N64_UKGL::Whats The Deal With The Expansion Pak?

Whats The Deal With The Expansion Pak?

The N64 expansion Pak. Is it worth getting one? Well many of the later games will not run without it; Donkey Kong 64, Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Other games increase in quality when run using an Expansion Pak; Turok 2, Episode 1 Racer.
So what exactly does it do to your system? Well the Expansion Pak contains 4MB of additional memory, which, when attached to your N64 brings the total memory up to 8MB. This allows for higher resolutions, framerates and colour depths within the games. The result of this is improved graphics and animation quality.

To try and actually notice the difference between a game played with and a game played without the Expansion Pak I played the beginning of Turok 2 with and without the Expansion Pak:
With the Pak the cuscenes were smoothly animated. The characters are more rounded and the textures are sharp and pretty realistic looking. The fire is surprisingly realistic looking! The in-game animation is just as high-quality and the textures on the backgrounds and the dinosaurs are well defined.
Without the Pak the first thing I noticed was that the menus were slower and the writing more fuzzy. The characters in the cut-scenes are blockier and the animation is uninspiring (although still better than a lot of PSX cutscenes). The levels are foggier than when using the Expansion Pak and the textures on the background and enemies are less defined. All in all the game is more blurred.
These examples aren't great, but they're the best I could find.


Turok 2 without the Expansion Pak	Turok 2 with the Expansion Pak

So how much will one cost and is it worth the money? Well nowadays it'd be easiest to buy an Expansion Pak from Ebay.co.uk, I expect one would cost little more than 15 plus whatever you need to pay in postage. As it lets you play games such as Donkey Kong 64 and will improve the graphics and animation substantially in many others I'd say that it is well worth the money for someone who cares about things like graphics and is yet to buy a Next-Gen console but perhaps not for a casual gamer or anyone owning a better console that can do these things without the extra money.

- aneurysm

Ebay: Expansion Paks