N64 20th Anniversary (09.26.2016)
Or have any interesting N64 launch stories?
I was managing a Babbage's store during the launch of the N64 at the time.
We had a really cool district manager which let the managers of his stores open and play their pre-purchased N64 systems in the break room several days before launch.
It was a blast playing Super Mario 64 during breaks and I even stayed late on a few ocassions just so I could keep playing it. Fun times!
Here's a little picture with my original store receipts to commemorate it.
Click for full resolution
I was managing a Babbage's store during the launch of the N64 at the time.
We had a really cool district manager which let the managers of his stores open and play their pre-purchased N64 systems in the break room several days before launch.
It was a blast playing Super Mario 64 during breaks and I even stayed late on a few ocassions just so I could keep playing it. Fun times!
Here's a little picture with my original store receipts to commemorate it.
Click for full resolution
Comments
My friend and his brother rented one for their birthdays, which were 2 days apart. My friend was having a birthday party on the first day, and his brother stayed home from school to play the thing all day since we'd be playing it at night time. I went over there after school and was blown away. I hadn't seen much of it until that point, I was only 11 at the time and the internet was still a new thing. They only rented SM64, but it was more than enough to keep us occupied for the rest of the day. I ended up renting one maybe a week or two later, we had a family friend that ran a video store, so she called us when it came back from being rented and held it for us. I rented SM64 and Pilotwings, and me and the same friend stayed up the whole night playing it, and then all weekend. Of course I wanted one for Christmas, and it was THE thing to get that year. I was always pretty lucky with getting consoles when I asked for them, and this year was no exception. My mom managed to get one for me only because my friend's mom had a friend that bought 2, offered one to her, and when she declined she suggested selling it to my mom. I found it under my parent's bed a few weeks early, so I had to pretend to act excited when Christmas rolled around. I got SM64, Wave Race, and Cruisn' USA with it.
as fate would have it, when i went to hook it up Christmas morning, i found out it only had RCA plugs, which our old-ass TV did not accept. so we had to make another trip into town to purchase an RF switch. the suspense was killing me!
we only picked up Mario 64, but to my surprise, on X-Mas morning we had also gotten Mortal Kombat Trilogy, my most requested game. i was in heaven! still have the same system, still works flawlessly, and still love it to this day.
Had to wait until Christmas morning. I do remember going into Toys 'r Us every chance that we could get to play it early though.
Me too, except I played it at Blockbuster much more than Toys R Us.
We went out on Christmas day and bought Shadows of the Empire and when we hooked it up the system was broken and none of the controller ports worked, so all we could do was watch the demo. We went and rented one from Blockbuster Christmas day and couldn't replace it for a few months because no stores had them in stock. lol
I got it home but sadly we never had a TV that we could hook it up to through RCA. So my Dad said lets go to Walmart and see if they have an adapter for RF. We headed there in a rush And got one. Once again I was in shock that my old man was doing all of this for me. I got it all hooked up and played Mario Kart 64 for the first time. Blew my mind. Then my mom made me pack it away when my brother came home for lunch from school (he was grade 11) because she knew if he saw it, he would skip the afternoon to game with me. (He probably skipped anyways) I dont think I stopped playing the entire weekend.
The even more shocking fact was that my Mom asked me if I wanted a game for my birthday that year. I said "James Bond Goldeneye", which was impossible to find at stores that Xmas season. My Mom being my Mom went to Walmart and asked the lady at the till if they had any since the shelf was emtpy. She looked around the counter and at the bottom there was one with a note saying "reserved with a phone number". The lady ripped off the note and said "we dont reserve items, so you can have this one".
I was a happy gamer that Xmas season LoL. Wonderful memories and it felt great typing them out. Even though I am not an N64 fan now I def was back then. The following year was even better with Ocarina and Castlevania shortly after!
We went to get our preordered unit at Toys R Us and they declined my mother's check. My brother and I had been saving for years but the money was in our mother's account and we had no ATM card to get it out. I couldn't believe it! My friend had one even though he didn't have the foresight to preorder and I was empty-handed because of some vague and nebulous electronic security system rejecting our check! The official explanation was because she had used one to buy a Barbie for my niece a couple weeks earlier and the activity looked strange to them considering that she hadn't purchased from there before and was suddenly making such a large purchase with a check. Stupid!
Meanwhile, we went to Blockbuster with our friend to rent a copy of SM64 and they were somehow rented out of it (how there were enough consoles sold without the game to do that, I'll never understand). We rented Pilotwings 64 instead and asked them to call as soon as they had SM64 available.
When we got back in town (Toys R Us was not local) we checked K-Mart even though they said that they were sold out of N64s. If you backed up and stood on your tip-toes it was possible to see one on top of the game cabinets. No one could see it and the employees were unaware, so of course it hadn't sold. Stupid! I don't think it was an employee hiding it for his or her self because everyone everywhere sounded genuinely clueless that there was even a launch that day.
So, yeah, no thanks to TRU, we took it home with no game and went to go play Pilotwings on my friend's console. Not sure why we even bothered buying at launch when we couldn't get a game but at least I didn't have to fight for it closer to Christmas.
Even after all this I was still a little short and I ended up pocketing the lunch money my step mom gave me everyday to eat lunch. Much of it was quarters. Finally I had just enough to get the system with Mario 64 on launch day. I remember the cashier giving me a look when I paid over $20 worth of the cost in quarters.
My friend and I ended up playing it in his basement all day. We had two TVs set up and we simultaneously played Mario 64 all day long. Great memory.
I got it at launch. I was in high school and I saved up money working a summer job at an amusement park. I pre-ordered the system at Toy R Us. I was still short on the total cost. Toys R Us was having a video game trade in promotion. They would give you $10 store credit for any cart that was not on a "does not qualify for promotion" list. There was a FuncoLand in the shopping lot across form Toys R Us. I remember going there with the list and saying give me every cart you have that is not on this list and is under $6. The look on the Toys R Us manager was priceless as my buddy, who was doing the same thing, and I traded a stack of games in with the FuncoLand sleeves on them. We were kinda laughing at him as we said these are worthless but he kept saying "no they are not, we just need them for the chips... for the chips" lol.
Even after all this I was still a little short and I ended up pocketing the lunch money my step mom gave me everyday to eat lunch. Much of it was quarters. Finally I had just enough to get the system with Mario 64 on launch day. I remember the cashier giving me a look when I paid over $20 worth of the cost in quarters.
My friend and I ended up playing it in his basement all day. We had two TVs set up and we simultaneously played Mario 64 all day long. Great memory.
LOL! I remember my friend buying an SNES and games with $250 in quarters in 1995! It also reminds me of when I would raid the $5 clearances and take them to Hasting's for their "trade three for one" deal where you'd get $50 of credit for a new game (games were $50 then) by trading in non-sports titles. At first they told me they couldn't take any shrink-wrapped games but when I showed receipts showing I had just purchased them minutes earlier at a Best Buy or Circuit City they stopped bothering to open, check, etc. I remember seeing so many new/sealed games in their used section that were my handiwork.
Had to swear to secrecy to not tell mom, but we got the system, and had to wait for Christmas to play it. Longest month ever. Only had one game for the longest time, MK Trilogy @ 79.99 , that's how much I believe games were at launch. I played the shit out of that cart.
Similar story about the 007 64 launch. Demand was huge and we were randomly at Montgomery Ward. They had one copy left, also 79.99 (I think we price matched later). My dad is a bond fan, so that didn't take much convincing. Lots of good memories playing 1v1 with him, that and NASCAR '99 were his games for some reason.
Side note my dad comes over all the time to my basement and we play Williams Pinball Arcade.... Great game. Didn't mean to turn this into a story about my dad, but that's just the natural flow.
A buddy of mine bought one at launch, but he didn't want his parents to know, so he brought it to my house and left it for a few weeks. Super Mario 64 was the coolest game ever, and we played the crap out of it everyday after school. It wasn't until the Star Wars Pod Racer set was released that I bought my own. Still have that N64 complete in the box.
The Pod Racer bundle is the one I had! I got it in summer 1999, survived on NES/Genesis/PC games up until that point. I kept the box for the longest time, but I think my mom eventually threw it out because I haven't been able to find it for quite some time.
I got my N64 pretty late in the system's life, but I had a lot of great memories of it. It's one of the last systems I can remember my dad sitting down and playing with me (Mario Tennis, and to a slight degree Smash Bros). Ocarina of Time is also my #1 game, so the N64 gains quite a few points in my book for that alone.
N64 was the first system I bought at launch. I pre-orded at Toys R Us and got a 3D Mario t-shirt (which I still have somewear very wore and faded) and a duffle bag which I used as a book bag for a time. I picked up the system and Super Mario 64 which I played everyday for a month entire getting all the stars. After that is was a huge draught because other than Pilotwings, the next round of games didn't hit until Dec.
Contrary to the title of this thread, the N64 launched [for everyone else in the US] on September 29th, 1996. I remember that it was a Sunday. Nintendo had previously run ads saying that on September 30th, "dinosaurs will fly." This was to address their previous delays and assure that it wasn't happening again. They did change the release date again, though: they made it a day earlier because, according to Nintendo Power, they received complaints about Sept. 30th being a "school night." I guess they were worried about kids camping out for it and staying up late to play it or skipping school.
Nice catch.. Here's the story behind that..
Nintendo had in fact planned on a 9/30/96 release date for the N64, but then, as you said, they changed it back a day to Sunday the 29th to keep kids from skipping school to buy it.
I was managing the Babbage's store at the time and we used to jokingly call the 30th "National N64 Skip Day" because we had so many kids ready to stop in to pick up their pre-orders in the morning of that day!
So early in the AM on the 26th we received our shipments of N64 consoles and we were told to lock them up in the backroom and don't tell any customers we received them until the 29th, (Keep in mind people were going absolutely nuts to get their hands on one and we were not only worried about customers nagging us for their system early, but for security concerns as well). Then around 12:30pm we started getting customers flooding our store saying that Kay-bee at the other end of the mall was already selling N64 systems. We originally blew it off as them trying to get theirs early, but then someone came in and showed us their N64 console.
At that point I called the Neo*Star corporate office in Texas to tell them about Kay-Bee Toys breaking the street date at which time they had me go to Kay-Bee, buy a system and then FAX them the receipt as proof. So I did that and about an hour later I got the call giving us to green light to start selling them. I rang up my system and 2 games first.
Here is the ad in question:
And here are both of my receipts dated 09/26/1996.
Contrary to the title of this thread, the N64 launched [for everyone else in the US] on September 29th, 1996. I remember that it was a Sunday. Nintendo had previously run ads saying that on September 30th, "dinosaurs will fly." This was to address their previous delays and assure that it wasn't happening again. They did change the release date again, though: they made it a day earlier because, according to Nintendo Power, they received complaints about Sept. 30th being a "school night." I guess they were worried about kids camping out for it and staying up late to play it or skipping school.
Nice catch.. Here's the story behind that..
Nintendo had in fact planned on a 9/30/96 release date for the N64, but then, as you said, they changed it back a day to Sunday the 29th to keep kids from skipping school to buy it.
I was managing the Babbage's store at the time and we used to jokingly call the 30th "National N64 Skip Day" because we had so many kids ready to stop in to pick up their pre-orders in the morning of that day!
So early in the AM on the 26th we received our shipments of N64 consoles and we were told to lock them up in the backroom and don't tell any customers we received them until the 29th, (Keep in mind people were going absolutely nuts to get their hands on one and we were not only worried about customers nagging us for their system early, but for security concerns as well). Then around 12:30pm we started getting customers flooding our store saying that Kay-bee at the other end of the mall was already selling N64 systems. We originally blew it off as them trying to get theirs early, but then someone came in and showed us their N64 console.
At that point I called the Neo*Star corporate office in Texas to tell them about Kay-Bee Toys breaking the street date at which time they had me go to Kay-Bee, buy a system and then FAX them the receipt as proof. So I did that and about an hour later I got the call giving us to green light to start selling them. I rang up my system and 2 games first.
Here is the ad in question:
And here are both of my receipts dated 09/26/1996.
Thanks for that info, neat story!
Contrary to the title of this thread, the N64 launched [for everyone else in the US] on September 29th, 1996. I remember that it was a Sunday. Nintendo had previously run ads saying that on September 30th, "dinosaurs will fly." This was to address their previous delays and assure that it wasn't happening again. They did change the release date again, though: they made it a day earlier because, according to Nintendo Power, they received complaints about Sept. 30th being a "school night." I guess they were worried about kids camping out for it and staying up late to play it or skipping school.
Nice catch.. Here's the story behind that..
Nintendo had in fact planned on a 9/30/96 release date for the N64, but then, as you said, they changed it back a day to Sunday the 29th to keep kids from skipping school to buy it.
I was managing the Babbage's store at the time and we used to jokingly call the 30th "National N64 Skip Day" because we had so many kids ready to stop in to pick up their pre-orders in the morning of that day!
So early in the AM on the 26th we received our shipments of N64 consoles and we were told to lock them up in the backroom and don't tell any customers we received them until the 29th, (Keep in mind people were going absolutely nuts to get their hands on one and we were not only worried about customers nagging us for their system early, but for security concerns as well). Then around 12:30pm we started getting customers flooding our store saying that Kay-bee at the other end of the mall was already selling N64 systems. We originally blew it off as them trying to get theirs early, but then someone came in and showed us their N64 console.
At that point I called the Neo*Star corporate office in Texas to tell them about Kay-Bee Toys breaking the street date at which time they had me go to Kay-Bee, buy a system and then FAX them the receipt as proof. So I did that and about an hour later I got the call giving us to green light to start selling them. I rang up my system and 2 games first.
Here is the ad in question:
And here are both of my receipts dated 09/26/1996.
Thanks for that info, neat story!
Hey, no problem!
I love hearing everyone's personal stories of how and when they received the N64 system.
I got it in 1999 when I was 5. Some of the best times of my life were on that thing.
Still have the system as well as every game I had when I was a kid.