Secrets of the N64 Transfer Pak | Punching Weight [SSFF]

The Nintendo 64 Transfer Pack. Better known as that thing that came with Pokémon Stadium, its usefulness outside of that was pretty slim, but this is classic Nintendo, really! I think what we forget when we talk about Nintendo and their wacky peripherals is that Nintendo was first and foremost a toy company. Then they became a toy company that makes video games, and just like a toy manufacturer doesn't expect something like... L.O.L. Surprisingly, Nintendo has a habit of not committing to its peripherals for very long, and the N64 Transfer Pak is a classic example. It's a good idea, implemented too late to be useful to anyone except Pokémon superfans.

On top of that, there's a risk that you'll delete your Game Boy data and it will soon be replaced by the next big thing. But it was one of the only ways to connect Game Boy games to Nintendo 64. We just needed to discover all its

secrets

! So welcome back to Punching Weight, the show where we take a look at the strange, ambitious and unnecessary, and we're going to put an emphasis on the "unnecessary" by taking a look at the Nintendo 64 Transfer Pak. But first! This video is sponsored by Squarespace. You can start your free trial of Squarespace today by visiting squarespace.com/stopskeletons and using the code 'STOPSKELETONS' to get 10% off your first purchase.

That's squarespace.com/stopskeletons and the offer code 'STOPSKELETONS'. Stay until the end of the episode to hear more! First, let's establish some context: the Nintendo 64 came out in 1996. The system's 3D capabilities, as showcased by Mario 64, were a revelation, a benchmark for what the third dimension could be for an industry still is solving the problems. But at the same time, Nintendo had a problem: its Game Boy handheld system, originally released in 1989, hadn't had a significant hardware upgrade in more than half a decade. Interest in the system was waning and it didn't really fit with Nintendo's focus on the future of gaming.

There was no reason to worry about two-dimensional, monochromatic, 8-bit games, so a Game Boy player for the N64 was never in the cards - at least it wasn't, before a little game called Pocket Monster, aka like Pokémon, it ruined everything by becoming the most successful thing on the planet. That's not to say that the N64 didn't have its own problems: while the system itself was successful, Nintendo's future approach wasn't entirely successful. We're talking, of course, about the Japanese-only disc-based add-on, the 64DD. While it was a truly innovative piece of hardware and we are still seeing its effects today, the N64DD flopped so badly in Japan that Nintendo literally scrapped it for spare parts.

We did a couple of videos on the 64DD orphans, and the Transfer Pak falls into that camp...sort of. The Transfer Pak was displayed at Nintendo's 1999 Space World, and here's a photo! Yes, THAT was called the Transfer Pak, but it's clearly different from what the Transfer Pak actually was, and looks much more like another peripheral we made a video about, the GameCube GBA Link Cable. Basically, Nintendo was going one way with the next-gen technologies of the N64, but the public was taking them the other way, with the outdated technology of Pokémon. That's why we have the N64 Transfer Pak, it's a substitute for the panic between these two technologies.

Now that we have all that out of the way, let's talk about the uses of the Transfer Pak, which... let's be honest, mainly concerned Pokémon. While it wasn't the first game to use it - more on that in a second - the Stadium series is the reason most people are interested in the Transfer Pak, and probably the reason they have one in the first place. . The Transfer Pak was originally included with Pokémon Stadium 1, although you can later purchase it separately. To use it with Pokémon Stadium, you must connect your Pokémon cartridge to the Transfer Pak, then connect your Transfer Pak to the controller, and then turn on the game.

In fact, you must take this care or you risk losing your Game Boy data. Pokémon Stadium will give you the option to use your data, that is, the Pokémon you have caught and their current statistics, in the game itself. Here's the kicker, though: the Transfer Pak is not essential for playing Pokémon Stadium. The game has a rental system that makes importing your own Pokémon completely optional! But you can also use this to battle your friends in 3D, assuming they also have a Transfer Pak, trade Pokémon, and even take pictures of your Pokémon and print them on the Game Boy printer, which is a pretty big improvement over printing.

My Pokémon Snap cards on a damn Blockbuster kiosk! You can also use it to include Pokémon with rare move sets in your Game Boy roster; For example, if you win Pokémon Stadium with a copy of Pokémon Yellow, you can use it to teach Pikachu Surf, which you can then

transfer

back to Yellow to unlock a whole new minigame! How cool is that?! Pokémon Stadium 2, which came out worldwide in 2001, added support for the second generation of Pokémon games and updated some other features. You can now trade items between Pokémon carts, use the Pokémon Stadium for mystery gifts, view and redecorate your room in 3D, and a couple of other things.

But the coolest Transfer Pak feature in the Stadium series has to be the Game Boy Tower! This allowed you to play your Pokémon games on your Nintendo 64. It has Super Game Boy edges and, if you've unlocked it, there are even two acceleration modes that allow you to play twice or three times faster. speed! Isn't it amazing that there is an official Nintendo emulator that allows you to play one of its most beloved franchises in a way it was not designed for? So this begs the question: Was there the Super Game Boy for the Super Nintendo and the Game Boy Advance Player for the GameCube... ...was it the same for the Nintendo 64?

And the answer is officially no... ...but technically? A bit! The Transfer Pak is functionally just a swapping device that allows you to connect a Game Boy game to the N64 controller. It doesn't have Game Boy hardware per se. Really, I think the star of the show here is the N64 controller, which actually does the job of transmitting Game Boy game data to the N64's RAM, where you can actually do things with it. Stadium games are the only games with a player feature and are designed to work only with Pokémon games. However, that doesn't mean it CAN'T work with Pokémon games with a little effort.

In 2014, game piracy enthusiast Mezmorize was able to hack the ROMs of Wario Land II and Super Mario Land to make Pokémon Stadium think he was playing Pokémon Blue, meaning you CAN disguise Game Boy games and smuggle them through Stadium security checks, which. ..how cool is that?! But it was just a proof of concept. This method doesn't make it a fully functional emulator on the N64, because there were some issues saving the game, and also, it's not really efficient to have to hack every Game Boy ROM to get it to work. It would be much better if we could go to the source and simply edit the code that prevents other Game Boy games from working with Pokémon Stadium.

Also, side note: there seems to be a lot of debate within the hacking community about whether Pokémon Stadium has a fully functional emulator within it. Okay, maybe not much... the hacking community is probably focused on bigger things, but there are rumors that it has Pokémon Game Boy data in the cart as a way to speed up loading times. But we contacted Mezmorize and they double-checked and found no evidence of the Pokémon Game Boy code in Pokémon Stadium. There are other reasons to think that it is a full emulator, such as that it was able to read the Super Game Boy border data for Wario Land II, and secondly, and this is getting quite technical, when the Game Boy Tower is checking if If you are playing a Pokémon Game, just check the header, and that's it!

It doesn't look for another specific Pokémon code. And after all this, the most shocking fact for me is that this game is almost 20 years old and there is still a long way to go! We don't even have time to dive into things like Pokémon ACE cheats! But it's safe to say that the Pokémon Stadium games haven't been completely cracked yet. So the Pokémon Stadium games were the most famous uses of this wayward Nintendo peripheral, but there were actually four other pairs of games that used the Transfer Pak outside of Japan. Tch. Yes, that's it: four.

But as you can probably see from the time left in this video, there's still a lot to talk about, so let's move on to the first pair of Transfer Pak-compatible games: Mario Golf! Released in 1999, before Pokémon Stadium and the current Transfer Pak, its compatibility was not widely publicized, it does not even appear in any of the manuals. But even though Pokémon Stadium wasn't available yet, Mario Golf superfans still had the option of importing the Transfer Pak from Japan in the meantime, as the device itself isn't region-locked. The N64 and Game Boy Color Mario Golfs are really different from each other.

Both are still golf games, but the N64 version is more of a party game with a large roster of Nintendo characters and mini-games to play with your friends, and the Game Boy Color version is more of a light RPG intended more for play alone. For the record, Mario isn't even unlocked at the beginning. His name is Mario Golf!! False advertising!! And an RPG campaign for Game Boy Color may sound a little strange, but don't forget that it was made by Camelot, whose resume included Shining Force, and would later make Golden Sun. Here's how it worked: You can

transfer

your Game Boy Color campaign character to one of the N64's four transfer slots to play in N64 tournaments and minigames.

Doing so will increase their experience for when you bring them back to the Game Boy Color. Beyond the characters, there's literally a menu to display your N64 scores on your Game Boy Color, so you can share your records on the go. And that's it! But we should clarify something: while researching this game, we heard all about how you can use the Transfer Pak to unlock four exclusive characters in the N64 version, but that's... not really true. There are four character variants you can choose from at the start of the Game Boy Color campaign, basically child/adult man, child/adult woman.

These four character models are in the N64 game, but as soon as you take out the Transfer Pak or turn it off, POOF! They're gone from the N64! This feature is only there so you can level up your character while you are away from your Game Boy Color. On top of that, you can't bring all four characters at once when you plug in your Transfer Pak, as there are only three save slots on the Game Boy Color, meaning you'll always be one slot short. This is actually for a group of friends who play Mario Golf separately and then get together to play.

Needless to say, these Game Boy Color characters are not available in the Virtual Console version of Mario Golf 64. But that's okay, because that's not really what they were designed for. Their base stats aren't great because they are meant to be more powerful than the other characters. It's a nice feature to be able to create a character in two games, but that's all you can do is pretty disappointing. Our next game is the Mario Tennis pair which, let's be real people, stands out for introducing the world to our lord and savior, Waluigi, who, side note for the uninitiated, was only created because Wario needed a pair of doubles, but Nintendo an evil princess was too unseemly, a mistake that fans wouldn't correct until 2018.

The Mario Tennis games were also created by Camelot and are a similar party game/RPG division. The difference, however, is that their Transfer Pak features are MUCH more robust. You can even bring all four campaign characters from one cart at a time and they will remain in the N64 cart! But there are more important things to do here! Both games unlock content in the other game, and it's a significant amount of content! If you transfer data from the N64 to the Game Boy Color, you'll unlock a ton of characters and their mini-games, which is cool in itself, but if you complete these mini-games, you'll be able to transfer THAT data back to the N64 and unlock new courts!

This makes this combination one of the most important Transfer Pak games, and also makes its Virtual Console re-releases a mere shadow in comparison, but especially the Game Boy Color version: without the Transfer Pak, Game Boy Color Mario Tennis only has four. mario characters; Baby Mario, Luigi, Peach and Mario, also known as the most basic Mario characters! No Waluigi, no deal! A star! It also means five fewer minigames on the Game Boy Color and five fewer courts on the N64. It's an additional shame because the Transfer Pak simply acts as a switch, there's no real reason why they couldn't have been unlocked for their Virtual Console versions.

Actually, thisit just underlines how our wonderfully named SMA4:SMB3e from our e-Reader video was an absolute UNIT of a Virtual Console release. Our next two games are from Nintendo's then-secondary developer, Rare: First, I want to talk about Mickey's Speedway USA because it's a joke. If you start the N64 game with the Game Boy Color cart attached, you unlock Huey as a racer, also known as the red one. And that is. You get a brief cutscene and then PING! It's in the game! He's not even that great of a character stat-wise, but if you bought your copy secondhand, check your game!

Maybe you'll get lucky! This is the only way to unlock Huey in the North American and PAL versions, but since the Game Boy Color game never came out in Japan, you can unlock him in that version the first time you get a ghost token. ...If you're curious about that, now you know. Rare's most interesting game was Perfect Dark, although it's more interesting for what it didn't have than for what it did have. And yes, a version of Perfect Dark was released for the Game Boy Color, and it even had a Rumble Pak, which is cool to see outside of a racing or pinball game!

Anyway, when you plug it into the Transfer Pak, you unlock a few cheats: Cloaking Device, Hurricane Fists, R-Tracker, and All Guns in Solo. Now, those first three aren't a big deal, they're actually pretty easy to unlock, but the All Guns cheat is one of the hardest cheats to get in Perfect Dark! Firstly, it usually requires beating the final level on the hardest difficulty, Perfect Agent, in under five minutes and 31 seconds, which is no small feat, but in order to attempt this challenge, you must beat all the other levels on Perfect . Agent first! As a child, I was never able to do this, but with the power of the Transfer Pak, I can finally complete my childhood!

But it's really anticlimactic, literally. Plug in the Transfer Pak at any time and cheats will appear suddenly. I mean, at least Mickey's Speedway had a quick little movie. But that wasn't originally all that was planned to be done with Transfer Pak in Perfect Dark. In 1999, Rare announced that it would allow players to map real images of people's faces onto in-game avatars using the Game Boy camera, in a mode called Perfect Head, but early the following year, Rare suddenly announced that it was withdrawing support. for it. Nintendo's Ken Lobb claimed that Rare had trouble running it without crashing the game, but the feature itself was also an unfortunate moment when you could put not only your face, but anyone's face, in a first-person shooter game. person, was a tough sell after the Columbine shooting.

It's not a feature that's particularly missed, as there's still a lot of crazy stuff in Perfect Dark, however, THERE WAS a game that used the Game Boy camera in this way: And that game was Mario Artist for the 64DD! ...man, we gotta get us one of those. With the Game Boy camera, players could take photos of themselves and map them onto an avatar, and use them in animations or mini-games! Unfortunately we don't have our own DD, so Pug Hoof Gaming let us use some of their images! If you want to see more, the link is in the description below.

This feature is kind of like Miis ten years before the Wii, and it's a pretty cool feature on its own, but what really caught my attention was that the avatars you create in Mario Artist can also be transferred to the SimCity 64 exclusive for Japanese. Which means you could actually put your friends in a game instead of making friends, well, I mean, you can... still make friends, but you make... more precise friends... you know what? I mean. ... It's pretty cool! There were a handful of other Japanese games that had Transfer Pak capability, but it's not really worth going into here since we don't have any way to really test them.

But our favorite is PD Ultraman Collection 64, because apparently for that game, you can plug ANY game into the Transfer Pak and unlock stuff, kind of like Monster Rancher. As we mentioned at the top, Transfer Pak was a fairly late addition to the Nintendo 64, and as expected, there are a handful of games whose planned Transfer Pak support never came out. Mezmorize pointed out a lot of this to us, but Hydro Thunder has the Transfer Pak language buried in its code, and The New Tetris does too, which, by the way, we really recommend checking out the Cutting Room Floor page on The New.

Tetris. There are other good things buried there too. It's worth noting that these games did not have Game Boy versions, but Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, which had versions for the N64 and Game Boy Color, has the phrase "Transfer Pak" in its code, but is not compatible with the device. . . Probably the biggest game with planned Transfer Pak support was WWF No Mercy. The Transfer Pak would have allowed you to transfer points you earned in the Game Boy Color game to the Nintendo 64, to spend at the Smackdown Mall, but the Game Boy Color version was canceled before the N64 game was released.

However, the Transfer Pak language can still be found in the No Mercy code. No Mercy has an exciting mod scene, maybe someone can find a way to modify WWF Betrayal to work with the game. The Transfer Pak had a couple of interesting uses, but overall it was basically the best for Pokémon. However, I went my entire life without having one. I bought this specifically for this video, but I'm still glad I did! Knowing that I will have full versions of Mario Tennis and that maybe one day this thing will be hacked into a fully functional Game Boy player is exciting!

And we want to make sure we give a huge thank you to Mezmorize and Pug Hoof Gaming for helping us with this video. This video is sponsored by Squarespace! They have an all-in-one platform - no plugins, no updates or patches - making it very easy for Hot Dog Gamer to add images of their favorite video game dogs to their website - Nochumpzone.com! We actually made this website. They also received 24/7/365 support in case you're having trouble getting your hot dog game reviews good. You can start your free trial today at Squarespace.com/stopskeletons and use the offer code 'STOPSKELETONS' to get 10% off your first purchase!

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