I am probably going to get hate for this, but I don’t think too highly of this console.
Sure, some of the games at the time were astonishing and well regarded classics, but man oh man do I dislike the controller, it just feels so… alien to hold you know?
Another thing too, the cartridge format whilst snappy, suffered from making too many cutbacks compared to the disc format of PS1 and Saturn which gave you pretty much the full scoop.
I am sure Nintnedo had their reasons at the time, but to me it was almost like it was a death by a thousand cuts scenario, a really powerful machine let down by not using what is literally the next gen medium at the time.
Let me know your thoughts, it is fine to disagree as the console is well respected with both nostalgia and entertainment, I’m just an outlier here.
I doubt you’ll get any disagreement on your take for the controller. It was definitely an odd and experimental one, though I do remember thinking it was really cool looking when it came out. I was also 6 and not the best judge of functionality.
That having been said, the cartridge decision was in line with Nintendo’s recent plays at the time that had paid out for them in a big way, and that they continue to follow today. They had made a gamble on the Game Boy a few years prior that absolutely blew up in their favor. When the Game Boy came out, the Game Gear was it’s competitor and Game Gear had a color screen and a lot more screen real estate. Nintendo made the choice to focus on power efficiency (up to almost a half a day of playtime on four double-A batteries versus the Game Gear with about three and a half hours of play time on six double-A’s) and production cost reduction. Some of those design philosophies carried forward to the N64.
Additionally, something a lot of people seem to be unaware of these days is how absolutely stark the difference in loading times was between something like the PS1 discs and the N64 cartridge. I grew up on the SNES and N64 and when I first played a PS1 game the load times made me not want to touch a Sony console for quite a while.
Anyways, that’s my two cents. No disagreements here that cartridges held the N64 back in some ways but the tradeoffs made it an amazing system and miles above the competition for me, personally. Good gameplay and quality of life will always beat more power in my book.
Totally agree on load times. That was a major factor in me sticking with Nintendo over PS during that time.
Cartridges were also a very solid copy right enforcement mechanism. By contrast PlayStation games were much easier to pirate although manufacturers kept adding on new mechanisms to prevent just that as time went on.