It’s not anything new to see peripherals get announced before being tossed aside. This was especially true for older consoles but one peripheral that was advertised years ago has since become a new means of discussion with retro fans today. We’re referring to the Nintendo 64 Secret Screen which got another chance at receiving some limelight thanks to a collector who shared the peripheral on his Twitter account.
While the Nintendo 64 has a relatively big following, there are a few peripherals that didn’t quite make the cut for the system. One of the peripherals is the Secret Screen, a device that acted somewhat similar to the Dreamcast VMU. With a small advertisement in EGM 1997, there wasn’t much of a push to bring the Secret Screen into the market.
Since then the peripheral’s creator decided to sell the device on eBay but the listing had been removed. Even though it was removed, screenshots of the listing did offer gamers some new details on the device. Apparently, the Secret Screen connected to the Nintendo 64 controller where it would be used to see in-game options. Only two games were reportedly going to use the peripheral which was a football title that could allow players to select plays without being shown on the television screen and Battleground Domination which would show a map.
What may be more interesting is that the article within EGM had a small blurb about Sega’s unnamed console coming out at the time now known as the Sega Dreamcast. It’s believed that Sega read the advertisement and took notice of the Secret Screen which they opted to make something similar known as the Dreamcast VMU. Essentially the VMU offered a few little features such as not only be a memory card but it offered a few little mini-games as well.
