Description

The Nintendo 64, commonly called the N64, is Nintendo's third home video game console. The N64 was released on June 23, 1996 in Japan, September 29, 1996 in North America, March 1, 1997 in Europe/Australia and September 1, 1997 in France. It was released with only two launch games in Japan and North America (Super Mario 64 and PilotWings 64) while Europe had a third launch title in the form of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (which was released earlier in the other markets).

Technical specifications

• Processor: Custom 93.75 MHz MIPS R4300i series 64-bit RISC CPU

  • L1 cache: 24 KB
  • Bandwidth: 250 MB/s
  • Operations: 93 MIPs (millions of instructions per second)
  • Manufactured by NEC using 0.35 µm transistor fabrication process
• RAM: 4 MB Rambus RDRAM (upgradeable to 8 MB with Expansion Pak)

  • Bandwidth: 562.5 MB/s
  • Bus: Custom 9-bit Rambus at 500 MHz (max)
• Graphics: SGI 62.5 MHz RCP (Reality Co-Processor) contains two sub-processors:

  • RSP (Reality Signal Processor) controls 3D graphics and sound functions
  • RDP (Reality Drawing Processor) handles all pixel drawing operations in hardware, such as:
    • Z-buffering (maintains 3d spatial relationships, is Mario in front of the tree or vice-versa?)
    • Anti-aliasing (smoothes jagged lines and edges)
    • Texture mapping (placing images over shapes, for example mapping a face image to a sphere creates head)
      • Trilinear Filtered Mipmap Interpolation (increases texture map rendering speed)
      • Perspective correction
      • Environment mapping
  • Resolution: 246x224 to 640x480 pixels flicker-free, interlaced
  • Colors: 16.7 million (32,000 on screen)
  • 150,000 polygon/s (all RDP features enabled)
• Sound: 16 bit ADPCM Stereo

  • Channels: 100 PCM (max, 16-24 avg.)
  • Sampling: 48 kHz (max, 44.1 kHz is CD quality)
• Media: 4 MB to 64 MB cartridges (64 MB with N64DD)
• Dimensions: 10.23 by 7.48 by 2.87 in (260 by 190 by 73 mm) WxDxH

  • Weight: 2.4 lb (1.1 kg)
• Controller: 1 analog stick; 2 shoulder buttons; one digital cross pad; six face buttons, 'start' button, and one digital trigger.