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[soxinthebox]

I hate the jittery effect in PS1 3D games and tend to prefer the look of N64 games because of it. The N64 had more performance problems (framerates) but those bothered me less than the constant jitter.

I still play my N64 fairly often. Only title I've tried that it just too technically unsound to play long is Banjo Tooie. Framerate is unbearable. Banjo-Kazooie on the other hand is probably the best visual output to performance ratio on the system.

Even at the time I found Tooie's framerate far too low to actually enjoy the game whereas Banjo Kazooie was up in my top 3 games for the 64.

I keep hearing that PAL suffered from lower framerates than the NTSC when it came to the 64 but have never had a way to test. Anyone know if there is really much difference in performance?

 

[Vane_MagicCity]

Did Spyro feature continuous levels on the scale of Mario 64? I can't remember, I didn't play them that much.

I think Spyro was actually bigger. I doubt Super Mario 64 was continuous, it just loaded fast so it seemed continuous.

 

[Lynd7]

Yeah I wasn't saying the whole thing was continuous. The worlds themselves.

 

[Error]

I liked how Megaman Legends looked, very blocky and colorful. One of the best looking games in the system for sure.

 

[Vane_MagicCity]

Yeah I wasn't saying the whole thing was continuous. The worlds themselves.

I haven't played Spyro in a few years but I believe the worlds were bigger. That's probably down to having more storage on a CD ROM. Loading times were obviously much longer.

 

[Lynd7]

Even at the time I found Tooie's framerate far too low to actually enjoy the game whereas Banjo Kazooie was up in my top 3 games for the 64.

I keep hearing that PAL suffered from lower framerates than the NTSC when it came to the 64 but have never had a way to test. Anyone know if there is really much difference in performance?

I think Rare's games were generally optimised pretty well. A lot of N64 games do run slower though.

 

[KojiKnight]

I liked how Megaman Legends looked, very blocky and colorful. One of the best looking games in the system for sure.

That team knew how to make a 3D game with the limitations of the hardware of the time, that's for sure.

 

[jhmtehgamr20xx]

I think Spyro was actually bigger. I doubt Super Mario 64 was continuous, it just loaded fast so it seemed continuous.

Nintendo are masters at this technique. They hide loading times excellently with cuts and transitions that integrate into the games perfectly thematically. SMG 1 also does this amazingly well.

So you stopped playing a certain platform just because graphics alone, not caring about if the games themselves were good or anything?

You may want to stay out of the Watch Dogs thread, then.

Or go in, just for laughs.

Battle for Naboo, Conker, Majora's Mask, Beetle Adventure Racing. The system's power was definitely held back by the texture cache, though.

A rare few, yep. Especially Conker and Naboo (and Squadron).

But there's a level of detail in a lot of PS1 games N64 ones lack, one culprit being the reason you state, and I'd rather have that than loss of it.

 

[vicoakland]

I like PS1, period, graphics and all.

There's some great, great stuff in the PS1 library, and, frankly, some of it kicks all the harder because of how the games intersect with the (admittedly very real) limits on the tech.

Intelligent Qube. R-Type Delta. Rival Schools. Micro Maniacs. Crash. Pandemonium. Breath of Fire. Xenogears. Lomax. Klonoa. Vagrant Story. Einhander. Tail Concerto. Threads of Fate. Chrono Cross. Colin McRae 2. Viewpoint. Omega Boost. Jumping Flash. Psychic Force. RE Nemesis. Elemental Gearbolt. Kagero. Ray Crisis. RR4. Devil Dice.

Running these PS1 games on a PS2 and outputting component into a WEGA is bliss. (And is not emulated, ie. no lag, all effects fully intact.)

CRT love.

 

[Tygamr]

While I liked the PS1 library more, I prefered the N64's graphics. It annoyed me how in many PS1 games, textures would get warped, and shimmer, or sometimes even disappear temporarily. N64 never had that issue, and while textures were blurry, I actually kinda prefered the blurring to the very pixelated PS1 textures.

I never really have issues going back to my favorite PS1 games though. I am amazed at how far computer graphics have come.

 

[Mooreberg]

Real time 3D has aged well enough with emulators. The pre-rendered stuff is going to look bad forever.

 

[Ishida]

You may want to stay out of the Watch Dogs thread, then.

Or go in, just for laughs..

Oh I've been there... I got out because of all the overreacting and drama.... Sometimes I think GAF is better than the rest of the gaming forums, but threads like that make me realize it's not always the case...

 

[Om3ga]

It's not something I even thought about while playing all those awesome games. N64 had only a handful of games that were worth playing to me and I didn't have a capable PC. The only thing I could compare the graphics to was arcades.

PS1 days I was literally buying new games every week/month and trading them at the flea market. I bought so many games from the guy, he just started to lend me games and told me to bring them back when I'm done with them and if I wanted to keep them or, "lost" them just pay for them.

I probably played at least 50 PS1 and never once thought the graphics were terrible.

 

[klee123]

I much prefer the graphics of PS1 over the other 2 systems at the time. Sure the 64 had smoother graphics, but most of the games ran like crap and was often a foggy mess.

 

[zero shift]

Better looking than any N64 game. I get the feeling a lot of people who are in favor of N64 either never owned a PS1 or never played the best looking games available on it.

Or more like you've never owned a Nintendo 64. I own Vagrant Story and while it looks great it isn't even close to the top tier NIntendo 64 games.

Conker's Bad Fur Day looked fantastic. Almost like a Dreamcast game.

(Doubt it's native resolution but it is impossible to find direct feed screens for this game)

Sin & Punishment looked incredible as well.

 

[My words exactly!]

Yep, Conker didn't even need to use the expansion pak. Couple that with incredible audio quality, models, effects and lighting too.

Btw i see the texture card beeing played (after the Turok one that got debunked) and while i get it for many cases, thing is that Naboo and GoldenEye/Perfect Dark had massive open enviroments with many characters on screen as well better textures than any PSX game. And they were in games that had not closed enviroments with barely any physics or interaction.

It is a crying shame that custom N64 microcode has not yet been reverse engineered to be properly emulated, so that ignorant people who dismiss top N64 games could see what the fuss is all about. Nintendo's stupidity to not offer it to any N64 developer has cost them dearly.

 

[Tain]

Real time 3D has aged well enough with emulators. The pre-rendered stuff is going to look bad forever.

I think that, in general, PSX and N64 games look worse in super-high resolutions. Not stable enough. N64 games probably hold up better with more stable polygons, but I'd take the original hardware on a CRT over this:

 

[emag]

The PS1/N64/Saturn generation was a wasteland, with the exception of some 2D/2.5D games (Symphony of the Night, Klonoa, Breath of Fire III, PaRappa, Resident Evil 2, Capcom fighters (on Saturn only), etc.) and racing/vehicle games (Wipeout, GT, RR, Colony Wars, etc.).

Everything was so insanely ugly and poorly designed. It boggled my mind back then -- and continues to flabbergast me today -- that anyone could appreciate the ugly, clunky Ocarina of Time/Super Mario 64 after the beautiful, smooth Link to the Past/Super Mario World/Yoshi's Island.

It wasn't until the Dreamcast and especially the GameCube (Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Wind Waker) that polygonal graphics and 3D game design caught up with 2D assets.

 

[IISANDERII]

Agreed OP. I was so unimpressed that I stopped gaming altogether for 3-4 years. Gran Turismo brought me back in but even then it was a halfhearted return because I only played a few games on the system like Metal Gear Solid and Colony Wars.

And I definitely felt as though standards had dropped because I was pretty surprised to learn that EGM gave Metal Gear Solid perfect 10's when I thought they'd give it 8.5's or so.

 

[Memorabilia]

I can go back and play everything from the 2600 on up, until I hit the psx/n64/saturn era, then I just have to jump over that whole blurry/framey/janky mess of an era then pick back up from Dreamcast on up

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I used to think it was just me. I recently bought a PSOne for $25 (it came with a couple extra DS2 controllers so it was like I was getting the console free lol) to "force" myself to do some retro-gaming and I'm having a really difficult time with it for a few reasons.

Maybe there are some good PSX 2D games?

 

[KojiKnight]

I think that, in general, PSX and N64 games look worse in super-high resolutions. Not stable enough. N64 games probably hold up better with more stable polygons, but I'd take the original hardware on a CRT over this:

That's some ugly additional texture filtering whatever emu you used to take that screenshot is using.

 

[Oddduck]

The best looking N64 games looked better than the best looking PS1 games.

 

[entremet]

That's some ugly additional texture filtering whatever emu you used to take that screenshot is using.

That's the point he's making lol.

 

[Lynd7]

The best looking N64 games looked better than the best looking PS1 games.

Yeah, I don't think there's even a contest really..

 

[ascii42]

This may be an irrelevant question, but what does everyone think was the best looking/running N64 game without the use of the expansion pack? Banjo-Kazooie?

 

[Lynd7]

This may be an irrelevant question, but what does everyone think was the best looking/running N64 game without the use of the expansion pack? Banjo-Kazooie?

Would have to be Conker.

 

[daninthemix]

This may be an irrelevant question, but what does everyone think was the best looking/running N64 game without the use of the expansion pack? Banjo-Kazooie?

I'd say so, yes. Diddy Kong Racing was pretty great too - one of the most colorful games ever.

 

[StuBurns]

Conker's the best looking N64 game, including the games that used ExpPak.

 

[Awakened]

I think that, in general, PSX and N64 games look worse in super-high resolutions. Not stable enough. N64 games probably hold up better with more stable polygons, but I'd take the original hardware on a CRT over this:

Yeah, even in the latest Mupen Retroarch core, which has had a lot of fixes lately and a more N64-like texture filter added, that fence has those white lines around it even running at 320x240 internal res:

We'll have to wait for Cen64 to have a good accuracy focused software emulator. For the most point I don't mind using Mupen though; the issues are less noticeable than I expected coming from using PJ64 v1.6 years ago.

On the PSX side, I love how Mednafen's software emulation looks:

(all of these shots are through RetroArch using the Pixellate shader to make the scaling look better without much blurring)

I can see how these shots can look ugly to some, but I like how the GUI meshes with the in game graphics unlike how bad it looks comparatively when you up the internal res.

Ultimately it's the gameplay that draws me in anyways.

 

[Panajev2001a]

That's true, but I wish they'd have waited for texture filtering.

Nah, perspective correct texture mapping (instead of linear interpolation of texture coordinates) would have been a much more practical things to ask for but then so would a z-buffer .

Still, while it would have allowed ploys to be used to add detail instead of minimizing texture warping it would have led to quite a bit of transistors being spent on interpolators, widening data busses, adding more VRAM to hold the z-buffer and making sure you can increase bandwidth too, etc... etc...

You start adding things up and you get a system difficult to launch when it did without super massive losses on the hardware sold to consumers.

 

[TheD]

Yep, Conker didn't even need to use the expansion pak. Couple that with incredible audio quality, models, effects and lighting too.

Btw i see the texture card beeing played (after the Turok one that got debunked) and while i get it for many cases, thing is that Naboo and GoldenEye/Perfect Dark had massive open enviroments with many characters on screen as well better textures than any PSX game. And they were in games that had not closed enviroments with barely any physics or interaction.

It is a crying shame that custom N64 microcode has not yet been reverse engineered to be properly emulated, so that ignorant people who dismiss top N64 games could see what the fuss is all about. Nintendo's stupidity to not offer it to any N64 developer has cost them dearly.

There is in fact a low level RSP plugin floating around that allows you to play at least some of the games that used custom microcode.

 

[ascii42]

Would have to be Conker.

Oh, yeah. You're probably right. I had thought Conker at the very least made use of the expansion pack if it was in the system, but apparently not. That's impressive. Been a long time since I've seen the N64 version in action. How well did it run? The Xbox version was how I played through the game (which wound up also being an impressive use of console hardware).

 

[huxley00]

The PS1/N64/Saturn generation was a wasteland, with the exception of some 2D/2.5D games (Symphony of the Night, Klonoa, Breath of Fire III, PaRappa, Resident Evil 2, Capcom fighters (on Saturn only), etc.) and racing/vehicle games (Wipeout, GT, RR, Colony Wars, etc.).

Everything was so insanely ugly and poorly designed. It boggled my mind back then -- and continues to flabbergast me today -- that anyone could appreciate the ugly, clunky Ocarina of Time/Super Mario 64 after the beautiful, smooth Link to the Past/Super Mario World/Yoshi's Island.

It wasn't until the Dreamcast and especially the GameCube (Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Wind Waker) that polygonal graphics and 3D game design caught up with 2D assets.

I was in the same boat, 13 when PS1 came out and I simply could not understand why, why, why they made these terribly ugly 3d games when they could make fantastic and beautiful 2d games. It just made no sense to me, still doesnt.

 

[jhmtehgamr20xx]

Oh I've been there... I got out because of all the overreacting and drama.... Sometimes I think GAF is better than the rest of the gaming forums, but threads like that make me realize it's not always the case...

82 pages of Hell and counting.

Lomax.

I didn't think there was a 2D platformer on the system that looked better than Rayman. Then I found out about this.

Also, welcome to the boards

The PS1/N64/Saturn generation was a wasteland, with the exception of some 2D/2.5D games (Symphony of the Night, Klonoa, Breath of Fire III, PaRappa, Resident Evil 2, Capcom fighters (on Saturn only), etc.) and racing/vehicle games (Wipeout, GT, RR, Colony Wars, etc.).

Everything was so insanely ugly and poorly designed. It boggled my mind back then -- and continues to flabbergast me today -- that anyone could appreciate the ugly, clunky Ocarina of Time/Super Mario 64 after the beautiful, smooth Link to the Past/Super Mario World/Yoshi's Island.

It wasn't until the Dreamcast and especially the GameCube (Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Wind Waker) that polygonal graphics and 3D game design caught up with 2D assets.

Altho that's a highly subjective opinion, I can respect it. But for me that gen had-and still has-maybe the most ambitious, experimental games I can think of, conceptually and in terms of game design that expects the player to have more than a single working brain cell.

There really have been very few to zero games like LSD: Dream Simulator, I Have No Mouth, System Shock, Burn:Cycle, Goemon, etc. The indie scene for me only half-counts because a lot of those are aping on tropes their inspirations did years ago, and in some cases don't even look as good as them from an art design/technical POV. It's been improving quite a bit on those fronts lately, though.

Also for myself personally, I am a massive fan of many different types of art; tbh I am not overtly impressed with photo-realistic paintings although they are technically excellent. I also have a fond appreciation for cartoons and anime, manga etc. Being an artist myself, I think that helps a lot with having a larger threshold of tolerance for different types of visual experiences of varying technical proficiencies, and that's a big reason why I can not only tolerate, but be fascinated with, PS1-era visuals.

 

[Miguel81]

How many others loved the 2D sprites over polygonal backgrounds? I'm playing Strider 2 at the moment and I wish we had more of these nowadays.

 

[lordchompy]

I'm inclined to agree with the OP, most ps1 games had either terrible image quality or a really unambitious graphics engine. But there are a few exceptions. Soul Reaver in my opinion was one of the best looking games of the 5th console generation, hands down. And even the limitations of the PS1 did not restrain Crystal Dynamics from blowing almost everything on the N64 out of the water.

 

[TheRook]

I don't agree with the OP, while I do own a Saturn, PSX, and N64. Visually they all had games that looked good and others that looked really shitty.

Saturn did have better ports of games like KOF 97, X-men vs SF, and Dead or Alive. But the PSX had Tekken 3/Soul Blade, Ehrgeiz(among many other great Sqaresoft games) and Legend of Dragoon. N64 wasn't a slouch either with Turok 2, Smash Bros, and Those great AKI developed Wrestling games.

Back then, the arcade versions of everything looked the best and most people generally didn't care about graphics most because they just wanted to play the games they played in the arcade at home as well. I'll admit that back then, I didn't think games could look better than Soul Calibur in the arcades....oh those were the days.

 

[Munin]

I love the pixelly PSX 3D look, with the right art direction it looks fantastic. Just wish the texture warping wasn't a problem. I assume there is no emu that fixes this?

 

[Uncle Rupee]

Or more like you've never owned a Nintendo 64. I own Vagrant Story and while it looks great it isn't even close to the top tier NIntendo 64 games.

Pfft. I probably own more N64 games than you ever did. While there are definitely strengths in the N64's visuals, the vast majority of its games look like ass. You can cherry pick one or two examples, but they aren't really representative of the average game. I think if you break it down, as I did in an earlier post in this thread, the PS1 wins overall because it has more impressive looking games in almost every genre.

 

[stilgar]

Perfect Dark 64 made me understand how deep the gap is between N64 and PS1.

It also made me sad to see how poorly N64 power was pushed by third parties.

 

[lordchompy]

Perfect Dark 64 made me understand how deep the gap is between N64 and PS1.

It also made me sad to see how poorly N64 power was pushed by third parties.

I couldn't for the life of me play Perfect Dark with its piss poor frame-rate.

 

[stilgar]

I couldn't for the life of me play Perfect Dark with its piss poor frame-rate.

Yeah, I can understand that. But with this console, my body was ready already.

4 players + bots I think I went like ... 5-10 FPS?

 

[petran79]

The PS1/N64/Saturn generation was a wasteland, with the exception of some 2D/2.5D games (Symphony of the Night, Klonoa, Breath of Fire III, PaRappa, Resident Evil 2, Capcom fighters (on Saturn only), etc.) and racing/vehicle games (Wipeout, GT, RR, Colony Wars, etc.).

Everything was so insanely ugly and poorly designed. It boggled my mind back then -- and continues to flabbergast me today -- that anyone could appreciate the ugly, clunky Ocarina of Time/Super Mario 64 after the beautiful, smooth Link to the Past/Super Mario World/Yoshi's Island.

It wasn't until the Dreamcast and especially the GameCube (Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Wind Waker) that polygonal graphics and 3D game design caught up with 2D assets.

at that time every platform not only had its own distinct graphics and controllers, but also displays.

Computers had hi-res monitors, arcades had special HQ CRT monitors, consoles had televisions through RF or scart, handhelds had LCD etc.

while computers, arcades and handhelds had no issues with displaying graphics properly, it is actually the desktop consoles and standard televisions that began to show the gap in technology.

Eg playing Dreamcast or PS2 games on an old television through RF or Scart was very tiresome. Especially on 50 Hz PAL monitors. PS3 games were impossible to play, since a lot of text was unreadable due to low-res. One had to own a really good TV set to enjoy those games.

Ocarina of Time at that time while not having the best graphics, it had very good art direction and vibrant colors. but I guess characters intentionally didnt move their mouths during dialogues....it wouldnt look so good.

3D graphics werent meant for old televisions.

 

[sublimit]

Sorry OP but i can't relate.
I loved the graphics and atmosphere of games like Resident Evil,Final Fantasy,Tomb Raider,Spyro,Gran Turismo and many others back then and i still like them today.

The hardware limitations really made the imaginations of artists shine back then.Nowdays the obsession with photorealism has made the art directions look sterile and boring.

 

[My words exactly!]

I couldn't for the life of me play Perfect Dark with its piss poor frame-rate.

Well in 4 player MP plus 8 hard+ sim bots you could certainly have a framerate in the single digits.
However single player was mostly smooth even at 480i (hi-rez setting) bar some really ambitious scenes. All in all though, if you consider that PD did things that even some of today's fps games don't do (and of course there was nothing that can touch it on PSX) and had a good AI as well, it was well worth it.
For all else, there's the XBLA version

Btw, in an old Rareware interview, it was stated (IIRC it was by Martin Hollis?) that the Perfect Dark engine (which was a turbocharged GoldenEye one with added effects) could run the original GoldenEye updated and locked in 30fps

There is in fact a low level RSP plugin floating around that allows you to play at least some of the games that used custom microcode.

Does that support Battle for Naboo, Indiana Jones and World Driver Championship?

 

[TheD]

Well in 4 player MP plus 8 hard+ sim bots you could certainly have a framerate in the single digits.
However single player was mostly smooth even at 480i (hi-rez setting) bar some really ambitious scenes. All in all though, if you consider that PD did things that even some of today's fps games don't do (and of course there was nothing that can touch it on PSX) and had a good AI as well, it was well worth it.
For all else, there's the XBLA version

Btw, in an old Rareware interview, it was stated (IIRC it was by Martin Hollis?) that the Perfect Dark engine (which was a turbocharged GoldenEye one with added effects) could run the original GoldenEye updated and locked in 30fps



Does that support Battle for Naboo, Indiana Jones and World Driver Championship?

Not sure about the first 2, but WDC runs.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

I'm inclined to agree with the OP, most ps1 games had either terrible image quality or a really unambitious graphics engine. But there are a few exceptions. Soul Reaver in my opinion was one of the best looking games of the 5th console generation, hands down. And even the limitations of the PS1 did not restrain Crystal Dynamics from blowing almost everything on the N64 out of the water.

Not only that, but there were no loading times whatsoever! That game was truly an amazing technical feat.

I love the screenshot you picked, the Drowned Abbey is my favourite area of the entire game. Those stained glass, man... <3

 

[Fusebox]

Or more like you've never owned a Nintendo 64. I own Vagrant Story and while it looks great it isn't even close to the top tier NIntendo 64 games.

Conker's Bad Fur Day looked fantastic. Almost like a Dreamcast game.

Or more like you've never owned a Dreamcast if you think N64 is remotely on par with it.

 

[Rafterman]

I gave a shit about it back then, the PS1 (and Saturn) had awful 3D hardware that made the N64 look great in comparison.

My hype for the PS2 was due to the much improved graphics.

The PS1 did not have the best looking games for very long, the 3DFX voodoo (and N64) came out in late 1996 and they both blew the PS1 away (even some software rendered PC games looked better than what the PS1 could do).

The PS1 came out a year before the N64 and I mentioned PC graphics cards in my last post. You're basically just saying everything I already said.

What he meant to say was "me and most of my friends were grade schoolers at the time and we didn't understand the technical aspects." Resolution and textures were DEFINITELY a topic of discussion back then. I ran Mega Man Legends via Bleem on my PC back in 2000 for that sweet ass texture filtering and resolution on a voodoo 2!

2000 was five years later, long after 3D PC gaming cards got people caring about that kind of stuff. In fact the Voodoo 2 was already garbage by then and Nvidia had already taken over. The PS1 was out well before that, and no one ever brought up resolution, textures, or filtering when it was released. This coming from someone who was finished with college when the PS1 was released, not in grade school.

 

[Tain]

I absolutely remember game magazines talking about framerate and resolution in the late 90s.