Nintendo's Lost Console: iQue Player - Rerez

rerez (69)in #gaming • 7 years ago

A lot of retro gamers happen to be fans of Nintendo and for good reason. Nintendo has a long history of amazing video game consoles and video games that have spanned the past thirty years. But what if I were to tell you there is a video game system that was released at a certain point in the history of Nintendo that we didn't know about? Sure we all know about the NES, the Super Nintendo, the Nintendo 64 and all of those video game systems that we’ve become so familiar with. But if there was a system that came out that wasn't released in Japan, North America or Europe well we would have never heard about it right? And that couldn't exist. Well it does. This is Nintendo's iQue Player. The hidden Nintendo console.

The iQue Player was released in 2003 in mainland China a place known at the time for a ban on video game consoles. That's right sometime in the early 2000s China decided to basically attempt to destroy the video game market in their country. Which didn't quite work out as somehow by the goodwill and persistence of Nintendo this system was actually released in China. Nintendo has a subsidiary company called iQue which releases Nintendo's line of handheld consoles for the Chinese market. So something like the Nintendo 3DS is known in China as the iQue 3DS. The only real difference between the iQue variants of the Nintendo systems is that they are region-locked with specific games ported using a simplified Chinese language interface. But if the ban on consoles was in full effect at this time why were these systems allowed to be released? Best I can tell is that the ban didn't seem to harm local companies which is what iQue was positioned to be. The ban also specifically mentioned video game consoles. The 3DS could be considered a portable video game player and not a console and this is how I believe the iQue Player got released.

See it's not called the N64 mini or the iQue 64. The official name is the iQue Player and it's a plug-and-play system. It's always been referred to as such and not a video game console. Where the Nintendo 64 has the ability to change games with the cartridge slot the iQue Player doesn't. It doesn't even have controller ports to plug in other controllers. The iQue Player stands alone as a simple device that can only play a handful of Nintendo 64 games re-released in simplified Chinese. I personally think this device is pretty cool looking since it's a console and controller in one. While I do like the Nintendo 64 I've never been the biggest fan of its controller. I feel that the iQue Player was a very big improvement in design. You can hold the iQue Player easily with both hands instead of the really strange manipulations you have to use to hold an N64 controller. The Z trigger is repositioned from the back center of the N64 controller to underneath the left shoulder button. The middle joystick is now placed at the top left and all the buttons have been adjusted just slightly to fit better on this design. Despite Nintendo's amazing track record with directional pads the one on the iQue Player is kind of squishy and not the classic Nintendo design that we've all come to know. There's only one button on this controller you won't find on an original Nintendo 64 controller and that's the power button that's just above the start. I'm not a terribly big fan of the button’s placement because you could easily push it while playing a game.

The system is bundled with four timed demos. Star Fox 64, Wave Race 64, Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Once you've maxed out all the time on the demo it's game over. You won't be able to play it again. Each iQue Player was bundled with one full game though, Dr. Mario 64. And it's pretty much exactly what the original release of the game was like on the N64 only this one is in Chinese. I love that the only game they included in full was a 2D game instead of a game that would show off the 3D effects that the N64 was known for. A bunch of Nintendo 64 games were released for the iQue Player like Mario Kart 64, Yoshi's Story, Paper Mario and a handful of others including Super Smash Brothers which is one of those games that really needs multiplayer. Like I said earlier though the iQue Player doesn't have multiple connection ports on the device but there is a way around that. There's an accessory you can buy for the iQue Player called the Swim Box. It's essentially a multi-tap device that you can plug up secondary controllers to. The secondary controllers are called Swim Controllers and they really can't do anything other than just play multiplayer games loaded from the main iQue Player. Sort of a complex way around things but it does exist.

The iQue Player we happen to have is actually bundled with a full version of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. It's just like you know it but in Chinese. Gameplay feels as sharp as ever and everything seems to look the same. Instead of using traditional Nintendo 64 hardware everything on this is pretty much a system on a chip and really this little system on a chip is pretty fantastic to be able to do something like this back in 2003. I've been told that this game runs a little bit faster than the original release on the Nintendo 64. Apparently it might have quicker loading times and faster scrolling dialogue text but it wasn't that noticeable to me. Still though this is a faithful version of the game. One I would possibly suggest over the original because I like the controller that much more. If you ever wanted to buy more iQue Player games there were two ways. The first way was you'd have to plug up to an iQue kiosk which you could find at a gas station and places like that. You would unplug the iQue memory card from the bottom of the system and plug it into the kiosk and just download the games. The second way was plugging in your iQue Player to a USB jack on your computer and downloading games from the iQue Player website. Around 2006 the last iQue Player game Animal Crossing was released. The website to download the iQue Player software at home is still active but no new games have been released since bringing the total number of iQue games to 14. After all of this though a sequel to the system was never released. No home console Nintendo system after the Nintendo 64 was ever brought to the Chinese market under the iQue banner. And with China's video game console ban lifted in 2015 it's very unlikely to see another strange plug and play version of one of Nintendo's existing consoles get released that way.

The iQue Player is a very strange device that was specifically designed to avoid some legal issues in China and honestly these days there's just no reason for a system like this to exist. I consider this console a pretty cool collectible. Not because it was released in China and it's really hard to come by but because it's possibly one of the best controllers that Nintendo ever released. I mean look at it. It really is an Xbox controller with a whole bunch of Nintendo 64 buttons on it. That's fantastic. This is one of the coolest systems they ever released and I really wish they would have released this in North America. So if you ever see one of these out in the wild you have to try it out. You just might consider this to be one of the best Nintendo consoles that you've ever played.

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