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How much more powerful was the N64 compared to the PlayStation anyway?

Yup. Unwrapping the N64 and booting that up for the first time is still the most vibrant gaming memory of my whole life.




How many of you old bastards remember seeing these characters first announced in the EGM cover story on the new N64 FF game.

Tips and Tricks, actually. :p

Edit: Actually, it might have been gamepro or EGM. I remember being at the grocery store with my parents when seeing it.
 

brumx

Member
Just remember for the PS1 to do 2D it would need to render a polygon which is why it had problems vs Saturn for 2D. PS1 text was hard to do as well because it would act like a polygon
 
Well, I mean Really REALLY, bad dreamcast games but games like Sin & Punishment and Majora's mask would have been acceptable on the platform

Well if you want to compare a systems best to another systems worst..

Dreamcast 1998

Sonic%20Adventure%20Emerald%20Coast.gif_thumb.jpg


N64 1999

tumblr_lnbffxDDFi1qk9qb8o1_r1_500.gif


:p
 
Barely any color, the fug? R4 may have the single best use of color in that generation. The deliberate, pastel, dreamy visuals add so much to its visual flair. Each stage has a specific look. RR64 is just color puke, with car models that look like they belong on the very first Ridge Racer game. Look at the hideous skybox on RR64 compared to the intelligent use of a soft gradient on R4. Gawd, I can't believe I'm reading this crap. R4 is one of the prettiest games of that era, RR64 is the redheaded stepchild of the franchise.

When it comes to speed that's the first race on R4, the campaign starts out really slow and gets progressively faster. Both games are locked at 30fps.

Controls have very little to do with this thread, but any Ridge Racer fan will tell you that R4 is a superior game. You have no idea what you are talking about, especially when you complain about collisions in comparison to RR64.

I nearly had a heart attack when I read the post you're replying to. Thank you for saving my life.
 
N64 looked worlds better than PS1, even from day 1 with Mario 64. PS1 had already been out by then but nothing could drop your jaw like Mario 64. It was mind-blowing.

The N64 in the right hands looked significantly ahead of PS1 games. I could never stand the constant shimmering and pixellated mess that was most PS1 games. There's a reason they always showed only-CG for a lot of Playstation games at the time.
 
N64 looked worlds better than PS1, even from day 1 with Mario 64. PS1 had already been out by then but nothing could drop your jaw like Mario 64. It was mind-blowing.

The N64 in the right hands looked significantly ahead of PS1 games. I could never stand the constant shimmering and pixellated mess that was most PS1 games. There's a reason they always showed only-CG for a lot of Playstation games at the time.

It always floored me that people didn't expect N64 to look better though.

It only launched 2 fucking years after the PlayStation. :p
 

Big-E

Member
I think it is the only generation we will ever see again where a console was better on paper but in terms of actual content, that gap didn't seem like much at all.
 

Log4Girlz

Member
I wonder what could be done with a chipset with the transistor count and power draw as the n64 chipset but with greater knowledge of how graphics chips should be built. Like, what could it do with a redesign.
 

Zaki2407

Member
All I remember was every time I play Mario 64, my head got dizzy. It was a pretty game back then, but I couldn,t stand the blurry texture. Never got the same problem with PS1 and Saturn though...
 
Ha! They had very different types of games. You didn't really enjoyed that generation if you didn't owned both systems imo. Something that is not true with the current one.

This... That was the first generation of games where I had all three home consoles... N64 rocked me Golden Eye and Perfect Dark, two hardcore games that PS1 had ZERO competition for. PSX was master of RPGs, giving me my final fantasy's and Lunar series (RIP Lunar, someday some company with money and class will do something good with you.... someday), while Sega Saturn gave me.... uummm... Saturn gave me.... errr... Oh! Dragon Force! That is seriously one of my favorite games to this day! And also.... uuuuuhhhhmmmm.... I guess panzer dragoon was cool?
 
Man, I miss that gen. I loved the N64 and PS1 so much. And after it died I got a saturn and a ton of great games on the cheap.

The way I remember it (I was in college at the time) was that the best games on the N64 were head and shoulders above the psx (typically nintendo exclusives) but most everything that was on both looked and played better on the psx.


Though, at the time nothing looked better than FFVII. And then nothing looked as good as gran turismo. But looking back at them now, compared to something like Mario 64, they don't hold up as well graphically. It's weird how that happens.


I miss 4 player split screen drunken goldeneye set to one shot kills. Ugh, now I feel old.
 
As has been mentioned before, the N64 was really crippled by its abysmally small texture cache, high latency RAM, and the difficulty of programming microcode for polygon performance. These bottlenecks caused much of the common visual problems associated with the N64 - blurry textures and low framerates. Nintendo certainly learned a lot from these problems; the Gamecube turned out to be an incredibly efficient design in comparison.

In the right hands though, really good results could be produced: Turok 3, Wave Race, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Jet Force Gemini, Majora's Mask, Perfect Dark, Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, Battle for Naboo, and Donkey Kong 64 are all a step above the PSX's best.

Btw, talking about Turok, Shadow of Oblivion was a looker. First game I played with lip-sync in real-time cutscenes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ_4NKSraaQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=308s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-UvK3zxfNE&feature=player_detailpage#t=122s
I forgot how impressive this game was for the time.
 
I generally found N64 games much nicer looking, though many times at the cost of a poor framerate (Rare games particularly. Banjo-Tooie is bad and Conker is horrible). I hear complaints towards Majora's Mask for its framerate too but I found issues pretty rare with it (though it uses the expansion pak, like Conker really should have at least optionally).

One PS1 game I'd give the nod to is Mega Man Legends 2. Very clean looking game even if the environments seem to vary wildly in detail. I remember the opening cutscene being pretty impressive overall.
 
Man, I miss that gen. I loved the N64 and PS1 so much. And after it died I got a saturn and a ton of great games on the cheap.

The way I remember it (I was in college at the time) was that the best games on the N64 were head and shoulders above the psx (typically nintendo exclusives) but most everything that was on both looked and played better on the psx.


Though, at the time nothing looked better than FFVII. And then nothing looked as good as gran turismo. But looking back at them now, compared to something like Mario 64, they don't hold up as well graphically. It's weird how that happens.


I miss 4 player split screen drunken goldeneye set to one shot kills. Ugh, now I feel old.

Surely, games controlled better on the PlayStation AFTER the Dualshock came out in November of 1997?

Speaking of FF7, I think FF7 looks cleaner than FF8 or FF9.
 
Man, I miss that gen. I loved the N64 and PS1 so much. And after it died I got a saturn and a ton of great games on the cheap.
Agree completely. And I did the same with Saturn - got it late with a bunch of games for next to nothing.

Favorite generation of gaming by far. I loved both N64 and PS1 equally.
 
You must have not played the Turok series.
And you must not have played Turok Rage Wars or Turok 3. Each Turok game looks better than the last. And anyway, Turok 1's a great game, fog or no.

Btw, talking about Turok, Shadow of Oblivion was a looker. First game I played with lip-sync in real-time cutscenes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ_4NKSraaQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=308s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-UvK3zxfNE&feature=player_detailpage#t=122s

Yeah, Turok 3 is quite impressive looking. And it plays great, too -- I at least like that they didn't make the game excessively difficult, like Turok 2 is. Turok 3 is challenging, but actually approachable.

N64:
N = 14
14 x 64 = 896

PS1:
P = 16
S = 19

16 x 19 x 1 = 304

896 / 304 = 2.86.

The N64 was almost 3 times as powerful as the PS1.
What's funny is that this comes to about the right result. :)

LOL

In all seriousness, the N64 was called the N64 but the PS1 was actually called the PlayStation at the time.
PSX, more often, I'd say.

what am i reading
It's that kind of extreme overstatement like your last post that got me thinking that R4 might actually look as good as RR64, or play as well either, but when I got it (many years after RR64, I didn't have a PS1 during that gen) it wasn't its match in either category. I mean, RR64 wasn't anything amazing gameplay-wise, but I enjoyed it a little more than R4.
 
I just remember playing a ton of F1 and Gran Turismo after the dual shock came out. It certainly helped with racing game's controls.

Except Ridge Racer. I always used the d-pad for RR. Wipeout as well.
 

TheD

The Detective
The depth buffer has nothing to do with texture filtering; or really with perspectice correct mapping either; you need to calculate the z coordinate for the interpolation but you don't need the zbuffer

Well the Z-Buffer usually goes hand in hand with it (at least with rasterisation).
 
Not a lot. When I was younger I always assumed it was twice as powerful because it was a 64 bit console compared to ps1 which was 32 bit. When I got older I realized that crash bandicoot 2 and gran tourino 2 looked better than anything on n64.

Edit: holy shot I forgot about final fantasy 9 and chrono cross. That shit was MILES ahead of anything on n64.
 

zoukka

Member
N64 was way more powerful. Games like Perfect Dark, Conker and Zeldas' were above and beyond anything the PS1 could do in terms of graphics and gameplay.

But developers were smart and the best looking games of PS1 have some edges in areas the N64 was weak in. Music, FMV sequences and the Squaresoft games had insane particle effects.
 
I loved both N64 and PS1 equally.



Yeah that's the weirdest part. I try to think of myself as an intelligent person, not beholden to stupid human norms. But I must admit... I was Intellivision over Atari, NES>Master System SNES > Genesis, PS1=N64, PS2>Xbox>Gamecube, PS3>360>Wii. I like to think i haven't been a fanboy but I probably was and still am even as a sensible old bastard. The dreamcast exists in a nether that I can't really place in a generation, but goddamn that system was awesome. And the Genesis was *ALMOST* there with the SNES for me, but that was the gen I fell in love with the JRPG.


So, yeah, PS1/N64 really is the only gen that I wasn't a fanboy. I loved the bejesus out of both of those things and both got a severe workout for years by me and my friends on lazy nights or before going out to parties.




I really hate the 360. Like I actually despise the thing. WHAT HAVE I BECOME!??!?!
 
Yeah that's the weirdest part. I try to think of myself as an intelligent person, not beholden to stupid human norms. But I must admit... I was Intellivision over Atari, NES>Master System SNES > Genesis, PS1=N64, PS2>Xbox>Gamecube, PS3>360>Wii. I like to think i haven't been a fanboy but I probably was and still am even as a sensible old bastard. The dreamcast exists in a nether that I can't really place in a generation, but goddamn that system was awesome. And the Genesis was *ALMOST* there with the SNES for me, but that was the gen I fell in love with the JRPG.


So, yeah, PS1/N64 really is the only gen that I wasn't a fanboy. I loved the bejesus out of both of those things and both got a severe workout for years by me and my friends on lazy nights or before going out to parties.




I really hate the 360. Like I actually despise the thing. WHAT HAVE I BECOME!??!?!


I dislike the ADBOX 360 too. You have become wise.

I too fell in love with JRPG's in the 16 bit era, Lufia & The Fortress of Doom. Not a great game today but back then it was the best thing I had ever played.
 
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