Spencer+-+Nintendo+64

= The Nintendo 64 =

Video games have been a big part of history when it comes to electronics from the cathode ray tube displaying the first video game ever to the Xbox Kinect allowing players to play video games without a controller, video games have been and always will be around because there will always be a loyal fan base waiting for the next big adventure or the next world war. Video gaming evolution has taken place in two ways, the video games and the video game consoles. One such console that stood out above all the rest was the Nintendo 64, this console inspired a generation of video gamers and video game developers alike. =The Nintendo 64 gets its start = The Nintendo 64 hit the market for the first time in early 1996 in Japan then North America then later that year it was released in Europe and Australia and in 1997 it was released to the public in France and Brazil at the end of the year. It lasted 6 years in North America and Japan and then production was stopped in 2002. This was due mostly to the fact that the games that were sold for it were long outdated due to the fact that they used game cartridges instead of the disc format which allowed for more to be put into the video game. In North America the N64 was sold for $199 and was a huge hit, it became the thing where everyone who could would get one. With all of the different colors, art, and customizable controllers that you could get on the console it appealed to many people, sometimes Nintendo would even hold huge contests where they would giveaway golden controllers.(Source 4) =The Nintendo64's Drawbacks and Revolutionary Ideas= The Nintendo 64 was a console that set standards for all future consoles with its revolutionary ideas and design, but all of these ideas and such did not mean the console was perfect. Although the Nintendo 64 was a powerful console it lacked the capability’s to do such things as have intricate scripted scenes and a higher sound quality due to the fact that it used a cartridge system for storing video game data while its competitor Sony used a disc drive on their PlayStation which allowed it to play many great games such as the finale fantasy series and this made them loose a lot of customers. The console did have some very good games though, they were Super Mario 64, Goldeneye, and at the tail end of its lifetime Perfect Dark, the games goldeneye and Super Mario are both considered to be in the top ten of games of best games of all time.(Source 5) With the invention of the rumble pack and the analog stick the Nintendo 64 set the way for which gaming controllers need to be built While at the time the most famous form of movement controls was the D-pad which put the camera and the movement buttons on the same spot so this limited the movement and viewing in games, but the Nintendo 64 introduced the revolutionary idea to add an analog stick in the center which controlled the camera. This analog stick allowed for 3Dand first person shooter games to come to the home console instead of only being playable on the PC with a mouse and keyboard. Games like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark showed the world that the FPS is not only a computer game type it showed that it was a console game type too and is one that is the largest game type sold in the world on console with games like Halo, Battlefield, and Call of Duty. while this was a great idea that changed the face of gaming it only had one joy stick and still had the D-pad be the main form of control on the console it was not until the PlayStation manufatucterd by Sony one of their biggest competitors did the duel analog become the future of gaming. The N64 with its great additions to controllers with such things as the rumble pack which allowed vibration of the controller which would happen if the player took damage or shot a gun.(Source 1)(Source 6) =Mario= To really understand the Nintendo 64 you have to understand Nintendo and to understand Nintendo you need to understand the most well know hero throughout the electronic world and who would that be you ask, well “it’s a-me Mario”. Mario is the game that is the reason the company Nintendo is still around today. Mario was the game that every gamer has played once and the by far most cherished in the series is Super Mario 64, this game was a real game changer and it is one of the real reasons Nintendo has so many loyal followers to this day. media type="youtube" key="57clXvePxSs" height="283" width="378" Mario did not start out like most games, he originally came from the game donkey Kong which was a game starring a gorilla that stole the princess from a castle and took her away and it was Jump man’s (Mario) job to rescue her which involved making it up a series of platforms and jumping over barrels but it wasn’t until donkey Kong jr. that Mario was created, although he did not have the name he had the appearance of Mario with the blue overalls and red shirt and hat and his moustache. It seems Mario was a big addition to the Nintendo library and without it they would have probably gone down in flames with the video game market crash in 1983. Without Mario Nintendo would have never been able to get enough money to start producing their own console and without consoles like the Nintendo 64 we probably would not be able to play 3D games on consoles like we can today. Without Mario the face of video gaming would be very different.(Source 3) =The games that changed gaming= As the days of Nintendo 64 started to come to an end so did its games, by 2000 the games had lost the touch that was there at the beginning of everything. They did release a few tiles that deserve some praise such as Paper Mario, Banjo Tooie, and Perfect Dark, if Perfect Dark would have been around a year earlier it would probably be considered to be one of the best Nintendo games along with Goldeneye and Mario 64. Just at the tail end of the 64 era the game the game conkers bad furday which was overall an unfit game to be the game that was the end of Nintendo 64. Super Mario 64, killer instinct, Mario kart, star fox 64, and goldeneye were all games that prospered very much along with others in the Nintendo 64 era while its competion was riding the wave of just one over talked game. such games as Super Mario 64 and star fox 64's sequel that came out on the Nintendo 64' follower the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES for short and based on what I have played on Mario and star fox they really are great games that deserve to be remembered throughout gaming history.(Source 6) == Banjo-Kazoo and Mario party were big games in Nintendo’s history with the intricate freedom and vechial creation and Mario party fun and interesting multiplayer mode that could play up to four players at a time. The game star wars rouge squadron was a game that started the beginning of a great time for gamer that loved star wars because it untimely showed that the public would love star wars games and influenced the creation of star wars battlefront 1-2 and soon to be 3 and the game star wars force unleashed 1 and 2. The last game of 1998 was one of the best Zelda games of all time; it was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The N64 had a huge impact on the MLG community with the game Super Smash Bros. making two sequels that have become a tournament favorite for MLG player, MLG players are players who have been chosen to join a group of professional player who get paid to play against each other in tournaments. (Source 6) The play style that came with the Nintendo 64 could never be carried over to any console with games like star fox, Banjo Kazooie, or even with the remake of Goldeneye. The Nintendo 64 was a Console that hanged the way people play and experience videogames and without it video games would not be as big as they are now and the market would not be as large as it is. The Nintendo 64 truly is a console that should be remembered through generations of gaming. Conker's Bad Fur Day released which was an ok game up until the end, the basic story was the king who is a panther has a broken table leg and wants to use Conker who is a red squirrel as a replacement so he has his scientist try to capture him and conker is just trying to get home to his girlfriend but on the way he has to help fight evil Nazi bears then when he gets home him and his girlfriend are forced to rob a bank by the local mafia which is really a trap set by the king and they end up getting captured and taken to the castle where the king kills conkers girlfriend but then is killed by alien made by the scientist who then tries to kill conker who destroyed the Nazi bears which was another creation of his and they get launched into low orbit where conker opens the airlock pushing the scientist and the body of his girlfriend into deep space then is attacked by the alien and just as it jumps at him everything stops and the worst thing that could happen in a video game does, conker breaks the fourth wall and talks to the developer taking the player out of the story completely and is given a katana and is teleported to the throne room where he kills the alien and is crowned king and then realizes his girlfriend is still dead and asks the developer to bring her back but realizes that he is gone and this leads into a monologue about how some things just come to an end no matter how good they are and that something better will come along to fill the void but in hindsight this seem like telling the gamers on the 64 that Nintendo 64 was over.(Source 6) =Conclusion = Conkers bad fur day marked the end of the Nintendo 64 and all that came with it. Nintendo knew that Nintendo 64 was coming to an end and there was nothing they could do about it, it had just simply become outdated and like every outdated toy now it was just thrown out or sold in hopes of getting money to buy the next new thing. Nintendo did release more consoles after the N64 was discontinued but they never had the success that the Nintendo 64 did, it wasn’t until the Wii came out that then Nintendo became a competitor in the console market. The Nintendo 64 was truly a magnificent piece of machinery and should always be considered among some of the best gaming consoles all time.