In the world of gaming, players generally have to wait for a new console to come out before seeing a significant and meaningful upgrade to their gaming experience. This is not to say that games never progress without better hardware, especially because developers and their teams become familiar with the capabilities and limitations as the life of the console grows. But those limitations are generally fixed ceilings.
The Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak completely changed that narrative. As a physical piece of hardware, it doubled the RAM (random access memory) of the N64 entertainment system. For most gamers, this meant more storage for bigger games, which was true, but it was not the entire story. Quite a lot about the Expansion Pak slipped under the radar of the general public.
10 Jumper Pak Replacement
The Expansion Pak came with an ejector tool to get rid of… wait, what did it get rid of? Was it the old memory card? Was it just a piece of plastic? Observant home technicians will note that the item ejected is labeled “Jumper Pak.”
Don’t feel bad throwing it away, the item is not a hidden gem on the N64. It exists to occupy the slot and terminate the Rambus system that might try to access unavailable memory. Just don’t toss it without the Expansion Pak or the N64 will only display a blank screen!
9 Origins In Donkey Kong 64
Donkey Kong is perhaps the most underrated Nintendo franchise and this entry on the list will only add fuel to that fire. Without Donkey Kong 64, there is a chance that most audiences would have only heard of the Expansion Pak as some kind of strange, failed experiment.
Most gamers did not actually buy an Expansion Pak, they bought Donkey Kong 64 which the Expansion Pak was bundled with. The game required a higher frame rate and better rendering than the N64 allowed, so the decision to pair it up with the Expansion Pak was made.
8 Bug Controversy
Making an N64 game with superior graphics might not have been the only reason the Expansion Pak came with Donkey Kong 64. Chris Marlow, a programmer for Rare, stated that the Expansion Pak was required to kill off a game-breaking bug.
That statement is true, but it is not without contest. Other developers asserted that the decision to use the Expansion Pak was made early on, well before the bug was ever an issue, so its presence was never much of a real problem. It’s less of a “myth” and more of a difference in perspective.
7 Improved Resolution
The addition of bigger games that could be ported from other consoles onto the N64 was not the only advantage of the Expansion Pak. Several games decided to use this extra space by improving the original state of their graphics.
Games like Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness offered players the option of “Hi-Res” of 490x355i, but some even took this further. Fifa 99, Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer, and Top Gear Overdrive actually had a 640x240p setting available after the Expansion Pak was installed!
6 Made Majora’s Mask Possible
Some will take note of the cuts from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and neglect that the entire game would have been cut if it weren’t for the Expansion Pak. That’s right, Zelda fans, the Expansion Pak is the only reason players ever got to explore Termina and Clock Town.
This accessory improved Majora’s Mask in many ways, like allowing motion blur, getting rid of the fog noticeable in Ocarina of Time, and permitting more models on screen, but even without all of that, the game was just fundamentally too big for the standard N64.
5 Perfect Dark A Demo No Longer
At an astounding 640x222p, Perfect Dark was beautiful and fun to play on the N64. It is still a top ten first-person shooter game on Metacritic (at the time of this article’s publication, it is tied for number one!)
Perfect Dark was technically playable without the Expansion Pak, but only in a few multiplayer modes, essentially making it a demo that had no access to the single-player campaign, counter-operative campaign, or the co-operative modes that gave the game its identity.
4 StarCraft 64 Brood War
Players who like Starcraft know a good RTS when they see one. Great real-time strategy games bundle intense and fast player-versus-player modes with deep, immersive, and important story modes in order to hit the gamer from every angle.
Those who didn’t have an Expansion Pak only got half of this beautiful RTS experience on the N64. Starcraft: Brood War was only accessible to gamers that had one and those without would be in the dark about the plot changes between the first installment and StarCraft 2.
3 Vigilante 8 Codes
Gamers have a love/hate relationship with cheat codes. On one hand, they can help beat a tough game, even in the modern era. On the other hand, hard-earned achievements are made indistinguishable from ordinarily tough badges that are just a code or two away.
Vigilante 8 and its sequel, Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense, had a different take on “cheats” and decided that the highest resolution settings made possible through the Expansion Pak should be codes entered like a cheat through the pause menu. That’s a heck of a secret; respectively entering “MAX_RESOLUTION” and “GO_MAX_REZ” enabled the best graphics settings.
2 Additional Colors
Higher resolutions and bigger file sizes weren’t the only improvements made possible with the Expansion Pak. While many game designers saw this as an opportunity to squeeze in more pixels, a couple of teams felt they could eke out some new colors as well.
Quake II increased framebuffer color depth (among other improvements like framerate and eliminating screen blur) and The World is Not Enough enabled an entire “hi-color” setting when the Expansion Pak was detected.
1 One Big Problem
By ejecting the Jumper Pak and installing the Expansion Pak, players were essentially treated to a unilateral upgrade for their system. For fans of one game, however, the “upgrade” became a total nightmare.
Space Station Silicon Valley went from a smooth game to a festival of crashes when the accessory was installed due to some streamlined coding that wasn’t prepared to handle the possibility of another RAM device. The Expansion Pak modernized most games but blasted this one back to the stone age.
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