Perhaps if you played it when you were young. But if you don't have any nostalgic feelings and started playing MK games with Double Dash, then MK7 does not only look pretty bad but it also plays incredibly slow and boring. Before MK Wii was out I downloaded MK64 on VC - it was a huge letdown.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
3D Games That Hold Up From the 32/64-bit era?
- Thread starter jeremy1456
- Start date
Perhaps if you played it when you were young. But if you don't have any nostalgic feelings and started playing MK games with Double Dash, then MK7 does not only look pretty bad but it also plays incredibly slow and boring. Before MK Wii was out I downloaded MK64 on VC - it was a huge letdown.
Isnt this the PC Port of MGS1?
DK64 aged alright, I think.
DK64's godawful object draw-in made it unplayable at the time of release for me. Having to get unreasonably close to a difficult to reach platform just to see if there was a banana there? Nope, I'm out. In Banjo you could look around the level and see your targets, and DK64 taking that step backwards was just unacceptable.
Darkstorne
Member
Another vote for Vagrant Story from me. That game's art direction is exquisite, and a prime example of Square in their prime:
Bjoern the Smexy
Member
I say Kirby 64, Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie, as well as Final Fantasy VIII and IX hold up pretty well.
I don't think FFVII holds up that good because those graphics REALLY suck hard. I actually didn't even like them back in 1997.
That's a baaaad texture pak there, son.
I don't think FFVII holds up that good because those graphics REALLY suck hard. I actually didn't even like them back in 1997.
DK64 aged alright, I think.
That's a baaaad texture pak there, son.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
A mere level pack for Banjo-Kazooie (same N64 tech, 60) I'd buy in a heartbeat and would prefer it over any game that's been released or announced for this year. This is how bad Banjo-Kazooie has aged. Absolutely splendid level design and great game mechanics.
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
If there was a platform, there was a banana. Which colour that banana had is a different question though...
I hadn't played the originals but based on the XBLA ports I absolutely disagree. But well, I don't have any nostalgic feelings towards the titles. Games have come a long way since 1998, with camera, controls, and game design improving quite a bit.
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
I prefer Soul Blade personally. Maybe even Tekken 3.
As for 3D games that sill hold up...
Mario 64
Banjo and Kazooie
Silent Bomber (there's nothing like it)
Crash Bandicoot
Ray Storm
Einhander
Ray Crisis
Thunderforce 5
Rtype Delta
Radiant Silvergun
Crash Bandicoot Racing
Crash Bandicoot series
Spyro the Dragon
Die Hard Arcade
Zelda titles
For a 1998 game, the gameplay hold up remarkably well.
Of course games that came later refined the formula but BK is still a classic IMO (better than DK64, BT and Conker).
UncleSporky
Member
No, you are thinking of WipEout 1 and 2097 (XL in the US), WipEout 3 never was released on the Saturn.
For this thread I'd like to nominate the WipEout games though; I think they hold up well gameplay wise. The first game is a little tricky, but 2097 and 3 really play great today. The feeling of the anti-gravity ship is fantasic and precise.
Especially 3 holds up well, with it's higher resolution and cleaner graphics. Benefitting from being later on in the PS1's lifetime.
I agree.
3 has "prototype" tracks, and while I don't think they are actually cel shaded, they use simple texturing that looks very much like it, and it holds up really well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvW5CYispTY
Glass Rebel
Member
Hmm, I haven't played it on original hardware so that might paint my memory of the game but I thought it looked pretty cool and as close to Suzuki's artstyle as the N64 would permit. I was talking more about the framerate and controls though. Of course, it's "just" a railshooter but it still plays amazingly well.
UncleSporky
Member
I thought Sin & Punishment was really dang good looking for being on the 64.
HORRORSHØW
Member
If there was a platform, there was a banana. Which colour that banana had is a different question though...
Bwahah. Those damn collectibles in that game.
ichtyander
Member
The Megaman Legends games look fantastic:
Yoshi
Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
It's not a matter of nostalgia. The level design in Banjo-Kazooie is absolutely brilliant, that team of Rare's really absolutely nailed the Collectathon subgenre, knowing exactly, how to use the collectibles to ensure a great flow in the game. The levels are compact, yet free for exploration, the notes lay out the basic paths through the levels and the design ideas for each level were expertly executed.
Since 1998, there were almost no improvements in camera, controls or game design in the collecathon genre. Super Mario Sunshine in 2002 improved on the camera and the controls, but after that there was only Vexx (2003) and a remake of Super Mario 64 even released in that genre and while Vexx is a nice game, it wasn't better than Banjo in any aspect sans graphics, Super Mario 64 DS had worse controls than Banjo and the camera wasn't better either. So no, this genre was not improved on since 2002 and the improvements from 1998 to 2002 were not that notable.
EDIT: I guess I should also answer the op's question:
Super Mario 64, Zelda OoT, Zelda MM, Banjo-Kazooie and F-Zero X are still among the best games ever created, besides them, Conker, Banjo-Tooie, Rayman 2, NiGHTS into Dreams (does that count as a 3D game?) and Diddy Kong Racing (also Mario Kart 64, but MKDS, MK7 and in particular MK8 are so much better than MK64...) are great fun. For PlayStation games, there are a lot of good games that suffer a lot from the PlayStation controller not having an analog stick. The Resident Evils, Croc, to lesser extend the Crash Bandicoot games would all greatly benefit from a complete overhaul of the controls, their level design is really good though.
EDIT 2: The Spyro games also hold up particularly well, they are still as awfully bad designed Banjo-clones, that absolutely failed to capture the essence of what makes collectathons fun, as ever. They do look quite nice though.
bobawesome
Member
The Megaman Legends games look fantastic:
Man...I wish these were available as PS1 classics on PSN.
Spieler Eins
Member
Games that were great back then still are. Games that were mediocre might be even worse now, though.
ResidentDante
Member
I agree.
3 has "prototype" tracks, and while I don't think they are actually cel shaded, they use simple texturing that looks very much like it, and it holds up really well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvW5CYispTY
Those prototypes should be like the benchmark for anybody making a new wipEout game. Make it play, move and feel like that with 1080p@60fps first, THEN add all the visuals and modern effects; guaranteed a great wipEout game.
Early 3D games that have aged well are very few and far between in my book. People have mentioned Starfox 64 and I think I'll agree to that, but the overall texture quality on the N64 was still pretty poor compared to the PSX, which had larger storage for clearer / bigger textures. Games on PSX generally seemed to have higher framerates too (the framerate on some N64 games is just abysmal, and the resolution is ridiculously blurry / small).
MGS1 is a pretty good example of an early 3D console game that hasn't aged atrociously. It has sort of a comic book-y vibe to its art direction.
Both the N64 and PSX had 1 mb of vram, so it didn't have room for larger textures than the N64. Rather, they were simply unfiltered, and because the PSX couldn't draw large polygons, it would have to subdivide large geometry into smaller chunks, which meant textures typically tiled better on the PSX (where they were stretched over huge areas on the N64).
N64:
PSX:
The shot you posted above of MGS is running on an emulator with its textures having a filter applied over them. And yes, the shots I posted are from emulators as well. The intent is to show the geometry, not the textures.
EDIT: In fact, the PSX has a 2k texture cache compared to the N64's 4k texture cache.
sixteen-bit
Member
R-Type Delta still looks nice
GravityMan
Member
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Vagrant Story
Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie look great on XBLA due to higher res and framerate. Same with Perfect Dark. I can't think of any N64 games that still look good today when played on a N64.
Vagrant Story
Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie look great on XBLA due to higher res and framerate. Same with Perfect Dark. I can't think of any N64 games that still look good today when played on a N64.
High resolution games tend to look good on a real N64 these days. Ignoring framerate, Perfect Dark looks great. Or Turok 2.
Conker also looks good on a real N64, despite not being high resolution.
arhra
Member
Those two numbers really aren't comparable at all: The PSX's texture cache is actually a proper cache. The texture units can access the main VRAM directly, and the cache sits in-between and caches texels as they're accessed.
The N64's texture "cache" is nothing of the sort. It's a manually-managed local store, and is the only piece of memory that the texture units can access directly, so every time you want to use a different texture, the entire texture (including the whole mip pyramid, for a mipmapped texture) has to be manually copied into the texture memory.
SaintMadeOfPlaster
Member
What does "hold up well" mean?
It seems most people here (no surprise) automatically assume it's a discussion about graphics.
I interpreted it as "which games are still fun and feel fresh to play?"
Until we all agree on what OP is talking about, many conversations in this thread will just go in circles.
It seems most people here (no surprise) automatically assume it's a discussion about graphics.
I interpreted it as "which games are still fun and feel fresh to play?"
Until we all agree on what OP is talking about, many conversations in this thread will just go in circles.
DrDrizzay101
Member
Recently replayed the PS1 trilogy, and while Spyro 1 feels kinda prototype-y the second and third games are absolutely fantastic. Full 3D environments that are a blast to explore and collect gems, with surprisingly spot-on controls and camera.
I also replayed the PS1 Crash trilogy and, while still great games, felt like they hadn't aged as well. They are a weird pseudo-full 3D that is mostly constrained to a 2D path, but not completely. It doesn't feel as good or work as well with the level designs as either full 3D environments in Spyro or committed 2.5D games like Klonoa imo. For example, the "run towards the camera, boulder chase" levels are really strange in hindsight.
Uncle Rupee
Banned
LOL... I think you mean 4kb
Wikipedia said:
You can easily see that the PS1 had way more memory for textures just by looking at most games. Some PS1 games have textures so detailed that you wouldn't even notice a big difference if they were smoothed using the N64's filtering (on an SD tv of course).
Look closely at this screen of Crash Bandicoot. There's no texture smoothing in this shot.
Amazeballs
Member
Tactics Ogre: Person of Lordly Calibur
Pre-Rendered 2D with 3D effects. Looks greats to this day. It could pass as a 3DS game.
CheDominik
Member
Sheep Raider
AbandonedTrolley
Member
What no love for G Police?
Still looks pretty decent today.
Still looks pretty decent today.
Sixfortyfive
He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Since the OP specified "3D" in the title, I just assumed he was talking about graphics. It's a weird distinction to make otherwise.
Brainiac 8
Member
Star Fox 64 still looks pretty nice.
But overall, not many hold up since 3D was so rough and blocky at that point.
But overall, not many hold up since 3D was so rough and blocky at that point.
Saint Gregory
Member
The only answer I had for this is Vagrant Story but I see it's been covered extensively in the thread already
Square just did an incredible job with translating Matsuno's traditional art style into 3D for a PS1 game. It still looked great when I played it a few months ago.
I feel like Symphony of the Night should count too since it had so many 3D elements.
Square just did an incredible job with translating Matsuno's traditional art style into 3D for a PS1 game. It still looked great when I played it a few months ago.
I feel like Symphony of the Night should count too since it had so many 3D elements.
Sapiens
Member
Shinrei Jusatsushi Taromaru
Man, I would really love to play this one day. Just seems so out of reach...shame about a lot of the Saturn library.
I'm sorry, no. For a 64 bit game this looks great:
As much as i love these games thats not how they looked like on a CRT screen back in the day.
Turok 3 using the N64's memory pak expansion looked like a Dreamcast game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y98nyRdl-k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y98nyRdl-k
Sub_Level
wants to fuck an Asian grill.
The majority of them hold up for me, but I will mention in particular:
Medievil
Armored Core
Crash Bandicoot Naughty Dog Trilogy
Quake
Duke Nukem 3D
Shadow Warrior
Fear Effect
Metal Gear Solid + VR Missions
Soul Blade
Wipeout XL\2097
Legend of Dragoon
Ghost in the Shell (PS1)
dat ps1
Never played Omega Boost or Vagrant Story but they seem like obvious picks as well. To prove that I just don't like ANY early 3d game, one example of one that I do NOT consider to have aged well would be MDK (PC, Mac, PS1).
Medievil
Armored Core
Crash Bandicoot Naughty Dog Trilogy
Quake
Duke Nukem 3D
Shadow Warrior
Fear Effect
Metal Gear Solid + VR Missions
Soul Blade
Wipeout XL\2097
Legend of Dragoon
Ghost in the Shell (PS1)
dat ps1
Never played Omega Boost or Vagrant Story but they seem like obvious picks as well. To prove that I just don't like ANY early 3d game, one example of one that I do NOT consider to have aged well would be MDK (PC, Mac, PS1).
BlackRainbowFT
Member
PS1 games look "okay" on screenshots but awful in motion... look up affine texture mapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_mapping).
I really hate jittery textures and "breaking polygons".
I really hate jittery textures and "breaking polygons".