I think the name they went with was perfect but does anyone think sticking with Ultra 64 would have made any difference on the success of the system?
The next generation would just be screaming
AND THIS IS TO GO EVEN FURTHER BEYOND!! HAAAAAAAAAAAA
The switch click would be a neck snap
EXISTENTIAL NOSTRADAMUS APOCALYPSE GAMECUBE
With the biblically accurate controllers! đđđ
âWhat the hells a giga Wii???!!â
I have those when I drink.
About an extra Tree Fitty
You know what I told that Lochness Monster? I told that Lochness Monster I give him Tree Fitty for it!
And the same with their handhelds. Gameboy, Gameman, Gamemeta-human, Gamedemigod...
You forgot the awkward Gameteen. Everyone forgets that one.
Mega Cube kind of rolls of the tongue better. But I agree.
we all missed our chance at becoming the borg, and it's nintendos fault
Dynamax switch LOL
Had me rofl
Domain Expansion: Nintendo Switch
Following that they'd need to release a sigma console
NGL, Omega Wii U sounds awesome af!!
Well, the codename for the Wii was "Revolution"...
The shoulda stuck with that!
Growing up I remember kids taking about the next system to come after snes. I remember a big emphasis on 32bit vs 64bit and what a huge leap that would be. Very cool.
I couldnât understand why the N64 wasnât a nes-to-snes leap to the ps1 and Saturn even though it was a 64bit system and Nintendo themselves said they were âsitting out the 32 bit generation to jump straight into the 64bit generationâ.
The n64 was supposed to be such a leap, but it was just better than its competitors, not a gigantic leapÂ
Love that this is getting down voted. The last line is accurate and people are forgetting what it was like when it actually came out. The amount of arguments I had with PS1 fanboys back then. Who's got the last laugh now... 25 years later đ¤Ł
I guess people think I am hating on the N64 even though itâs my fave console ever.
Itâs just not ânext genâ compared to the ps1/saturn.
Fun fact: Nintendo rushed the virtual boy so they could have âsomethingâ in the 32nd generation since the n64 was supposed to be next gen.
It was a significantly better than the PS1. It didn't have any of the wonky texture warping PS1 games had.
In Killer Instinct I distinctly remember the narrator saying "Coming to the Ultra 64 system in 1996"
I remember thinking KI and Cruisinâ USA would look exactly the same on the Ultra 64 as it looked in the arcade. Sadly this was a huge exaggeration on Nintendoâs part.
Yeah they pretty much promised us straight ports.
Turns out we never got a close port of either KI game. Street fighter 2 turbo or mortal kombat 2 in the SNES are closer ports to the arcade sf2 and mk2 games than ki gold was to ki 2, which blows my mindÂ
Ki Gold was a decent port compared to the original killer instinct on SNES. That one just sounded and played kinda bad tbh.
You are right.
On the fipside, though, KI was never meant to be ported to the SNES, it was a â64 bit gameâ made to serve as some sort of tech demo/marketing for the Ultra 64, and the SNES was this 1991 era 16-bit console with 32mb carts⌠it was pretty impressive they did it.
yea i remember thinking if they can bring these home like neo geo did but it was a bit of a let down as the arcades were dedicated systems
"Available for your home in 1995. Only on Nintendo ULTRA 64!!! Those words are seared into my brain. Used to play killer instinct constantly in the arcades. That little promo would give me chills it was so fcking cool
Omg yes. This is actually the first time i found out about the Ultra 64.
I always thought N64 was still cool, But Ultra 64 does make it sound more powerful.
It makes sense going from "Super" (SNES) to "Ultra" (N64).
my Dad still calls it Ultra to this day. he must have seen those ads lol cuz for 30 years he kept calling it Ultra
Ultra 64, Zelda 3, PSX, all dropped/unofficial names that kinda stuck
I remember PSX! I remember thinking it was something completely different than the PS1 or 2.. God nostalgia is rose colored
Thatâs a different PSX?wprov=sfti1), that one is an official Sony product combining PS2 with PVR. What I meant was people calling PS1 PSX as the original code name for it was Playstation X to differentiate it with Nintendo Playstation project. It was never the official name but people just started calling it PSX even gake magazine like EGM reviewed Playstation 1 game under the PSX heading.
I remember seeing this in Nintendo Power. I always thought the Ultra 64 was pretty fuckinâ badass.
Yup! A lot of us Nintendo Power readers were teased by these sneak previews and brainwashed into saving our dollars for this sleek magic console. No regrets either.
I remember reading about something called The Dolphin that was supposed to come out after the N64, but maybe itâs Mandela effect. I donât want to google it cause I enjoy having this weird memory in my brain and I donât want to debunk it đ
Dolphin was the codename for the Gamecube. You definitely didn't imagine it
Edit: Also if you look at the console or controller or any official Nintendo peripherals for the Gamecube, the model # on the items all start with DOL for Dolphin
It's also whence the Dolphin emulator got its name.
Also why Super Mario Sunshine takes planes on Isle Delfino, which is shaped like a dolphin.
And the executable files for the Gamecube and Wii, also DOL extension!
And then something called "Revolution" meant to come out after the Dolphin. Then "Project Cafe" after Revolution, and "NX" after Project Cafe. Wonder what became of all of those ;-)
And the model numbers for the Wii started with RVL for Revolution.
"Dolphin" was the codename for "Gamecube".
Dolphin was the early codename for the Gamecube other codename where
Revolution: Wii
CafĂŠ: Wii U
NX: Switch
Ounce: Next nintendo console
Ounce?
I also remember it being called the Dolphin because its chip was called âFLIPPERâ as a reference to MIPS R4000 CPU in the N64. MIPS means âmillion instructions per secondâ and FLIPs are âFloating Point Instructions Per Secondâ which is a big deal for 3D graphics.
But I bring this up and everyone goes âNo, the processor was named for the code name!â Which makes no sense. Where did the code name come from?
And then they go, âbut itâs FLOPs, not FLIPsâ forgetting that in the 90s those terms coexisted. Operations roughly equal instructions.
I would actually love a source for this, because Iâm nearly certain itâs true.
I also remember it being called the Dolphin because its chip was called âFLIPPERâ as a reference to MIPS R4000 CPU in the N64. MIPS means âmillion instructions per secondâ and FLIPs are âFloating Point Instructions Per Secondâ which is a big deal for 3D graphics.
The "Flipper" was the Graphics chip in the Gamecube. It's unclear whether ArtX was able to name the chip they created, chose Flipper, and that influenced Nintendo to change the codename from N2000 to Dolphin, or if Dolphin was already the code-name so ArtX named the chip based on that. The latter does seem more likely though- I can't imagine Nintendo choosing a codename based off another name chosen by a company they contracted. I'm sure ATI would have preferred to have called it "Rage" after they acquired ArtX.
As far as "where did the code name come from then?". I mean, somebody could have just come back from seaworld or something while they were trying to decide on a better codename than N2000.
And then they go, âbut itâs FLOPs, not FLIPsâ forgetting that in the 90s those terms coexisted. Operations roughly equal instructions.
The terms did not coexist, because FLIPS was never a term. I certainly don't remember it, but also cannot find any reference to it ever being used. It would not be a useful term entirely because operations do not roughly equal instructions, as Floating point instructions include those used to load data into appropriate floating point registers and suchlike; and on the other side of the spectrum there's newer instructions that can also allow multiple operations per instruction as well. Additionally, there is the problem of RISC architectures having more, but typically faster instructions to achieve a single operation, so "FLIPS" would result in wildly inflated numbers for RISC architectures making it not possible to compare.
https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/guide/1796/gamecube-faq-art-x--ati
According to this source, itâs a âfanboy creationâ from the Art-X team.
This is the most I could find that said anything positive about the name, so the direction of influence definitely was Dolphin->Flipper and not the other way around. I was mistaken there.
But what I mean by âinstructions per secondâ are roughly equal to âoperations per secondâ is not that youâll get the same answer, but that theyâre counting a similar thing: discrete units of computation over time. You can use either to compare two chips of similar architecture and theyâll give roughly the same answer as to which is faster. All such counts across different architectures will give different (sometimes wildly different) measures of performance. And the N64âs MIPS chip was risc, was it not? So counting instructions there was probably inflating the numbers, too, no?
A âfanboy creationâ is an interesting way to describe a pop culture reference, too. A fanboy is more likely to embed a more niche reference. What makes more sense is that Art-X were Nintendo fanboying MIPS the Rabbit with FLOPS, I mean FLIPS, er, Flipper the Dolphin.
Nintendo should have used SI prefixes ...
â
Kilo Nintendo Entertainment System (KNES)
Mega Nintendo Entertainment System (MNES)
Giga Nintendo Entertainment System (GNES)
Tera Nintendo Entertainment System (TNES)
Peta Nintendo Entertainment System (PNES)
Exa Nintendo Entertainment System (ENES)
Zetta Nintendo Entertainment System (ZNES)
â
On second thought, maybe not PNES ... đđ¤Ł
Are you playing with your PNES in there?
đ¤Łđthis guy just help thinking 'bout PNESUS đđ¤Ł
I always thought that name was cooler.
Honestly I prefer the way it turned out instead
Also Killer Instinct in the arcade had Ultra 64 on the side of it. And of course the ULTRA COMBO!!!!!
Omg I forgot in my younger days of hanging out at arcades that it did have that on the side. Memory unlocked thank you! That would be so cool to have that cabinet now
Name doesn't matter at all. The only thing that truly mattered was sticking with cartridges instead of CDs, and arriving too late to stem the playstation tide. Sony just did everything right so letting them have such a head start meant the race was over before it began, although you can't really blame Nintendo for not predicting that a newcomer would upset their throne
Sony also had the marketing, they made it cool to be a gamer, that made all the difference. Casual gamers bought into the marketing massively.
I still use the word Ultra when describing really epic things. It seemed like a good progression after Super. Shoulda just been called the Ultra Nintendo (UNES)
IDC if it was called the Ultra 64, I just wanted the HDD accessory along with the original iteration of Zelda OOT (the one that basically looked like the very first LoZ game but in 3D)
I remember the first time playing Earthbound I named my favorite thing, "Ult. 64"
I was massively disappointed that Killer Instinct was not a thing on N64. Or FF7. But there were some gems obviously. I always associated KI not being released to the death of NU64, and renaming it to N64
I heard somewhere that FF7 would have required multiple cartridges
Around 21 just with no downgrades.
There was KI Gold which was just KI2 for 64, at least in the US. I know in some regions of the world it didn't get released though
Ki gold was a weird downgrade of ki2.
Some moves were missing (like jagoâs ghost), the multiple endings were missing, the graphics looked blurry (which wasnât necessary at all, look at mk trilogy) and the backgrounds were redone in bare bones polygonal environments. The FMV cutscenes were replaced by some weird cardboard looking stills.
Considering the amount of FMV that resident evil 2 had, none of these downgrades were necessaryÂ
I was quite disappointed in the name change I mean Ultra 64 sounded awesome vs Nintendo 64.
Ultra Nintendo/Ultra Famicom would have went so hard as a name for the console.
I think it should have just been called the Nintendo Ultra
After the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, naming it the Ultra Nintendo Entertainment System (scrap the 64!) would have made total sense, as stupid as it sounds
I loved the idea of the Ultra 64 so much when I modded mine I put the sticker on the front in place of the original logo
Nintendo was trying to go Super Saiyan with that name.
In the Dominican Republic when I went there for month back in the 1998, I had taken my N64 there and kids there were calling it an Ultra. It was interesting at the time.
I remember the days of being excited for the ultra 64. Honestly I didn't mind super nintendo, but ultra 64 would have just been odd, no longer a nintendo. Nintendo ultra 64 is a mouthful and ultra nintendo would have been worse. Nintendo 64 somehow worked. Honestly I feel cheated out of my nintendo DD, or double D's if you prefer.
No
Bad name and ugly logo. I like the N64 logo.
If you had seen the Ultra 64 logo for 18 years and just now saw the âunfinished N64â logo for the first time, youâd probably think the same thing. Personally, neither are bad. I think that the Ultra 64 logo made sense for the mid 90s direction Nintendo was going for with the play it loud campaign. By 1996 they had effectively dropped that attitude.
To be succeeded by the GigaChad.
Super mega ultra grandè 64
I got this confused with the one Hyperkin is working on. Same name.đ¤Ł
The system was already very successful. It was unlikely to top the PS1, without using CDâs and having many developers move on over to other platforms. That being said, Ultra 64 sounds pretty cool.
I hope It can play Super Nintendo games
I like "Ultra 64" more than "Nintendo 64 / N64", but I do still like what they officially went with...
I've since acquired a second console and replaced the faceplate N64 logo with a Ultra 64 one, but I wish that I could also find a replacement sricker / label for the bottom of the console that replaces Nintendo 64 / N64 with Ultra 64 as well.
This is real?! I had no idea.
Never knew it was a thingâŚ
I always thought it should be the Nintendo 360
Hell yes I remember reading that very article
It makes sense after super
Mad we never got a killer instinct 1 arcade port
Great great game. Fabulous game.Â
No difference for how it was marketed. It just sounded awesome. Unfortunately the Ultra name was trademarked in a region or something prevented them from using it worldwide.
I had a friend that made decals like that for a while. Not super popular but many of use older millennials knew what it referenced
I worked my first job ever to buy this at launch. Had it preordered at Babbage's. I remember my little ass slapping my money on the counter feeling like a boss. And then I geeked out on Pilotwings for days/weeks/months because I don't even think Mario 64 was out yet.
In an alternate time-line, we could've gotten the Ultra 64. Then, we would be talking about how Ultra Mario 64 and MVC2 were the greatest U64 games of all time. We would also be complaining about how Nintendo botched Ultra F-Zero and how Ultra NFL Blitz 2001 got canceled.
Good name but a bit over the top. Nintendo 64 sounds great. it has the firmiliar nintendo name everyone knows and a big number to represent how advanced it is. they could have even called it the ultra nintendo 64.
Better than N64.
Really N64 should've been a 32 bit console, then they could've beefed up the caches with the die space that was wasted on the 64 bits. Probably could've clocked it 25% faster too, increased the rambus bus from 9b to 18b, and dropped the price too!!
All in all still a fantastic system, sadly the Nintendo company management were idiots and shot themselves in the foot...
Na they got Ultra from Killer Instinct cause you can go Ultra Combos and Killer Instinct Gold was one of the first games out for the 64âŚ. So I think Ultra game from that
i though the same!
It just the Nintendo 64
Opinions? It looks a lot like a Nintendo 64 in my opinion.
Then Nintendo would've had to keep upping the ante. Mega Gamecube, Giga Wii, Omega Wii U, Dynamax Switch