The Rumble Pak is a small box with a motor in it. It plugs into the socket under the Nintendo 64 controller, where the memory card normally goes, and shakes the controller when the program tells it to. Nintendo packed one free with Star Fox 64 in Japan in April 1997, so that every hit on the player’s Arwing arrived in the hands as well as on the screen. Nintendo liked the result enough to reissue two of its best games to support it, and within seven months Sony had launched the DualShock, with the motors inside the pad itself.
Fast facts
- First shipped with: Star Fox 64 (Nintendo), Japan, 27 April 1997; included in the American box in June 1997 (Nintendo Power, May 1997).
- Names: shindō pakku (“vibration pack”) in Japan; “Jolt Pack” in the English press before launch; Rumble Pak on sale.
- Inside: a DC motor, powered by two AAA batteries; it plugs into the controller’s Controller Pak slot (Nintendo Power, May 1997).
- UK price: £15 alone, or in the box with Lylat Wars at £60 (N64 Magazine, September 1997).
- Rivals: Datel’s £25 ShockWave pack with a built-in memory card; Sony’s vibrating Dual Analog pad (Japan, April 1997) and DualShock (Japan, November 1997).
The Jolt Pak
N64 Magazine announced it in its first issue, in April 1997, as “a Jolt Pack” that “reproduces explosions in the game as vibrations in your controller”. It expected the pack to stay in Japan, “highly unlikely to be included in either American or European copies of StarFox 64”, and guessed that Nintendo would sell it separately in Europe. In the event the American Star Fox 64 came with one too: Nintendo Power listed a “Rumble Pak (included with the game)”, a “DC motor” that “plugs into Controller Pak slot of N64 controller” and “requires 2 AAA batteries”. By June Nintendo Official Magazine was calling it “the Peripheral Formerly Known as the Jolt Pak”, “resembling a Memory Pak on steroids”, which “produces a satisfying jolt whenever your craft takes a hit”.
The magazine also called it “the first decent force-feedback device for a home console”. Edge, reviewing the Japanese game the same month, thought the “bizarre gadget” had a longer history, and traced its “lineage … back to the halcyon days of Afterburner”, the arcade cabinet. The same issue’s Tobal 2 review mentioned “the built-in ‘jolt’ mechanisms of Sony’s analogue pad”: Sony’s Dual Analog controller, on sale in Japan since April, already had motors of its own.
Selling the shake
Nintendo marketed the Pak hard in Japan. Its television commercial for Star Fox 64 starred the actress Ryoko Hirosue, repeating “shibireru!” (“it tingles!”) as the pack buzzed (Famitsu). Nintendo Official Magazine reported that it was shot on 13 March 1997, with “150 other young actors … clustering around a huge screen showing Starfox 64 and pulling silly faces as the Pak shook in their hands” (the magazine gave her name as “Kyoko Hiroki”). A British reader asked N64 Magazine what “Buru” meant on the Japanese packaging: buru buru is the Japanese word for a trembling shake. The magazine admitted that on first playing the import “we giggled like schoolgirls at the free Rumble Pak, which wedges into the bottom of the Controller and wobbles when you’re hit”, and ran a competition asking readers what else the socket could be used for.
Shindou
Nintendo was pleased enough with the Pak to retrofit it. In the summer of 1997 it re-released Super Mario 64 and Wave Race 64 in Japan as Shindō editions, named after the pack: shindō means vibration. (N64 Magazine translated it as “Improved”.) They were “practically identical to the games you may already own, except they now include the necessary software morsels to support the Rumble Pak”. The new Mario also carried the voice work and other changes made for the American release, and the new Wave Race added a ghost mode to its time trial. N64 Magazine’s Japan correspondent thought it cheeky to charge 6,800 yen “for the added thrill of a mild vibrating sensation coursing through his body every time he, er, beaches his craft”, but the reviewer, who allowed that “you may have written it off as a novelty, a marketing gimmick”, found that “the effect of the Rumble Pak is immediately apparent”.
In Britain
Star Fox 64 reached Europe as Lylat Wars in October 1997, with the Pak in the box. N64 Magazine reported that it would cost “a ‘mere’ £60 — prices as high as £80 had been mooted. And! That includes a Rumble Pak!”, with spare Paks “for multi-player purposes” at £15. Datel’s ShockWave cost more, £25, but built in a 1Mb memory card, because with Nintendo’s Pak “you’ve got to switch packs when you want to stop rumbling and start saving games”. Other games were quick to use it: Nintendo Official Magazine listed Clayfighter 63⅓, Extreme-G, Sonic Wings Assault, Wayne Gretzky 2 and San Francisco Rush as coming, and N64 Magazine found that on a racing game “plugging in a Rumble Pak further heightens the sense of seat-gripping, high-speed tension”.
Sony’s pads
Sony had vibration first in Japan and took it away in the West. Its Dual Analog pad vibrated in Japan from April 1997, but the version sold in Britain and America had no motors. A reader who bought the UK pad and Rally Cross told Edge in December 1997 that there was “no response from the so-called vibrating feedback”. Edge reported reasons ranging “from disputed reliability and compatibility to issues of cost”, and said that “the effect paled slightly when compared to N64’s Rumble Pak”. Sony put the motors back into the DualShock, launched in Japan on 20 November 1997 with two motors inside the grips rather than a pack to plug in. Edge was previewing “the promised Dual Shock compatibility” in March 1998, and by July a $149 American PlayStation pack included the pad. From then on, vibration was built into the standard pads rather than added on.
Later
The Rumble Pak name returned in 2006 for a Nintendo DS add-on shaped like a Game Boy Advance cartridge, which fitted the DS’s second slot and was first packed with Metroid Prime Pinball in North America.
Sources
- N64 Magazine issue 1, April 1997: “Jolt into action!” news item.
- Nintendo Power issue 96, May 1997: Star Fox 64 preview (Rumble Pak included with the game, DC motor, two AAA batteries, June release).
- Nintendo Official Magazine issue 57, June 1997: “Bah! Rumbled!” (the Pak, formerly the Jolt Pak) and news pages (the Japanese commercial, planned compatible games).
- Edge issue 46, June 1997: Star Fox 64 review (the Jolt Pack and its arcade lineage) and Tobal 2 review (Sony’s vibrating pad).
- N64 Magazine issues 3–5, June–August 1997: competition page, reader’s letter on “Buru”, Star Fox 64 import recollection, racing game review.
- N64 Magazine issue 6, September 1997: Japan column and Shindou reviews; Lylat Wars price, spare Rumble Paks and Datel’s ShockWave.
- Edge issue 52, December 1997: reader’s letter on the European Sony pad, with Edge’s reply.
- Edge issue 56, March 1998, and issue 60, July 1998: Dual Shock compatibility in previews; the $149 US PlayStation pack.
- Famitsu.com, Star Fox 64 anniversary article, 27 April 2022 (web, secondary): Japanese release date, first Rumble Pak game, the Ryoko Hirosue commercial. https://www.famitsu.com/news/202204/27259601.html
- Wikipedia, “Rumble Pak” (web, secondary): the Japanese name, the European release in October 1997, and the Nintendo DS Rumble Pak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumble_Pak