Why the N64 is so great - Part II.
By Hizang 33 Comments
Video game consoles in 1996 where black or grey, there were a few exceptions but back then companies didn't really seem, to care what there console looks like. Consoles were just a thing you played games on, not something you would sit at and admire. When the N64 launched, it seemed to follow the same trend as consoles before it, and it's rival the Playstation. It stuck to dull colour pallet of black/grey console with a grey controller. But not soon after launch Nintendo started a trend that other consoles would follow even to this day, they introduced colour.
The time for Hot Pink consoles is now!
When N64 introduced colour to the market they did more than just do a white version or a red version. In total N64 made 16 colour console variants over the course of 4 years, when you look at it like that, that alone is amazing. And the variants that they did produce were very different at the time, such as transparent N64. Nintendo decided to release N64's that were translucent, so you can see inside the console and see all the pieces that make the console work. They first did this with a bundle, a Jungle Green edition with Donkey Kong 64. This was followed by a Fire Red, Smoke Grey, Grape Purple, Ice Aqua and Watermelon Hot Pink N64's. All of them were translucent and were at the time very in, the cool kids at school all had one of these. When friends came over you would show your friends how cool the Watermelon N64 was. If you were a huge Pokemon fan you were in for a huge treat, a console that was a Pokemon fan's wet dream. The console not only had a Poke ball and Pikacku's feet as buttons, but when you turned it on Pikachu's cheeks flashed on and off and then stayed lit.
My moneys on red controller fuck blue controller!
Ok so four friends meet up too play some Super Smash Bros and you decide to play a team game of red vs blue. You can take this to the extreme and have two people using a blue controller and two people using a red controller. Thats right the colours were not just for the consoles, but for the controllers too. Most of the coloured consoles had a controller counterpart, but the controllers also had a few additional colours such as Atomic purple. The see through controllers really were awesome because you could see whenever you pressed a button or moved the joystick the inside would move around. There were a few cool controllers to that would have one colour one side and one colour on the other side. With my personal N64 I have a red controller, and whenever I play against a friend I always play with the Red controller while the rest have to play with the grey controller. When I went to a friends house even though they had enough controllers, I would bring my red one, it's like a lucky rabbit foot.
Just to remind you, Carts continue to be awesome!
The colours keep on coming with the release of coloured N64 carts, as the same as the console at launch it was just grey carts, but this soon expanded into really cool colours. There was green, yellow, red, yellow, black and even a few limited edition gold carts. Some of the carts were both in grey and in coloured version, the gold carts especially now are very rare and are worth a lot of money. But dude gold carts!
Thank you for reading Part II of my blog series about why the N64 is so great, incase you missed the first part you can find it here. Let me leave you with one last cool thing.
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