Buzz Off? (N64 Force Pack)

Member Name: andrewl

Product:	N64 Force Pack
Date:	09/08/09 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, fun, good design

Disadvantages: Patchy compatibility, no room for memory cards

The N64 was a great piece of kit. The last console whose software was robust enough to double as a beermat, with an endless variety of games as long as they were broadly similar to either Goldeneye or Mario Kart.

There were accessories, of course, but no dancing mats or microphones for this console. No, to begin with at least, the Rumble Pack was as good as it got.

Simply, the Rumble Pack is a little box that you plug into the base of an N64 controller. Then, when you get shot or crash, the whole controller vibrates briefly.

The idea was that this would simulate imapcts and immerse the gamer more deeply in the video game experience, heightening the illusion of reality.
In practice?

The Rumble Pack is a great idea that failed though poor software support. Brilliantly simple (the pack actually just contains space for batteries and a motor with a weight attached - exactly as complicated as it needed to be) and easy to use, it added an extra little perk to games like Goldeneye, and younger players tend to love it. It's cheap (maybe not at the time it was released, but you can get them in specialist computer games shops for £3 or £4 now) and the excitingly chunky design is consistent with the rest of the N64 kit, so if you're at all bothered by aesthetics in console accessories, you can't lose.

Unfortunately, though...

The Rumble Pack is not necessarily compatible with all N64 games. Having said that, a quick glance at my collection fails to reveal many games that can't use it. One particularly disappointing game was Doom 64. As hardened Doom veterans will know, the snarling sound effects and sudden violence of that game was quite capable of making players jump out of their seats. The prospect of having one's hands jolted around as well was fantastic. Alas, to no avail. This is not the time to mention Doom 64's other faults, of which there are many, but in some ways this was the icing on the cake.

Assuming your game was compatible (and I must stress again that in all fairness most of the ones I played were), you were also presented with a terrible dilemna. You could either use the Rumble Pack for 'Force Feedback' fun OR you could use a Memory Card and play your previously saved games. With only one slot in the controller, you could not do both. I found this a bigger problem, but then I found the memory cards were rubbish and only stored one or two saved games anyway, so again I suppose we can't grumble.

Moving on, the pack itself was a nice weight, and didn't really get in the way of your game playing. However, once the AA batteries were added, it became significantly heavier and I found this could interfere with my gaming even more than the handset occasionally buzzing at me.

As for the vibration, well, the blurb claimed that the Rumble Pack had several levels of intensity according to what happened to you in the game. I didn't actually notice a huge amount of variation, which is a small point. The big gripe is that the actual movement of the controller is as nothing compared to the angry buzzing noise it makes. It's like being attacked by electric bees. Obviously, when your force feedback is being generated by a motor with a weight bashing the insides of the pack, there is going to be a fair amount of noise generated, but I felt the manufacturers could have made some effort to muffle it a bit.

But now that the entire console rests comfortably in the second hand market, these points all seem like sour grapes. The bottom line is that this product can add a little extra flavour to some of your favourite games, and it's so cheap that you have little to lose.

One final word of warning though. As well as the Nintendo Rumble Packs, there were a bunch of unbranded clones on the market a few years back. I bought an N64 with four controllers with Rumble Packs from a friend who was getting married (and so not allowed to play computer games any more). The two unbranded Packs broke two months later. The two Nintendo ones are still working four years later. Draw your own conclusions.

Summary: Assuming you still have an N64, a pretty good fun piece of kit for it.