A first-person shooter for the Nintendo 64 console, produced by Rareware and based on the Goldeneye 007 engine and design. Many gamers consider PD[1]the best console FPS ever, perhaps even better in gameplay design than Bungie's Halo for the PortBox.
Perfect Dark or Perfect Revenue Stream?
Nintendo has designed several newer Nintendo 64 games such as Perfect Dark, Mario Golf, and Mario Tennis to be extremely expen$ive to own. In order to unlock key features of the games, you must own a Game Boy Color handheld console, both the N64 and GBC versions of the game1, several years of back issues of Nintendo Power, and the N64 game Pokemon Stadium (which includes a Transfer Pak used to copy information between N64 and GBC cartridges).
1 According to asterphage, it's possible to earn Perfect Dark's secrets using only the N64 version, but it takes ungodly skill, akin to beating Contra and Super Mario Brothers The Lost Levels on one life, without warping, or beating Ninja Gaiden without looking at the screen (it's been done).
Parts list
This parts list has been revised on July 1, 2002, to reflect the price cuts on Nintendo equipment now that the Nintendo GameCube has been released.
- $260 Television set (at least 25" for 4 player simultaneous. Playing a split-screen game on your college 13" is no fun at all.)
- $_20 Used copy of Perfect Dark for N64
- $_15 Used copy of Perfect Dark for Game Boy Color.
- $100 Nintendo 64 console with bundled Pokemon Stadium. You'll need Stadium's GB cartridge adapter to import earned items from PD for GBC, and this is the cheapest way to get Stadium.
- $_70 Game Boy Advance (TЯU sells GBC and GBA at the same price, so you might as well go for a GBA and be able to play Tetanus On Drugs)
- $_30 Memory Expansion Pak (otherwise you just get 2 player deathmatch)
- $_90 3 extra controllers
- $_20 1-year subscription to Nintendo Power magazine (to download NP Exclusive codes from nintendo.com)
Total: $605 (formerly $810).
Skinning?
My original price figure included a Game Boy Camera for the face-skinning feature.
I was told that Rare removed it at the last minute for two reasons:
1. it would look bad in a game released soon after the Columbine tragedy, and
2. when PD went gold, skinning was still too unreliable for public consumption.
Servo5678 reports that a player can use a GameShark device to see the menus for the skinning, but then it crashes once the game starts.
However, malcster claims that a reviewer at some N64 magazine played a beta and the skinning worked fine.
It's been years since Columbine and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Will Perfect Dark 2 on the Xbox include skinning, based on digital cameras that conform to some standard for image acquisition?
$
questions? comments? /msg me
[1] Here, PD refers to Perfect Dark, not to the public domain, which no longer exists thanks to Di$ney.