N64DD - Nintendo 64 Disk Drive

Who's heard of this thing before?

While browsing for an N64 rom earlier, I was stuck wondering why I couldn't find it. I stumble upon the wikipedia page for it and find it listed for the system as N64DD. Not knowing what it was, I went and tried the link and found it to be an accessory (pretty much the same size as the N64) that hooked on the bottom and allowed games to be run from a disc.

Through a bit more Googling, I found the accessory was apparently very exclusive and hard to obtain. To top it off, the library for it was tiny, only nine games or so. It was an impressive accessory and games such as Sim City 64 (Japanese release only) were able to be made to pretty much the highest possible extent memory wise back then (for a single disc anyways).

I was curious if anybody even had one. I don't even know of rom's for this exist online, as my search didn't reach too far, but it seems unlikely. Plus, even if you could find them, there probably isn't an emulator in existence that could properly run the type of file it would be.

It just peaked my curiosity, and I thought I would share for others who may not know about it.

 

What you're describing is the Doctor V64. Essentially a rom dumper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_V64

It was used for various purposes, but the main reason was to make backups of the games.
And as for roms, you won't find any.

 

I was talking more about this, slightly different:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64DD

Doctor V64 probably just used similar technology.

 

It is different, but kinda the same idea. The Doctor V64 had to have hacked bios to dump games.
That is rather interesting. I didn't know that the N64 had an add-on other than the Doctor V64.

 

Huh, I was just trying to look for a N64DD emulator just an hour ago.

Zelda OoT was planned to be a game on the N64DD, utilizing a day and night system, Link affecting the world permanently (like cutting down a tree or even a foot print in the sand staying there), also there was planned to have random shuffled items in chests and stuff like that.

I was mostly looking for an emulator to play around with the F-Zero X track editor. :\

 

This device gets more and more interesting.

 

I have my doubts as well that it ever got emulated, and finding the actual hardware and games would probably cost a fortune now.

 

Just for some quick prices - http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&show=dd&q=nintendo+64dd&spell=1&oi=spell

and

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140348242758&rvr_id=130442475077&crlp=1_263602_263622&UA=WXF%3F&GUID=b05303fa12a0a06c1b73d713ffd53d30&itemid=140348242758&ff4=263602_263622

EDIT

Video. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WzpEQ3neK8&feature=fvw

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/NINTENDO-64DD-N64DD-Disk-Drive-64-8-disk-games-/250687515421?pt=Video_Games

If anyone's interested, I guess. It's 8 out of the 9 games too.

 

If I had the money...I'd buy that in a heart beat...

 

Well I stand corrected, I was expecting it to be a lot higher than that.

 

Japan only.

 

I have all the games for it and they play on project64, I tried simcity earlier in reply to another thread.
I downloaded a complete romset and it has lots of bios files in, doctorv64, z64, wideboy, neon64 and cd64. I don't know if these have anything to do with it.

 

From what I read, it was even somewhat limited in Japan (it never got anywhere else though). It never really got the chance to go big though apparently.

Well, it's nice to know the rom's do exist and play on an existing emulator. I might try and find them to give them a shot eventually.

 

the f zero expansion sounds really really good

 

some days left on that auction-

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250666510301

that last one sold for QUITE a bit.

 

Not so much limited, it was just extremely unsuccessful, just like any other system add-on.

 

If I recall correctly as I did at one time download a lot of N64 ROMs here on RomUlation, that games that were meant for N64DD were also hosted on here. Games like F-zero X & Zelda Ocarina of Time that have N64DD versions were bulk archived on the same archive the non-N64DD come in. Incidentally, OoT's "enhanced" GameCube version was also crammed into OoT's archive.

 

And remained in japan because of this.