Man, sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about all the gaming rumors that consumed my teenage brain in the late 90s. You know the ones I’m talking about – those whispered legends about secret Nintendo projects that some kid’s uncle who “totally worked at Nintendo” had definitely seen behind closed doors at E3. The Nintendo DS 64 was probably the biggest one that got me, this mythical dual-screen N64 handheld that felt so real I could practically hold it in my hands.
I was probably fourteen, maybe fifteen when I first heard about it. My buddy Mike and I were at the local Kmart – remember when Kmart had that tiny electronics section wedged between the clothing racks and automotive department? Anyway, this older kid, probably a junior or senior, was holding court near the Game Boy games talking about how his cousin worked at some game magazine and had seen prototype photos of Nintendo’s next big thing. “It’s like a Game Boy but it folds open and has two screens, and it can play actual N64 games.” The way he said it, all confident and matter-of-fact, made my allowance money start burning a hole in my pocket even though the thing didn’t exist.
This would’ve been around 1998 or so, right when the N64 was hitting its stride. I had finally convinced my parents to get me one for Christmas – took months of negotiation and a promise to maintain a B average, which I somehow managed to do – and games like Ocarina of Time were making me believe that Nintendo could literally do no wrong. That controller felt like something from the future, even if it did give you hand cramps after extended Mario Party sessions.
The DS 64 rumors made perfect sense to my teenage brain because Nintendo had already done dual screens before. I’d played some of those Game & Watch handhelds at garage sales – you know, those little LCD things from the early 80s where you’d control Mario jumping between platforms on two tiny screens. Plus there was that weird Punch-Out!! arcade cabinet where Little Mac was on the bottom screen and you could see through his opponent on the top screen. If they could do it in arcades, why not make it portable?
What I didn’t understand then – hell, what none of us understood – was how the portable gaming market actually worked. The Game Boy Color had just come out and was selling like crazy, Pokemon was basically printing money, and Nintendo wasn’t about to mess with a formula that successful. But try explaining market economics to a kid who just wanted to play Super Mario 64 on the school bus.
I spent so many boring algebra classes sketching what I thought the DS 64 would look like in my notebook margins. Usually ended up looking like someone had taken a Game Boy Advance – which didn’t even exist yet – and made it fold like a laptop. I’d draw little cartridge slots on the side, maybe some kind of expansion port for linking multiple systems together. My math teacher Mrs. Peterson was not impressed, but honestly those sketches were probably more useful than whatever she was trying to teach us about quadratic equations.
The portable gaming scene back then was this weird mix of ambition and technical limitations that seems almost quaint now. Sega’s Game Gear looked amazing but ate batteries like they were potato chips and was about as portable as carrying around a small television. I actually owned an Atari Lynx for a few months – found it at a pawn shop with California Games and thought I’d struck gold – but the screen was so dark you needed perfect lighting conditions to see anything.
What’s funny is that Nintendo really was working on dual-screen technology, just not the way we imagined it. The actual Nintendo DS wouldn’t show up until 2004, and when it did, my mind was completely blown. Touch screens, wireless multiplayer, backwards compatibility with Game Boy Advance games… it was everything we’d dreamed about and stuff we’d never even thought to dream about.
But back in ’98, we were convinced the DS 64 was coming any day now. Gaming magazines would occasionally run these patent drawings Nintendo had filed showing folding handheld designs, and we’d study them like they were ancient treasure maps. Electronic Gaming Monthly’s April Fool’s issues didn’t help – half their fake announcements seemed totally plausible given how weird Nintendo could get with their hardware decisions.
The technical impossibility of it all completely went over our heads. Two screens meant double the processing power, double the memory requirements, double everything. The N64’s custom chips were already expensive as hell – cramming that into a handheld with 1990s battery technology would’ve created something roughly the size and weight of a textbook. But when you’re fourteen and dreaming big, physics is just a minor inconvenience.
I remember having these intense debates with friends about what games would work best on the DS 64. Obviously GoldenEye would be perfect – map on the bottom screen, action on top. Racing games could show the track layout below and the main view above. RPGs could have menus and inventory on one screen while keeping the action going on the other. We had it all figured out, except for the part where none of it was actually possible with the technology of the time.
Looking back now from my basement game room, surrounded by actual dual-screen gaming devices that work better than anything we could’ve imagined, I’m almost glad the DS 64 stayed a rumor. Sometimes the fantasy version of something is better than any reality could deliver. My notebook sketches showed impossible machines that could display full N64 graphics on two crystal-clear screens with perfect battery life and a price tag my part-time job at the grocery store could actually afford.
The real thing would’ve been compromises all the way down – tiny screens with that weird greenish tint that plagued early handhelds, simplified graphics that barely resembled their console counterparts, battery life measured in minutes rather than hours, and a price tag that would’ve required selling a kidney. Nintendo’s handhelds succeeded because they knew their limitations and designed brilliant games within those constraints, not because they tried to cram console experiences into portable packages.
When the actual Nintendo DS finally arrived in 2004, I was in college and had supposedly outgrown my obsession with portable gaming. Supposedly. I still bought one on launch day, along with Super Mario 64 DS and Feel the Magic, and spent way too many hours in my dorm room rediscovering why dual screens were such a compelling idea. Nintendogs, Brain Age, Elite Beat Agents – games that literally couldn’t exist on any other system, proving that innovation comes from embracing your hardware’s unique features rather than fighting against them.
The Nintendo DS 64 never existed, but in a weird way it absolutely did exist – in our conversations, our sketches, our shared dreams about what gaming could become. Sometimes the journey toward innovation is just as important as reaching the destination, even if that journey happens entirely in teenage imaginations fueled by rumor mills and wishful thinking.
Samuel’s been gaming since the Atari 2600 and still thinks 16-bit was the golden age. Between accounting gigs and parenting teens, he keeps the CRTs humming in his Minneapolis basement, writing about cartridge quirks, console wars, and why pixel art never stopped being beautiful.
