For the longest time, I have had a Nintendo 64 gathering dust in a drawer. During a spring clean, however, I decided to put the console on display on a bookcase alongside my other retro games and gaming equipment. This got me wondering whether the console still worked and, if it did, whether it would be possible to use it with a relatively modern television.
Last week, I checked where I keep my old cables and found the Nintendo 64 power supply, an RCA to HDMI video converter that I had previously used with my PlayStation 2, and a Nintendo 64 SCART cable. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a Nintendo 64 controller, Memory Pak or AV RCA cable. After checking eBay, however, I was able to pick up all three for around £20. They were all unofficial third-party accessories, but for the price, I thought it was worth a try.
The new accessories arrived earlier in the week, and thankfully, everything seems to have worked rather well. The picture is a little grainy, possibly because the RCA-to-HDMI converter is a very cheap one, or perhaps because I need to adjust the display ratio. Despite this, there is no noticeable latency, and the sound quality is excellent, making my copy of Perfect Dark immediately playable.
Unfortunately, with the exception of Perfect Dark, I gave away or possibly traded in my Nintendo 64 game collection some 20-plus years ago. However, getting the console working again has made me excited at the prospect of starting a new collection. There is also the possibility of using the same setup with a SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System), or Super Famicom as it was known in Japan, a console I have always wanted to own. Perhaps getting the Nintendo 64 working again will be the start of something bigger, but I am a little strapped for cash right now so can’t go crazy.
Turning on the Nintendo 64 is a refreshing reminder of just how simple gaming was back in the late 90s. Everything is essentially plug and play. There are no console updates, no game updates and, of course, no internet connection. You plug it in, turn it on and play. It is also remarkably quiet, almost completely silent, in fact. Unlike the PlayStation, which used a mechanical CD drive, the Nintendo 64 loaded its games from cartridges, so there are no moving parts involved in reading the game itself. It feels wonderfully simple by modern standards.
I have to say that, as a console, I think the Nintendo 64 was superior to the PlayStation, its main competitor at the time. One of Nintendo’s big selling points was the 64-bit architecture, compared with the PlayStation’s 32-bit. While the number of bits alone doesn’t tell the whole story about the performance of either console, it certainly became a major part of the Nintendo 64’s identity. The cartridges also had some advantages. Depending on the game, save data could be stored directly on the cartridge, while the Nintendo 64 also supported a Controller Pak for games that required one. The console also came with four controller ports as standard, rather than the PlayStation’s two, making multiplayer gaming much easier without needing an additional accessory.
On paper, the Nintendo 64 had a lot going for it. However, Sony’s PlayStation had one very significant advantage: games. The PlayStation library was considerably larger, with a huge variety of titles from both Sony and third-party developers. The console was also cheaper for consumers, which made it an attractive alternative to Nintendo’s more expensive cartridge-based system. Looking back now, it is interesting to see how differently the two companies approached the same market. Nintendo had the hardware and some truly memorable first-party games, while Sony embraced CDs, third-party developers and a much broader game library. At the time, it was an interesting rivalry, and one that would ultimately shape the future of console gaming.
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