Mario Party 1 & 2 may have been planned 64DD titles

[Famidrive-16]

This was an interesting tidbit I didn't know about before. Someone named Osuwari posted on NeoGAF about issues playing MP on his N64 with a DD attached:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=411915


so, i'm here wondering why my Mario Party cart doesn't work while sorting some games and i notice something that never caught my attention before.

the only 3 games i own on N64 that don't load up with a 64DD unit attached are F-Zero X, Zelda OoT and Mario Party. i sorta had an idea why FZX and OoT didn't work due to the games looking for US 64DD hardware upon turning on the system but somehow the Japanese 64DD hardware prevented them from booting up at all but i had no idea why MP didn't load. i thought the game cart had kicked the bucket.

that is when i noticed their code numbers in the front sticker of the carts.

every N64 game i have has the following structure: NUS-NXXE-USA
these 3 games have their code like this: NUS-CXXE-USA
XX = depends on game but everything else is the same. examples:
NUS-CLBE-USA is Mario Party's code
NUS-CFZE-USA is F-Zero X's code
NUS-CZLE-USA is Zelda OoT's code
normal game: NUS-NKTE-USA would be mario Kart 64 and NUS-NALE-USA is SSB

when i removed the 64DD to try the game again, it booted up fine and it surprised me since both FZX and OoT worked when i removed the 64DD.

this leads me to think that at some point Mario Party wasn't supposed to have so many sequels initially but, due to the 64DD tanking, they made the expansion disk it's own game and it became Mario Party 2. it would also explain why they recycled so many minigames for it and why all further installments had a complete new minigame roster in comparison.

this should help anyone who has both a 64DD and Mario Party know that their games aren't busted.

Someone else also posted video of an error message that can pop up with the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKu5lABxR2Q

Basically, it's a possibility that at one point, the game was being designed for the 64DD and that MP2 could've been an expansion disk instead of another complete game, which may explain how MP2 was released so soon. Thought I'd like to share.

[Baloo]

That's a bit strange, but rather speculative to be honest. I can undestand F-Zero X, but there hasn't been any info on if Mario Party was a planned 64DD Game. Or was there?

[Dr. Dib]

That's a bit strange, but rather speculative to be honest. I can undestand F-Zero X, but there hasn't been any info on if Mario Party was a planned 64DD Game. Or was there?

The topic name is a bit of a misnomer. This video just shows it is possible that Mario Party was meant to have a 64DD expansion at one time. As the Neogaf poster mentioned, the only other 2 games he had that didn't work with the 64DD were OOT and F-Zero, both of which had known 64DD expansions planned. In F-Zero's case I think it was released.

If Mario Party 2 was meant to be that expansion it was scrapped early on though since it came out shortly after the 64DD came out. Of course I think signs point to Nintendo knowing the 64DD was going to fail really early on so they may have changed gears with Mario Party right away..

[Zama]

Hmmm very interesting :)

[PapaStu]

It's a bit dangerous to go by Nintendo part numbers only. They use a single letter designation before they switch to another letter and start over again and im pretty sure that they stick with a single letter designation across all release regions before they move to the next.

The DS has gone through multiple letters already and there isn't anything that would imply DSi expanded gameplay etc. for the game IDs. What would show that normally is the first 3 letters i.e. NTR-XXXX-USA is a standard DS game. TWL-XXXX-USA is the very shortlived DSi exclusive game run thats come and gone.

For example

NTR-YBNE-USA is 100 Classic Books (which came out a few months ago)

NTR-YW2E-USA is Advanced Wars: Days of Ruin (which is 2 years old?)

NTR-AWRE-USA is Advanced Wars: Dual Strike (almost a launch title)

NTR-BWKE-USA is Bookworm (6 months old)

NTR-ABTE-USA is Cake Mania

NTR-CAKE-USA is Cake Mania 2

NTR-B3ME-USA is Cake Mania 3

NTR-ASKE-USA is Lost in Blue

NTR-AL2E-USA is Lost in Blue 2

NTR-YL3E-USA is Lost in Blue 3

It's really all over the board. Are the only 3 N64 games with the C designation those that got the 64DD treatment?

[PacmanPlush]

It's really all over the board. Are the only 3 N64 games with the C designation those that got the 64DD treatment?

Yes, these do seem to be the only US released games to have a C in the product code. :pimp: However, there are also 5 Japanese releases with such a code:
Dezaemon 3D (NUS-CDZJ-JPN)
F-Zero X (NUS-CFZJ-JPN)
Pocket Monsters Stadium 2 (NUS-CP2J-JPN)
Pocket Monsters Stadium with Transfer Pak (NUS-CPSJ-JPN)
Zelda no Densetsu: Toki no Ocarina (NUS-CZLJ-JPN)

We know the story with Zelda, F-Zero and the Pokémon Stadium games, but Dezaemon is an interesting one- apparently, no add-on was ever released for it, but there was an article on IGN about the game's planned 64DD expansion. Also, like Mario Party, the game provides a message of some sort when the "wrong" disk is inserted. :pimp:

(Source: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=324618)

Interestingly, I found that the Australian and European releases of Ocarina of Time have "normal" product codes; NUS-NZLP-AUS and NUS-NZLP-EUR, respectively. These versions were released in December of 1998, a month after the Japanese and North American releases. Do the AUS and EUR versions lack the 64DD "functionality"? :villagepeople:

While we're on the subject, it's worth noting that the codes often have a relation to the game's title:

Dezaemon 3D (NUS-CDZJ-JPN)
F-Zero X (NUS-CFZJ-JPN)
Pocket Monsters Stadium 2 (NUS-CP2J-JPN)
Pocket Monsters Stadium with Transfer Pak (NUS-CPSJ-JPN)
Zelda no Densetsu: Toki no Ocarina (NUS-CZLJ-JPN)

(With Mario Party, NUS-CLBE-USA, this doesn't seem to be the case.)

The first bit, NUS, stands for Nintendo Ultra Sixty-Four. :guitar: In the second part, the first letter seems to signify whether the game is N-type (Normal? Non-DD? Nintendo?) or C-type (Creator, an early title planned for the DD?) The next two characters represent the game's title, and the last, the language or region (P=PAL, J=Japanese, E=English, I guess.) Last comes the region code- USA, JPN, AUS, and so on.

As far as the DS product codes go, the relation- if there is one- isn't as apparent. NTR is for Nitro, the codename for the DS. The single letter language code and three letter region codes remain the same as the N64 codes. :bigmac:

Advance Wars: Dual Strike (NTR-AWRE-USA)
Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (The 2nd AW DS title) (NTR-YW2E-USA)
Bookworm (NTR-BKWE-USA)
Cake Mania (NTR-ABTE-USA) (No connection? Also, everything I've found seems to indicate the code is AOYE. ABTE is Bust-A-Move...)
Cake Mania 2 (NTR-CAKE-USA) (The word CAKE is something of a coincidence; the E represents English and the C represents something else, but it does indicate that Majesco knew beforehand that the game would be "C-Type," or they couldn't have done this.)
Cake Mania 3 (NTR-B3ME-USA)



It's a bit dangerous to go by Nintendo part numbers only. They use a single letter designation before they switch to another letter and start over again and im pretty sure that they stick with a single letter designation across all release regions before they move to the next.

Well, now I'm wondering. The codes used for the N64 games seem to make sense. I'll admit I haven't figured out the DS codes yet. :embarrassed: The only prefixes I've seen are A, B, C, and Y. I'm not entirely sure if they loop through these numbers, but I can't think of anything that links the 'A' games, and differentiates them from the 'C' games.

[Aussie2B]

Very interesting, although the idea of one of the Mario Party games starting as 64DD software isn't particularly unusual. Many of the N64's games started briefly on the 64DD before being switched over to cartridge:

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