Long story short in my room there was an N64 controller connected to the TV. I was pretty excited about it because I haven't seen in-room gaming services in a hotel for quite some time. I think the last time I remember seeing an N64 in a hotel was around the time when the system was somewhat new so I certainly didn't expect to see one nowadays, especially in working order.
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If the games were significantly cheaper (or free) I would of spent a good deal of time testing them out to see what, if any differences there are between that and the real games. Besides, most of my money went to renting the room, buying supper, getting gifts, etc, so I didn't exactly have 7 bucks an hour to spend on games that are thirteen years old, and most of which I own anyways.
I read a little bit about it online and I couldn't find a whole lot about them other than general information, and things that I didn't need to go online to figure out. The one thing I did notice is that it seems to be very rare to actually own any of the hardware because it was never sold publicly.
Gradually getting drunker as the night goes on, and being a huge gamer, I kept thinking about how cool the whole system is. This set up is similar and related to the expensive and rare Famicom Box systems that were used in Japanese hotels and are now very rare and expensive. Granted this technology is a little more advanced since there is no actual system and everything is sent to and from your room using a modem and some other crap connected to the TV so I will be 100 times harder to actually get working, but I still figured it is rare and would be neat to have.
The controller is similar to a normal N64 controller with a few exceptions as you will see in the reference pictures. The cord is basically incredibly long telephone wire. When I say long, I mean it. When the cord is coiled up it is probably about twelve feet long and it can be stretched to at least double that. On front of the controller where the Nintendo logo normally is, there is six remote-style buttons used mainly to browse the menus and order the games. (The buttons are: Order, Reset, Menu, #, Select, *) On the back of the controller is says "...Controller is not compatible with home game system and if removed 29.95 will be charged to your room..." so I figured if I came across one of these "in the wild" I would gladly pay thirty dollars for it, whether I can get it working or not. Needless to say there was 29.95 charged to our room shortly after we checked out.
Also I should note that the controller is in amazing condition. It an almost brand new feel to it, since none of the buttons or joy stick are worn down even slightly. I guess paying seven dollars an hour for games when you're already paying over 100 dollars a night for the room didn't sit too well with a lot of people.
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I was tempted to make a professional article with all the information that I researched about this system, but I don't have the necessary hardware to get it working so there isn't any real point to that right now. It isn't anywhere near the top of my priorities right now but if I come across a way to get it up and running again I will certainly look into it and write a lengthly article about the whole experience.
I tried to take pictures of all the different menus. There was eleven pages of games available, and surprisingly most of them are really good. If you selected a game you could briefly read about it and check the control scheme.
In the mean time check out these pictures I took. Forgive the crappyness of them, but I was using my iPhone camera and I was already pretty drunk by this point.
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