All the speculation on how EarthBound 64 was going to be on the new N64DD drive is not going to happen. Why? Because the DD drive has been cancelled. They will not be releasing the N64DD in America. And there is still debate on whether or not to release it in Japan.

The reason for this all is because of the bad history of add-on drives for video game systems. Just think about it. You remember the Sega CD drive? Or how about Sega 32X? Well Nintendo doesn't want to make the same mistake. Those 2 Sega add-on drives sold horribly. Sega lost millions upon millions of dollars because they promoted a product that did really bad. All other companies that have had add-on drives also did bad.

Nintendo tallied up the cost for selling the N64DD in the USA. It came out to be about $125. You can now buy a N64 for that much money! Would you want to buy an add on drive that costs about as much as the original sore system? I didn't think so!

As for EarthBound 64, there is much speculation. One of the reasons that it was delayed is because they were making the game for the N64DD drive. Which would have been excellent. Don't get me wrong, the N64DD would have been really powerful and could have been the next greatest thing. It would have been able to hold 10X more data than a cartridge game, maybe more. But now that it has been cancelled, they have to make it into a cart game again.

If EarthBound was going to be released on the N64DD, there would have been some amazing things. One of the great ideas was "Time Wrapping" (the name was still being played with). This would, for example, let you plant a tree, and a week later (REAL TIME!) it would be growing. Excellent, only now that the DD is cancelled, it is a dead idea because cart games can only dream of having things like that.