My Experience with the Nintendo 64

After being a little disappointed by the Virtual Boy, I was pumped for the Nintendo 64 and skeptical at the same time. The jump from 8 to 16-bit yielded pretty much the same type of games, just with better graphics/sound. The jump from 2D to 3D was going to change things from a fundamental level. I wasn’t sure how a Mario or Zelda game would translate.

I had been saving for it for about 9 months, starting with the $100 I got from my grandma for Christmas. I had planned on adding like $20 each month, but didn’t really end up saving as much as I'd hoped because buying comics/cards/etc. got in the way. It was supposed to come out on September 29, 1996, which was a Sunday. I was quite bummed as my family was Mormon and I wouldn’t be able to get it until Monday after school, should any be left.

In the month leading up to the release Wal-Mart had a display that I would look at. Once I saw what Super Mario 64 was like I was sold. At that time, the electronics department was in the center of the store and had a “wall” around it (to prevent theft, I assume). But the TV that the demo was hooked up to could be seen from quite a ways away; it was visible to nearly one-third of the store. I would tag along with my mom on trips to Wal-Mart just to see it or play it if nobody else was already doing so.

Then on Saturday, September 28, I went to Wal-Mart with my two youngest brothers. I can’t remember what I was going to buy, but I really just wanted one last glance at the 64. As usual, as soon as the TV was visible my eyes were glued to the screen as I walked toward electronics and up to the controller. Just my luck, some little brat was playing it. I decided I could wait my turn and bide my time. After about 5 minutes, I heard a mother behind me talking to her 6 year old son. “Look at the new Nintendo!” I turned and smiled, hoping to see the look of wonder in either of their eyes at the beauty of the spectacle before them. To my shock and surprise, they weren’t even looking at the TV screen. They were, instead, holding the N64 box. My first thought was that surely these were just empty display boxes. I picked one up and it was heavy. 

I don’t know how, or why, but the store had put them out 1 day too early! I grabbed one and started celebrating, only to realize that I didn’t have my money with me. And then the panic set in. As soon as word gets out that they’re available early, there will be a run on them, and I’ll be in the same boat as before. So I did what any desperate teenager would do – I left my 5- and 8-year-old brothers there alone and unattended to guard one for me while I ran home to get money.

I dashed home as quickly as I could to get the money and returned. Luckily nothing had happened to them, and only one had been sold in my absence. I had panicked for nothing. Oh well. I paid for the console and Super Mario 64 and went home to hook it up, only to discover the 64 didn’t have an RF jack - just the multi-out. “How did they expect me to hook this up?! Am I gonna have to buy a new TV just for this!?” I looked through the setup manual (the one nobody reads because it’s easy to hook up) and found I had to go buy an adapter. Now the questions were 1) Would Wal-Mart have the adapter on launch day, and 2) Could I afford it? Thankfully the answer to both questions was ‘yes.’

I only had $3 after buying the system, game, and adapter. I wished I could have bought a second controller that day, but Mario was only 1 player, and I was kinda wiped as far as money goes for a while. As one might expect, I (and my brothers) played the new game pretty much non-stop for a while. Just like when I got the SNES, friends and tertiary friends all came to visit. On Monday, school couldn’t get out soon enough. My friend Edgar and I skipped our study hall to go play – the only class I ever ditched in high school. We played the heck out of Mario 64 and I loved going online (when the web was fairly new) to read how good Mario 64 was and how much better the N64 was than its competition.

That next Thanksgiving, my room was crowded with most of my cousins wanting to play or watch the N64. In December I would buy Shadows of the Empire, a Star Wars game I had been greatly anticipating. Some of the hype videos for it showed lightsabers, so I was pumped. The Special Editions of the Star Wars Trilogy were just about out, and this game just added to the excitement. The first stage was the best version of the Hoth battle ever made up to that point, but most of the rest of the stages were mediocre 3rd person shooter. I did, however, like the fact that this game’s story was not just a rehash of something seen in the movies – it was mostly backstory to events occurring between Empire and Jedi. 

Later for Christmas, we received Wave Race 64 from my Aunt Cindy and Uncle Jerry (and family), the ones who had previously given us Golf for the NES. It was a fun racing game, but I really wanted to play it with 2 players. By the time I could afford a second controller, there were none to be found. That year there were several big items that were in high demand for Christmas, and the Nintendo 64 was one of them (along with Tickle-Me Elmo). There was an article in the newspaper about the rush and demand on N64s, but I just sat back and was glad to not have to go through it.

It wouldn’t be until late January that I happened to find a second controller. I was in Boise with my brothers to play a little laser tag at Q-Zar (may it rest in peace). While I was there, I popped over to a few places to see if they happened to have one. Toys’Я’Us happened to have a 3rd party controller, the Shark Pad. It was made of clear plastic (which I didn’t like because clear plastic is brittle), the thumbstick cap would fall off occasionally, and the control stick design was dissimilar enough that it made some slight differences in the outcome of play. But I was desperate, so I got it. It came with little insert plastic tabs so that I could “color code” it, should I have multiple versions of it and didn’t want to mix them up. However, it did also have a turbo and slow feature, but I didn’t use them at all.

Edgar also bought Shadows of the Empire with me, and bought a used N64 from a friend a couple days later. He was a huge game enthusiast and had multiple systems like me, but he also branched out into non-Nintendo territory. My friend Brooks’ family got an N64 for Christmas. They had completely skipped the 16-bit era and this was the first system they got since the original NES. They had a few games that I liked – NHL Hockey and Pilotwings 64.

Two Memory Cards, a Rumble Pak,
and a Jumper Pak with pry-tool.

I bought a memory card to go into the controller, even though I didn’t own any games that really utilized this capability at the time. It was mainly for some of the games I rented, like Turok 64 – a FPS that was very well done. The problem with renting cartridge based games is that your save file is on the cartridge, and unless you pay to rent the game for days on end, your save file will almost certainly be erased by the time you rent it again. But with the memory card, I could keep my save file at home, and when I rented the game a second time I could pick up where I left off.

The new video rental store in town had N64 games, and even imported some Japanese titles early. They would use nippers to clip off part of the plastic on the cartridge so it would fit in an American N64. I rented StarFox 64 to see if I liked it, and I did, so I bought it as soon as the North American version was released. It came with the Rumble Pack, and that has almost always stayed in the controller ever since.

I can count the times I rented N64 games on one hand, unfortunately. It was a combination of having to wait for stores to start getting a supply of games I wanted to play and not having extra money after buying comics, my small N64 library, and all the accessories I got. Also, by the time stores had a decent supply of games I would be at college or in Japan. 

Around this time, supply had finally caught up with demand and Wal-Mart had controllers in stock. I bought a black and a blue one, bringing my total to 4. Now we could play 4-player StarFox 64, but my brothers didn’t like it as much because I always won. I also learned how the control stick worked by taking my controllers apart to clean them and stretch the spring to extend its life. Looking back, I wish I had also lubricated the control stick base - something I only learned about in 2015.

Mario Kart 64 came out and I borrowed that from a friend for a while. It was a major improvement on the first game and ignited the Mario Kart craze that has existed ever since. Whenever we played multiplayer, I hooked the N64 up to the bigger TV upstairs so we could all see better.

Occasionally I would hook up the 64 to the stereo to listen to game music (like I had done with the SNES), but the problem was that I couldn’t see anything if I did so. The SNES had 2 ways of connecting so I could have it hooked up to the TV and the stereo simultaneously, but there was no such luck with the N64. I tried to get some kind of video adapter to get it to work, but the only solution was to buy a $40 RF-RCA adapter from Radio Shit, and I would rather have bought another game.

I gave up my paper route before I went to college, so my funds to buy games stopped. I didn’t take the N64 with me because I didn’t have a TV there, and didn’t feel like I should take the one Matt and I had bought. Besides, if everything went well there, I wouldn’t have much time to play it anyway. But I should have at least taken one of the Game Boys so I could play Link’s Awakening or something. During Thanksgiving break, I went to play my system and noticed something was wrong. My black controller had a small but peculiar little nick on the plastic on it. It had bugged me because I would stare at it while the game was loading or something. But the nick was now gone! I asked my brother where my controller was, and he acted confused, like he didn’t know what I was talking about. I was more forceful and finally he confessed. Some time before, my cousin Jessica had spilled soda onto the controller and had made the buttons sticky. When they heard I was coming home they ran out and bought a replacement. I took the original one and was able to clean out the soda from it and get it working like normal. Now that I had 4 official controllers, I gave the Shark Pad one away to the cousins (the same ones who spilled on it in the first place).

My family got Goldeneye007 for Christmas, but I didn’t have any interest in playing at the time, as I had other matters and errands on my mind, like getting my wisdom teeth out and talking to my friends on mIRC (a chat program). When I went back home for a cousin’s wedding, I started playing Goldeneye007 and got hooked.

A couple months later I bought a cheap used 25” TV for $5 at Deseret Industries, and I had decided to basically not attend my classes. When I went home in March, I took the N64 back to college with me (without the sports games I didn’t care about). I anticipated my brothers pulling some stunt preventing me from taking it, so I had removed the jumper pack from the control deck so that nobody could use it should shenanigans happen. 

I pretty much played Goldeneye 24/7 for a few days, and when I wasn’t playing it, someone else from my dorm was. I was determined to beat all levels on 00 Agent and earn all the cheat codes. We started having 4 player games almost every night in our little room, and posted a few house rules to mitigate some of the underhanded ways to cheat (like staring at the ceiling or peeking at someone else’s screen. Occasionally we would play other games like 4-player StarFox64 but others didn’t like the radar system.

About 2 months later, I left for Japan, and missed out on 2 years worth of games while being closer than ever to Nintendo’s headquarters, ironically. While I was there, I saw Mario Party and thought it was a brilliant concept for a game. I also saw and got to test play Rogue Squadron. But the big one that I missed was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I hovered around demos at stores, and picked up some of the literature and brochures about it. I even bought the soundtrack, though I didn’t keep the CD because my friend had paid for half of it and I just copied it to a mini-disk. I also sent home a few drawings I made from the brochure. My family got the game for Christmas, and to their credit, they kept the box and manual in pretty good shape for me. 

When I got home I had instructed them to have Goldeneye ready on the big TV, but when I got back I really, really wanted to play Ocarina. I wanted to do nothing but catch up on movies, games, and other things for the first month or so. My mom didn’t understand, but Michael did, as he had gone through the same thing.

I got a temp job around town and used some of the money to buy both Perfect Dark and Donkey Kong 64. The main reason I bought DK64 was because it came with a free RAM expansion pack (like how StarFox64 came with the rumble pack). I decided to save it until some future date to play and focus on Perfect Dark instead. I didn’t end up playing it for the first time until about a year and a half later.

A few weeks later, I moved out of my parents’ house went to live in Orem with Edgar, where he promised me a room, a bed, and a job. I took my N64, SNES, and the 13” TV, as Matt was now out of the country. But I left my brothers’ SNES and N64 sports games, the NES, and any “family games”. Somehow Shadows of the Empire, Starfox64, Goldeneye007, and Wave Race64 got lost or sold somewhere. My family ended up getting their own Jungle Green N64 to play the sports games, and my youngest brother Brady played games more like me. At first, I played mainly PD and Ocarina in Orem with any free time I had. I also bought Rogue Squadron used from Hollywood Videos and played that a lot. My SNES was hooked up to the 13” TV but my N64 was hooked up to Edgar’s 27” TV in our bedroom.

A couple months later, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask came out. Edgar had pre-ordered it from Babbage’s, but I decided to buy it from Target on launch morning – which happened to be the same day as the PS2 launch. It felt good to walk past the long line of campers waiting for the PS2 and just go straight to the register. This was the second game I had been able to get launch day since being back in the US (the other being Perfect Dark), and it felt nice to play it simultaneously with Edgar and exchange tips instead of playing catchup on a game that most people had already completed. The other thing I bought while living in Orem is a watermelon colored controller. It was mainly because I liked the semi-transparent look, but also because they were better made and had solved a few engineering issues that the original run of controllers had.

While I lived there, there were also frequent Perfect Dark 4-player games, similar to what happened in my dorm room with Goldeneye007. But since PD was a superior game with much better customization options and record keeping, it motivated us to play more and do better. Another nice feature was that the apartment had surround sound, so I got to experience that for the first time.

When I started dating Anne, I had her play Super Mario 64 in my room while I cleaned up and organized my stuff. She also helped me do some spider hunting on Majora’s Mask.

After I got married, I moved to Ogden and had SNES and N64 hooked up to the 13” TV in the front room. Anne would play Zelda: LttP and LA while I was at work, as she had nothing to do and hadn’t found a job yet. Within a week of being married, we went to buy a VCR so we had a little entertainment. I specifically bought a VCR that had RCA inputs so that we could hook up multiple systems through it, essentially using the VCR as a receiver. We found a nicer one that had the inputs I wanted, but then got another VCR as a wedding present. We had to track down where it was sold to try and exchange it and couldn’t figure out what store it came from, so we finally had to call and make up a story about the stop button being broken.

Later we would get a 25” monaural TV as a wedding gift. We enjoyed it for a week but then I lamented that we didn’t have the RCA jacks on it. Anne suggested that we return the TV and pay the $10 to upgrade it to the stereo version. Once we did, it was much easier to hook up multiple systems between the TV and VCR’s inputs. We also got a better TV stand to accommodate the bigger TV, and we put the systems in the cabinet underneath. To make room for the systems and the DVD system we bought, we got some wire racks to make the SNES and N64 “bunkbeds” of sorts. Meanwhile, the NESv2 and the 13” TV were relegated to the bedroom (my mom had given me all the old video game stuff).  

About a year later, we had some kids over to play games, and afterwards I couldn’t find Majora’s Mask. I assumed one of them had stolen it. I grudgingly replaced it with a used copy I bought from Hollywood Video. However, later when we moved from our apartment to our condo we were having to turn the loveseat at all kinds of angles to get it through the door and around corners. When we did so, I heard something rattling inside the couch. I reached in, and it was my original copy of Majora’s Mask.

Ever since moving to our condo, the N64 has been hooked up ever since to the big TV downstairs. For quite a while we had a TV that could do a side-by-side dual input screen, so we could have it and the GameCube/Wii playing simultaneously. Years later, I replaced all of the lost and/or sold games and repaired the controllers as much as possible to keep it in good condition.