The Rumble Pak is an accessory for the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo DS. Games that support the Rumble Pak cause it to vibrate in certain situations, such as when a player loses a life, fires a weapon or receives damage.
Nintendo 64
The original Rumble Pak, designed for the Nintendo 64 controller, was released in April 1997 in Japan, May 1997 in North America and October 1997 in Europe. It requires two Triple-A batteries and is inserted into the controller's memory cartridge slot. This prevents simultaneous use of the Controller Pak. This usually has little impact however in gameplay, as N64 cartridges have the ability to store saved data in the cartridge. The Rumble Pak was introduced bundled with the game Star Fox 64 (known as Lylat Wars in the PAL region) and made available as a separate purchase two months later. Rumble Pak support soon became a standard for N64 games, and launch titles Wave Race 64 and Super Mario 64 were re-released in Japan in July 1997 with Rumble Pak support.
Nintendo DS
The Rumble Pak for the Nintendo DS is a DS Option Pak shaped like a Game Boy Advance cartridge and is designed to be inserted in the system's Game Boy Advance game slot. In North America, it was first made available bundled with Metroid Prime Pinball, but is now also available as a stand-alone purchase from Nintendo's online store. Unlike the N64 Rumble Pak, it uses system power. Mario games that support the Rumble Pak are Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Diddy Kong Racing DS, Super Princess Peach, and Wario: Master of Disguise.
Although the Rumble Pak works with both the DS and the redesigned DS Lite, it protrudes from the DS Lite when inserted like GBA cartridges do, because of the DS Lite's smaller size. For this reason, a smaller version of the Rumble Pak is available in Japan, which is flush with the system when inserted.
This accessory is incompatible with a Nintendo DSi or Nintendo 3DS because it lacks a Game Boy Advance slot.
