INSIDE THE NINTENDO 64

In 1993, Nintendo was a company in an interesting position. While it was undoubtedly a leader in the videogame console market, it could no longer boast the virtual monopoly it held during the late-Eighties. What’s more, the industry was already planning to transition away from the 16-bit console market, and rival manufacturers were beginning to show their hands. NEC had experienced success in Japan with the PC Engine, and had already shown off the 32-bit Tetsujin, while Atari had announced the Jaguar in August 1993 and was gearing up for a holiday test launch. The much vaunted 3DO, from former Electronic Arts executive Trip Hawkins, was also scheduled to launch for the holiday season and had the backing of electronics giant Panasonic.

Nintendo wasn’t particularly concerned with most of these companies – at the time, Sega was its biggest rival, having been the first company to bring serious competition to the console market. As the two biggest players in the console market, either of them could have been behind what ultimately became the Nintendo 64. The hardware was primarily engineered by Silicon Graphics, Inc, a huge name in movie special effects technology which had recently bought MIPS Technologies, the designer of the CPUs used in its workstations. Having developed a low cost, power-efficient version of the latest MIPS processors, SGI put together a design proposal for a games console. In September 1993, the rivals had signed the contracts and made their announcements – Nintendo would partner with SGI and launch its 64-bit home console in late-1995, while Sega would use Hitachi’s 32-bit processors and launch in the autumn of 1994. Sony, Nintendo’s former partner on the SNES CD-ROM project, announced its intention to launch a home console of its own the following month.

Being the last to market wasn’t an unfamiliar situation for Nintendo, as it had done the same with the SNES and been able to retain a substantial market share regardless. The tactic here was the same – simply put, Nintendo bet on having the best technology. Project Reality, as it soon became known, was also an easy machine to hype. With SGI on board, claimed that the machine had “the potential to provide graphic images such as those seen in , and ”. At a time when more bits was better, being a 64-bit machine was a big deal. emphasised that “[Sega’s] game,” says Giles Goddard, a programmer working for Nintendo at that time. “They just wanted to get it right – there was no particular big problem that happened that caused a delay or anything.”