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[PaulloDEC]

You haven't played real PS1 hardware in a while have you? The textures are filtered in those gifs (the PS1 couldn't blur textures like that) and the framerate looks too high. CTR was horrendous at times regarding framerate.

People need to stop posting tiny gifs "to represent" a game. I got tired of that shit back in "lets post Killzone 2 gifs everywhere". Games look different i fullscreen, tiny gifs make fucking Atari Jaguar games look good.

I suspect the "filtering" you're seeing is a side-effect of the GIF compression. Here's some screenshots from the uncompressed video:

The reason they're tiny is twofold: firstly, I wanted to use a size that felt representative of the resolution the console originally rendered at, and secondly I didn't want to chew everyone's bandwidth with stupidly large GIFs. I originally wanted to do WebMs, but the H264 compression makes it kinda pointless with PS1 games.

Finally, I wasn't aware PS1 emulators were capable of increasing framerates.

While he specifies that he's using an emulator and is incorrect about filtering (as you say, it's clearly there) it could still realistically originate from PS2 hardware. The PS2 used real PS1 hardware but had the added benefit of filtering textures when the option was selected. It was still 99% accurate to actual PSX hardware in terms of performance and visual quality - just with texture filtering as an option.

Whoa now, in this case, tiny gifs actually do represent the output resolution of these games.

Cheers for the backup

 

[Herne]

I think ps1 had better graphics when i see this comparison.
http://www.lensoftruth.com/retro-head2head-resident-evil-2/

Not exactly a fair comparison, with Capcom having to squeeze all of two disc's worth (about 1300MB) into a 64MB cartridge, fmv's and all. Of course it was all compressed to shit and obviously the textures would suffer because of it.

 

[MadJackChurchill]

N64 developers should be seriously commemorated for their wizardry. They avoided the cripplingly small cartridge sizes by some really awesome techniques - everything from assets to music was edited, looped, compressed in seriously interesting ways.

If you haven't looked it up, I would suggest investigating some of your favourite titles and how the devs managed to fit it all in (usually) 8-16MB.

 

[TGO]

You haven't played real PS1 hardware in a while have you? The textures are filtered in those gifs (the PS1 couldn't blur textures like that) and the framerate looks too high. CTR was horrendous at times regarding framerate.

People need to stop posting tiny gifs "to represent" a game. I got tired of that shit back in "lets post Killzone 2 gifs everywhere". Games look different i fullscreen, tiny gifs make fucking Atari Jaguar games look good.

Looks like you haven't played real PSX hardware
The Crash games had smooth textures, so did a few others but I don't think was filtered, you'll have to ask ND how they did it, but those gifs do represent the games

 

[rjc571]

That would be one hell of a 1999 PC.

No it wouldn't, a GeForce 256 (released in 1999) runs Quake 3 at 84 fps in 1024x768.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-3d-linux,225-9.html
(Of course, the CRT monitors of the time were able to display that many frames, as well!)

Even with newer consoles struggling to run in high resolutions, on old PCs it wasn't much of a problem.

Looks like you haven't played real PSX hardware
The Crash games had smooth textures, so did a few others but I don't think was filtered, you'll have to ask ND how they did it, but those gifs do represent the games

I think I read somewhere that ND actually did implement bilinear filtering on the Crash games.

 

[Later Alligator]

some of my favorite games of all time are from the ps1/n64 era. but the n64 definitely looked better/cleaner IMO and they aged better.

IMO nothing on the ps1 has ever topped mario 64, among others. and yes, i own all of the crash games, they some of my fav ps1 games (amongst others... warcraft 2, chrono cross, resident evils, metal gear, etc....)

 

[Eusis]

You wish.

I think he COULD be right, but the circumstances had to be so exact that it just wasn't practical. You might be able to make a singular game that looks better, but you couldn't just go and recreate Zelda: OoT on it, or Metal Gear Solid/Vagrant Story. I assume not anyway. It's stuff like VF2 that can come out ahead and that pulls at least a few tricks like mode 7 backgrounds as I recall.

 

[Timeaisis]

N64 had some memory issues, but other than that, it was superior. Once it got the RAM expansion there was no contest.

 

[Ray Wonder]

I've always wondered why there isn't a modern day equivalent to the expansion pak. Add a gig or two of ram.

 

[dark10x]

Looks like you haven't played real PSX hardware
The Crash games had smooth textures, so did a few others but I don't think was filtered, you'll have to ask ND how they did it, but those gifs do represent the games

Yeah, looking more closely at the pixel doubled shots, it does appear that texture filtering was, in fact, disabled all along.

N64 had some memory issues, but other than that, it was superior. Once it got the RAM expansion there was no contest.

That's really a limited point of view.

It has some serious advantages over PSX and is a modern modern piece of hardware but to suggest that it was superior across the board is ignoring all of the other advantages PSX had on tap. For one thing, audio is a huge issue that has been glossed over. The audio chip used in the PlayStation was like a supercharged version of the chip Sony produced for the SNES. Developers were able to create high quality music without using pre-recorded formats. The N64 could have benefited greatly from this as you could produce this music without eating up much disc space. The audio quality on PSX was not dependent on the CD format.

On N64, the lack of dedicated sound hardware not only resulted in lower quality audio but it also ate into CPU cycles further hurting performance.

Also, the PSX has native RGB output. N64 requires additional modding to achieve RGB output and, even then, the quality isn't great. It's further degraded by the atrocious filtering applied to most N64 games (as part of the default toolset). The image is much blurrier than it otherwise could have been as a result of this.

N64 was definitely forward looking hardware but it was ultimately limited by some poor engineering decisions (memory issues and lack of sound hardware, primarily). It's still a very interesting machine, of course.

 

[Cuyejo]

Didn't the PS1 had a lot more games running at 60 fps anyway?

 

[RAIDEN1]

Don't know if it was ever covered on these forums, but what about a comparison between Dreamcast and the M2 hardware from Panasonic/3DO?

 

[HalcyonXcution]

Inferior to the Saturn.

Spoiler

at 2d

The Saturn is a confusing little machine, it is powerful just not the easiest thing to program for. Still wish Sonic X-treme happened.

Food for though though Sega Mars and a prototype of sega Neptune do exist and it was Sega's first 32 bit console. Ah the 32x, at one point it would of been its own console (neptune) but was later made an add-on. Now this is where you have to wonder if sega gave the 32x an actual life span instead of a year before saturns release, do you think saturn would of been 64 bit at that point. While both the sega cd and 32x were not successful if they released with a lower price I could see them catching on, Sonic Cd, and knuckles chaotix make some good examples for what the can do. All in all sega killed them selves not only did the 32x get shortened but so did the saturn. First is usually not the best when releasing a console.

 

[-GOUKI-]

All these shots are so misleading. N64 and ps1 all ran games at like 240p resolution.

 

[dark10x]

All these shots are so misleading. N64 and ps1 all ran games at like 240p resolution.

Yeah, and it looks awesome. 240p is still beautiful (though primarily for 2D). 3D content at 240p does get a bit muddled.

 

[Metallix87]

I always find it weird and confusing when people tell me that PS1 was more powerful than N64 and PS2 was more powerful than GC, yet I've found it's fairly common.

 

[Ishida]

From a technical side though; Mario 64 thrashes Crash. Gameplay wise Mario 64 has kept itself waaaay better than the Crash 1 controls.

Wat

 

[RedSwirl]

Didn't the PS1 had a lot more games running at 60 fps anyway?

That's probably because it had a lot more games in general. Several times more.

 

[Barkley's Justice]

My perception of N64 at the time was it was much worse than PlayStation. It just looked so muddled and blurry that I assumed it was the weaker console.

There were some really striking games on PS1 such as Rage Racer, Soul Edge, Tobal 2, Tekken 2 and later Tekken 3. N64 games always left me visually wanting. Although I thought the wave physics in Waverace were unbelievable.

 

[Crazymoogle]

As an N64 dev back in the day, I can speak to some of this...

For one thing, audio is a huge issue that has been glossed over. The audio chip used in the PlayStation was like a supercharged version of the chip Sony produced for the SNES. Developers were able to create high quality music without using pre-recorded formats. The N64 could have benefited greatly from this as you could produce this music without eating up much disc space. The audio quality on PSX was not dependent on the CD format.

Not dependent, but highly in favor of. One of the PS1's greatest advantages was that you could preload SFX, but then let the drive stream audio as needed. With the N64, you were instead stuck with trying to prefetch from cartridge and then decompress to memory. Just having a coprocessor there to deal with BGM saved a ton in terms of keeping the main CPU idle. The RSP had a lot of other things to do, so you usually ended up with a GBA-like fight between video and audio quality.

As bad as the Texture Cache issue with the N64 was, an equally big problem was RAM latency. RDRAM could carry a huge amount of data, but the latency was awful. So awful that one would constantly be looking at ways to prefetch or pack what's going to the CPU (trying to carpool on the freeway, basically). It was just incredibly difficult to keep the VR4300 running at full capacity. There was also no CPU DMA, so again, just tons of roadblocks. I remember a lot of conversations about times in the Runtime where the CPU had plenty of room left but we just couldn't figure out a way to keep it busy.

I imagine the microcodes helped there a great deal, but back in the day this was proprietary information, so you had to go to Nintendo with some strong arguments to get any of that data.

The Gamecube is a really interesting piece of hardware to look at today, because it seems to have been built almost exclusively to deal with these issues.

 

[Man God]

Consoles were generally built like armies, i.e. prepared to fight the last battle. Sometimes they were completely ill suited for the new war though.

 

[RedSwirl]

As an N64 dev back in the day, I can speak to some of this...



Not dependent, but highly in favor of. One of the PS1's greatest advantages was that you could preload SFX, but then let the drive stream audio as needed. With the N64, you were instead stuck with trying to prefetch from cartridge and then decompress to memory. Just having a coprocessor there to deal with BGM saved a ton in terms of keeping the main CPU idle. The RSP had a lot of other things to do, so you usually ended up with a GBA-like fight between video and audio quality.

As bad as the Texture Cache issue with the N64 was, an equally big problem was RAM latency. RDRAM could carry a huge amount of data, but the latency was awful. So awful that one would constantly be looking at ways to prefetch or pack what's going to the CPU (trying to carpool on the freeway, basically). It was just incredibly difficult to keep the VR4300 running at full capacity. There was also no CPU DMA, so again, just tons of roadblocks. I remember a lot of conversations about times in the Runtime where the CPU had plenty of room left but we just couldn't figure out a way to keep it busy.

I imagine the microcodes helped there a great deal, but back in the day this was proprietary information, so you had to go to Nintendo with some strong arguments to get any of that data.

The Gamecube is a really interesting piece of hardware to look at today, because it seems to have been built almost exclusively to deal with these issues.

Wasn't ease of development Nintendo's whole selling point with the Gamecube? They thought they were gonna get more third party support off that alone compared to the relatively complex PS2.

Technically, Nintendo did get more Japanese third party support on the Gamecube than they did on the N64, but they didn't really anticipate the Xbox being equally easy to program for and sucking away western developer support Nintendo never realized it needed. I even think some statistic said most OG Xbox owners upgraded to it from the N64, not the PlayStation.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I even think some statistic said most OG Xbox owners upgraded to it from the N64, not the PlayStation.

That wouldn't be surprising. In the US the biggest selling point for the N64 was its focus on multiplayer games. The Xbox picked that up while Nintendo ignored that part of the N64's success.

 

[KojiKnight]

All these shots are so misleading. N64 and ps1 all ran games at like 240p resolution.

Not all, just the majority. Quite a few games ran at a higher resolution (some with or without the expansion pack on the N64 side).

 

[Fafalada]

I believe the issue you're talking about is primarily caused by the lack of subpixel correction in the rasterizer, rather than the fixed-point geometry engine directly.

To be precise - everything up to (and including) XBox1 used fixed-point precision in rasterizer, including N64 of course.
The difference as you pointed out, is that PS1 rasterizer had no subpixel correction, which resulted in additional artifacting N64 avoided. You can see the difference nicely against many software rendered PC games, which - for most part, used no-perspective correction, no-filtering, and (obviously) fixed-point math to rasterize, but didn't have the same issues with jittering polygon edges (not talking textures here).

 

[Contra11]

Didn't the PS1 had a lot more games running at 60 fps anyway?

Except few fighting games .. i dont think there are 3D 60 fps games on the ps1

 

[GamingIsDead]

Not all, just the majority. Quite a few games ran at a higher resolution (some with or without the expansion pack on the N64 side).

colony wars ran at higher res then most ps1 games. Found that out when playing it on my psp as the emulator will only run the games at 320x240 and the text was unreadable.

 

[Metallix87]

That wouldn't be surprising. In the US the biggest selling point for the N64 was its focus on multiplayer games. The Xbox picked that up while Nintendo ignored that part of the N64's success.

Nintendo didn't ignore that.

 

[moltonasty]

No comparison, N64 games looked better. I wonder how the tides would have turned if MGS had been released on the N64 instead. It's not like the game had any pre-rendered cutscenes that required CD's. And imagine how much better it would have looked!

 

[Ishida]

No comparison, N64 games looked better. I wonder how the tides would have turned if MGS had been released on the N64 instead. It's not like the game had any pre-rendered cutscenes that required CD's. And imagine how much better it would have looked!

In that case we could've kissed all the amazing audio and dialog goodbye.

Nope. Thank God that didn't happen.

 

[QuantumZebra]

Turok 2 called - said this conversation is over.

 

[encephalon]

Were there PS1 games that were able to use tricks to keep the textures more stable?

Also, the PSX has native RGB output.

If only I could just find the damn cord ...

 

[Branduil]

I believe the issue you're talking about is primarily caused by the lack of subpixel correction in the rasterizer, rather than the fixed-point geometry engine directly. The lack of floating point certainly caused some issues, though, especially with lazily ported PC code that just swapped out floating-point math for fixed-point...

That's true, I got my terminology mixed up.

I always find it weird and confusing when people tell me that PS1 was more powerful than N64 and PS2 was more powerful than GC, yet I've found it's fairly common.

Well, saying PS2 > GC is simply wrong. It's not really debatable like PS1 vs. N64. The only way in which PS2 bests GC is disc size, but there were a lot of ways around that problem.

 

[Ishida]

That's true, I got my terminology mixed up.



Well, saying PS2 > GC is simply wrong. It's not really debatable like PS1 vs. N64. The only way in which PS2 bests GC is disc size, but there were a lot of ways around that problem.

I may be wrong with this, but wasn't the PS2 better at handling particles and transparencies or some stuff, thanks to the insane fill rate?

The GameCube was of course more powerful, but I never saw a game in that console that matched the absolutely brutal effects of Zone of the Enders 2: The Second Runner.

 

[Branduil]

I may be wrong with this, but wasn't the PS2 better at handling particles and transparencies or some stuff, thanks to the insane fill rate?

The GameCube was of course more powerful, but I never saw a game in that console that matched the absolutely brutal effects of Zone of the Enders 2: The Second Runner.

That sounds right, but the Gamecube was simply better at so many other things- polygons, texturing, lighting, etc., that's it's pretty hard to argue against it being superior. The PS2 didn't have anything on the technical level of the Rogue Squadron games, Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, Resident Evil 4, F-Zero, etc. There were obviously great-looking games like the MGS series, but those took care to work within the system's strengths while minimizing the weaknesses like poor texture quality.

 

[Ishida]

That sounds right, but the Gamecube was simply better at so many other things- polygons, texturing, lighting, etc., that's it's pretty hard to argue against it being superior. The PS2 didn't have anything on the technical level of the Rogue Squadron games, Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, Resident Evil 4, F-Zero, etc. There were obviously great-looking games like the MGS series, but those took care to work within the system's strengths while minimizing the weaknesses like poor texture quality.

I'd disagree with Wind Waker, Metroid Prime and F-Zero. Resident Evil 4 is debatable, but Rogue Squadron indeed looked damn fine.

 

[RayMaker]

Overall visuals were better on the N64 because of the sheer fact that ps1 titles looked like everything was made from moving sprites(wobbly textures whatever you wanna call it). It truly did make games look like garbage, it was like devs were using tricks to make 3D works, where as the n64 was designed for 3D.

but the PS1 did have richer, bigger budget games, and I suppose you could make the argument that the ps1 was more powerful because it had more ambitious+richer games.

there was nothing like driver on the n64, that game was so sweet on PS1.

not having CD was a crippling factor for the N64

 

[mcz117chief]

Believe it or not, lads, but this is a PS 1 game, it looks almost as good as some of the early PS2 games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=648rmVwI108#t=123

When I saw it for the 1st time I couldn't believe it, this proves that PS1 had a ton of potential and was an extremely powerful console for the time. Now show me an N64 game of similar graphics fidelity, please

 

[Y2Kev]

No comparison, N64 games looked better. I wonder how the tides would have turned if MGS had been released on the N64 instead. It's not like the game had any pre-rendered cutscenes that required CD's. And imagine how much better it would have looked!

Turok 2 called - said this conversation is over.

This kind of post is pointless and rude. Do you see the thread is at almost 1500 posts? There's definitely comparison and the conversation is not over!

 

[rjc571]

Believe it or not, lads, but this is a PS 1 game, it looks almost as good as some of the early PS2 games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=648rmVwI108#t=123

When people say stuff like this, the only conclusion I can reach is that they've never actually seen a PS2 game in their life. The worst looking game on the PS2 looks ten times better than that.

 

[mcz117chief]

When people say stuff like this, the only conclusion I can reach is that they've never actually seen a PS2 game in their life. The worst looking game on the PS2 looks ten times better than that.

Ok, maybe it was a bit of a hyperbole. But I still think it looks really good for a ps1 game. Also, there are a lot of bad looking games on PS2, for example: about a month ago I bought Zone of the Enders HD edition and said to myself when I saw the in-game graphics "meh, not bad for a ps1 game, looks pretty much the same as Metal Gear Solid." you can imagine my shock later when I found out it is a ps2 game.

 

[TitusGroan]

While I'm not too schooled up on the technological doodads that went inside these consoles, I was around when both were out on the market. My family had a PS1, one of my best friends had an N64.

And as great as games like Crash and Spyro looked, the image quality was absolute crap compared to games like Mario 64 and Ocarina. Even as a ten year old, I could tell the difference between the warping, stretching, juddery jaggy polygons seen in PS1 games, and the comparatively smoother visuals on the N64. My mate and I used to play Goldeneye, and nothing on the PS1 came close.

The only way ten year old me could really explain it was by saying that it felt like a lot of the time, 3D in PS1 games seemed like more of a magic trick. You were presented with 3D levels and objects, sure, but you could also see the cracks in the illusion constantly appearing at the side, the warping, the stretching. Games like Mario 64, as barebones as they are by today's standard, felt tangible. When an object rotated in 3D, it didn't feel like an illusion, it felt like an actual 3D object.

The PS1 may have had the capacity for better textures, but none of that helped offset the fact that a lot of the time, the graphics felt like a bunch of polys and pixels warping themselves together to create an approximation. When the camera spinned around the races in F-Zero X, the textures may have been simpler, but those vehicles felt damn tangible. This isn't meant as a slight against PS1 games, many of which I still love to this day, but simply a statement that even my younger self could see that N64 games had better image quality.

Here in the UK, the marketing slogan for the N64 was 'The fastest and most powerful games console on earth.' I'm pretty sure Nintendo backed up their words there. Nothing on PS1 matched Ocarina when it came to a free-roaming 3D adventure land with dynamic camera angles and huge spaces.

 

[Branduil]

Believe it or not, lads, but this is a PS 1 game, it looks almost as good as some of the early PS2 games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=648rmVwI108#t=123

When I saw it for the 1st time I couldn't believe it, this proves that PS1 had a ton of potential and was an extremely powerful console for the time. Now show me an N64 game of similar graphics fidelity, please

I'd say Perfect Dark or one of the later Turok games.

 

[mcz117chief]

I'd say Perfect Dark or one of the later Turok games.

Ok, thanks. Yeah, agreed, both look better by a mile.

 

[boyshine]

Believe it or not, lads, but this is a PS 1 game, it looks almost as good as some of the early PS2 games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=648rmVwI108#t=123

When I saw it for the 1st time I couldn't believe it, this proves that PS1 had a ton of potential and was an extremely powerful console for the time. Now show me an N64 game of similar graphics fidelity, please

Here you go: Perfect Dark

 

[JNT]

Ok, maybe it was a bit of a hyperbole. But I still think it looks really good for a ps1 game. Also, there are a lot of bad looking games on PS2, for example: about a month ago I bought Zone of the Enders HD edition and said to myself when I saw the in-game graphics "meh, not bad for a ps1 game, looks pretty much the same as Metal Gear Solid." you can imagine my shock later when I found out it is a ps2 game.

I agree that the game looks good, but I think games set in dark space stations are prone to looking good in relation to what you expect from the hardware its being run on, see Doom 3, Dead Space, and Routine.

 

[mcz117chief]

Here you go: Perfect Dark

Yeah, I already accepted my defeat

I agree that the game looks good, but I think games set in dark space stations are prone to looking good in relation to what you expect from the hardware its being run on, see Doom 3, Dead Space, and Routine.

True, especially since you can turn down draw distance to just a few meters.

 

[dark10x]

Ok, maybe it was a bit of a hyperbole. But I still think it looks really good for a ps1 game. Also, there are a lot of bad looking games on PS2, for example: about a month ago I bought Zone of the Enders HD edition and said to myself when I saw the in-game graphics "meh, not bad for a ps1 game, looks pretty much the same as Metal Gear Solid." you can imagine my shock later when I found out it is a ps2 game.

Wait, what?!

ZOE1 is still a beautiful game for its day. It was released at the beginning of 2000. It looks great considering it runs at a flawless 60 fps with loads of particles and effects. Unfortunately, the HD Collection suffers from problems that weren't present in the original game and, unlike ZOE2, it was never patched.

Surely you're not talking about ZOE2, though, which is one of the best looking games from that generation. ZOE2 HD (patched version) is a fantastic version but the original non-patched ZOE2 is completely broken and terrible.

 

[mcz117chief]

Wait, what?!

ZOE1 is still a beautiful game for its day. It was released at the beginning of 2000. It looks great considering it runs at a flawless 60 fps with loads of particles and effects.

Surely you're not talking about ZOE2, though, which is one of the best looking games from that generation.

I am talking about ZoE1. The textures on the buildings, on enemies, the draw distance, it is all horrible. Absolutely uncomparable to Black or Shadow of the Colossus.

 

[petran79]

That looks nothing like an early PS2 game whatsoever. It looks like a PS1 game ported to PC with minimal improvements outside of resolution. Which is exactly what it was.

I'd probably take Quake 3 running on 1999 PC hardware at 1024x768 and 80 fps over Daytona or anything else on Model 3, though.

if you had 3dfx Voodo and UltraHLE, you could even run Nintendo 64 games back then!