Every once in a while, I come across a gaming device that utterly fascinates me. Recently, Youtuber MetalJesusRocks wowed me when he showed off a US retail prototype of the Nintendo 64DD disk drive add-on. This latest find, however, has me at an absolute loss. What the hell is this thing? How have I never heard about it? And where can I get one? This ”thing” is the Doctor V64 development console, a bootleg add-on for the Nintendo 64. It was released in 1996 by Bung Enterprises Ltd and retailed for $450. While expensive for the time, it turns out it was a popular option for some third-party developers. Apparently, it was a much cheaper alternative to Nintendo’s official dev kit, which was made by Silicon Graphics. The Center for Computing History recently grabbed one and put it through its paces: The Doctor V64 attaches to the bottom of the N64 via its expansion slot, just like the 64DD does. An official Nintendo 64 game cartridge must be plugged into the base console in order to bypass its region lockout chip. The Doctor 64 features a CD drive that can read N64 ROMs and load them into the machine’s RAM. Once loaded, the user could select a ROM, power up the N64, and play the game smoothly. Although the Doctor V64 was sold as a budget development kit, it doesn’t take a genius to realize it had more utility as a way to play pirated games. The CD drive also acts as a video CD player, a format very popular in Asia at the time. The Doctor V64 has a 25-pin serial port in back that allows connection to a PC. This allows users to dump ROMs directly into the V64’s ram, bypassing the CD drive. Granted, the Doctor V64 is not nearly as rare as MetalJesusRocks’s Us 64DD. Still, I would love to own one for…historical purposes.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
TG writes: If you’ve ever wanted that chaotic, large-scale modern warfare feeling from Battlefield but in full VR immersion, Forefront delivers it better than anything else currently available on Quest.
You know I was really excited about the concept of owning a 64DD back in the day but it wasn't to be but that recent one showing up was super cool to see.