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    Nintendo was founded in Kyoto, Japan in 1889 as a manufacturer of hanafuda playing cards. The company went through several small niche businesses before becoming a video game company.

    North American Nintendo 64DD Discovered

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    Skinky

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    #1  Edited By Skinky

    Fellow Nintendo collector "Metal Jesus" has recently acquired what appears to an extremely rare retail-ready version of the Nintendo 64DD.

    The system add-on hardware bombed in Japan, and as a result this North American version was never released, sadly. I say sadly because the proposed games due to be worked on had some notable potential in the Western market.

    Link:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b64Bx0WKh7M

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/64DD

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    bigsocrates

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    I remember being pretty excited about the 64DD back in the day, but ultimately it just showed that Nintendo didn't really know what it was doing with the N64. The 64DD was kind of like a CD add-on (like Sega CD or Turbografx CD) the generation after those add-ons had proven unpopular, and more importantly it didn't even have the storage capacity of CDs (while the competitors to the N64 came with CD drives at no extra price.) It's not like the 64DD would have allowed for storage heavy RPGs like FF VII or CD quality audio, which were the reasons the Playstation dominated the N64 so heavily.

    Yes there were come cool ideas for user created content, but there was no real way to share it so even the idea of making your own tracks in F-Zero or whatever had a limited appeal. The device flopped in Japan and doesn't really have any killer apps, with F-Zero X Expansion Kit probably being the best release, and that just being...an expansion to an admittedly great game.

    It's kind of cool that an American unit was discovered but since the device was released in Japan there's not a lot to say about it. We already know an American release was planned and then scrapped.

    To be fair to Nintendo, they originally planned some killer applications for the device, like Zelda I believe, but ultimately found ways to release those games on cartridge, which is why the support was so poor. This is in some ways similar to the Famicom Disc System, which was released in Japan and had some amazing games, but where most of the best titles found western release on cartridge, albeit with some slight compromises like reduced audio quality.

    The 64DD was just a bad idea though. The Nintendo 64 needed to lean into the advantages of cartridges (mostly better load times) rather than trying to compete with CDs via an expensive, unfocused, add-on that still provided less than 10% of the storage space of a CD.

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