{"id":428,"date":"2026-09-05T22:19:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T01:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/2026\/09\/historia-nintendo-64-revolucao-3d\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T04:49:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T07:49:49","slug":"historia-nintendo-64-revolucao-3d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/2026\/09\/historia-nintendo-64-revolucao-3d\/","title":{"rendered":"The history of the Nintendo 64"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Mascote do LinuxPro jogando Nintendo 64 com controle nas duas maos\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/nintendo64-v3.webp\" width=\"1052\" height=\"652\" \/><\/p>\n<p>At the start of the 1990 decade, home video games were still pixels and flat planes. Nintendo did not move to 32-bit CDs: it struck a deal with <strong>Silicon Graphics<\/strong>, miniaturized a Hollywood workstation, and launched a 64-bit cartridge console. This text follows the documentary <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=y_m3WMhG2jg\">History of Nintendo 64 1993-Today<\/a>, from the channel <strong>DJ Glowing Ice<\/strong>. The angle here is silicon: MIPS, RCP, Rambus \u2014 the same kind of calculation that the post <a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/como-funcionam-placas-de-video\/\">How graphics cards work<\/a> does for the modern GPU.<\/p>\n<p><!-- more --><\/p>\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:1.5em 0\">\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y_m3WMhG2jg\" title=\"History of Nintendo 64 1993-Today \u2014 DJ Glowing Ice\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<h2>From Hanafuda to the PlayStation Nintendo did not make<\/h2>\n<p>Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889, making <em>hanafuda<\/em>. cards. Hiroshi Yamauchi moved the firm into toys, <em>Game &amp; Watch<\/em>, Donkey Kong, and the Famicom\/NES that rebuilt the market after 1983. With the SNES came the Sony agreement for an add-on CD drive \u2014 the <strong>Nintendo PlayStation<\/strong>. At CES, Nintendo announced that its partner would be Philips. Sony turned the project into the PlayStation. Philips' CD-i produced the Zelda games nobody asks to remember.<\/p>\n<p>The lesson Yamauchi took away: do not give up disk royalties. The next generation would use cartridges. And 64 bits.<\/p>\n<h2>SGI knocked on Sega's door first<\/h2>\n<p>At the beginning of the 90 decade, <strong>Silicon Graphics<\/strong> was the home of cinematic 3D \u2014 <em>Terminator 2<\/em>, <em>Jurassic Park<\/em> \u2014 running on IRIX workstations, UNIX from the family that the post on <a href=\"\/en\/2017\/08\/a-historia-do-unix\/\">the history of UNIX<\/a> places in Bell's tree. Jim Clark wanted those machines' chipset in a console costing less than US$ 250.<\/p>\n<pre data-no-translation=\"\"><code class=\"language-text\" data-no-translation=\"\">Jim Clark (SGI)\n  \u251c\u2500 Sega of America: Tom Kalinske topou; o Jap\u00e3o preferiu o Saturn de dois chips\n  \u2514\u2500 Nintendo: Yamauchi fechou. 1993, an\u00fancio: Project Reality\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Project Reality \u2192 Ultra 64 \u2192 Nintendo 64. SGI brought the coprocessor; NEC manufactured the MIPS. Nintendo retained control of software and media.<\/p>\n<h2>Inside: VR4300, RCP, and 4 MB of Rambus<\/h2>\n<p>Launch in 1996. The die is not a fat CPU with a GPU glued on: it is a lean 64-bit MIPS and an SGI coprocessor that handles almost everything the player sees and hears.<\/p>\n<pre data-no-translation=\"\"><code class=\"language-text\" data-no-translation=\"\">Nintendo 64 (1996)\nCPU   NEC VR4300 (MIPS R4300i)   93,75 MHz, 125 MIPS\nRCP   SGI Reality Coprocessor    62,5 MHz\n        RSP  geometria, luz, \u00e1udio (vetor de ponto fixo)\n        RDP  raster, Z-buffer, textura\nRAM   4 MB RDRAM unificada       bus 500 MHz, 562,5 MB\/s\n      Expansion Pak              +4 MB \u2192 8 MB\nm\u00eddia cartucho ROM               4 MB a 64 MB\nv\u00eddeo 240p \/ 480i                AA e filtro trilinear de f\u00e1brica\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>The <strong>RSP<\/strong> transforms polygons, lights them, and also synthesizes audio \u2014 the cartridge has no separate sound chip like the SNES. The <strong>RDP<\/strong> brought hardware Z-buffering, trilinear filtering, and full-screen anti-aliasing to the living room. The PlayStation 1 and Saturn made polygons jagged; the N64 deliberately blurred textures. The calculation is the same FMA\/matrix work from the GPU post, in fixed point and with 4 MB in its pocket.<\/p>\n<p>Rambus RDRAM provided bandwidth that the SDRAM of the time could not \u2014 and high random-access latency, the hidden price. Anyone programming emulators on Linux (mupen64plus, parallel-RDP) still wrestles with this hierarchy: the RCP is not a modern GPU; it is a display DSP with microcode.<\/p>\n<h2>Cartridge versus CD<\/h2>\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n<th><\/th>\n<th>Cartridge (N64)<\/th>\n<th>CD-ROM (PS1 \/ Saturn)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Access<\/td>\n<td>almost instantaneous<\/td>\n<td>2\u00d7 drive, loading screen<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Capacity<\/td>\n<td>4\u201364 MB<\/td>\n<td>~650 MB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Cost\/unit<\/td>\n<td>US$ 20\u201330 for ROM<\/td>\n<td>US$ 1\u20132 for pressing<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Restocking<\/td>\n<td>weeks at the silicon factory<\/td>\n<td>days<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Copying<\/td>\n<td>difficult at the time<\/td>\n<td>CD burner<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Multimedia<\/td>\n<td>compressed MIDI<\/td>\n<td>CD-DA and FMV<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p><em>Super Mario 64<\/em> gained a continuous world without loading. Square took <em>Final Fantasy VII<\/em> (multiple CDs, orchestra, FMV) to PlayStation. Third parties looked at cartridge costs and the factory queue and left. Nintendo was left with brilliant first-party games and sparse shelves.<\/p>\n<h2>Mario 64, the trident, and the Rumble Pak<\/h2>\n<p>Miyamoto spent the first year with Mario just walking, swimming, and jumping in an empty room and a player-controlled camera. The SNES D-pad cannot deliver subtle 360\u00b0 control. Nintendo modeled more than 100 clay prototypes before reaching the trident controller: an optical analog stick in the center, L\/R on the shoulders, Z trigger at the back, four C buttons for the camera.<\/p>\n<p>Tilt gently: tiptoe. Push fully: run. That became the norm. In 1997, the <strong>Rumble Pak<\/strong> shipped with <em>Star Fox 64<\/em> \u2014 the first force feedback in a console controller that the entire market copied. Four ports out of the box, no multitap: <em>GoldenEye 007<\/em>, <em>Mario Kart 64<\/em>, <em>Smash Bros.<\/em> on the couch.<\/p>\n<h2>The 64DD that arrived late<\/h2>\n<p>The <strong>64DD<\/strong> was the answer to CDs: a rewritable 64 MB magnetic drive at the base of the console, a dial-up modem (Randnet), <em>Mario Artist<\/em>. Announced before the N64, released only in December 1999 \u2014 and only in Japan. Fewer than 15 thousand units. <em>Ocarina of Time<\/em>, designed for rewritable disks, was squeezed onto a cartridge. By the time the drive shipped, the PlayStation 2 was already at the door.<\/p>\n<h2>The score and what remained<\/h2>\n<p>The cycle ended in 2002: around <strong>32,93 million<\/strong> consoles. PlayStation surpassed 102 million. For the first time, Nintendo lost a home-console generation.<\/p>\n<p>What remained in game design did not lose:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Analog sticks and rumble became standard.<\/li>\n<li><em>Mario 64<\/em> wrote the rulebook for cameras, physics, and collision in 3D platformers.<\/li>\n<li><em>GoldenEye 007<\/em> (Rare) demonstrated console FPS games with four players on the same rug.<\/li>\n<li><em>Ocarina of Time<\/em> invented <strong>Z-targeting<\/strong> \u2014 the aiming and focus system action-adventure games still use.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>iQue, hotels, and emulation<\/h2>\n<p>In 2003, China got the <strong>iQue Player<\/strong>: the entire console inside a controller, games on flash at iQue Depots \u2014 a way around the console ban. LodgeNet put N64s in hotel rooms. On Switch, the catalog officially returned. On Linux, the community route is mupen64plus and parallel-RDP, reproducing RCP microcode rather than \u201capproximating 3D.\u201d.<\/p>\n<h2>References<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=y_m3WMhG2jg\">DJ Glowing Ice \u2014 History of Nintendo 64 1993-Today<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/en\/2026\/09\/como-funcionam-placas-de-video\/\">How graphics cards work<\/a> \u2014 FMA, SIMD, the RCP's modern cousin<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/en\/2017\/08\/a-historia-do-unix\/\">UNIX \u2014 the origin of systems<\/a> \u2014 the tree where SGI\/IRIX sits<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/en\/2017\/06\/a-historia-dos-sistemas-operacionais\/\">The history of operating systems<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/mupen64plus\/mupen64plus-core\">mupen64plus<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The N64 did not win the generation. It won the vocabulary: free camera, analog controls, rumble, Z-targeting, worlds without loading. Underneath, a 64-bit MIPS and an SGI coprocessor that was, in 1996, the piece of Hollywood that fit into US$ 250 \u2014 and 4 MB of Rambus.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the early 1990s, home video games were still pixels and flat planes. Nintendo did not move to 32-bit CDs: it partnered with Silicon Graphics, miniaturized a Hollywood workstation, and launched a 64-bit cartridge console. This article follows the documentary History of Nintendo 64 1993-Today, from \u2026 <a title=\"The history of the Nintendo 64\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/2026\/09\/historia-nintendo-64-revolucao-3d\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about A hist\u00f3ria do Nintendo 64\">Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,18,109],"tags":[172,170,169,171],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux","category-os","category-unix","tag-mips","tag-n64","tag-nintendo","tag-sgi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1117,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.linuxpro.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}