64DD

Lore & Background

The 64DD plugs into the extension port on the console's underside, enabling expanded, rewritable data storage via proprietary 64 MB magnetic disks. It introduced a real-time clock for persistent game world elements and included a standardized font and audio library to optimize storage efficiency. Its games and hardware accessories allowed users to create movies, characters, and animations for use across various titles and shared online. The system could connect to the Internet via a dedicated online service, Randnet, which supported e-commerce, online gaming, and media sharing. Described as "the first writable bulk data storage device for a modern video game console", Nintendo envisioned the 64DD as an enabling technology for pioneering new game genres and applications, though many of these remained in development for years and never saw full realization.

Development began as Nintendo explored options for data storage for its new Project Reality console. A Nintendo spokesperson said in 1993 that "it could be a cartridge system, a CD system, or both, or something not ever used before." In 1994, Howard Lincoln, chairman of Nintendo of America, stated that cartridges offered faster access time and speed, but that Nintendo would eventually use CD as the software storage medium for its 64-bit system. Nintendo software engineering manager Jim Merrick warned about the cost of adding an eight-speed CD-ROM mechanism, and game designer Shigesato Itoi explained that by attaching a DD to the game console, the number of possible genres could be drastically increased. The company also explored an early online strategy with Netscape, whose founding management had recently come from SGI, the company that designed the core Nintendo 64 hardware. Nintendo reportedly considered multiplayer online gaming to be of the highest priority, even above web browsing, though the final Randnet service offered no online multiplayer gaming support.

The 64DD was announced at Nintendo's Shoshinkai 1995 trade show and fully revealed at Shoshinkai 1996, where IGN reported it was one of the biggest items of the show. Nintendo's Director of Corporate Communications, Perrin Kaplan, made the first official launch window announcement for late 1997 in Japan. The event featured a makeshift demonstration of Zelda 64 and a graphics application that mapped audience photographs onto live 3D animated avatars, a feature later released as Mario Artist: Talent Studio and the Capture Cassette. Much of the gaming press said the reveal was not as significant as Nintendo had promised, leaving the public still unaware of the system's software lineup, practical capabilities, and release date. The 64DD then experienced two years of many launch delays, which created an interdependent cascade of delays and complications for Nintendo and its partners, and the cancellation of Space World 1998 due to lack of completed 64DD software.

Reader's Guide

By the time the 64DD was discontinued in February 2001, only ten software disks had been released, and Randnet had just 15,000 subscribers. A commercial failure, the peripheral was never released outside Japan. Many games originally planned for the 64DD were instead released as standard Nintendo 64 titles, ported to the more-powerful GameCube, or canceled altogether. IGN lamented the device as "broken promises" and "vaporware", but described what was launched as "an appealing creativity package" for a niche audience, delivering both a "well-designed, user-driven experience" and a "limited online experiment." Ultimately, the 64DD only partially fulfilled Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi's "longtime dream of a network that connects Nintendo consoles all across the nation." The 64DD is notable for its ambitious but ultimately unrealized vision of rewritable storage and online connectivity for the Nintendo 64, and for the protracted delays that plagued its development and release. Its legacy is that of a peripheral that introduced concepts such as persistent game worlds via a real-time clock and user-generated content shared online, but failed to achieve commercial or widespread adoption.

Did You Know?

• The 64DD was announced in 1995, before the Nintendo 64 itself launched in 1996.
• Only ten software disks were released for the 64DD before it was discontinued.
• The Randnet online service had just 15,000 subscribers at the time of discontinuation.
• The 64DD was never released outside Japan.