IGN lamented the "broken promises" and "vaporware", summarizing the 64DD as "an appealing creativity package"[6] for "a certain type of user"[2] that "delivered a well-designed user-driven experience"—and as a "limited online experiment at the same time", which partially fulfilled Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi's "longtime dream of a network that connects Nintendo consoles all across the nation".

"[10] In 1994, Howard Lincoln, chairman of Nintendo of America said, "Right now, cartridges offer faster access time and more speed of movement and characters than CDs.

"[11] In consideration of the 64DD's actual launch price equivalent of about US$90, Nintendo software engineering manager Jim Merrick warned, "We're very sensitive to the cost of the console.

Nintendo's Director of Corporate Communications, Perrin Kaplan, made the company's first official launch window announcement for the peripheral, scheduled for late 1997 in Japan.

[24][29] The event featured Creator, a music and animation game by Software Creations,[30] the same UK company that had made Sound Tool for the Nintendo Ultra 64 development kit.

[32] Much of the gaming press said the 64DD reveal at Shoshinkai 1996 was not as significant as Nintendo had promised, leaving the public still unaware of the system's software lineup, practical capabilities, and release date.

Next Generation magazine observed the attendees and the demonstrations, finding no appeal to the US market from any current 64DD software, which was mainly Mario Artist and Pocket Monsters.

[51] George Harrison, vice president of Nintendo of America, described the logistics of the 64DD launch delays:[47] Certainly [64DD] hasn't been sidelined, it's still in the starting gate.

Known third-party 64DD developers included Konami, Culture Brain, Seta, Japan System Supply, Titus, Infogrames, Rare, Paradigm Entertainment, Ocean, and Factor 5.

[53] The 64DD was conspicuously absent from E3 1998, having been briefly described the prior day as "definitely not" launching in 1998 and "questionable" in 1999, which Next Generation magazine interpreted as being "as close to 'dead' as we can imagine".

[55] In June 1999, IGN reported that month's completion of Randnet and the modem, as having "breathed new life into what many have called the most elusive piece of vaporware to date".

[57] The 64DD was launched on December 13, 1999, exclusively in Japan,[62] as a package called the Randnet Starter Kit including six games bimonthly through the mail, and one year of Internet service.

[39] Anticipating that its long-planned peripheral would become a commercial failure, Nintendo initially sold the Randnet Starter Kit via mail order.

On August 25, 2000, Space World was signified by the launches of the GameCube and Game Boy Advance, and by what IGN considered to be the unofficial discontinuation of the 64DD, jokingly calling it "DeaDD".

The most advanced CD technology delivered by the contemporaneous Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation game consoles can hold at least 650 megabytes (MB) of information with a peak 300 kB/s[7] throughput and more than 200 ms seek speed.

Shigeru Miyamoto, said this of the canceled four-year development of the pet breeding game Cabbage: "We're doing it on the 64DD because I wanted to make a clock function, such that even if the power is cut, can still raise the creature.

The subscription fee included the dialup Internet account, 64DD system hardware, and a delivery schedule of game disks by mail.

[83] Nintendo had originally promised these canceled features:[6][18] From November 11, 1999, to January 11, 2000, the first round of membership registration for Randnet's Internet service opened to a maximum of 100,000 subscribers on a "first come, first served" basis.

The 64 Dream magazine relayed a Nintendo public relations statement that there had been approximately 15,000 Randnet subscribers at the time of this announcement, indicating that there had been at least that many hardware units sold to customers.

[1] Nintendo offered to buy back all the Randnet-purchased consumer hardware and to give free service to all users from the announcement of closure, until the day it actually went offline.

Because these items were sold only as a soon-discontinued bundle, all with such ultimately limited application, he found the disks' cheaper prices to be aggregated back up to the level of cartridges.

[6] He found the Mario Artist series (especially the 64DD's "killer app", Talent Studio) to be uniquely compelling in creative ways that "couldn't be done on any other gaming console on the market", utilizing the disks' writability and "[leaving] CD systems behind".

[96] Schneider acknowledges Nintendo's vision, attributing the system's downfall generally upon the drastically changing marketplace during the several years of delays.

"[19] Nintendo reported 15,000 active Randnet subscribers as of the October 2000 announcement of the service's impending closure, implying the sale of at least as many requisite 64DD units.

—Miyamoto New genres of games were developed due to the advent of 64DD's rewritable mass storage, real-time clock (RTC), and Internet appliance functionality.

The eventual initial release of the series was adapted to utilize only the Nintendo 64 cartridge format with an embedded RTC, in the form of Japan's Animal Forest.

[52] A subset of creature maintenance functionality is made portable on the Game Boy via the Transfer Pak, to be synchronized back to the 64DD disk.

"[101] The concept of a personal avatar creator app which had begun with prototypes for the Famicom was solidified in Mario Artist: Talent Studio and then has been seen on all subsequent Nintendo consoles.

Nintendo designer Yamashita Takayuki credits his work on Talent Studio as having been foundational to his conception and development of the entire Mii component of the Wii platform a decade later.

The user-creation of graphics, animations, levels, and minigames which are in the Mario Artist series and F-Zero X Expansion Kit are revisited in later console generations.