Some games had cheats to disable texture filtering like Extreme G or Shadows of the empire via the debug mode but they still looked blurry though. Running games in high res was the only way to get decent image quality out of the system and to get poor PAL conversions to almost display fullscreen.
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How much more powerful was the N64 compared to the PlayStation anyway?
- Thread starter Snakeyes
- Start date
Some games had cheats to disable texture filtering like Extreme G or Shadows of the empire via the debug mode but they still looked blurry though. Running games in high res was the only way to get decent image quality out of the system and to get poor PAL conversions to almost display fullscreen.
ResidentDante
Member
In splitscreen CTR does not perform well on the original hardware. The framerate is really low.
soxinthebox
Member
I have a copy of Shadows of the Empire at home. Will give it a go and see if it looks any nicer sometime this week.
MrCunningham
Member
You would really have to look at the source textures to compare the resolution sizes. But one thing that is clear here is that the DS game appears to use a slightly larger variety of textures, even if they are not higher resolution. The pattern on the side of the mountain does not seem to be the same as the ground texture, and there seems to be some transitional textures going on in the DS game that do not seem to be there in the N64 game.
The lower contrasting colours in the DS textures do a pretty good job of masking the low resolution nature of the textures though.
xDUMPWEEDx
Banned
This. They just have two completely different graphical styles. You can't really choose which one is better. Both had strengths and weaknesses.
encephalon
Member
mm legends 2 was a great looking and awesome game but if we compare legends 1 to mm64 I'd say that it looks a bit better in the 64
It's probably more important to compare what the faces look like in the cutscenes (which are an unbelievable achievement).
Yes, it does feature more texture variety. The DS was more capable in that area and Mario 64 was a launch title so they were still learning a lot about 3D.
Still, I think Mario 64 makes masterful use of texture filtering in a way that few Nintendo 64 games did. The textures were designed within limitations of the system rather than attempting to display more detail than the textures were capable of.
TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
I preferred the PSX graphics, they seem to character and looked more detailed despite the blockyness of it all and it didn't look bad on the CRT TV, play a PSX game on the Vita they not that bad
The PS2 with its texture filter kinda proves this, even though it wasn't the best
If you compare a Multiplat of the same game or different game then on the N64 the PS2's emulation of it looks better imo and they didn't lose as much detail with the filtering, but this is probably due to N64 games being most of the time low poly and having really low res textures to begin with.
The PS2 with its texture filter kinda proves this, even though it wasn't the best
If you compare a Multiplat of the same game or different game then on the N64 the PS2's emulation of it looks better imo and they didn't lose as much detail with the filtering, but this is probably due to N64 games being most of the time low poly and having really low res textures to begin with.
MrCunningham
Member
Yeah I totally understand what you are saying here and I agree. The textures in Mario 64 were really designed with the filtering in mind.. The same thing goes for Zelda OoT as well.
Well sure, but we're opening up a can of worms for either platform if we start bringing splitscreen into it.
Blast corps employes some really nice effects.
It's no wonder the same team did Jet force gemini.
blurry, lower quality textures, terrible sound compression and worse draw distance.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
Is that a Chinese knockoff or something?
Yep, that's the reason. There's another post here that explains the poly setup pretty well, probably on an earlier page tho for us PeasantGAFfers.
mm legends 2 was a great looking and awesome game but if we compare legends 1 to mm64 I'd say that it looks a bit better in the 64
I'd have to play the N64 version to really see(and on an actual N64 as you can't reproduce the original fidelity on emulators
). Regardless, I mentioned MML2 and not the first one because that one hasn't aged well at all. Ingueferroque
Banned
I vastly prefer the pixellated look on MML PS1 over the fuzzy mess thats the N64 version.
In the Mission Impossible pics posted earlier, the N64's character models actually had a lot more polygons. The PSX's polygon advantage was entirely wasted on subdividing the terrain into smaller polygons to prevent texture warping.
N64
PSX
Not too sure, but my friend had one back in the day and I know they aren't too common. Didn't need individual cartridges if I remember correctly. There were a bunch of games on individual discs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_V64
I'm not sure it's even the DS being more capable so much as it is the DS version having the advantage of a much larger cart size to store the texture variety.
I agree, and this is why I think it has aged better than most N64 games. (combined with the relatively good framerate)
Polygons or not. The Playstation wins this battle easily.In the Mission Impossible pics posted earlier, the N64's character models actually had a lot more polygons. The PSX's polygon advantage was entirely wasted on subdividing the terrain into smaller polygons to prevent texture warping.
N64
PSX
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
According to the Wiki it was a dev unit clone. And a pretty cheap one at that. But it's still kind of a stretch to say N64 could read CDs throwing that into the argument; it wasn't meant for regular consumers.
D.Lo
Member
Would have to say N64 got closer to it's top game earlier. Wave race was at launch. And Conker isn't too much better than Banjo.
Compare that to Tekken 1-3, 3 looks a generation later. Turok 1-3 isn't as much a leap as that.
For the first couple of years N64 games looked so much further ahead than PS1, apart from ones that used 'tricks' like pre-rendered backgrounds (RE2 can look better in a screenshot than Goldeneye, but of course is not real 3D. But then literally years of effort and massive budgets created MGS for example, coded to the bone.
N64 also benefitted a lot from interlacing and scanlines. The natural anti-aliasing scanlines bring made some N64 stuff look 'perfect', but it still wasn't enough for many jaggy 3D PS1 games, though it did keep pre-rendered stuff looking nice too.
Compare that to Tekken 1-3, 3 looks a generation later. Turok 1-3 isn't as much a leap as that.
For the first couple of years N64 games looked so much further ahead than PS1, apart from ones that used 'tricks' like pre-rendered backgrounds (RE2 can look better in a screenshot than Goldeneye, but of course is not real 3D. But then literally years of effort and massive budgets created MGS for example, coded to the bone.
N64 also benefitted a lot from interlacing and scanlines. The natural anti-aliasing scanlines bring made some N64 stuff look 'perfect', but it still wasn't enough for many jaggy 3D PS1 games, though it did keep pre-rendered stuff looking nice too.
Until you move the camera and the world goes all wibbly, jittery, and shows texture seams everywhere.
Wat.
At best, interlacing hides aliases only insofar as it damages details in general.
CRTs do tend to give a more accurately-reproduced image than flat panels, in ways which often make aliasing less annoying, but that's not unique to interlaced scanning.
The Albatross
Member
Feel like this should be quoted on Every page just to inform people stopping by who may be from another planet and have never heard of videogames before.. Basically everything you need to know about these two consoles can be learned by reading the opposite of this post.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
Wasn't the mipmapping part of the reason Dreamcast had better texture image quality/more vibrant textures than PS2 tho? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read that somewhere before...I think.
DonMigs85
Member
It's just that the texture transitions on the ground were quite abrupt, like a PC game running with bilinear filtering only (no anistropy)
benjipwns
Banned
Yeah, this is one of my irrational hatreds. It's like there's some intermediary step missing so you go from crystal clear beautiful textures to a blurred mess instantly.It's just that the texture transitions on the ground were quite abrupt, like a PC game running with bilinear filtering only (no anistropy)
Though some games and areas of games were better about it. I don't know if it's some basic library or feature and some used it and others don't. You see it in almost all the Sega games anyway. It "feels" like it was less noticeable in non-Sega titles. But I haven't booted up the DC in over a year now.
The series it always irritated me the most in was NFL/NBA 2K because no matter how far away in the arena/stadium you look it doesn't blur. But look down the floor ten feet and everything's blurry colors.
D.Lo
Member
No detail is 'damaged' in interlacing 240p images, they're just line doubled non-sequentially, which smooths the image out to the eye which has to make sense of the soft visible scanlines.
N64 had good enough edges on objects that the scanline factor helped them become as good as you could look for 240p 3D graphics at the time.
DonMigs85
Member
The 640x480 titles looked pretty flickery and harsh though, like the GameCube games with "Deflicker" turned off.
Also, Star Wars Episode 1 Racer was a bit of an odd duck in that the hi-res mode seemed to have a bigger effect on texture sharpness rather than the actual resolution or edges.
Also, Star Wars Episode 1 Racer was a bit of an odd duck in that the hi-res mode seemed to have a bigger effect on texture sharpness rather than the actual resolution or edges.
If you're referring specifically to 240-line games on these older consoles, they usually weren't interlaced at all. They typically fudged with the video signals to force the TV to only display either all even or all odd fields. This gives an entirely progressive-scanned image, albeit one which has a high separation between visual lines, hence the "scanlines" effect.
If the game is being displayed "correctly", you shouldn't be getting any line-doubling or interlacing.
If N64 games looked "antialiased", it was probably:
1-Actual antialiasing (N64 games could use Wu's line algorithm for AA), and/or
2-Generally better precision and filtering compared with PSX and Saturn, and/or
3-CRTs just generally behaving as a better image reconstruction filter than modern flat panels. The "soft" effect you're attributing to 240p scanlines is intrinsic to how CRT scanning works in general; rather than use square pixels, the electron beam scans lines onto very fine-pitched phosphor elements with a somewhat gaussian-esque beam.
D.Lo
Member
The vast majority of N64 and PS1 games ran at 240p so yes that's what I'm referring to.
Okay so you know what you're talking about.
From the TV's perspective, it's still not really a 'progressive' picture (though the signal is), it's just that every second line is left blank, creating scanlines. There's usually bleed over into the dark lines too, so it's not quite that stark as some of the 'fake' scanlines on scalers.
Anyway that bleed and the scanline effect overall benefited the N64's good geometry in my opinion. Lines looked sharp, moreso than then do on emulators, and did in early Ps2 games, which being among the first 480i games were famous for their aliasing.
PS1's geometry wasn't stable enough to benefit as much from this effect was my point.
ResidentDante
Member
In the Mission Impossible pics posted earlier, the N64's character models actually had a lot more polygons. The PSX's polygon advantage was entirely wasted on subdividing the terrain into smaller polygons to prevent texture warping.
N64
PSX
Polygons or not. The Playstation wins this battle easily.
It's not that easy. First off, those screens are both way higher resolution than the original consoles, both of them. However the PS1 version will suffer the most at the original resolution, without the texture smoothing and the polygon warping all over the place it ends up looking like a pixelated mess.
MoGamesXNA
Unconfirmed Member
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DemurOnion
Banned
I think some people want to remember the PS better than it really was. I guess in my memory on a decent CRT it was good for the time. Unplayable now. Same with the 64 which aged not well. I think I would choose some games on 64 and some on the PS1. It depends on what you are looking for. If you had emulation too then definitely PS1.
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
Absolutely. In fact Nintendo said they intentionally made the N64 difficult to program for to "keep weaker devs from making games on it" or something like that.
Whether it or the Saturn was the more difficult machine to program for is now the question. Any examples of N64 games using the....well the system doesn't even have a sound chip so that's that question out of the window.
DonMigs85
Member
Pretty sure Saturn was tougher since it had dual SH-2 processors which happened to share the same data bus. It also had several VDPs (video display processors). It was still a mostly sprite-based machine too, 3D polygon graphics had to be implemented in software as far as I know.
N64 at least used a MIPS processor like the PS1 only faster, and an SGI "Reality Co-Processor" for graphics and audio, but I do recall reading somewhere that every sound channel used ate up 1% of the CPU time.
Rbk_3
Member
You could never do Smackdown on the N64
No Mercy owned Smackdown, it wasn't even close.
Edit- just realized this post was from 2 years ago. My bad.
The N64 actually had better mipmap filtering than the Dreamcast and PS2 usually did, it's just that they were used so rarely. But in games like Goldeneye you have true trilinear filtering on the mipmaps. Most Dreamcast games didn't have trilinear, so you have those abrupt transitions. The PS2 had trilinear, but the problem was that they forget to design its mipmapping with angles in mind, so you end up with games having tons of texture aliasing on every oblique texture. Gamecube was the first system to really do trilinear filtering justice.
MoGamesXNA
Unconfirmed Member
.
At the time (I was 17) when N64 came out, I remember how excited I was for it. It's kind of hard to explain to someone unless you were there because it was something completely new that hadn't been done before. Super Mario 64 was ground breaking for its time. It wasn't just the graphics either, but the analog controls. Sure there were some problems with the system that's a lot easier to criticize now, but for its time, it was amazing. As great as PS1 and Saturn were, nothing really compared to N64, not even PC imo. In fact, N64's graphics was ahead of PC for a short time. It really was in a league of it's own.
I also remember arguing w/friends over which system had the better graphics PS1 or N64. N64 was the clear winner imo. Yes, the graphics were blurry and washed out, but the PS1's graphics were dark, wobbily, full of jagged edges and blown up looking - which I now I know was the resolution. The controls on N64 were also far superior for 3D games. It's not even comparable. PS1 obviously had a lot more games, but like N64, there are only a handful of them that I was interested in.
The prices of games and software droughts on N64 were ridiculous though. Looking back, I think that's one of the reasons the attach rate to GC was so high. Despite the fact that GC still suffered from droughts, Nintendo fans were eager for games and happy to pay for them at the now much lower price. Xbox also took a lot of the western gamers away from Nintendo. Nintendo lost western third party support (something it had a lot of on N64) and the people who liked FPS's and racers went to Xbox.
That being said, one of my favorite games on N64 that I haven't seen mentioned yet is World Driver Championship. It's a graphical showcase for the system and one of the best looking (and fun) games on the system imo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T_zHVO_K8I&list=PLA7522A8290F9E884&index=48#t=2m48s
I think it's also worth mentioning that despite there being a memory expansion pack available for N64, this game did not use it. Boss Studios pulled some rabbits out of their hats when they made this game imo.
Thanks again for this post, as I found a copy at a local game store here in NE Ohio for $2.50...... any Cuyahoga-County-Ohio-GAF members looking for another at the same price, it's at The Exchange in Parma Heights on Pearl Road!!
misericordia
Neo Member
World Driver Championship is certainly one of the most graphicaly advanced games of its time.
It's dificult to explain how this game overpasses the most games of its time.
Another well crafted games on the 64 were the the almost entire Rare's library.
---
Itagaki once said this game had water graphics that only a generation ahead reached it:
It's dificult to explain how this game overpasses the most games of its time.
Another well crafted games on the 64 were the the almost entire Rare's library.
---
Itagaki once said this game had water graphics that only a generation ahead reached it:
superNESjoe
Member
I love necro bumps. This thread was a good read.
riskVSreward
Member
I remember calling up the Playstation 800-number when N64 was a few months away and basically harassing the dudes working that line about how N64 was gonna be better. To their credit, they actually explained some stuff to me and helped me realize that "bits" aren't really that relevant... but they also had some serious spin. I'm pretty sure they mentioned that N64 had "fog" and PS1 didn't, and other dumb things along those lines.
I don't know why we did it, I think my friend's were getting the N64 and I already had the PS1 so I was trying to justify my ownership since my parents would definitely not be buying me another system so soon... I was like 10 or 11... Good times.
I don't know why we did it, I think my friend's were getting the N64 and I already had the PS1 so I was trying to justify my ownership since my parents would definitely not be buying me another system so soon... I was like 10 or 11... Good times.
Small Mailman
Member
Man this thread is like living the era all over again!
Pretty much this. Nintendo handed all their 3rd party support to Sony because they are so greedy and they want to take control of everything.
I played just about every N64 game and I can tell you the best looking games are:
World Driver Championship
Shadowman
Turok 3 / Turok: Rage Wars
Nothing on PSX can touch them. Those three had the best blend of visual quality and framerate. I love Perfect Dark, but most all the RARE games mentioned have despicable framerates. Factor 5 was the same deal, but with very noticeable repeating textures.
World Driver Championship
Shadowman
Turok 3 / Turok: Rage Wars
Nothing on PSX can touch them. Those three had the best blend of visual quality and framerate. I love Perfect Dark, but most all the RARE games mentioned have despicable framerates. Factor 5 was the same deal, but with very noticeable repeating textures.
I know crazy talk. We went from block hands to fingers...
nkarafo
Member
I agree with WDC and Shadowman and i would add Banjo-Kazooie. It looks great and has a pretty good frame rate compared to other RARE games.