http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmViSPAxLpM
The textures on the characters seem to be less detailed on the N64, and blurrier obviously, but that's a given huh?
At the end of the day it's an inferior version of the game. Backgrounds are way blurrier and the FMVs are compressed to hell. It's a really impressive achievement though.
No, it's a better version of the game (slightly; not by a lot). Better controls, first -- it has real analog support! That was completely awesome, tank controls aren't the worst but actual analog support is certainly better. The in-game visuals are very close, as that comparison there shows, but I think the N64 has the edge; getting rid of jaggies alone makes a huge difference. The PS1 version does have better FMVs, but gameplay matters more than videos... (As for the backgrounds, going by those screenshots they look pretty similar.)
A limitation that shouldn't be disregarded in the comparison. It's in keeping with the discussions in this thread, where cart space has been brought up before.
I am amazed that they got RE2 onto the N64 and in a reasonably fair state, though, but I don't think it should be used as a yardstick in measuring the N64's power over the PS1.
I agree, it's not the best title to use; they did an amazing job getting it working well, but it's clearly not the kind of game that makes the best use of the N64's power.
Yeah, Trickstyle was a Criterion game as well (who would go on to deliver so many beautiful 60 fps PS2 titles). Trickstyle, unfortunately, ran at a VERY VERY low framerate. It was so damn choppy.
Yeah, TrickStyle's choppy framerate was pretty disappointing. If it'd been stable it could have been okay, but as choppy as it is, it's distracting. However, they did do a better job with their other Dreamcast racing game, Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing; that one's a pretty good game, has very nice graphics, and does play smoothly, too. Much improved over TrickStyle.
Indeed it was not entirely valid. Better would be if someone prefers a page from a porn magazine to a Mona Lisa painting.
Sorry if that was blunt but everything about RR64 seems garish and half assed visually with no effort and thought put in it at all - whereas R4 clearly had incredible talent and effort dedicated to visual styling. Those pictures from dark10x post really say it all, and would even more if they'd show what the animation there looked like.
Trying hard to live up to your tag and sound like a complete fool at the same time, huh? Well, you're succeeding.
You're absolutely right. I love bright colors as well.
I simply don't feel that RR64 uses them tastefully.
We disagree on this, then.
I particularly hate the "farm yard countryside" vibe the game has going for it.
Huh? The first two tracks take their themes from the first two PS1 games, and the third track's a desert, pretty much. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "farm yard countryside". Countryside perhaps, most of the game is not in big cities, but farmyard?
Ah, I see, you have very limited musical exposure. I thought that way 15 years ago but there's a whole world of music out there just waiting to be explored. I'm not knocking you there as, again, I once would have written the same exact answer (right down to techno and classical), but I think you'd be surprised by how much amazing music you're missing.
On topic, really, what you're saying here is irrelevant to the discussion, because both R4 and RR64 have techno/electronic soundtracks...
But anyway, no, I highly doubt that. I don't know what kind of music you're talking about there, but as I said, I don't like other kinds of music. I don't listen to music on its own, it's just background stuff while I'm doing something else. I almost never listen to music with words either, at least not words I can understand (ie, that are in English); I don't care much about the "story" the music is trying to tell, or whatever, in almost all cases. I also dislike guitar music in general.
You're not wrong, of course, but I feel that your opinions are akin to claiming Blade Runner has poor art direction in favor of a some "Uguu~~ anime". There's no real objective way to pass judgement on good art, however.
You're incredibly overrating R4 to crazy degrees here. I'm not saying that RR64's one of the highlights of design or anything, it's certainly not. I'm just that it looks better than R4. Plenty of things do.
Also, regarding the graphic design.
R4 has a unified style with great fonts, transitions, and other design elements. Lots of animations abound with everything moving smoothly around the screen in a very concise fashion.
RR64, however, is the kind of game that would gladly paste a static image of a CG model on the side of a black screen and call it a day. It just seems cheap and ugly in comparison.
That's just the main menu, she's not in any of the other menus. RR64's main menu looks fine, but really, what should they do, just leave that part of the screen blank? As if R4's main menu is so amazing looking? At least compare similar menus, like the track screen versus the track screen, or the main menu versus the main menu!
Oh, and R4 has reversed buttons in the menus too. Lazy Namco, X should be confirm and O cancel...
Yeah, I have no idea why you think that those shots show R4 to have the better menus, because they certainly don't... though RR64's menus do lose a little in screenshots, as the music, animation, etc. are part of why they look so stylish, they hold up pretty well, at least. As for R4... as I said, much less interesting design going on there. And I'm not saying that because of the system, but because of the game. It's all boxy menus and cluttered text... oh, and I'm not really a fan of the "racing team" theme of the game, either, with that team manager who talks to you (via text boxes) in between races and such. I get the idea, to make the game slightly more "realistic", and it's okay, but RR64's simpler, more arcadey game style, where you just choose a race and go, is at least its equal and might be better. I was thinking of this (game presentation) as well when I said that about the menus, though RR64 does have more stylish menus too. Those little track animations in the upper right corner of the R4 screen are kind of neat, but don't give it overall better menus.
Has the RR1 Hi-Spec demo that followed R4 been mentioned, cause I really don't see what RR64 has going for it. It may have had smoothing, but the visuals looked like downgrade compared to RR1 and RR Rev.
Yeah, no. As for RR1 Hi-Spec, sure, it looks visually nice, but there's only one opponent car! What, so they could only pull off graphics that nice by limiting it to two vehicles in the race, or something? RR64 has twelve cars per race... I know R4's only got eight, and RR1 Hi-Spec is just two. Do any of the PS1 games match RR64 in that? I forget about the older PS1 games.
This actually pissed me off at the time, I thought the cars in R4 would have reflections ingame, like Gran Turismo and it fucking didn't. Only in replays I believe.
Few games that gen have good in-race reflections... Rush 2049 did on the N64, and it looked awesome, but I don't think most games did.
This isn't an N64-specific thing, though. ABF likes bright and garish colors from any media. If you disagree with him that Ridge Racer 64 or
this are aesthetically appealing, you're not going to change his mind.
There's nothing inherently wrong with it, just how P.A. Works did it.
It's certainly possible to make it look good, but the Angel Beats shots is just eye-stabbingly bright and blurry.
Sure, I think that shot looks good, but your obsession with bashing Angel Beats is somewhat strange... why do you find it so hard to imagine that someone could have liked it? I mean, there are lots of animes I hate, sure, and some of the time I can't figure out why people actually like them, but usually there's something that can explain it. And there are lots of reasons why I think Angel Beats is good. But that's quite off topic here.
There is actually a pretty tremendous difference between 320x240 and 256x192. Still, you're comparing a fixed pixel display to 240p output on a CRT (or any display, I suppose). The N64 is super blurry in comparison.
One step above, pretty much. I think the screen size matters more than the resolution, overall -- and yes, the sizes of the screens those images are going to matters a lot, and certainly helps make the DS look a little less bad than it would on a TV.
I don't think we're going to be able to agree.
R4, in my eyes, uses a very stylistic color palette with a very subdued overall look. It's sleek and beautiful to me.
RR64 is garish as hell in comparison. I find it absolutely hideous.
You seem to be a huge N64 super fan while it's one of my least favorite successful systems of all time. I hate just about everything about it and only own one for the same reasons I own a 3DO. As such, I don't think we'll ever come to an agreement on things related to it.
I think that every console has good games on it, but yes, the N64 is my overall favorite, and I'm biased against Sony (note: I like Sega consoles too, slightly less than Nintendo ones but I definitely like them). As I've said though, there are lots of games I like on their consoles... but the Ridge Racer series is definitely not among them. My favorite PS1 racing game would probably be Rollcage. Maybe Wipeout XL or 3. As for the PS2, my favorite PS2 racing game... hmm, probably Outrun 2006. Amazing game.
The "jaggyness" varied heavily from title to title, but for me, I'd much rather take a high framerate with greater detail at the expense of image quality. Many PS2 games sacrificed image quality in order to deliver 60 fps. That was a sacrifice I was willing to make every time. Games appeared jaggy as a result of using field rendering which basically alternates odd and even scanlines every other frame. Any game using this method was basically stuck at 60 fps as slowdown would halve the framerate and resolution. It was akin to the DS lock on 60 fps. Of course, many games worked around this in order to improve image quality.
I'd say that as I said before, it depends on the framerate. In a 3d action-adventure game I think a 25 or something framerate can be fine (heck, most racing games are okay at 30 too, even if 60 is a bit smoother), but if we're talking 10, or 15 or something? Then I have a problem with it, yes. I also dislike when a game has a mostly okay framerate, but occasionally it drops far too low. You see this in both Banjo-Tooie and Conker's BFD sometimes, for instance, particularly in areas with longer vistas. That bothered me, and I don't think Donkey Kong 64 had anything like that... maybe B-T and Conker should have had Expansion Pak support.