10 Years of N64 Squid!

Has it really been this long? I originally launched this website back in 2014, with this here being the first one I ever posted.

Back then, I started the site as a contrast to the work I did in my full-time job. I did a lot of website management and one of the big frustrations I had was that everything was always run by committee, approvals whatever. Even to try something like a new button layout for an A/B test took at least a week to be approved.

So I created N64 Squid to really just talk about everything N64-related. I was initially going to make it a review site for N64 games, but I quickly ditched the idea. For the first few months, I went on a writing spree and just wrote about anything and everything. Even a few random things that weren’t related to the Nintendo 64.

After that, I settled on writing about post-deprecation stuff regarding the N64. Some of it was reacting to things from the web about the N64, some of it was YouTube videos. Then I added the Fanart section to share what some people out there (mostly on Deviantart) are drawing about N64-related things. I also added the FAQ section for some easily-accessible N64 stats.

2015 was a bit slow since I was busy working on another project (to be written about later).

After that, in 2016 I added in the Homebrew section in which I started to write some guides on how to make games with the official SDK.

It was a bit over-ambitious, so in 2017 I instead used the homebrew section to post about all the various homebrew projects that have been made over the years. There is a lot of backlog, so I’m still in the process of making my way through it all.

Later that year I’d also publish the new N64 Price Checker section of the website. Though unfortunately due to changes in the ebay API it was discontinued in 2020.

2018 was a bit of a slow year, but it saw a bit of a renewed interest in N64 homebrew due to the release of Flappy Bird and Pyoro 64.

In 2019, I started doing some investigative work into abandonware with the page on Ocarina of Time 2D. This is also the year that I redid my N64 setup, complete with a HDMI 64 and a paintjob on my console. Though the most significant thing to come out of this year is the Smash Remix page, which has since been the most popular page on this website for 5 years and going.

I started 2020 with another very popular post about how to patch ROM hacks and another one towards the end about Banjo Dreamie. Though what is the most important thing to happen this year is the inauguration of the 64 Brew Game Jam which has since become an annual tradition.

In 2021 we got the long-awaited leak of Dinosaur Planet and Earthbound 64; there even was tweo ‘investigative’ posts about Super Luigi 64 and Ura Zelda. Even though I was making solid progress on writing about N64 homebrew games,I was already talking about how much of a backlog of N64 games that I had to take care of. That’s pretty much a persistent though I’ve been having all this time.

2022 saw the post about Cubivore (even though it was old news by then), the 2022 Game Jam, and really just a lot of posts from the backlog of old n64 demos.

In the Ninth year of N64 Squid, i opened up the Projects section of the website to write about all the various things that I’ve made over the years. At first it just held some of the other small projects that I worked on.

The tenth year

This year I really brought things into high gear. I made it a resolution to never miss a weekly post and I did manage to complete it (with one exception). This added a total of 41 hacks, demos and original games to the listings to the list of N64 homebrew productions.

The exception was that in August, I wanted to make a post about a particular ROM hack but it ended up being more than a week’s worth of work. When researching it, it also appeared to be an evolving subject so it wasn’t really set in stone until much later.

You’ll probably notice that that still doesn’t quite add up to the 52-3 weeks that there are in a year. The rest of it was filled up with this:

• 4 new project pages
• 3 commentaries on recent events
• 20 Libdragon tutorial pages
• 13 (not really publicised) sorting algorithm analysis pages

In some cases, I released several of the Libdragon pages as one (Eg all the audio pages together).

We’ve of course also had the 2023 Game Jam as well which was a lot of fun.

Notable posts

That said, there has been a lot of new pages which have made it to the top most popular list. Here are some of them:

• B3313 – A Mario 64 hack that is meant to emulate a sort of parallel dimension horror setting of Peach’s Castle based on the internal plexus theory.
• Only Up 64 – Another Mario 64 hack where you have to climb up a seemingly endless chain of N64-related objects
• Five Nights at Freddy’s 64 – A port of the now-classic horror game.
• Mario Sunshine 64 – A hack of Mario 64 which attempts to replicate the gameplay of the original game on the Gamecube.
• Wolfenstein 64 – A look at two ports of the classic 90’s game.
• Getter Love translation – A long awaited (by me) translation of the Japan-only party-dating-sim.
• Libdragon tutorial – help to get people started with working on making games with Libdragon trunk version.
• Presence of Mind ’98 – A page replicating the original POM98 now that all the submissions have been reviewed.

Because of all these new ports and translations, I decided to make a new section for them in the homebrew page, to be filled in more in the future.

Homemade homebrew

This year also marks the start of me making my own homebrew games. Well, one of them is a N64 adaptation of a game I made for the terminal, and the other one is more of an interactive demo than it is a proper game. Anyway, here is the list:

• Tic Tac Toe
• Sorting algorithm visualiser

What’s coming up in the future?

As of now, I don’t have plans for any major posts or new sections in the future. I’ll be taking a break for the next week or two since I’m on holidays and can’t really get any serious work done.

One thing that I’ve realised is that there are way too many Super Mario 64 ROM hacks being made so I will never be able to cover them quickly enough to make a dent. So I’ll have to be quite selective about the ones I write about.

Though I’ve covered Libdragon quite extensively in the tutorial I wrote, I have yet to cover anything from the Unstable branch. I’m working on some practice with it so look forward to some tutorials in the future.

Besides that, I guess it’s all just carrying on with things as they are! Hopefully this year I’ll manage to cover all the POM’99 games since I’m about halfway through with those.

Here’s to many more years of N64 Squid!