Nintendo 64

The Nintendo 64 is a video game console developed by Nintendo, and was released in 1996 in Japan and North America. The Nintendo 64 was the last main home console to use the ROM cartridge as it's format for games and other software released by Nintendo. (excluding Nintendo Switch, as that is occasionally referred to as a portable console) The console, at launch, sold for $199.99 in U.S. stores. The Nintendo 64 (partially under the working title of the Ultra 64) was also the console that Super Mario 64 was first designed and published for before being redesigned and republished for the Nintendo DS.

History
The concept for the Nintendo 64 first begun during the development of Star Fox for the SNES, along with the Super FX chip that made the 3D graphics of Star Fox possible. Shigeru Miyamoto, while working on this had the idea for a Super Mario game in 3D utilizing the Super FX chip, however this idea never came to fruition, and instead was merged into ideas for the next console, a 64-bit console to be able to compete with SEGA as well as Sony, a newcomer to the console wars. The console began development in 1993 soon after Star Fox was released. Nintendo partnered with Silicon Graphics along with MIPS Technologies to make necessary components for the console, such as graphics cards and processors. The console's development was officially announced during the span of Nintendo's August 1993 Shoshinkai (Space World) event when Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics met with Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi, officially launching "Project Reality", the codename for the Nintendo 64

The working title Ultra 64 was first revealed June 23rd, 1994 along with the reveal of the console's design. Shortly afterwards, in September of the same year, Super Mario 64 began development. A couple months later, in July of 1995, Nintendo partnered with a currently unknown company to create personalization technology to implant in the Nintendo 64 to enhance the game to the player's wishes judging from gameplay style, skill and semi-randomization. This technology was planned to be used in nearly all games developed for the console, although it was only used for Super Mario 64 officially.

In March of 1996, Project DAEDALUS begun, which involved a thorough testing of the Personalization AI. Part of this project was the testing on the Focus aspect of the Personalization AI. Due to complications in the AI, the Personalization AI could not work correctly if at least 50% of the participant's attention (conscious or sub-conscious) was focused on other topics. To distract participants to test this, Nintendo played sounds of a man drowning over speakers during the "Let's-a-Go! Play it Early Contest". It is unknown how Nintendo obtained these noises, as the clips were not from any stock-footage library known at that time. Other distractions were also created, ranging from cat-scratching noises, to audio-visual distortion and atrocities shown to participants. During the planning of these tests, Mr. Seiyro passed away due to disagreements with Nintendo over how to obtain distractions and which distractions were to be used. Due to his death, the Personalization AI was completely reworked.

Later in 1996, the console was released to the public.

Overall Development Timeline

Quick Introduction

'The following document shows and explains the development timeline of Nintendo’s Ultra 64 Console. The information was provided by external sources from the internet, and any speculation will be presented in an italic font.'

August 1993

The earliest known announcement of the console was introduced at Nintendo’s own annual trade show,Shoshinkai, also known as Space World 93. The announcement revealed “Project Reality”. This was a joint development agreement between Nintendo and Silicon Graphics to develop a graphical processing unit and deliver high quality 3D Graphics to the masses for under $300. It was announced to release in the summer of 1995 for the price of $250.

January 1994

In another tradeshow called CES, hosted in Las Vegas, guests were treated with a presentation of tech demos. These tech demos represented how powerful the reality’s hardware was, allowing for complex 3D graphics and real time texture mapping to run coherently and consistently.

May 1994

After CES, Project reality was maintaining an all time high of hype, but Nintendo had bad news to deliver. They announced that project reality would still utilize cartridges, because moving to CD drives would have cost them $100 to produce on each individual unit.

June 1994

In summer CES, hosted in Chicago, Project Reality was presented once again, but was renamed to the “Ultra 64”. More tech demos were presented, but behind closed doors. No footage has surfaced of these behind doors tech demos so far, but we can speculate they have improved since the Winter CES. However, Nintendo did show their new Super Nintendo Game, Donkey Kong Country. This used the CGI Silicon Graphic Workstations to produce these 3D images that were then translated to 2D sprites, but the Ultra 64’s was still waiting to be proven more powerful.

May 1995

Since the beginning of 1995, Nintendo were silent about the Ultra 64, and nothing much was heard, especially at the new upcoming E3 1995. All they said was that the Ultra 64 would release in December 1995 for japan, and 1996 for North America and Europe. Alongside this announcement, multiple conferences and presentations about piracy surrounding the Super Nintendo were shown. They also published multiple advertisements to help keep people interested, maintaining the hype.

November 1995

The Ultra 64 was once again presented in the annual trade show, Space World 95. Multiple interactive game demos were available for guests, which were Super Mario 64 (temporary), and Kirby 64 (temporary). Both demos were around 50% complete. alongside this, promotional tapes showing 13 games in development was presented, and was also broadcasted by GameShare. The main games presented were, Super Mario 64, Kirby Ball 64, Super Mario Kart R, WaveRace 64, PilotWings 64, Buggie-Boogie 64, BlastDozer, Shadows of the Empire, GoldenEye, BodyHarvest, Creator, Starfox 64, and The Legend of Zelda 64. The Ultra 64 also had another and final name change to “Nintendo 64”, and it was announced that the release date for japan would be pushed back to April 1996.

April 1996

The Nintendo 64 was once again pushed back, this time by 2 months, to the final pushback, June 1996. During this time, very little talk of third party developers surrounding the Nintendo 64 were announced, and the dream team began to lose steam, making the launch seem bleak.

May 1996

The Nintendo 64 was revealed at the second annual Electronic Entertianment Expo, E3 1996. Nintendo presented the console and a playable demo of Super Mario 64, which was near final, aside from some texture differences, UI layouts and icons, and minor level changes.

June 1996

The Nintendo 64 was released in japan, with two major release titles, Super Mario 64, and Pilotwings 64. the third game is obscure.

September 1996

The Nintendo 64 was released in North America, with only two release titles, Super Mario 64, and Pilotwings 64.

March 1997

The Nintendo 64 was released in Europe, with three major release titles, Super Mario 64, Pilotwings 64, and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. However, there was a fourth launch title, called “Turok: Dinosaur Hunter” which was released 3 days later, on March 4th 1997.

Personalization Bond
The Personalization Bond is a special bond between Super Mario 64 cartridges and the system. When activated, the system sends commands to Super Mario 64 to inititate Personalization protocol.