Retro Gaming Australia

Before the Wavebird, wireless pads were pretty damn awful. Now they’re the standard for every console released since 2005. Retro-Bit is hoping you’ll want the same sort of quality wireless controllers for the Nintendo 64 – because they’ll be bringing them to market in a few weeks time.

The pad’s design is based on the official Nintendo 64 controller, but it also packs in some turbo switches for you cheating bastards out there.

Word on the street is that these babies will be sold for $US30 when they hit the market in the northern hemisphere summer.

The Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak boosts the RAM of the Nintendo 64 from 4MB to 8MB. Most games used the memory expansion for high resolution modes, boosting the outputted resolution from 320×240 to 640×480. Unfortunately this typically resulted in even worse framerates (looking at you, Turok 2). A number of later generation games either required the Pak (Donkey Kong 64, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask) or greatly benefitted from its use (Perfect Dark).

Youtube user 2010clarky has modified a Nintendo 64 controller to feature two analog sticks, and it looks pretty slick.

Some Nintendo 64 games allow the player to use two separate N64 controllers to utilise both analog sticks, so the clever modder has housed both analog sticks in one big ol’ merged controller titled the “El Quadinaros.” It still works as a single controller too! (continue reading…)

Retro Gaming Theatre is a new feature for Retro Gaming Australia where we pick up a game we’ve not played in a couple of years and…well…play it. In these videos, you’ll get the game in all its glory – no jerks who think they’re hilarious talking over the top and no piss-farting around on the options screen before getting to the game. We’re playing this stuff on the original hardware too.

About a year or so ago, I bought some capture equipment with the intention of producing all sorts of awesome video footage for RGA. Unfortunately, most of our stuff was stashed away in boxes, making it a painstaking process to get access to most of our retro stuff. After reorganising the house on my holidays, we’ve now got all of our retro equipment front and centre, and will be producing video features from now on.

The first game to appear on Retro Gaming Theatre is Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64. It’s one of a handful of series which made its debut on the Nintendo 64, but arguably got better as the series progressed. As you’ll see, I’m pretty rusty at the start, but turn it around in the end.

We’ll be putting these videos out on a regular schedule both here and on our Youtube channel. If you have any specific requests for games you want to see, let us know and we’ll see what we can do!

YouTube user ZeldaFreakGlitcha has discovered a warp glitch in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64 that allows players to finish the game in less than 24 minutes.

The recently discovered glitch warps players from the Deku Tree straight to the Ganon’s Castle escape sequence, as child Link. Upon activating the blue warp circle after defeating Queen Gohma, plays must ignore this warp and instead travel through the glitch warp to teleport past adult Link, the Light Medallion, Zelda’s Lullaby, and much more of the 1998 classic.

Click the video above to watch the 23 minute 29 second speed run in its entirety.

One of those games where the advertising budget must have been double that of the development budget, based on the sheer number of ads in magazines.

Buck Bumble put players in control of the titular character, a cyborg bee fighting in some resistance movement. It’s all highly derivative and technically unpolished – kind of like everything Argonaut produced after Nintendo poached their best talent.

Who doesn’t want an array of multi-coloured systems? Sane people, probably.

Nintendo released a bunch of coloured Nintendo 64s in 1999-2000 to boost flagging sales of the system. These systems had transparent casing and could be bought in one of six colours – purple, orange, green, red, blue or grey. They weren’t released in particularly big numbers in Australia, so expect to pay through the nose for one.

Search for Nintendo 64 systems on eBay

Today’s ad is for everybody’s favourite 30 hour+ collect-a-thon

Donkey Kong 64 was the last original Donkey Kong game developed by Rare to be released before they were bought out by Microsoft. It was the first game on the Nintendo 64 that required the Expansion Pak, which was included in most copies of the game free of charge. Due to difficulties with Expansion Pak emulation and the inclusion of Jetpac (which Microsoft owns the rights to) in the game, Donkey Kong 64 has not, and probably will not be released on the Virtual Console.

Search for Donkey Kong 64 on eBay