Structurally, it’s similar to the old Famicom Disk System-and that means one is liable to repeat the same kind of mistakes with CD-ROM games as one made with Disk System games. Even though CD-ROMs technically can store a lot of information, the amount of data you can pre-load into the console at any given time is limited, which accordingly limits the kind of games you can make. The ROM data has to be transferred from the CD to the console hardware itself, and the game runs off that internal memory. Every second, Mario Kart 64 needs to draw about 30 different images, and the speed required for that can only be accomplished with cartridges.ĬD-ROMs just can’t cut it. Character animations, voice samples, all that can be instantly accessed from the ROM in real-time. The fact that you have 8 different karts, 4 players, and 16 tracks, all available at once, is thanks to the way the ROM prepares (pre-loads) the image data. As with other N64 games, Mario Kart 64 could not have been accomplished any other way. One other thing that hasn’t changed, now that I think on it, is that we’re still using the ROM cartridge format. Even if they try to make a kart racing game like ours, there’s no way they’ll be able to, so please rest easy in your purchase. I don’t think other consoles can imitate it right now. It’s another one of the “behind the scenes” improvements that is actually quite an impressive bit of technology. 4-player mode feels like you’re playing on 4 separate little TVs, thanks to that. But the N64 has some tricks that address this very issue, and we relied on that a lot. (laughs)Īlso, with 4-players, each player’s individual screen gets very small, and the danger is that the image quality and resolution will be too grainy. The N64 CPU is quite fast, and doing those kinds of calculations is one of its specialities, but even so, at first the programmers said “this is impossible.” As the producer, I can say the results turned out pretty much just as I had hoped. And each of the split screens has to do its own 3D calculations for that screen, which meant 4x the processing power was needed. (laughs) It was very difficult balancing it, as we wanted it to be as accessible as the standard race mode. The 4P battle mode is really amazing, and I was pleasantly surprised we pulled it off.
Nintendo switch super mario kart 64 how to#
4-player was one of our development themes, so we spent a great deal of time and effort on technological challenges: how to make 4-player a stress-free experience, how to utilize the N64’s power to that end, etc. It’s just that this time we focused on changing the internal processes-the things under the hood which the player doesn’t see. I mean, of course, if you play Mario Kart 64 I think you’ll understand this, but I’m not saying we kept everything the same.