It really is "sex"? They didn't just run with the joke? Me and my friends used to(I still do & always will) call it C E X, or "cecks" but I think that's like an old word for trousers or something
This video brought a rush of nostalgia that I completely forgot about. As an adult, it made me realize how much my parents spoiled me and how much i miss them now.
I used to work for CeX, I once dispatched some NES games to you from my store and I believe you used them in a video at one point! Megaman 2 was one of them I think? Two other staff members and I had a bit of a fan moment when we saw your name pop up on the eCom sheet 😅
@@DarrenOConnor3 Is this really a GDPR violation? "Man once bought products in store". I think people are being overly sensitive. Ashens mentioned shopping at CEX, there is literally no new information in this.
@@AnalogSins The law doesn't account for being "overly sensitive", it's literally black and white. If an employee shares confidential information about a customer, that would be a breach. That would include the fact they made a purchase from the store, and what it is they purchased. Is it serious enough that anyone would take action? Probably not, especially given Ashens' openness about what he purchased and where from, but then it introduces the question of whether this employee is holding other confidential information he's withholding; i.e. the customer's personal phone number, email address, home address etc. But those haven't been shared so it's probably not going anywhere. It's not a big deal in this situation but these laws are sweeping and general for reasons that protect many others.
@@scarpergirl This is not confidential information. A man may have purchased megaman 2 at some point is not confidential. It is so incredibly vague it is probably true for thousands of people. Confidential information is information that would help identify an individiual AS an individual. Well known video game collector may have bought a video game from store is not that.
The N64 launch in Canada lined up with my birthday almost perfectly so I got N64 at my birthday party and for the entire party me and about 20 kids sat around the tv in complete awe playing Mario 64. We were going to play laser tag and no one wanted to go, but we went and afterwards everyone rushed back to the living room to play more Mario 64 for the rest of the party .That game truly was transformative.
Sick! That must have been an awesome birthday 😎 My mum owned a after school and holiday club and she would get all the new consoles when they came out and I remember the day we got the 64 and mate I remember the crowd around the table all watching the timer waiting for their turn 😂 amazing memories mate! 👍👍
@davidstephens3235 What? Argonaut took that prototype and made Croc, which feels completely different from Mario 64. It would be more accurate to say that Croc started as a pitch to Nintendo for a Yoshi game. Nintendo rejected the proposal because they didn't want to license their characters out to another company, but they hired some of the developers who worked on the pitch. A bit crazy to say they "stole" anything from Argonauts.
I feel that's why Virtual Reality headsets aren't doing well. Who wants to exercise, which is pretty much required, when they can just sit down and use a controller. I miss laser-tag, it was a great way to have fun and keep in shape, too.
@@stephenthomas1492 yeah man quasar (UK laser tag) was sick AF loved going in with just me and a mate and made loads of new on the day friends. And you're right I would much prefer to sit with a controller 🎮 and game with buddies then stand up ..standing up was for when you was about to win and you start jumping while playing still 🤣🤣
Me and three friends in middle school playing 4 player Goldeneye on a 13 inch TV with 4 teeny tiny split screens, it was somehow the greatest thing in the world.
@Elastane When i worked there as a teenager many years ago we all knew it stood for "Complete Entertainment Exchange" so even to this day i call it "C-E-X" and refuse to pronounce it the edgy hilarious way lol
My father, being the semi-hoarder he was, actually kept all the N64 game boxes from all the games my parents ever bought me (about 15 in total) and they are all in mint condition. When I discovered that in the attic during a cleanout I was beyond amazed
My brother took everything SNES related when he left home, completely the opposite to your dad. That included Christmas gifts that I'd gotten and the first game I ever bought with my own money.
@@crapparc I tried to remember and consider that my little brother plays video games too, when I moved out. I left a lot of stuff back at my folks for him to play.
If you have a dead Memory Pak, you might need to open it up and replace the CR2032 battery. I did that with a couple of mine recently and they would save again. The third party ones are easier to change out than the official ones because the batteries aren't usually soldered in.
There's also a more modern forever pak 64 by 4fourlayer technologies. They're awesome and you never have to worry about them running out of juice (they don't use a battery). However unfortunately they are the size of a standard Nintendo mem pak storage wise.
One 3rd party one I bought brand new on amazon had a finicky battery. Worked after I soldered in a new battery! I was so sick of losing my save data in Rayman 2
I have an Interact memory pak like the one shown and I've opened it up and it does indeed have a 2032 battery in a standard battery holder inside of it keeping the ram chips alive, if you take it out you lose all the save data so back up your save before putting in a new battery!
BTW Interact also sold the PC memory pak reader "Dex Drive" that let you plug a memory pak into a pc and read/backup and restore game data to and from original and aftermarket memory paks. Still got mine and it works though only on an old PC running Win 98, it mostly worked under XP but not as well.
So happy to see you doing retro gaming / PC stuff again. It's always been my favorite part of your channel. Also please bring back "thumbs up for Dingoo" as your official catchphrase
Fun Fact: One N64 game was released with corrupted, glitched music, with lots of Midi errors, corrupted instrument samples and more. It's called Donald Duck Goin Quackers, which is actually a port of the Dreamcast/PC version (that actually has some great, underrated music!), but has a few original songs that to this day are not as audible as they should be. The game's TCRF article explains a lot of the music errors. It's crazy!
@@QuinquinoMan I love the PC version's ost too. The n64 version however has some exclusive songs that are to this day not audible as they are supposed to.
I feel sorry for the composer. He created a stripped down midi version for the N64 version alongside his original music, and the dev team imports it so incorrectly and faulty. I mean, the N64 version of the game seems to be more known than the PC and Dreamcast versions for whatever reason, which contributes to the fact that few people don't know the actual HQ music...
Seeing Body Harvest knocked a memory loose in my brain. I remember loving the idea of the game, but never quite getting the hang of it. Also, WWF No Mercy, for those combined wrestling/video game fans, is really considered of one the best wrestling games ever made, and it still holds up tremendously today.
Honestly these are some of the most well-executed advertisements. Just giving very real examples of things you may have lying around and how you can make money.
Grew up playing Diddy Kong racing and Mario party 2 on this legendary system as a kid with my 2 older brothers as well as taking turns watching each other as we played through Ogre Battle 64. We only had 4 games, but it was all we needed to enjoy it
@@ezedjay well it changed the way we played multiplayer first person shooters. I always preferred the single player campaigns myself but I appreciate how good it was at the time.
@@functionatthejunction Goldeneye is a lot like Halo before Halo, it set a lot of the standards for what a console fps should be. Multiplayer is the big thing, but it's also one of the first games you can set up for modern dual stick controls, using the d-pad for movement and the stick for aim.
I will forever remember the Christmas that I got an N64. It was the year that the console was released. We had an insane blizzard in my area during Christmas that year. My parents were divorced so I went to my dad's Christmas eve and then went back to my mom's that night for Christmas in the morning. I will never forget the ride to my moms. The city was completely empty. We didn't see a single car on the road. All the stores that weren't considered essential were closed. I had never seen my town like that. It was like everyone else in the world just disappeared. I will never forget that.
When you started piling up the passports I nearly died 😂 * And then the explorer64 added in too. I'm crying here "Incredibly the answer is.......YES"😂 Great retrospective 👍
@@davy_KThe import adapters don’t use any power. They literally just connect the ROM and save pins to the top cart and connect the CIC security chip pins to the rear slot… though I guess they have to power both cartridges, the port was designed to power things like the capture cart for Mario Artist and the Morita Shogi 64 modem cart.
Body Harvest was amazing. You glossed over the fact it has a time travelling mechanic too so you visit all these open worlds across various time periods fighting the Alien Invasion. And the reason its "GTA like before GTA" - is that its from DMA Design - the same folk behind GTA. It's almost like a prototype of a 3D GTA. And I love it. I'd imagine Rockstar* still have the IP somewhere in their vault and I'd love them to revisit it.
Fun fact, the Pikachu console still has the 64 DD connector, probably because it'd be more expensive to redesign the board just for a console revision they just didn't put a door for it on the plastic mold
Funner factier (?): The Pikachu consoles used N64 boards that were fully manufactured for standard consoles before being reworked into Pikachu consoles. This is evident by the original power LED being installed and then cut off with remnant legs left soldered in. The blinking LED cheek PCB then taps power from the main board using bodge wires. The others are right about the expansion slot: It acts as a socket for the removable cartridge slot so it must remain in place. The real reason they walked it off isn’t because the 64DD failed. It’s because the port was mostly used for piracy while the 64DD was essentially canceled years earlier and only finally got a limited released to meet contractual obligations with their development partner, RandNet. This is evident because even the 64DD was ready before launch in 1996 as shown by the retail American version (production sample) found second hand in Washington state (near Nintendo’s headquarters). My theory is that Nintendo was ready to switch as a last ditch effort if it seemed like cartridges were causing the system to fail. It probably would’ve ended up much like PC Engine Super CD-ROM² in Japan where nearly all game development switched to it, old hardware was upgraded, and future hardware came with it built in. Imagine that: A N64 with a built-in 64DD.
@@flandrbleNot soldered. The top port has pins that go through the board to connect to the bottom port. The bottom port is the only one solders and it acts like a socket for the top slot using holes in the PCB. It’s very easy to break the wings on the left and right if you don’t pull it out perfectly straight but it will simply pull out and slide back in without tools. I’ve demonstrated it many times if you look.
I still have my Blockbuster card, old and wrinkled. And the card is too. We used to rent the console and Mario Kart. Enough times where I could easily have just bought the damn things and saved money.
Those controler paks have batteries in them like some of the older nes and gameboy games do (zelda, pokemon) replacing the battery could bring it back to life.
I went from a Megadrive to a N64 i think on my 13th birthday. Can imagine how my mind was blown. I got Pilot wings as my first game and just adored it.
The N64 used RDRAM, which was high performance RAM at the time but had some peculiarities and SDRAM quickly surpassed it. I had a PC with RDRAM, and it REQUIRED installing DIMMs in pairs, you couldn't leave a socket open. I presume this is why the N64 requires either a jumper pak or an expansion pak. And yeah, Nintendo loved their Paks. You could actually play Goldeneye with two controllers, holding each by the center prong, to use two sticks and two triggers, for a relatively modern take on movement/aiming. The N64 analog stick isn't actually analog; it's a digital optical device. The X and Y axes have gimbals that move a slitted quadrant past an optical sensor which counts how often the beam breaks to determine how far the stick has been moved. It has no mechanism to detect what position it starts in which is why you have to make sure the stick isn't held over when you start the console. This mechanism is immune to the stick drift that plagues modern consoles because there are no wear-prone potentiometers, but the gimbal mechanism itself was subject to plastic-on-plastic wear and either the stick or the gimbals would waller out, causing the familiar N64 floppy joystick. To this day there are companies that make replacement sticks and gimbals, and they're fairly easy to fix. I believe the N64 was the first console that actually offered a rumble feature. The PS1 started out with their SNES pad with two additional shoulder buttons, added two analog sticks for the Dual Analog, then added rumble to that for the DualShock controller which has been the pattern for game controllers since, but I believe the N64 did it first.
No, it wasn't Nintendo. First of all, Force Feedback had been a thing in Arcade/Pinball Machines going back to the 70's and it was already in use in Joysticks on the PC and in 1994 Aura Systems launched the Interactor Vest (Mega Drive, SNES) that did Force Feedback based on Audio (it worked great with fighting games). The whole concept is really old, it just took console manufacturers ages to finally utilize it, probably due to costs. For consoles, it was Sony, who released their Dual Analogue Controller several days before the N64 was released and it actually had the force feedback motors, though only in the japanese version, for the non-japanese version, the motors were removed because there weren't any non-japese games that supported the feature at the time.
It’s the same thing as “continuity RIMMs” to fill the unoccupied slots in a dual-channel RDRAM-based PC. “Continuity” just means a straight connection, just like a jumper, hence “jumper pak.” You can see that it merely connects some bus terminating components on the board at the end of the memory bus (removing the pak disconnects the terminators). I built my first Pentium 4 system with the retail boxed 1.3GHz Williamette, released just after the 1.4 and 1.5GHz versions. I paired it with the retail boxed Intel D850GB (NOT D850GBAL) board while my friend went with the Asus P4B. Anyway, we both got 2x32MB or 2x64MB RDRAM inside of our retail boxed P4 CPUs. They bundled that because the modules were almost unobtainium and the only real use for the RDRAM RIMMs back then was in Pentium 4 systems anyway (the i820-based Tualatin Pentium III boards had been recalled due to issues with the RDRAM chipset). I can’t recall if the continuity RIMMs came pre-populated with the boards or with the CPUs, but it was likely the boards. I remember telling my friend “just like the RDRAM inside the N64!” when we were building these ~Jan/Feb 2001.
Being digital is why Nintendo only ever referred to their thumb stick as a “3D Control Stick” instead of analog. Also, you could recalibrate at any point using L + R + Start, which was implemented in every game as part of the devkit libraries and mandatory for licensing. Same as the Controller Pak management screen when you hold Start at boot. Fun fact: The L + R + Start button combination would be seen by the console as Button 15 instead of those three buttons, meaning the controller itself specifically recognized it even though it was the software on the console that would react and recalibrate (controller did nothing but send the Button 15 signal). You could exploit this to move beyond the intended range to glitch certain games. For example, you could get out of your vehicle and moonwalk backwards in Blast Corps, though some crappy 3rd part controller did that automatically since they would overdrive the range (The Rock 64, I’m looking at YOU!).
Shadow Angel already got here before me regarding Sony controllers, though _that said:_ Yeah, force feedback existed in the arcade and on PC, but I would not count Aura Systems' peripherals as they simply worked based on the audio output of the console; a game couldn't tell it "okay rumble NOW", it would just react based to the sound. While not the first machine capable of playing video games _period_ to have rumble, the N64 is indeed the first home console to support true programmable rumble like we see on modern consoles as far as I'm aware.
@@ShadowAngel1860 It's not like Nintendo ripped off Sony in terms of rumble; like you said, the Dual Analog beat the Rumble Pak to market by just 2 days, and they were both first shown to the public in the same month (November 1996). Effectively, it was a tie.
Blast Corps was probably the game I rented the most back in the day. Me and my brother were so into it, spending many a weekend to complete it. So great.
I have a strong memory of the Sega Nomad video. I had just moved into my house, my bed hadn't even arrived yet so I remember falling asleep on the couch in the living room with my Kindle tablet propped up on a chair watching RUclips videos. I would wake up and watch the food special ones, and you know I really enjoyed it when Stuart found a foreign food he liked. Sure it's funny how he'll roast disgusting foods but somehow I always found "That's actually quite nice. I'm having more of those later" pleasantly wholesome.
I first heard about cex thanks to ashens. Before that I was cexless, just whimsically trudging along through my world without cex but that’s ok now because I have all the cex I could ever desire
While not as available, there are some HDMI mods available that solder on directly onto the digital side before the DAC and video-converter chip. These give crystal clear digital-to-digital upscaling with accurate colors and low latency. Maybe a bit on the pricey side, maybe a bit of a moderately challenging solder job, but no PCB trace-cutting needed and it does not sacrifice the original AV port.
I'll give that to CEX, it's quite clever how they've managed to make a RUclips sponsorship in a way in which vids sponsored by them are likely to be demonetized:D Fun fact (that comment section will be aware of already)- that bottom port on the Pokemon version is still there, it's just missing a hole in the case. Btw, that's an interesting post-credits scene:]
A friend sent me a copy of Conker's Bad Fur Day, and I went out and bought a N64 just to play it. I ended up with a rumble pack with a socket for the memory card on it, so I didn't have to keep switching them in and out. It worked pretty well for about twenty minutes.
I had a third party rumble pak with a memory card slot in the front. It had a switch you were supposed to use to switch it from rumble to memory mode, but in my experience you could just ignore it and they both worked all the time. It was also neat because the way the memory pak stuck out the front allowed it to be used as a weird stand when you put the controller down.
My favorite console. Great to see Beetles Adventure Racing and WWF No Mercy! Two games I've loved after their heyday! If CEX makes it so we can get these videos, I certainly won't complain!
Really happy to see this in my sub box. I’ll be honest, some of the pound shop tat episodes I’ve tuned out of after a while. But the PlayStation retrospective was the first one I completely watched all the way through in a while! Wondering if you would ever be open to doing any old mobile phone reviews. Like get an old Nokia 3310 working, or Sony Ericsson (complete with game Deep Abyss)- or even the N-Gage and it’s games!
Mischief Makers was amazing! _shake shake_ I loved going for the highest rankings in each level of that game; it's VERY fun, in my opinion, if you can get past the weird controls. There are so many fun and ridiculous things you can do in Mischief Makers; it's honestly one of my favorite games on the system.
Mischief Makers is excellent though it is one of those Japanese games where if you're not dashing/boosting around the level as fast as you can, it's gonna feel weird.
32:58 I'm Canadian, but I randomly bought a copy of the official UK Nintendo magazine around 1999 or 2000. On one page, they mentioned a game called "Lylat Wars" and I got excited because I thought it was a sequel to Starfox 64 that I hadn't heard about. Then I looked close and realized the screenshot was just a level in SF64, at which point I realized it must be an alternate name. I had no idea why they did that at the time, but many years later I found out it was because Nintendo thought the original title sounded too much like a German company called StarVox.
I'm 31 and have owned several N64s since I grew up with them. I'd consider myself to be pretty knowledgable but I've never heard of the French ones having unique video out. That's awesome.
Apparently one of the reasons they included four controller ports was due to the urging from development studios like Rare. In the rare replay video they filmed for Goldeneye, they mentioned really pushing Nintendo for it. Nintendo was very: ohh... It's not that big here in Japan... It'll cost like fifty cents more... Rare responded with: But four player Mario kart would be incredible. The rest is history.
Also, the speed argument in favor of cartridges became moot as developers used compression, meaning data had to "load"/decompress. The real reason Nintendo did it is because they're assholes who wanted full control. "They've gotta buy their carts from us, and our lockout chip is a lot harder to crack this time, so I'd really hate to be a third party developer who doesn't wanna pay much for cartridges or for our licensing..." Why do you think the GameCube had Mini-DVD instead? On a completely unrelated note, we got so scammed in the US, getting these huge full sized cases for games on the GameCube, when Japan got those awesome mini cases. Not saying I don't like a full sized case, I just think they were unnecessary.
I remember Forsaken64 was one of the few games that used the D-Pad. Up and Down would swap your primary weapons and Left and Right would swap your secondary
In a lot of fps games you could also use the d-pad for movement and the stick for aim. It was never the default, but plenty of N64 shooters support normal dual stick style controls if set up like this.
The N64 was probably the first console I got really, really excited about, I still have a lot of nostalgia for it. It was great to see WWF No Mercy getting some love here, 23 years on it's still revered by wrestling fans. It is worth mentioning however that it was not the first of its kind, but really the best one and the culmination of years of tweaking of the Virtual Pro Wrestling (the name of the Japanese equivalent to the series) engine, and had several predecessors, two of which - WCW vs. nWo World Tour and WCW/nWo Revenge - were the best selling wrestling games for N64.
in regards to the expansion port it's actually still installed on the motherboard they just didn't include access. There's a channel (James channel) where he takes one apart
A funny fact, that middle bit with the stick, nintendo basically cut that out of the controller and turned it into the wii it’s nunchuck, it’s pretty much the shame shape and size.
Mischief Makers is one of the best platform games ever made very underrated IMO. Body Harvest was great if sluggish and I loved Chopper Attack ugly yet smooth controls.
I think the gold controller was released to coincide with Ocerina Of Time, which was a gold colour cartridge. Either that or they were released to coincide with GoldenEye 007 which came out in Australia in 1998, it's so long ago that I can't remember, and we never had a gold controller with our N64.
Nintendo Power had a contest where you could qualify to win one if you beat a certain lap time on Mario Circuit in Mario Kart 64 and send in a photograph as proof.
@@jeffs1637 I don't think Nintendo Power existed here in Australia, but I think these controllers were sold at retail outlets. I also believe they were bundled in various Nintendo 64 packages.
@@Lachlant1984interesting! I'm not sure if you could get the gold controllers any other ways here in the States, but I got mine through the NP contest. I'm curious how other areas may have been able to acquire the gold controllers.
I remember getting my N64 for $50 (AUD) at a small little cluttered second-hand shop in Tasmania. It came with 2 controllers and like, 3 games and I'm so happy I still have it to this day, especially now that the consoles alone go for over 100.
Because after the N64 days all the key staff at Rare left and it went down hill quickly. These days their IPs get passed around to any developers by Microsoft.
My cat has discovered she can push open the cartridge slot as some sort of new toy. She knows she's not meant to do this. I also just remembered that an ex-roommate's rabbit bit through the cable of one of my controllers and should get the fixed.
Octav1us King knows that pain. Their rotating gallery of Rats chew through the cables of their various tech. Even added a Twitch-chat emote depicting such an incident.
Seeing it didn't impress me much, but playing it felt absolutely amazing and "unreal" for lack of a better word. But it also had a massive disadvantage: I couldn't go back to the brutal jank of other 3D games of the time, like Tomb Raider II.
No Mercy was one of games I remember the most fondly from the days of playing N64 with my older brother. The character creation in it was so much fun to play with.
Still have my Pikachu N64 I found at a garage sale and cleaned up. Cart reader recently died, this reminded me to go fix it up so thank you! Mystical Ninja was the best game on the console 👀
I am 100% in for these old console retrospectives
Totally
he does it because of sponsor
@@zlocishhe's been doing these kinds of videos for years
@@zlocishso?
@@zlocish you could say he's a cex worker
Ashens having cex in this video made me quite happy. I hope he has cex more in the future as it is very fun to watch these videos that feature cex.
You made my day, good sir! Godspeed, I say!
Hey, you know what they say, cex sells (video games).
It really is "sex"? They didn't just run with the joke? Me and my friends used to(I still do & always will) call it C E X, or "cecks" but I think that's like an old word for trousers or something
@@SmD-ff5xd That's "kecks". 😉
@@SmD-ff5xd no it's official
most ppl pronounce it "kex"
This video brought a rush of nostalgia that I completely forgot about. As an adult, it made me realize how much my parents spoiled me and how much i miss them now.
I used to work for CeX, I once dispatched some NES games to you from my store and I believe you used them in a video at one point! Megaman 2 was one of them I think?
Two other staff members and I had a bit of a fan moment when we saw your name pop up on the eCom sheet 😅
It's not often that you find a GDPR violation in a RUclips comment
@@DarrenOConnor3 🤓
@@DarrenOConnor3 Is this really a GDPR violation? "Man once bought products in store". I think people are being overly sensitive. Ashens mentioned shopping at CEX, there is literally no new information in this.
@@AnalogSins The law doesn't account for being "overly sensitive", it's literally black and white. If an employee shares confidential information about a customer, that would be a breach. That would include the fact they made a purchase from the store, and what it is they purchased.
Is it serious enough that anyone would take action? Probably not, especially given Ashens' openness about what he purchased and where from, but then it introduces the question of whether this employee is holding other confidential information he's withholding; i.e. the customer's personal phone number, email address, home address etc.
But those haven't been shared so it's probably not going anywhere. It's not a big deal in this situation but these laws are sweeping and general for reasons that protect many others.
@@scarpergirl This is not confidential information. A man may have purchased megaman 2 at some point is not confidential. It is so incredibly vague it is probably true for thousands of people. Confidential information is information that would help identify an individiual AS an individual. Well known video game collector may have bought a video game from store is not that.
The N64 launch in Canada lined up with my birthday almost perfectly so I got N64 at my birthday party and for the entire party me and about 20 kids sat around the tv in complete awe playing Mario 64. We were going to play laser tag and no one wanted to go, but we went and afterwards everyone rushed back to the living room to play more Mario 64 for the rest of the party .That game truly was transformative.
Unfortunately Nintendo basically stole the game from argonaut games.
Sick! That must have been an awesome birthday 😎
My mum owned a after school and holiday club and she would get all the new consoles when they came out and I remember the day we got the 64 and mate I remember the crowd around the table all watching the timer waiting for their turn 😂 amazing memories mate! 👍👍
@davidstephens3235 What? Argonaut took that prototype and made Croc, which feels completely different from Mario 64. It would be more accurate to say that Croc started as a pitch to Nintendo for a Yoshi game. Nintendo rejected the proposal because they didn't want to license their characters out to another company, but they hired some of the developers who worked on the pitch.
A bit crazy to say they "stole" anything from Argonauts.
I feel that's why Virtual Reality headsets aren't doing well. Who wants to exercise, which is pretty much required, when they can just sit down and use a controller. I miss laser-tag, it was a great way to have fun and keep in shape, too.
@@stephenthomas1492 yeah man quasar (UK laser tag) was sick AF loved going in with just me and a mate and made loads of new on the day friends.
And you're right I would much prefer to sit with a controller 🎮 and game with buddies then stand up ..standing up was for when you was about to win and you start jumping while playing still 🤣🤣
Me and three friends in middle school playing 4 player Goldeneye on a 13 inch TV with 4 teeny tiny split screens, it was somehow the greatest thing in the world.
When I first got the game to play I felt like I was really bond so good times
I played on a 50 inch HD TV lol four big screens and made levels look big
That was me in high school but on a 27-inch and lots of weed and nag champa incense lol
@@Bond007eryeah I had a friend who had a giant projection TV that we played on...fun times
I hope cex' budget allows for a few more of these, I'd love ashens talk about all the weird plastic controller contraptions from the Wii era
I'm sure they must have the budget; cex sells.
Could've been worse - they could've called it CBT (Computer Boutique Trade) Store.
@Elastane When i worked there as a teenager many years ago we all knew it stood for "Complete Entertainment Exchange" so even to this day i call it "C-E-X" and refuse to pronounce it the edgy hilarious way lol
My father, being the semi-hoarder he was, actually kept all the N64 game boxes from all the games my parents ever bought me (about 15 in total) and they are all in mint condition. When I discovered that in the attic during a cleanout I was beyond amazed
My brother took everything SNES related when he left home, completely the opposite to your dad. That included Christmas gifts that I'd gotten and the first game I ever bought with my own money.
@@crapparc I tried to remember and consider that my little brother plays video games too, when I moved out. I left a lot of stuff back at my folks for him to play.
If you have a dead Memory Pak, you might need to open it up and replace the CR2032 battery. I did that with a couple of mine recently and they would save again. The third party ones are easier to change out than the official ones because the batteries aren't usually soldered in.
yup, i have the memory card plus he showed and it still works with a new battery.
There's also a more modern forever pak 64 by 4fourlayer technologies. They're awesome and you never have to worry about them running out of juice (they don't use a battery). However unfortunately they are the size of a standard Nintendo mem pak storage wise.
One 3rd party one I bought brand new on amazon had a finicky battery. Worked after I soldered in a new battery! I was so sick of losing my save data in Rayman 2
I have an Interact memory pak like the one shown and I've opened it up and it does indeed have a 2032 battery in a standard battery holder inside of it keeping the ram chips alive, if you take it out you lose all the save data so back up your save before putting in a new battery!
BTW Interact also sold the PC memory pak reader "Dex Drive" that let you plug a memory pak into a pc and read/backup and restore game data to and from original and aftermarket memory paks. Still got mine and it works though only on an old PC running Win 98, it mostly worked under XP but not as well.
Paul being the one to give Lightspeed Rescue a score that breaks the rating scale sounds about right, honestly.
Explains his inability to mark 25 points on the Cliffhanger edition of Price of Shite 😂😂
Always a good day when Ashens uploads a new video.
The N64 is a magnificent specimen of a game console.
It's truly a beast.
"there was Nintendo, then there were 64 of them"
S tier storytelling, im flabbergasted
I keep seeing you everywhere!
@@YokiDokiPanic He is the one who knocks
So happy to see you doing retro gaming / PC stuff again. It's always been my favorite part of your channel.
Also please bring back "thumbs up for Dingoo" as your official catchphrase
Great content as always..Great to see someone who genuinely enjoys talking about retro tat
I can't get enough of these Ashens CeX videos.
Cex tapes
The ending has me thinking I should use the voucher online, and order it like that.
*burp*
And do it then.
Well its been 6 hours, did ya git it? Enquiring minds need to know.
Fun Fact: One N64 game was released with corrupted, glitched music, with lots of Midi errors, corrupted instrument samples and more.
It's called Donald Duck Goin Quackers, which is actually a port of the Dreamcast/PC version (that actually has some great, underrated music!), but has a few original songs that to this day are not as audible as they should be.
The game's TCRF article explains a lot of the music errors. It's crazy!
That's crazy. I grew up with the PC version. What an epic Music OST!
@@QuinquinoMan I love the PC version's ost too. The n64 version however has some exclusive songs that are to this day not audible as they are supposed to.
Fans are working on a repair patch however, which is supposed to be released this year. Noice.
I feel sorry for the composer. He created a stripped down midi version for the N64 version alongside his original music, and the dev team imports it so incorrectly and faulty.
I mean, the N64 version of the game seems to be more known than the PC and Dreamcast versions for whatever reason, which contributes to the fact that few people don't know the actual HQ music...
Wow 64 whole bits! Gaming will never get better than this.
Seeing Body Harvest knocked a memory loose in my brain. I remember loving the idea of the game, but never quite getting the hang of it. Also, WWF No Mercy, for those combined wrestling/video game fans, is really considered of one the best wrestling games ever made, and it still holds up tremendously today.
Best part about rare replay, It regularly on sale digitally for under 10. The digital version comes with goldeneye (until the licenses expire again)
Honestly these are some of the most well-executed advertisements. Just giving very real examples of things you may have lying around and how you can make money.
Grew up playing Diddy Kong racing and Mario party 2 on this legendary system as a kid with my 2 older brothers as well as taking turns watching each other as we played through Ogre Battle 64. We only had 4 games, but it was all we needed to enjoy it
Mario Party 2 is my jam! :D
Beetle Adventure racing...that took me back. Amazing game
I could watch retro gaming videos all day especially the N64 and Dreamcast stuff. Goldeneye was an absolute game changer.
Goldeneye didnt really do anything unique though.
I will not pardon the pun 😂
@@ezedjay well it changed the way we played multiplayer first person shooters. I always preferred the single player campaigns myself but I appreciate how good it was at the time.
@@functionatthejunction Goldeneye is a lot like Halo before Halo, it set a lot of the standards for what a console fps should be. Multiplayer is the big thing, but it's also one of the first games you can set up for modern dual stick controls, using the d-pad for movement and the stick for aim.
I will forever remember the Christmas that I got an N64. It was the year that the console was released. We had an insane blizzard in my area during Christmas that year. My parents were divorced so I went to my dad's Christmas eve and then went back to my mom's that night for Christmas in the morning. I will never forget the ride to my moms. The city was completely empty. We didn't see a single car on the road. All the stores that weren't considered essential were closed. I had never seen my town like that. It was like everyone else in the world just disappeared. I will never forget that.
Love it when Ashens posts again
Classic ashens this is exactly why I subscribed back in 2008
When you started piling up the passports I nearly died 😂
* And then the explorer64 added in too. I'm crying here "Incredibly the answer is.......YES"😂
Great retrospective 👍
Amazed he didn't blow an internal fuse or something towering up those adaptors!! :)
@@davy_KThe import adapters don’t use any power. They literally just connect the ROM and save pins to the top cart and connect the CIC security chip pins to the rear slot… though I guess they have to power both cartridges, the port was designed to power things like the capture cart for Mario Artist and the Morita Shogi 64 modem cart.
Body Harvest was amazing. You glossed over the fact it has a time travelling mechanic too so you visit all these open worlds across various time periods fighting the Alien Invasion.
And the reason its "GTA like before GTA" - is that its from DMA Design - the same folk behind GTA. It's almost like a prototype of a 3D GTA.
And I love it. I'd imagine Rockstar* still have the IP somewhere in their vault and I'd love them to revisit it.
Would be amusing to see Rockstar North get the license to Lemmings back and make another game.
Matt McMuscles did a great video on the history of Body Harvest.
@@davidmcgill1000 Sadly, Lemmings is now just another undead IP in Sony's dragon-hoard.
Body Harvest was bastard hard
@@kevintaylor8934 it really was, even using cheats it could be brutal
Fun fact, the Pikachu console still has the 64 DD connector, probably because it'd be more expensive to redesign the board just for a console revision they just didn't put a door for it on the plastic mold
the bottom port is soldered to the top port to hold them together afaik
Also it acts as a support so your not bending the board when jamming a cartridge in.
Funner factier (?): The Pikachu consoles used N64 boards that were fully manufactured for standard consoles before being reworked into Pikachu consoles. This is evident by the original power LED being installed and then cut off with remnant legs left soldered in. The blinking LED cheek PCB then taps power from the main board using bodge wires.
The others are right about the expansion slot: It acts as a socket for the removable cartridge slot so it must remain in place.
The real reason they walked it off isn’t because the 64DD failed. It’s because the port was mostly used for piracy while the 64DD was essentially canceled years earlier and only finally got a limited released to meet contractual obligations with their development partner, RandNet. This is evident because even the 64DD was ready before launch in 1996 as shown by the retail American version (production sample) found second hand in Washington state (near Nintendo’s headquarters).
My theory is that Nintendo was ready to switch as a last ditch effort if it seemed like cartridges were causing the system to fail. It probably would’ve ended up much like PC Engine Super CD-ROM² in Japan where nearly all game development switched to it, old hardware was upgraded, and future hardware came with it built in. Imagine that: A N64 with a built-in 64DD.
@@flandrbleNot soldered. The top port has pins that go through the board to connect to the bottom port. The bottom port is the only one solders and it acts like a socket for the top slot using holes in the PCB. It’s very easy to break the wings on the left and right if you don’t pull it out perfectly straight but it will simply pull out and slide back in without tools. I’ve demonstrated it many times if you look.
Would absolutely be down for more of these retrospectives, they're very entertaining!
"Don't expect to see your favorite games"
Body Harvest is one of my favorite games. :)
"and then use the voucher online and get them ordered like that" 49:09 best bit. :) Including the burp.
(editing error)
Thank you for covering my favorite console
Used to rent games for our N64 from the Blockbuster at the end our street. Those were the bloody days!
I still have my Blockbuster card, old and wrinkled. And the card is too.
We used to rent the console and Mario Kart. Enough times where I could easily have just bought the damn things and saved money.
Those controler paks have batteries in them like some of the older nes and gameboy games do (zelda, pokemon) replacing the battery could bring it back to life.
I went from a Megadrive to a N64 i think on my 13th birthday. Can imagine how my mind was blown. I got Pilot wings as my first game and just adored it.
Pilot Wings was shite.
Body harvest and blast corps were bangers.
I love these videos, takes me back to my childhood 🎉
"This has got to be the only console ever created where you reset by tickling a characters foot" Suda51: "write that down! Write that down!"
The N64 used RDRAM, which was high performance RAM at the time but had some peculiarities and SDRAM quickly surpassed it. I had a PC with RDRAM, and it REQUIRED installing DIMMs in pairs, you couldn't leave a socket open. I presume this is why the N64 requires either a jumper pak or an expansion pak. And yeah, Nintendo loved their Paks.
You could actually play Goldeneye with two controllers, holding each by the center prong, to use two sticks and two triggers, for a relatively modern take on movement/aiming.
The N64 analog stick isn't actually analog; it's a digital optical device. The X and Y axes have gimbals that move a slitted quadrant past an optical sensor which counts how often the beam breaks to determine how far the stick has been moved. It has no mechanism to detect what position it starts in which is why you have to make sure the stick isn't held over when you start the console. This mechanism is immune to the stick drift that plagues modern consoles because there are no wear-prone potentiometers, but the gimbal mechanism itself was subject to plastic-on-plastic wear and either the stick or the gimbals would waller out, causing the familiar N64 floppy joystick. To this day there are companies that make replacement sticks and gimbals, and they're fairly easy to fix.
I believe the N64 was the first console that actually offered a rumble feature. The PS1 started out with their SNES pad with two additional shoulder buttons, added two analog sticks for the Dual Analog, then added rumble to that for the DualShock controller which has been the pattern for game controllers since, but I believe the N64 did it first.
No, it wasn't Nintendo. First of all, Force Feedback had been a thing in Arcade/Pinball Machines going back to the 70's and it was already in use in Joysticks on the PC and in 1994 Aura Systems launched the Interactor Vest (Mega Drive, SNES) that did Force Feedback based on Audio (it worked great with fighting games). The whole concept is really old, it just took console manufacturers ages to finally utilize it, probably due to costs.
For consoles, it was Sony, who released their Dual Analogue Controller several days before the N64 was released and it actually had the force feedback motors, though only in the japanese version, for the non-japanese version, the motors were removed because there weren't any non-japese games that supported the feature at the time.
It’s the same thing as “continuity RIMMs” to fill the unoccupied slots in a dual-channel RDRAM-based PC. “Continuity” just means a straight connection, just like a jumper, hence “jumper pak.” You can see that it merely connects some bus terminating components on the board at the end of the memory bus (removing the pak disconnects the terminators).
I built my first Pentium 4 system with the retail boxed 1.3GHz Williamette, released just after the 1.4 and 1.5GHz versions. I paired it with the retail boxed Intel D850GB (NOT D850GBAL) board while my friend went with the Asus P4B. Anyway, we both got 2x32MB or 2x64MB RDRAM inside of our retail boxed P4 CPUs. They bundled that because the modules were almost unobtainium and the only real use for the RDRAM RIMMs back then was in Pentium 4 systems anyway (the i820-based Tualatin Pentium III boards had been recalled due to issues with the RDRAM chipset).
I can’t recall if the continuity RIMMs came pre-populated with the boards or with the CPUs, but it was likely the boards. I remember telling my friend “just like the RDRAM inside the N64!” when we were building these ~Jan/Feb 2001.
Being digital is why Nintendo only ever referred to their thumb stick as a “3D Control Stick” instead of analog. Also, you could recalibrate at any point using L + R + Start, which was implemented in every game as part of the devkit libraries and mandatory for licensing. Same as the Controller Pak management screen when you hold Start at boot. Fun fact: The L + R + Start button combination would be seen by the console as Button 15 instead of those three buttons, meaning the controller itself specifically recognized it even though it was the software on the console that would react and recalibrate (controller did nothing but send the Button 15 signal). You could exploit this to move beyond the intended range to glitch certain games. For example, you could get out of your vehicle and moonwalk backwards in Blast Corps, though some crappy 3rd part controller did that automatically since they would overdrive the range (The Rock 64, I’m looking at YOU!).
Shadow Angel already got here before me regarding Sony controllers, though _that said:_ Yeah, force feedback existed in the arcade and on PC, but I would not count Aura Systems' peripherals as they simply worked based on the audio output of the console; a game couldn't tell it "okay rumble NOW", it would just react based to the sound.
While not the first machine capable of playing video games _period_ to have rumble, the N64 is indeed the first home console to support true programmable rumble like we see on modern consoles as far as I'm aware.
@@ShadowAngel1860 It's not like Nintendo ripped off Sony in terms of rumble; like you said, the Dual Analog beat the Rumble Pak to market by just 2 days, and they were both first shown to the public in the same month (November 1996). Effectively, it was a tie.
Two videos this close together? CEX must be funding a new Ashens movie : )
You mean "the CEXtape"?
Anytime I see a N64 all I can think about is playing Goldeneye in "big head" mode. Those were the days 😅
Great job. N64 control is great. A lot more stuff with the N64 than I knew of.
Yep, loved a bit of Goldeneye... Slappers mode, back in the day. Still got the N64 stashed away, with all the shizzle. Bloody loved that console 😍👍
I think I'll use the voucher online and get them ordered like that
Cough.... Burp 🤣🤣🤣
Blast Corps was probably the game I rented the most back in the day. Me and my brother were so into it, spending many a weekend to complete it. So great.
Two lengthy videos within a month? Ashens is pulling out all the stops.
Been watching since I was like 13 and still get hype for a new upload especially a long one like this
That controller at 16:34 when detached from whatever monstrosity that base thing is kind of reminds me of an Atari Jaguar controller.
I see an Ashens video and N64 ? I click like instantly!
The old Game Boy Extravaganza episode was my first video of yours that I found. Glad to see the series still going.
I have a strong memory of the Sega Nomad video. I had just moved into my house, my bed hadn't even arrived yet so I remember falling asleep on the couch in the living room with my Kindle tablet propped up on a chair watching RUclips videos. I would wake up and watch the food special ones, and you know I really enjoyed it when Stuart found a foreign food he liked. Sure it's funny how he'll roast disgusting foods but somehow I always found "That's actually quite nice. I'm having more of those later" pleasantly wholesome.
I first heard about cex thanks to ashens. Before that I was cexless, just whimsically trudging along through my world without cex but that’s ok now because I have all the cex I could ever desire
While not as available, there are some HDMI mods available that solder on directly onto the digital side before the DAC and video-converter chip. These give crystal clear digital-to-digital upscaling with accurate colors and low latency. Maybe a bit on the pricey side, maybe a bit of a moderately challenging solder job, but no PCB trace-cutting needed and it does not sacrifice the original AV port.
i love the console retrospectives, you are so knowledgeable and sound like you could talk about em for hours
Mickey’s speedway USA is one of the first games I think of when I think the N64. Brilliant game
I'll give that to CEX, it's quite clever how they've managed to make a RUclips sponsorship in a way in which vids sponsored by them are likely to be demonetized:D
Fun fact (that comment section will be aware of already)- that bottom port on the Pokemon version is still there, it's just missing a hole in the case. Btw, that's an interesting post-credits scene:]
A friend sent me a copy of Conker's Bad Fur Day, and I went out and bought a N64 just to play it. I ended up with a rumble pack with a socket for the memory card on it, so I didn't have to keep switching them in and out. It worked pretty well for about twenty minutes.
I had a third party rumble pak with a memory card slot in the front. It had a switch you were supposed to use to switch it from rumble to memory mode, but in my experience you could just ignore it and they both worked all the time. It was also neat because the way the memory pak stuck out the front allowed it to be used as a weird stand when you put the controller down.
You've made me nostalgic for something that I never experienced. Well done.
Absolutely loved Body Harvest, I never owned it but my parents kept renting it from our local video rental shop. Good times!
My favorite console.
Great to see Beetles Adventure Racing and WWF No Mercy! Two games I've loved after their heyday!
If CEX makes it so we can get these videos, I certainly won't complain!
Really happy to see this in my sub box. I’ll be honest, some of the pound shop tat episodes I’ve tuned out of after a while. But the PlayStation retrospective was the first one I completely watched all the way through in a while!
Wondering if you would ever be open to doing any old mobile phone reviews. Like get an old Nokia 3310 working, or Sony Ericsson (complete with game Deep Abyss)- or even the N-Gage and it’s games!
I love how these videos are sponsored in a non invasive way. Classic ashens really.
Mischief Makers was amazing! _shake shake_ I loved going for the highest rankings in each level of that game; it's VERY fun, in my opinion, if you can get past the weird controls. There are so many fun and ridiculous things you can do in Mischief Makers; it's honestly one of my favorite games on the system.
Mischief Makers is excellent though it is one of those Japanese games where if you're not dashing/boosting around the level as fast as you can, it's gonna feel weird.
Mate please keep these coming they are the best hangover watch, I’ve saved this for later when I’m hanging out my ass
32:58 I'm Canadian, but I randomly bought a copy of the official UK Nintendo magazine around 1999 or 2000. On one page, they mentioned a game called "Lylat Wars" and I got excited because I thought it was a sequel to Starfox 64 that I hadn't heard about. Then I looked close and realized the screenshot was just a level in SF64, at which point I realized it must be an alternate name. I had no idea why they did that at the time, but many years later I found out it was because Nintendo thought the original title sounded too much like a German company called StarVox.
I'm 31 and have owned several N64s since I grew up with them. I'd consider myself to be pretty knowledgable but I've never heard of the French ones having unique video out. That's awesome.
Apparently one of the reasons they included four controller ports was due to the urging from development studios like Rare. In the rare replay video they filmed for Goldeneye, they mentioned really pushing Nintendo for it.
Nintendo was very: ohh... It's not that big here in Japan... It'll cost like fifty cents more...
Rare responded with: But four player Mario kart would be incredible.
The rest is history.
Also, the speed argument in favor of cartridges became moot as developers used compression, meaning data had to "load"/decompress.
The real reason Nintendo did it is because they're assholes who wanted full control.
"They've gotta buy their carts from us, and our lockout chip is a lot harder to crack this time, so I'd really hate to be a third party developer who doesn't wanna pay much for cartridges or for our licensing..."
Why do you think the GameCube had Mini-DVD instead?
On a completely unrelated note, we got so scammed in the US, getting these huge full sized cases for games on the GameCube, when Japan got those awesome mini cases. Not saying I don't like a full sized case, I just think they were unnecessary.
A sponsor skipper keeps the flow of the other Ashens videos alive!
I remember Forsaken64 was one of the few games that used the D-Pad. Up and Down would swap your primary weapons and Left and Right would swap your secondary
In a lot of fps games you could also use the d-pad for movement and the stick for aim. It was never the default, but plenty of N64 shooters support normal dual stick style controls if set up like this.
Man, Forsaken was bad.
The N64 was probably the first console I got really, really excited about, I still have a lot of nostalgia for it. It was great to see WWF No Mercy getting some love here, 23 years on it's still revered by wrestling fans. It is worth mentioning however that it was not the first of its kind, but really the best one and the culmination of years of tweaking of the Virtual Pro Wrestling (the name of the Japanese equivalent to the series) engine, and had several predecessors, two of which - WCW vs. nWo World Tour and WCW/nWo Revenge - were the best selling wrestling games for N64.
Can’t wait for the Dreamcast retrospective (hope he’s got Blue Stinger)
30:00 The leaning tower of cheeta... it's beautiful.
in regards to the expansion port it's actually still installed on the motherboard they just didn't include access. There's a channel (James channel) where he takes one apart
Hands of an elf😂. Ash you make me laugh so hard. It's a pleasure watching you go through bits and bobs. Keep on going
If I recall correctly, Nintendo deliberately misspelled "pak" in the hopes they could trademark it.
I love ur videos I'm so glad your making videos Man I keep pulling up ur old videos even the couch adventure 😂
Giving you a thumbs up and some props for enjoying and appreciating Beetle Adventure Racing. So few people do. And they are all nits.
A funny fact, that middle bit with the stick, nintendo basically cut that out of the controller and turned it into the wii it’s nunchuck, it’s pretty much the shame shape and size.
Mischief Makers is one of the best platform games ever made very underrated IMO. Body Harvest was great if sluggish and I loved Chopper Attack ugly yet smooth controls.
One of my all time favorite games is Jet Force Gemini. Great run and gun with design elements that clearly influenced the later Ratchet & Clank.
I think the gold controller was released to coincide with Ocerina Of Time, which was a gold colour cartridge. Either that or they were released to coincide with GoldenEye 007 which came out in Australia in 1998, it's so long ago that I can't remember, and we never had a gold controller with our N64.
Nintendo Power had a contest where you could qualify to win one if you beat a certain lap time on Mario Circuit in Mario Kart 64 and send in a photograph as proof.
@@jeffs1637 I don't think Nintendo Power existed here in Australia, but I think these controllers were sold at retail outlets. I also believe they were bundled in various Nintendo 64 packages.
@@Lachlant1984interesting! I'm not sure if you could get the gold controllers any other ways here in the States, but I got mine through the NP contest. I'm curious how other areas may have been able to acquire the gold controllers.
ashens’ extravaganza series never disappoints. been watching for 6 years!🫡
I remember getting my N64 for $50 (AUD) at a small little cluttered second-hand shop in Tasmania. It came with 2 controllers and like, 3 games and I'm so happy I still have it to this day, especially now that the consoles alone go for over 100.
The pikachu N64 actually does still have the expansion port on the bottom of the motherboard, just without a hole in the case for it.
29:00 this segment was made just for me, so thank you ashens for making that segment just for me!
How has there not been a Blast Corp. remake or sequel? That game was flipping awesome!
Because after the N64 days all the key staff at Rare left and it went down hill quickly. These days their IPs get passed around to any developers by Microsoft.
It was re-released in Rare Replay
The Backlash stages SUCKED
I found one of these for 150 bucks. One of the best antique store purchases I’ve ever had.
I loved Body Harvest!
Excellent video!
My cat has discovered she can push open the cartridge slot as some sort of new toy. She knows she's not meant to do this.
I also just remembered that an ex-roommate's rabbit bit through the cable of one of my controllers and should get the fixed.
Octav1us King knows that pain. Their rotating gallery of Rats chew through the cables of their various tech. Even added a Twitch-chat emote depicting such an incident.
My rabbit as a kid ate through many sega controller cords. Too true of a pain
No game will ever impress me as much as seeing Mario 64 for the first time. You had to be there.
Seeing it didn't impress me much, but playing it felt absolutely amazing and "unreal" for lack of a better word. But it also had a massive disadvantage: I couldn't go back to the brutal jank of other 3D games of the time, like Tomb Raider II.
I remember how sensitive the transfer pack used to be 😂
Person: "Your mom's so fat, she doesn't sit in the house, she sits *AROUND* the house!"
Transfer Pak: 😢
Nice, absolutely loved the body harvest game
You should make this a series. It would be rather enjoyable
He already did one on the PlayStation....so....
I just recently went through the old Game Boy Extravaganzas again and now this shows up. Jolly good.
I can't wait for the gamecube episode !
No Mercy was one of games I remember the most fondly from the days of playing N64 with my older brother. The character creation in it was so much fun to play with.
You should do an entire video on Goldeneye itself
Still have my Pikachu N64 I found at a garage sale and cleaned up. Cart reader recently died, this reminded me to go fix it up so thank you!
Mystical Ninja was the best game on the console 👀