The Strange (and Rare) Videogame Pics Page

NINTENDO

ULTRA 64

Nintendo 64-bit system began its life known as Project Reality. The system was to be designed by Nintendo and Silicon Graphics. Later Nintendo decided the final name of the system ULTRA 64. Here you can see the first official photo of the system that Nintendo showed together with some interesting demos. In the picture we can easily see that the system and cartridge design was already finalized. The logo was pretty cool too and I prefer it to the logo actually used. Ultra 64 was to be used in USA and Europe only since Nintendo planned to distribute it in Japan with a different name: Ultra Famicom.

The system and a cartridge. <Click on the picture to see it bigger>

Later the name was changed for several reasons: Nintendo 64 was the easier name Nintendo decided to use!

And here is the system as it was showed later. Note the design of the joypad: the stick was bigger than the actual one

The name change was probably a last minute decision done for marketing purposes only (some sources told the name wasn't easy to pronounce in particular by Japanese people and since Nintendo wanted to use the same name in every market they changed it) since the system seems to be still referred as Ultra 64 inside Nintendo. This could be clearly seen if you look at the model numbers: they all begin with the word NUS (the system is referred as NUS-001, the joypad as NUS-005 and so on). I suppose NUS means Nintendo Ultra Sixtyfour!