@@ryuunosuk3In a release they made of Cannon Fodder, the team who worked on it had a big joke about it by hiding a bunch of “Free S*x!” signs on the background layer of the Virgin Logo. It only became publicly known when TCRF found it 10 years later.
I think they shot themselves in the foot legally speaking by shipping with a disk containing a pirated library of roms. It's hard to argue it's not for piracy, when you do that.
We used these extensively at Iguana for art-sends. They were cheap and easy to program. They were not used by the engineers for normal development; it was specifically for art/audio and QA.
Not actually Bung. I don't know who was bundling discs of commercial ROMs with them but it wasn't Bung, Carl Industries, or Lik Sang. My 1997 unit from CI had no CD. my 2000/2001 unit from Lik Sang had a CD with some MPEG commercials for Bung PC Jr, GB Xchanger, and other stuff. In 1997 I didn't want to burn an expensive CD-R for the few games that were released. I had a blank bundled with my CD-R drive in early 1998 and didn't burn one until I had about 80 N64 games.
a college friend had what I think was called the "Dr Z64" and had a Zip100 drive vs a CD-ROM... this was awesome, as he could insert any cart into the unit, power it up and immediately rip the rom onto whatever Zip disc you had in the drive at the moment. Unlike the one shown, the Z64 was shoved into the cartridge slot and the cart was inserted into it. Of course that meant they would leverage their friends with Zip drives and CD burners to make compilation CDs for their future use :P
Wasn't just Acclaim. I knew a LOT of devs who loved these things back the day due to how cheap and functional they were; they were used on games that shipped as early as 1997. A lot of teams would have one or two official devkits for the leads, but everyone else on the team would use the Doctor V64s. I'd imagine when Nintendo stopped by they'd hide them in the closet.
I worked on Nintendo ds games as an artist for a small UK developer. We used r4 carts to test games, mainly because the screens on the dev kits were so scratched and faded from over use!
@@nicholasfarley5967 I also remember the ROM writing time was an order of magnitude faster than on the legit ROM writers. Like, 3 minutes versus two hours.
I worked for Activision in the mid 2000's. I was tasked with ordering 300 backup DS carts for development. Using piracy devices to save dev costs had been going on for a long time. It's not like "COD/Guitar Hero" Activision could not afford official dev kits at the time.
@@jeff15 in practice, the PSU wasn't good enough for many/most of the faster drives and the BIOS didn't support CD-R drives. If I recall correctly, people recommended Creative-brand drives because they used less power in their higher speed drives. The second one I got from Lik Sang had a low-power laptop drive in an IDE adapter but it was defective and I had to replace it. The first one I got had an 8x drive installed by a US Bung distributor (think it was Carl Industries).
@@laserdrip I believe my laptop CD-ROM was 24x and I got it working once. The disc wouldn't spin and there was something physically scraping when I turned the disc manually. After spinning it around enough times manually it would finally spin on its own but only loaded games once or twice before it failed and never worked again. Wasn't sending it back to Hong Kong and risking customs again so I just grabbed the drive out of my older V64 bought from an American distributor back in 1998.
@@emmettturner9452 I believe the distributor (Lik-Sang) installed the drive in our second unit. Maybe Carl Industries (USA distributor) installed the drive in our first DV64.
We and a number of other studios used to use Bung hardware + Emulators to develop GameBoy Color games too. We shipped 4 commercial titles without a single official dev kit. The 2000's were an interesting time. ;)
@@EnforcerX71 That's actually ironic, because if I remember correctly, some of their top people, like Miyamoto, have in the past stated how Nintendo tried to be the gaming equivalent of Disney, or at least, tried to be a similar business.
I got my first DV64 before Zelda OoT was released, but I made sure to get the one with 256mbit RAM because I knew those larger games were coming. I was poor and lived in a trailer park. There's absolutely no way I spent $450 USD. It was more like $275. The USA distributor at the time was Carl Industries. My package included the emulation adapter, DS1 (SRAM save device), and DX256 (EEPROM save device). I don't believe there was any extra charge for those at the time.
2 of my friends had these devices when I was a kid. They'd travel to Hong Kong every year, and both of them came back with it the same year. Along with many CDS and had the entire library of N64 games....needless to say, my 11-year-old self had my mind blown!
DevKits are strictly full feature piracy devices. Because they either have to be able to load and run unsigned codes, or people can just resign codes to load and run on it anyway. Not always the same the other way around, though, for some piracy devices only run custom format (encrypted) ROMs that only the vendor of such device can create.
Still got my Doctor V64 to this day. Still working well. I've had to replace the CD-ROM drive as the laser failed but now it's alive again. I used to get patches from Dextrose where you could patch games to have trainers and cheats! Edit: Had it since the first year it released and could probably adjust the laser pot to fix it but quicker to replace! Edit edit: I used the parallel cable to dump my own cartridges to patch them and then re-run on the Doctor 64. Still got my Mario 64 game with the always ability to fly mod!
@@kbruns33 well to be fair we did get a bit of that returned with the PSP's Pandora Battery, Nintendo DS & 3DS's flashcarts, and i guess if you want the Nintendo Switch's RCMLoader dongle that plugs straight in the Switch without needing a PC or Laptop to do the work everytime.
@@MrDmoney156 True, though still (to me) doesn't feel the same. Funny thing about the Switch though, I have the SXos and doggle etc.. and I've never used it. Everything on the Switch platform has been top rate and ive purchased everything. My initial desire was homebrew emulators but with the security measures and online risks.. I said the hell with it.. not gonna do it. That being said though, I have enough purchasing power that buying games are really a non-issue to me. Something that wasn't the case during prior consoles for me.
Though you could probably fit an IDE to USB drive in it instead and forget the laser death altogether. Might be a plan to buy ione for the future in case the current drive dies.
@@kbruns33 yeah I know what you mean about the fun, plus it was probably better when we were younger because it was a bit... Naughty lol. I was lucky in that I could save money up and buy the games legit but the doctor 64 allowed me to "test" the games before I bought them. I mostly only played Mario kart and goldeneye with my friends so owning them original didn't cost much at all, zelda and other games I bought and traded at the local flea market once I'd completed them. Probably why mine is still working well as it only get used for playing with cheats and trainers!
The story of Lik-Sang sound like an interesting tale as well. Effectively forced into closure, it claimed to have supplied most of the execs in Sony Europe with PSPs before they could get them from Sony in Japan
Lik Sang was such a great website. I remember they would often give neat little freebies with orders. Got my famicom GBA Micro, my red DS, and a few games including Elecroplankton from them. They were my favorite online retailer in general until they were forced to close.
@@empoleonmaster6709 Lik-Sang was an import site that originally dealed in mod chips and other stuff. From memory they stopped selling those products after a number of lawsuits from the big 3 and pivoted to just imported products. Think Play-Asia but with free shipping and that's basically what Lik-Sang was. The PSP lawsuit was about how the PSP didn't get a simultaneous global release with Europe being the the last region to get it so people from the EU used the site to import Japanese PSPs. Sony's Europe didn't like how the company was potentially eating into their sales so they sued Lik-Sang in UK courts and won with the ruling saying something along the lines that Sony had the exclusive rights to sell Sony products. This lawsuit was the straw that broke the camel's back and forced the site to shut down and as a parting shot, Lik-Sang mentioned how according to their customer data, a lot of Sony EU management had used their site to get the PSP early.
@CurryKitten: I befriended one of the Lik-Sang employees years ago. Pretty awesome individual! A rather accomplished developer too. Alas, it is lamentably common for hegemonic big businesses to be bullies to any organization which has appearances of potentially eating into their profit margins. Lik-Sang sold a lot of products which were completely unrelated to devkits which could be potentially used by unethical individuals for piracy.
I can't imagine what an amazing system the 64 would have been with an optical drive. The games were so hamstrung by storage space. So much performance available in the new system when it came out, but no storage.
Meh, it would’ve turn into a clone of the Playstation with circle-jerk FMVs, ridiculously long load times, and multiple discs. I don’t think it was that bad of a decision by Nintendo to keep the cartridge format for one last rodeo.
@Gomam0n - I intended to say shittier 3D, as the N64 had slightly better visuals sometimes, but they were both bad overall. I'll take that out of the comment as it's not really relevant to cartridge vs disc.
@@Prizm44The DRAM in this unit is an UNGODLY amount of RAM for a typical CD-ROM based system which only has to have enough RAM for the menu or current level. Meanwhile, this thing has to fit an entire game into RAM. The PlayStation CD-ROM was only ~2x speed and only got a little faster in later models because Sony literally couldn’t source anything slower. One of my V64s came with an 8x Matsushita CD-ROM and the other came with a 24x Teac notebook CD-ROM. Even the 8x had fast loading speeds from CD. You’d literally spend more time loading to get in any PlayStation game. It was loading over the parallel port that was painfully slow but thankfully they resolved that with the faster V64jr… a parallel port ONLY device (no CD-ROM). So, yeah, imagine how rich you could make a single level with 32MB DRAM in addition to the console’s 8MB RDRAM. The CD-ROM had plenty of room to feed that if you didn’t waste it on FMV and uncompressed audio like most PlayStation games did.
We used some of these at Boss Game Studio (World Driver Championship, etc.), and I still have mine they gave me when they closed down (I was an artist there). Always thought this thing was pretty cool, thanks for the history video. :)
One thing that's cool about Bung is they held a homebrew gameboy game competition to promote their gameboy product, basically like a game jam. We played the games in Kusogrande recently.
Very fascinating look at technology an 8 year old me back in 1997 would have killed for lol. I remember being absolutely fascinated by the idea of how code written on a PC would somehow end up on a cartridge as a video game. I think because I still have that fascination I love watching this channel, and have been subscribed to it for some time. Thank you for making these videos!
My friends dad was really tech savy and he had one, we would play games month in advance without spending a dime. Same thing with your modded ps1 with copied games. Those were the days.
I love your channel. I grew up learning my first language (python), then moving on lua and messing around with the psp. Every video is like reliving one of those moments. I remember doom on psp and being blown away that emulation and older games ran so well. I still have that old sucker too still running custom firmware. Thank you for all the great work you do.
Lik Sang was amazing, once I ordered something from them within a week later the price had dropped by around $20, without asking they gave store credit for the price difference! never seen customer service like that before or after,
I had one.... And the Snes version too. The Snes device I sold many years back but the Doctor V64 I only threw away last year when moving as I've dragged it and other retro consoles from my early life with me on three house moves. I threw away a neo geo CD, Dreamcast modded, Saturn with pal/NTSC switch, Snes, PC engine CD..... I have no room anymore and my crt was sold a few years back.... A bit gutted looking back but it was impossible to store again, especially when I became a Dad. Great video again.
Back in the late 90's I was in HK and Dr. V 64 was in those shady shops you found in obscure markets. I remember I could buy the whole set up and take it back home with me. At that point in time. I already dealt with the Dr equivalents of the SNES but using floppy's. Man I could give a boat load of information on all those devices for so many platforms and all I had seen. Could write a book on it. But it's nice to see you bringing this to light. Cheers.
Wasn't there one for the NES or Famicom as well if i recalled? I remembered reading that somewhere before. Also, was it cheaper to get it straight from Hong Kong rather then importing it back then?
@@MrDmoney156 Yes, there were similar devices for those. Unlike Jr C's assertion that he could "write a book on it" and "I don't recall ever seeing Drs for Sega or NEC" he completely ignores the Multi Game Doctor^2 and the Super Magic Griffin, as just two examples. In other words: if he wrote a book on such subjects, it would be lacking a lot of details.
My mate had one of these somewhere around 1997. It was awesome. He was one of first people in the country to get ADSL as well, as one of his housemates worked for a telco. The two combined were a piracy powerhouse! He also had the super wild card before that, so we were never short of something to play when round his house. We used to use the ADSL to host an Unreal Tournament server, and use all the house PCs to team up in UT. We'd let plebs connect to the server to create the other team. No-one could touch us as our latency was non-existent. Kind of cheaty, but you can't spell slaughter without laughter! Good times. RIP Lik Sang
I had a Dr64 (and 32 other backup units) in my collection at one time (late 90's). i visited Carl Ind in Miami and Bung in HK in 96/97. They were actually really nice. I also was part of the release groups for the Dr64. There was another copier (cant remember the name right now) for the N64 that backed up to ZIP Disk (originally the 100meg disk and later the 250M disk). Fun times. Great to see videos on this devices, as they are a really interesting subculture of the video gaming history.
I know this is unlikely, but I don't suppose you ever remembered the name of that other peripheral? I believe I also wanted that specific one back in the day but can't remember it's darn name!
as a game tester at Nintendo, one of us guys had one of these and copied eproms. Each was salted so if it ever leaked Nintendo would know exactly who it came from... The only early eprom we couldn't copy was perfect dark, it came to us welded into a steel frame with an n64 inside!
@@alexjohnward They actually spent the money to send over an entire console, welded in a metal case to try and stop piracy which would of hardly touched their bottom line anyway? The things company will go through because of the big boogyman Piracy.
This is one of the first things I ever learned about on the Internet. I remember reading about it via AOL in 96 on my 28k dial-up modem and being hellbent on getting one. So cool you got your hands on one. The V64 files in emulation coming from this device is blowing my mind right now. Great video as always MVG!
Thanks to people like that it's possible to retro game with almost all old consoles as emulators on PC and almost all games are available as ROMs that's amazing there have been kits for most obviously as ROMs from most exist including Nintendo Ds and cartridges with SD adapters to run ROMs on the game consoles themselves or use ROMs on a PC. Glad that exists it's amazing and wonderful
3:00 You labeled it as Final Fantasy VI (six) Delete your channel lol. Kidding. The development kit aspect of this story is insanely interesting. I'm surprised I'm only now hearing about this device. I love the notion of plugging in a glorified CD-burner to your device to have a completely working devkit.
I still have a CIB CD64 :). The CD64 along with the z64 were the two main competitors to the V64. Wish I had all three of them now for my collection. Great video and fantastic share, ty! Oh, and yes, I got my original device from Lik-Sang back in the 90s :).
It would be quite a capable FMV box, because it is actually possible to play full MPEG videos on it by using the coprocessor to do the heavy lifting. I bet it would be possible to do a single disc final fantasy 7 game for it without losing any video quality, or even with 24-30 FPS fmvs instead of 15.
m.ruclips.net/video/DhKX_i4BlGs/видео.html the storage format had an impact on what games were made and cartridges had advantages over CDs and vice verca which led to different games.
@nicholascooney It's exactly the fun fella i'm talking about. This game uses FULL MPEG to compress the video instead of the half assed MJPEG stuff of the PS1, or the awful Cinepak codec on the saturn. The full MPEG have interframe and motion prediction frames that makes the overall file a lot smaller for the same quality. which do wonderful things such as requiring less bandwidth from the CD-ROM and shoving more minutes of video in it. Of course, to fit all the movies of resident evil 2 on a 64 MB cartridge, they sacrificed quite a lot of video quality, but at least it's possible. Trying to do this with MJPEG would result in horrid blocky slideshows
This is awesome . What a great explanation and telling of the history of this whole topic. I just basically heard about this now, besides little snippets of things in the past that I knew this existed but did not know much about it so thank you very much for laying it all out here! Really cool and Man back in the day there would’ve been such an awesome thought to know about as a kid that I could be developing my own N64 games in my house!
Great vid very interesting! Thinking back as a kid and remembering when al the ps1 owners would have about 100 pirated games 😂 I miss borrowing games from friends on the n64, we would swap for a week or two then play multiplayer on those titles or read nintendo mag and try and beat the diddy kong track records! Fun times!
Guess I had mine early - I didn't get a CD of games! :-) I did some homebrew with it, but again, it was early. There were no 3D libraries or anything available at the time. I got some decent 2D stuff running on it but had moved on to some other shiny new toy by the time the SDKs matured. Mine also had a memory card that died. They were pretty good about replacing it though. Fun device.
I'm very skeptical of Nintendo's claim that they became aware of Bung through Lik Sang. I became aware of them years earlier from ads in the back of magazines like Popular Science. PopSci had been around for a century so they weren't some fly-by-night publication. It exposed a lot of people to Bung's SNES Game Doctor (Professor SF) series. Heck, I even saw the V64 featured in Game Pro or EGM in early 1997 (actual article).
There was also a classified ad on Popular Mechanics back in 1998 which offered PS1 modchips and such. Growing up I was only made aware of modchips and piracy when a cousin of mine in the States mentioned about those things if we were to play bootlegs or imports. And then there was those so-called "Hong Kong silvers" with the Indiana Pacers logo on it, sold at flea markets and malls for cheap. I honestly was not aware about the N64 though I've vaguely heard of the Saturn. Nintendo's no-holds-barred litigation habit came as no surprise but while I do understand as in some ways Bung's shady practices can be construed as unfair competition, Nintendo's stifling of law-abiding homebrewers e.g. with the ban on flash carts can be a bit too much imho.
I used to own a "Mr. Backup Z64". Popped directly into the game slot instead of underneath the N64, and backed up cartridges to Zip disks. The game slot on the device also worked in passthrough mode so there was never a need to remove the Z64 from your console.
Yeah, the V64jr units were rebranded "E64" and had two-tone shell colors in order to look slightly different and not match the list of banned products a US Customs agent might be referring to. ;) It still had "Bung" molded on the shell though!
The second V64, however, was new-old stock found by Lik Sang. I recall paying by Western Union money transfer. Customs must have stopped looking for them by that point because I received it without issues. Still have it complete in box.
@@emmettturner9452 Recieving something doesn't mean customs stopped looking. Customs can't inspect every single package that enters the entire country for every single banned product. Your package probably wasn't even inspected.
I still have mine, but the power supply broke so long ago, and there was no way for me to replace it. I was able to enjoy all the games from the USA and Japan here in germany, when I was just a child. A friend of my parents was a collector, and he owned one. When his motorcycle needed expensive replacement parts, he sold it to my parents for a good price, and I got it as a christmas present when I was about 10 years old. The power supply lasted about 5 years from there. It already had a loose contact when I got it. I'm happy for the time. I played some japanese games with my best friend. We were trying to understand how Kira tto Kaiketsu works and what the goal is xD It's a really fun multiplayer board game, which became one of my absolute favorites on the console. Nobody really heard of that, but I like it more than Mario Party actually. Today I own an Everdrive to relive those memories, but It's not the same. I liked the menu, the loading time and the moment you start the game on the V64. It was magical xD Oh, also watched the first Harry Potter and some Star Wars movies on there xD
@@Jackifictional I don't remember any age restriction, I mean that was HK and another time :) People didn't know what the Internet is ... what I remember are the 150 bucks each month going to my ISP _additionally_ to the regular dial-up phone charges per minute... was pretty disappointing coming from the BBS scene. But anyway. I used bank transfer. Wasn't a problem. I bought a lot of stuff "from" the net back then - also my 3D Banshee graphics card from a company in California :) ...and all the HK silvers and ofc the first Playstation, directly from Japan :) 1y before it was available in Europe. Toshinden included! Also got the Hex for the modchip from the net... the Internet was pretty much like the darkweb today I guess, lol.
I had one of these back in the day, I had like 40 games saved to one disk, you couldn't save your games but it was awesome, paid 400$ for it back in 97
I used to have one of these along with the DS1 and DX256 memory cartridges. It was also advertised as a “3D Spatializer” unit that allegedly enabled 3D sound effects. With the RAM upgrade it was an amazing machine for the time. It wasn’t a half bad VCD player either.
I forgot about lik sang! Man I miss that era and the gamecube era. I remember the first soldering I ever did was installing a qoob pro. This channel has some serious nostalgic vibes for me. Thanks for the great conetent.
If they marketed this as a kind of development tool maybe they could have worked something out (as long as they arent hurting sales of games I dont think Nintendo would care that much). Also $4000 for a devkit sounds crazy expensive, did Nintendo want to stay away from the low end developers back in the SNES days ? As an indie game tool it would have been pretty cool as well, if it werent for the price maybe (400+ dollars is pretty expensive for back then) and as an obvious piracy tool. Makes me wonder if that might have been an option back then. Also that SNES floppy loader looks really cool, old tech like that always looks really fun in a weird way.
@@riaandebeer6718 He needed a bung doctor after I was finished with him. Only kidding, I was gentle and took it slow. We used thermal paste as lube. It's basically a silicone compound so it works great. That's a little secret between engineers who get their man love on the down low.
Do you think there would be any way to leak to code or schematics for this guy? MOS 6502 chips are still being mannufactured, so re-building these in an open source enviroment wouldn't be the most difficult thing.
That is clarifies the fact that one of ancient CD-ROM had a ROM of Hong Kong 97 designed to use in one of SNES game copiers. I've seen some black market CD bought in Hong Kong who contained a ROM of Hong Kong 97 (original game was released on floppy discs but like its creator say, he sold only about 30 copies of the game). By the way, Ultra Healthy Game Nerd proved that it is a true. He actually played this game through actual SNES game copier from an original floppy disc (which was bought from person who bought this from original creator himself).
About 20 years ago I found this weird newspaper style publication that had cables that allowed you to hookup a Nintendo 64 to a Wintel PC through the PCs RS232 port . It allowed you to copy cartridges to the PC and load the games from your PC .
As a kid who was involved (in a small way) in the development/testing of Nemu64, I wanted to Dr V64 so badly. I nearly got my dad to purchase one for me (I believe it was from LikSang but I can't remember for sure), but it ended up being, "Do you want a V64 or a PS2?" I went with the PS2 :)
Until you got the click of death. Both the internal drive in my z64 and the external drive that I had on my PC both died in the same week.. had to replace them both. $$$. Kinda wish I would have done the CFlash drive mod to it when it was still being worked on.
Nintendo like Atari with the Jaguar forced so many pirates copies of games for the simple reason that carts are expensive to make, and cannot simply be resold as low budget games later on like CD's can, or be reduced much without financial loss. So whilst Carts can prevent piracy, they also encourage it too.
The fact that companies left Nintendo because of cartridges was only part of it. It was also the Japanese Bro code they broke. Nintendo went to Phillips behind Sony’s back and asked them to make a cd-rom for the next system. Sony found out and took basically all Japanese support to Nintendo with them. That’s why on the N64 they didn’t have many third party games.
Had a V64 Jr. as a kid with my N64. Approximately ~350 ROMs to choose from back then. Mario Party II in Japanese, transferred through ICQ, hot off the usenet. Fond memories.
5 лет назад+3
Is just a humble but honest opinion, I'm sure someone out there must feel the same: This channel is one of the very finest of it's kind. Pretty N E A T job MVG, keep rocking!
Great video but one thing. Acclaim was always having money problems. They made good money by publishing mortal kombat in the early 90s but when that ended they almost closed down until Turok saved them. When Turok Evolution failed the company was done for. When I started to watch the video I wondered if Acclaim had used them and they are specifically mentioned lol
I remember vividly reading a story about this piracy tool in 1997, from a videogame magazine. I don't remember if it was GameFan, EGM, Gamepro, or other. I wanted one to play rare imports or maybe even prototypes.
As a 16 year old I stood in the aisle at the grocery store on my lunch break from a nearby hotel and read that same article. I think it was Game Pro or possibly EGM. Don't think it was Game Fan. Speaking of "vivid," I still remember the page layout and such. :) I think it had a rendered Mario sliding and a V64+N64 somewhere to the left of center. Ended up getting my first V64 as soon as I could afford it (1998)!
@@emmettturner9452 Good times. I miss the 90s. I was also 16. Back when I bought all the magazines with their fake rumors, and freeloaded off the rest by going to Barnes and Noble.
Dee Jimenez I was 7 when i saw N64 on TV this console was the best console at hardware. Sony took many years to reach the top with PSX(code name for PS1 console)
@@mattishida3067 N64 could have won that generation, but Yamauchi and company insisted on paltry cartridges over CDs, and as a result the PSX got generation winning games like Final Fantasy 7, Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania SOTN, etc. Even the 64DD only held 64MB of data.
I'm currently in the process of developing a Blu Ray drive for the N64 called the 64BD. It'll have a madern GUI OS installed, as well as the ability to run 4K N64 homebrew while outputting video fcom its full-sized HDMI port. I've even asked CryZenX to port his Unreal Engine 4 remake of Ocarina of Time to 64BD on a BD-R.
I remember the lady's face at Blockbuster when I walked in for the third time in one day and plopped another 5 carts on the counter, while returning the previous 5. "...What's wrong with this guy..?" It's a dev kit tho.
"That is a piracy tool in anyone's book" I strongly disagree. The tool is entirely legitimate, just the same as a standard CD burner allowed users to rip and burn copies of CD music. It can be used legitimately for personal backups, aftermarket software developmemt amd loading, archival, and storage optimisation.
So Bung changed their name to 'First Union'... F U.
Was that a message to Nintendo?
louis tournas You said so much.
But made so little sense.
congrats on your social credit points
@@louistournas120 No Dumbass, they speak Cantonese in Hong Kong.
Bunga! Bunga!
@@louistournas120 1 sesame credit has been added to your account.
I can say this wasn’t uncommon. We used Super Wild Cards to do SNES development at Virgin Interactive.
and there are 2 blokes in london who sold em to em that i can think of. thats all they did all week.. sell err "dev kits" lol
"Virgin interactive" that's a appropriate name for a 90s video game company.
@@ryuunosuk3In a release they made of Cannon Fodder, the team who worked on it had a big joke about it by hiding a bunch of “Free S*x!” signs on the background layer of the Virgin Logo. It only became publicly known when TCRF found it 10 years later.
I think they shot themselves in the foot legally speaking by shipping with a disk containing a pirated library of roms. It's hard to argue it's not for piracy, when you do that.
"Shotting yourself in the foot" seems to be a popular phrase to use in this day and age
@@fawzanfawzi9993 are you a time traveller
@@fawzanfawzi9993 It's not like the saying is decades old or anything.
Internet’s were dialup during that time, 700 megs would have taken a month
scootersound ah good ol dial up. 64k modem and the inability to use the phone while you were on the internet.
We used these extensively at Iguana for art-sends. They were cheap and easy to program. They were not used by the engineers for normal development; it was specifically for art/audio and QA.
Thank you for some genuine classics.
Bung: It's a backup/dev device. Only use it for that!
Also Bung: Every purchase gets a backup of all the N64 games out there!
Not actually Bung.
I don't know who was bundling discs of commercial ROMs with them but it wasn't Bung, Carl Industries, or Lik Sang. My 1997 unit from CI had no CD. my 2000/2001 unit from Lik Sang had a CD with some MPEG commercials for Bung PC Jr, GB Xchanger, and other stuff. In 1997 I didn't want to burn an expensive CD-R for the few games that were released. I had a blank bundled with my CD-R drive in early 1998 and didn't burn one until I had about 80 N64 games.
Gifts are coming ungrateful swine.
a college friend had what I think was called the "Dr Z64" and had a Zip100 drive vs a CD-ROM... this was awesome, as he could insert any cart into the unit, power it up and immediately rip the rom onto whatever Zip disc you had in the drive at the moment. Unlike the one shown, the Z64 was shoved into the cartridge slot and the cart was inserted into it.
Of course that meant they would leverage their friends with Zip drives and CD burners to make compilation CDs for their future use :P
@@chouseification not the Dr z64 but the Mr Backup z64
Wasn't just Acclaim. I knew a LOT of devs who loved these things back the day due to how cheap and functional they were; they were used on games that shipped as early as 1997. A lot of teams would have one or two official devkits for the leads, but everyone else on the team would use the Doctor V64s. I'd imagine when Nintendo stopped by they'd hide them in the closet.
Makes sense to me honestly. Modern flashcards are used for both development and running ROMs. Why would early ones be different?
Only reason I can think off is might lose there contract or lisence to make Nintendo games
Really Nintendo the greed machine charging developers a lot after losing a lot of them to PlayStation
I worked on Nintendo ds games as an artist for a small UK developer. We used r4 carts to test games, mainly because the screens on the dev kits were so scratched and faded from over use!
@@nicholasfarley5967 I also remember the ROM writing time was an order of magnitude faster than on the legit ROM writers. Like, 3 minutes versus two hours.
I worked for Activision in the mid 2000's. I was tasked with ordering 300 backup DS carts for development. Using piracy devices to save dev costs had been going on for a long time. It's not like "COD/Guitar Hero" Activision could not afford official dev kits at the time.
Ah that's why these cards worked so flawlessly: the developers made sure they games ran fine on them!
xmine08 Worked? Mine still works.
Which flashcarts did you order? I always loved the Acekard back in the day.
*kits* not kids
@@nathanmead140 No no no...Activision 'hires' dev kids from 3rd world countries to work on the cheap. True story.
They were often sold without a CD-drive specifically to save on shipping costs.
So you can install any drive /brand you like ?
@@jeff15 in practice, the PSU wasn't good enough for many/most of the faster drives and the BIOS didn't support CD-R drives. If I recall correctly, people recommended Creative-brand drives because they used less power in their higher speed drives. The second one I got from Lik Sang had a low-power laptop drive in an IDE adapter but it was defective and I had to replace it. The first one I got had an 8x drive installed by a US Bung distributor (think it was Carl Industries).
That's interesting. I wonder if there are compatibility issues with higher speed CD Roms.
@@laserdrip I believe my laptop CD-ROM was 24x and I got it working once. The disc wouldn't spin and there was something physically scraping when I turned the disc manually. After spinning it around enough times manually it would finally spin on its own but only loaded games once or twice before it failed and never worked again. Wasn't sending it back to Hong Kong and risking customs again so I just grabbed the drive out of my older V64 bought from an American distributor back in 1998.
@@emmettturner9452 I believe the distributor (Lik-Sang) installed the drive in our second unit. Maybe Carl Industries (USA distributor) installed the drive in our first DV64.
We and a number of other studios used to use Bung hardware + Emulators to develop GameBoy Color games too. We shipped 4 commercial titles without a single official dev kit. The 2000's were an interesting time. ;)
Feels like every Nintendo video I watch they're sueing someone
They're essentially the Disney of gaming.
@@EnforcerX71 That's actually ironic, because if I remember correctly, some of their top people, like Miyamoto, have in the past stated how Nintendo tried to be the gaming equivalent of Disney, or at least, tried to be a similar business.
I got my first DV64 before Zelda OoT was released, but I made sure to get the one with 256mbit RAM because I knew those larger games were coming. I was poor and lived in a trailer park. There's absolutely no way I spent $450 USD. It was more like $275. The USA distributor at the time was Carl Industries. My package included the emulation adapter, DS1 (SRAM save device), and DX256 (EEPROM save device). I don't believe there was any extra charge for those at the time.
small error at 2:54 "final fantasy vi"
Yeah and it didn't release in 1994 either.
@@The2808erik Final Fantasy VI released in 1994. :P
VII did not tho.
@@nonic_ yeah I know. He was talking about FF7 and the PS1 though and FF6 released later on the PS1 with added cut scenes.
MISTAKES WERE MADE
for that error, securities are circumvented
2 of my friends had these devices when I was a kid. They'd travel to Hong Kong every year, and both of them came back with it the same year. Along with many CDS and had the entire library of N64 games....needless to say, my 11-year-old self had my mind blown!
Cool. I had a similar experience with PSX Silvers :)
I love my DoctorV64, best hardware i ever got, and i was the coolest kid in town back then, memories
the cool kid did some illegal
@@gtxg. XD
Same bro. 😎
@@cte another cool kid did some illegal
itsmii I’m guessing you asked but never got one for Christmas. 😆
Nintendo 64 DevKit or Piracy Device?
Why can't we have both?!? ;D
"or" is for plebs 😎
That's kind of the point of the video though?
DevKits are strictly full feature piracy devices. Because they either have to be able to load and run unsigned codes, or people can just resign codes to load and run on it anyway.
Not always the same the other way around, though, for some piracy devices only run custom format (encrypted) ROMs that only the vendor of such device can create.
Behold a hard drive: a piracy device
I would argue that you can't have one without the other.
Still got my Doctor V64 to this day. Still working well. I've had to replace the CD-ROM drive as the laser failed but now it's alive again. I used to get patches from Dextrose where you could patch games to have trainers and cheats!
Edit: Had it since the first year it released and could probably adjust the laser pot to fix it but quicker to replace!
Edit edit: I used the parallel cable to dump my own cartridges to patch them and then re-run on the Doctor 64. Still got my Mario 64 game with the always ability to fly mod!
Dextrose
@@kbruns33 well to be fair we did get a bit of that returned with the PSP's Pandora Battery, Nintendo DS & 3DS's flashcarts, and i guess if you want the Nintendo Switch's RCMLoader dongle that plugs straight in the Switch without needing a PC or Laptop to do the work everytime.
@@MrDmoney156 True, though still (to me) doesn't feel the same. Funny thing about the Switch though, I have the SXos and doggle etc.. and I've never used it. Everything on the Switch platform has been top rate and ive purchased everything. My initial desire was homebrew emulators but with the security measures and online risks.. I said the hell with it.. not gonna do it. That being said though, I have enough purchasing power that buying games are really a non-issue to me. Something that wasn't the case during prior consoles for me.
Though you could probably fit an IDE to USB drive in it instead and forget the laser death altogether. Might be a plan to buy ione for the future in case the current drive dies.
@@kbruns33 yeah I know what you mean about the fun, plus it was probably better when we were younger because it was a bit... Naughty lol. I was lucky in that I could save money up and buy the games legit but the doctor 64 allowed me to "test" the games before I bought them. I mostly only played Mario kart and goldeneye with my friends so owning them original didn't cost much at all, zelda and other games I bought and traded at the local flea market once I'd completed them. Probably why mine is still working well as it only get used for playing with cheats and trainers!
Just when you think you’ve heard of every strange gaming device, this pops up in your feed. Thanks for this great video!
Use to have one was amazing
i owned this since year 2000.... its a very old device
The story of Lik-Sang sound like an interesting tale as well. Effectively forced into closure, it claimed to have supplied most of the execs in Sony Europe with PSPs before they could get them from Sony in Japan
please tell me more, I'm interested
Lik Sang was such a great website. I remember they would often give neat little freebies with orders. Got my famicom GBA Micro, my red DS, and a few games including Elecroplankton from them. They were my favorite online retailer in general until they were forced to close.
@@empoleonmaster6709 Lik-Sang was an import site that originally dealed in mod chips and other stuff. From memory they stopped selling those products after a number of lawsuits from the big 3 and pivoted to just imported products. Think Play-Asia but with free shipping and that's basically what Lik-Sang was.
The PSP lawsuit was about how the PSP didn't get a simultaneous global release with Europe being the the last region to get it so people from the EU used the site to import Japanese PSPs. Sony's Europe didn't like how the company was potentially eating into their sales so they sued Lik-Sang in UK courts and won with the ruling saying something along the lines that Sony had the exclusive rights to sell Sony products. This lawsuit was the straw that broke the camel's back and forced the site to shut down and as a parting shot, Lik-Sang mentioned how according to their customer data, a lot of Sony EU management had used their site to get the PSP early.
@CurryKitten: I befriended one of the Lik-Sang employees years ago. Pretty awesome individual! A rather accomplished developer too.
Alas, it is lamentably common for hegemonic big businesses to be bullies to any organization which has appearances of potentially eating into their profit margins. Lik-Sang sold a lot of products which were completely unrelated to devkits which could be potentially used by unethical individuals for piracy.
Loved the video! Anything to do with modding and jail breaking I love. Takes me back
Wow very nice bhai I watch your channel.
Kr yeah I was a member of razor1911 you don't know what piracy is but your videos are good for people who don't l2c
Damn dude when I saw your tweet about the new video for Monday I couldn't wait for it. Thanks you for your quality content.
I can't believe they passed up the opportunity to call the V64 the "Bung Hole"
tp for my bung hole
Naw, the Bung Slot
You are hands down my favorite RUclips creator! Thank you for the great content and awareness of the homebrew community!
I can't imagine what an amazing system the 64 would have been with an optical drive. The games were so hamstrung by storage space. So much performance available in the new system when it came out, but no storage.
Meh, it would’ve turn into a clone of the Playstation with circle-jerk FMVs, ridiculously long load times, and multiple discs. I don’t think it was that bad of a decision by Nintendo to keep the cartridge format for one last rodeo.
@Gomam0n - I intended to say shittier 3D, as the N64 had slightly better visuals sometimes, but they were both bad overall. I'll take that out of the comment as it's not really relevant to cartridge vs disc.
@@Prizm44The DRAM in this unit is an UNGODLY amount of RAM for a typical CD-ROM based system which only has to have enough RAM for the menu or current level. Meanwhile, this thing has to fit an entire game into RAM. The PlayStation CD-ROM was only ~2x speed and only got a little faster in later models because Sony literally couldn’t source anything slower.
One of my V64s came with an 8x Matsushita CD-ROM and the other came with a 24x Teac notebook CD-ROM. Even the 8x had fast loading speeds from CD. You’d literally spend more time loading to get in any PlayStation game.
It was loading over the parallel port that was painfully slow but thankfully they resolved that with the faster V64jr… a parallel port ONLY device (no CD-ROM).
So, yeah, imagine how rich you could make a single level with 32MB DRAM in addition to the console’s 8MB RDRAM. The CD-ROM had plenty of room to feed that if you didn’t waste it on FMV and uncompressed audio like most PlayStation games did.
We used some of these at Boss Game Studio (World Driver Championship, etc.), and I still have mine they gave me when they closed down (I was an artist there). Always thought this thing was pretty cool, thanks for the history video. :)
How the N64 security was defeated
**Mistakes were made**
One thing that's cool about Bung is they held a homebrew gameboy game competition to promote their gameboy product, basically like a game jam. We played the games in Kusogrande recently.
Very fascinating look at technology an 8 year old me back in 1997 would have killed for lol. I remember being absolutely fascinated by the idea of how code written on a PC would somehow end up on a cartridge as a video game. I think because I still have that fascination I love watching this channel, and have been subscribed to it for some time. Thank you for making these videos!
My friends dad was really tech savy and he had one, we would play games month in advance without spending a dime. Same thing with your modded ps1 with copied games. Those were the days.
Nintendo: *sends C&D to Bung*
Bung: Are you threatening me? I need TP for my bunghole!
This is even more topical now.
I see you are a man of culture.
I love your channel. I grew up learning my first language (python), then moving on lua and messing around with the psp. Every video is like reliving one of those moments. I remember doom on psp and being blown away that emulation and older games ran so well. I still have that old sucker too still running custom firmware. Thank you for all the great work you do.
Lik Sang was amazing, once I ordered something from them within a week later the price had dropped by around $20, without asking they gave store credit for the price difference! never seen customer service like that before or after,
You must have really geeked out to receive such a sweet retro hacker toy!
I had one.... And the Snes version too. The Snes device I sold many years back but the Doctor V64 I only threw away last year when moving as I've dragged it and other retro consoles from my early life with me on three house moves. I threw away a neo geo CD, Dreamcast modded, Saturn with pal/NTSC switch, Snes, PC engine CD..... I have no room anymore and my crt was sold a few years back.... A bit gutted looking back but it was impossible to store again, especially when I became a Dad.
Great video again.
Back in the late 90's I was in HK and Dr. V 64 was in those shady shops you found in obscure markets. I remember I could buy the whole set up and take it back home with me. At that point in time. I already dealt with the Dr equivalents of the SNES but using floppy's. Man I could give a boat load of information on all those devices for so many platforms and all I had seen. Could write a book on it. But it's nice to see you bringing this to light. Cheers.
Wasn't there one for the NES or Famicom as well if i recalled? I remembered reading that somewhere before.
Also, was it cheaper to get it straight from Hong Kong rather then importing it back then?
@@MrDmoney156 Yes as well for GB. The other systems I just remember they made repo's I don't recall ever seeing Drs for Sega or NEC.
@@MrDmoney156 Yes, there were similar devices for those.
Unlike Jr C's assertion that he could "write a book on it" and "I don't recall ever seeing Drs for Sega or NEC" he completely ignores the Multi Game Doctor^2 and the Super Magic Griffin, as just two examples. In other words: if he wrote a book on such subjects, it would be lacking a lot of details.
My mate had one of these somewhere around 1997. It was awesome. He was one of first people in the country to get ADSL as well, as one of his housemates worked for a telco. The two combined were a piracy powerhouse! He also had the super wild card before that, so we were never short of something to play when round his house.
We used to use the ADSL to host an Unreal Tournament server, and use all the house PCs to team up in UT. We'd let plebs connect to the server to create the other team. No-one could touch us as our latency was non-existent. Kind of cheaty, but you can't spell slaughter without laughter! Good times.
RIP Lik Sang
I had a Dr64 (and 32 other backup units) in my collection at one time (late 90's). i visited Carl Ind in Miami and Bung in HK in 96/97. They were actually really nice. I also was part of the release groups for the Dr64. There was another copier (cant remember the name right now) for the N64 that backed up to ZIP Disk (originally the 100meg disk and later the 250M disk). Fun times. Great to see videos on this devices, as they are a really interesting subculture of the video gaming history.
I know this is unlikely, but I don't suppose you ever remembered the name of that other peripheral? I believe I also wanted that specific one back in the day but can't remember it's darn name!
2:52 Pitchforks and torches! Get your pitchforks and torches here~!
as a game tester at Nintendo, one of us guys had one of these and copied eproms. Each was salted so if it ever leaked Nintendo would know exactly who it came from... The only early eprom we couldn't copy was perfect dark, it came to us welded into a steel frame with an n64 inside!
So you have a bunch of N64 prototype ROMs?
@@renakunisaki no, it wasn't me personally, I wouldn't have had the balls to do it, it was very very risky activity.
@@alexjohnward Can you please explain what do you mean by salted?
@@aussieguy1012 each eprom cartridge had a bit of unique code hidden in it by NCL, so if it ever leaked they would know exactly where it leaked from.
@@alexjohnward They actually spent the money to send over an entire console, welded in a metal case to try and stop piracy which would of hardly touched their bottom line anyway? The things company will go through because of the big boogyman Piracy.
This is one of the first things I ever learned about on the Internet. I remember reading about it via AOL in 96 on my 28k dial-up modem and being hellbent on getting one. So cool you got your hands on one.
The V64 files in emulation coming from this device is blowing my mind right now. Great video as always MVG!
"Bung Pirate" would have been the perfect name for this device.
Thanks to people like that it's possible to retro game with almost all old consoles as emulators on PC and almost all games are available as ROMs that's amazing there have been kits for most obviously as ROMs from most exist including Nintendo Ds and cartridges with SD adapters to run ROMs on the game consoles themselves or use ROMs on a PC. Glad that exists it's amazing and wonderful
3:00
You labeled it as Final Fantasy VI (six)
Delete your channel lol.
Kidding. The development kit aspect of this story is insanely interesting. I'm surprised I'm only now hearing about this device. I love the notion of plugging in a glorified CD-burner to your device to have a completely working devkit.
I still have a CIB CD64 :). The CD64 along with the z64 were the two main competitors to the V64. Wish I had all three of them now for my collection. Great video and fantastic share, ty! Oh, and yes, I got my original device from Lik-Sang back in the 90s :).
Now this is a great mvg video!!! Thanks to starting again doing REALLY vintage content videos !!! I look for your videos every week , you’re the best!
Thank you really enjoyed making this one
Can confirm as a dev on N64 games we used these devices as a cheap alternative. I think I still have one somewhere in my boxes.
Imagine if an n64 game were released on CD ROM! Cutscenes, Redbook audio, more content 😁
It would be quite a capable FMV box, because it is actually possible to play full MPEG videos on it by using the coprocessor to do the heavy lifting.
I bet it would be possible to do a single disc final fantasy 7 game for it without losing any video quality, or even with 24-30 FPS fmvs instead of 15.
And scratches.
m.ruclips.net/video/DhKX_i4BlGs/видео.html the storage format had an impact on what games were made and cartridges had advantages over CDs and vice verca which led to different games.
@crazyflyingdonut You're an idiot.
@nicholascooney It's exactly the fun fella i'm talking about.
This game uses FULL MPEG to compress the video instead of the half assed MJPEG stuff of the PS1, or the awful Cinepak codec on the saturn.
The full MPEG have interframe and motion prediction frames that makes the overall file a lot smaller for the same quality. which do wonderful things such as requiring less bandwidth from the CD-ROM and shoving more minutes of video in it.
Of course, to fit all the movies of resident evil 2 on a 64 MB cartridge, they sacrificed quite a lot of video quality, but at least it's possible.
Trying to do this with MJPEG would result in horrid blocky slideshows
This is awesome . What a great explanation and telling of the history of this whole topic. I just basically heard about this now, besides little snippets of things in the past that I knew this existed but did not know much about it so thank you very much for laying it all out here! Really cool and Man back in the day there would’ve been such an awesome thought to know about as a kid that I could be developing my own N64 games in my house!
Great vid very interesting! Thinking back as a kid and remembering when al the ps1 owners would have about 100 pirated games 😂 I miss borrowing games from friends on the n64, we would swap for a week or two then play multiplayer on those titles or read nintendo mag and try and beat the diddy kong track records! Fun times!
I remember seeing a picture with a short paragraph about this in a german videogame magazine from the 90's. Thx for sending me on that nostalgia trip!
Great Video, like always. That's a Story I've never heard of. Thanks!
You have some of the best content on YT! Big props, man!
Guess I had mine early - I didn't get a CD of games! :-) I did some homebrew with it, but again, it was early. There were no 3D libraries or anything available at the time. I got some decent 2D stuff running on it but had moved on to some other shiny new toy by the time the SDKs matured.
Mine also had a memory card that died. They were pretty good about replacing it though.
Fun device.
Every video you make is super engaging and interesting. Keep it up MVG!!
I'm very skeptical of Nintendo's claim that they became aware of Bung through Lik Sang. I became aware of them years earlier from ads in the back of magazines like Popular Science. PopSci had been around for a century so they weren't some fly-by-night publication. It exposed a lot of people to Bung's SNES Game Doctor (Professor SF) series. Heck, I even saw the V64 featured in Game Pro or EGM in early 1997 (actual article).
There was also a classified ad on Popular Mechanics back in 1998 which offered PS1 modchips and such.
Growing up I was only made aware of modchips and piracy when a cousin of mine in the States mentioned about those things if we were to play bootlegs or imports. And then there was those so-called "Hong Kong silvers" with the Indiana Pacers logo on it, sold at flea markets and malls for cheap. I honestly was not aware about the N64 though I've vaguely heard of the Saturn. Nintendo's no-holds-barred litigation habit came as no surprise but while I do understand as in some ways Bung's shady practices can be construed as unfair competition, Nintendo's stifling of law-abiding homebrewers e.g. with the ban on flash carts can be a bit too much imho.
I used to own a "Mr. Backup Z64". Popped directly into the game slot instead of underneath the N64, and backed up cartridges to Zip disks. The game slot on the device also worked in passthrough mode so there was never a need to remove the Z64 from your console.
I ordered my second V64 and two V64jr 512 units from Lik Sang after Nintendo won and got an import ban. Still have them!
Yeah, the V64jr units were rebranded "E64" and had two-tone shell colors in order to look slightly different and not match the list of banned products a US Customs agent might be referring to. ;) It still had "Bung" molded on the shell though!
The second V64, however, was new-old stock found by Lik Sang. I recall paying by Western Union money transfer. Customs must have stopped looking for them by that point because I received it without issues. Still have it complete in box.
Aww, Lik Sang :(
@@MrSadface I know, right? Can't believe Sony did them in over importing PSPs. :(
@@emmettturner9452 Recieving something doesn't mean customs stopped looking. Customs can't inspect every single package that enters the entire country for every single banned product. Your package probably wasn't even inspected.
I still have mine, but the power supply broke so long ago, and there was no way for me to replace it. I was able to enjoy all the games from the USA and Japan here in germany, when I was just a child. A friend of my parents was a collector, and he owned one. When his motorcycle needed expensive replacement parts, he sold it to my parents for a good price, and I got it as a christmas present when I was about 10 years old. The power supply lasted about 5 years from there. It already had a loose contact when I got it. I'm happy for the time. I played some japanese games with my best friend. We were trying to understand how Kira tto Kaiketsu works and what the goal is xD It's a really fun multiplayer board game, which became one of my absolute favorites on the console. Nobody really heard of that, but I like it more than Mario Party actually. Today I own an Everdrive to relive those memories, but It's not the same. I liked the menu, the loading time and the moment you start the game on the V64. It was magical xD Oh, also watched the first Harry Potter and some Star Wars movies on there xD
You can make your own PSU with an S-Video cable and virtual any dual-voltage PSU for external CD-ROM/HDD.
I always dreamed of having one of these but it was almost impossible for a teenager in germany to get.
These were relatively common in Sweden, but they were like 600 euros if I remember correctly.
I must have paid £500 here in the uk for mine
Why? Was a (swiss) teenager myself and just ordered it on their website...
@@surject Because it is not allowed to purchase online if you are under 18 and also probably no method of paying
@@Jackifictional I don't remember any age restriction, I mean that was HK and another time :) People didn't know what the Internet is ... what I remember are the 150 bucks each month going to my ISP _additionally_ to the regular dial-up phone charges per minute... was pretty disappointing coming from the BBS scene. But anyway. I used bank transfer. Wasn't a problem. I bought a lot of stuff "from" the net back then - also my 3D Banshee graphics card from a company in California :) ...and all the HK silvers and ofc the first Playstation, directly from Japan :) 1y before it was available in Europe. Toshinden included! Also got the Hex for the modchip from the net... the Internet was pretty much like the darkweb today I guess, lol.
I had one of these back in the day, I had like 40 games saved to one disk, you couldn't save your games but it was awesome, paid 400$ for it back in 97
I never knew this existed. These videos are so freaking interesting. Thanks MVG!
The fact that the Nintendo official devkit cost 4k while the "illegal piracy device" cost a 1/10th of the price. Nintendo being greedy? Never!
I need TP for my Bunghole.
Ok boomer
Beavis and butthead for the win. The young ones will not remember.
R u threatening me...
No need for TP, fingers exist for a reason.
Beavis: "I am from Nicaragua!"
I used to have one of these along with the DS1 and DX256 memory cartridges. It was also advertised as a “3D Spatializer” unit that allegedly enabled 3D sound effects.
With the RAM upgrade it was an amazing machine for the time. It wasn’t a half bad VCD player either.
Another Spawnwave video: *I sleep*
MVG Video: *drops everything to watch*
I hope you don't have a newborn
@@raresideb rip Richard Jr 2019-2019
Love your videos, I learn so much being so young I didn't know some of this stuff was even out back then. Crazy!
3:00 “one of the best video games ever made: final fantasy 7” yet the Roman numeral for 6 is on screen
Lol
Came looking for this comment lol
he also put the publishing date for ff6
Glad I wasn’t the only one that noticed that.
Inflation. In 1997 it was VI now it's VII... same with the release date...
I just realized I've been watching MVG for years but have never subscribed to this gem of a channel! I had to as soon as I noticed!
Man, I wanted one of these so badly when they came out.
I forgot about lik sang!
Man I miss that era and the gamecube era.
I remember the first soldering I ever did was installing a qoob pro.
This channel has some serious nostalgic vibes for me.
Thanks for the great conetent.
I bought one of these yesterday, thankyou for the video!
If they marketed this as a kind of development tool maybe they could have worked something out (as long as they arent hurting sales of games I dont think Nintendo would care that much).
Also $4000 for a devkit sounds crazy expensive, did Nintendo want to stay away from the low end developers back in the SNES days ?
As an indie game tool it would have been pretty cool as well, if it werent for the price maybe (400+ dollars is pretty expensive for back then) and as an obvious piracy tool. Makes me wonder if that might have been an option back then.
Also that SNES floppy loader looks really cool, old tech like that always looks really fun in a weird way.
My dad used to be a engineer in Bung Enterprises
That's cool to me
i like it
@@robertoceferino1456 what the hell
@@matchi9592 It was a crazy place to work. We did a lot of cocaine.
@@riaandebeer6718 He needed a bung doctor after I was finished with him. Only kidding, I was gentle and took it slow. We used thermal paste as lube. It's basically a silicone compound so it works great. That's a little secret between engineers who get their man love on the down low.
Do you think there would be any way to leak to code or schematics for this guy? MOS 6502 chips are still being mannufactured, so re-building these in an open source enviroment wouldn't be the most difficult thing.
That is clarifies the fact that one of ancient CD-ROM had a ROM of Hong Kong 97 designed to use in one of SNES game copiers. I've seen some black market CD bought in Hong Kong who contained a ROM of Hong Kong 97 (original game was released on floppy discs but like its creator say, he sold only about 30 copies of the game).
By the way, Ultra Healthy Game Nerd proved that it is a true. He actually played this game through actual SNES game copier from an original floppy disc (which was bought from person who bought this from original creator himself).
Wow, FF6 looks a lot better than I remember
My thought too ^ -^
HAHAHAA! Right? i saw that and came to the comments all "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait...."
About 20 years ago I found this weird newspaper style publication that had cables that allowed you to hookup a Nintendo 64 to a Wintel PC through the PCs RS232 port . It allowed you to copy cartridges to the PC and load the games from your PC .
"Today, we test the RUclips censorship algorithm. BUNG BUNG BUNG BUNG BUNG BUNG HOL--"
"Coopers and brewers be damned, censor it because Bevis and Butthead was a thing."
In UK English a 'bung' can also mean a bribe.
@@phuzz00 Hey... tell you what... I can give you a bung... want one in exchange for a passport? Hehehe.
"I am the great Cornholio! I demand tp for my bung"
Didn't the previous Italian President Silvio Berlusconi have 'bunga bunga parties'! :D
As a kid who was involved (in a small way) in the development/testing of Nemu64, I wanted to Dr V64 so badly. I nearly got my dad to purchase one for me (I believe it was from LikSang but I can't remember for sure), but it ended up being, "Do you want a V64 or a PS2?" I went with the PS2 :)
A shot everytime he says Doctor V 64 and I'm dead.
Super dope video. Crazy how much hardware was required to use this thing!
I had the "Mr. Backup Z64" which used zip disks. It was awesome...
Until you got the click of death. Both the internal drive in my z64 and the external drive that I had on my PC both died in the same week.. had to replace them both. $$$. Kinda wish I would have done the CFlash drive mod to it when it was still being worked on.
@@kbruns33 yeah, if you put any Click-o-disks that where murdered by the old drives in those new drives, they'd break.... That hardware bug... OMG....
oh it was it was so sweeeet... excellent "investment". best birthday gift everrr. drive is broken now
Nintendo like Atari with the Jaguar forced so many pirates copies of games for the simple reason that carts are expensive to make, and cannot simply be resold as low budget games later on like CD's can, or be reduced much without financial loss. So whilst Carts can prevent piracy, they also encourage it too.
I’d never heard of these, that was dope! Cheers MVG 🍺
The fact that companies left Nintendo because of cartridges was only part of it. It was also the Japanese Bro code they broke. Nintendo went to Phillips behind Sony’s back and asked them to make a cd-rom for the next system. Sony found out and took basically all Japanese support to Nintendo with them. That’s why on the N64 they didn’t have many third party games.
Backing up your games is not PIracy!
Nice video, MVG!
My cousin had 1 of these back in the day. Blew my mind then.
Had a V64 Jr. as a kid with my N64. Approximately ~350 ROMs to choose from back then. Mario Party II in Japanese, transferred through ICQ, hot off the usenet. Fond memories.
Is just a humble but honest opinion, I'm sure someone out there must feel the same:
This channel is one of the very finest of it's kind.
Pretty N E A T job MVG, keep rocking!
You finally said it! A device to play backups is more likely a device to play pirated copies.
Great channel. Great stories.
Thank you!
Video should speed up every time he says Nintendo 64 or doctor v64
Man... These old dev kits official or unofficial are always interesting to look at... Good job MVG
2:58 ah yes, I too remember how we arrived by train in Final Fantasy VI and proceeded to kick the living shit out of the guards posted there.
Great video but one thing. Acclaim was always having money problems. They made good money by publishing mortal kombat in the early 90s but when that ended they almost closed down until Turok saved them. When Turok Evolution failed the company was done for. When I started to watch the video I wondered if Acclaim had used them and they are specifically mentioned lol
I remember vividly reading a story about this piracy tool in 1997, from a videogame magazine. I don't remember if it was GameFan, EGM, Gamepro, or other. I wanted one to play rare imports or maybe even prototypes.
As a 16 year old I stood in the aisle at the grocery store on my lunch break from a nearby hotel and read that same article. I think it was Game Pro or possibly EGM. Don't think it was Game Fan. Speaking of "vivid," I still remember the page layout and such. :) I think it had a rendered Mario sliding and a V64+N64 somewhere to the left of center. Ended up getting my first V64 as soon as I could afford it (1998)!
@@emmettturner9452 Good times. I miss the 90s. I was also 16. Back when I bought all the magazines with their fake rumors, and freeloaded off the rest by going to Barnes and Noble.
Dee Jimenez I was 7 when i saw N64 on TV this console was the best console at hardware. Sony took many years to reach the top with PSX(code name for PS1 console)
@@mattishida3067 N64 could have won that generation, but Yamauchi and company insisted on paltry cartridges over CDs, and as a result the PSX got generation winning games like Final Fantasy 7, Metal Gear Solid, Castlevania SOTN, etc. Even the 64DD only held 64MB of data.
I'm currently in the process of developing a Blu Ray drive for the N64 called the 64BD. It'll have a madern GUI OS installed, as well as the ability to run 4K N64 homebrew while outputting video fcom its full-sized HDMI port. I've even asked CryZenX to port his Unreal Engine 4 remake of Ocarina of Time to 64BD on a BD-R.
MVG is like the unofficial custodian of the home brew universe.
One of my favorite channels currently. Great moves, keep it up.
Now THIS Is my Monday Morning
I remember the lady's face at Blockbuster when I walked in for the third time in one day and plopped another 5 carts on the counter, while returning the previous 5. "...What's wrong with this guy..?" It's a dev kit tho.
Smart move btw
I did the exact same thing.
Did see these on Ebay here and there, thanks for sharing always joy watching your video's.
"That is a piracy tool in anyone's book"
I strongly disagree. The tool is entirely legitimate, just the same as a standard CD burner allowed users to rip and burn copies of CD music. It can be used legitimately for personal backups, aftermarket software developmemt amd loading, archival, and storage optimisation.
Shipping it with hundreds of rom dumps did not help