sixteen-bit
Member
sörine;120006760 said:
Flat shaded 3D ages pretty well imo. Tobal is a good example and it maintains 60 fps. Looks awesome!
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PS1 (PSX) - Worst Aging Video Game System to Date?
- Thread starter Delt31
- Start date
Flat shaded 3D ages pretty well imo. Tobal is a good example and it maintains 60 fps. Looks awesome!
The warping issue with PS1 graphics bothered me even back in the 90s. It's still a great system to this day, but I never got used to seeing that probably because I got my N64 first.
OP is clearly someone that started gaming in a post-Nintendo world. Everything before the NES is collectively the worst aging video game system.
Agreed. Some PS1 games look absolutely awful at high resolutions, like Ridge Racer Type 4. Increasing the resolution only makes the texture warping effect worse. At its intended resolution it's still a visually appealing game.
Some games are just meant to be appreciated as what they originally looked like.
Those screenshots are the game running in an emulator, the art was designed around the low resolution and forced dithering of the original Playstation.
3D on the Playstation worked best in dark environments where details are lost within the darkness and the dithering, creating a very atmospheric look that is lost when rendered in enhanced emulators. For example here are is a screenshot of the same scene rendered in the same way it was on the original Playstaion:
The lower resolution, dithering and narrower colour palette create a more unified look that stands up better than when rendering at a high resolution with no dithering in an emulator. The details in the face become more painterly and details in the scene blend more evenly into the darkness. The smoke from the cigarette also blends in naturally with the scene. Here are some other shots of Vagrant Story that show how well the games art direction was thought out with the limitations of the hardware.
I really do think there are a number of games that look better rendered as they are intended. At high resolutions the limitations on textures and models are brought to light and the smart ways of drawing scenes to avoid showing this are lost.
This cropped shot from a cutscene in Metal Gear Solid is also great at showing how the Playstation can look great when the art is played to the systems strengths:
Agreed. Some PS1 games look absolutely awful at high resolutions, like Ridge Racer Type 4. Increasing the resolution only makes the texture warping effect worse. At its intended resolution it's still a visually appealing game.
Some games are just meant to be appreciated as what they originally looked like.
OP is clearly someone that started gaming in a post-Nintendo world. Everything before the NES is collectively the worst aging video game system.
Agreed. Some PS1 games look absolutely awful at high resolutions, like Ridge Racer Type 4. Increasing the resolution only makes the texture warping effect worse. At its intended resolution it's still a visually appealing game.
Some games are just meant to be appreciated as what they originally looked like.
I played this game on my Vita a while ago and it looks quite decent on its lovely little screen. The story mode is quite cool, a shame more racing games haven't expanded the core idea.
Before coming to Gaf a few days ago I've never heard anyone say they like flat shaded 3D before. But now that I think about it, I really do agree it's a nice clean look.
What are some other games that had nice flat shaded 3D graphics?
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
Worse makes it sound like it's bad. Between using emulators and popping the old discs in or ripping them or even playing them on PS3 or Vita, they are just fine. I only wish we had more of the back catalog on PSN for games like Lunar 1/2 and the Jade Cocoons of the world.
The PSX's GPU would interpolate an 8bpp framebuffer from the 24bpp internal render when storing in framebuffer. This was done to save space in vram. The side effect of this is a full screen dither. On a normal CRT television of its time, NTSC Color bleed would make the dither vanish, and the image, to the eye, would be virtually indistinguishable from the original 24 bpp image. With modern screens (and even using certain cables of the day, like a SCART cable to an RGB monitor in europe) would completely expose the effect. You can see traces of it in lots of the screenshots people have posted that aren't touched up.
Modern emulation can skip the color downsampling, hence making these games look much better than they used to. Example: Pure, untouched, PS1 output:
Very noticeable. Worth mentioning that downsampling to a lower color depth was common up until the Xbox days. The GCN, for example, will go from 24bpp to an 18 bpp framebuffer.
Once we moved over to HDTVs, this was no longer viable.
vagabondarts
Member
I liked the PS2 Ridge Racer game that followed your trek through a global racing league. It had a rich story campaign and was like a mix between Gran Turismo and Ridge Racer. The name escapes me at the moment.
It definitely built on and expanded on ideas from R4.
R4 on Vita is great btw
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
OP is clearly someone that started gaming in a post-Nintendo world. Everything before the NES is collectively the worst aging video game system.
Agreed. Some PS1 games look absolutely awful at high resolutions, like Ridge Racer Type 4. Increasing the resolution only makes the texture warping effect worse. At its intended resolution it's still a visually appealing game.
Some games are just meant to be appreciated as what they originally looked like.
This is also a big factor. I'm probably not going to play my old PS1 games on a 70" 4k TV.
I agree. Just the other day, I played Metal Gear Solid on my PS1 and the game grabbed me into its world. Although the original Playstation may not have aged as well as the others, it still holds up well depending the games you played. If the game was from the very beginning of its life, then it may be rough to play, but like nrvalleytime said (above), a lot of RPGs really hold up well.
That's still a very small list and, unfortunately, most of those you listed still rely heavily on 3D backgrounds. Are there even any truly 2D pixel art style action games on the system? Bangaioh is perhaps the closest thing, but it's kind of strange looking with tiny sprites and simple background tiles.sörine;120005686 said:
That's what's disappointing. You really have to dig into the library (mostly Japanese as well) to find any 2D games at all and what's there isn't even completely 2D for the most part.
Just one really great 60 fps 2D action game for the N64 would make me happy.
Azure Wolf
Banned
For the time it was released PS1 was a relatively competent 3D machine, but after the N64, and especially the Dreamcast was released it just highlighted what an absolute mess many 3D PS1 games were.
Not to mention how much it held back many N64 and DC games because they were ported from PS1.
There are definitely notable exceptions, but by 1998 at the very latest the PS1 was pretty much utterly redundant as a true 3D gaming machine.
I'm not disputing that many good 3D games were released for the PS1 subsequently, but all were subject to severe limitations when compared to true 3D games like Zelda OOT and Half Life, and when Soul Calibur for the DC came out the following year, it was basically a joke machine for 3D games, all IMO of course.
Not to mention how much it held back many N64 and DC games because they were ported from PS1.
There are definitely notable exceptions, but by 1998 at the very latest the PS1 was pretty much utterly redundant as a true 3D gaming machine.
I'm not disputing that many good 3D games were released for the PS1 subsequently, but all were subject to severe limitations when compared to true 3D games like Zelda OOT and Half Life, and when Soul Calibur for the DC came out the following year, it was basically a joke machine for 3D games, all IMO of course.
FaintDeftone
Junior Member
From my experiences recently, most games play just fine but the graphics are sort of an eye sore. Graphically the console did not age well, especially while playing anything rendered in full 3D. Stuff like 2D titles and JRPGs are fine, though.
The console is still great to break out and play, though. I dusted off Bust a Groove a few weeks ago and was impressed how well it still looks.
The console is still great to break out and play, though. I dusted off Bust a Groove a few weeks ago and was impressed how well it still looks.
spookyfish
Member
I remember seeing these games for the first time, and I have a nostalgic feeling about them. But I understand what you're saying.
Closest you'll get to what you're asking for on the N64 is Worms Armageddon.
Parakeetman
No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
Son turn in your gamer card right now.
It wasn't relatively competent, it was high performance 3D at an extremely cheap price. It was a really big deal.
You forget the n64 launched almost 2 years after the PSX and the Dreamcast 5 years after. Of course they highlighted the advancements since the PSX's release. The PSX doesn't even have a z-buffer. It was from a time before such things were standard.
EDIT: Like I can't get over this revisionist history. What were it's peers that it only appeared competent next to? 3D accelerator cards of the time? the PSX stomps the Nvidia NV1 Diamond Edge 3D released a year after the PSX. Arcade games? You'd be comparing several thousand dollar tech to a $300 home console... and in some cases, the $300 home console outperformed the arcade tech.
The PSX wasn't "relatively competent." It was pretty amazing for its time.
hardcastlemccormick
Banned
The more games I play before I got into gaming, the more I realize that "aging badly" is bullshit.
It's not even nostalgia. The old stuff is just fine.
It's not even nostalgia. The old stuff is just fine.
Isleofsancroy
Banned
I lost you when you said the NES aged well.
Here here
The hardware was incredible for its time. In 1994, when it was first released in Japan, it was far ahead of the competition from a performance perspective. Not even PCs of that day could compete with the PSX let alone any other consoles.
I still feel that a high frame-rate is what really helps older games stand up over time.
Games with really low frame-rates just aren't very playable at this point.
It's certainly more important than the visuals themselves.
Azure Wolf
Banned
All right that's a fair point, my phrasing may not have been the best, at the time it was about as good as 3D got, which is to say the hardware wasn't there yet to provide high quality 3D experiences, pretty much on any platform, and with the possible exception of Ridge Racer which still holds up fairly well, none of the PS1 early games hold up well as a true 3D experience.
I never implied that the PS1 was released at the same time as the N64 or DC, nor forgot that, but the fact is they all competed with one another at a time when the PS1 was the dominant platform, yet vastly inferior to both at producing high quality 3D games.
There's no revisionist history at all in my post, and as mentioned it's all my opinion, you're welcome to counter it.
The video for Money for Nothing by Dire Straits was once the height of 3D graphics, yet were they ever any more than a competent representation of a 3 dimensional form? If even that?
The same applies to the PS1 for me, it was a powerful machine at the time yet still incapable of producing high quality 3D games. The N64 was the first console to nail a rudimentary 3D experience, the DC the first to provide standards that are still the framework for modern 3D games. The PS1 was a sort of halfway house for 3D games, but that still doesn't take anything away from its success.
Eh, that's bullshit. We had a great PSX vs. N64 thread not too long ago and it showed that both system had their advantages and disadvantages.
Comparing raw numbers I can see your point but you have to be aware that there are simply less games in general on N64 (around 400 total). It has less than a fifth the library PS1 did and even less than Saturn somehow. It has far, far less 2D games but also far, far less janky 3D games too.
I also didn't dig too deep really and three of my examples (Wonder Project J2, Pokemon Puzzle, Bomberman) do hit the mostly sprite based qualifier you seem to want. I mean if you want zero polygons then even stuff on PSX/Saturn like SOTN or Valkyrie Profile or Astal would be disqualified. And there's others on N64 too albeit mostly multiplatform puzzle games (Mickey Tetris, Bust-A-Move series, Puyo Puyo series) or the games are just pretty ugly imo (KI Gold, MK Trilogy, Clayfighter 63 1/3).
Curry-Hakase
Member
IMO the majority of 3D PS1 games haven't aged that well(still better than the NES) due to all the QoL design changes we've been pampered with ever since.
The 2D games on the PS1 are really timeless though.
The 2D games on the PS1 are really timeless though.
Well, for that particular topic; it's true. During half the generation, multiplats didn't come out on PSX/N64/Saturn; it was PSX/N64/Dreamcast.
Azure Wolf
Banned
What was the point of that post? You have countered anything at all.
Until Mario 64 came out, 3D games on consoles had not yet properly been realised, Zelda OOT further cemented the 3D legacy and set in place pretty much all the standards for modern 3D 3rd person games (z targeting) etc.
Goldeneye was regarded as pretty much the first competent 3D FPS on a console - none of those experiences were possible on a PS1.
The PS1 had PLENTY of advantages over the N64, most of which is it's comparatively massive library of games with huge variety in many genres, but as a true 3D machine, it just wasn't a great console.
Also how about linking the topic instead of glib insults? It doesn't do your argument any favours.
I'd rather play PS1 games (especially RPGs and other games that don't rely framerate and/or 3D as much) instead of 95% of the stuff on the NES. I'm not sure how those games hold up for you (outside of a few obvious Nintendo and Capcom exceptions) but everything on PS1 doesn't.
The consoles were designed with different philosophies in mind. The PSX reminds me of the NES in a lot of ways, given that it was built under the assumption that 3D worlds would be constructed of small rooms, much like how the NES was built mainly for single screen games. The PSX generally has just enough in it to render an entire room on screen, but not much off screen beyond a room. Games that seemed open or sprawling on the PSX were essentially aggressively culling off-screen polygons to continuously draw "rooms" just beyond the edge of the draw distance to create the illusion of continuous, flowing space.
The N64 wasn't really designed like that. It was built to push large polygons. It doesn't aggressively cull offscreen geometry, mainly because the levels themselves often have low geometry.
However, while conceptually these are huge differences, in practice, they wound up not being very dissimilar. You can typically create the sort of games you made on the N64, on the PSX, and especially vice versa. Only games custom made for the N64, like Mario 64 or Zelda, would have been really impossible on the PSX.
Stuff like Medal of Honor and The World is not Enough shows that a goldeneye-like game was very possible on the PSX.
SolidSnakex
Member
In what sense? Jumping Flash was already released, and that was a fully 3D first person platformer. It even controls and works well today. Back then they actually figured out how to make jumping work in first person by simply having Robbit tilt its head down as you were coming down so that you could see its feet in order to land properly.
jett already responded to this one, but there were a good number of solid FPS games on the PSone.
sixteen-bit
Member
that assumption isn't true; one of the big deals about the NES was that it allowed scrolling backgrounds
Not to mention that Tomb Raider has released before that, and Crash Bandicoot was released only 3 months after Mario 64. And if we're judging the PSX's ability to produce 3D by it's ability to make a game in Mario 64's vein, the PSX was home to games like Gex 3, Croc 2, and Spyro the Dragon.
Scrolling backgrounds are achieved through external memory mapper chips within NES game carts. Scrolling is a trick. The NES actually wasn't designed around scrolling games, much like the MSX.
Night_Trekker
Member
Good games are always good. Your expectations (about controls or graphical complexity) may have changed, but the games didn't. Games don't change as they get older. It may be hard to go back to an older game, but if it's no good, it was never any good.
Goldeneye was a landmark game but there were definitely other well regarded console fps before it. Doom SNES, Doom 32X, AVP Jaguar, Space Hulk 3DO, Powerslave PS/SS, Disruptor PS, Duke Nukem 3D PS/SS and probably a bunch more I'm forgetting.
Tomb Raider released 5 months after Mario 64 too. The only 3D platformer that really predates it is Floating Runner.
I love Jumping Flash but it honestly feels more like piloting a vehicle than character based platforming. It's really not a great title to put against Mario 64.
Tomb Raider released 5 months after Mario 64 too. The only 3D platformer that really predates it is Floating Runner.
Azure Wolf
Banned
Actually Jumping Flash was one of the more interesting early PS1 games to me and I do remember being pretty damn impressed by it, but to say it laid the ground work for Mario 64, a far more complex and varied experience, not to mention you're comparing a first person game to a third person one, with none of the 3D camera considerations is a highly tenuous claim.
Also a couple of PS1 shooters, playing to the systems limitations (low draw distance rooms and settings) and released in 1999 (2 years after Goldeneye) a time at which PC and DC were truly defining 3D graphics, doesn't cut it as a high quality 3D experience, but in fairness, they are decent for the system. But like I said originally, N64 Goldeneye simply wasn't possible to be made on the PS1.
All I can say is that I was there for both launches of both machines, I was definitely impressed by the dinosaur demo on the PS1, and Battle Arena Toshinden was fun to look at and play, but at no point did I feel it ushered in a new age of 3D, with games that arguably looked a lot worse than the best 2D graphics at the time with a distinctly pixelated watery quality that was never remedied. 2 years later Mario 64 utterly blew my mind in every sense, graphics, gameplay, etc, and I'll defend it forever as the game that pioneered true, quality 3D gaming on consoles.
Also the poster that mentioned quality 2D FPS's on PS1, that was never in dispute, we're talking 3D.
As a successful console the PS1 soundly defeated the N64, but not in the realm of 3D games, nor in the sense of pioneering 3D standards.
Anyway, these are just all opinions, of course we'll have differing ones, I welcome opposing viewpoints as long as they're respectful.
Lord_Balkan
Member
The biggest problem with the N64 was the framerate.
The N64 has much much better image quality than the PS1. Anti aliasing and mipmapping. All the people who say the N64 looked like vaseline was smeared on the screen don't really get it. The textures were slightly lower res than the PS1 textures, but the mipmapping the N64 provided made it seem worse than it was. The benefits of mipmapping is that the texture does not get pixelated when you get close to it (something the PS1 suffers from greatly). The textures were smooth (vaseline smeared on the textures would be more accurate then on the screen), but the image quality was clear. You were able to easily distinguish objects and edges even if they were in the distance (don't bring up turok fog, because the ps1 had pretty bad draw distance as well, the difference is they didn't use fog to hide it).
It is the same argument that gets brought up with whats better? GLQuake or Quake? One of the biggest differences is the mipmapping, which removes pixelation. The psychological benefit of pixelated textures is because they are a pixelated mess, they trick the eye in thinking there is more detail than there really is. This is similar to Skyrim and partially why it looks so much better and cleaner than Oblivion. They used DOF to blur out low-res textures in the distance. This makes it seem like there is more detail than there really is. This happens when you pixelate textures or blur out parts of a scene.
No, using polygons to some effect is OK, but many of those games use backgrounds that are entirely 3D. That's kind of a different thing (more in line with something like Klonoa which does the same thing).sörine;120015490 said:
N64 is the one system that I struggle to build a compelling collection for. I have no real nostalgia for it and I find most of its best games somewhat difficult to play these days (outside of Nintendo's first party stuff like Mario, Zelda, F-Zero, Smash, etc).
Gravy Boat
Member
I think some games still look pretty great.
Of course some games look terrible, but even some PS3/360 games look terrible by today's standards.
Of course some games look terrible, but even some PS3/360 games look terrible by today's standards.
The first side scrolling game was released on the Famicom after two years or am I wrong?
EDIT:
I'm actually wrong the first game for famicom with the scrolling background is Namcot's Xavious released a year after the launch.
Sapiens
Member
SotN is all polygons.
Many in this case would be a total of four games out of everything I've listed. Look, I'm not disagreeing with your larger points but you seem to be layering those with a lot of smaller untruths I take some issue with. Most 2D N64 games didn't use prerendered sprites, there were indeed some fully sprite based games on the system, and so on. That's why I'm bringing you counter examples for each point.
TheJollyCorner
Member
I didn't have any issues with PS1's graphics back in the day, much like the NES, but the generation jump changed everything.
PS2 to PS1 was absolutely stunning to me (as was SNES to NES).
Other than some nostalgic favorites, I find it the hardest to go back to the NES and PS1 era games.
PS2 to PS1 was absolutely stunning to me (as was SNES to NES).
Other than some nostalgic favorites, I find it the hardest to go back to the NES and PS1 era games.
You throw around terms like mip-mapping and anti-aliasing as if it were the 90s.
Texture filtering is what you were talking about. Mip-maps are actually a collection of smaller optimized textures designed to reduce moire and aliasing of flat surface textures as they move away from the camera. Mip-mapping basically serves as a "Level of detail" for textures and they weren't always used in N64 games.
N64 texture filtering only used three samples during its process instead of four as we saw with 3D accelerators on the PC. It was basically a hack to allow for cheaper hardware at the time but it created all sorts of artifacts that you shouldn't normally see with bilinear filtering. The results were more of a triangular pattern within surfaces as opposed to the more "diamond" shape you would see elsewhere. In some cases, I actually think basic nearest neighbor filtering might have looked better than the hacked bilinear filtering. It was the lack of perspective correction on PSX that ruined its textures not the lack of filtering.
The N64 didn't use real AA either. They had some sort of "edge filter" that was normally enabled and while it did help reduce some aliasing artifacts it also created a much blurrier image that removed detail. Quake 64 seems to be a game which allows you to disable this filter and the difference is rather astounding. It's a much cleaner, sharper game without this filter so it's a shame that most games seemed to use it.
Fair enough. I don't have access to Japanese compatible N64 hardware so I haven't delved into those titles but I did spend a while attempting to procure N64 titles that fit what I was looking for and came away super disappointed.
Still, talking about 2D games is strange as there are so few. Most of the NTSC-U games I've looked into use rendered sprites.
Is there any 2D action platformer on N64? Looking at your list I'm not seeing any. Those are the types of games I enjoy picking up and playing still today.
yeah,but comparing to today standards,the controls are impracticable.I need to try to play again,but i can't understand how anyone did any mod to ''change'' the controllers.
Let me clarify the role of the memory mapper and how scrolling on the NES works. Perhaps saying the NES wasn't built for scrolling or single screen games is going a bit too far. The NES was still designed mainly to accommodate single screen games like Mario Bros or Donkey Kong, but it had some unique quirks at the time that enabled games like Super Mario Bros to scroll
The NES can set up pages of screen resolution into various configurations using mirroring modes. You can think of the screen real estate on the NES as being two screens big, either arranged in a horizontal arrangement or a vertical arrangement. The reason Nintendo did this was to allow for scrolling high score tables or screens that "moved" onto each other, like Zelda or the title screen for bubble bobble.
Conventional computers at the time allowed only for full width character scrolling, but the NES PPU had an offset for pixel scrolling of individual characters. This was meant to let one page transition to the other, again, like how Zelda's screen transitions work.
Games like Super Mario Bros would use memory mappers to move a seam of 8x8 character blocks off screen over once they reached the edge of the screen. The idea was to scroll by pixel the two screens until you reached the edge of the right most screen, at which point the entire scroll would reset to 0, and the position of the "seam" would shift so that you never noticed. Early mappers, like in Super Mario Bros 1, only allowed this seam to move in 1 direction. Eventually, more advanced mappers allowed the seam to move in multiple directions.
Multidirection scrolling on the NES was essentially impossible. The way games like Mario 3 got away with it was by defining the mirroring mode in vertical space such that every screen was 2 screens tall. Then, expecting overscan to hide the effect, the right-most column of the screen was devoted to the "seam." The game would offset the horizontal pixel arrangement of the screen up to 1 column of tiles until it'd snap back to place. This is why, when played on an emulator, you see artifacts on the right side of the screen in Mario 3. This is also why, excusing the vertical scrolling levels in World 7, all levels in Mario 3 are 2 screens tall and no taller.
Mario 2 got around this by switching mirroring modes at points. The levels would be arranged horizontally until you reached a point where it'd need to scroll vertically, at which point it'd become a vertical orientation. Mario 2 never scrolled in 2 directions at once.
Contrast this to systems built for multi-directional scrolling, like the Sega Genesis, which has hardware registered to scroll in both directions. Scrolling on the NES is rather one large trick.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
Just pick other games to play.
Out of that gen maybe it has some of roughest aging games, but I can say the same of N64 and Saturn.
I do agree tho that lack of analog support for early PS1 games hurts them tremendously today, but it sounds to me maybe you're just not in a mental state where you can adapt to the play systems of older games. It doesn't mean they're objectively worst in most cases; for example it's very hard to say the old RE games are objectively worst than RE 6, 5, or even 4; the general consensus is they're better than 5 and 6 and 4 is pretty much as good as them, just a lot different.
For me it's the most unique games on the system that still hold up today (and in some cases exceed what's out nowadays too) imho. But something like NFL Gameday '97...yeah...very very dated by today's standards.
Mischief Makers is excellent. Yeah it's prerendered CG models ala DKC, but it's smooth as hell and "feels" like a sprite-based game. Give it a play sometime.
Out of that gen maybe it has some of roughest aging games, but I can say the same of N64 and Saturn.
I do agree tho that lack of analog support for early PS1 games hurts them tremendously today, but it sounds to me maybe you're just not in a mental state where you can adapt to the play systems of older games. It doesn't mean they're objectively worst in most cases; for example it's very hard to say the old RE games are objectively worst than RE 6, 5, or even 4; the general consensus is they're better than 5 and 6 and 4 is pretty much as good as them, just a lot different.
For me it's the most unique games on the system that still hold up today (and in some cases exceed what's out nowadays too) imho. But something like NFL Gameday '97...yeah...very very dated by today's standards.
Mischief Makers is excellent. Yeah it's prerendered CG models ala DKC, but it's smooth as hell and "feels" like a sprite-based game. Give it a play sometime.
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