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A look at the decision to use a cartridge-based format on the Nintendo 64

As forever a fanatic of all things Nintendo 64, I’ve sometimes wondered what the system would have been like if it had used compact discs as opposed to cartridges. All too often, the system is labeled as a failure or a mistake, with the insistence of sticking to cartridges as the primary reason. It’s pretty easy to look back so far into the past with the knowledge of today and pick out bad ideas, but during the time, no company had such luxury. With the fourteenth anniversary of the North American Nintendo 64 launch just passing a couple days ago, let us take a step back to 1996 and get a feel for the perspective of the world’s most successful videogame company who lost their lead in the market simply by doing what they love.

Up until the days of the Nintendo 64, Nintendo's greatest gaming achievements were all based around the cartridge format. It had served them well in the past, and they saw no reason to change. At that point in time, none of the CD systems had came close to success: Sega CD, CD-i, 3DO... all of them were failures, some massively so. The Sega Saturn was struggling to catch on, and even the PlayStation took quite some time before it began to skyrocket to success, taking all of fifteen months on the market to sell its first million units. The reason Sony chose CD is because they had the perspective of a hardware manufacturer, who had no real format they were "experienced" with, so they decided to push a relatively new format as their hook.

In contrast, Nintendo chose a format they felt would best suit the games that they wanted to create. They were a proven success time and time again, and it was the best medium for what they wanted to achieve with videogames. Development of the monumental game Super Mario 64 held great influence on the overall design of the Nintendo 64 itself; their vision was vast worlds which could be traveled to and from instantaneously. The key factor to accomplish this feat was the instant load times allowed by cartridges, which could have individual parts of landscapes and environments to be loaded mid-level when required without any delay.

 

 

In addition, Nintendo wanted complete control over their medium. Here is where one could say Nintendo got a little selfish, but like any other corporation, it’s their job to be concerned with their own wellbeing over all else. Nintendo wanted to keep the big royalties associated with cartridges, which obviously did not bode well with third-party developers. They probably could have handled the space limitations associated with cartridges, but the high cost of manufacture along with the fees applied was too much to swallow. The cartridge format also practically eliminates piracy, as creating counterfeit cartridges is too costly to be worth it.

Interestingly enough, Nintendo began development on a disc drive add-on to the Nintendo 64 before it was even launched. The 64 Dynamic Drive -- or 64DD for short -- was patterned after the relatively successful Famicom Disk System, released only in Japan for the Famicom, the Japan equivalent of the NES. It used a proprietary type of magnetic disc that was somewhat similar to 3 ½ inch floppy discs, and had a capacity of 64MB. Though offering far less storage than CDs, they were cheaper to produce and still offered fast load times and more durability.

 

 

The question is, why not convert this format into the main media for the Nintendo 64? It clearly offered more than the standard Nintendo 64 cartridge at a reduced price. There are two possibilities that seem likely, with one being the added costs. The 64DD required added processing power and RAM; the Nintendo 64’s components were already expensive to manufacture as it was. This would have pushed the system into the $300 territory, which was not a desirable price point at this time. The second is, Nintendo had online functionalities planned for the device in the form of RandNet, and they likely pushed back the launch date for the add-on to release it when the online service was up and running.

Nintendo was in a tight spot. The Nintendo 64 was already launching after all of its competitors, so it wasn't an option to delay it further to integrate the 64DD into it. Nintendo also seemed very intent on a $200 price point, which was a smart decision if you ask me; competitors had more leeway for price cuts since their systems had already been out for a while. Nintendo also wasn't about to incur losses on system sales. After it all, Nintendo essentially abandoned hope of success for the add-on, released it with limited availability, and allowed it to quietly fade into obscurity before it caused a disaster of Virtual Boy proportions. It’s a shame, as the RandNet service was ambitious for its time, and was kind of a waste, but in some ways, that vision was channeled into the Wii.

 

 

Since their creative vision is what lead then to cartridges, if they had used CDs, their games would have been entirely different. The Nintendo 64 is home to many of what people consider some of the best games ever created. Would their games have been just as great if they had gone with CDs? There is no way to ever know that, but it does mean we wouldn’t have experienced jumping into a painting to enter a whole new world. We wouldn’t have spun a stick to send Bowser flying into the abyss, we wouldn’t have crossed a vast field to reach the castle in the distance. There are so many things that wouldn’t have existed, to be replaced by who-knows-what. Would Nintendo still have shaped the industry? I firmly believe not.

In the end, the Nintendo 64 not only sold less than its predecessor, the Super NES, it lost out on the number one position to Sony’s PlayStation. With this statement alone, it would be easy to call the system a failure, but that’s a cynical way to view it. Not only was the Nintendo 64 the most influential of the time period, it also outperformed the 3DO, Saturn, Jaguar, Amiga CD, Neo-Geo CD, and whatever other systems may have existed in the generation. The PlayStation was the only system that bested it in sales, giving the Nintendo 64 a graceful second place, far from failure. Of course, as consumers, people tend to focus on only the end result; this is why the Nintendo 64 was a "failure" to some. For Nintendo, and for me, the Nintendo 64 was no mistake.