The 64DD Was One Of Nintendo’s Oddest Experiments

11 responses to “The 64DD Was One Of Nintendo’s Oddest Experiments”

1. 

   darren

   December 20, 2018 at 9:01 am

   Pretty sure the SNES had some sort of networking in Japan also.

   Reply
   1. 

      stormo

      December 20, 2018 at 9:12 am

      The SNES had Satellaview, which was a system that used satellite broadcasting to send games to your SNES. Games would be broadcast over certain timeslots and you would download them. There was also stuff like the ability to play along with a developer commentary if you played at certain times of the day.

      It wasn’t an online service in the way RANDnet was though.

      Reply
      1. 

         pylgrim

         December 20, 2018 at 7:56 pm

         One of the most notable things to come for it was what basically amounted to the first draft for a Chrono Trigger sequel (Radical Dreamers), a text-based game.

         Reply
   2. 

      rethilgore

      December 20, 2018 at 10:27 am

      yep and so did the original Famicom. pretty sure that had a modem addon that let you do banking and gamble on horse racing and stuff.

      Reply
2. 

   matt1234

   December 20, 2018 at 10:42 am

   Now if only we got more of this sort of material on kotaku, instead of copy/paste twitter feeds and reddit threads

   Reply
   1. 

      pylgrim

      December 20, 2018 at 8:00 pm

      This kind of content and in-depth reporting, etc come out every so often. The thing is that they take lots of time to create, days, when not weeks. In the meantime, Kotaku needs to keep the lights on, so the fluff articles serve to pad content. It’s a normal and necessary scheme for internet-based niche blogs. (Also note that there are some people that enjoy that kind of content).

      Reply
      1. 

         pass

         December 28, 2018 at 8:34 pm

         I don’t think this would’ve taken long to write, it’s pretty short. Not that that’s a complaint. And as for keeping the lights on, the non-gaming gossipy stuff keeps me away for months at a time. And I’m not alone in that.

         I like this Kotaku, keep it up

         Reply
         1. 

            pylgrim

            January 4, 2019 at 6:03 pm

            The long part was the video. Researching, collating, writing the script, etc. It’s all time-consuming. It may not look like much until you try it.

            Reply
            1. 

               pass

               January 17, 2019 at 4:30 am

               Yeah fair enough re: video. I didn’t actually realise it was there and just read the article. I absolutely get that the video would take a lot more time and resources. But even if it was just a short article I’d been keen to come back for more like it, rather than the mind boggling one I just read about people misunderstanding tidying suggestions on Twitter.

3. 

   robnick

   December 20, 2018 at 1:32 pm

   Okay that was awesome – what a golden age of gaming.

   Reply
4. 

   mrtaco

   December 20, 2018 at 4:39 pm

   Such a shame it died harder than the Virtual Boy. The F-Zero Expansion Kit is amazing, would have loved to see what could have come of other games using the idea.

   Reply
5. 

   sarahbubbly

   December 23, 2018 at 3:02 am

   I can remember looking forward to the 64DD for ages, getting more and more hyped from reading and re-reading every magazine article released on the topic. Given the small size of n64 cartridges, this really would have allowed new features that simply weren’t possible on a 2mb cart (like quality voice acting, larger levels, more varied textures, maybe even fmv / prerendered cutscenes to name but a few). Not to mention the possibilities of proper internet connectivity – online multiplayer to increase the player limit over 4 person splitscreen would have been amazing.

   Ive always been quite dissapointed at the failure of the 64DD. Not that it was really that surprising in hindsight – expensive add-ons have historically never done that well for a console (just look at all the sega megadrive stuff). But the potential here to improve on all the main drawbacks of the n64 could have really allowed for some outstanding games.

   Reply