Ideas & Thoughts: The Perfect 64DD Pack-In
17-Jan-98
Well, I figure the 64DD will do better if it has a pack-in that people want. But that's kinda obvious, right? Well, the first part of my idea is to have it help you out with controller pak data. I mean, we can all agree that it sucks when you have so much to save, so little to save with. Remember this: controller paks save 32 KB of information. The 64DD can save 38 MB of information. In other words, about 1187 times a controller pak! Even if they only left, say, 1 MB writeable, it'd be 31x a controller pak. Just imagine the advertising. :) Let's go with it being 31x controller pak size, and let's just say that by the time the 64DD comes, 1st-party controller paks have dropped to $15... and that the 64DD costs $120... "Save $345 on controller paks!" Not bad, eh?
It'd have to have a good way to keep the things in order, though... First of all, you'd be able to have more than 1 save of a certain type, unlike with controller paks. That way you could have 10 different TGR paint jobs on there or something. Next, you'd be able to input a description of what it is, to help you identify them. For example, with those TGR cars, you could name them "Flames", "Mt. Dew", "Old Bessie", whatever you wanted. Then when you wanted to switch between them, you'd just put in your controller pak, choose the one you want, and (after doing an "Are you sure?" thing) copy it onto your pak.
This would be just another easy, great way to get people to look upon the 64DD better. If you're a big Mario Kart 64 fan, you've got no more worries about having the entire pak taken up by 2 of your favorite Time Trial runs. You'd have no more problems with games that take up the entire pak. Etc.
Now, this could be good or bad for Nintendo in the controller pak business. I mean, I know many people get the first-party Nintendo paks because the 3rd-party ones will sometimes mess up, and you'd lose your data. If you could easily back it up, though, you probably wouldn't be worried about the pak messing up. Then again, if they could find some way to make it only work with Nintendo-made memory paks, it'd get them more money... but I really doubt that could happen... and even if it did, 3rd-party controller pak makers would just find a way to make theirs work with it anyways. :) Then again, with the extra saving of the 64DD, that would at least slow down the sales of the 3rd-party 4x controller paks... but I don't think this is a huge deal to Nintendo. I mean, do you think they'd be more concerned about controller pak sales or 64DD sales? Exactly...
But that still leaves a lot of space on the 64DD to go. I mean, even if we say that they ue all 38 MB of writeability, and the program to handle it was 1 MB, we've still got about 15 MB left. What could be done with this? I've got 3 ideas.
1. Add-on. Yup. F-Zero is confirmed to be a 64DD-compatible title, and I'm sure there'll be another or two that will be too by that time. The extra space could be used for a mini-add on to these (I'm thinking preferably multiple) games. Perhaps just a few stages for F-Zero, or a mini-adventure for Zelda...
2. Demo. Well, it could have demos of games. But I don't know if Nintendo'd really do that. Maybe non-playable demos. No, I don't mean FMV, either. Real-time stuff. It'd be like the videos they send out, only it could have more.
3. Info. I'm thinking just info on current and upcoming N64/64DD games. Let's say that there's only that 15 MB left. And let's say that by that time the number of games released and games officially announced add up to 200. That leaves 75k for each game. So they could have a screen shot or two and info on genre/developer/# of players/etc.
Well, I think that's about it for this set of thoughts...
Joshua Slone is, at the time of this typing, alive and well.