THE RANT: So it's 1996 and Sony and Sega have both released their 32 bit machines and are quickly stomping all over Nintendo's SNES sales. Nintendo had it's "Project reality" in the works for some time but continuously lagged while it perfected the machine. To their credit they did a halfway decent job, this system is innovative in that it brought back analog sticks as controllers for 3rd person 3d games, which in my opinion is the first good use of an analog stick. Finally in 1996 the Nintendo 64 debuted to a mixed reaction. Initially sales were strong due to the fabulous Mario 64, which was the only reason to buy this system in my opinion. But as time went on the limits of cartridge media became apparent: While carts had zero load times CDs had greater storage capacity, thus better sounds, music, and larger games. Nintendo's hardware was technically superior to the competition, but due to the limits of cartridges it's full capabilities were never utilized. Nintendo changed strategy and went for the kiddy market with it's Pokemon games, and released several Pokemon themed N64s to boot. They laughed all the way to the bank as millions of kids "had to catch them all." This alone probably saved the N64 from a very short shelf life. There was a N64 DD "Disk drive" add-on that was only sold in Japan (it only has 10 games, including F-zero expansion, Mario pant, and Mario 64 DD.) The N64 hung on until 2001 when the Gamecube was released.  

THE GOOD: Pretty powerful system with a lot of good games. The best reason to buy this machine is for Mario 64, probably the best game ever made. Almost all the other games from Nintendo's in house people kick bootay as well, Mario cart R, Super smash brothers, Zelda 64, Paper Mario, F-Zero 64, all of them rock. Some of the 3rd party games are pretty good too (my favorite being Goldeneye,  Turok 2, and Doom 64.) The DD drive should work fine with American systems. 

THE BAD: There are some serious stinkers for this machine. Usually if you put the N64 version of a game right next to a Playstation, the N64 has better graphics, the Playstation has better sound and playability. N64 graphics tend to be flat textured polygons, and because of the cart media most of the time characters tend to be very blocky. If those bozos in charge had not been so afraid of Piracy and went to CD then the graphics would have been better simply because of the sheer amount of data a CD can hold.

I'm sorry, I just don't like N64 controllers. They are too big, and too weird looking. Instead of putting the analog stick on the side next to the cross pad they put it on this third prong-thingy that juts out of the middle of the controller. It's just hard to get used to. The controllers not cheap, just somewhat fragile. Analog sticks tend to break and not center right (a problem ever since the early 80s.) Can't someone invent an analog cross pad? I know it has to be possible. 

THE UGLY: That huge power transformer that juts out of the back of the console. Looks like they just slapped it on at the last minute. 

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