lodgenet n64 controller

[qbertandernie]

thought id throw this up so anyone who finds one of these controllers at a flea market in 2009 and does a search will have some info about it after the program is long gone. viva la DP!

my brother invited me to stay at a Great Wolf Lodge in Sandusky, Ohio recently. in the room they had a modified N64 controller(with menu, select, order, reset, * and # buttons above the start button) sitting on top of the TV. naturally this piqued my interest. attaching the controller to the TV is about an 8' phone type cord. i thought this must be some bootleg deal, but soon noticed it has the nintendo logo on it. flipping it over, the rumble pak slot is solid(though the controller is shaped the same), and in this area is printed "CONTROLLER IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ANY HOME GAME SYSTEM. IF REMOVED, A $29.95 SERVICE CHARGE WILL BE ADDED TO YOUR ROOM BILL."
then, in smaller(but still capital letters)
'lodgenet model no. LN6401 Made in china
M(circled)C(circled)1997 nintendo /D(circled) nintendo U.S. patent376,826
more patents issued and pending"

im a sucker for weird controllers, so naturally i stole it...more on that later

being a connoiseur (i cant spell anymore) of game history, i thought id preserve the game list...avaialble in the room for $7.73 an hour.

each game select screen showed 3 games, as follows.

mario tennis
excitebike 64
mario kart 64
paper mario
super smash Bros.
hydro thunder
midways greatest arcade hits
rush 2 extreme racing usa
1080 snowboarding
mario golf
namco museum
dr mario 64
super mario 64
ready to rumble boxing
mario party 3
kirby 64
star wars rogue squadron
martal kombat
wave race 64
pokemon snap
virtual pool 64
yoshis story
donkey kong 64
star fox 64
the new tetris
rampage 2 universal tour
fzero x
pilot wings 64
legend of zelda (thats all it said)
gauntlet legends
legend of zelda: majoras mask
virtual chess

32 games total, but at $8.00 an hour it seemed expensive, especially with a water park downstairs.

so anyway, i decide im going to steal the controller. i go down to the night manager to tell him(i dont want it to be charged to my brother) and he tells me"theyll charge you like $150 for that...i wouldnt take it. our blankets are $300!!" younger guy, but a damn twerp. he also said 'theyd have to call in an order for one of those, we dont have them here". twerp.
after looking for a 'prices of our stuff if you steal it' guide in the room, i find out the blankets are $50, and the damn controller is printed $29.95, so thats what ill pay. so in the morning i go tell the older manager(different guy, cooler and more knwledgable of company policy) that im stealing the controller and would like to pay for it now. his response? "ok""i dont know why youd want it, but how much did it say?" so we run the deal, he charges my credit card...says simply"you know what, let me check with the maintenance guys to see if those will work on your system"...nice guy. i told him i knew it wouldnt and didnt care, im a collector, etc.
to help shorten a long story, 5 minutes later i was out the door with my lodgenet controller.

so i think to myself "theres a market for these if i can get them cheap"
so i email lodgenet. they respond basically that "we are not resellers and are not licensed to sell these things. sorry about your luck but thanks for the interest" (paraphrasing) good thing i 'stole' one, even though it cost $29.99 for a controller that will never work. i still like it.

well, thats my tale, simply for posterity. there are other posts about these in the past, but no topics yet...
someone else said the place they stayed had about 11 games and 3 homebrew type. im sure lodgenet has updated its offerings many many times, so there are probably several different available games at different times.

i thought this was pretty interesting, and had never seen one even though it was licensed in 1997....the website says a gamecube lodgenet is in place in some areas also. if i find one, you can bet ill drop another $29.95 for that one too.

[Richter Belmount]

grr i hate j00 =P i should of done what you had done when they had snes controllers.

[SoulBlazer]

A lot of hotels still have the Logenet N64 systems. I worked at a Courtyard that was brand new when I started there in May of 2003, and they had them. When I left in October of this year, we still had them.

I remember reading last year that a deal was signed to get GameCube games in on the Lodgenet system, but I have no idea if that has been done yet.

[DigitalSpace]

A few years ago, I stayed at a Hilton in Washington D.C. that had those Lodgenet N64 systems. Didn't bother to play it though, too expensive for my taste.

Here's some information/pics on the SNES Lodgenet system:

Link

[joshnickerson]

I've come across those things a few times during my travels, though I never bothered to play it, since $8 an hour is a bit much.

[Nez]

Yeah my work has em. Suprisingly people still pay 9.00 an hour to play the olde N64. There neat but IMO nothing to get excited about.

[rbudrick]

I think I actually have an old post about these. Actually, looks like I didn't start the thread, but I did post in a couple of these:

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/search.php?mode=results

When I stayed at Attitash in Northern NH (a ski resort), they had these a couple years ago this March. I wanted to steal it to. I even contacted Lodgenet and got the same shit. I actually wanted to steal the whole damn TV and check out its hardware. Basically a Cable connection downloads the game to the TV.

-Rob

[qbertandernie]

id love to see a closer shot of that snes controller...

[postulio]

if the system itself wastn bult into the tv id steal that. screw the controller dude take the whole thing.

[Cauterize]

I remember reading last year that a deal was signed to get GameCube games in on the Lodgenet system, but I have no idea if that has been done yet.

There is a guy on DP, based in Liverpool, England, (i forgot his user name) and he has gamecube controllers with modem cable conector style ends to them, possibly they are for this kind of system

[Nez]

I remember reading last year that a deal was signed to get GameCube games in on the Lodgenet system, but I have no idea if that has been done yet.

There is a guy on DP, based in Liverpool, England, (i forgot his user name) and he has gamecube controllers with modem cable conector style ends to them, possibly they are for this kind of system

No those were prototypes for the gamecube its self. And I know they have a lodgnet Gamecube. I've seen the brochures that they faxed over to my hotel.

[Cauterize]

I remember reading last year that a deal was signed to get GameCube games in on the Lodgenet system, but I have no idea if that has been done yet.

There is a guy on DP, based in Liverpool, England, (i forgot his user name) and he has gamecube controllers with modem cable conector style ends to them, possibly they are for this kind of system

No those were prototypes for the gamecube its self. And I know they have a lodgnet Gamecube. I've seen the brochures that they faxed over to my hotel.

Ahhhh my bad then, even so they were pretty cool!

[Cmosfm]

Awesome man! Now....I want to see pictures! Can you post em?

[qbertandernie]

ill get em put on photobucket...then ill link em up

[qbertandernie]

try this...should be the first 2 pics.

http://photobucket.com/albums/v509/qbertandernie/

[SoulBlazer]

Okay, that's England....I was saying I have yet to hear of a SINGLE hotel in the US that has changed from N64 Lodgenet to GameCube Lodgenet.

[portnoyd]

I've seen both SNES and N64, but all the times I did, it was on business travel, and I'd rather not fuck around by grabbing one. Since then, no fucking luck!

dave

[davidbrit2]

I'd suspect that the actual game hardware is part of the same backend system that handles things like pay-per-view movie playback. The televisions just have a generic serial device port that the controllers connect to, and they are also capable of sending data back upstream through the coax cable for things like movie purchasing, and in this case, sending game controls to the machine that's actually running them. It wouldn't make sense to have the game hardware built into the television, because it would greatly complicate an upgrade deployment. By leaving the game hardware separate, they just have to replace the controllers and a bank of hardware in the A/V office, as opposed to replacing or modifying the television in every single room.

If you can find one of those televisions that supports serial devices somewhere else (I've seen them in schools), try plugging it in, because the remote control functions might still work.

[Cauterize]

I'd suspect that the actual game hardware is part of the same backend system that handles things like pay-per-view movie playback. The televisions just have a generic serial device port that the controllers connect to, and they are also capable of sending data back upstream through the coax cable for things like movie purchasing, and in this case, sending game controls to the machine that's actually running them. It wouldn't make sense to have the game hardware built into the television, because it would greatly complicate an upgrade deployment. By leaving the game hardware separate, they just have to replace the controllers and a bank of hardware in the A/V office, as opposed to replacing or modifying the television in every single room.

If you can find one of those televisions that supports serial devices somewhere else (I've seen them in schools), try plugging it in, because the remote control functions might still work.

But does that mean there are X amount of N64s playing X amoutn of games?

or

Is there some Multicart these places have with all those games on???

also

lets say 15 people are playign at the same time, how many n64s are there and what if they all wanna play the same game?

[o2william]

Ahh, the infamous LodgeNet service. I noticed this when I went to CGE2K4 (they have it at the Crowne Plaza hotel in San Jose). I found it odd to see an N64 controller wired up to the TV. The one in my room was obviously broken, although I wouldn't have paid for the service anyway.

I snapped a few blurry screenshots for the heck of it. This is the only one I have online right now:



If anyone's interested, I'll put up the rest (I think I saved them). They're just shots of the game selection screens.