Much has been written about how the N64, for all of its amazing games and technological advancements, was something of a misstep for Nintendo – especially after a decade of amazing success with the NES, Game Boy and SNES.
Nintendo famously decided to go with expensive cartridges rather than adopt cheaper (but easily-to-pirate) CDs, a choice which cost it the support of more than one third-party publisher, with former staunch ally Square being perhaps the most notable example. Shiny's Dave Perry was vocal about the fact that he wouldn't support the system at the time, but the loss of Square's support hurt Nintendo more keenly. The company's Final Fantasy RPGs had been million-sellers on the Famicom and Super Famicom, but the relationship between the two companies broke down in spectacular fashion in the mid-'90s, with Square linking up with Sony for the seminal Final Fantasy VII, a title that was originally intended for Nintendo hardware.
Another previously loyal company that dramatically cooled off its relationship with Nintendo during the N64 era was Capcom. One of the earliest supporters of both the NES and SNES, Capcom's titles had played a huge part in the success of Nintendo's home systems. Games like DuckTales, Mega Man, Final Fight, Breath of Fire and – of course – Street Fighter II had turned both consoles into must-have platforms for series gamers all over the world, but the company would support the N64 sporadically at best. In fact, only three Capcom games ever made it to the 64-bit console: Resident Evil 2, Mega Man Legends and Magical Tetris Challenge.
What caused this massive rift between two firms which had previously enjoyed so much success? Well, the answer isn't all that shocking – it's largely the same reasons that so many other third-parties flocked to the PlayStation (low costs and a larger userbase) – but, as was touched upon during a recent Retronauts podcast on the Street Fighter Alpha series, the straw that broke the camel's back was the remarkable SNES port of the second Alpha game, which launched very late in the lifespan of the console.
Back in the days of the SNES, third-party manufacturers had to place orders with Nintendo (and Sega, for that matter) for physical cartridges and would have to estimate how many copies they would need before placing an order. If you overestimated the order and found that the game was a flop, Nintendo wasn't going to refund you the cost of producing those cartridges – and the temptation would always be to place a big order just in case, because the production turnaround on millions of cartridges could be quite a lengthy one.
Speaking to Polygon as part of its excellent Street Fighter: An Oral History series from a couple of years back, former Capcom USA customer service manager Justin Berenbaum explained the situation with Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the SNES, which flopped at retail and left the publisher with a warehouse full of unsold stock:
I was involved with finding third parties to take the games that were sitting in the warehouse off our hands, because at that time the cost of goods on a Super Nintendo game — especially because these games required so much memory — was anywhere between 25 and 40 bucks a cartridge. So if you overmanufactured by a hundred thousand cartridges, you're sitting on $4 million to $5 million in inventory cost. And I do remember the warehouse, because the shipping warehouse was right next to the Capcom offices. And I remember the warehouse was just being loaded with pallets and pallets of the game. [...]
It was part of Berenbaum's job to dispose of that unwanted inventory, and he explains that Capcom was forced to indulge in some unorthodox practices to shift the cartridges because Nintendo's policy wouldn't allow for returns:
I remember dealing with some companies that we would ship them to, and then they would guarantee to ship them out of the country so they didn't get resold back into retail. That was a really common practice back then. [...] This was, like, a legitimized gray market to sell off stock without destroying the retail market in the U.S. [...] They would sell it to distributors who promised to take it south of the border. And back then, it was all gray market south of the border, for the most part, but they needed content. So we sold at a loss, but they were contractually obligated — if those units came back into the U.S., they would be fined. That's one of those dirty secrets that nobody really talked about. [...]
We cut these deals for a pallet full or two pallets full for these companies. And they were good deals because they were cash in advance, so we didn't ship until the [wire transfers] would come through. And then literally, they would show up with a box truck, and we'd load the pallets onto the box truck and they'd drive them off.
Sony's use of CDs avoided such issues; not only were CDs cheaper to produce and therefore avoided the issue of having millions of dollars sitting in a warehouse unsold, the quicker turnaround on CD duplication meant that publishers could afford to do smaller print runs of games to see how they fared at retail before ramping up production when they knew they had a success on their hands. That approach wasn't possible with cartridges, which were more complicated to produce and (as was the case with Street Fighter Alpha 2) often featured special (and expensive) chips that were intended to augment the power of the host system.
Of course, by the time the GameCube came along, Nintendo and Capcom had fully made up, and Capcom even created a series of system exclusives for the platform, which initially included the likes of Resident Evil 4 and Viewtiful Joe. But it's clear that the bond between the two allies was significantly weakened during the N64 era, and the saga of Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the SNES had a part to play in that.
What makes all of this so interesting is that the SNES port of Street Fighter Alpha 2 was a staggering technical achievement. Granted, it pales when compared to the Saturn and PlayStation versions, which were released around the same time, but given that the console was six years old by this point, it's a very respectable effort – and one that deserves a better legacy than being the title which (briefly) soured the relationship between two massive gaming firms.
Comments 63
The latest in an ongoing series called ‘how Sony came in and stole the industry, and the industry cheered.’
It's a shame honestly. Capcom were absolutely killing it on the NES/SNES with Mega Man, Street Fighter, Ghosts & Goblins, etc. so to see them jump ship the next generation afterwards was understandable given the state of the N64 and the rise of the PS but still sad regardless.
Still, I'd argue their relationship has been well and truly mended since then. They made Ace Attorney exclusive to Nintendo handhelds until the PC and console ports in 2019, bringing a lot of their back catalogue to Switch in collections and, of course, the huge timed exclusivity of MHRise. Capcom's my favourite third party developer so it makes me happy that I don't necessarily need a PC anymore to enjoy their best series.
I’m sure capcom has made up for that loss a few times with SF editions over the years
I didn't know about the SNES version of SFA2 until around the late '00s — at first I thought it was just some clever romhack, but the fact they managed to get it running at all was really ambitious, and aside from the iffy load times, the game itself seems to run pretty decently
It’s good that as soon as Nintendo started using CDs with the GameCube, that Capcom would resume strong support. It seems like it took longer for Square Enix, less I’m mistaken.
There were some strong reasons for going with cartridges. For real time 3D games using polygons to run smoothly without load times. A Rare developer mentioned dynamic music as a benefit in an interview.
If the first 3D Mario and Zelda games would have been far less than what they were, then cartridges can be seen as a wise move. Is it possible that on CD, those games could have been as well realised?
Nintendos biggest mistake was spitting in Sonys face thinking they were too big headed and didn’t need Sony back in the 90s. it was a rough few years but Nintendo found its footing and is only stronger. Also, I can’t argue that today the market is better for Sony being here.
However, sony is acting big headed and better then everyone else alright now, and they don’t have the 1st party catalog to fall back in. Especially when their biggest selling game is cod, owned my Microsoft now…
I get it…but still seems an odd choice, or maybe just a risky one, to order so many copies so late in the life cycle of the snes…
@electrolite77 Nintendo was the bully at the time, Sega and then Sony freed the industry
@Donutman the whole Nintendo PlayStation thing, if that’s what you’re referring to, often gets only part of the story told, so Nintendo comes out as the clear bad guy. It’s reported less often how Sony was trying to take advantage of the situation where they would reap most of the profits.
Nintendo was wrong in switching partners so late, but Sony has its fair share of blame for this happening.
Put SNES Street Fighter Alpha 2 on NSO!
@Tzara Nintendo were the Industry leaders and wanted to keep things running a certain way in the industry-the industry that they revived from collapse,.
Sega was doing a lot of the ribbing at this time.
I used to have the Alpha 2 cart back in the day. It's playable, but soooo slow. Play the snes version then go play the arcade version, it's like night and day.
@electrolite77 More like "How Sony made more margin on the consumers than Nintendo and consumers cheered and Nintendo was still seen as the greedy side"
Great article!!!!!!
"This was, like, a legitimized gray market to sell off stock without destroying the retail market in the U.S. [...] They would sell it to distributors who promised to take it south of the border. "
Now I understand how we got some authentic games in my country at that time without official distribution/imports, albeit for excruciating prices which very few people could afford
@OldManHermit Having it slow with those graphics on the Snes is a miracle in itself. I wonder what kind of work they put into that port. But I agree it's uncomfortable to play it having played other versions before
Horrible port. Should have tried to do SFA first before SFA2.
It's obvious Nintendo never liked using disc and if they had to use it, it had to be made by them and not some other third party manufacturer. This is why they went with mini optical disc with the GameCube cause then they could license those smaller disc media and had third parties dev pay them to use those instead of having to get them from the actual source that Ninty got those from.
The GameCube itself also had region lock and special laser code imprinted on each disc so any mini disc you got that doesn't had those will not be read or recognize by the GameCube, this is their solution to piracy. This tactic by Nintendo is different from what Sega did when they first used disc with the Saturn. Because Sega doesn't license or manufactured their discs and merely buys them from another company, it cost Sega a lot of time and money to developed games on those media.
Even worst, disc that Sega used had lower storage compare to the ones Sony used and since Sony manufactured their own disc and give lower cost to buy pack from, devs found no issue in getting media to make games for. Whereas Sega had to buy their own disc from another company, they had to sold their disc pack at a higher cost to dev thus resulting in not many dev wanting to take the plunge. Because it's expensive for Sega to get more disc for the Saturn, they tried to limit their game library only accepting most genre of games. This may explains why not many RPGs were release on Saturn due to Sega's concern of having to get multiple discs for those with games like Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shining Force III being a few examples of games that were good and use multiple disc but the end result doesn't scream financial success. This is a non-issue for Sony as those disc are made by Sony themselves and they could easily ramp production for more, this is why RPGs are common in the PlayStation as providing multiple disc games aren't expensive compare to if they were on Sega Saturn.
Nintendo not using disc in the 90s also make sense as disc speed aren't fast enough at the time and Nintendo doesn't like to share profit by using disc at the time. Eventually one fear Nintendo had is if they partner with Sony that eventually Sony would get full royalty of the disc media and all royalty comes to them instead of Nintendo. Not only that another concern Nintendo had is if devs decided to buy the disc media directly from Sony instead of Nintendo thus they could had easily avoid paying licensing fees to Nintendo altogether, it'll be like Tengen all over again. These two concerns are the reason Nintendo stick with cartridges for the N64.
Interesting article, I remember most of Capcom games going mostly to PlayStation with Saturn and Dreamcast getting some nice amount too. I think N64 only received 3 games from Cap?
@LikeWhoa SFA was basically a rush-job done in six months in order to shift a bunch of unsold arcade hardware. SFA2 is superior in every way, so you can't blame them for wanting to port the better game.
With the N64, Nintendo rightly or wrongly believed that the speed advantage of cartridge was essential to the kind of games they wanted to create. It wasn't all about screwing over developers or stopping copying.
People should be careful about assuming that cartridge was a mistake and the games that we love from the N64's library would have worked out fine on CD. Maybe Nintendo were wrong, but until someone builds a frankeN64 which runs the classics off CD we'll never know.
@LikeWhoa Reason why SFA was not chosen was because there were no point in porting that game. By 1996 Street Fighter Alpha 2 already hit arcade, not only that Capcom couldn't afford the SDD-1 chip at the time Street Fighter Alpha 1 came out, either that or didn't exist yet. By 1996 Capcom had more money to afford the SDD-1 chip and was able to port SFA2 to Super NES. Also some of the dev team that made SFA2 says their favorite console was the Super NES so yeah that's another reason why SFA2 got a Super NES port.
The only reason why SFA2 turn out a bit downgrade for the Super NES at the time was because it was really difficult to work around the limitation of the game running on a 16-Bit system and there were no way to remove the constant pausing and loading of audio in-game which is why the game had that sudden pause in the game. This issue was fix nowadays though with a patch but remember it's modern reverse engineer and hacking skills that made it happen, back then the game wouldn't be able to get the fix even if they try as the tools to fully fix the issue weren't available yet.
@Rosalinho That was one of many reason Nintendo stick with cartridge, another reason was cause Nintendo doesn't trust Sony as they fear the royalty for those disc games would go to them instead of Nintendo. Remember if Nintendo bought the disc from Sony, third party devs will need to buy licensing from Nintendo to make their games using those disc on their console but Nintendo knew there could also be an exploit in the work where some third party instead of getting the disc from Nintendo which they had to pay a licensing fee in addition to the disc price, they would just buy it direct from the source from Sony thus paying only for the disc avoiding the licensing fee altogether. Because if third party dev bought the disc direct from Sony there could also be a conflict where Sony would want royalty of that game instead of giving it to Nintendo. This is a concern Nintendo had after having already partner with Sony in producing the PlayStation SNES-CD add-on.
@shonenjump86 Yeap, but console aside that only hurt Nintendo in the home market field, on the handheld side Nintendo still got most of the third parties staying true. Nintendo did partner with Capcom to create Flagship, a Capcom own dev that works on the Legend of Zelda: Oracle games. Even if Capcom doesn't work with Nintendo with their console, in the end Nintendo was able to still make profit from those Capcom developed Zelda games. Just on the GBC alone, Capcom was able to bring Resident Evil Gaiden, Toki Tori, Shantae, Street Fighter Alpha, Mega Man Xtreme 1 & 2, Dragon's Lair, and Ghosts 'n Goblins to GBC. Had Nintendo not had their handheld division still in strong support, it would be the end for Nintendo. Even better was when Nintendo launch the GBA thus getting Capcom back on board with the company again.
Wow. And I thought their port of Alpha 3 on the GBA was impressive.
Sure they weren't talking about Super Street Fighter II?
Reportedly Capcom burned themselves trying to take too many rides on the gravy train, and was left with a lot of copies of SSFII because they assumed people would buy a premium-priced game for the THIRD time. It sounds it was common for some resellers to end up with 50 or more sealed copies on hand (as I had seen on ebay at least once).
It is said that was a big influencer for Capcom to be FAR more stingy with production runs for the remainder of the SNES' lifespan.
@Rosalinho I've heard of at least one CD-based game copier (or "amateur dev unit" if you want to try to legitimize its use) made for the N64 from back in the day.
That would be the day when floppy disks were still the most common PC data storage/transfer medium.
But I suppose many realized that even pirates probably weren't willing to load Ocarina of Time off 32 floppies.
And would've had to choose CD or Zip drive (the latter of which I know because one such drive device not only dared to advertise in GamePro, with blatant encouragement of piracy but the GP editors actually ran the ad. I wonder if they got called up by Nintendo for doing that. )
@Riderkicker It was impressive, you also had to keep in mind the storage size of the game. Here's the storage size comparison of each version of Alpha 3 for the platform that use em:
GBA = 8mb
Arcade (CPS-2) = 45mb
PSP = 235mb
Arcade (NAOMI) = 310mb
PlayStation = 502mb
Sega Saturn = 520mb
Sega Dreamcast = 1.10gb
The PS2 version is part of a compilation so it wasn't included here but I assume that one is the same as the CPS-2 and NAOMI version. Of all of these it seems the Dreamcast version is the largest of the bunch but had almost the same contents as those found on the PS1 and Saturn release. Really odd how the PSP version is the most definitive version but had slightly less storage than the NAOMI version. As for the GBA damn that's one small size and you gotta realize that one was able to cramp in all 38 fighters onto that small 8mb cartridge. For the Dreamcast one you could include both the PS1, NAOMI, and CPS-2 version on that disc and still had room for the GBA version.
I had this for my SNES. I remember walking into whatever was the main gaming chain in the UK (was it Game back then?) in around Christmas 96 and seeing a single copy on the shelf. Hadn't seen any reviews or advertising but bought it on the strength of the name alone. Apart from the weird 2 second pause before each round it was amazing.
@KingMike That's interesting, I know about the floppy based copiers but didn't know CD ones existed. The thing is, that kind of copier loads the game into RAM which is wired up to the cartridge port (similar to the Famicom Disk System's RAM pack). So if Nintendo had gone with that approach out of wanting to avoid the slowness of CD, they would have had to put a huge amount of RAM in the N64, which would have been technologically possible, but given the cost of RAM in 1996 would have led to the machine being unaffordable.
@Rosalinho If you do a Google image search for Doctor 64 you should get some examples of the CD-based machine back. It was a bit of an expensive beast and I think people had to upgrade the RAM after a while when larger games started shipping.
@gb_nes_gamer I think there were upsides to cartridges, but I also think it was overwhelmingly a business decision. I think dynamic music was possible on the CD-based systems because the music wasn't always directly streamed off CD. And if N64 was based on optical discs, it would have been designed differently, with more memory on board since it wouldn't be able to rely on fast ROM access. So it would be hard to say how that might have affected major N64 games like Zelda.
Oddly enough, just two days ago I was just wondering about Capcom's relationship with Nintendo during the N64 era. It always struck me as odd that Capcom never brought any of their 2D fighters to N64. The controller wasn't the best for that, but that's a minor thing. The N64 could have done good versions of those games with a big enough cart, with a benefit of no load times. I've wondered if Nintendo had a policy against 2D, sprite-based games as the system didn't have many. There may have been such a policy. Still, Street Fighter was big enough to be an exception. So this information is a nice piece of that puzzle. I'm sure its position in Japan also contributed as I recall it was behind the Saturn there in those days.
I played it on my cousin's Wii U, and to be honest, of all the SF games on the Super Nintendo, this one was the weakest and worst. The music sounds like it's coming from an 8 Bit console hehehe.
Terrific article, thanks for shedding fresh light on the shinanigans back in the day.
The decision to make the N64 a cart based system was purely a financial decision with gameplay and load times then used to justify. I can’t recall a single PS1 game or sega Saturn game ruined by load times….and just look at the load times we now have on systems (including Nintendos own!).
@electrolite77 Sony partnered with Nintendo to make the ps1 but once they'd made the console Nintendo backed out so Sony decided to release it on their own , they didn't 'steal' anything they just made a better product
I believe so much was the rift that Capcom became a huge Sega supporter during the Saturn & Dreamcast era. They certainly bestowed both those machines with great games. Perhaps it was the design on the machines being close to Capcom’s arcade output but I’d say there was more to it than that, they really seemed to believe in Sega which would make sense if things weren’t so great with Nintendo around that time.
@Tzara I get Sony but what did Sega do?
@Specter_of-the_OLED ah, almost forgot about the GB. I actually played a few of the Capcom GBC games. Street Fighter Alpha.
Played Alpha 2 at a friends house on the SNES, I had already played the playstation version at that point and was just surprised they managed to make it work. Which they did!
@Would_you_kindly
They stole the industry-and deservedly so-by offering a better deal for third parties, retailers and consumers than Nintendo were willing to do.
@glaemay
If Sony made more margin on PS1 products than Nintendo did on N64 products, fair play to them. They clearly made some excellent business decisions. Whether that’s true or not, I find it impossible to have much sympathy for that Nintendo.
@Tzara
Agreed
Nintendo only has themselves to blame for declining optical media. It's a miracle Resi 2 even got on the N64
@rob7979 I couldn't finish the PS1 port of Chrono Trigger even once because load times.
I suppose it wouldn't be the worst thing if you hadn't played the SNES original first, but wow did they not even really try to hide the load times in that one (unlike Square's other FF ports). Touch any enemy and they all have the reaction time of a Slowpoke.
@sdelfin At least according to the MAME ROM sets, the mid '90s Capcom fighting games weren't even that far off from N64 cart sizes. (they probably could've fit them on 64MB carts. But then again, Nintendo didn't even make those larger carts until the end of the N64 era. Most early N64 games had to work with only 8 or 12 MB ROM sizes.)
@rob7979 yep, I definitely remember Nintendo back then claiming cartridges were still superior and they were bothered with the load times associated with it. In fact the Nintendo 64 was a stronger graphical processor, so if you did compare PS1 games side-to-side, the only drawback was the audio compression capabilities and memory.
@Specter_of-the_OLED there’s an existing NintendoLife article on the development of SFA 3 for the GBA that chronicles the development, which was NOT Capcom, but Crawfish.
@electrolite77
Less stole and more saw the complete arrogance of Sega and Nintendo and took advantage the situation.
@Rainbowjames weirdly it was dixons and hmv for me in those days. Apart from a weird independent who used to swap games for £2, those were the days 😁
@KingMike Yeah, I was thinking of both those things when I wrote that. And I was under the same impression that those bigger carts may have come too late, though I never really knew the timeline there. I suppose a good explanation for that lack of Capcom 2D fighters could just be an assumption that their core audience were largely Playstation and Saturn(in Japan) owners and that publishing those for N64 didn't have a lot of sales potential for them. Plus, the Dreamcast was on the way and Capcom had a pretty good relationship with Sega at that point. But it always did seem weird those games weren't on the system considering Capcom did have a few releases for it.
@mattesdude the industry never collapsed. american market had temp issues, that is true.
nintendo was the mafia of the industry back then, you can read the stories of contracts behind the scenes.
@Fizza hows yours?
@arty77 it didn’t crash? I guess my memory is wrong…as well as the countless articles and whatnot on it.
I loved my N64 as a kid and wasn't really aware at 8-10 years old about the software issues it had.
It's quite shocking looking back how many companies straight abandoned support for Nintendo and how seriously dire the software lineup was.
I think 250 games total in the US/EU compared to 3,000+ on Playstation? Its crazy.
@Threebcisum they didn't really decline it. They were working on the Disc Drive for N64 for a while. But that went through serious delays which killed it.
They simply didn't want to pay Sony royalties for every game that would use their cd ROM patents. There's an infamous lunch meeting of Sega and playstation executives where the Sony head laughs that Sony gets paid for every single Saturn game sold.
@Magrane Yeah it's kinda sad too cause Crawfish were shut down after the released of the GBA version of SFA3. They developed the game but didn't received enough royalty to keep the studio going. Crawfish like Clover Studio were a few great Capcom dev that had they got major support from the big corp would had potential to be a great indie dev in this day and age.
@electrolite77 Not only did they make good business decision at the time, they also got the better format and a good advantage of that format cause they themselves are also the manufacturer of those disc. Because of that they could manufacture those on the cheap and able to provide third party with a more affordable way to get their games out there. Also since Sony is both an electronic company and a movie studio company as well they could pull IPs from their movie license to help make games from as well such as Spider-Man. Nintendo's mistake was that they made their console with their games in mind so at the time as long as they could get most of their IPs into 3D, then they had accomplished their goal.
@Threebcisum Declining optical media was Nintendo's best decision ever though, PS1 games were dead ugly and very slow to process.
I had Street Fighter Alpha 2 on SNES. I couldn't afford an N64 nor PSOne so I kept my SNES. It was a bit slow but still a very fun game to play at the time.
@Specter_of-the_OLED not even close, the n64 library was trash. The GameCube was a niche console few people had. The only reason they turned it around was jumping on the motion control gimmick with the Wii. They definitely made a bad decision not finishing what they started with Sony.
Plus look at them now, coasting off of reselling old games and failing at that too. I'm pretty sure I will see Nintendo bankrupt or merged in my lifetime. They're horrible for consumers. If it wasn't for the legacy of their genius decisions in the 80s, they definitely would be like Atari is now
@mattesdude or perhaps you don't understand what "temp issues" means
@Serpenterror n64's 4x4 pixel textures, bad quality music, no voicovers, no cgi, etc say hellooooo from those carts
oh, these n fanboiz, they never change....
@arty77 Ok-so then the stock market never crashed in the ‘30s? Those were temp issues too? What about a car crash? Temp issues?
Not trying to be snarky, just trying to see your definition of crash vs temp issues.
@mattesdude calling the changes in the 80s of the US(!!) videogame market a crash is overly dramatic, that is my only issue. for a couple of years people bought less videogames/etc there (in the US!!!) because atari was overly dominant and so much crap was released. so what?
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