Why don't all N64 games use the Expansion Pak?
I mean, sure it was released in 1998, but the console was designed to accommodate it!
So from the start, Nintendo knew very well that they would add memory!!
So probably they didn't know how much it would be (2MB, 4MB or 6MB).
But still it was possible to make Mario 64 or Mario Kart more fluid with an addition of 2MB.
Didn't installing it reduce the clockspeed of the main memory? I remember reading that the expansion pak's bus was something like half the speed of the main RAM.
No that is not how RDRAM works.
>why don't games released before the expansion pak use the expansion pak
Nobody knows. It's a complete mystery.
NTA, but what, exactly, "is not how RDRAM works"? And how on God's green earth did you manage to confuse a console with a type or RAM? Anon asked if stories about how the system worked were true, not whether, well, whatever you imagine you were answering.
Not him but what the fuck are you on about. You said it reduced the memory speed, and he replied RDRAM doesn't work like that. You're both talking about ram
>You said
No I didn't. Unlike samefag coper (You) I'm not that anon. And that anon didn't say that. He asked that. So mystery solved. If you're confused about the difference between a question and a statement no wonder you're confused about the difference between a console and RAM. You're clearly also confused about what "you must be at least 18 years old to use this site" means.
I think you're on to something.
I remember VIVIDLY star wars racer running better with the jumper pack, the character select screen alone already ran better without the expansion pak, (i was in low res mode with the expansor to be clear), sadly i don't own a jumper pak to test this now.
Sounds like placebo to me
Wasnt placebo, it felt like the bar in ran at like 15 fps with the expac on and at 30 with it off.
Cunt, you were running it in hi-res mode
memory was never really the issue with the shit64, iirc most devs just used the expansion pak as extra disk space.
>Why don't all N64 games use the Expansion Pak?
You already answered your own question, because it came out in 1998. That's like asking why didn't all N64 games support the DD when the N64 was designed to accommodate it.
>So from the start, Nintendo knew very well that they would add memory!!
And how does that change games that were made before the addon came out?
>So probably they didn't know how much it would be (2MB, 4MB or 6MB).
Incorrect. RDRAM had to be installed in pairs, the system already had 4MB, so it could only add another 4MB. In fact, all RDRAM slots had to be occupied either by an actual RAM stick or a terminator (A CRIMM as it was called), that's what the Jumper Pak is and why the N64 won't function without it even though the only thing inside it is a bunch of resistors, because it acts as a CRIMM.
>But still it was possible to make Mario 64 or Mario Kart more fluid with an addition of 2MB.
More RAM isn't magic, it's not going to give you higher CPU or GPU performance unless the game is already hitting the limits of the existing RAM and constantly using the CPU to swap out data. It just lets you have more content loaded at once (Like the areas in DK64 or Perfect Dark's campaign mode) or attempt to render at a higher resolution.... which in many cases resulted in lower framerates (Hybrid Heaven did this, if you had an Expansion Pak you could enable hi-res mode, which looked much nicer but ran at a much slower framerate, I think Excitebike 64 did it too?)
So, they had to put 4MB. no more no less
So yes, it was released in 1998, but from 1996 they knew that the console would have an addition of 4MB!!
So when Nintendo developed Mario 64, they did so based on 4MB when they already knew that the console would later have 8MB.
One reason not to do it is because if you have two different modes of operation you have to extensively test both modes to make sure they work right. You don't want to work on an 8MB mode for a product that won't be out for two years only to then find out when the final product releases there are catastrophic bugs you didn't catch.
Nintendo couldn't make 8MB development kits?
Since 8MB is mandatory for the DD64 and Ocarina Of Time was planned on that in 1997, they must have had these 8MB kits in 1995-96.
At least Nintendo.
As
>One reason not to do it is because if you have two different modes of operation you have to extensively test both modes to make sure they work right. You don't want to work on an 8MB mode for a product that won't be out for two years only to then find out when the final product releases there are catastrophic bugs you didn't catch.
and
>Devs just don't develop for a piece of hardware they don't know when it will come out or if it even will and how it will turn out in the end. Even if they knew for certain the RAM pack would come out in 2 years, its specifities WILL change by then.
Explained, it's a very bad idea to develop for future hardware you don't have or even know the final specs for. This is what caused the whole Stop'n'Swop mess. It was a feature designed to work due to older specs of the N64 while it was still being developed, specs that changed and made it no longer viable. Many such expansion accessories even eventually end up getting cancelled (Like the SNES CD, or the US version of the 64DD), Sony devs ignored this and it caused a mess when the PocketStation never came out in the US and games had features locked behind it.
I don't think there was a single game where its "high resolution mode" didn't run at like 10-15 FPS, it was a godawful feature
you're right. it looked pretty good but was as slow as you described.
see pic
>(Hybrid Heaven did this, if you had an Expansion Pak you could enable hi-res mode, which looked much nicer but ran at a much slower framerate
It looks significantly better. A pretty big upgrade, I was pretty impressed when I picked up the game at some point. Unfortunately, the shitty framerate is immensely noticeable
dk could run without the pak its cause rare fucked up the code from the beginning and a memory leak would occur crashing the game constantly and they couldnt patch it due to how they coded it and the pak basically fixed it kind of? it allowed the memory leak to go on but it would take dozens of hours to occur which would likely never happen cause folk would save their game and turn off and back on another time thus resetting the leak and they would never encounter it
Proven false many times
no it has not you fucking retard
The "memory leak" story originates from some guy who didn't even work on the game. It's complete BS. This is what really happened, according to Mark Stevenson (lead artist of DK64):
>"This one’s a myth. The decision to use the Expansion Pak happened a long time before the game shipped, in fact we were called in by management and told that we were going to use the Expansion Pak and that we needed to do find ways to do stuff in the game that justified its use and made it a selling point. I think the bug story somehow got amalgamated into the Expansion Pak use and became urban myth."
Source: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/11/feature_donkey_kong_64_devs_on_bugs_boxing_and_20_years_of_the_dk_rap
Easy:
>Economically
As a dev, developping for the N64 was costly.
As a player, buying anything big N sold was expensive.
So, as a dev, the cheapest cartridge option, and supporting the smallest possible set of accessories was the default to go.
Some games don't even support the memory pack (even if, thanks to the cartridge, it's not mandatory).
So, not bothering with this add on, was the default solution.
Still a handful of games added partial support.
>Technologically
The N64 was a freaking workhorse.
It's only, VERY limiting factor was the RAMBUS.
To make it simple, the cartridge, CPU and GPU all shared the same (small) bandwidth.
And unfortunately, the GPU couldn't access directly to the cartridge.
So, loading a huge amount of data to the ram blocked the GPU, and then, you had a limited reads in the time it took to generate an image anyway.
So, basically, with the default microcode and knowledge of the console (so, simply put, not being Rare or Nintendo), you don't have much advantages to use the added RAM.
Good post to read
They had, and most games were planned from the get go to work on the 64DD (like Zelda, but also Mario very early version, and some other later titles.)
And it have been a pain in the ass to reduce Ocarina of Time to work on a plain N64 without expansion pack.
Even shitier was Majora's Mask, they said "fuck it! You don't want us to rewrite and compress the game and drop real time clock events? No. We will make a big cartridge with everything in it."
Tl;Dr: N64 was really a good technological platform, but this bandwidth really fucked everything.
Nintendo bad commercial decisions and very slow development broke it's second leg.
>Technologically
>The N64 was a freaking workhorse.
It's only, VERY limiting factor was the RAMBUS.
To make it simple, the cartridge, CPU and GPU all shared the same (small) bandwidth.
>And unfortunately, the GPU couldn't access directly to the cartridge.
>So, loading a huge amount of data to the ram blocked the GPU, and then, you had a limited reads in the time it took to generate an image anyway.
>So, basically, with the default microcode and knowledge of the console (so, simply put, not being Rare or Nintendo), you don't have much advantages to use the added RAM.
Of course it's possible.
This is the principle of Expension Pak!
Sometimes I feel like you're totally ignoring the fact that there are 63 Expension Pak compatible games on Nintendo 64.
For Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, the game works with or without EP, so Activision did it!!
It's doable !!
All the original consoles run Tony Hawk 2, the one with the EP has a better framerate.
My question is:
>Although it was released in 1999, Nintendo had:
-planned
-and had knowledge of the EP from 1995-96
- knew that by putting the original 4MB they could only put 4MB more
-the Ony devkit had between 64MB and 16GB of RAM.
So why not have (a little) benefit?
Everything was already there for 3 years!
That's why I'm talking about having a better framerate.
I suspect that for the resolution it requires more memory on the cartridges and that at the start of the console's life it was not huge.
But just have a better framerate does it take more memory on the cartridges?
>using quotation
without any
>consistency
Anyway...
The expansion pack basically adds RAM.
But it's the speed (and architecture) of the rambus that makes it slow (and it could theoretically go up to 500Mbps).
But in a fucked up conception, the GPU controls the RAM, and the data has to be giggled around a lot:
- The CPU asks the GPU to copy data from the cartridge to the RAM.
- The CPU may deflate data/texture if needed.
- The CPU set up the 3D scene objects position and put the data to the RAM (always asking the GPU to access the RAM)
- The CPU ask the GPU to access the RAM and compute the image from the RAM content (textures, object data and screen buffer)
- When done, the CPU asks the GPU to send the screenbuffer to the Visual Interface (that will munch and output the signals to display the screen buffer on TV)
It's painful, and the GPU is always shifting data right and left.
So adding more RAM won't just solve the speed problem.
In fact, as the RAMBUS is serial and not parallel, the more RAM chip you add, the longer it takes to access your data (the N64 can address 4Gb of RAM (32bits adress). Fortunately, and because of the cost, they limited it to 4Mb(ish) by default, and 4Mb(ish) additional with the expansion pack. Access time would have been terrible anyway.)
If you want to know more, I highly recomand you to read https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/nintendo-64/
I may have simplified a bit too much, but I hope you get the point.
>Of course it's possible.
Yeah, obviously. I even said so ( "Still a handful of games added partial support." )
But it was more of an afterthought / marketing / dev had time to spare than a real planned move most of the time.
>So why not have (a little) benefit?
Because it was a mess to manage and balance.
Even for the official devkits, the programming informations were sparse, and the microcode given by Nintendo, slow.
(I am hitting char limits)
Yeah, also. But the rambus impacted more things.
>Why don't all N64 games use the Expansion Pak?
Because not all developers fell for a trap of spending more time over designing cart games they had to be forced from buying from Nintendo towards end of its lifecycle.
>I mean, sure it was released in 1998, but the console was designed to accommodate it!
It was also designed to accommodate the jumper that did nothing included with the console.
>So from the start, Nintendo knew very well that they would add memory!!
They had no concept of how to make a 3D game more like. Their only experience was Argonaut holding their hand on Starfox. It's what would explain such a blatantly stupid inherent flaw such as , or perhaps it was to just shoot devs in the foot.
>So probably they didn't know how much it would be (2MB, 4MB or 6MB)
They still to this day have no idea how the fucking internet works.
Do you have some sort of neurodegenerative condition?
Your entire post is diarrhea.
>Do you have some sort of neurodegenerative condition?
"life"
>Your entire post is diarrhea.
Imagine making a console with a sweltering 2 first party developed titles for the first year. Then an astounding 2 the next. Then not even making the best looking games for your own console because you gimped yourself with a mistake of not knowing how RAM works and you're unable to use RAM tricks to work around stock settings.
>It's only, VERY limiting factor was the RAMBUS.
the texture cache was bad
Makes framerate worse on an already bottlenecked hardware.
Devs just don't develop for a piece of hardware they don't know when it will come out or if it even will and how it will turn out in the end. Even if they knew for certain the RAM pack would come out in 2 years, its specifities WILL change by then.
You should check the recent youtube video about Retrostudios and their work for Nintendo. At one point they mention working on a GameCube game, before the console's release, so the only devkit they had was an emulator, which turned out to greatly overestimate the capabilities of the final machine.
Just an example, but even if the specs remained the same, the way it worked would have been subject to change; which is fine for something still in dev, but not something released 2 years prior.
Anybody knows what do the expansion pak does in Stadium 2?
The Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak increases the texture resolution and overall image quality when inserted into the console, and also reduces how often data needs to be loaded when playing Pokémon Crystal in the Game Boy Tower.
Not the texture resolution but the image resolution.
If I recall correctly, there was at least one game released prior to the expansion pak that was able to make use of it. But, videogame consoles aren't like PCs. They are highly optimised for the targeted specs.
>Why don't all N64 games use the Expansion Pak
because the expansion pack came out late and barely any games were made with it in mind
And the ones that do don't utilise it properly
Smash Bros Remix is a good example of what it's potential was
Unfortunately cart size was also a factor
peak clueless-yet-answering-anywayposting
OK anon, tell me how I'm wrong
Yes I said it twice that it came out 3 years later.
But guys, you understand that even though the Expension Pak came out in November 1999, Nintendo didn't come up with the idea until October 1999.
Are you aware of this?
From the start the console is planned to go from 4MB to 8MB.
From 1995-96 they knew because they put a fucking hole at the top to put the pak expansion.
They developed games in 1996, 97 and 98 knowing that Expension Pak arrived.
> From the start the console is planned to go from 4MB to 8MB.
Irrelevant because making games that couldn’t run on the base console would’ve been pointless and spending extra to cater to for a future product
I'm not asking to make Mario 64 only compatible with the EP.
But like most games like Star War Racer, Road Rash 64 , Tony Hawk 2 or Top Gear Overdrive.
That is to say a basic mode which works with the basic console (4MB).
And then allow you to use the 8MB, just by becoming more fluid.
For multiplayer games like Mario Kart that wouldn't be luxury.
What would the early games do with the extra memory? Obviously none of them requires it, since it doesn't exist yet, and so it'd probably just alter graphics a little bit. The main alteration it apparently makes available is high-resolution mode, which isn't that great without a processor upgrade to go with the memory upgrade. Having the option of enabling high-resolution mode in old games would be cool, but it's not that big a deal. And it wouldn't be free for the developers to add it since they'd have to tune it and bugtest it and always be worrying about framerate being acceptable in both modes rather than in just one.
Hasn’t already been proven with smash remix that games could’ve potentially run smoother?
There’s also that megatexture demo that was made recently
of course it could work.
All games there are lots of games having a mode With or Without Expension Pak!!
Why wasn't it possible for Mario 64 when Nintendo had already planned the Expension Pak?
Your entire point and this thread hinges on a flawed logic.
First - You assume that game devs got developer units with expansion packs/larger memory.
Second - ever heard about vaporware? Imagine bs that would be developing games with expansion pack in mind and then getting info that for certain reasons said expansion is axed. It's especially important to note because N64 already was pain in ass for devs. No one should risk working on project with addon that may be released in 3 years in mind.
The really early games like Mario 64, they didn't even know what the final console specs were going to be while they were developing the game, they were going based off of projections from the hardware engineers. Even something like a future-proof resolution option, that far out from release of the expansion pak, probably felt like too many question marks.
Also, it's never a 100% guarantee that you're going to release something, even if your console design plans for it. The North American N64 has the serial port on the bottom for the N64DD, but they never released it outside of Japan. Same with the North American NES and Famicom Disk System.
Something like smoother animations and higher res textures would take up extra rom space on the cart. Devs probably wouldn't want to reserve that space for options that would only be available at some nebulous time in the future, and only be available to those who purchased the expansion pak.
It didn't do a whole lot except run some games that needed the extra memory. Hires mode often would do more harm than good.
Thanks for reminding me of this 50 dongle I had to buy just to run stupid PD and making me now have contemplate slight buyers remorse about my 64 as a whole for the first time. If only 1999 was the last year of it. Those ~2000 games were all unplayable with their 10 frames
*50 dollar
aka 100 of today's dollars
>2000 games
>A total of 388 Nintendo 64 games were officially released, with just 85 exclusively sold in Japan.
year 2000. 'cmon man i said if only it only went up to year 1999 because 2000 was bad' and you can't grasp what 2000 referred to
The year 2000 was amazing, it really felt like we were moving into the future. Then 9/11 happened and we have this
Are you talking about n64 games?
Both games and as a society. N64 remeasrs in 2000 were
>Majora's mask
>Perfect dark
>Paper Mario
>No mercy
>Pkm stadium 2
>Sin and punishment
That's bready gud, manon.
Releases*
my mistake i thought turok 2 was a 2000 game. turns out frame rates went out the window and muh hd mode muh expand pack ruination was occurring even by 1998.
Turok 3 came out in 2000 on gbc, if that's any consolation
A lot of games ran awfully with it in.
A few games you pretty much needed it / were required.
this
i have two faggy systems bc of this
one with the majoras mask jumper
and one without
not being able to flip a setting or jumper back to stock settings was a tard move
That's a limitation of rdram. It needs a terminator at the end of the bus.
>i have two faggy systems bc of this
That's on you
>not being able to flip a setting or jumper back to stock settings was a tard move
Nah. Nintendo should have just not allowed devs to make games run like ass by default when the expansion pak was there.
You can just turn high resolution off in the game's settings. There is no reason to have two systems or switch between the expansion pak and the jumper.
Well, except for Space Station Silicon Valley.
Irrelevant if you have an ED
There’s a romhacked one that fixes that and other issues
Some games wouldn't let you do that
which games?
are there any hacks that takes advantaged of the expansion pax?
most require it but only because they're poorly programmed
Yes, the smash remix game requires it. Runs flawless even in a bootleg everdrive.
How fucking retarded are you morons.
The expansion pak was extra memory. It cost a lot at the start of the consoles life, you could add it a few years later when the price of memory had gone down.
Same as if you had a PC and bought it with one amount of ram that could be upgraded in future to twice that amount.
>you guts are retarded
>thinks nintendo products drop in price
>thinks consoles pre 7th gen are like PC's
lol
Most games that used the expansion pak only increased the resolution and sometimes this was at the cost of framerate. A very small number of games did other things with the expansion pak like: certain maps only available with the expansion pak, higher resolution textures, higher framerates (presumably triple buffering) at low res, extra graphical effects. F-1 World Grand Prix II enables replays with the expansion pak and remember, with Perfect Dark, single player campaign was only available if you had the expansion pak. The game that made the most use out of the expansion pak is clearly Majora's Mask.
So, what is the stock pak in the N64 for? I recall when I was younger when I installed the expansion pak, I had to remove something that was in there already. If that's just a memory expansion already, and the expansion pak is just a larger one, why isn't that original memory thing just built in???
A terminator to close the circuit
Is that literally it? I figured it could just be left empty like most expansion ports, including the port on the bottom of the N64
Have you not heard of a jumper in electronics before?
But anon, the n64 can't jump!
It literally is. But a very early model. It can't even ask if your name is Sarah Connor.
>Have you not heard of a jumper
We call them sweaters
I felt the placebo and thought Mario 64 had less slowdowns or ran slightly faster with this expansion inserted. Anyone else?
By the time the Expansion Pak was released the N64 was a distant second in the console market. Why bother developing for a niche console, to take advantage of an even nicher accessory?.
and that too.
In the end, how many Expension Paks were sold??
Because I don't understand why since 1999, Nintendo did not equip all new consoles with Expension Pak.
this would necessarily have increased the number of 8MB-consoles
RAM was really expansive back in the day.
The N64 was already expansive, no need to make it even more inaccessible...
Also, as a side note, the N64 devkit had even more memory, because of the debugger.
Rare used some of the debugger RAM to test functions in goldeneye, which they then had to squeeze back to the limited RAM of the normal console.
And during Perfect dark, they just go yolo, and fortunately, when they were told to reduce RAM usage to fit in a normal console, they call Donkey Kong and Majora's Mask to say, "they did it! Why not us?"
Else, most of the game would have been waaay shittier.
Fortunately, for us, they managed to keep the expansion pack and gave us a great game.
(read more here: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/12/feature_perfect_dark_turns_20_-_the_definitive_story_behind_the_n64_hit_that_outclassed_james_bond?page=4 )
you keep saying 'fortunately' as if PD's bloated molasses slog was a good result.
In 1999 4mb of extra ram would not have been that expensive
Going further back, what was the purpose of the expansion slot on the SNES? Do any US/EU released accessories even use it? PSX parallel port was disappointing too Action Replay devices, I think a VCD add-on and... That's it?
Like with any console
Potential add ons
Doesn’t mean they’d get made
>But still it was possible to make Mario 64 or Mario Kart more fluid with an addition of 2MB?
no
but code optimization, yes.
watch Kaze Emanuar (https://www.youtube.com/@KazeN64) on youtube.