Freshmaker said:
It's hard to predict an alternate future.
I doubt such a system would generate the hype that the N64 did. Especially if it came in ad a considerably higher price (SGI but with more more RAM, a CD drive? That stuff would've upped the price more than you're willing to allow IMO.)
It's a bit of a crap shoot since you don't need the best hardware to win either. A lot of it came down to the licensing model and Sony being willing to promote 3rd party software etc.
It would've likely come in at ~$400 if they did that.
Adding some cache RAM (for loading stuff from the CD; it doesn't have to be the main 4MB RDRAM block, or whatever replaced that, I don't know enough about hardware designs to say how it should be done, it just needed some RAM for that) and a CD drive would double the price? Seriously? That's hard to imagine.
You're right that you don't need the best hardware to win, though. Just having the most powerful system definitely doesn't guarantee you victory. But in Sega's case, their choice of hardware platform actually did matter -- it was just far too expensive to make and far too hard to program for! THOSE are the things that really needed fixing... and that cannot be done with anything like the design they chose.
The hardware limitations on the N64 are not a hazy mystery. Its poly output has long been known to be much lower than the PS or the Saturn. Most N64 games weren't running at 30 fps much less 60. Certain features were locked in by the hardware. There wasn't much room for finagling. (IIRC, some developers even noted that turning features off actually hurt performance more microcode or no.)
Yes. They were awful. They weren't really competitive with Tekken, much less VF2, Fighting Vipers, Fighters Megamix, Tekken 2 and 3, Tobal 2 etc.
I like either of those games more than most of those games on your list there, myself... but I've never liked the Virtua Fighter or Tekken series. Really, most 5th gen 3d fighting games are pretty awful, in my opinion, looking back. And I generally try to not think of games as worse because of their technology... but of the 5th gen 3d fighting games I've played, the ones I've actually found entertaining, I guess, are Dead or Alive, Mace, Evil Zone, and... um... not sure what else. And those aren't exactly great games. Virtua Fighter 1 and 2, Tekken 3... I have them, but just don't like them very much. Soulblade's kind of awful. Toshinden (I have one on Saturn and one on PSX) is bad, though at least the first game is entertainingly bad.
By that I mean, I think the N64's 3d fighting games were quite competent as far as fighting games go that generation. They're not top-notch efforts, sure, but as far as 3d fighting games go, Fighter's Destiny (very interesting, unique points system definitely makes this one worth playing), Mace: The Dark Age (I don't really like Mortal Kombat, but this one's interesting... plays like a cross between MK and SF, sort of), and Flying Dragon (not a great game, but okay), at least, are okay. It's 2d fighting games that I really miss on the N64. There's no question that it'd be fantastic for them -- the controller would be great for the genre, with the 6-face-button layout that the games require to be good and a great d-pad, and the cart format would get rid of the horrific load times that plague the PSX and Saturn 2d fighting games. I really, really wish that Capcom or SNK had made some 2d fighting games on N64, they'd have been really good...
I mean, Smash Bros. is a great game, but no Capcom or SNK fighters is really too bad.
You say they might have been doable. No evidence actually supports this however since no such game was ever made for the N64, and the specs don't tell an encouraging tale.
There's a lot more evidence to show it would be possible than that it wouldn't, for sure, I would say. Because there's pretty much no evidence that would say that it isn't, while there is some that would say that it is.
Except that it did in fact put fewer polygons onscreen and had a harder time moving what it did put onscreen quickly. It was also limited on the texture front etc. It did a lot of things well, but it wasn't ideally suited to all genres. I think only Nintendo fanboys like to pretend this isn't the case.
Seems more like evidence that such hardware was not especially well suited for the titles that Sega needed the system to run.
Lots of stupid lies and/or misinformation here! I almost don't know where to start...
First, polygons. You keep saying that N64 can't push as many polygons as PSX or Saturn. This is simply false. While Nintendo's stated polygon numbers are a little below the PSX's numbers, this is NOT because the N64 can push less polygons. In fact, it can push as many or more. What's happening is twofold -- first, Nintendo is always conservative in their stated performance numbers. Nintendo was listing actual, in-game polygon counts, with all effects on. Sony, in contrast, liked to list fictional polygon counts that could only be achieved by turning off textures, effects, etc. So that accounts for part of the gap.
Second, there were a bunch of hardware effects on teh N64 that usually not be turned off, such as the Z-Buffer, triple buffering, etc. These effects are what make 3d N64 games look so, so much better than 3d games from any system before it -- there are no jaggies in sight, no textures popping around and warping, and more! It just looks fantastic, it's a huge, huge leap in comparison to the PSX and Saturn. That power comes at a price though, it knocks off a chunk of the system's polygon power. PSX and Saturn don't do those effects, so they've got less overhead there.
Also, because of the way Sony designed their system, that is because of the propensity for the system to display lines between the polygons, polygons were often overlapped, increasing the number of polygons you had to put on the screen. With N64 that was unnecessary, effects take care of all those issues.
As for textures, the PSX didn't have any larger texture cache than the N64, actually, I think... it's not like all PSX games have awesome high-res textures. Also, good developers could come up with ways to get higher res textures working on the N64. There were just far more developers working on PSX, so many more games max out its power when compared to the N64. Finally, some use of shaded polygons could help, the system was designed to display shaded polygons as well as textured, which is part of why Nintendo didn't think the texture cache was a problem -- shaded polygons don't use textures. Mario in Mario 64 is made up of shaded polygons, for example.
Textures are a minor weakness on the N64, but the great strength of all of its other hardware effects are so huge that it's a pretty small issue compared to how great it is to not have jaggies, lines between polygons, polygon warping, and all the horrible stuff you see in PSX and Saturn 3d.
Iron and Blood ended up being published on the PlayStation....
Looking worse than it would have on M2. There are videos of M2 stuff out there, watch them... it's really, really impressive stuff for the time! And I mean actual, real M2 games, not the techdemo videos. Look up IMSA Racing on Youtube, for instance.
Again, depends on the genre. The N64 couldn't do a decent fighter. It wasn't ideal for RE type games, Final Fantasy 7 etc.
RE? It did RE great, RE2 is better than the PSX version... okay, to be more specific, the N64 version has much better controls (with 3d mode, an actual analog, push-the-stick-the-way-you-want-to-go mode!), much better polygon models, shorter load times, and slightly worse backgrounds and FMVs thanks to the compression. I'd say its better. There weren't other games of that kind, really, but that's just because of developers, not anything relating to system power. Also remember that Eternal Darkness started as an N64 game, based on the screenshots of that version it looked pretty good. (ED's one of my favorite GC games though, so I did like it)
As for fighting games, I've already covered that, but if you want to keep pretending that you have a "point" when you don't even remotely have one, go ahead.
As for FF7, sure, the N64 isn't ideal for the FMV aspects. The ingame engine parts would have looked a whole heck of a lot better, though.
The point was, the Saturn did 2d quite well.
Yeah, but the PSX and N64 weren't as far behind in 2d as people often say, that's all I'm saying. They were a little behind, sure, but not a LOT behind. Lots of 2d games look great on both systems.
You would still have to take cost considerations into account. You really can't just say, "Well, they'd slap more RAM into it, and pop on a CD drive and then everything would be fine."
The specs in general don't support the notion that the N64 could generate a better port of VF2. I've seen no evidence to the contrary.
"Well, I'm sure if someone who was good did it, it would be fine." Isn't a valid argument here.
Given that in every genre that was actually tried on the N64 by top-notch development teams there was at least one good game made, I think it's pretty safe to say, yes.
:lol Nintendo went with carts out of sheer pride. Saving hapless gamers from textures and 2-10 second load times (ignoring streaming games with huge areas and no visible loading like King's Field entirely) are hardly good reasons.
No, absolutely not. It's a common rumor that the N64 was designed around Mario 64 more than anything, and it's a rumor that I think might be true. On that note, I remember Nintendo saying that Mario 64 couldn't be done on any CD-based system without smaller areas and more load times, and I'm sure that they were telling the truth. You couldn't easily stream a Mario 64 level, and it would be too big for RAM... you need direct cart access. And Nintendo genuinely did care about minimizing load times. This carried on to the Gamecube as well, one reason why they used the small discs was to reduce load times. It worked, and GC games on average have some of the shortest load times of anything on disc-based media. Nintendo also hid the load times as best they could in their GC games, and they didn't just do it for fun, they did it because they thought that load times were bad and should be minimized. I agree with that philosophy. Load times are really annoying. Carts are also much more durable than CDs, which is great, and can save to the carts so you don't need memory cards for all N64 games, only most of the third party ones. Despite the repercussions, I absolutely think that Nintendo did the right thing in sticking with carts in the N64, no question.
We know that the N64 is easier to program for than Saturn, for sure, so we know that. I don't know offhand how hard the M2 is to program for, though; it was finished and games were in development, though, so somebody would know... but I highly doubt it'd be as hard as Saturn. As for the LM system, I really have no idea. Again though, Saturn was just incredibly, incredibly complex. I mean, N64 wasn't exactly easy to program for... but compared to Saturn?
They really didn't. Their cart format cost them key exclusives, and made the N64 a less profitable platform to develop for overall. Sony had the best third party support in place, and the less risky storage format aided them a great deal even without mip mapping and AA.
The PS and Saturn didn't really kill the Jaguar or the 3DO. Both collapsed under their own weight. 3DO had a terrible business model and the Jaguar had no financial backing.
I'm not sure if I said this in my last post, but if I didn't, Atari actually did still have millions in the bank in early 1996 when they gave up. What happened was that Sam Tramiel had been the biggest pusher within the company to stay in the console business, but he got a heart attack around that time and was forced to take a break. Jack Tramiel retook the reins at that point and decided to just quit the business and sell off the company. Had he not done that, though, despite how horribly the Jaguar had sold, Atari had been frugal enough over the years that they actually still had millions. They could have gone on for several more years and probably released the Jaguar 2, had they wanted to. They actually did have a near-final Jaguar 2 hardware design and a few test motherboards for the system exist, so it's known that it was in serious development. It would have been fully backwards-compatible with the original Jaguar and have had both a cart slot and CD drive.
As for 3DO, they just messed things up bad, yeah... the system's lack of 3d power really hurt it in the end, and the high price in the beginning, and those aren't things they could really change (for 1993, the 3DO was about as powerful as you could do, and even then it was $700!). They just needed to actually release that M2, and preferably in mid '96... they'd still have lost badly, though, so maybe just giving up and going third party was the right decision. I'm not sure, I'm not big into the M2 like some people so I haven't spent a lot of time looking into it, just a little here and there. It certainly was powerful though, so it'd have been interesting to see regardless.
Anyway, it resulted in us getting BattleTanx on the N64, and that game and its sequel were amazing, so in the late '90s at least I didn't care that the 3DO had failed.
I also don't really buy the whole "16 bit was still selling" argument. 16 bit was still going because it was cheap at that point. People wheeled this out when the PS2 was introduced as well, but the two platforms weren't really competing for the same market at all.
My point was that the Genesis and SNES were still doing very well in the US and Europe in 1995. Nintendo did not suffer to any appreciable degree by not having the N64 out until September 1996; as I've explained it failed to take first place for reasons that were not related to its release date. The same would have been true for Sega, had they released only ONE 32-bit system, and done it, say, in early 1996. Go with Genesis and Sega CD up to that point and they'd have been just fine, just like Nintendo was. The Genesis did sell 40 million systems worldwide, after all, only losing to the SNES worldwide because of how badly Sega got crushed in Japan. In the rest of the world, Sega was probably a little ahead overall that generation. Just ditching the system like they did was unbelievably stupid! Focusing only on Japan was a major, major mistake.
CD format netted them both Enix and Square.
I'd argue that had Sega waited, Sony would have still netted Enix and Square, effectively securing Japan. Mainly due to their third party policies and lucrative storage format. (Which Sega and Nintendo both kinda sucked at.) Sega might have done better, but there's no guarantee that they would've ended up with a better position in the market.
I'll agree that that last point is probably likely, particularly for Square. Square was tired of Nintendo by 1996 because of Nintendo's tyrannical ways and how they pushed Square around. Honestly, even had N64 been CD based, looking back I wouldn't be at all surprised if Square had gone Playstation-only anyway. They wanted Sony to do well, for some reason. I mean, CDs obviously weren't the only reason -- they didn't support Saturn or 3DO or something, just PSX. They just wanted Nintendo to lose... and the Square-Nintendo rivalry went on for years. It wouldn't end until Yamauchi was gone from Nintendo, in fact -- he held a grudge against Square after it left and never let it go (not that Square did either, I think). Anyway, Square definitely also liked Sony's low licensing fees. That was another important point. Also I know I've heard before that after deciding on Sony, Square went around trying to convince other Japanese companies, like Enix, to support Sony and not Nintendo... Enix had initially supported the N64, publishing games like Mischief Makers and Wonder Project J2 on the system, but they then dropped it in favor of the Playstation. When did that happen? Around the time that Square "betrayed" Nintendo and announced FFVII for the PSX, I believe... do you think that that was a coincidence, or just done because the system hadn't done as well as expected in Japan? I'm not so sure... but either way, there definitely were multiple factors, and yeah, system power wasn't the most important of them.
Anyway, it would have been interesting to see Square on Saturn, but I've never heard that they even considered it, for whatever reason... maybe there's something out there about this that I haven't seen, but I haven't seen a thing.
Oh, despite all that though, I do think that the N64 really did have a chance to win in 1996-1997, in the West at least. In Japan it was probably a lost cause, but in the US it had a real chance...
Remember that the N64 sold 21 million systems in the US, while the PSX was about 40 million, but the PSX lasted years longer. Despite that the PSX only outsold it 2 to 1. In 1996-1997, the gap between the two was quite close, and as I said a lot of people really did think that N64 was going to catch up. The numerous third-party-to-PSX announcements and the severe lack of software really hurt NIntendo's momentum though, and they never regained it after that. But even without CDs, if Nintendo had been more willing to proactively go after third parties, I think they'd have had a much better chance at holding that momentum that they made in the early months... and had they done THAT, well, then I think they'd have been in good shape. Consoles in the lead usually keep that lead, unless either another system comes out and is a big hit or the company does something disastrously wrong. Even in the latter case, though, it can be possible to hold onto a lead -- Even after all of their disastrous moves, the numbers we now know say that in the Americas as a whole (that is, including Latin America, Brazil, etc), Sega won, ~25 million for the Genesis versus 23.5 million for the SNES. See here for more Genesis sales numbers details:
http://segatastic.blogspot.com/2009/12/mega-drive-sales-figures-update.html
The point is, once you've got a lead it's hard to lose it. The challenge is gaining that lead. Maybe it was impossible to find something to maintain that early momentum because of how big an advantage Sony had thanks to its cheap media costs and much lower licensing fees, but I'm sure SOMETHING was possible. Nintendo just didn't do much, and just expected that what they had would be good enough, or that the Dream Team thing could do the job, or something like that. I'm not sure. The point is, they needed to do more, but didn't know it because they were too busy just expecting to win because they had for two generations. That's kind of like with Sony with the PS3 in a way, perhaps...
In Nintendo's case that finally led them to seriously reform their ways and change things and look for new strategies, which of course ended up in success. We'll see with Sony, we're still in the middle of this generation. That issue's not the point of this, though, so enough on that.
The only way that'd happen is if they managed to secure those key third parties. That wasn't really ever a hardware issue. Don't get me wrong. I like Sega, and bought a Saturn before I picked up a PS, but changing the hardware doesn't really insure Sega better than third place spot.
That's actually possible, yes... but Sega didn't necesarily need to finish first or second. They just needed to NOT LOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON THE SYSTEM. And I think a system like one of these would have a much better chance of achieving that than the Saturn as it is did.
They're the only console manufacturer that actively alienates third parties and still manages to sail along without 'em.
Actually, I'd say that Atari was even worse in that regards than Sega... but yes, Sega was pretty bad.
Feel free to present some kind of evidence.
What do I need to do? Prove that N64 games can have good framerates? That's easy, F-Zero X is rock-solid 60fps. Prove that it can do good 2.5d fighting games (because Virtua Fighter is NOT a 3d game! There's no 3d movement in that game! It's 2.5d.)? That's easy, SSB's fantastic. So um, what's left?
