Should a copy surface, it is assumed by those who are aware of its existence that it would command exceedingly high prices on the secondhand, gray market. Those copies of the disk that are not held by Nintendo of Japan are presumed to be in the hands of other, former employees, and perhaps private collectors. Nintendo would likely see little to no value in releasing a hardware addon for the failing Nintendo 64DD peripheral, especially given that the Enhancer 64 was not a video game in and of itself, but, instead, a means of "improving" or "personalizing" video games.Īccording to former Nintendo of Japan employee, "A", there are less than a handful of Enhancer 64 disks in circulation. Having failed to launch in Japan, and with no plans for a wider release - or any form of release, at all - in Western territories, the Nintendo 64DD's short lifespan likely claimed the Enhancer 64, dooming the hardware to languish in obscurity. In fact, the Enhancer 64 seems to have been developed with Super Mario 64's ability to be personalized in mind, as the Enhancer 64 will simply "pick up slack", as described by "A", for the A.I, should the A.I at all not succeed at, or otherwise blunder during gameplay personalization. If the Nintendo 64 hardware is physically modified to allow for NTSC-J and/or PAL region cartridges to be inserted into the deck, the Enhancer 64 can modify the "Shindou Edition" of Super Mario 64.Ĭontrary to assumption, the Enhancer 64 hardware does not, according to "A", interfere with the A.I's personalization process.
No instances of Dynamic Level Rearrangement in affected Nintendo 64 cartridges have been noted or described.Īs described by the former Nintendo of Japan source, "A", on a now-deleted imageboard thread, the Enhancer 64 is capable of modifying copies of Super Mario 64. It cannot retroactively increase or decrease level difficulty, or overall game difficulty. Unlike the experimental Personalization A.I found within every copy of Super Mario 64, the Enhancer 64 possesses no intelligence or agency of its own, artificial or otherwise. It can be inferred from this behavior that, perhaps, the Enhancer 64 did not receive thorough debugging.
Occasionally, the Enhancer 64 will pull unused text strings, and re-insert them into the manipulated game at odd, unexpected intervals.
Unused content can be reintroduced, but only if there is associated code for the manipulated game to execute. The Enhancer 64 is capable of reading and writing to memory within almost any Nintendo 64 title's code. 3 Cancellation and Subsequent Obscurityįunctioning as any Nintendo 64DD disk could be expected to function, the Enhancer 64 can be inserted into the disk drive, and, only after launching a short "welcome" application to alert the user to its operational status, will silently, without interfering directly, begin processing and manipulating, reading and writing to cartridge memory when a Nintendo 64 cartridge is inserted into the Nintendo 64 deck.While some might question the lofty price tag, the praise from Heritage and the impressive grading from Wata certainly justified the cartridge’s price tag to someone - and that someone is now in possession of what might be the most pristine copy of Super Mario 64 ever seen. “The cultural significance of this title and its importance to the history of video games is paramount,” they continued, and went on to confirm that even their staff were blown away by the piece: “the condition of this copy is just so breathtaking that we’re really at a loss here.”
In addition to sharing the result of the auction on Twitter, Heritage also pointed out the significance of the piece in their listing, calling it “the highest graded copy of the single best-selling video game on the Nintendo 64 - the first 3D adventure of Nintendo’s mascot, Mario.” ? #HERITAGELIVE #WORLDRECORD!! Super Mario 64 – Wata 9.8 A++ Sealed, N64 Nintendo 1996 USA just sold for $1,560,000 at #HeritageAuctions, smashing previous mark of $870K, set Friday at Heritage for The Legend of Zelda! #SuperMario #Nintendo #N64 #WATA /rHpTuZl95l