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[MrCunningham]

And yet Mario, being more detailed in the DS version, had fewer polys than the N64 version lol.

Wait, he did? Maybe he smaller screen was playing tricks on my eyes.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

Wait, he did? Maybe he smaller screen was playing tricks on my eyes.

It's not the smaller screen. It's the detailed texture work on the DS version.

 

[Branduil]

It's not the smaller screen. It's the detailed texture work on the DS version.

That and vastly improved modeling techniques compared to the primitive early days of 3D. In the original game, Mario's arms and legs were composed of separate, closed cylinders that were just animated together. The DS model has seamless limbs that are properly stitched together.

 

[LeleSocho]

It's not the smaller screen. It's the detailed texture work on the DS version.

more like improved techniques of modeling

 

[MrCunningham]

That and vastly improved modeling techniques compared to the primitive early days of 3D. In the original game, Mario's arms and legs were composed of separate, closed cylinders that were just animated together. The DS model has seamless limbs that are properly stitched together.

Yeah, that's most likely it. Though I would need to see the two models side by side to fully compare the two.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

more like improved techniques of modeling

I suppose everything has to be factored in. Better modeling + texturing = do more with less polygons.

 

[D.Lo]

This is the very definition of grasping for straws, you are comparing N64 sales numbers to a catastrophic failure that caused Sega to bow out of the hardware business and a huge disappointment that caused Nintendo to rethink their hardware strategy entirely.

Let's compare apples to apples, PS1 to N64. 102 million units for the PS1, that's more than three times than what the N64 managed. You also forgot to mention that the N64 sold nearly 20 million less consoles than the SNES, despite the market getting bigger every year at the time.

And let's do software too. 962 million units for the PS1, 224 million for the Nintendo 64. The numbers more than speak for themselves.


The N64 didn't really sell well anywhere. If not an outright failure it was a definite disappointment. Nintendo went from market leader to a very, very far second place. It's like arguing that the PS3 was a success for Sony.

The N64's problem was it died off quickly as well. PS1 was only at around 60 million at the end of 1999 (sold not shipped) to 30 million-ish N64 so it was more of a SNES/Genesis situation at that point (where the N64 had made up lots of ground given it released much later), when N64 sales fell off a cliff, as Nintendo started to focus back on Game Boy Color and the upcoming Game Boy Advance, among other things.

Still, the n64 sold more than any non-Nintendo or Sony system apart from the 360 and Mega Drive. If it's a failure then only 6 consoles ever had been successes until this generation.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Also, Nintendo owned on the factories that made the carts so you were forced to go through them and accept their rules and they got a cut from that as well. N64 using carts is not only the one major thing that lost them the crown of king of the gaming world but also was the very height of their greed and determination to take advantage of third parties any way they could which is still being felt even today.

It was terrible for 3rd parties because Nintendo gets paid whether the games sell or not, but if you have to pay like $31 a unit for your game there is very little margin for error. A flop is financial catastrophic at those rates.

It does have AA? It's still so horribly pixelated, though... DS graphics look in between N64 and PS1 graphics because of the missing filters. DS 3d looks ugly for me compared the N64 3d because of the awful, unfiltered polygons. And that anti-aliasing can't be as good as the N64s... but yeah, it does look better than PS1 because of the Z-buffering and perspective correction.

There's only so much smoothing that can be done in 256 × 192 pixels. That's a pure resolution problem.

 

[pixelbox]

People mentioned wave race but what about that crash 3 jetski level. Imo was nearly as impressive on lesser hardware. Tomb raider 3 and 4 were awesome lookers as well.

 

[dark10x]

Yeah, no way. The DS has no anti-aliasing or texture filtering, and you can REALLY tell. Sure, DS games are all 60fps and can have much higher-res textures, but the horrible aliasing absolutely ruins them versus the N64. I'd absolutely say that the N64 looks better overall because of that.

... I just don't see it at all, beyond "decent late-PS1 graphics". It looks almost as bland to look at in those screenshots as it is to actually play...

I can see that we don't agree on art design and gameplay, then. RRT4 looks absolutely gorgeous to me and still plays great. Ridge Racer 64 isn't even remotely close.

Also, on the DS, not all games were 60 fps. It was common (which was awesome) but there were still 3D games that couldn't deliver. Mario 64 is one of them (limited to 30 fps).

I loved playing 4 player split screen in the PSOne version. Quake 2 PSOne was a real achievement, one of those titles that 'couldn't be done' but they did. Same adventure as the PC title but with a bit more frequent loading.

That's not entirely true. The game does change quite a bit as you progress. Some areas are basically the same as the PC version while many others are entirely new. It weaves back and forth between the PC levels, N64 levels, and entirely original areas. It's a strange mix of content.

It looks absolutely incredible, though. Much more detailed than the N64 version (which, of course, runs on a different engine).

hat "Test Drive Le Mans did 5 million polys" thing is out there because a developer said it, but yeah, it's not true. The game does push more polygons than most Dreamcast games, though I don't know if the exact number is known, but the DC can't really go over ~3.2 million polygons before you start to run out of room for textures as you mention... but as I've said, I don't know if any released games get anywhere near that number. Had the system lasted longer we would have seen more DC games for sure with multi-million polygon counts.

TDLM was one of those games that really demonstrated to me how much more potential the PS2 had. It was hyped as a very impressive showpiece for the Dreamcast and I did think it looked great, but the lighting was a bit flat and the framerate only 30 fps.

Even the launch title Ridge Racer V absolutely SMOKED TDLM when you saw the two side by side. Sure, RRV was jaggy as hell, but the smooth framerate, visual effects, lighting, post processing, and depth of field were all unlike anything we had seen before. The 60 fps realtime intro alone was jaw dropping for the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US2-Hvjr6Ls

When GT3 was finally released it was even more obvious that the PS2 was one a different level.

 

[xemumanic]

I think the N64 was more powerful than the PS1, maybe not by much overall, but it almost never got the chance to prove it anyway.

The fact that the N64 was still using carts really limited it potential. The textures looked like blurry smears for one. But the impact of that choice to use carts I feel reverberated well into future generations. Many developers instead went to the PS1, Square being the poster child of this, but not the only. Note that all the new iterations of Capcom or Konami series for example, from the previous generation, were on the CD consoles, and not the N64. Because of that, Nintendo was a second place that was so far behind, it may as well have been 3rd place.

Sony took Nintendo's place as the default brand for video games in the PlayStation era. Few cared what they did last generation with the GameCube, except for diehard Nintendo fans, many of which probably grew up with the N64 as their first console despite Sony's successes. They fell so far from grace even newcomer Microsoft beat them by a small margin.

Nintendo's choice to go 'lower end' with the Wii, and now the Wii U (the Wii U in comparison to what we expect from MS and Sony for next gen) all stems from their choice to go with carts in the N64.

 

[danwarb]

Texture filtering made all the difference. PS1 games were noisy and jittery in comparison to N64.

If only PS2 hardware allowed for decent texures, like the DC.

 

[dark10x]

Texture filtering made all the difference. PS1 games were noisy and jittery in comparison to N64.

If only PS2 hardware allowed for decent texures, like the DC.

IT DID allow for decent textures.

Good lord. Have you actually gone back and taken a look at any Dreamcast games as of late? Very early PS2 games struggled a bit, but by the end, PS2 games were delivering better textures than we ever saw on Dreamcast.

I've played a LOT of Dreamcast in the past two weeks and I was kind of shocked by how poor most games actually look today.

 

[jett]

IT DID allow for decent textures.

Good lord. Have you actually gone back and taken a look at any Dreamcast games as of late? Very early PS2 games struggled a bit, but by the end, PS2 games were delivering better textures than we ever saw on Dreamcast.

I've played a LOT of Dreamcast in the past two weeks and I was kind of shocked by how poor most games actually look today.

Yeah there's no comparison, people talk about the DC vs PS2 as if it was still the year 2000. :lol

 

[Tain]

Actually, that makes me curious. How did late 3D Naomi to PS2 ports turn out? Stuff like Triggerheart and Shikigami no Shiro 2.

 

[zephervack]

You are right, the Turoks might be streaming indeed.

Im pretty sure they were not as big as we thought, I remember the screen going black (fast-loading) whenever you entered these:

You would find a lot of these in each area, but yeah, the game is still impressive.

 

[v1oz]

Nintendo gave conservative numbers for the N64's performance which is why some people think it was slower than the PS1 in some aspects. And indeed some developers doing ports of Playstation games had problems getting it to push lots of triangles on screen with the standard microcode which was far too accurate for gaming purposes. But with custom microcode you could easily get the N64 to push 600,000 polys per sec. Twice as fast as the PS1, but with better quality filtered polygons.

Technically the N64 was way ahead of its time. When it came out it had tech which even PC's didn't have. The N64 was the first consumer level hardware with trilinear mip map filtering, perspective correction, anti aliasing, hardware zbuffering, environment mapping, coloured light etc etc. The N64 actually pre-dates the 3DFX Voodoo PCI card. And it could do stuff like Coloured light easily, which PCs at the time struggled with. Coloured lighting was one of the major highlight features of the Quake II engine for example.

The N64 was also one of the earliest devices to use high speed Rambus Ram (albeit with high latency). At the time, back in mid-2006, nothing could touch the N64 tech wise.

 

[Tyrone_Biggums]

Nintendo gave conservative numbers for the N64's performance which is why some people think it was slower than the PS1 in some aspects. And indeed some developers doing ports of Playstation games had problems getting it to push lots of triangles on screen with the standard microcode which was far too accurate for gaming purposes. But with custom microcode you could easily get the N64 to push 600,000 polys per sec. Twice as fast as the PS1, but with better quality filtered polygons.

Technically the N64 was way ahead of its time. When it came out it had tech which even PC's didn't have. The N64 was the first consumer level hardware with trilinear mip map filtering, perspective correction, anti aliasing, hardware zbuffering, environment mapping, coloured light etc etc. The N64 actually pre-dates the 3DFX Voodoo PCI card. And it could do stuff like Coloured light easily, which PCs at the time struggled with. Coloured lighting was one of the major highlight features of the Quake II engine for example.

The N64 was also one of the earliest devices to use high speed Rambus Ram (albeit with high latency). At the time, back in mid-2006, nothing could touch the N64 tech wise.

It was a technically impressive console to be sure. Every game I saw on it blew me away, from Mario to GoldenEye to Zelda to JFG, they all looked incredible to my 13 year old eyes. My favorite console to date.

 

[dark10x]

Nintendo gave conservative numbers for the N64's performance which is why some people think it was slower than the PS1 in some aspects. And indeed some developers doing ports of Playstation games had problems getting it to push lots of triangles on screen with the standard microcode which was far too accurate for gaming purposes. But with custom microcode you could easily get the N64 to push 600,000 polys per sec. Twice as fast as the PS1, but with better quality filtered polygons.

Technically the N64 was way ahead of its time. When it came out it had tech which even PC's didn't have. The N64 was the first consumer level hardware with trilinear mip map filtering, perspective correction, anti aliasing, hardware zbuffering, environment mapping, coloured light etc etc. The N64 actually pre-dates the 3DFX Voodoo PCI card. And it could do stuff like Coloured light easily, which PCs at the time struggled with. Coloured lighting was one of the major highlight features of the Quake II engine for example.

The N64 was also one of the earliest devices to use high speed Rambus Ram (albeit with high latency). At the time, back in mid-2006, nothing could touch the N64 tech wise.

It was definitely ahead of its time in many ways.

My disappointment with it stems from the fact that I don't feel it drastically improved over its lifetime.

Sure, there were games doing a lot more by the end of its life, but they sacrificed a lot of performance to get there. Is doubling scene detail really that impressive when you halve your framerate?

In 1996, however, Mario 64 was truly the game to beat. So many PC focused magazines covered the system and I do believe the capabilities helped drive 3D card sales.

 

[Tain]

At the time, back in mid-2006, nothing could touch the N64 tech wise.

Obviously a typo, but it cracked me up.

 

[Bending_Unit_22]

Obviously a typo, but it cracked me up.

Heh, it worked for me at first since I was thinking Rambus which after the N64 the next time I heard about it was the PS3 in 2006. But yeah, typo.

 

[atbigelow]

The one thing with the DS is that the hardware has a hard vertex limit per frame that it can display. I believe it's 2000(NOPE) 6114, see below (thanks Cuteness). This is a good/bad thing, because if you're under this you can hit 60 FPS no problem. If you want more, you're gonna have to be swapping vertices in and out and drop your framerate.

And the DS absolutely has anti-aliasing. You can see it pretty easily on New Super Mario Bros. However due to the lack of texture-filtering, things overall look more pixelated than games on the N64.

But seriously the most annoying graphical quirk of the PS1/N64 generation was the jittering. The DS lacks floating point calculations and suffers from the same thing. And it drives me insane seeing it. The 3D in most DS games is hard for me to stand.

You can see how much more "real" feeling the geometry is in N64 games due to the lack of jittering. Sure the textures were a blurry mess, but you didn't have to worry about edges shifting around oddly when a character was "breathing." While Vagrant Story is an absolutely beautiful game, I distinctly remember the jitters on the character models during the cutscenes.

 

[Cute Dragon Here]

I guess I'm pretty fine with how DS 3D is - a bit of an improvement compared to both PS1 and N64 3D. It's like what would have happened if we did had a compromise between them.

The vertex limit seems to be around 6144 or so. That would make sense - 2048 triangles all with unique vertices.

I'd agree with you on the lack of texture filtering, but having perspective correction, even if a bit inaccurate compared to later systems (extreme angles seem to still manage to cause it to fail), already had it 3D quality better than PS1 in most senses.

I've noticed that the "jitter" is still much less than the PS1, which, in addition to the lack of floating-point, didn't had a Z-buffer. I wonder whether that did anything?

 

[Josh7289]

You might be blind. Wait, did you just call R4's visuals bland? I think the problem here is a lack of taste.

For what it's worth, my jaw dropped at some of those screenshots you posted. I've never played the game before, but everything you described it as rings true with me too. Except for maybe the nostalgia part.

 

[MYE]

I'm quoting this again because damn it, you compelled me to make a quickie Shadowman comparison, I grabbed the shots from this video that was posted earlier:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woJ1GUmL0Xw




Major difference is honestly one you can't see in the pictures, the framerate is smoother on the N64. There are also some lighting effects missing on the PS1, but they largely look the same. I even prefer the use of color on the PS1 in some places. Neither is a particularly good looking game, I think I pretty much wasted my time to be honest.

Psx version is terrible, man. Sound cuts off or doesnt even play. Controls are shit, lighting effects are worse and it seems to be extra jittery for no reason whatsoever.

 

[rjc571]

I guess I'm pretty fine with how DS 3D is - a bit of an improvement compared to both PS1 and N64 3D. It's like what would have happened if we did had a compromise between them.

The vertex limit seems to be around 6144 or so. That would make sense - 2048 triangles all with unique vertices.

I'd agree with you on the lack of texture filtering, but having perspective correction, even if a bit inaccurate compared to later systems (extreme angles seem to still manage to cause it to fail), already had it 3D quality better than PS1 in most senses.

I've noticed that the "jitter" is still much less than the PS1, which, in addition to the lack of floating-point, didn't had a Z-buffer. I wonder whether that did anything?

But polygons which are adjacent to each other are going to have shared vertices, so you should still be able to have more than 2048 triangles per frame on the DS even with the 6144 vertex limit, right? This is something that I was never clear on.

 

[atbigelow]

But polygons which are adjacent to each other are going to have shared vertices, so you should still be able to have more than 2048 triangles per frame on the DS even with the 6144 vertex limit, right? This is something that I was never clear on.

Yeah, "vertex striping" I believe is the term for it. You can share vertices with other polygons. That's why the limit is on vertices and not polygons themselves.

 

[Y2Kev]

Psx version is terrible, man. Sound cuts off or doesnt even play. Controls are shit, lighting effects are worse and it seems to be extra jittery for no reason whatsoever.

Wat? The psx version is probably shit but you bring up sound? The n64 version is like half silent in that video.

 

[Aeana]

Yeah, no way. The DS has no anti-aliasing or texture filtering, and you can REALLY tell. Sure, DS games are all 60fps and can have much higher-res textures, but the horrible aliasing absolutely ruins them versus the N64. I'd absolutely say that the N64 looks better overall because of that.

The DS absolutely has edge anti-aliasing. It's really obvious if you're actually looking at a game on the DS's screen itself.

I'll quote M3d10n's wonderful DS vs. PSX post from last year:

On your command.

I'd say it's a tie. The DS is better than the PS1 in a lot of areas, the PS1 advantages all contributing to making the top PS1 games look better (in overall) than DS games.

- Renders at 18-bit color: providing a clean image free of dithering;
- Perspective correct texture mapping avoids the "zig-zag" or "wavy" textures seen on PS1 games;
- Polygons shake/snap a lot less in DS games due to higher precision geometry transformations (32-bits versus 12-bits);
- True skeletal animation due to much faster CPU and hardware-accelerated transform & lighting;
- Hardware-accelerated polygon clipping and backface culling.
- Hardware support for cel-shading, outlines, stencil-buffer and reflection mapping;
- Free edge antialiasing.

But the PS1 had some advantages:
- 600~700MB discs (being able to use multiple discs if needed), while most DS games are smaller than 256MBs.
- Supports additive and substractive blending modes, while the DS only supports alpha-blending (like the N64 did);
- Higher polygon throughput (180K tris/s versus 120K tris/s on the DS);
- More flexible rendering pipeline (but harder to program for);
- The top-games had much bigger budgets than DS games;

The DS has a very strange way of dealing with polygons, in that it always runs at 60fps and draws 2048 polygons per frame. Only polygons which are visible on the screen count for that number (after clipping/culling) and anything over that is simply skipped. If you want your game to run at 30fps and get twice the polygons you need to jump through hoops and draw the scene in two passes, sacrificing some VRAM and dropping from 18bpp to 16bpp to do so.

The PS1 would just reduce the framerate if you pushed more than 3000 triangles per frame. So a 20fps game could push 9K triangles per frame (FFIX battles).

The budget/development philosophy was very different: the top PS1 games were bona-fied blockbusters where developers were constantly attempting to out-do each other in technical prowess while even the top DS games are developed with a safer and more budget-conscious approach.

Crash Bandicoot is a great example: there's nothing on the DS like it (but the Wizard of Oz game gets very close - and runs at 60fps). But if you read the article about it, there's nothing preventing a DS game from using the same streaming technique. But it's such a ludicrous and laborious technique that no DS dev would get a budget approved for that.

 

[MYE]

Wat? The psx version is probably shit but you bring up sound? The n64 version is like half silent in that video.

I meant sound glitches. I think the Dreamcast port also had this issue, but I never played much of my copy of that port.

 

[Calamari41]

All I know is that when I booted up Star Fox 64 for the first time and the crew was running down that hallway in the opening, I knew that we had reached the pinnacle of graphics and that it would be impossible for a game to look any better.

 

[dark10x]

I meant sound glitches. I think the Dreamcast port also had this issue, but I never played much of my copy of that port.

Well, the N64 does sound like shit AND suffers from glitches.

The Dreamcast port is even worse. The audio is almost completely broken. The framerate is also stupidly unstable on Dreamcast. :\

 

[A Black Falcon]

The N64's problem was it died off quickly as well. PS1 was only at around 60 million at the end of 1999 (sold not shipped) to 30 million-ish N64 so it was more of a SNES/Genesis situation at that point (where the N64 had made up lots of ground given it released much later), when N64 sales fell off a cliff, as Nintendo started to focus back on Game Boy Color and the upcoming Game Boy Advance, among other things.

Still, the n64 sold more than any non-Nintendo or Sony system apart from the 360 and Mega Drive. If it's a failure then only 6 consoles ever had been successes until this generation.

Yeah, I've said this as well, but didn't have those specific 60 vs. 30 numbers. That's not quite Sega Genesis territory -- the Genesis was only a few million behind the SNES overall in the US and only maybe 10 million behind worldwide at the end of the generation -- but it is a real competition. The N64 started off very quickly and it seemed like it'd catch the PS1, which had had slow sales up to that point. Of course, the N64 didn't quite manage that, and then slowed down while the PS1 started to take off, but still, from launch until '99 or '00, the N64 was quite competitive. It just faded fast at the end, from late '00 through '01. Part of that was definitely because the PS2 had stolen all market interest away from consoles like the N64 or Dreamcast, no question, but as I said in my last post though, I think part of that was Nintendo's fault, for not supporting it well enough later on, even though they could have, probably because thanks to its lack of success in Japan they didn't care enough to keep trying, and just wanted to move on to the GC... unfortunate.

But yeah, as you say, the N64 still did outsell all non-Nintendo or Sony systems except for the Genesis. Of course not all comparisons like that are fair, given that every generation has higher total sales than the previous one, but still, it's still something.

It was terrible for 3rd parties because Nintendo gets paid whether the games sell or not, but if you have to pay like $31 a unit for your game there is very little margin for error. A flop is financial catastrophic at those rates.

True, and it made them cautious. But because of the thin release list and higher average quality (versus PS1), N64 games were more likely to sell well than Playstation games were, so there is that.

There's only so much smoothing that can be done in 256 × 192 pixels. That's a pure resolution problem.

I don't know, most N64 games are only 320x240, that's not much different from 256x192. And there's a huge difference in image quality between the two.

The DS absolutely has edge anti-aliasing. It's really obvious if you're actually looking at a game on the DS's screen itself.

I'll quote M3d10n's wonderful DS vs. PSX post from last year:

Well, DS graphics do look more like PS1 than N64 thanks to their pixelated, unfiltered look, but I do not mean that as a positive (for either system)... but there's definitely several things missing in DS visuals versus the N64.

I can see that we don't agree on art design and gameplay, then. RRT4 looks absolutely gorgeous to me and still plays great. Ridge Racer 64 isn't even remotely close.

R4's just so bland and dull looking... RR64 definitely looks better. N64 built-in image quality improvements help too of course.

Also, on the DS, not all games were 60 fps. It was common (which was awesome) but there were still 3D games that couldn't deliver. Mario 64 is one of them (limited to 30 fps).

Really? I thought the hardware almost required 60fps. Or is it that it doesn't let you go under 30?

That's not entirely true. The game does change quite a bit as you progress. Some areas are basically the same as the PC version while many others are entirely new. It weaves back and forth between the PC levels, N64 levels, and entirely original areas. It's a strange mix of content.

It looks absolutely incredible, though. Much more detailed than the N64 version (which, of course, runs on a different engine).

Um, you put in the wrong quote, from some other person's post, there, but I assume this is about my saying that Quake II N64 is an entirely different game (except for that last sentence, which is about the PS1 I assume)? It's mostly new, anyway, but I guess you're right that it's not completely different, unlike, say, Forsaken 64. I do have Quake II for N64, but don't like it as much as the Turok games or Perfect Dark... or Doom 64, for that matter. It's good, I guess, but I like other things more. I haven't played the other versions of the game (PC, PS1).

TDLM was one of those games that really demonstrated to me how much more potential the PS2 had. It was hyped as a very impressive showpiece for the Dreamcast and I did think it looked great, but the lighting was a bit flat and the framerate only 30 fps.

Well, at 30fps you can put some more polygons on screen than you could at 60. It is very impressive for Dreamcast, but I think as much as the game itself, the reason for mentioning it is that had the system lived, we could have seen more games with graphics that good.

Even the launch title Ridge Racer V absolutely SMOKED TDLM when you saw the two side by side. Sure, RRV was jaggy as hell, but the smooth framerate, visual effects, lighting, post processing, and depth of field were all unlike anything we had seen before. The 60 fps realtime intro alone was jaw dropping for the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US2-Hvjr6Ls

When GT3 was finally released it was even more obvious that the PS2 was one a different level.

I have no opinion on Test Drive Le Mans vs. RRV as I haven't played much of either title, but that PS2 jaggyness looked so bad... I think it took the PS2 years to get anywhere near Dreamcast image quality.

 

[Vorg]

Uh, Ridge Racer Type 4 does not look worse than Ridge Racer 64. I don't know where you're getting that idea, A Black Falcon. Have you played both games?

 

[Boerseun]

This thread is crazy! You only have to compare the N64 and Ps1 versions of The World is Not Enough and Armorines: Project Swarm to know there existed a massive difference in performance between the two platforms.

Uh, Ridge Racer Type 4 does not look worse than Ridge Racer 64. I don't know where you're getting that idea, A Black Falcon. Have you played both games?

I'm sure A Black Falcon will be in here to answer your question, post haste. But for my two cents, the two games simply look too different (in terms of aesthetics) to be considered for a side-by-side comparison. Note that it has been several years since I've played either, and back then I did prefer RR64, as I remember my younger self having a lot more fun with it than RR4.

Also worth mentioning is that RR64 wasn't made by the Ridge Racer team at Namco but by one of Nintendo's smaller studios, NST (Nintendo Software Technology). That probably accounts for why the two games look different, despite not being all that different in terms of core gameplay.

Everything considered, graphically RR64 is the stronger game, in my opinion. Artistically it's up for debate, though.

 

[atbigelow]

Black, the DS has a memory limit for vertices rendered in a single frame. The DS will render them at 60 FPS. However if you want more vertices to be rendered, you can break them into chunks. So say the first 6000 vertices in the first frame, a different 6000 in the next. In this case you're really only rendering the entire scene at 30 FPS.

And the thing the DS is missing you keep referring to is texture filtering. The DS does anti-aliasing on polygon edges. It does not filter the textures on those polygons, so they end up pixellated.

 

[Freshmaker]

Terrible at particle effects, better at just about everything else.

Excepting frame rate and resolution of course.

 

[Branduil]

Excepting frame rate and resolution of course.

What?

 

[dark10x]

I don't know, most N64 games are only 320x240, that's not much different from 256x192. And there's a huge difference in image quality between the two.

There is actually a pretty tremendous difference between 320x240 and 256x192. Still, you're comparing a fixed pixel display to 240p output on a CRT (or any display, I suppose). The N64 is super blurry in comparison.

Well, DS graphics do look more like PS1 than N64 thanks to their pixelated, unfiltered look, but I do not mean that as a positive (for either system)... but there's definitely several things missing in DS visuals versus the N64.

Quite true but the vastly superior performance MORE than makes up for the difference, I feel.

R4's just so bland and dull looking... RR64 definitely looks better. N64 built-in image quality improvements help too of course.

I don't think we're going to be able to agree.

R4, in my eyes, uses a very stylistic color palette with a very subdued overall look. It's sleek and beautiful to me.

RR64 is garish as hell in comparison. I find it absolutely hideous.

You seem to be a huge N64 super fan while it's one of my least favorite successful systems of all time. I hate just about everything about it and only own one for the same reasons I own a 3DO. As such, I don't think we'll ever come to an agreement on things related to it.

I have no opinion on Test Drive Le Mans vs. RRV as I haven't played much of either title, but that PS2 jaggyness looked so bad... I think it took the PS2 years to get anywhere near Dreamcast image quality.

The "jaggyness" varied heavily from title to title, but for me, I'd much rather take a high framerate with greater detail at the expense of image quality. Many PS2 games sacrificed image quality in order to deliver 60 fps. That was a sacrifice I was willing to make every time. Games appeared jaggy as a result of using field rendering which basically alternates odd and even scanlines every other frame. Any game using this method was basically stuck at 60 fps as slowdown would halve the framerate and resolution. It was akin to the DS lock on 60 fps. Of course, many games worked around this in order to improve image quality.

 

[Brera]

Can't acutally believe you are defending this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isUYwKh_FLs

Looks better then this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-S0BwVQ5Vo

Not only is it a jaggy mess with barely any color, but it also feels like you are going at 20 kph and the collision detection is hilariously bad.

I'm a massive ridge fan and rr64 looks awful.

It looks like a baby game. It has simple textures and not much going on.

R4 blows it away in graphical style and looks much more vibrant. This is coming from a n64 only owner back in the day.

It's rougher but IMO looks much nicer.

The ps1 main strength was the sheer amount of support. The console was pushed to the limit by the likes of namco and capcom.

The best looking racer on the n64 is world racing championship and that looks ass compared to type 4.

Don't get me started on the sound in those two vids...

 

[brumx]

Without Pokemon there might be a Nintendo today at all

 

[jett]

Oh thank god, some sensible people have come to defend R4.

That was a sad sentence to write, as if R4 needed defending.

 

[Fafalada]

So say the first 6000 vertices in the first frame, a different 6000 in the next.

One tradeoff there is that have to allocate a second frame-buffer (like on all other GPUs).
DS rasterizer is scanline based, so at 60fps you can render the scene chasing the vertical-retrace - without double-buffering - a lot like the old 2d consoles used to do.

 

[luka]

No way, R4's a jaggy mess. As I said, it looks nice for the PS1, but it's no match for RR64.


R4 doesn't look THAT special, though... decent to good for a later PS1 racing game, but certainly not one of the prettiest games of the era. And as for "best use of color that generation"... yeah, no way. Absolutely not. And RR64's visuals look pretty good, what's wrong with using a lot of colors? It looks good as it is!

say what now?

of everything that has been said in the thread, this is easily the most egregious. i just couldn't let it pass.

 

[Trevelyan9999]

I'm a massive ridge fan and rr64 looks awful.

It looks like a baby game. It has simple textures and not much going on.

R4 blows it away in graphical style and looks much more vibrant. This is coming from a n64 only owner back in the day.

It's rougher but IMO looks much nicer.

The ps1 main strength was the sheer amount of support. The console was pushed to the limit by the likes of namco and capcom.

The best looking racer on the n64 is world racing championship and that looks ass compared to type 4.

Don't get me started on the sound in those two vids...

Wow, I've died and returned to 2nd grade. lol.


The PS1 could push more polygons but other than that there can't be much argument over the N64 being superior graphically.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

I liked the looks of both RR.

I thought RR64 looked more stable, but startlingly colorful. RR4 had the jitters, but a better more consistent atmosphere.

In the end I liked RR4 more. But I thought both were perfectly competent games.

At that time I was buying games for the sake of buying games. I bought Superman 64 at a high price just to say I got the shittiest game of all time. And then I beat it and realized what not to ever do when making a videogame.

 

[A Black Falcon]

say what now?

of everything that has been said in the thread, this is easily the most egregious. i just couldn't let it pass.

What, so you missed when I said earlier in the thread that I think the original Saturn version of Daytona is a better game (gameplay-wise, in my personal opinion only) than anything in the whole Ridge Racer franchise? That is to say, I don't like the franchise in general all that much, so isn't it easy to understand that I don't exactly love R4? The Ridge Racer franchise isn't, and never was, that great. I have no idea why people actually liked the first PS1 Ridge Racer over Saturn Daytona... Daytona's a far better game. The graphics aren't THAT bad, either, I think it's quite acceptably playable.

On that note, I tried R4 and RR64 again today. Both are overly frustrating games that I do not find fun, but RR64 certainly is the better looking and playing of the two. Well, better looking; as far as gameplay goes the two are completely different in almost every way, with entirely different kinds of track designs, entirely different handling systems, etc. It's pretty hard to compare them in controls, with how different they are. RR64 has those auto-powerslides that are so hard to get used to, while R4 pretty much ditches that in favor of tighter controls. They're not really better though, just easier and more generic. RR64 has better music, I think. The two do have a few things in common, though -- both games have that annoying "spend the whole race chasing the guy in first who, if you do very well, you'll catch right near the end" design, and require you to win every race in order to advance. Such a pain.


Looking just at the visuals though, R4 has the usual horribly blocky textures (as I've said, the blocky textures really bother me on the DS too... it's not just the PS1 and Saturn I have a problem with), jaggies, and polygon popping that you always see on the PS1. Pretty ugly look as usual. Visual design is somewhat bland compared to RR64, too. I would absolutely say that games like Wipeout 3 or either Rollcage game look better (and play better too). They're much more visually interesting.

 

[luka]

What, so you missed when I said earlier in the thread that I think the original Saturn version of Daytona is a better game (gameplay-wise, in my personal opinion only) than anything in the whole Ridge Racer franchise? That is to say, I don't like the franchise in general all that much, so isn't it easy to understand that I don't exactly love R4? The Ridge Racer franchise isn't, and never was, that great. I have no idea why people actually liked the first PS1 Ridge Racer over Saturn Daytona... Daytona's a far better game. The graphics aren't THAT bad, either, I think it's quite acceptably playable.

i didn't miss that. i just didn't see how it related to your opinions on the technical presentation of the games, which are pretty batty.

 

[A Black Falcon]

i didn't miss that. i just didn't see how it related to your opinions on the technical presentation of the games, which are pretty batty.

The graphics are nice for the PS1, but so bland... the music's similar, understated compared to the RR64 music. I definitely prefer RR64's style on both fronts. I mean, RR64's track designs are somewhat similar of course, because they are based on Ridge Racer tracks, but they have a different feel from R4. And the technical presentation's unquestionably on the N64's side, of course (filtering looks much better than pixelization, no jaggies, etc.). RR64 has about as stylish a presentation as I've seen on the N64. It's probably not putting the most polygons on screen, and the environments aren't as big or impressive as those in some other N64 racing games, but in terms of smooth visuals, style, and flash, it's got a lot of it. That motion blur looks pretty cool too, and it's everywhere. If only the game was as good as the graphics are...

 

[Celine]

Without Pokemon there might be a Nintendo today at all