No, my Mario64 copy is definitely NTSC. Here are some shots of Mischief Makers:
The letterboxing is definitely there, too. I checked it on my PVM CRT and it looks the same.
[QUOTE=hunterk;20927]No, my Mario64 copy is definitely NTSC. Here are some shots of Mischief Makers:
The letterboxing is definitely there, too. I checked it on my PVM CRT and it looks the same.[/QUOTE]
Case closed!
But, why did I never notice such giant black bars as a kid? I can only assume it’s because some of it would have been cropped off by the TVs overscan, making them less noticeable.
It also just seems completely wacky that the N64 did that. It would have been so easy for the game devs to say “scale to 4:3” instead of “pad to 4:3,” although you would get a slight loss of resolution that way.
Thanks for looking into that!
No problem 
Hardware testing/verification is one of the reasons I bought all of my gear, so it’s nice to get to use it for that.
Overscan is almost certainly a factor in what you remember, as a lot of old TVs cut off as much as 20% of the screen. I also just didn’t notice that sort of thing as much when I was a kid for whatever reason. Looking back, Stunt Race FX looks like it’s viewed through a teeny peephole, but I thought nothing of it at the time.