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[gamerMan]

I want to say Waverace 64. I like that the beautiful, turbulent waves ARE the gameplay.

Man, I wish the that Nintendo still existed. Using tech to create new gameplay ideas that never existed before. I remember playing that game over and over again even though the game was super short. It was damn fun and the graphics blew me away. There was this one level that started out in fog and when it cleared up, it looked so real with the reflections in the water. It probably doesn't look so good today, but at the time it blew my mind.

 

[minkymuskyslyoldstoaty]

Man, I wish the that Nintendo still existed. Using tech to create new gameplay ideas that never existed before. I remember playing that game over and over again even though the game was super short. It was damn fun and the graphics blew me away. There was this one level that started out in fog and when it cleared up, it looked so real with the reflections in the water. It probably doesn't look so good today, but at the time it blew my mind.

That sounds like the Drake Lake / Milky Lake level, after Sunset Bay.

 

[MisterHero]

Man, I wish the that Nintendo still existed. Using tech to create new gameplay ideas that never existed before. I remember playing that game over and over again even though the game was super short. It was damn fun and the graphics blew me away. There was this one level that started out in fog and when it cleared up, it looked so real with the reflections in the water. It probably doesn't look so good today, but at the time it blew my mind.

No developer will probably ever be as awesome as EAD was on N64. They could make all sorts of games, but today there's not enough time or money for games that aren't Mario or Zelda.

I'm kind of scared to play Starfox Zero because of that legacy.

 

[IdreamofHIME]

It's Conkers for sure. It looked better than most of the PS2's launch lineup.

 

[chemicals]

I'm trying to remember... But everything is so freaking blurry. Lol. No but seriously - the N64 had some of the worst graphics ever.

 

[Kozak]

Man, I wish the that Nintendo still existed. Using tech to create new gameplay ideas that never existed before. I remember playing that game over and over again even though the game was super short. It was damn fun and the graphics blew me away. There was this one level that started out in fog and when it cleared up, it looked so real with the reflections in the water. It probably doesn't look so good today, but at the time it blew my mind.

The reflections and water in that stage hold up today imo.

 

[Xaero Gravity]

I have some different definitions of still holds up I guess.

You and me both.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

Beetle Adventure Racing looks almost as good as World Driver Championship (sometimes) and has a way more interesting art style

 

[potatohead]

There are too many inaccurate emulator shots in this thread. Emulators make N64 games look too sharp.

If you want to see how N64 games really look and don't have a real machine, use the Angrylion's Pixel Accurate plugin and keep DAC filters ON:

These are images from random games from this thread: http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?31145-N64-Games-Hacked-To-Remove-Blurry-Graphics-Via-Action-Replay-Or-Flash-Carts

For me, in order to declare the Graphics king on the N64, i take into account the sharpness (you can't see that in emulator shots without Angrylions and many games look too blurred in reality), frame rate (can't see that in screenshots), geometry, draw distances and art direction. It has to be a good balance between all those. With that said, these are the definite winners on the N64:

World Driver Championship

Banjo-Kazooie

Shadowman (High-Res mode)

Doom 64

Thanks for this! I didn't know of this plugin until I saw your post. Great plugin!

Any ideas on how to get it to perform better? I switched to LLE graphics emulation, but there's lots of slowdown. But I guess that's normal.

 

[My words exactly!]

World Driver Championship, especially the Zurich, Las Vegas or Sydney tracks, incredible visuals for the time, the best looking "realistic" racer of that generation by far. Too bad BOSS games folded, they had an awesome looking Xbox game on the way as well

Perfect Dark did things that STILL aren't done by many games today in the hit detection, animation, lighting and AI department. Not to mention attention to detail like many types of bullet holes depending on the surface, enemies staying limp when shot on foot (and not miraculously recover like all other games) etc . All that on 8MB RAM on the N64. Amazing. Any other console shooter at the time couldn't hope to come close.

Banjo Kazooie Had great colors, incredible draw distance (see the Click Clock Wood level or the Haunted Mansion), smooth framerate 99% of the time.

Roadsters was an unexpected surprise sepecially with the xpansion pak's hi-rez mode it really looked very clean, shiny and busy, lots of trackside detail, with fully rendered drivers on the cabrios. Could pass as an early DC game, even.

Diddy Kong Racing Best looking and best playing kart racing game of that generation. Flawless visuals basically.

Battle for Naboo Perfecting the Rogue Squadron engine, ditches the fog entirely, super hectic levels, had great audio AND a commentary feauture by Factor 5 on the cart.

Indiana Jones Improved from the PC version, with better textures and lighting. Great visuals and framerate. The closest thing to N64's Tomb Raider

Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask
No need to say much for this, they trumped OoT visually, in enemy numbers, animation, effects, and the polycount was the highest of an N64 game (along wth JFG)

Honorable mentions
F1 World Grand Prix II Was the best looking F1 sim at the time, with "photorealistic" visuals.

007 TWINE Much better lighting, reflections, shadows,reload animations geometry than GoldenEye. However had worse textures imho.

Jet Force Gemini Gargantuan levels, really large scope, great lighting, some fuzzy textures in places and framerate drops nix points.

Conker Same as above, only more pronounced

Rally Racing 2000 It was an OK rally game with good draw distance but it was the first time i had seen a true real time reflection of the environment on car windows and windshield

ISS 64/98/2000 Arcade football game (precurson to the PES series) that looked incredible at the time. The 200 version even supported 480i visuals with the expansion pak.

GoldenEye
Though it got beat by Perfect Dark's evolution it still impresses at times (Aztec, Silo and Frigate levels have amazing texturework)

Pilotwings 64
Launch game, incredible scale, large draw distance.

 

[potatohead]

World Driver Championship, especially the Zurich, Las Vegas or Sydney tracks, incredible visuals for the time, the best looking "realistic" racer of that generation by far. Too bad BOSS games folded, they had an awesome looking Xbox game on the way as well

Damn son, that Lambo game looks sweet.

 

[Krejlooc]

Perfect Dark did things that STILL aren't done by many games today in the hit detection, animation, lighting and AI department. Not to mention attention to detail like many types of bullet holes depending on the surface, enemies staying limp when shot on foot (and not miraculously recover like all other games) etc . All that on 8MB RAM on the N64. Amazing. Any other console shooter at the time couldn't hope to come close.

Hi:

 

[Timu]

Good god, so many emulator shots...

 

[Lux R7]

Perfect Dark to me.

 

[Pastor Steven Anderson]

I've posted a few screens from my UltraHDMI N64 in the N64 thread. Here's one shot from Paper Mario. It's just the image being upscaled with the scanlines filter on.

Can post more if people want other games.

Yes, please god do that. Let's see 64 getting pushed on real hardware. Can you show Majora's Mask (or OOT)?

 

[sixteen-bit]

Ogre Battle 64 got that timeless charm imo

 

[nkarafo]

Thanks for this! I didn't know of this plugin until I saw your post. Great plugin!

Any ideas on how to get it to perform better? I switched to LLE graphics emulation, but there's lots of slowdown. But I guess that's normal.

Unfortunately, the plugin is only single threaded i believe and you are going to need to overclock as high as 4.5ghz and above to get a few games run full speed with this thing. So it's mostly only for testing, to see how a game really looks and compare to other plugins i suppose.

 

[Lork]

Hi:

Ah yes, a port of a PC game that doesn't even attempt to compete with Perfect Dark across any of the categories he mentioned with the possible exception of lighting, on the next generation of hardware. I can see why this isn't a total non sequitur.

 

[Krejlooc]

Ah yes, a port of a PC game that doesn't even attempt to compete with Perfect Dark across any of the categories he mentioned with the possible exception of lighting, on the next generation of hardware. I can see why this isn't a total non sequitur.

Quake 3 has great hit detection and spectacular bot support, both far better than Perfect Dark, both online and in local multiplayer.

But mostly, his claim that "no console FPS of the time could touch it" was wrong. Quake 3 on the dreamcast was king of console FPS at the time.

 

[nkarafo]

Beetle Adventure Racing looks almost as good as World Driver Championship (sometimes) and has a way more interesting art style

There's also some real time reflections going on, on the body of the car. Rally 2000 also had real time reflections on the windows. These were not faked.

 

[diddykong13]

I wish Dinosaur Planet would have made it out on the N64 in it's original form - that game looked fantastic

 

[My words exactly!]

Krejlooc, Q3 was arena based and far less ambitious than PD as far as campaign went. Basically, it's no contest. It also ran on better hardware. By hit detection i meant shots having a visible impact on enemies, affecting their behaviour, animation etc, not talking about hitboxes (which is what you are referring to).

BTW multi in PD was no slouch, bots had many different personalities/behaviours and custom setups with myriads of loadouts and weapon choices were possible. The plethora of content is still unmatched today, even the Timesplitters games were lacking in that department compared to PD.

Ah yes, a port of a PC game that doesn't even attempt to compete with Perfect Dark across any of the categories he mentioned with the possible exception of lighting, on the next generation of hardware. I can see why this isn't a total non sequitur.

Exactly.

 

[Tom Nook Sawyer]

There's also some real time reflections going on, on the body of the car. Rally 2000 also had real time reflections on the windows. These were not faked.

Nah, they were faked, at least in BAR. It just mapped the portion of the screen to the respective side of the car. Convincing (and impressive) for sure, but not a true reflection

 

[nilbog21]

By far and away SM64. If you owned a pc back in the day you knew N64 graphics were dog shit. PC's couldn't touch sm64 tho..

 

[nkarafo]

Nah, they were faked, at least in BAR. It just mapped the portion of the screen to the respective side of the car. Convincing (and impressive) for sure, but not a true reflection

You seem to be sure about this so i'll take your word for it.

 

[Ishida]

It's Conkers for sure. It looked better than most of the PS2's launch lineup.

No. Not even close.

 

[Tom Nook Sawyer]

You seem to be sure about this so i'll take your word for it.

Haha fair enough, but just in case it weren't enough, I found this in the original IGN review

The best effect, on the other hand, is the reflection mapping. Yep, you heard right. Drive by a sign and it will actually reflect in your cars paint. It's an awesome trick (it's actually the full screen view mapped onto the car, much like the jumbotrons in many of the second generation sports games) that's sure to be copied by many upcoming racers.

 

[dark10x]

By far and away SM64. If you owned a pc back in the day you knew N64 graphics were dog shit. PC's couldn't touch sm64 tho..

Eh, I dunno, I was hardcore into PC gaming during the mid to late 90s but, when N64 first hit, it definitely blew me away. 3D cards were only JUST starting to appear when N64 first launched in Japan and seeing Mario 64 being played was just...insane.

At the time, I was completely obsessed with texture filtering and it was a new effect to me.

Once I added a proper 3D card to my PC first with PowerVR then Voodoo 1, the N64 was left behind, but initially, it was very very impressive.

 

[nkarafo]

Quake 3 has great hit detection and spectacular bot support, both far better than Perfect Dark, both online and in local multiplayer.

The hit detection in Goldeneye and PD is almost above anything else i have ever played. A bullet can zip near an enemy's head (or any object) if you miss the spot for a couple of pixels (with no auto aim). And you get different hit spots on each body part as well. PD goes beyond that with hit boxes on your enemie's weapons.

Also, the bots in PD could be assigned with different behaviors. Like having a bot hunting the last man/bot who killed him, or a coward one running away and shooting from afar, or a bot who tries stealing all the pick ups, etc.

http://perfectdark.retropixel.net/pd/combat/simulants.php

In Quake 3 they just kill each other.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

It's Conkers for sure. It looked better than most of the PS2's launch lineup.

Holy hyperbole, Batman.

Goddamn, where do I even begin...?

 

[potatohead]

Unfortunately, the plugin is only single threaded i believe and you are going to need to overclock as high as 4.5ghz and above to get a few games run full speed with this thing. So it's mostly only for testing, to see how a game really looks and compare to other plugins i suppose.

OK cool, thanks for info

It does look very nice.

It's Conkers for sure. It looked better than most of the PS2's launch lineup.

 

[BumblebeeCody]

Definitely on that Conker BFD train but Turok, Star Wars, Paper Mario and Yoshis Story deserve credit.
I've not seen that World Driver Championship before but that does look impressive.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

I wish Dinosaur Planet would have made it out on the N64 in it's original form - that game looked fantastic

Anyone else think Miyamoto changed it to Star Fox Adventures because Nintendo didn't want Rare to have another original IP they could take to Xbox-land so they a changed it to a Nintendo IP so it doesn't help Rare when it was sold to the competition?

And yes, that game looked phenomenal. I'm certain it would've been better remembered than SFA on GC.

 

[dark10x]

It's Conkers for sure. It looked better than most of the PS2's launch lineup.

Ridge Racer V alone was a huge leap in visuals. Beautiful 60fps, 24-bit color, impressive lighting and reflection effects, depth of field, faked spectacular highlights on the road, and unmatched geometry detail.

Conker ran at a much lower resolution, an absolutely awful frame-rate, and was geometrically simplistic with low-res textures (though they were sharp for N64 standards).

 

[Glix]

Posting emulator shots in threads like these should be ban-worthy, it drives me nuts.

Rogue Squadron was a pretty fine looking game.

 

[Timu]

Posting emulator shots in threads like these should be ban-worthy, it drives me nuts.

Rogue Squadron was a pretty fine looking game.

Don't worry, I posted direct feeds a page or so ago, and I agree as well.

 

[Shikamaru Ninja]

Posting emulator shots in threads like these should be ban-worthy, it drives me nuts.Rogue Squadron was a pretty fine looking game.

In still pictures. In motion or game play, not so much.

 

[Version 3.0]

The reflections and water in that stage hold up today imo.

Honestly, everything about the game except the awful character models hold up well, and the water in particular, of course. The character models were poor even at the time, but it didn't matter much and still doesn't.

Posting emulator shots in threads like these should be ban-worthy, it drives me nuts.

Banning sounds harsh, but yeah, it's annoying.

 

[Timu]

Ridge Racer V alone was a huge leap in visuals. Beautiful 60fps, 24-bit color, impressive lighting and reflection effects, depth of field, faked spectacular highlights on the road, and unmatched geometry detail.

Yeah I own that and I agree it looks great!

 

[IdreamofHIME]

Ridge Racer V alone was a huge leap in visuals. Beautiful 60fps, 24-bit color, impressive lighting and reflection effects, depth of field, faked spectacular highlights on the road, and unmatched geometry detail.

Conker ran at a much lower resolution, an absolutely awful frame-rate, and was geometrically simplistic with low-res textures (though they were sharp for N64 standards).

Notice I said "most", not all. But it's cool that you love RR so much.

 

[Lork]

Quake 3 has great hit detection and spectacular bot support, both far better than Perfect Dark, both online and in local multiplayer.

But mostly, his claim that "no console FPS of the time could touch it" was wrong. Quake 3 on the dreamcast was king of console FPS at the time.

lol, Quake 3's bots were an embarrassment, and were roundly criticized at the time. That you would dismissively compare it to Perfect Dark of all games really betrays your ignorance on the subject.

By hit detection i meant shots having a visible impact on enemies, affecting their behaviour, animation etc, not talking about hitboxes (which is what you are referring to).

Even by that metric he's still completely wrong. Here is a visual representation of the "hit boxes" used by Quake 3:

Perfect Dark used a far more accurate method that actually attempted to conform to the visual model and animations of the thing you're shooting at. I don't know the precise nature of the solution they used or have access to a visual representation of it because it's a console game, but suffice to say that if the player were to aim just over the shoulder of the character in My words exactly!'s screenshot they would miss, which would not be the case in Quake 3.

 

[Timu]

I wish Dinosaur Planet would have made it out on the N64 in it's original form - that game looked fantastic

I would had loved for this to come out even though I enjoyed Star Fox Adventures.

 

[Timu]

Ogre Battle 64 got that timeless charm imo

Heard good things about that one but haven't played it yet.

 

[SpotAnime]

World Driver Championship. There really isn't a better looking game on the N64, from a pure graphics standpoint.

Artistically, there are all kinds of good examples, but they're just not pushing the hardware as much as WDC. It was remarkable then and it stood the test of time now.

 

[J.D]

Am I the only one who really loved the look of DK64?

 

[Jay Sosa]

Conker, no doubt.

 

[Timu]

Am I the only one who really loved the look of DK64?

No, there are others who do, like me.

 

[Red Devil]

Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie, I remember jumping into the water on occasion only to see the water drops effect, I thought that looked very neat back then.

 

[AntMurda]

World Driver Championship. There really isn't a better looking game on the N64, from a pure graphics standpoint.

Artistically, there are all kinds of good examples, but they're just not pushing the hardware as much as WDC. It was remarkable then and it stood the test of time now.

It's not even a contest how WDC smokes any RARE or Factor 5 game. Unless you really didn't mind playing low framerate games.

 

[Timu]

Gonna repost this:

Here's 4 games and hopefully more coming, note that these are taken directly from the console with no upscaling, no filters, just scan doubled from 720x240 to 720x480 due to the NTSC signal.

World Driver Championship

Turok 2

1080 Snowboarding

Wave Race 64

The reason Turok 2 has 3 because honestly, it's tough to take screenshots of that game, lol.

Remember I took these directly from the console, no emulation crap.