Had no idea that Nintendo's royalty fee was so high on the N64. I thought it was in-line with the PSX, but the cart manufacturing fucked it up.
No, the high royalty is on top of the much higher cart manufacturing cost. Nintendo still had the highest royalties with the Gamecube too, I'm pretty sure -- they reduced them from the N64, but they were still above the competition. And yeah, in both cases, it definitely hurt Nintendo.
I played it a few months after it came out - I was young and had only seen screenshots of the game.
When I realised that I could literally jump into the river and swim under the bridge, no invisible walls, I was dumbfounded. When I first approached a painting and it shimmered like a wall of water, I felt that in this mere ten minutes, there was nothing like this in gaming - it was an advancement of exploration into 3D the likes of which the console industry had never seen.
At the time, describing myself as being "impressed" would be a dramatic understatement. It was revolutionary, in visuals, 3D control and design, and in opportunities for exploration.
Yeah, in 1996, Mario 64 was the most mind-blowingly amazing thing ever. I agree that later on it didn't look quite as shocking as it did when first released, though; I got my N64 in Sept. '99, and got Mario 64 and OoT, and definitely remember thinking that while Mario 64 looked good, it didn't look as great as I'd remembered it looking when I'd played it in '96. But in '96... visually, and in design, Mario 64 was the most amazing thing I've ever seen, versus what came before. I don't know if it can be topped, really, in impact...
Yeah, I didn't play it at first either because it was sold out everywhere. I did get to play it around a month after launch and was also playing Tomb Raider at the time as well. With the freedom given and complexity of the environments in Tomb Raider, Mario wasn't nearly as impressive for me. It was cleaner, but also simpler
By the time I got an N64 my PC definitely had better graphics (I had a Voodoo2...), but still I thought that the N64 looked good too... not quite as good, but good. I still think that. Maybe it helped that the only time I thought the N64 had the best graphics ever was from well before I actually owned one? It was the games that really made me love the N64 though, above the visuals.
Well, Sonic Adventure wasn't particularly high in polys and IIRC that went up to 300k polys a second in some scenes, which is far above what's possible on the previous generation. I remember the other games you listed and yeah they weren't extremely high in geometry, mostly in the environments but there are aspects with most of those games where the geometry is higher than what's possible on the previous generation. The cars in Speed Devils and vehicle in Red Dog are higher in complexity than what's seen on the PS1/N64/Saturn.
Maybe so, but if so not by much at all. I guess that you probably are right about the polygon difference being more in the environments, but still...
As I've said the DC CAN do more, it just didn't usually, mostly because of the very short lifecycle I would imagine. Oh, for a few more that do impress me visually, along with DoA2 and Test Drive Le Mans, I'd also mention Under Defeat and Propeller Arena.
Pod was always an ugly game IMO and Trick Style looks amazing to me at launch, but that was mostly down to the texture work and not the poly count.
I don't know, I think Pod looks okay... it's an atrociously bad sequel to the first Pod, but is one of my favorite DC racing games anyway, which is why I mentioned it.
So I can definitely see some of these games working if you shave off some polys here and there. Only catch is most of them are launch or near launch titles. I think it took time for devs to get up to speed on their tools and such since they were still so invested into developing on the prior gen. It didn't take long for more impressive DC games to come out though. Sega GT, Shenmue, MDK2, D2, 2K sports line, RE:CV, HoTD2, and more all had geometry above PS1/N64 levels.
But how much above PS1/N64 levels are you talking, for most of those?
I thought the use of quads could help texture distortion, no?
Somewhat, I think, but you still have problems.
It's a matter of preference.
But it is true that the N64 graphics include things we have come to expect from graphics today, like solid objects even when the camera moves, smooth textures (as low-res they may be), and even anti-aliasing. By comparison, the PS1/Saturn graphics feel incomplete, like the software mode of early PC games that didn't have Direct3D enabled. N64 was a prototype of modern graphics, as opposed as an extension of the early experimental 3D graphics of the early 90's, late 80's.
Agreed. And yeah, I thought those mid '90s, non-Direct3D PC games looked horrible too. There's a reason I bought that Voodoo2 card, and it wasn't just because that S3 ViRGE was one of the worst things ever... software was awful too.
Anyone try Forsaken on PSX? Unlike the N64 version it runs almost entirely at 60 fps on PSX while delivering the same levels as the PC version (which the 64 game does not).
Also, Quake 2 on PSX is an impressive piece of work. It runs at a higher framerate, contains more detail, and features much smoother animation than the N64 game. Plus it managed to combat texture warping beautifully.
Quake 2 PSX used a custom engine unrelated to the Quake engine while the N64 game used the same engine that was designed to run Quake 64. So while they were basically the same games, the end results were vastly different.
Look at dat textures!
http://i.picpar.com/1cdf21fa591743ebe4669ed438c14f36f4198e6a.JPG
http://i.picpar.com/5a8f342bc5af66c617deeb594021b77a6be082f4.JPG
It does change the appearance of the distortion but there is still distortion nonetheless.
Quake 2 is a completely different game on the N64, all levels were replaced with new ones... it's not a port. The same goes for Forsaken -- Forsaken 64 is an original title, not a PC port like the PS1 title is. I think that Forsaken 64's quite good. Quake 2 for N64's good as well, but between those two I definitely prefer Forsaken. Of course though, that's probably because I had more interest in Descent than Quake...
I uploaded some more pics of WE3, cuz that game is just damn pretty.
No, Special Edition always runs at 512x256, wether widescreen correction is on or off.
Wipeout 3 is one of the best looking PS1 games for sure. The game's so sharp, while most PS1 games are so fuzzy... definitely impressive work. It's kind of too bad that the Special Edition was Europe only. I do find Wipeout 3 harder than the previous games, though. That's part of why Wipeout 64 is my favorite one that gen; it's hard, but not as brutal as Wipeout 3.
The N64 was a Fararri with a lawn mower gas tank. Had that thing been CD based, it would have blown the doors off the Playstation technically and would have never lost a single 3rd party franchise.
I already said this in my last post, but no, that is wrong. The N64 benefits from using cartridges in several important ways, so the games would have been worse overall (smaller areas, loading times...), and just having carts would not necessarily have given Nintendo a sure victory, either, given the huge difference in licensing fees and how on Playstation third parties didn't have to compete with Nintendo's IPs.
How was this game?
I only have the first two
Turok 3 is very good. It's completely different again, maybe even more different from Turok 2 than Turok 2 was from the first game, but though in some ways it's less ambitious than Turok 2 as it's a fairly linear title, and not a giant, living world like Turok 2, I think that that makes it a better overall game. It's sort of Turok with some bits of Half-Life mixed in. Definitely play it if you enjoy N64 FPSes.
What exactly could the N64 handle in terms of 2D?
There was the pre-rendered stuff like KI:Gold and Yoshi's Story, but i was disappointed in those visuals overall, cause like the 3D stuff, they had the vaseline effect. Was there a reason it was like that?
It really ruined what was otherwise nice art (Yoshi's Story anyway).
DKC on SNES still looked nicer to my eye cause of that vaseline.
Was it impossible to do something crisp like you'd see in a Capcom fighter on Saturn?
I think SF3 was rumoured for N64 at one point (before it hit arcades IIRC) - would it have been able to handle it i wonder.
Crisp? You'd need to talk Nintendo into allowing you to use custom microcode for that. But as for what it could do in 2d, yeah, there are very few games to look at. Mischief Makers, Bangaioh, Yoshi's Story, and almost all of the puzzle games are pretty much it. Well, and Wonder Project J2 too, for a Japan-only title. That's an issue of what developers wanted to make on the system, though, not a hardware limitation problem.
Interesting read, thanks! Reading what you are saying about triangle polygons vs. quads I wonder; did the developers have to remodel every 3D model for the Saturn version to models with quads? Or am I not understanding this right?
Yes indeed, they had to remodel games in quads for the Saturn.
Oh wow, really?
I kind of feel that way about N64.
I only recently added one to my collection and, outside of a few classics, it's very difficult to find great N64 games. Most of the carts I've ended up collecting are PC ports of games I wanted to see running on N64.
The PSX holds up far better today with a wider variety of more playable games (especially 2D games and the simple but smooth 60 fps 3D games). Nearly everything on N64 consists of blurry polygon based visuals with a very low framerate.
There are lots of great N64 games... read my review thread? Of course it helps if you like the genres that the N64 was better at, like 3d action-adventure, racing, 3d platformer, FPS, and such, though. I like the N64's library more, but certainly would admit that the PS1 has a greater variety of genres represented.
That's close, but as you noted, still off. The HUD elements are displayed at a clean 240p on a real N64 with hard pixels. It looks much better than what you see there.
The N64 also produces very messy filtering. You might be right about some sort of edge filter going on. I'm not sure how they would have done it but games on n64 are surprisingly clean. The hard polygon edges in Mario 64 are surprisingly smooth rather than jaggy on a real SDTV.
What you get with an emulators does not really resemble the real thing.
I really wish that the N64 and PS1 had emulators like SSF for the Saturn, that try to accurately emulate the hardware instead of "improving" upon it... that'd be great, and is needed, but doesn't look like it's happening, sadly.
Yeah, the DC's progressive scan support was perhaps the biggest thing it had over earlier consoles, visually.
I have to correct you on this Black Falcon
First off, there are a multitude of disc-based games that seamlessly stream content, even on the PS1. The most well-known example is Soul Reaver.
That's true, that and Driver show that you can do streaming, with enough work. It's a LOT easier on N64 though.
Second, most N64 loaded levels into memory the regular way without any sort of streaming, including Mario 64 and both Zeldas. There are constant "loading screens", what do you think those fade to blacks are for?
I can't think of other N64 games with "huge" areas.
That kind of "loading" is exactly the advantage of a cart, though -- a loading screen so short you don't even notice it. The N64 would not be better with PS1-length or longer loading screens all over the place!
As for other games with huge areas, the Rare 3d platformers immediately come to mind, certainly, for some more examples.
And there are N64 games with noticeable loading, like Wipeout 64, anyway.
Yeah, that or Hydro Thunder have loading times because of audio decompression. They're still shorter than most PS1 load times though.
Going with carts was a mistake, period. History has factually proved this.
No, it wasn't a mistake. For the time it was the correct decision, and resulted in better games than the system would have had had it used discs.
Poorly written on my part, but that's what I meant to say. No home console system from that era ran at 60FPS progressive scan. 60FPS games are really running at 30Hz(or 31Hz) even though they're rendering two images together interlaced at once. Though the Dreamcast did have a VGA mode with 480p 60fps progressive scan. Though apparently the Saturn did support progressive scan to a certain degree as well. But I don't think any game ever supported it, nor is there any way to enable this mode without hard wiring the Saturn to do so.
Yeah, nobody had done real progressive scan before the DC. Definitely a big step forward.
Oh I was wrong, Decathlete was 704x480i as well. But most of these other games you mentioned all ran at 704x448, or 704x240 with lower vertical resolutions.
I don't think using a high resolution like that is much of an accomplishment if the game is only using it in menus... it only really matters if it's being used ingame!
Umm... as far as I know, exporting a quad based model to a triangles is easy, as you can make quads out of triangles. But exporting a triangle based model to quads is not so easy. But it really depends on the complexity of the model. So I would imagine that in most cases, yes. Models would have to be rebuilt for the Saturn when porting from the PS1.
Good explanation here. And yeah, I'm sure having to make everything into quads did hurt some of those PS1-to-Saturn ports, in addition to everything else that made the Saturn harder to program for.
Quads do have a few advantages over triangle, but they also have many disadvantages as well. In the Saturn's case, quads did have less texture warping and distortion than the PS1's triangle based rendering. You could actually also render curved surfaces much easier on quads than you could in triangles. But things like clipping and collision detection are much more of a pain in the ass to deal with for programmers. This is why the entire PC industry adopted triangles as the main form of rendering over quads.
This is true, but even if there's less texture warping and distortion, the Saturn definitely has some texture warping and distortion, compared to systems which can fix that in hardware.
I won't deny it, but Wipeout 3 was a really good looking game on the PS1.
The Sega Saturn didn't have a port of Wipeout 3, but it did have ports of Wipeout 1 and 2 (XL/ 2097)
Wipeout 1 side by side comparison
Wipeout 2097 (XL) side by side comparison
Both games running on real hardware.
The Saturn ports are actually pretty impressive. But they both do suffer from a worse framerates (more notably 2097 than Wipeout 1) and lack hardware transparencies and light sourcing on the models. There were a few Saturn games that did achieve dynamic lighting and transparencies through software trickery, but these were things that the Saturn didn't really support through hardware like the PS1.
For completions sake, here's Wipeout 64 on the N64 for comparison:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToSX20YfFyM
(not sure if this is running on emulation or real hardware though)
That Wipeout 64 video might be real hardware, but yeah, it's hard to tell. The game clearly is based on Wipeout XL's graphics, but improves over them.
As for the Saturn games, I have the first Wipeout for Saturn. It looks reasonably comparable to the PS1 game in most respects, but as I said earlier in the thread, you really can tell that the Saturn can't easily do transparencies, and the special effects (explosions and such) look a lot worse on Saturn than on PS1. Otherwise though, very similar. I like the game more on Saturn overall because I much prefer the redesigned wall-hitting system that only knocks off a little speed when you bump a wall, instead of dropping your acceleration to zero as happens in the PS1 version. It makes the Saturn version so much more playable...