/vr/ - Retro Games

>>1830521
extra ram

>>1830521
Expands Dong.

So you can play Donkey Kong 64

It just adds more RAM for games that need it. Saturn had a similar card.

>friend refused to get an Expansion Pak because he thought he would lose his Goldeneye saves

How come there aren't more hardware mods involving the expansion port?

>>1830521
It expands the N64's memory, obviously.

>>1830570
I too am wondering this

>>1830570
Because it's attached to the RAM bus and nothing else. The only thing you can do with it is put in extra RAM. And not just any RAM, it has to be RDRAM which nobody makes anymore.

>N64 friends needed hardware expansions to play their games

toplaughingps1guy.jpg

>>1830521
N64: DK Expansion.
I don't think it did nothing more.

>>1831097

Other games also required it, Majora's Mask or Perfect Dark.
Some games like Hybrid Heaven or Star Wars Racer also used the expansion to get display at higher resolutions and get better textures, sacrificing some framerate.

>>1831109

I'd say it sacrifices A LOT of framerate. If I recall correctly, Shadow Man also uses the expansion pack.

>>1831086

There was also a RAM expansion for the Saturn, you know.

>>1831127
>N64 being lumped together with that abomination.

You're not helping things.

>>1831143

Why are you mild shitposting?

>>1831153
Damn, I bet you gobbled up everything nintendo through out there didn't you.

59.99$ Superman 64! Yes please! May I have some more sir?

Just because you liked having a system that couldn't even handle new games without hardware expansions, and I didn't, doesn't mean I'm shitposting. It just means, I'm upsetting you with truths you don't want to hear.

>>1830521
It makes DK64 not crash for unknown reasons.

>>1831118
the expansion pack doesn't really make the system any faster, but it does provide enough memory to fit a 640x480 framebuffer while still giving the dev room for other stuff. So it's still the same goofy N64 architecture trying to pump out 4x the pixels.

>>1831167
>Just because you liked having a system that couldn't even handle new games without hardware expansions, and I didn't

Thank you for confirming you're just a salty single-system owning peasant who needs to shitpost about 20 year old console war to feel better about his shitty childhood with only 1 system. You reuly are a great contributor to /vr/'s quality posting.

>>1831173
>assuming I only had one system
Wow great posting anon. You really dug up the hard facts on my personal life for that insightful post.

>>1831173
Going to samefag here and say, holy fuck are you buttravaged. Fanboys are pathetic.

>>1831180

The whole point of that post is that fanboys ARE pathetic. Console wars from 20 years ago, I mean come on.

>>1831185
Consoles wars weren't real.
Not once did one of my friends in school or in life ever say "LEL YOU HAVE A N64, WHAT A NERD".

No we all played our vidya, and loved it.

>>1831187
This, but without obnoxiously using the term "vidya"

>>1831086
Still buttmad about the PS1 not being able to run 2D games properly unlike the glorious almost arcade perfect 2D ports on Saturn?

>>1831191
Having to type out 'Video games' 50 times a day on a board with an established shortend word is obnoxious.

>>1831192
Nobody loved you saturn. Just stop.
Dreamcast was everything you wish you could be, and more.

>>1831206
/v/ is right about sony fans
please go back there

>>1831212
>Dreamcast was made by sony

Holy fuck. The levels of retardation in this thread never stop reaching new heights.

>>1831191
>50 times a day

i'm currently on my laptop in bed and don't have a constanza.jpg

>>1831191

>>1831216
meant for
>>1831203

>>1831086
Eh, I'd say not using any optional RAM expansions was one of the Playstion's biggest shortcomings. If they did, they could have had far better arcade ports, most of which ended up being very lackluster compared to the Saturn.

>>1831206
Nonsense. Not only did the Saturn have far superior controllers(both original and 3D pad) but it also was a 2D powerhouse in a time when 2D games were getting more and more uncommon. In Japan at least, it filled a significant niche in the market.

There are even some games which run better on Saturn than on Dreamcast, like Street Fighter Zero/Alpha 3.

>>1831310
Did the serial port on the back of the PS1 have support for ram type add-ons or was that just video related.

>>1831314
I think that port was only compatible with link cables or communications devices, but the Parallel I/O port on earlier revisions would probably have been able to do RAM expansions.

>>1831343
Oops, yeah I think I named incorrectly.

>>1831343
I very much doubt any of those ports have the bandwidth to support RAM addons. It's like, you can't just add RAM via USB on your PC. The usefulness of RAM is its speed, nothing more. Only specially designed ports that feed directly into the RAM pathways on a motherboard can have extra RAM plugged into them.

>>1831375
You are probably right. The PC Engine did have dedicated RAM expansions for the card slot though, as do a few cartridge games on other systems. Were all cartridge slots designed like this?

Quake 2 64 also used it.
As did F-Zero X.

Its just a RAM upgrade, not all games benefit from it but specific ones were made in mind to benefit from it. F-Zero X actually needs it, but Quake 2 64 just uses it as a graphical enhancer.

Starcraft 64 needed it in order to access the Brood War levels.

I was never really sure if the newer maps/units actually required the extra memory or if it was just "if you want to play the expansion pack you need to have the Expansion Pak! Get it? TROLOLOLOL!!"

>>1832936
I felt the same way with Rush 2049. Seems like they just locked things out to get you to buy the Expansion Pak.

>>1832784

F-Zero X does not *need* the expansion pack. I got it for Christmas '99 and didn't get my expansion pack until like 2002 (seriously).

You need it for:
Donkey Kong 64
Majoras mask
You'll also need it for Perfect Dark, only the multiplayer challenges are available without it and it's shite.

Aside from that loads and loads of games use it for "graphics stuff" mostly 640x480 resolution but it could also be used to help with the framerate or colour depth, I think Resident Evil 2 does all 3.

Remarkably Conkers Bad Fur Day doesn't use it. God knows what they could have achieved with it.

In some cases, RAM expansions are used as a crutch. One significant example is Final Fight Revenge on the Saturn, which uses the 4MB RAM cartridge and was one of the last games on the system, yet still looks terrible and worse than the other Saturn 3D fighters like Virtua Fighter 2 and Fighters Megamix, which don't use any expansions.

>>1832968
Resident Evil 2 loads more textures, so there are fewer blurry torsos and whatnot. There's a whole article out there on what exactly it does for the game, replete with screenshots, but since Google's indexing has been shit up horribly, it's impossible to find.

>>1833004
I thought it did something other than the resolution and that would probably be it. It looks pretty nice. It's a shame about the article you mentioned

Incidentally the dynamic way it switches the resolution depending on the number of enemies means that it's really quite difficult to play on an LCD screen.

a full list of games that utilize it and to what end is on the wikipedia article you retarded faggots

i know you need to stroke off and use 4chan as a social network replacement for your sperg ass but could you please have more than a superficial interest in retro gaming that goes beyond nostalgia for three games before posting

thanks

>>1831109
Turok 2 could also play in high res if you had the expansion.

>>1831343
They made something called the "vram", I think, for the parallel port, but it was just a really really big memory card for saves.

>>1830521
Fuck.
If I am not mistaken, this shit was the reason that I could not play OoT when I was like 12

For some reason when I got home with my brand new OoT, I wasn't able to play it...oh.. the despair.... that day changed me...

>>1833018
You're welcome.

>>1833131
You are mistaken.

>>1830521
>My console doesn't currently have one but the graphics look fine to me.
You should try to play a game that requires it.

The RAM expansion isn't magic. Having more RAM doesn't make the base system more powerful. It just gives the developers more room and flexibility.

Conker didn't use it cause they already maxed the N64 and there's not really much of a way that extra RAM could have helped.

Believe it or not the system was actually well designed and balanced in some respects. It's just the memory architecture is intolerant of code that isn't specifically worked for its nuances.

>>1831187
>Consoles wars weren't real.
They were, and still are.

>>1831167
Yes, because Nintendo totally made Superman 64.

>>1835149

>>1835167
Oh I get it, you're pretending to be retarded.

My question would be... why didn't they just include that much ROM in the system in the first place?

It must have always been intentional to develop an add-on for the system since they created the door on the front of the system/removable ROM cartridge. Would that area have served any other purpose other than the expansion pack, or were they just aware they were going to try and charge people later for something they may have been able to include from the start?

>>1835167
Seal of Quality was a promise that it was a legitimate cartridge and that it wouldnt fuck up your system.
It said nothing about the quality of the game itself.

>>1835197
To keep costs down.

>>1835192
Oh I get it, You love being lied to by nintendo.
Just like the little faggot you are.

>>1835167
>Thinking the seal means Nintendo made it

>>1835198
They didn't need to slap that on the cover.
They sure didn't say underneath it what the quality was assuring.

>>1835206
Nintendo is vouching for the game.
You could slap a hello world program on the cartridge and they would put "SEAL OF QUALITY" on the cover.


Contrary to what other faggots are saying. They didn't put that shit on the cover to try and convince people it was a legit cart. It's all marketing.

>>1835215
The "seal of quality" wasn't really a measure of quality. It just meant that the game was officially licensed by Nintendo and not some bootleg game.

>>1835224
Could you not put that on the back?
Yes you could. But, instead they used the seal for the real purpose. Trying to church up their games to be Luxurious and valuable looking, compared to PS1 that didn't have any type of "guarantee" on the cover.

That seal maybe have been for the purpose of legit carts in the NES days, but after SNES it was for marketing, because it looks nice to a consumer.

>>1835231
>Trying to church up their games to be Luxurious and valuable looking, compared to PS1 that didn't have any type of "guarantee" on the cover.

Is that why they were doing it in the 80s, long before Sony was in the console biz? Damn you, Nintendo, hoarding all the crystal balls on Earth. Let us have some, too.

>>1835279
Did you seriously reply without even reading the whole post? fuck you.

>>1835285
Are you seriously being retarded? No, sir, fuck you.

If the seal of quality was on NES games, there's no reason to expect it was on N64 and beyond for the sole purpose of "looking good" in front of Sony. This is you pulling bullshit straight out of your rectum. I'd say "and you know it", but I have the sneaking suspicion that you're deluded enough to think you actually know what you're talking about.

>>1835224
>>1835231
The Nintendo Official Seal of Quality was designed as a measure to prevent bootlegged carts during the NES era, and also as a safeguard against shovelware like ET, which was largely blamed for the Atari crash.
As time went on, the SNES and N64 both also featured the Seal of Quality standard, although its necessity as a marketing device had longed pass with the resurgence of videogames.

The Seal of Quality has never, ever been used as a means of endorsing or trying to label a product as an 'official' Nintendo device. This misconception comes from Nintendo's NES-era quality assurance policy, in which they rarely allowed third party development that was not somehow brokered by Nintendo itself.

>>1835296
You're just making yourself look retarded.
I don't mind. Anyone that has any education in marketing and business knows what the truth is.

It's also why SEGA had to do the same thing.
They didn't want to be the console without a seal of quality on the cover. That would make them seem lesser than nintendo. Again, for marketing, they added it.


I honestly, don't care what your shitty opinion is, because you've shown yourself to not be anywhere near smart enough to discuss such topics. So, again, fuck off.

>>1835304
>Anyone that has any education in marketing and business knows what the truth is.

What is this, code for "Bullshit I pulled out of my ass and decided to spout?"

>So, again, fuck off.

Telling someone to fuck off after being called out on bullshit. Heh.

>>1835224
>>1835231
>>1835296
That's only partly true. One of the Rare guys confirmed in an interview that you have to earn the Seal of Quality by demonstrating that the game is bug-free and doesn't lock up. It has to pass 5 days' testing without finding any bugs or lock-ups at Nintendo of America and then 48 hours' non-stop testing at Nintendo of Japan. It's partly a marketing device but not entirely. It's also a guarantee that the game actually works, which was a big deal after the Atari, and surprisingly is a big deal again these days. How many modern AAA games do you think could get that seal?

>>1831079

so nintendo made the n64 knowing full well they would need to add more ram to it one day and nothing else?

>>1830521
it was something that printed money for jewtendo

>>1831314
>>1831343

i had a gameshark that plugged into the rear port of the psx

my cousin had this thing that would let you play gameboy games on the psx, plugged into the same spot

>>1835330
>my cousin had this thing that would let you play gameboy games on the psx, plugged into the same spot

Wat

>>1835338
something like this

>>1830521
It came with copies of Donkey Kong 64 because there was some bug in the game that would make it crash every time you turned it on.

Giving these out with the game was the quickest and easiest fix.

>>1835365
You'd think delaying the game to fix the crash and NOT bundle in expansion pacs would have more cost effective.

But now that I look at the release date, it was right before christmas in every region.

>>1835348
Neat!

How was the accuracy?

>>1835482

as i recall, it worked fine, but the sound was shoddy

>>1835457
Yeah, any more delays would have cost more than the extra costs induced by including the Expansion Pak. In the end, it also improved Majora's Mask's sales(which did not bundle the Expansion Pak outside of Japan) as more people already owned it.

>>1835298
>safeguard against shovelware like ET, which was largely blamed for the Atari crash.

ET was rushed through production and overproduced and overpushed by Warner, the parent company of Atari at the time, so it was not ATARI's fault the fucking game became the alleged abomination it is.

>>1835457
It wasn't just that. Rare built the game to work both with and without the Expansion Pak. The difference between the two was that the version with the Pak would have a higher resolution. However, beta testing kept on triggering a game-crashing bug in the Pak-less version and Rare just couldn't find what was causing it, even after looking for ages. They decided just to dummy out the Pak-less version and force people to play the Pak version which didn't have the game-crashing bug.

>>1833009
Oh, it does pump up the resolution, to the best of my recollection (not like I couldn't look it up on GameFAQS or anything, but I can't bother). Sorry if my phrasing seemed like the textures were the only improvement.

>>1835314
>How many modern AAA games do you think could get that seal?

None because they all avoid Nintendo. Nintendo is FAR from what they used to be.

>>1835592
It was unified memory that ran at the same speed as the system bus; similar to how integrated graphics in laptops work; but not limited to textures, framebuffer, etc. A few games used it for both more complex maps and a FB.

>>1835167
>doesn't even know what it means

>>1835329
>it was something that printed money for jewtendo
It actually caused Rareware to lose a bunch of money because they had to bundle it with DK64.

>>1835324
Pretty much, yes.

They also had the expansion port on the bottom for stuff like the 64DD.

>>1836090
There was at least one CD drive that plugged into that port for playing burned games.

>>1835324
Wouldn't be the first or last time their console's expandable hardware capabilities weren't fully realized

>>1835914
Wasn't DK64 the last Rare game to even use it?

>>1832784
F Zero X neither needed nor required the expansion pack.In fact, of all Nintendo in-house games, only Majora utilised it.

3rd and 2nd parties used it mainly.
DK64
Perfect Dark
Turok from 2 onwards
Hybrid Heaven
Star Wars games from Rogue Squadron onwards
ISS 2000
Quake 2
Dick Kickem Zero Hour
RE2
Pokeman Stadium 2

and some more I don't remember

>>1835906

Apparently you don't. ;)

>>1835314

>>1835197
RAM, not ROM ya dingus.

Why didn't other consoles (except the saturn) ever have their own expansion pak-like devices?

>>1837424
Good question. I'd like an answer to that as well because it seems like it would be a good way to match the gap between PC and consoles in terms of performance.

>>1837434
I'm sure the PS3 would benefit from it since I've heard devs were having a hard time with its RAM limitations.

But the PS3 isn't /vr/.

>>1835542
Have we since found out what the bug was? I'd be interested to learn about it.

>>1831343
I thought the parallel I/O port was something left over from the dev kits and Sony was too lazy to remove them from consumer units until it was found that some of the cheat carts that used the port could bypass the copy protection.

>>1833587
>well designed and balanced
>just as much of a clusterfuck that was the Saturn's design

>>1837424
well actually, the 3DO was going to get the M2 expansion pack, which would've beefed up its capabilities even more, but the 3DO tanked and the expansion never came out.

>>1837424
The ability to make your own pack is always there, as long as you have some kind of IO port. Damn, Atari didn't develop any kind of expansion capability for 2600 and people used addressing pins for RAM expansions.
PS1 had serial/parallel ports (plus if we include memory cards), PS2 had the "expansion bay" (early models having PCMCIA) + USB 1.1 etc.

Also, does anyone know speeds of those ports?

>>1837479
I'm not sure that bug has been found, Chris Seavor and the rest of the Conker's Bad Fur Day devs had mentioned the DK64 pakless bug in passing on their Conker's Bad Fur Day Let's Play and that was fairly recent.

>>1837594
Comparing the N64's design to the Saturn is ridiculous.

The N64's schematic is literally CPU -> GPU <- -> RAM instead of the crazy juggling of like 8 processors and little RAM pools and shit on the Saturn.

The fact is that the N64 was actually quite well (though not perfectly) designed. Most of the weaknesses was caused by cost-cutting. Nintendo had essentially developed a console that was considerably cheaper to manufacturer than the Playstation and yet had higher specifications.

I remember that I think it was on the Beyond3D forums, people on there attempted to make a theoretical redesign of the N64 while conforming to what was available for production in 1996 and at similar levels of cost - and nobody was able to do it. Nintendo basically had made the best decisions in every possible way for the price level they were targeting.

Sure the N64's RDRAM is high latency, but the bandwidth is amazing - that's not the reason Nintendo chose it. Nintendo chose RDRAM because they were able to get an excellent discount on it from their partnership with SGI who designed the N64's GPU.

>>1838664
The N64's general clunkiness is because of the types of games made for it, not the specs, which are great for 96. It COULD do full open 3d games, which the PSX really can't, but that doesn't mean it should have done them. If they had done more 2d/pre-rendered/gouraud-shading games, the 64 would seem much more impressive next to the PSX in retrospect. PSX used pre-rendered backdrops like it was going out of style.

Ahh 3DO. I remember the ps1 titles i had from that company like Army Men: Land, Sea, Air and Battle Tanks: Global Asssult. good times :)

>>1838664
Also Rambi the Rhino from DKC was named after RAMBUS.

>>1838073
they were never able to determine the exact conditions to reproduce the bug, it's the whole reason the game comes with the RAM expansion (the bug only happens without the RAM expansion)

I had gotten this when it come out and enjoyed the hell out of what it opened up for the games.
However, a friend pointed out that the fact that the games were somewhat crippled without it and the fact that the Expansion Slot was so prominent meant that Nintendo had intentionally put out an incomplete console and was using these addons to make more money. Basically, he came to the same conclusion of what many think of modern "incomplete" games that are only "fixed" afterwards for a price. In a way, he was right.

I for the mos part resented the N64 for all the hardware bullshit like the ram expansion and the shitty gamepads.

Why not make a updated version of the N64 with expansion included into the base hardware sometime within the console's lifespan?

I'm guessing updating the N64 production for added RAM would be not add to profits that selling an overpriced RAM module did?

>>1835338
>my cousin's dad works at Sonytendo!

>>1838905
Pretty much. Lots of N64 games were just too damn ambitious. I remember there was an article I read where Miyamoto said that Sony developers were going to experience what it was like making "real" 3D games with the PS2.