I NEED SCISSORS said:
The N64 was terrible - but I say this as someone who received one from a friend in 2006 and had been a PlayStation only gamer up until then. The main issues:
- The unconventional design of the controller, in which half of it went to waste, really put me off just playing games. The few games which did use all of it, such as Doom 64, were impossible to control. Also my analog stick was really loose, so that probably affected things.
The controller's analog stick is its only real weakness. That is an issue, but get a replacement stick or good controller and it's great. It's designed so that you either use the dpad or stick, not both; that's fine, you don't need both at once. Nintendo did clearly think more games would use the dpad than did when they designed it, but still it was a great design. With controllers that have either two prongs, with the dpad and stick next to eachother, one or the other of them is going to be a little easier to use than the other; with the N64 both are in the perfect place, when you hold it with the left hand on that prong and the right on the buttons.
- Cartridges, and their subsequent large cardboard boxes, took up more storage space than CDs and had the problem of the sticker peeling off. They also made the games lower quality - audio was often really muffled due to compression and music was usually MIDI to keep within the storage limitations imposed. I remember it also made games up to £65 when new.
Cartridge stickers don't often peel off unless you really treat them terribly. Carts are MUCH more durable than CDs and are much harder to break. Carts allow for immediate access to all game data, making for much shorter or no load times and larger areas without streaming (you don't need to only do what you can load in RAM). I think Nintendo did the right thing sticking with carts, they are better in more ways than they are worse in my opinion.
- The image quality was terrible. Very murky with some absolutely horrible analog connections. Framerate issues were also abound - it was like playing things in slow motion compared to PlayStation.
The image quality was far superior to Playstation or Saturn image quality thanks to perspective correction, z-buffering, anti-aliasing, filtering, and more. It did have blurry textures, but the jaggies, texture warping, etc. that the other consoles have (PSX particularly, for texture warping) are much, much bigger issues. The N64 was much faster than Saturn or PSX, but didn't push lots more polygons; instead a lot of that power was used in the much improved image quality, so that fewer polygons were needed (on PSX for instance polygons often had to be overlapped, I believe, to hide the awful polygon edges; on N64 that isn't an issue thanks to its hardware so you could use fewer polys.)
The N64 did have low texture resolutions in many games, thanks to the small texture cache, but I think the much improved quality of the 3d makes it well worth it in comparison to most games on the other systems...
As for framerates, it is true that some games that pushed the system did have questionable framerates. I don't think they made games unplayable, though, and N64 framerates were much better than early 3d framerates were (Super FX games for example...). Also in many games the worst framerates are with an expansion pak and High Res mode turned on; often this is a switch and the player can choose low or high resolution, choosing between a better framerate or better graphics.
- The system was ugly. I hate systems that try to build themselves up into some sort of unique looking monolith. I prefer just a nondescript, sleek looking box that I can hide in a corner. I disliked the way the cartridge stuck up in the air (a NES style tray would have been preferable).
It's the original model Playstation that's horribly ugly, I think that the N64 is beautiful, one of the best looking consoles ever.
Also, the NES's cart tray, as cool as it looks, was a horrible design idea because of how unreliable it makes the system. If you're going to use carts, make the most out of their advantages and have a direct cartridge connection -- having carts but then using internal moving parts that can break sacrifices one of the medium's advantages, that of the greater durability (to both system and cartridge) that they bring.
- All in all, the games had their quirky appeal, but nothing really had the same sort of grand cinematic excellence that you got on PlayStation with Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo and Final Fantasy VIII.
Now that, of course, is entirely opinion. In my opinion, sure the Playstation had more cinematic experiences, but the N64 had better games.
