#nintendo64dd

I'M A MARIO ARTIST!!!

After a VERY long time of saving and an ordeal of being ripped off... I finally managed to get my hands on a Nintendo64DD and the Mario Artist suite.

It was a long time coming but I was finally able to make this picture! hahahaha! The two best Mario Art games side by side! I can't wait to experiment more with Mario Artist!

I am now the PROUD owner of a WORKING Nintendo64DD! YEAH!

My journey to getting the Nintendo 64 DD was a very long time in the making. I saw it as a kid in magazines and on the early pages of the internet. I saw Mario Artist and being a huge lover of Mario Paint I always wanted it! Then it kind of dissapeared and I didn't know why?

The Nintendo 64 DD (aka the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive)was an add-on at the end of the Nintendo 64's lifetime. You literally put the N64 on top of the DD. Also instead of using carts like the N64 they used a disk system like early computers. The problem was the GameCube was right around the corner and everyone was interested in that! (as they should've been!) Around 15,000 units were sold (ONLY IN JAPAN) before Nintendo saw that the add-on was dead in the water and pulled the plug.

Over the years I searched online to find this system. The more the internet advanced the more info came out about it. The system popped up to buy here and there but they were always out of my price range. So i got a plan. I would save and save and save and put money aside to maybe one day get myself a piece of history. By the time I actually began to look to buy, the price was INSANE. I guess since only 15,000 of these systems went out, over the years they broke, or got lost, or had been damaged due to being stored and then found in random garages or boxes in basements. So naturally they're value went up over time. It's estimated now that there are only between 5,000 to 7,000 in the world that are out there and work.

I watched the price rise over the years but things recently made me get serious about pulling the trigger.

It started with the release of the Nintendo Switch 2. One of the system features that they advertised right off that bat was that the Joy-Cons could be used like a computer mouse:

That peaked my interest because anytime Nintendo featured a mouse controller it's been (at first) for an art game. (Mario Paint SNES and Mario Artist N64DD)

The second thing that pushed me a bit forward, was Nintendo released icons you can use for your profile as they do. They released a series of icons of systems for a limited time. One of those was the Nintendo 64 DD... I can't remember the last time they acknowledged the N64DD... (I got there too late and couldn't download it) BUT... it added to my interest...

I figured that was the end of it... THEN Donkey Kong bananza was released. The game trailer was amazing! (and i've since 100% that game) but at the end of the trailer they showed off a feature called DK artist. You could use the the Joy-Con as a mouse and basically color and sculpt stone to anything you desire.

...That was when I pulled the trigger. Maybe this is Nintendo hinting at a new Mario art game... So I went for it. It wasn't that I thought if I got one it would go up in price and I would benefit because of it. It was more about IF I'm right and a new Mario art game comes out... It could spark interest in the old. People will look into Mario Paint for the SNES and then the NEW diehard collectors will look into something more... Mario Artist. From that point the demand will go up and if it does... I will never be able to afford a N64DD again... So I pulled the trigger... and I bought an expensive but amazing bundle that included a Japanese N64 and all the games in the images above.

I was so jacked! It was supposed to come within 4 days but a strike happened with the shipping company and I had to wait... and wait... I wasn't sure if I would ever get it. Because of the strike it was hard to get a hold of anyone for updates. In the meantime Nintendo announced another little spark in my gamble on an art game coming...

Mario Paint for the SNES was coming to the Nintendo Switch 2's SNES game library! Not to mention you could use the Switch 2 Joycon's mouse mode AND you could also use a USB mouse to play the game!

I started getting pretty tense coming home from work everyday. Reading emails saying "expected today" and then nothing... and then one brutal downpour of an afternoon I watched the truck pull up. I ran out and grabbed it from the truck. Took it inside and set it up.

I was so hesitant to test the system. To a degree that once I had set it up I did anything else around my house. Should I start up the system?... I'll just do the dishes... Should I start up the system?... I'll just clean my bedroom... Eventually I sat down and started up the Nintendo64DD... IT WORKED!!! Then I loaded in the first disk... AND. IT. WORKED! One disk after another they all worked. I was absolutly floored. Floored that it worked and floored that me, just some random nobody in Canada, had a working piece of Nintendo history. I didn't even get into playing any of the games. I would just start them up, play for a second and then start up another.

My mom called at one point, midway through me testing the games, and asked me if I was on drugs because of how excited I was! hahaha!

(NOTE: Japan has the same type prongs as Canada on their power plugs besides the 3rd ground prong. Canada's output 120v but Japan puts out 100v. You can technically put in a Canadian power box into the back of a Japanese N64 and it'll regulate it but just to be safe I bought a step-down converter. Just if anyone was curious)

I packed it all up and made a nice place for it to live in the museum.

I was lucky enough to get so many games in the bundle I bought. Out of curiosity I looked into how many were left in the Nintendo64DD library. Turns out... Only two...

Welp... that will never happen but truly I'm just so happy to have a working DD and the Mario Artist suite. NOTE: Those images were taken from a few months ago... They've either gone up in price or disappeared since...

I hope no one reading this thinks this is a #humblebrag moment. I mean if you've found this blog and made it to this sentence I don't know how you think it could be. It's been a long journey to get here and I'm just excited to share.

...now after this... I was curious if any other games were meant to come to the Nintendo64DD or what games were possibly planned. Brace yourself for a whirlwind of what ifs...

It turns out more than 60 games were planned to come out for the N64DD but were all either made into a stand alone Nintendo 64 games, canceled or passed onto another console. I wasn't going to post the whole list but it's pretty interesting:

7th Legion Asylum Automobili Lamborghini Add-On Cabbage (unreleased, influencing Nintendogs and others) Communication Game (online game by the development team of PostPet, a famous Japanese email application) Creator (later integrated into the Mario Artist series) DD Sequencer Derby Stallion (released on cartridge) Desert Island: No Man's Island Dezaemon 3D Expansion Kit Diablo Digital Horse Racing Newspaper Digital Sports Newspaper (canceled) Doubutsu Banchou (Animal Leader, previewed on Game Pak and released on GameCube as Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest) Dōbutsu no Mori (Animal Forest, released as a cartridge with an embedded RTC in Japan, and later as Animal Crossing on GameCube) Dragon Warrior VII (ported and released on the Sony PlayStation instead) DT Bloodmasters Emperor of the Jungle (canceled) Far East of Eden: Oriental Blue (canceled, becoming a GBA game of the same name) Fire Emblem 64 (canceled, with plot elements later used on Fire Emblem: Fūin no Tsurugi for GBA) Fushigi no Dungeon: Fūrai no Shiren 2 (released on cartridge) Game Maker (canceled) Gendai Dai-Senryaku: Ultimate War (converted to cartridge in 2000 and canceled) Graphical Message Maker (canceled) Ide Yosuke no Mahjong Juku (released on cartridge) Mario Artist: Sound Maker (split out from Paint Studio and then canceled) Mario Party 2 (released on cartridge) Mario no Photopi (cartridge released without 64DD storage option) Mission: Impossible (released on cartridge) Morita Shogi 64 (released on cartridge) Mother 3 (EarthBound 64) (converted to cartridge with expansion disk in 1999, canceled in 2000, then redeveloped and released as Mother 3 for GBA in Japan) Mother 3.5 (Mother 3 expansion) Namco RPG Ogre Battle Saga (released on cartridge) Oriental Blue: Ao no Tengai (canceled and released on GBA in 2003) Pokémon Snap (released on cartridge) Pocket Monsters Stadium (released on cartridge) Pokémon Stadium (released on cartridge) Pokémon Stadium 2 (released on cartridge) Project Cairo Resident Evil Zero (released on GameCube) Rev Limit (canceled) Seaman (released on Dreamcast) SimCopter 64 (canceled) SnowSpeeder (released on cartridge) Street Fighter III Super Mario 64 2 Super Mario RPG 2 or Super Mario Adventure (released on cartridge as Mario Story in Japan and Paper Mario in the rest of the world) Suul Teo Tonic Trouble expansion (canceled) Toukon Road: Brave Spirits Add-On Unreal (canceled) Wall Street Ultra Donkey Kong (released on cartridge as Donkey Kong 64) Ura Zelda (canceled but then released for GameCube as Master Quest) Video Jockey Maker (canceled) Zelda 64 (released on cartridge as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) Zelda Gaiden (released on cartridge as The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask)

To me persoanlly a few stand outs are:

Gamemaker. I don't know if it's the same game maker we made Petey Pest in but it would be WILD if it was.

Super Mario 64 2. I don't know what that wouldv'e added but what a shame. An expansion of that game wouldv'e been epic. 2 player. More levels. What a shame.

Diablo. I'm not a huge fan but if it's the same PC Diablo I'm thinking of... how awesome would that have been!

Mother 3. I saw screenshots of the development in old gaming magazines growing up. That wouldv'e been amazing.

and the biggest surprise...

SEAMAN. This game feels like such a Dreamcast staple today. I can't even fathom this game being on a Nintendo console. That's insane!

(incase you don't know what Seaman is)

Think of "hey you, Pikachu" where you can use a microphone to talk to the character... only instead of Pikachu... You're talking to a fish/frog thing with a grown man's face who is relentlessly sarcastic. It was awesome!