For years, Nintendo has added special bottom ports to its consoles to prepare for future accessories. Most of these ports were never used in the West, but in Japan, they supported important add-ons.
The NES Expansion Port (bottom)
Official Use: None. No company has launched official retail peripherals for this 48-pin port in North America.
- There was one exception: In the early 1990s, the Minnesota State Lottery tested a modem that let people buy lottery tickets with their NES. The project was canceled because of legal problems.
- The port was meant as a backup option for things like modems or disk drives, similar to the Famicom Disk System in Japan, which connects through the cartridge slot there.
- Today, some homebrew projects like the NES HUB use this port to add features such as Bluetooth controller support. It can also expand audio without needing to change the console itself.
After more than 15 years of buying NES consoles, I’ve found that buyers almost never ask about this port. The only time it came up was as a joke about hiding joints in it when I was a kid.
The N64 Expansion Ports
The N64 featured two distinct expansion points:
- The top port was for memory. It came with a simple Jumper Pak, but you could swap it out for the Expansion Memory Pak, which doubled the system’s RAM from 4 MB to 8 MB.
You need the Expansion Pak to play Donkey Kong 64 and Majora's Mask. I sometimes wonder if people realize this. When we sell these games, we always try to make it clear they won't work without the Expansion Pak. In my experience, most casual gamers just assume, "This makes my console better," and buy an expansion pak without really knowing what it does.
- Bottom Port (EXT): Used exclusively in Japan for the 64DD (disk drive).
- The 64DD let the N64 use 64 MB magnetic disks, had a real-time clock, and supported rewritable data.
- North American Use: Remained entirely unused by official hardware.
- I've never seen a 64DD in the wild, only on YouTube.
The Super Nintendo (SNES) port
- In Japan, the Satellaview was a satellite modem that let players download exclusive games and extra content.
- This port was also planned for the SNES CD-ROM add-on, which Sony was developing before the partnership ended.
The GameCube expansion ports.
The GameCube was the first Nintendo console to use these ports worldwide.
- The high-speed port was used for the Game Boy Player, which let you play Game Boy Advance games on your TV.
The Game Boy Player sells for a pretty penny, but only if you have both the attachment and the disc together. If you're missing the disc, the attachment alone is worth almost nothing. People want the complete set.
- Serial Port 1: was used for broadband or modem adapters, enabling online play in games like Phantasy Star Online.
- Serial Port 2: was never used for official accessories and was eventually removed from later versions of the GameCube.
The Wrap Up
Most of these ports never got used. The GameCube really used its ports. Also, there was a strange exercise bike for the Super Nintendo. Otherwise, the best use for these ports was hiding joints from your parents. Thanks, Nintendo.
Want to sell your old consoles and accessories? We buy Nintendo systems and peripherals from the '90s to now at The Old School Game Vault.
