do with the development of kirby 64. in an interview for the official nintendo of japan website sakurai stated he avoided even looking at kirby 64 during development because he feared he would be compelled to make comments and interfere with the vision of the staff the game was instead directed by shinichi shimamura shimamura began his career at hal labs working on the rail shooter hyperzone then later worked under sakurai on kirby's adventure two kirby development teams were formed after kirby's adventure sakurai went on to develop kirby superstar and shimamura developed kirby streamland 2. the kirby games that he directed dreamland 2 dreamland 3 and kirby 64 are often referred to as the dark matter trilogy by fans referring to the reoccurring villain in the three games following kirby 64 shimamura went on to co-direct nightmare in dreamland with sakurai but mysteriously vanished from the video games industry after its release another common thread in shimamura's kirby games are the animal companions originally these characters were intended to play a much larger role in kirby 64. but they were eventually relegated to cameo appearances as transformations via the stone cutter power unused graphics in the game's data contains portraits of the animal friends with what appears to be a date october 30th 1998 nearly a year and a half before the game's japanese release early concept art from a japanese exclusive art book depicts adeline painting coo into existence additionally an unused remix of the animal's friends themes from kirby's dreamland 3 can be found in the sound test mode of kirby 64. some early concept art for the game shows kermi riding atop a giant whale and climbing an enormous spider web more early concept art and screenshots reveal that king ddd waddle d and adeline were intended to be playable characters in the main story waddle dee had the ability to lift objects and enemies over his head an ability given to kirby in the final game and adeline was likely going to use her power to paint objects into life to protect her however in the final version of the game king ddd was the only character other than kirby that's still playable early build of the game also had players controlling kirby with the analog stick and the frequent use of the z button this was changed after play testing as developers saw that children had difficulties with the control scheme kirby 64 was also originally developed for the nintendo 64 disk drive system but like many other disk drive games it was converted to a cartridge game after the commercial failure of the 64 dd according to project manager takashi saito kirby 64 went through two major phases of development and it was in a complete playable state almost a year before its release the team decided to not release the game at that point to give themselves more time to polish the final product an early trailer of the game shown at space world 1998 features some beta versions of kirby's powers at one point the stone power-up retained kirby's ability to jump while transformed the ice bomb power was originally just a generic chunk of ice that exploded as opposed to the snowman in the final version the stone spark ability originally turned kirby into a computer chip that would kill enemies upon contact a mini-game was also scrapped before the game was released it was apparently a timed-based music game where each character played a different instrument there are a few regional differences between the japanese version of the game and the international version the optional hud screen number four was modeled after japanese calligraphy but was changed to a crayon-like theme in the international versions similar to other kirby games some japanese-based foods were also changed in international versions the sandwich health item was originally rice balls in the japanese release but oddly enough wadati is still seen eating rice balls in a cut scene for the international version kirby 64's fifth world shiverstar has some famously dark secrets the ice-covered planet appears to be based on a post-apocalyptic earth the planet has one moon like earth and the seven continents can be outlined in a lighter color than the oceans the nintendo of japan's website once mentioned the planet's inhabitants being forced to leave after a disaster struck leaving behind decaying stores abandoned factories robot enemies and animals in test tubes many fans speculate that the post-apocalyptic earth could be a subtle commentary on nuclear fallout or climate change the sound test features an unused audio track that some have speculated was intended to play on the tv screens in stage 3. the audio is a sped up reading of the famous japanese poem called iroha the words seem to fit the decaying theme of shiver star and it translates to even the blossoming flowers colors are fragrant but they will eventually scatter did you know goldeneye was originally going to be a 2d side scroller for the super nintendo rare had recently made donkey kong country and felt that the easiest way to make gold nia hit would be to make it similar to dkc this idea was quickly pushed aside in favor of an on-rail shooter mike sega's virtua cop only for nintendo's upcoming 64-bit console a team of about 10 individuals were assembled to work on goldeneye eight of these team members had never worked on a game before but their inexperience proved to be an invaluable asset since they'd never developed a game they weren't held back by the traditional game development standards and mentalities the initial development process centered around creating this on-rails shooter features such as reloading your gun penalties for killing innocents and civilians and pressing the r trigger for a closer aim were added thanks to similar mechanics appearing in virtua cop the team made an on-rails version of the gas plant level but began to experiment with letting the player move around freely as it turned out the ability to move around the level instead of being stuck on a single track made the gameplay much better the first year of goldeneye's development was spent simply making a game engine and the basic assets needed to test it the priority for the designers was to create interesting levels adding characters and objectives to the levels didn't come until later the team made a list of gadgets from the bond films then modeled them then later tried to find levels where they could be used goldeneye developer martin hollis said the benefit of this sloppy unplanned approach was that many of the levels in the game have a realistic and non-linear feel this realism was partly due to some of the rooms in the game serving little to no purpose just as some of the rooms in a real building would be empty or unimportant the process of putting levels together with missions and objectives was inspired by super mario 64. the difference was that goldeneye's objectives were strung together to be completed in a single play through rather than having to restart the level after completing each objective a lot of goldeneye's development actually happened before rare even had a nintendo 64 development kit the engine initially ran on an sgi onyx workstation and the game was tested with a modified sega saturn controller once they had the proper dev kit and controller the developers had the idea of reloading weapons by having the player unplug and re-insert the n64 rumble pack this would have mirrored the action of reloading a magazine into a gun but the idea was shot down by nintendo the level intros where the camera moves into bond's head to show his line of sight and bond's arm coming up on screen to check his watch were both implemented to immerse the player and make them feel more like the real james bond surprisingly the multiplayer in golden eye was an afterthought and was put together during the last six weeks of the game's development the higher ups at rare had no idea that the mode was in the game until the team presented it to them the developers hadn't asked permission from rare or nintendo to implement the multiplayer mode but simply went ahead with it anyway what's even more surprising is that the game was almost never released there was a three-month period where nintendo simply stopped funding the project nintendo felt that the game had too many bugs and didn't believe it would work out despite this rare had faith in the game and kept paying the team to work on it goldeneye was finally released in 1997 after two and a half years of development a racing version of the game was also in development for the virtual boy but was cancelled before release three of the lead actors from previous james bond movies were originally going to be playable in goldeneye sean connery roger moore and timothy dalton could all be used in multiplayer but had to be cut from the game for legal reasons this is likely due to the fact that the character models were representing real world individuals and rare didn't have permission to use their likenesses the characters can be seen on page 20 of the game's instruction booklet and traces of them can still be found in the game using game shark codes their portraits can be put back into the game's character select menu in multiplayer their portrait will replace pierce brosnan's but brosnan's character model will remain there's also code in the game suggesting that the alternate bonds were playable in the game's aztec and egypt bonus missions screenshots from the beta of the game showed that the portraits were going to be used to represent the individual save slots in the final game however they're all brosnan although the bonds never made it into goldeneye they were referenced in goldeneye's spiritual successor perfect dark the tuxedos for all four bonds can be accessed in the game's multiplayer mode another one of goldeneye's hidden secrets is a functioning zx spectrum emulator users of the rare witch project forums uncovered the emulator in goldeneye's code in march of 2012. the emulator was an experiment by developer steve ellis to see if the nintendo 64 was capable of emulating zx spectrum games and was meant to be removed from the game's code instead the code was simply made inaccessible during normal play and was rendered inoperable a patch was made so the emulator could be triggered from goldeneye's folder select screen several games are bundled with the emulator which were all made by rare in the 1980s when they went by the name ultimate play the game goldeneye also has several unused multiplayer levels the statue park and cradle levels seen in the game's single player campaign were planned to be used in the game's multiplayer mode as well using a gameshark code to access the single player levels in multiplayer mode reveals the statue and cradle levels have proper item locations and multiplayer starting points where other single player levels do not the cradle in particular had a slower frame rate than the other levels in single player mode and the additional strain of multiplayer would bring the frame rate down even more this is possibly the reason why these levels were left out of multiplayer as lag would have made it near impossible to play competitively it's also thought that the statue level was cut because its dark atmosphere and large open design wasn't a good fit for multiplayer some text in the game's code also suggested that there was an unused level called citadel the level was eventually found in an incredibly unpolished state and seem to be built around entirely different specifications than any other multiplayer level accessing the citadel with a set of game shark codes will show the final programming for the game is barely even compatible with the level the player can't walk up ramps but they can walk through walls the citadel being in a different format than the other levels cemented the idea that it was only ever intended for testing purposes and that it was cast aside early on in [Music] development [Music] did you know next to the word dark and the game's logo is what appears to be a set of quotes which was inspired by dakuten marks used in japanese writing the title perfect dark was also partly drawn from director martin hollis affection for grammatically incorrect english in japanese media the odd grammar was also a product of randomly attaching cool sounding words to each other in order to come up with a name the team decided very early on that they wanted a female lead while designing her the team took inspiration from several sources this included ghost in the shell the x-files and the real-life historical figure joan of arc or as she's called in french jean dark this served as the basis for joanna dark's name during development nintendo asked rare to hire an american voice actress for the role of joanna this didn't sit well with rare after a string of unsuccessful auditions the role ultimately went to the game's composer evelyn novokovic the job of providing motion capture for joanna fell to designer duncan botwood who was given a pair of high heels to wear during his performances in an interview botwood reminisced that's not a good memory and it wasn't a good result either in order to get quality animations for joanna the team would try to elicit authentic reactions from botwood for example if they needed an animation for getting shot in the shoulder they would jab him in the shoulder with a stick and if they needed an animation for joanna being sent flying they would tie a rope around botwood's body and prepare to yank him backwards on the count of three but then pull him on the count of one there are other remnants of cut content still present in the game's code including at least three planned levels that were never finished there's an additional bonus mission called retaking the institute a single-player version of the skeeter combat simulator and a level called rooftop that was described as being not up to scratch there are also three unused music tracks an alternate version of the death theme a comedic musical jingle and what seems to be an alternate version of the deep sea nullify threat track this third track was actually used in an early trailer for the game one of the game's more unique leftovers is a pair of usernames and passwords that can be unlocked which serve no purpose in the game whatsoever two marketing websites carringtoninstitute.com and datadyne.com were set up before the game was released the login information was intended to be used on these sites to access additional supplementary material but this feature was never implemented every level in perfect dark contains a hidden piece of cheese these cheese wedges cannot be interacted with in any way and finding them accomplishes nothing aside from encouraging players to explore fans have often speculated what the cheese meant and now one perfect dark developer has an answer for them according to artist b jones she told environmental artist ross bury that part of the president's plane which ross was modeling looked like a wedge of cheese from then on ross left a wedge of cheese in every level as a sort of calling card shooting all of the wine bottles in the cellar of the villa will also cause carrington to skull joanna [Music] hidden inside the safe at the end of the g5 building level is an award from the british academy of film and television arts this is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the same award rare had previously won for their work on goldeneye in the multiplayer mode among the various selectable heads are the faces of nintendo shigeru miyamoto and ken lob lob is a nintendo employee who worked closely with rare during the development of goldeneye another golden eye reference found in perfect dark's multiplayer are the four dinner jackets the jackets are based on the suits worn by sean connery pierce brosnan timothy dalton and roger moore during their portrayals of james bond rare originally wanted to include the four as playable characters in goldeneye's multiplayer but weren't unable to because of licensing issues some of the secrets hidden in the game were placed there solely to confuse players the area 51 level hides a mysterious keyhole that serves no purpose in the multiplayer level warehouse the player can reach a grate on the ceiling featuring a question mark design and an ammo crate that cannot be reached during the opening cut scene as the camera is sweeping over the city a sign advertising anal land can be seen very briefly a perfect dark prequel for the game boy color was released in conjunction with the n64 game after completing the tutorial level in the game boy game the player can find a poorly drawn cow painted on one of the walls outside unofficially dubbed the rare cow this is a recurring easter egg that appeared in several hand-held games developed by rare including donkey kong country banjo-kazooie grunty's revenge conker's pocket tales and mickey's racing adventure when perfect dark was released in japan it came with a variety of alterations additional shield pickups were added to many levels on the perfect agent difficulty to make them easier and the combat knife weapon was removed from the game the blood splatter effect when a character is shot and the pools of blood beneath dead characters were both removed as well dead bodies also disappear after a short period of time because this frees up additional memory the japanese version of the game runs slightly smoother than the other versions joanna's character model also has an updated facial texture changing her hair style and facial features in the american and european versions of the game the mission the duel gives the character jonathan's full name as jonathan dark implying that he is joanna's brother no connection between the two is established in the plot however in perfect dark zero jonathan was renamed as jonathan steinberg in order to retcon the sibling relationship according to the developers at rare jonathan was joanna's brother in early drafts of the story but this was dropped before release and his surname in perfect dark was just an error that managed to slip by them if there's one thing the nintendo 64 was good at it was taking the mario ip and adapting it to every genre imaginable one example of this is the highly praised title paper mario which spawned its own long-running rpg series the game came out in japan a full six months before it came to the west which gave developers time to do what they usually do such as fix glitches and make the game easier for westerners one example of this is the cooper shell minigame which was slowed down during its third and most difficult phase another regional change can be seen with the game's music the song that plays when a new partner joins mario's party is entirely different in the japanese game it's speculated that the song was changed outside of japan due to the original tune sounding too much like the song america from west side story and nintendo wanted to avoid any copyright issues [Music] [Applause] [Music] another iconic mario game on the n64 is super mario 64. one interesting fact about the game's development was how the team tried to make sure the game would appeal to children and that they would be able to get to grips with its mechanics they did something often unheard of from nintendo at the time and had children playtest the title with around 10 middle schoolers being given access to the bomb battlefield stage for half a day while staff observed what the children did one of these children was actually miyamoto's son kenshi miyamoto stated my child was one of them actually but seeing him try dozens of times over and over to get up this unclimbable hill as a parent i couldn't help but think geez does this kid have any brains afterwards we asked the children what they thought of the game and they said it was fun and that they wanted to play it again another of nintendo's titles excitebike 64 actually has a rather peculiar piece of unused data included at the end of the game's rom is unused text which is repeated multiple times to fill out any leftover space remaining on the game's cartridge clearly directed toward those who intend to dump and redistribute the game online the text reads please don't copy this game that would be rude hey what are you doing looking at this binary when you should be looking after my shed one of nintendo's other driving games also has unused aspects mario kart 64 originally had a vertical split screen option in two-player gameplay as well as horizontal this cannot be seen without hacking it back into the final version and the lap counter still appears in battle mode mario kart 8 later managed to use vertical split screen 18 years later another n64 game with unused content is rare's goldeneye 007 the terrorist multiplayer character cannot be found anywhere in the single player game however the instruction manual for the game lists the phantom weapon as a terrorist favorite and the phantom can only be found on the frigate level the frigate level is also the only level with hostages which would likely indicate the involvement of terrorists this would suggest that the terrorist was once used as an enemy on the frigate but was removed and kept in multiplayer speaking of rare before their buyout by microsoft many consider the apex of rare's prestige to be during the n64 heyday after goldeneye's success the company would go on to work on another mature first person shooter created with their own story perfect dark the game was set to introduce many new bold features which pushed the nintendo 64 peripherals and all and though the final product ended up being impressive in its own right one particular feature which had a fair share of hype surrounding it would ultimately be cut before final publication the transfer pack a peripheral which was used for pokemon stadium allowing for a gameboy game to interact with the console from the back of the player's controller was set to have some utility within perfect dark specifically the transfer pack was to be used in conjunction with nintendo's game boy camera allowing players to snap photos of people's faces to have them mapped to a character's head the feature was talked about extensively being incredibly unique at the time before the likes of more known titles using the concept such as tony hawk underground the feature was talked about in gaming news outlets in the run-up to perfect ark's release with spin magazine's december 1999 issue mentioning perhaps in ingest though maybe insensitively that it would allow players to blow jocks off of buildings with lasers unfortunately the timing of this statement made it seem in poor taste having been issued in the same year as the 1999 columbine incident according to a gamespot article nintendo's ken lobb had told the press that it had been removed because of technical difficulties though later rare's website would be updated to talk about the feature's removal stating that it had been removed to avoid controversy during the game's release and that the fully operational game boy camera feature within perfect arc has been removed from the software this would suggest that ken lob's statement in itself was to avoid controversy as well as it could be considered a censorship issue one n64 game with an interesting history is the european exclusive taz express for the americans or whoever didn't play the game taz express was a simple puzzle platformer where taz delivers various packages the most interesting part of the game however can't even be found within it the title originally began as a prototype called vampire circus this was a gauntlet-style game full of vampires and zombies where the player controlled a single character in a party of five with the rest being ai each character had different abilities and players could switch between them these characters could die to vampires however leading to strategic and hectic gameplay developers z2 apparently got quite far with the vampire circus prototype but when publishers ocean software were absorbed into infograms in 1996 z2 were forced to work on a warner brothers property the nintendo 64 was originally created under the working title of the ultra 64 as a tribute to several toys manufactured by nintendo in the late 1960s such as the ultra hand however as konami still held the trademark on the name ultra games nintendo elected to change the name and logo for their new console the system was created at a time when nintendo's competition was particularly fierce being released a year after sony's first entry into the console market race with the playstation with that said the device received rave reviews despite being criticized for its comparatively slim lineup of titles one of the more popular titles on the n64 was star fox 64. despite all versions being released within six months of each other internationally in 1997 there are still a few regional differences an obvious change comes with the game being in a different language however the pal version lilac wars went one step further than simply translating the game into english it's the only version that features language settings and the player is even able to set the language to lilat this makes all the characters in-game speak gibberish in reference to the game's predecessor for the super nintendo the japanese version has different dialogue as well the western versions of the game have fox's teammates yell when being shot down whereas the japanese version has them cry fox's name this isn't the only change as the japanese version's character icons also do not sync up with the character's dialogue unlike the english versions just three months after the success of star fox 64 and its introduction of the rumble pack super mario 64 and wave race 64 both received re-releases in july 1997 exclusively in japan both titles are updated with special shindu paktayo editions the main focus for these releases was to add compatibility with the rumble pack wave race's inclusion was vibration that matched the engine of the jet ski and reactions to jumps and waves by jolting the player in mario 64 the rumble feature kicks when the player is attacked or being attacked by an enemy it rumbles with ground pounds forward dives and when collecting a red coin or an extra life the rumble pack also vibrates when stretching mario's face in the title screen wave race 64 has a few more changes added to the game that weren't present in the original the announcer's inflection was changed two of the tracks from the soundtrack were remixed and a ghost was added into the time trial mode in the form of a dolphin mario's 64 shindu edition has quite a few differences however it includes changes made for the international release of the game that didn't appear in the original japanese version such as voice clips and the ability to press a or b when interacting with npcs or signs instead of just b an odd glitch was removed where mario would receive 99 lives if the coin count went above 999 this bug would break the game and display m25 instead of 99 lives this version also fixes the backwards long jump oversight present in all previous versions an easter egg was even added to the game if the player presses zed on the title screen a spiral of screen showing mario's head will appear another more unusual change is that if mario jumps onto a tree he will slide round and face the camera instead of facing the direction in which he jumped another n64 peripheral that didn't quite garner the same popularity was the biosensor the biosensor was released by sata exclusively in japan and came bundled with tetris 64. the device was designed to clip onto the player's ear and read their pulse initially designed specifically for tetra64 the game reacted with the player's pulse based on how stressed the player becomes while playing the block's falling speed will increase or slow down accordingly the legend of zelda majora's mask is a much beloved game that has many distinctive features one of its more distinctive features for zelda fans is that it reused many assets from ocarina of time but this reusing of art and resources goes even further than you might think inside the moon there is a small bird that flies around the tree this bird model was originally used in a beta version of ocarina of time but was cut in the final release it found a second life within majora's mask along with many other ocarina of time assets chameleon twist ii developed by japan system supply and published by sunsoft was released in 1998 in japan and 1999 internationally unlike the japanese release the international versions had radically altered designs compared to the first game the cute humanoid characters from the original were scrapped for a more realistic looking chameleon design it's thought that these changes were made to help the game sell outside of japan davey and jack's colors were also switched and rinder was changed to linda pokemon puzzle league is a very unusual case particularly for a pokemon title the game was never actually released in japan only appearing in north american and pal regions in 2000 and 2001 respectively the game is the spiritual successor to puzzle league also known as panel depon but of course featuring pokemon characters it was never made clear as to why it never received a release in japan despite the game receiving respectable reviews even the virtual console re-released in 2008 remained exclusively westward within the game's files are two voice clips that are thought to be love notes from staff who worked on the game one in japanese and one in english mario 10 is released in the year 2000 as well and was the second time mario is behind the net if you include mario's tennis for the virtual boy if for some reason the player decides to turn on the game without plugging a controller in they're greeted with a humorous image featuring waluigi and luigi this image was put in place to ask the player to reset the console and plug their controllers in the accompanying music is the match point theme clay fighters 63 and a third the third title in the clay fighter series was developed by interplay and released in 1997. there was originally going to be a character in the title that went by the name hobo cop a clear play on the titular character from the movie robocop the character was adorned with pots and trashcan lids and would have some pretty risque animations especially for nintendo like urinating on the stage and exposing himself to his opponent though hobokop did appear in promotional material for the game as well as in beta footage he was not included in the game's final release a rent-only blockbuster exclusive version of the game also exists called clayfighter sculptors cut this version included several other previously cut characters those still lack the inclusion of hobokop this was apparently because nintendo did not approve of the character believing that he was too controversial hobokop can also be seen in footage from a prototype demo for the unreleased playstation version called clayfighter extreme that was planned to be released at the same time as the nintendo 64 version so it's likely he would have been a unique character to that release another noteworthy n64 title is jet force gemini which was developed by rare and released in 1999 the game was well received and much like its rare predecessors perfect dark and conker's bad fur day was set to have a game boy color title in its series the game would have been a top-down isometric 2d shooter with heroes juno and loopers searching for juno's twin sister valor however the game was cancelled before it was even announced this was probably due to lack of interest in rare's previous portable endeavors and the age of the game boy console itself in an october 2012 interview former rare designer and producer martin wakeley said jet force gemini on the game boy was the only occasion i can remember rare outsourcing anything it was being done by bits studios and was nearly done last time i saw it i'm not sure what happened to it in 2006 a prototype of the game was found and was said to be quote nearly complete mr pants rare's unofficial mascot makes his appearance in one way or another in every rare game and jet force gemini is no exception after the player collects 300 ant heads the cheat pants as ants is unlocked when active all the blue ants in the game are replaced with mr pants he is also drawn on one of the walls in the torfret castle level today we'll be looking at an interesting take on the fighting genre appearing on a console with a distinct shortage of exclusive fighting games the nintendo 64. the game we'll be covering is simply titled rakuge kids created in 1998 by konami rakuga kids is a straightforward fighting game that has the player take on the role of various children and the characters they've created the game's title is a play on the word rakugaki a japanese term effectively meaning doodle this is fitting as the game's use of doodle-like artwork and childish character design plays into this theme the game's story follows six children who discover some magical crayons in a cave the kids decide to share the eight crayons between themselves but the remaining two crayons and their box are stolen by the local neighborhood bully the kids discover that anything drawn with these crayons comes to life so in order to get them back they decide to draw their way to victory these heroes include andy and his drawing astronauts a spaceman who takes the role of the game's front man ddj and captain cat kid a break dancing cat that attacks its opponents with music nola and martha a witch that wears a chicken hat and has the ability to jump huge distances jerry and robot cho a bot who may be slow but is capable of dealing huge damage cleon and bear tank a teddy bear with a tank turret and treads who is always tired roy and cools roy a cowboy who plays similarly to astronauts and also val and memezo a monster capable of morphing into various different forms like scissors an iron or a spoon in a typical style of its time the game makes use of flat characters on a 3d plane not unlike parappa the rapper or nintendo's paper mario the title plays similarly to any other fighting game with attacks and combos being performed with the directional and attack buttons each fighter is capable of double jumping and there are three punch buttons and three kick buttons alongside a taunt and a button used to perform magic attacks these magic attacks allow the player to perform three different strong moves after their superbar fills at the bottom of the screen these are performed by pressing the magic button and holding in different directions the three different types of magical combat include attack magic a move capable of dealing a large quantity of damage defense magic a move which has the potential to put some distance between the players so they can re-evaluate their tactics and counter-attack magic which is performed while blocking and can perform a decent amount of damage as well as giving the player some space an interesting mode in the game comes in the form of training mode a way of training a character to play through the game for you this mode has the player select a character train them by competing against other characters and having them become better at fighting the game is programmed to learn your playstyle allowing you to set your character to automatically work through the game's story mode without your input the reception of rakuga kids was somewhat positive with many praising its unique art style though complaints regularly included issues with flow attacks feel quite stiff and restricted and with the game's variety of characters it can often be hard to work out how to go about attacking your opponent many also show distaste towards the game's loading screens not understanding why they should need to even exist on a cartridge-based title the reasons behind these loading screens is likely due to the game's most praised feature its artwork each character has an incredibly large number of frames all of which need to be loaded into the nintendo 64's four megabytes of ram koji yoshida the game's director had previously worked on street fighter 2 as a software designer and final fight as a programmer after recouga kids he would go on to work on a number of other notable projects such as directing goemon mononoke sugoloko programmer for castlevania circle of the moon as well as programming for the legend of zelda oracle of ages and seasons several references to rakuga kids can be found within yoshida's other works these include unlikely appearances such as his work on circle of the moon nathan is capable of transforming into cleon's drawing of bear tank by equipping both the bear ring and activating the black dog and pluto cards rather than turn into a skeleton as normally happens with using these cards the player is instead turned into the sleepy teddy bear capable of firing projectiles bear tank has a high level of attack but does suffer from the hindrance of dying from a single blow bear tank proved to be a popular character within konami later going on to appear as a playable character in konami's kart racer konami crazy races alongside several other popular konami characters however rakuga kids never received a us release instead only being published in japan and europe the reasons behind this aren't fully known since the game had a european release there was an english translation already made the nintendo 64 was prolific with its expansive library of child-friendly titles and rakuga kids art style fits this theme quite well rakugekids was released in 1998 the same year as marvel vs capcom x-men vs street fighter and only a single year after tekken 3. this is a period in gaming history when fighting games were fairly common it's possible that recouga kids for all of its positive feedback was deemed mediocre when compared to the aaa fighting games at the time with this in mind konami may have refrained from publishing the title in the us knowing that the competition was too strong and that the market for a child-friendly fighting game may not be too big [Music] you

Channel: DYKG Clips

Views: 398,340

Keywords: n64, nintendo 64, nintendo, n64 game, n64 games, super mario 64, mario 64, banjo kazooie, banjo, conker, conker's bad fur day, goldeneye 007, perfect dark, kirby 64, zelda, majora's mask

Id: BoWl13NOR9o

Length: 62min 3sec (3723 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/K1ng-Cole]

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