N64 studio spent two years on 64DD games, says Nintendo told them to 'start again'

A developer at Digital Eden says the studio spent about two years making games for Nintendo’s 64DD add-on, only to have Nintendo repeatedly tell them to “start again from scratch,” the developer told GamesRadar. The 64DD was released exclusively in Japan on December 11, 1999, as a disk drive for the Nintendo 64 that added rewritable storage, a real-time clock and internet connectivity.

After years of delays, only a handful of 64DD games appeared; many planned titles, including Pokemon Stadium and the Zelda spin-off that became Majora’s Mask, were converted to cartridges, and the add-on was discontinued barely a year after its debut. Digital Eden’s lead said the studio got funding and even technical assistance, with “the head of Iwata-san coming over once a week” and regular meetings with Miyamoto-san.

Still, Nintendo’s feedback was blunt: “Eventually, the feedback we were getting for each game idea that we presented to Nintendo was just like, ‘That’s no good. Start again from scratch,’” Honeywood recalled. The studio wanted to make a low-violence action game featuring kids with water pistols and water balloons — something Honeywood described as not far off, spiritually, from what Splatoon would be many years later — while Nintendo had pushed for a shooter in the vein of Raiden.

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