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A super rare Nintendo 64 Disk Drive dev kit has been documented by YouTuber Shane Luis on his Twitter account, @RerezTV. Luis was reportedly sent the dev kit by a private video game collector for verification and documentation, and he shared the entire unboxing process on his account. The dev kit has attaches to the bottom of a standard Nintendo 64 console, and uses several adapters to connect a utility cart and disk to the system. There was also an instruction manual included in Japanese that Luis has scanned and uploaded, if you want to try and help translate it. You can view Luis' full thread and see all the details of the dev kit in the linked Twitter thread below.

I was asked to verify and photograph a Nintendo 64 Disk Drive (64DD) Development Kit from a private video game collector. The system was new in box and needed to be carefully documented.

This is what it looks like to unbox one. pic.twitter.com/X2PflhtemW

— Shane Luis (@RerezTV) March 24, 2021

 

[raxadian]

Anyone here has played Zelda 64: Dawn & Dusk fangame on real hardware?

Thats an awesome find! What lovely bit of kit. My N64 is broken sadly. Id love to get it going and play some Wave Race and 1080 with my kids.

Doesn't Wave Race got a Gamecube sequel?

Ah yes Wave Race: Blue Storm.

 

[SDA]

Time to shine again for the N64DD... right?
It deserves a second chance as it flopped very badly back then, but not like the Virtual Boy.

 

[raxadian]

Time to shine again for the N64DD... right?
It deserves a second chance as it flopped very badly back then, but not like the Virtual Boy.

The Virtual Boy flopped because Nintendo hated it, they just released it to recover some of the lost money invested on it and then moved on.

Nintendo KNEW the DD just... was not going to work due to costs. And they knew that very well after looking at how Sega did with the 32x and to a lesser extend with the Sega CD.

Worse, the extra 4 mb of ram of the expansion pack just ended working better on the Nintendo 64 that in the DD.

There was no real incentive to use the DD as it didn't even use CDs or at least a custom disc format like the Sega Dreamcast did.

The DD was one the the biggest mistakes Nintendo did with the Nintendo 64, but most likely didn't hurt sales as much releasing two years later that the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation did.

Those two years really helped Sony a whole lot, not only Playstation games got better and with faster load times,;but Sony released new revisions of the Playstation that failed a whole lot less.

Oh and the Playstation also got Crash Bandicoot.

 

[SDA]

The Virtual Boy flopped because Nintendo hated it, they just released it to recover some of the lost money invested on it and then moved on.

Nintendo KNEW the DD just... was not going to work due to costs. And they knew that very well after looking at how Sega did with the 32x and to a lesser extend with the Sega CD.

Worse, the extra 4 mb of ram of the expansion pack just ended working better on the Nintendo 64 that in the DD.

There was no real incentive to use the DD as it didn't even use CDs or at least a custom disc format like the Sega Dreamcast did.

The DD was one the the biggest mistakes Nintendo did with the Nintendo 64, but most likely didn't hurt sales as much releasing two years later that the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation did.

Those two years really helped Sony a whole lot, not only Playstation games got better and with faster load times,;but Sony released new revisions of the Playstation that failed a whole lot less.

Oh and the Playstation also got Crash Bandicoot.

"Thanks" for telling me how the Playstation was created. I mean, I've seen everything on Wikipedia.

 

[Deleted member 668561]

sent to for verification purposes? makes me wonder if he'll be returning it.

Welp knowing ninty, that devkit was either nos, or it's still under an NDA

So technically neither "owns" the devkit, nintendo can step in and be like no, thats our private property, *takes*


That's why serial # and factory identification is covered or removed when you see em for sale

 

[Something whatever]

hmmm what can we do with it now?

 

[Kwyjor]

hmmm what can we do with it now?

It's my understanding that there are already plenty of these units in the hands of collectors – but maybe not any in such pristine condition with a documented unboxing.

So, anything that could have been done with this has already been done.

 

[raxadian]

"Thanks" for telling me how the Playstation was created. I mean, I've seen everything on Wikipedia.

Actually most people tends to ignore the whole "Nintendo 64 got released two years later that Sony Playstation" part of the story.
It says something on how bad the Sega Saturn sales were outside of Japan that the Nintendo 64 still beat it.