"I was expecting better...and so were most of the rest of Nintendo's fans..."

All of the systems Nintendo made before the N64 had something that this system will never have...staying power. The NES survived longer than everyone thought it would, even when the Genesis was gobbling up market share. The Game Boy outlived all other portable systems even though they had color. The SNES had the daunting task of keeping its fanbase from being taken away by two 32 bit systems. Then comes the Nintendo 64, which landed as quickly as it took off. It may still exist, but that's only because it has to. Remember how a few NES games were still made even when the SNES was out? Watch...once GameCube comes out, Nintendo will drop N64 like a bad habit.

Graphics Capabilities: 8
The N64's sweet spot graphics wise was it's superior image quality. It had the second highest (playable) resolution capability out of the other two systems in existence when the N64 first came out, plus more hardware effects in it's ''Reality Engine'' video chip than in the other two systems' video chips combined. With all this power and ability coupled with the near 100 Mhz RISC CPU, one would think that this system could achieve high frame rates. Sadly, this is not so. I would have rather wanted to see smooth graphics with most (or all) of the effects turned off than dropped frames with all effects on. Nintendo realized this and made some games which focused on speed instead of beauty (F-Zero X), but it wasn't enough.

Audio Capabilities: 8
There really isn't much difference in the sound quality of the N64 when compared to the SNES. The biggest improvement is the fact that it has more RAM, so there can be better quality instrument samples and voices. These improvements are good and some music is great on the N64, but it's not enough to compete with PSX and Saturn, which can either have CD tracks or compressed CD quality digital music files.

Controller Design: 7
Nintendo had analog and digital controls on their pad, which was a good idea, but the analog joystick was very weak. After a while, it would stop returning to the center. Also, the Z button is just dumb. Yeah, it makes the controller feel more like a gun when playing shooting games, but using it can be cumbersome if you have to use that button PLUS all the buttons on top. Nintendo crammed way too many features into one controller. It shows.

Game Library: 5
Nintendo cleaned up with it's first games. Mario 64 had everyone drooling over the graphics and fun gameplay. Some people even admitted to buying an N64 just for that game. StarFox 64 was beautiful as well, as were most of the first N64 games. This period in the N64's existence was short lived, however. Aside from a handful of amazing games, most of the N64's lineup consisted of a bunch of kids games (Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Kazooie...). There were almost NO good fighting games and NO good RPGs. There were some good sports games, but they weren't more or less fun to play than sports games on competing systems. The only good racing games were F-Zero X and Mario Kart 64. FPSs looked good on the N64, but there was no reason to get them if you had a good PC with a decent 3D card. Goldeneye was one of the N64's saviors only because it wasn't made available for the PC. Nintendo tried making up for the childishness of it's game lineup by making Conker's Bad Fur Day, but by the time this came out everyone was already thoroughly fed up with Nintendo...too late, big N.

Peripherals?
Nintendo pioneered the Rumble Pack, which shook the controller at certain points of the game to make gameplay seem more ''realistic'' and ''fun.'' I think a better word for how the Rumble Pack feels is ANNOYING. The first time I tried the Rumble Pack, I played for 10 minutes and after I was done, my hands were STILL SHAKING for about 20 minutes. It felt like crap. It's sad that other companies have followed suit with this kind of ''gameplay enhancement.'' Trust me, if you haven't tried the Rumble Pack yet, don't. You're not missing much...

The RAM expansion pack is a very controversial item indeed. Some games say that you should have it for best performance, other games MAKE you get it. Either way you HAVE to get it, because playing a game without the pack, even though you can, looks terrible. The Sega Saturn has expansions similar to this, but they were only made to make a few games extra special. Most of N64's modern games require the pack, making having a base N64 quite worthless today. If Nintendo had all that RAM built into the system, chances are it would have been fared better because of the extra power...but the game library would still be lacking...

As for the 64DD...it promised so many things and ended up not even coming to the US. This accessory would have somewhat made up for the fact that Nintendo decided to act like morons and keep using small, expensive cartridges to hold their games. :: sigh ::

One thing they SHOULD have added to the N64 system was a BIOS...which would have made it much easier to manage saved game data. Having to guess if your cart is full or not, not to mention having to run every single game to delete it's respective data if it IS full, is way too tedious.

Bottom Line?
If you feel like buying the system just for the few great games it has (e.g. Zelda, Goldeneye, Mario Kart, Mario Party...), you'll have fun. If you have a five year old child, this system will delight him/her greatly...until they grow up. If you want truly high quality gaming, look elsewhere. This system was the start of Nintendo's downfall with a kiddish, GEEKY game lineup being the worst aspect of the system (and what's a system without games, hm???), which is why I give it a 6.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/02/01, Updated 07/02/01