N64 Connoisseur

They Call That a Remainder

In long division, when there is a little something left over, that is referred to as a remainder. That is about where it ends for me and the maths, but that is enough to define what I am up to here this week. As I have come to find out over my time as the Connoisseur, not every idea can be a full piece. Some ideas are good, but there is just not enough meat to them to support a whole piece. Kind of like how I don’t think Will Smith is a good enough actor to be the only character in a movie. Over the course of a year, though, these things tend to pile up and what am I supposed to do with them all? Maybe they would all be good together. Will Smith, after all, is good with other actors around him. So, this piece is my purging of all of those N64 Connoisseur thoughts that just didn’t make it.

Do you have an original N64 controller and the thumb stick is as wobbly as a frat boy after a kegger? Well, they actually make replacement thumb sticks on the cheap! A quick search on Amazon or eBay pops up a ton of them. Better than that, they are super easy to replace. Don’t believe me? Check out these instructions.

I have often wondered what would have happened if Nintendo had stuck to their naming patterns for consoles. We all know by now that the Nintendo 64 was originally the Ultra 64. Where would it have gone from there? MegaCube? Alpha Wii? Wii-Ultimate?

The Dreamcast is often credited with being the pioneer in online consoles, but Nintendo actually dabbled in it first with the Famicom, believe it or not. It had a modem that let you do stuff like trade stocks for some reason. They continued this with the Super Famicom and tried it also with N64 by way of the failed 64DD. The 64DD was notable because you could only get the unit by subscribing to the online service. Are you one of those that complains about the price of Xbox Live Gold? Imagine paying $25 a month for almost no games. Still, though, imagine if that had actually caught on. Japan gets all of the coolest stuff.

I know from talking with you folks throughout the last year that I am not the only one majorly inconvenienced by the fact that there is no top label on the N64 cartridge. I know these carts were expensive to make and all but for the love of storage, could you really not have afforded top labels, Nintendo? Well, there is a solution. I do know about the Universal Media case but, come on. I already have 120+ N64 carts with the end goal of owning all 296. Where am I supposed to put that many of those giant things? A quick online search of “N64 Top Labels” will yield you several fellows on the Nintendo Age website that will make some for you and sell them to you. Are you more of a do it yourself kind of person? After a bit of digging, I figured out that all these people are doing is taking the UMC case image from here, taking out the spine part, and shrinking it down to N64-like proportions. Ta-da!

I would give my kingdom for a way to remove those [EXPLETIVE DELETED] Blockbuster labels from the cartridge without ruining the actual label. Well, aside from a few of the most patient people on earth, the general consensus is that if you have one, best leave it there. Not all is lost though. Word on the street is that if you do get one of those full front label “Property of Blockbuster” stickers, a little rubbing alcohol will take that lettering off, leaving you with a clear sticker over your label. I can live with that, can’t you? You’re still out of luck on the rest of the labels, though.

Speaking of cartridges, The N64 was, of course, the last major console to use them. You may argue that the 3DS has cartridges but, let’s be realistic here. Those are glorified SD cards. However, they perfectly make my point. The 3DS is not short of amazing games. On a flipping SD card. Should the cartridge ever make a comeback (it won’t though, costs a fortune to manufacture) I think technology has advanced to the point of us being able to store a whole lot of game on one. I bought a hard drive this weekend that wasn’t too much bigger than a cartridge and it has a 1TB capacity. Different tech, I know, but my point is it can be done.

Those are some of the ideas that just didn’t have enough behind them for a whole article. I am in the process of getting ready to move into an apartment next month and so my last couple of weeks has consisted of getting rid of things I have been holding on to for no good reason. “But I swear, I need that broken handle from a backscratcher. No, I don’t know where the scratchy part went.” This was a good cleaning out of the ideas bin. Join me back here in 2 weeks when I have a very timely 2 Decades Late review.

Photo appears courtesy of whatleydude on Flickr