Hardware Oldies New to N64 - Lots of Questions On Where to Start

[1dkreally]

I recently bought my first N64, and I have a lot of questions on how to get started with it.

The space for a jumper/expansion pak in my N64 came empty, with neither pak to go with it. Do I need both paks, or will I be fine with just getting an expansion pak? Is it worth it to get a 3rd-party pak for cheap, or do these have issues that official paks don't?

I'm going to get myself an Everdrive flashcart, is the X7 only worth it if you want to save without having to reset and/or you're planning on playing Animal Forest? I don't mind having to reset and I'm not interested in Animal Forest, are there any other benefits to getting an X7? There's also the developer USB port, is this needed for anything outside of developing homebrew/ROM hacks? I do want to play homebrew/ROM hacks, but I have no intentions of making anything.

I plan on playing a few games that require controller paks, but I don't want to have spend too much money on them. Are there any ways of moving the save files to an SD card, and swapping them around whenever I want to play a certain game (E.G. transferring out Mario Kart 64 ghost data to make room for Duke Nukem, then swapping the data back when I want to play MK64 again)?

I've heard that there can be issues when using an AV-to-HDMI adapter with the N64, is this true? Am I fine to get any old adapter, or would I need to get either a fancy adapter or an older TV?

If there's anything else I should know, then please tell me! Thank you for bearing with me :]

 

[RAHelllord]

From top to bottom:

Expansion is recommended if you don't have anything, the console doesn't work with nothing in that port and as far as I know there are no downsides to having the expansion pak inserted at all times for all games. No idea about third-party ones, best to Google the specific brand you're looking at and see if anyone reported anything. If not that one is probably fine outside of defects due to age. That shouldn't happen for a while, though.

The X7 is really only worth it for the writing the saves without reset. Personally I'd say it's worth it, but you know your finances best so go with what makes more sense to you. Both will play all romhacks and games otherwise, apart from the lack of RTC. The USB port might be worth it for some hacks as it can adjust the game that's playing live, for the nes version someone made a tool that allows streamer's chat to affect the game via sending power ups or random events for donations. This could be used in the future with other stuff, like real hardware retro achievements, but none of this actually exists yet so I would strongly advise against considering this as an argument to pay extra.

The Everdrive will automatically make a copy of your memory pak and save it to the SD card for every game, effectively giving you unlimited memory paks. You can disable this functionality but I'd keep it intact. You can also manually dump and write the contents of the memory pak from the menu of the ED, and then edit it further on a PC.

Most reputable adapters are fine, Retrotink has a few cheap ones that are very high quality, but external ones like that also need decent cables, but can be used with more devices. If you don't want that something like the radx2 from retrogamingcables will work with almost all Nintendo consoles using the same AV out port.
That said with how old the N64 is they do look best on a CRT, if you have the space I'd recommend getting one from somewhere.

Edit: One important thing to note for the N64 is that the joystick on the controllers is very unique. I would highly recommend you get at least one good original N64 controller, lube up the bowl with some white lithium or silicone grease, and use it for games that need precision.
For games where precision isn't the biggest concern many modern third-party controllers will do just fine. The tribue64 or brawler64 for example. Another great option would be to get a blueretro64 adapter and combine that with the official NSO N64 controller, comes with a built in memory pak and is wireless to boot, plus newly manufactured. But that does need an active NSO subscription, but free trials also work.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I recently bought my first N64, and I have a lot of questions on how to get started with it.

The space for a jumper/expansion pak in my N64 came empty, with neither pak to go with it. Do I need both paks, or will I be fine with just getting an expansion pak? Is it worth it to get a 3rd-party pak for cheap, or do these have issues that official paks don't?

I'm going to get myself an Everdrive flashcart, is the X7 only worth it if you want to save without having to reset and/or you're planning on playing Animal Forest? I don't mind having to reset and I'm not interested in Animal Forest, are there any other benefits to getting an X7? There's also the developer USB port, is this needed for anything outside of developing homebrew/ROM hacks? I do want to play homebrew/ROM hacks, but I have no intentions of making anything.

I plan on playing a few games that require controller paks, but I don't want to have spend too much money on them. Are there any ways of moving the save files to an SD card, and swapping them around whenever I want to play a certain game (E.G. transferring out Mario Kart 64 ghost data to make room for Duke Nukem, then swapping the data back when I want to play MK64 again)?

I've heard that there can be issues when using an AV-to-HDMI adapter with the N64, is this true? Am I fine to get any old adapter, or would I need to get either a fancy adapter or an older TV?

If there's anything else I should know, then please tell me! Thank you for bearing with me :]

Judging by your country, I assume you have a PAL console, composite out is the only option on PAL consoles without hardware modding and the video quality is poor, I would suggest a HDMI mod rather than an upscaler (or a RGB mod + good quality upscaler)

Those generic AV2HDMI adapters are crap, and not really good for much.

 

[spinal_cord]

If you play on an old CRT tv, the quality will be passible, if you play on a modern flat screen, it will be too blurry to even play some games. Upscaling on modern tv's is terrible. If you don't mind a little soldering, you can build a cheap hdmi(ish) adapter yourself (https://github.com/kbeckmann/PicoDVI-N64) the quality is not perfect yet, but it's usable.
You can get reasonable quality out of the retrotink clone that can be found on cheap shopping sites, it's a reasonable way to get a cleaner picture on a modern tv.

But be warned, even die hard N64 fans will tell you, the games have not aged well. You'll find a few that you like, but most of them are complete crap. -- I say that as an N64 fan.

 

[master801]

If you play on an old CRT tv, the quality will be passible, if you play on a modern flat screen, it will be too blurry to even play some games. Upscaling on modern tv's is terrible. If you don't mind a little soldering, you can build a cheap hdmi(ish) adapter yourself (https://github.com/kbeckmann/PicoDVI-N64) the quality is not perfect yet, but it's usable.
You can get reasonable quality out of the retrotink clone that can be found on cheap shopping sites, it's a reasonable way to get a cleaner picture on a modern tv.

But be warned, even die hard N64 fans will tell you, the games have not aged well. You'll find a few that you like, but most of them are complete crap. -- I say that as an N64 fan.

From the GitHub, a lot of people are reporting issues with it- albeit mostly from the installation issues. Not to mention

With the unstandardized wiring and reported issues, it's not a good solution for any end-user.

You'd be better off buying a HISPEEDIDO HDMI kit than trying to build and install that Pico-based adapter.

 

[1dkreally]

From top to bottom:

Expansion is recommended if you don't have anything, the console doesn't work with nothing in that port and as far as I know there are no downsides to having the expansion pak inserted at all times for all games. No idea about third-party ones, best to Google the specific brand you're looking at and see if anyone reported anything. If not that one is probably fine outside of defects due to age. That shouldn't happen for a while, though.

The X7 is really only worth it for the writing the saves without reset. Personally I'd say it's worth it, but you know your finances best so go with what makes more sense to you. Both will play all romhacks and games otherwise, apart from the lack of RTC. The USB port might be worth it for some hacks as it can adjust the game that's playing live, for the nes version someone made a tool that allows streamer's chat to affect the game via sending power ups or random events for donations. This could be used in the future with other stuff, like real hardware retro achievements, but none of this actually exists yet so I would strongly advise against considering this as an argument to pay extra.

The Everdrive will automatically make a copy of your memory pak and save it to the SD card for every game, effectively giving you unlimited memory paks. You can disable this functionality but I'd keep it intact. You can also manually dump and write the contents of the memory pak from the menu of the ED, and then edit it further on a PC.

Most reputable adapters are fine, Retrotink has a few cheap ones that are very high quality, but external ones like that also need decent cables, but can be used with more devices. If you don't want that something like the radx2 from retrogamingcables will work with almost all Nintendo consoles using the same AV out port.
That said with how old the N64 is they do look best on a CRT, if you have the space I'd recommend getting one from somewhere.

Edit: One important thing to note for the N64 is that the joystick on the controllers is very unique. I would highly recommend you get at least one good original N64 controller, lube up the bowl with some white lithium or silicone grease, and use it for games that need precision.
For games where precision isn't the biggest concern many modern third-party controllers will do just fine. The tribue64 or brawler64 for example. Another great option would be to get a blueretro64 adapter and combine that with the official NSO N64 controller, comes with a built in memory pak and is wireless to boot, plus newly manufactured. But that does need an active NSO subscription, but free trials also work.

Thank you so much for answering all my questions! :]

I looked more into 3rd-party expansion paks, turns out they're usually crap so I'll just go official.

Thanks for the info on controllers too, I already have an original controller so I'll need to get some lube for it lol

Post automatically merged: Oct 21, 2023

Judging by your country, I assume you have a PAL console, composite out is the only option on PAL consoles without hardware modding and the video quality is poor, I would suggest a HDMI mod rather than an upscaler (or a RGB mod + good quality upscaler)

Those generic AV2HDMI adapters are crap, and not really good for much.

I do have a PAL console, I'll probably just see if I can find an old CRT TV at my local dump for cheap as I don't want to mod the hardware lol