Nintendo 64 Game Pak
Nintendo 64 Game Pak is the brand name of the ROM cartridges that store game data for the Nintendo 64. As with Nintendo's previous consoles, the Game Pak's design strategy was intended to achieve maximal read speed and lower console manufacturing costs through not integrating a mechanical drive, with a drawback of lower per dollar storage capacity compared to a disk. From the console's first year from late 1996 through 1997, Game Pak sizes were with a typical third party retail price of, then available in in 1998, and finally from 1999 onwards.
As with the Famicom Disk System floppy drive of the 1980s, Nintendo sought a higher-capacity and cheaper medium to complement the Game Pak, resulting in the 64DD—a Japan-only floppy drive peripheral which launched late in 1999 and was a commercial failure.
Some developers such as Factor 5, Rare, and Nintendo were supportive of the solid-state medium due to fast read speeds and bank switching. Some other developers had vastly heavier designs, such as the use of full-motion video, but sufficient data compression techniques had not yet been invented and ROM chips were not yet cost-efficient, leading many developers like Square to target CD-ROM based platforms instead.
The Nintendo 64 was the last major home console to use cartridges as its primary storage format, while the hybrid Nintendo Switch was released in 2017. Portable systems such as the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS also used cartridges where their home contemporaries had not.
History
had already invested into high-capacity secondary storage devices with the Famicom Disk System and the cancelled SNES-CD for their previous two home consoles. In a 1994 interview, Nintendo of America summarised its analysis of the advantages of cartridges and CDs with respect to its next console—eventually the Nintendo 64.That sentiment was soon revised in the same year when NOA's Vice President of Sales & Marketing Peter Main stated that "The choice we made is not cartridge versus CD, it's silicon over optical. When it comes to speed, no other format approaches the silicon-based cartridge."
At Shoshinkai 1995, Nintendo announced the complementary 64DD, a rewritable magnetic disk drive for the then-upcoming Nintendo 64 with several times faster transfer rates and seek time than competing CD-ROM consoles. In 1997, Nintendo game designer Shigesato Itoi explained, "CD holds a lot of data, DD holds a moderate amount of data and backs the data up, and ROMs hold the least data and processes the fastest. By attaching a DD to the game console, we can drastically increase the number of possible genres. ... I think we'll make the game on a cartridge first, then... finish it up as a full-out 64DD game." Many 64DD games entered development; however, after the device's launch was delayed several years until 1999 and restricted to Japan, many of these games switched to the Game Pak or were outright cancelled. The 64DD was a commercial failure and was discontinued only 14 months after launch.
In 1996, prior to the Nintendo 64's launch, President of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi praised the user experience of the cartridge format:
Until the launch of the Switch in 2017, the Nintendo 64 was the latest major home console to use the cartridge as its primary storage format, and most handheld systems except the PlayStation Portable use cartridges. Most home systems since the fifth generation use disc, flash, and online formats. The succeeding GameCube uses an optical disc format, in a boon to some developers. The company stated its goal was to reduce manufacturing costs and did not cite storage space as a rationale. Because the new console lacks backwards compatibility with Nintendo 64 Game Paks, Nintendo said players could simply keep their Nintendo 64.
Features
Save files
Some Game Paks include internal EEPROM, flash memory, or battery-backed-up RAM for saved game storage. Otherwise, game saves may be stored on a separate memory card, marketed by Nintendo as a Controller Pak.Copy protection
Each Nintendo 64 Game Pak contains a lockout chip to prevent production of unlicensed games and piracy. Unlike previous Nintendo systems, the Nintendo 64 lockout chip contains a seed value which is used to calculate a checksum of the game's boot code. To prevent playing of illegitimate games by piggybacking on a real Game Pak – as was a common workaround for the NES – Nintendo produced five different versions of the lockout chip. During the boot process, and occasionally while the game is running, the console computes the checksum of the boot code and verifies it with the lockout chip in the Game Pak, failing to boot if the check fails.On June 2, 1997, a U.S. District Court issued a temporary restraining order against Games City for its Game Doctor and Doctor V64 products, which allow users to copy from a Game Pak to a CD or hard disk drive. Games City was ordered to stop importing, distributing, advertising, or selling any such devices.
Regional lockout
Two small indentations on the back of each cartridge allow it to connect or pass through the system's cartridge dustcover flaps. All regions have the same connectors, and region-locked cartridges will fit into the other regions' systems by using a cartridge converter or by simply removing the cartridge's casing. However, the systems are also equipped with lockout chips that will only allow them to play their appropriate games. Both Japanese and North American systems have the same NTSC lockout, and Europe has a PAL lockout. A bypass device such as the N64 Passport or the Datel Action Replay can be used to play import games, but a few require an additional boot code.Modem
The cartridge for the officially licensed Japanese game Morita Shogi 64, featured a modem and a custom shell to accommodate an RJ11 port and activity LED.Analysis
The Nintendo 64 Game Pak medium provides essential benefits alongside drawbacks. Though it provides the faster load times and greater durability than the CD-ROM format, its solid-state silicon could not be produced as quickly and was more expensive to manufacture, leading to low storage capacity.For example, a Top Gun video game was announced in 1995 as a launch title for the Nintendo 64 and then cancelled five months prior to the system's launch, partially due to the additional lead time of ordering the more expensive proprietary cartridge format, plus Nintendo's licensing fees. The game's developer, Spectrum Holobyte, said, "The question is, does Nintendo really think it needs licensees? It seems to want the lion's share of the software sales, possibly as much as two thirds."
In 1997, journalist Alex S. Kasten observed that the issue "goes beyond the economics of the media market strategy and style of game play also factor into the cartridge/CD decision Nintendo has remained cartridge-based for two main reasons: economics and performance."
Console cost
Nintendo knew that a CD-ROM drive would greatly increase the cost of the console in a price-sensitive market. Nintendo software engineering manager Jim Merrick said, "We're very sensitive to the cost of the console. We could get an eight-speed CD-ROM mechanism in the unit, but in the under-$200 console market, it would be hard to pull that off."Performance
Specified at 5 to 50 MiB/s, Nintendo emphasised the Game Pak' fast load times in comparison to the competing Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation's 2× CD-ROM drives running at about with high latency. This speed discrepancy can be observed through the loading screens that appear in many multiplatform games; such screens were often nonexistent on the Nintendo 64 version. Bank switching was a common practice for developers in many games, such as Nintendo EAD's Super Mario 64 or Factor 5's Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, which allowed for efficient memory usage. Howard Lincoln said, " and those guys felt very strongly that it was absolutely essential to have it on a cartridge in order to do the kind of things that we wanted to do with Super Mario."Sega countered by claiming that load times on CD-ROMs could eventually be minimised. Ted Hoff, vice president of sales and marketing at Sega, said "We are finding more and more ways to mask the load factor We are working out ways to overlay or leapfrog the loading time."
Durability
Game Paks are far more durable than compact discs, the latter of which must be carefully used and stored in protective cases. It also prevents accidental scratches and subsequent read errors. While Game Paks are more resistant than CDs to physical damage, they are sometimes less resistant to long-term environmental damage, particularly oxidation, wear of their electrical contacts, or static electricity.Manufacturing cost
Due to the complex manufacturing processes, cartridge-based games are more expensive and difficult to manufacture than their disk-based counterparts. PlayStation CD-ROMs reportedly cost to manufacture, while cartridges for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System cost $15 and Nintendo 64 cartridges reportedly as much as over $30.Prices also depended on ROM capacity and whether a cartridge supports saves. By 1996 the average price of a 4 MB mask ROM, typical for advanced Super NES games later in its life cycle, was around $10, while the price for a 2 MB mask ROM was around $6.50. At the same time, an 8 MB mask ROM cost around $15 and a 16 MB mask ROM twice that.
Publishers passed these expenses to the consumer, so Nintendo 64 games tended toward higher prices than PlayStation games. Rarely did a PlayStation game exceed, whereas some Nintendo 64 cartridges were $79.99 like the first print of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Games in Sony's Greatest Hits budget line retailed for $19.95, whereas Nintendo's equivalent Player's Choice line retailed for $39.95. In August 1997, Kelly Flock, president of Sony Interactive Studios America said "Most N64 carts are costing consumers $55 to $70, compared with $20 to $50 for a PlayStation CD." In the United States, the typical price of a third-party game was around $75.99 in the system's first year on the market in 1997, though this dropped incrementally after Nintendo reduced wholesale prices on the cartridges. NOA Vice President George Harrison was enthused about the increasing third-party cartridge orders placed after that price drop. In the United Kingdom, Nintendo 64 games were priced at release, with PlayStation games priced at.