64DD Launch - All N64 Games

[nekunando]

I enjoyed TG Rally 2 back at the time but the feeling of 'deja-vu' was definitely noticeable then, too 😅

It was cool to have a random track generator available in the game but it did mean the overall track design suffered.

As for damage, I'm not entirely sure the blame is on you! I also struggled to make it through races without stuff happening, especially later on, and it certainly didn't always feel like my fault!

Driving over railway tracks at speed? You deserve to puncture your tire! Taking a superb corner and having the tire blow anyway? Hmm.. not so sure on that one!

I haven't played it for years but I'd guess it feels dodgy enough in 2024..

I always preferred the first game but if they could both somehow come to Nintendo Switch Online that would be great 😁

[Cube]

Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate
 

• NA release: 7th December 1999
• PAL release: 28th February 2000
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Saffire
• Publisher: Titus
• N64 Magazine Score: 81%

In 1999, two Xena games were released. The PlayStation got a hack-n-slash adventure, while the N64 got a fighting game. The plot of this game is easily what you’d expect: there’s a powerful object, and random characters have to compete for it. This means that Xena (or your character of choice) will have to slice her way through friends in order to win the object.

One small touch with the characters is that when Xena faces Gabrielle, Gabrielle is renamed as “Hope” (who is Gabrielle’s half-demon evil daughter that magically aged and looks exactly like Gabrielle), but none of Xena’s other friends get the same treatment. It’s also strange that this also happens when playing as Gabrielle – you’ll just be renamed when you fight Xena.

The Talisman of Fate is a fairly simple fighting game. This isn’t a bad thing, though, and manages to turn this game into something quite enjoyable. Instead of trying to be a deep fighting game, it instead focuses on speed and excitement, giving you jump and duck buttons for more movement options. It does mean that button mashing works quite well, but it works really well for a tie-in game that will likely have a more casual audience.

The game’s biggest weakness is lack of modes, although still not as lacking as some N64 fighting games. One thing that they did attempt to do was create a 4-player mode, but changing target (pressing A) is a bit clunky. It’s a nice try, even if it doesn’t fully work.

Xena is a decent fighting game, which makes it one of the better fighting games on N64.

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Which leaves Xena in the hands of its multiplayer, which, thanks to the balanced firhing, finely-tuned controls and smooth graphics, works a treat. Human opponents are much tougher to beat than their CPU counterparts – mainly because a friend will immediately find ways to dodge your repertoire of computer-thrashing combos – and the limited moves make for fights where real skill is needed to find chinks in your opponent’s armour. The wealth of bass-heavy crunching sounds effect also helps to make bouts satisfyingly meaty.

Mark Green, N64 Magazine #36

Remake or Remaster?

How about a collection of Xena (and Hercules) games? Nothing special, just a re-release of the games.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate

[Cube]

Custom Robo
 

• JP release: 8th December 1999
• PAL release: N/A
• NA release: N/A
• Developer: Noise
• Publisher: Nintendo
• N64 Magazine Score: 83%

Every now and then, a game I would have never expected to like will surprise me, making me very glad that I’m doing these playthroughs. I always dismissed Custom Robo as the kind of JRPG that I don’t like, and magazines that reviewed it made a lot of comparisons to Pokémon. However, I ended up loving Custom Robo, and would absolutely love for Pokémon to try this style of combat.

Custom Robo was only released in Japan, as well as its sequel and the GBA game – it wasn’t until the fourth game, on GameCube, that the series made its way elsewhere (and only the most recent game on DS was released in Europe). Luckily, there’s a decent fan translation to play the game in English.

The main story is mostly what you’d expect – walking around a 2D environment, speaking to other people to battle. However, Custom Robo’s story is very linear, with no side quests or exploration, so each playthrough will be fairly similar. The story is a simple story about a young boy who gets a Custom Robo – a tiny robot designed to take part in friendly battles – competing in tournaments within his town (which handily is home to the main Custom Robo tournament).

There are some additional stories, and the characters you meet along the way are interesting, so there’s a lot of charm here. The main greatness of Custom Robo, however, is the battles.

In Custom Robo, you control your tiny robot in holographic arenas. The robos are fast and nimble, and you automatically face your opponent at all times, which means you can focus on manoeuvring and dodging.

Your abilities include your gun, your “pods” which launch a kind of homing missile, and a bomb that you automatically aim where your opponent is (although you can manually adjust it to account for them moving). You also have a high jump, and can perform a few dodges in mid-air, there’s a lot of options at your disposal, but with extremely simple controls.

The arenas themselves are also important. Hiding behind obstacles and popping out or jumping up to shoot, getting high ground, circling around moving obstacles or dangerous areas to impact your opponent. The arenas start off simple and get more imaginative as you go on – with the best being the “unofficial” ones your encounter along your journey.

Another interesting element is that when robos recover from being knocked down, they have a brief invincibility period where they can fire – preventing anyone from being permanently trapped in the combo, and letting them go on the offensive.

What I especially love about Custom Robo is the lack of levelling up or grinding. Every robo’s health is 1000HP, with different body types (which you unfortunately don’t get to use in the main story) having their own abilities. What you do collect as you go on, however, is different weapons.

But there’s no “best” weapon. Your main gun, for example, fires in different ways. There’s a powerful magnum that does a ton of damage, but fires in a straight line and is quite slow. There are some homing weapons that aren’t as strong and aren’t useful if you need to defend yourself as they take a while to hit. My favourite weapon wasn’t particularly strong, but fired in an arc and could hit over walls.

The bombs and pods are equally varied, with some relentless but slow pods, or fast ones that require a quick dodge to avoid. Some weapons also hit next to an opponent, with you planning on them dodging or moving around.

Because of all this, everything feels balanced in a wonderful way, and you’ll encounter opponents that will force you to rethink your strategy. In a single battle, one combination may have an advantage, but there will be other combos that will in turn have an advantage over it. However, it’s never hopeless, sometimes you have to rethink your strategy and use what you’ve picked in a different way.

As an example, I favoured a weapon where I could do a short hop near a wall, and hit an opponent behind another wall. Then, I encountered an opponent that had bombs and pods that exploded above my head, which I kept jumping into. I had to go for a more hit-and-run approach to win the fight. It’s nice that you can outright see the advantages, instead of it just being numbers.

The setup for each match is also worth mentioning. When you carry them around, your Custom Robo is in a little cube. At the start of each match, you aim a little cannon to try and land in a section of the arena you want, while also reacting to where your opponent is landing on.

Your robo, in cube form, is then fired out. Each side has an icon to show the orientation of your robo, with a face signifying the top, and feet showing the bottom. You have a bit of control over your robo to try and land right side up, as this means your robo will be able to start quicker – with robos landing on their head starting stuck in the ground, and having to wiggle to make a start.

The combat in Custom Robo was something that I never got tired of doing. It avoids everything I personally dislike about combat in a lot of JRPGs, and I really like how customisation works in it. In the story mode, you get drip fed these parts as you progress, letting you experiment a bit on your journey, and at the start of each battle, you can pick your setup and try it out before starting the fight.

There are some other modes, though, such as a challenge mode and free battle (which supports multiplayer). These let you pick different robot bodies for even more possible combinations. I do wish the story itself was a bit more free form, but that’s only a mild issue with how much I enjoyed playing the game.

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A tremendously quirky game, obviously inspired by Pokémon. Building robots and making them fight has never been such fun.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #41

Remake or remaster?

It still plays extremely well. A collection of the five Custom Robo games with official translations for the first three would be amazing.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to play Custom Robo

[Jonnas]

I remember being fascinated by the Custom Robo trophy in Melee, and being very curious about the upcoming Gamecube game.

I'm not sure if this kind of game would've been for me... but then again, it was the age of Pokémon and Medabots, I'm sure I'd have a blast. This franchise would've been fire if it released in the west with better timing.

[Hero-of-Time]

6 hours ago, Jonnas said:

I remember being fascinated by the Custom Robo trophy in Melee, and being very curious about the upcoming Gamecube game.

I imported the Gamecube Custom Robo game for the very same reason. Seen the trophy in Smash, was intrigued about the franchise and so bought the game.

[Cube]

Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness
 

• NA release: 8th December 1999
• JP release: 25th December 1999
• PAL release: 3rd March 2000
• Developer: Konami
• Publisher: Konami
• N64 Magazine Score: 75%

Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness is a bit of an odd game. It’s sort of a new game, but also isn’t. In a way, this is an attempt at re-doing Castlevania 64, listening to feedback from that release, and addressing it without creating a full sequel.

The levels feel a lot more simplified, less routes to get lost in, and it’s generally a more linear experience. There are also save points everywhere, and the game lets you move the camera, albeit using the D-pad, which is a bit awkward on the N64 controller.

But there is a ton of new stuff as well. At the start, you can only select a new character called Cornell, although there is a variant of the Konami code (only discovered in April 2024) to unlock all characters. His story is set 8 years before the first Castlevania 64.

Once you complete his story, you can play the original two campaigns, Carrie and Reinhardt, who have re-worked versions of their original campaigns, along with another new character called Harry, who has a shorter game that you need to complete in fewer than 7 in-game days.

Because the original game cut me off before the end of the game, due to playing on easy (which, thankfully, no longer stops you from playing the full game), I really didn’t realise how many levels at the end of the game focused much more on platforming, and Cornell’s journey even more so. The second half of his game feels completely different from the first, and the game’s wonky jumping and grabbing edges is one of the issues that hasn’t been addressed. The first game focused on combat and puzzles, while the first time playing this will be mainly platform-based.

If you’re going to play a version of Castlevania 64, it may as well be this one.

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It may sound like we’re being overly harsh on Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness, but it simply seems incredibly dated now, and, if truth be known, we’re very disappointed. It’s still a solid game – despite its faults – and can be heartily enjoyable games, but this ‘special edition’ should really have included more to warrant the £40 price tag. A year ago, when the first 64-bit version of Castlevania was release, the market was very different so this was a mite more impressive. In the meantime we’ve had Shadowman and Resident Evil 2 on release, both games that simply do their own respective things far better than this does. Ultimately, as a 3D adventure, Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness is looking a little dog-eared.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #38

Remake or remaster?

A remaster that improves upon this and also gives the option of playing Carrie and Reinhardt’s original levels would be nice.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness.

[Helmsly]

That's crazy, I had no idea this game was in part a remake of Castlevania 64. And to think it came out barely a year later too

[Jonnas]

Never played any of the 3D Castlevanias, but this one in particular intrigues me. Having a werewolf for a protagonist is attractive in itself, and atypical, even for this series.

Plus, Cornell was playable in Judgement (the most fun character to use in that game, imo), and he had a really cool theme song inspired by Legacy of Darkness:

 

[Dcubed]

I'd love to see M2 attempt a redo of this one.  They did some stellar work on Adventure Rebirth and Haunted Castle Revisited, but I get that 3D (or anything beyond the 16 bit era for that matter) isn't really within their wheelhouse...

[Cube]

Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M.
 

• NA release: 9th December 1999
• PAL release: 17th December 1999
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Acclaim London
• Publisher: Acclaim
• N64 Magazine Score: 76%

When Starship Troopers became a big hit, Acclaim wanted to cash in on its success. Instead of trying to work out a licensing deal, they looked at their comic catalogue and realised one of them was a sci-fi marine comic. The comic didn’t contain bug-like aliens, so they invented new ones for the game. Running on the same engine (and controls) as Turok 2, it seemed like a recipe for success.

But Acclaim didn’t seem to pay attention to why Starship Troopers was successful: personality. The film took some very dry source material and made it into something special. Armorines, on the other hand, is utterly devoid of personality.

The bugs in Armorines aren’t scary. They don’t react to gunshots like enemies in Turok and they don’t act in any smart kind of way. As a result, killing them isn’t satisfying, which is a major issue in an FPS game. There are different types, but it generally means that bigger ones need more shots to go down.

The weapons don’t help matters, either, as there’s nothing quite as fun as the weapons in the Turok games. Selecting weapons is also unintuitive. You hold A and move the control stick in a direction – the same as the great weapons wheel previously used in Turok games. Except there’s no weapons wheel. You press different directions to cycle to different groups of weapons, meaning you have to memorise the direction and order of the weapons. Not that it matters much, as you’re going to be using the default weapon – a shotgun if you pick the male character, or the much more useful machine gun if you pick the female character – most of the time anyway.

While the default gun certainly has advantages, such as having infinite ammo (as opposed to very limited ammo for other guns) and being good enough to handle most enemies, their main use isn’t for killing enemies. It’s for the ability to see.

Many areas of Armorines are extremely dark. Again, this doesn’t make the game scary, it just makes it hard to see. You can get IR goggles to see enemies clearer, but they don’t help a lot in navigating the confusing levels. So, most of the time you’ll be firing your gun just to have a light source, because your futuristic super special power armour doesn’t have a torch. This is the main reason why the machine gun is better than the shotgun.

It’s a shame, as Armorines had a very solid foundation and inspiration – the gameplay of Turok 2 was great, and the satire nature of Starship Troopers could potentially have worked well for a video game. Unfortunately, many aspects – such as the weapons, enemy AI, their reaction to being shot, and any personality – are downgrades, and it ends up being a game that is functionally fine, but is really dull.

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Which makes the weaponary that much more disapointing, especially as there’s an obvious lack of Turok 2-style visual splendour. They do the job and they’re a splendidly varied bunch – form the oddness of the Staff of Ra to the baby bug-firing alien arm – it’s just that they’re almost completely devoid of spectacle. The rocket launcher, for example, produces a weedy-looking explosion, the Staff of Ra a mild blue shockwave, and the grenade launcher appears to fires peas. There’s no oomph, no performance, not enough meat on the bones.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #37

Remake or remaster?

Despite its flaws, it would be nice to see this running on Nightdive’s Turok 2 engine. The darkness could be fixed, and more satisfying enemy AI and reactions could be added – they could even add a bit of personality with some new cutscenes and dialogue. I doubt that it would sell enough to make doing that profitable, but there’s a solid foundation to work from.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M.

[Ashley]

58 minutes ago, Cube said:

especially as there’s an obvious lack of Turok 2-style visual splendour

 

[Cube]

Worms Armageddon
 

• PAL release: 11th December 1999
• NA release: 23rd March 2000
• JP release: N/A
• Developer: Team17, Infogrames
• Publisher: Infogrames
• N64 Magazine Score: 85

The PC version of Worms Armageddon is a game that Team17 have never been able to live up to. Many Worms games have come and gone since, yet Armageddon still lives on, with the last official major patch released in 2020, and a complete overhaul is being worked on (albeit very slowly). The PC version is easily the best version of the game, with better graphics, far more weapons, more levels, and a ton of additional support (both official and fan) over the years.

Yet, despite all that, my preference still lies with the N64 version. A lot of it is nostalgia – it’s probably my most played N64 game as a kid – but I think there’s another important reason: the controller, which I’ll explain in a bit.

Worms is a game of strategy with a bit of luck thrown in. There are teams of worms (usually four) across the map, and you take turns to move around and use one weapon to attack your opponents. The genius is that the weapons also blow up the landscape, so the space available to the worms gets smaller and smaller as the game’s going on, with worms falling into the water dying instantly.

The weapons are brilliantly made, some require precise aiming and taking into account the wind, some amusing, and others seemingly pointless but perfect for the right situations (like prod). These weapons aren’t just satisfying to use when you get them right, they’re also great when things go wrong.

Which brings me to the controller. The PC version has much better controls using a keyboard, being more accurate and having lots of shortcuts to access weapons quickly. When playing online, it’s certainly helpful. But, to me, Worms is best as a local multiplayer game, something that makes it a wonderful experience when you do mess up, and a controller is simply much easier to pass around than a keyboard and mouse.

Worms Armageddon lets you use one controller for four players (although you can use more if you want). While you can try mapping a controller to keyboard inputs for the PC version (despite many updates, it still doesn’t offer controller support), it’s not quite the same as the properly crafted controls for N64.

Outside of the brilliant multiplayer, which offers specially designed levels and randomly generated levels, there’s also a bunch of singleplayer missions and training modes, some of which are a ton of fun, such as the Ninja Rope training. The Ninja Rope is an immensely fun item (which doesn’t count as using a weapon) to get around levels, with lots of risky tricks you can try and perform. I had a ton of fun with the Ninja Rope training, taking it in turn to play it with friends.

Worms Armageddon is a great game, and the N64 version is still worth playing for its ease of multiplayer.

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Worms Armageddon is just about the best version of the game to date, thanks to its brilliant solo missions. It could have done with a zoom option to make long-range aiming less haphazard, and we’d have preferred to see the original Vietnam backgrounds instead of the surreal cartoon landscapes on offer here, but, despite these niggles, it’s still a brilliant addition to the N64’s catalogue of classy four-player games.

Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #36

Remake or remaster?

A lot of work has already been done for the PC version, but it still needs controller support. A remaster has also been released for home consoles.

Official Ways to get the game

The remaster is available on Switch, Xbox and PlayStation.

[Ashley]

Now I just want to play Worms. 

[Jonnas]

Worms Armageddon is one of the greatest games of all time. One of the few PC games you can easily play in local multiplayer, too.

It's hard to imagine playing it with a console controller, but I guess it's a matter of whatever we're used to.

[Cube]

(I'm out for the weekend, so I'll post two games)

Mario Artist Paint Studio

• JP release: 13th December 1999
• NA release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: Software Creations
• Publisher: Nintendo
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

As this is the first 64DD game, I’ll talk a little bit about the device itself. It was an add-on to the N64 which would have provided a slot for a new kind of media: 64DD discs. These were sort of large floppy discs, 64MB by default – the same as the largest (and most expensive) N64 cartridge. One key element was that there was a lot more space to save data, allowing for much more complex stuff that could be saved in a game. It was also going to come with an Expansion Pak to increase the N64’s RAM (which ended up getting released on its own).

But it kept getting delayed, and many projects (such as Ocarina of Time) were changed from being 64DD games to regular N64 games. It finally released in Japan only via a subscription (with a later limited release on its own), ending up with 10 games – and that includes a web browser, a disc for sharing creations online, and two expansions. Even though they first talked about it in issue 1, N64 Magazine ended up not covering it that much, with it getting a whopping 3 and a half page article once they got their hands on one.

Mario Artist Paint Studio was one of the two launch games bundled with the 64DD, being a sequel to Mario Paint on the SNES. Like the SNES game, it also came bundled with a mouse. I’m awful at any kind of art software, and this is no different. It offers a good amount of features – including a lot of backgrounds and stickers (including Nintendo and Rare characters), but it feels a bit cumbersome and sterile, lacking the fun nature of the original Mario Paint.

There are a few touches here and there that harkens back to the original – such as the fun animations representing the cursor speed and music options – but it all feels more muted. One colossal advantage it does have over the original is being able to save multiple pictures. It can also connect to the Game Boy Camera to insert some photos.

There are some interesting additional features, such as the 3D worlds. Here you can watch three scenes play out – an underwater world, dinosaurs, and strange robots in space. You can play with the camera, watch different creatures, make the image full screen to watch, or even enter the world as a little man to explore and look around.

You can also mess around with the worlds. Once you’ve selected a creature, you can then edit its texture, either by picking from a load of colourful random textures, or loading up the texture itself in an editor and manually editing it. It expands Paint Studio into something that’s also a basic introduction to how textures work in video games – the whole Mario Artist series seemed to be aimed at different parts of creating games, which would have likely culminated with the announced but cancelled Mario Artist: Game Maker.

One thing about the 64DD is connectivity between games, so Paint Studio would gain more usage as the different parts of the Mario Artist series cropped up, as your creations could also be imported into that, as well as SimCity 64. It was an ambitious project, and it’s a shame we never saw the final result of the entire package.

However, there’s one more interesting thing to talk about, something that was completely removed from the final game, but was later found in an earlier build. Just start creating a drawing then click on the “coffee break” icon.

Now you can play a new version of Gnat Attack, the flyswatter minigame from the original Mario Paint (which had versions in some WarioWare games and Super Mario Maker). There are four stages that take place in a few rooms of a house, with the last being a boss, before the game loops. It’s really good fun, and I have no idea why it was taken out of the final product, as it seems to be complete.

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Does anyone remember a game we featured back in issue one called Creator? It was being developed by British developers Software Creations, and was basically an advanced art package, that allowed you to customise 3D models and animate them. It appears hare as part of Paint Studio. You choose one of three different 3D animated scenes and then you can jump to different camera angles, and toy with colour schemes, patterns and textures.

N64 Magazine Issue #40

Remake or remaster?

I would love to see a fully realised version of the Mario Artist package, but without the cancelled parts of it, there’s not a huge reason to re-release this.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Mario Artist: Paint Studio

--

 

Doshin the Giant

• JP release: 13th December 1999
• NA release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: Param
• Publisher: Nintendo
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

The second 64DD launch title was Doshin the Giant, a game that got a bit more attention when the GameCube version came out (and made it outside of Japan). The various Doshin projects are the works of developer Param, who made nothing else.

The purpose of Doshin the Giant seems to be to show how the 64DD could enable a game’s world to change over time, allowing you to manipulate it and watch it grow without needing a memory card.

You start Doshin the Giant as fairly small yellow giant. The tribes on the various islands you discover will request you to do things for them (usually bring plants over, or create more land for them), which will generate hearts, allowing you to grow. As you help the tribes out, they’ll start to develop buildings and eventually build a monument to you.

Controls are simple, as you can grab objects to move them (keeping A held down, or else you’ll throw it straight away), as well as holding onto land and pull it up, providing it’s lower, and stop to lower land.

At the end of each day, Doshin will die (I think) and you’ll get some stats before being booted to the main menu. Start a new game, and you’ll be a new Doshin at the starting size, however, the world will be the same as how you left it at the end of the previous game. The game is quite freeform in what you can do, however, I found that it got more and more difficult to impress villagers, so I was unable to achieve the size I got in the first day.

Although it’s not all about being good – it’s entirely up to you. While you can cause some damage (such as accidentally squishing villagers once you’re a certain size) as regular Doshin, you can switch to an evil version of him, which gives you a different set of powers. You can send out shockwaves and demolish land, and causing terror will make you grow just as hearts do.

Interestingly, evil Doshin also has better powers at manipulating land, as you can easily lower and raise vast amounts of land at ease, but it can be difficult to use this to help out, as the villagers fear you (note: after playing the expansion and GameCube version, I now know that good Doshin can do the same thing).

There’s a checklist of different monuments to get the villagers to build, but I could only get them to build the same one over and over. I’m probably missing something, as the text is quite fast and hard to use Google Translate for, so I’m looking forward to discovering more when I play the GameCube version.

Overall, Doshin the Giant does come across as more of a tech demo to show off what the 64DD can do, but it’s still a wonderfully unique and charming game.

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Of all the 64DD games that have been publicised, (aside from the F-Zero X Expansion Kit, of course), it was this that always looked the most promising. Ostensibly a ‘God game’, you control a mysterious giant that wakes up on an inhabited island.

N64 Magazine #40

Remake or remaster?

I’d love to see a new Doshin game.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Doshin the Giant.

[Dcubed]

One can’t help but sit and wonder at all the possibilities and wasted potential of the 64DD… Just imagine if it were the default medium to begin with? The landscape of today could’ve been vastly different…

Of course, the correct answer would still have been to go with CDs, but perhaps the 64DD disk could’ve been the middle-ground that Nintendo wanted oh so badly…

So many games could’ve turned out so differently, the amount of cut content and changes that the likes of Pokemon Stadium and Ocarina of Time had to go through was insane; and the development issues and subsequent abandonment of the 64DD was something that cost Nintendo years of lost development time with over a dozen releases.  The sheer number of cancelled N64 games was just ridiculous, dwarfing basically every other system Nintendo put out (including the Wii U!), and the 64DD was a big reason why that list is so huge.

Nintendo bet big on the project and they came up craps.  The whole debacle was one of their biggest blunders with the N64 hardware as a whole.  The fact that it actually got released (albeit in a very limited manner) is still incredible to me; it’s the kind of concept project that you would think would’ve forever stayed on the cutting room floor.