I decided to expand my old school gaming inventory, so I went to a local gaming store today and bought a Nintendo 64. Of course from what I remember playing when I was younger I though "Damn, I should buy one with the expansion pack already in it, it can save me a few bucks since I won't have to buy it". Naturally, I bought it. I found some awesome games at another store, and from a local ad and basically I ended up coming home with a Nintendo 64, clear blue model, and 12 games (Gex, Mario 64, Starfox 64, Zelda:Ocarina of Time, Zelda: Majora's Mask, Bomberman hero, Rogue Squadron, Banjo Kazooie, Nightmare Creatures, Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness, Diddy Kong Racing, and Mario Kart 64).
Anyways, so I decided to put the games in and try them all out. First I tried Rogue Squadron. Once it booted up it asked me if I wanted to use the expansion packs features and play the game in high res, so I did of course, and no problem. Next I tried Castlevania: Legacy Of Darkness. Because I have the expansion installed, it asked me if I wanted to play the game in high res or low res, like RS, so I picked High Res. From the intro I already noticed the game was kind of choppy, and through the intro and into the gameplay, it tended to slightly skip and continue to be choppy throughout. I reset it, chose low res, and it worked much better. So I figured it was just a minor error and decided to disregard the matter.
Next I decided to play Ocarina Of time. So in the beginning (as expected), I created my file, and proceeded to watch the intro about hyrule where it fades into Link sleeping in his wood carved bed. Immediately I noticed links character sprite was flashing in and out, like disappearing and reappearing, and then the words that scrolled out at the bottom spelled some weird sentences that resembled readable text, but with random letters placed in between some of the words. Like "Stanbd ovyre threy". So in my confusion and by using the process of elimination I decided my N64 wasn't possessed and trying to tell me something, and started to think something was maybe wrong with my system, or the expansion pack for that matter.
I decided to make one final attempt, so I put in Majora's Mask and started playing it, since that was one of the games I knew actually required the expansion pack to play it. I started the game, and like OOT I made a new file. Started playing through the game, I think it froze once but I can't remember correctly if it did or not. Anyways it didn't look too bad. The graphics certainly looked different, but I couldn't distinguish what the difference was between a game that didn't need the expansion, and one that did, I honestly couldn't tell much of a difference.
Basically, I ended up getting a sweet deal on some awesome games and a sweet new system to add to my collection, but when I was younger I never had the expansion for my N64. Has anyone read or heard anything about the Expansion pack causing freezes and skips/choppy gameplay for some games? I remember looking at one review where some dude said that the expansion pack (or PAK as it was called) is known to cause choppiness in 80-90% of the the games that are played while it's installed. Is this true? I am going to try and clean my system and games tonight really good and see if that fixes the issue, but if anyone knows anything that can either help, or educate me on why this is happening, let me know please.