With the announcement of the NX, Nintendo admits defeat with the Wii U

I'm wondering if they will follow the idea of a normal console with something more to appeal to a larger public, so maybe bundle it with a VR device like Oculus Rift or even with augmented reality, since looks like it's the new boat to take after the 3D.
But an idea that I have since the DS days is a portable that also is a home console (not like the Wii U controller, but a real portable), and for Nintendo this could save them, because they still rule the sales of this market. Would be a "all or nothing" situation, but they are almost in this position now...

I really don't think it will be a normal console with VR. I have a feeling that its going to be something as changing as Wii and DS where. Sadly, I thought those changes where negative... I mean, motion waggle didn't make games better and two screens wasn't special. Touching the bottom to move the top? Eh.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fruitsofherwomb

I really don't think it will be a normal console with VR. I have a feeling that its going to be something as changing as Wii and DS where. Sadly, I thought those changes where negative... I mean, motion waggle didn't make games better and two screens wasn't special. Touching the bottom to move the top? Eh.

---

Now with 3 screens! For 3 times the innovation!

But seriously. Seeing how they have handled this, and what they are saying. I have no faith in this being anything good.

That doesn't mean it won't sell well. I thought (and still do) the wii was a terrible POS, but it still sold like gold battered diamonds for quite awhile.

But they really don't seem to have a clue. I'd even welcome a "throw shit at the wall to see what sticks" strategy at this point. At least we'd be likely to see some interesting things, and maybe some would actually work.

Their handhelds will likely be successful for awhile longer. The Gameboy/DS line is still pretty ingrained as the go to portable gaming system. Even with the rise of mobile devices that are as capable, or more so, than the Nintendo handhelds they still haven't erased those handhelds totally yet.

I'm mostly worried about their home consoles. They have totally lost the plot since the Gamecube and don't seem to be on the road to finding it again since then.

The DS, 3ds, wii, wii-u. All have been frugal hardware with a gimmick hoping to make Nintendo big money with a minimum of hassle.

I own the Wii U and the 3DS. I like the 3DS and its games, but it has to do more with the actual games not the hardware. The issue is they think people care about the box its being played on. All they care about is what they are playing and want to play it with controller. The issue here is that all the games are on other consoles and have better advertising.

Nintendo is a great game developer, but they can't force people to buy a 250 dollar Nintendo game player.

I honestly just can't wait for them to die so we can talk about how great Nintendo was in the 80s, instead of how shit they have been for about 10 years or so.

Yeah its a shame, that the old SEGA never have Nintendo war chest At least SEGA gave it a go with the DC and pushed the boat out, Nintendo have been a joke, since the N64 days for consoles...way behind on tech and a complete waste of time for on-line and HD gaming really . They're an analogue dinosaur in the digital age.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gogogadget

I honestly just can't wait for them to die so we can talk about how great Nintendo was in the 80s, instead of how shit they have been for about 10 years or so.

---

I'd hate to see them die, they reliably make some fun and well designed games with tight gameplay.

Not everything they make is solid gold to be sure, but they have a knack for quality that's hard to deny. My biggest complaint is that they milk certain characters/settings to a crazy extent (I'm looking at you Mario), while huge chunks of their IP sits and rots.

The big problem is, as fruitsofherwomb put it, they keep trying to force people into buying an expensive Nintendo gamebox... because Nintendo doesn't seem to give a damn about anyone else making games on their systems other than them.


Nintendo could release an xb1/ps4 with a number of the non-gaming features stripped out for a lower price and the wii pro controller (or similar) as the controller used.
No gimmicks, no "quirky" default control schemes, just a basic game system with all the power needed.

And all the people buying their consoles and games? They would still buy them on that kind of system. The only difference is they would have ALSO been able to get any 3rd party games they wanted on the same system without having to hope it got a last gen version/downport that also made it to Nintendo's console.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

Nintendo could release an xb1/ps4 with a number of the non-gaming features stripped out for a lower price and the wii pro controller (or similar) as the controller used.
No gimmicks, no "quirky" default control schemes, just a basic game system with all the power needed.

---

Isn't that basically what the Gamecube was?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by j_factor

Isn't that basically what the Gamecube was?

---

Almost. Still had gimped storage space. But it's been the closest Nintendo has come to having a console that is really on par with the competition since the SNES. (The n64's carts were a much larger hindrance than the smaller disks were for the cube).

The GC still sold about as well as the oXbox. Neither one of them was going to beat out the PS2 however.

They need to stop with the gimmicks in my opinion. Since the Wii in both their console and handheld departments it's just been minor tweaks and gimmick after gimmick. I mean the DS to the DSXL to the 3DS and then the 2DS?! Give me a fucking break. They treat their customer base EXACTLY how Sega started treating theirs in the mid 90's, namely by taking them utterly for granted. If they want to get back to where they were as a gaming giant then, as I've said before, they need to actually start developing hardware and spending the billions they are no doubt sat on from years of mastering the art of gimmick making and releasing the exact same games starring their biggest franchises over and over again with minor tweaks. They need to actually spend on developing a console that serious gamers will sit up and take notice of again in order to even begin to claw back marketshare from Sony and Microsoft. It ain't rocket science and unless Nintendo actually shows the ambition the company showed in the early 90's during their war with Sega then the sad irony for them is that they will be packing their bags and following Sega down that long road of obscurity.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Gogogadget

I honestly just can't wait for them to die so we can talk about how great Nintendo was in the 80s, instead of how shit they have been for about 10 years or so.

---

I honestly just prefer to play the games Nintendo released the last ten years than the games they released in the '80.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Yeah its a shame, that the old SEGA never have Nintendo war chest At least SEGA gave it a go with the DC and pushed the boat out, Nintendo have been a joke, since the N64 days for consoles...way behind on tech and a complete waste of time for on-line and HD gaming really . They're an analogue dinosaur in the digital age.

---

Nintendo earned that war chest through videogames, it didn't fall from the sky.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

Almost. Still had gimped storage space. But it's been the closest Nintendo has come to having a console that is really on par with the competition since the SNES. (The n64's carts were a much larger hindrance than the smaller disks were for the cube).

The GC still sold about as well as the oXbox. Neither one of them was going to beat out the PS2 however.

---

The N64's better third-party game library than the GC's should be more than enough to prove you wrong. The N64 and Gamecube are both hardware just as good or better than the other consoles of their generation. Smaller storage mediums mean little compared to the powerful hardware in the boxes.

However, good tech didn't sell well enough, so Nintendo changed strategies with their next system. Now that Wii strategy is struggling, what will they do next...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

The N64's better third-party game library than the GC's should be more than enough to prove you wrong. The N64 and Gamecube are both hardware just as good or better than the other consoles of their generation. Smaller storage mediums mean little compared to the powerful hardware in the boxes.

However, good tech didn't sell well enough, so Nintendo changed strategies with their next system. Now that Wii strategy is struggling, what will they do next...

---

When the Saturn and ESPECIALLY the PS1 were embracing full CD audio, massive pre-rendered cut scenes, and generally all sorts of stuff that took up tons of storage space... it absolutely was a problem.

The N64 hardware was more powerful, but at the same time they couldn't push the content to it. The cost of pressing a CD was cheaper than even the lowest capacity N64 carts, and offered much more space.

The n64 was also the first true post SNES Nintendo console. It was supported by a great number of the companies that had supported them before. It wasn't until the PSX stole that generations thunder that companies started shifting their focus. The GC and oXbox both had less 3rd party support than Sony... because the PS2 was already a sales monster before they even got released, they just were never going to compete unless something drastically happened to Sony.

People always bring up the GC as being a bad system for Nintendo.. but compared to what? To the PS2? So was everything. Compared to the oXbox? Just barely, and mostly due to the US market, but even with that they were pretty much neck and neck by the time they were both discontinued.
Compared to the N64? Well yeah, it wasn't going to reclaim market share up against the PS2.

The GC did ok, but not great, and instead of redoubling their efforts to make a killer system we got the wii. Which they got lucky with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

When the Saturn and ESPECIALLY the PS1 were embracing full CD audio, massive pre-rendered cut scenes, and generally all sorts of stuff that took up tons of storage space... it absolutely was a problem.

The N64 hardware was more powerful, but at the same time they couldn't push the content to it. The cost of pressing a CD was cheaper than even the lowest capacity N64 carts, and offered much more space.

---

FMV and CD audio aren't gameplay. They can be nice things, but aren't necessary in games. N64 cartridges are big enough for any actual gameplay content that generation. Gameplay is what matters in games, more than anything else. And anyway, Resident Evil 2 for N64 shows how you can do plenty of FMV on the N64 if you want, and use good compression. As for music, games like Wipeout 64, Top Gear Overdrive, and the Tony Hawk games have music with full vocals, so you can do that on the system too.

Quote:

---

The n64 was also the first true post SNES Nintendo console. It was supported by a great number of the companies that had supported them before. It wasn't until the PSX stole that generations thunder that companies started shifting their focus.

---

This isn't really true, the third-party support the N64 had stuck through until '99 at least, and only faded after that because of the coming of the PS2, not because of anything related to the PS1. As for the third party support the N64 had, it was a mixture of third parties that had supported Nintendo before and some new ones. For Western third parties, Midway was mostly new, for instance; they only started making their own home console games in about '95. Acclaim had supported Nintendo since the NES, but significantly improved their game quality on the N64 -- the N64 has to be Acclaim's best period. Other studios were a mix of old and new.

In Japan of course Nintendo lost most of their top supporters to Sony, so there what you're saying really isn't true. They did continue to get some support from major third parties like Konami and Hudson, but most others abandoned them, following Square's lead towards Sony. There never was a time where the N64 actually had good third-party support from Japan; Enix did initially consider supporting it and then decided to instead follow Square towards the PS1, but you make it sound like it had support that went away partway through the generation, but that didn't happen. In Japan Nintendo mostly lost it at the beginning of the generation, and in the US the support they had stuck with them until the new consoles were about to come out.

Quote:

---

The GC and oXbox both had less 3rd party support than Sony... because the PS2 was already a sales monster before they even got released, they just were never going to compete unless something drastically happened to Sony.

---

If you look, you'll notice that GC third-party support dramatically drops after the first few years, as third parties fled the system thanks to struggling sales. A lot of third party games in '01-'03 are on GC as well as PS2 and Xbox, but after that, most third party games are PS2/Xbox only. In the US at least, the Xbox has far better third-party support than the Gamecube.

Quote:

---

People always bring up the GC as being a bad system for Nintendo.. but compared to what? To the PS2? So was everything. Compared to the oXbox? Just barely, and mostly due to the US market, but even with that they were pretty much neck and neck by the time they were both discontinued.
Compared to the N64? Well yeah, it wasn't going to reclaim market share up against the PS2.

The GC did ok, but not great, and instead of redoubling their efforts to make a killer system we got the wii. Which they got lucky with.

---

The GC is a great console, but it was Nintendo's worst-selling TV console before the Wii U, has worse third-party support than the N64, and has FAR more games that are just ports of games from the other consoles of the generation than the N64 had. A lot of GC games are PS2/Xbox ports (or DC, in some cases), while the N64 has a lot more exclusives, or PC/N64 only games that aren't on other consoles.

I find N64 versions of Nintendo series games often better than their GC sequels, too -- N64 Zelda is better, N64 Mario is better, N64 Wave Race is better, N64 F-Zero is better, N64 Mario Tennis is better, N64 Star Fox is better, N64 Mario Kart is better, etc. Some GC versions are better -- Smash Bros. and 1080 I like more on the GC -- but more series I like more on the N64.

Are you really trying to say that the CD audio and FMV on many high profile PS1 games WASN'T a huge marketing advantage for the system? I mean, gameplay certainly matters, but aside from Nintendo's own first party N64 games, there wasn't a huge amount of hype for that many games. And those that were hyped got positively destroyed by the likes of FF7.

The lack of storage space being available for N64 games was a giant issue regardless of your thoughts on the matter.

And yes, later on some 3rd parties started to stray away from the GC, but they also started to go BACK towards it as well closer to the end.


And again, the GC can't really be faulted for its sales. It sold just as well as the other non Sony console that gen. You can't expect it to magically do better out of nowhere. Sony dominated to a point that no one else could touch... so you have to look at relative performance.
MS took it as a foothold and went on to do great with the 360.

Point is, the GC... for it's generation, did just fine. Could it have done better? Yeah, most likely. But Nintendo went and got super lucky with the wii... but that was more of a fluke than an actual workable strategy.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

Almost. Still had gimped storage space. But it's been the closest Nintendo has come to having a console that is really on par with the competition since the SNES. (The n64's carts were a much larger hindrance than the smaller disks were for the cube).

The GC still sold about as well as the oXbox. Neither one of them was going to beat out the PS2 however.

---

I always bring up this fact.

During the prime of the 6th-gen era(1999-2006), I didn't know a single person who had anything besides a PS2. No Dreamcasts, Xboxs or GameCubes.

I had a Gamecube for Metroid Prime. No regrets.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

Point is, the GC... for it's generation, did just fine.

---

Perhaps it did. But I can't imagine anyone of authority at Nintendo holding up their worst-selling prior console as a model for their strategy with their next one.

Nintendo lost much of their 3rd party support the moment they announced they were going to release a cartridge based system. If the n64 had been CD based it would most likely had had the first resident evil, Final fantasy 7, metal gear solid, probably tekken and soul blade. Many of the killer apps that made the playstation so successful would have been nintendo games. They might have had a multi-platform release, but Nintendo had the money to pay for exclusives and even if they had been multi-platform releases, the n64 was the most powerful so would have had the best versions. All of those developers made great games for the SNES and would have continued with it's successor if only it hadn't been so crippled.

The frustrating thing with Nintendo is they constantly try and tell gamers what they want. I remember when they announced the N64 and said it was going to use cartridges because it was "unacceptable to wait sometimes several minutes to play" (i'm paraphrasing). This was during the 90's arcade resurgence when I'd spend my saturday nights queueing for half an hour just to play the new AM2 arcade machines for a few minutes. I was only 12 at the time, but even I knew CD-ROMs were the absolute shit and Nintendo were retarded not to use them.

The gamecube did okay, but again they limited themselves with the little discs and by painting the console purple and giving us a yellow nubbin instead of using the twin sticks which were standard for the other consoles. The ps2 owned that era, the xbox did okay because it was the most powerful, but there wasn't really anything that stood out about the GC.

If they ever want to compete with sony and microsoft, it's pretty obvious the only real way they can do it is by making something that's better for cross-platform releases than the xbox one or ps4. Since it's coming out several years after them, there's no excuse for it to not be more powerful and able to have nicer looking versions of the same games. If they want to save costs then I guess they could ditch physical media entirely and go totally online.

Of course I'm dreaming. Their revolutionary new system will most likely have 2 wii remotes per person and be bundled with a remake of Samba de Amigo. ;)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

The N64's better third-party game library than the GC's should be more than enough to prove you wrong. The N64 and Gamecube are both hardware just as good or better than the other consoles of their generation. Smaller storage mediums mean little compared to the powerful hardware in the boxes.

---

Why do you think that the N64 had better 3rd party games?

The Gamecube had these exclusive 3rd party titles (some released later on PS2):

Rogue Squadron II
Rogue Squadron III
Viewfitul Joe
Ikaruga (North American Exclusive)
Chaos Field (NA exclusive)
Phantasy Star Online: Episode III
MGS The Twin Snakes
Tales of Symphonia
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
Resident Evil 0
Resident Evil 4
P.N. 03
Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg
Chibi-Robo
Super Monkey Ball
Pac-Man Vs.
Lost Kingdoms
Lost Kingdoms 2
Eternal Darkness
Baten Kaitos Origins
Baten Kaitos Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
Bomberman Generation
Beach Spikers
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle
Skies of Arcadia (encounter rates were improved upon the DC version)
Evolution Worlds
Lost Kingdoms
Lost Kingdoms II
Go! Go! Hypergrind

The Gamecube also had a lot of 3rd party games that supported progressive scan, while the PS2 didn't.

One of my favorite GameCube games was a third party, Metal Arms: Glitch in the System. That wasn't an exclusive though.

There was also that awful Mega Man EXE game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

Are you really trying to say that the CD audio and FMV on many high profile PS1 games WASN'T a huge marketing advantage for the system?

---

Although 20 years later they are pretty much despised across the board, FMV games sold like hotcakes and FMV or digitized sound/graphics were gigantic software selling points at the time.

Game players disliked them, but the general game purchasing public loved to buy them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EclecticGroove

Are you really trying to say that the CD audio and FMV on many high profile PS1 games WASN'T a huge marketing advantage for the system? I mean, gameplay certainly matters, but aside from Nintendo's own first party N64 games, there wasn't a huge amount of hype for that many games. And those that were hyped got positively destroyed by the likes of FF7.

The lack of storage space being available for N64 games was a giant issue regardless of your thoughts on the matter.

---

The lack of storage was a problem in Japan, it was one of the factors that convinced Square and Enix to abandon Nintendo for Sony. In America, however, it really wasn't all that important. Some of the major Western third parties supported the N64 much better than the PS1 or Saturn, after all, and others supported it decently well. Of course part of this is because the system sold well in the US, but all those quality Western third-party titles helped those sales continue, so the two things are connected. In Japan, it was losing all those third parties that was the key blow that doomed it there, I think... but still, RE2 and such show that no, the N64 could do just fine even with FMV. If the cost of overall better gameplay (no load times, larger game areas without complex streaming, etc.) is losing Square that generation, that was a tradeoff well worth taking. I've always said this, but the N64 with CDs would be a worse console. The system benefits overall from using carts.

As for marketing, Sony had FMV, while Nintendo had better looking actual ingame graphics. Poor people who thought all those 100% CGI FFVII ads were actually ingame graphics... :lol: (Yes, of course FFVII and its FMV was a big hit for Sony, but still, the N64 held its own well, you are understating its success in the US.)

Quote:

---

And yes, later on some 3rd parties started to stray away from the GC, but they also started to go BACK towards it as well closer to the end.

---

... What? The GC was my only current-gen TV console between its release and 2007, and I can assure you, this most DEFINITELY did not happen. The only third party games the GC got later in its life were a few major franchise titles (Need for Speed, some sports games) and kids' licensed movie/TV show tie-in games, pretty much. And Sonic.

Quote:

---

And again, the GC can't really be faulted for its sales. It sold just as well as the other non Sony console that gen. You can't expect it to magically do better out of nowhere. Sony dominated to a point that no one else could touch... so you have to look at relative performance.
MS took it as a foothold and went on to do great with the 360.

---

No, it can be faulted for its sales. Nintendo allowed Microsoft to steal away the entire Western core gamer market that generation, they had no good strategy for keeping that important element of the N64's American userbase. This was a significant failing which helped determine the path Nintendo took afterwards, away from core gaming and towards the Wii's casual aim; away from competitive tech and towards lower-powered tech good enough for what they wanted to do but not as good as the other systems.

The GC was also when Iwata took over, and he started taking away NoA's independence, controlling everything from Japan, ruining Nintendo's relationships with all of its Western second parties and some close third parties as well (Factor 5, for instance), and more. He tried instead a strategy which got major publishers to make games with Nintendo franchises on Nintendo systems. This got some games, but not lasting support from those companies outside of those few titles; I think the second-parties strategies Howard Lincoln and co. pushed in the '90s was far better. I don't think Lincoln, if he had still been at NoA in the '00s and still with the independence he and Arakawa had in the '90s, would have allowed things to get as bad as they did... he almost certainly wouldn't have let Rare go, for instance, that was one significant mistake. Losing Factor 5, Left Field, and Silicon Knights and replacing them with nothing also hurt (Nintendo's two American first party studios, Retro and NST. both started up under his leadership, so those don't count as replacements).

Quote:

---

Point is, the GC... for it's generation, did just fine. Could it have done better? Yeah, most likely. But Nintendo went and got super lucky with the wii... but that was more of a fluke than an actual workable strategy.

---

Third place out of four really isn't "just fine". It wasn't AWFUL, thanks to America, but it wasn't just fine. Nintendo's drop from 21 million N64s sold in the US to only 12.5 million Gamecubes was a huge collapse, percentage-wise almost as bad as the SNES-to-N64 collapse in Japan (17.17 million SNESes there to only 5.54 million N64s). Percentage-wise, Nintendo's biggest decline in the US in TV console hardware sales before the Wii U is the one from the N64 to the Gamecube! Did you know that? The GC did do okay, I knew plenty of people who owned one for sure, but it did a lot less okay than the N64. Nintendo had its first quarterly loss ever during the GC era, and as I said above it was the GC's failure that convinced Iwata to try the Wii strategy. Of course as I said I have bigger problems than that with Iwata's decisions then, I really do think centralizing power in Japan hurt Nintendo, but the Wii only exists because the GC didn't sell well enough. I do think the Wii is a pretty great console, but it would have been nice to see Nintendo continue to make consoles with hardware competitive to the other systems.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gamevet

Why do you think that the N64 had better 3rd party games?

---

Better third party exclusives (or PC/N64 only titles). For overall libraries the GC has more games, because porting PS2/Xbox games over to GC was a lot easier than porting PS1 games over to the N64, so I don't know if the overall third party library is better on N64. But in terms of exclusives... for me at least, no contest. And I'd probably pick the N64 for overall third party games too, purely in my personal opinion of course.

Quote:

---

The Gamecube had these exclusive 3rd party titles (some released later on PS2):

Rogue Squadron II
Rogue Squadron III
Viewfitul Joe [Not Exclusive - also on PS2]
Ikaruga (North American Exclusive) [Not Exclusive - DC port]
Chaos Field (NA exclusive) [Not Exclusive - DC port]
Phantasy Star Online: Episode III
MGS The Twin Snakes
Tales of Symphonia [Not Exclusive - also on PS2 in Japan and on PS3 worldwide]
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
Resident Evil 0 [Not Exclusive - also on Wii]
Resident Evil 4 [Not Exclusive - also on PC, PS2, and Wii]
P.N. 03
Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg [Not Exclusive - also on PC (Europe only release]
Chibi-Robo
Super Monkey Ball [Not Exclusive - also on PS2 and Xbox]
Pac-Man Vs.
Lost Kingdoms
Lost Kingdoms 2
Eternal Darkness
Baten Kaitos Origins
Baten Kaitos Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
Bomberman Generation
Beach Spikers
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle [Not Exclusive - DC port, now also on PC, PS3, and X360]
Skies of Arcadia (encounter rates were improved upon the DC version) [Not Exclusive - DC port]
Evolution Worlds [Not Exclusive - DC port/redo]
Lost Kingdoms
Lost Kingdoms II
Go! Go! Hypergrind

The Gamecube also had a lot of 3rd party games that supported progressive scan, while the PS2 didn't.

---

All of the strikethrough titles are actually first or second party games, not third, and shouldn't be on this list.

-Eternal Darkness and MGS: Twin Snakes are by then second party Silicon Knights.
-Baten Kaitos Origins is by Monolith Soft from after Nintendo bought 83% of the company; Monolith Soft has been a Nintendo first-party studio since this games' development (Nintendo bought the rest of Monolith Soft in '07. I didn't strike the first game because I think Nintendo didn't have rights to that until after its release (that is, Namco published that game, but then Nintendo got the franchise rights when they bought the developer from Namco.).
-Pac-Man Vs. is a first-party Nintendo title developed by Miyamoto at EAD. Namco then published because it uses a Namco IP, but it's a first-party Nintendo game.
-Chibi-Robo was published by Nintendo, and developed by an "outside" team that only supports Nintendo platforms and I think is partially Nintendo-funded.

Also, I didn't strikethrough them, but Factor 5, the team behind the Rogue Squadron games, had a close relationship with Nintendo in the N64 and GC generations -- they made a music system for the GBC for Nintendo, for instance. I guess they were a third party, but they were a close one.

And finally of course RE4 had a PS2 port less than a year after its GC release, it's not really an exclusive. Super Monkey Ball and Viewtiful Joe also later had PS2 ports.


As for the N64, list wars are kind of silly because the lists are always incomplete, but here's some (including N64 exclusives and games only also on PC but not other consoles), here are some pretty good third-party exclusives (not counting the Cruis'n franchise because Nintendo had partial rights to the name). Note that all titles on this list are N64-exclusive, excluding only the listed PC and arcade versions of the games.:
----
Rogue Squadron (also on PC)
Battle for Naboo (maybe my favorite of Factor 5's Star Wars games) (also on PC)
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (also on PC)
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (also on PC)
Turok: Rage Wars
Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion
San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing (arcade port also on PC)
Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA
California Speed (arcade port)
Mace: The Dark Age (arcade port)
NFL Blitz Special Edition
Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey (arcade port also on PC)
Doom 64
Quake II (redone, not exactly a port of the PC/PS1 game)
Wipeout 64 (adapted from Wipeout XL (PS1/PC/SAT, but not the same game)
Hybrid Heaven
Castlevania
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon
Goemon's Great Adventure
Flying Dragon and SD Hiryu no Ken Densetsu (there is a related PS1 game, but it's not the same as these)
Fighter's Destiny (1 and 2)
Bomberman 64 (US) (Nintendo published this game in the West, but the original Japanese release is from Hudson) [JP: Baku Bomberman]
Bomberman 64 (Japan)
Bomberman Hero
Mischief Makers (Nintendo published this game in the West, but the original Japanese release is from Enix)
Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage
Tonic Trouble
Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth (arcade port I think)
Chameleon Twist 1 and 2
Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers
Forsaken 64 (different from the PS1/PC game; similar gameplay, but different levels and such here)
Iggy's 'Reckin Balls
World Driver Championship
Rally Challenge 2000
Big Mountain 2000
Top Gear Rally
Top Gear Overdrive
Top Gear Rally 2
Top Gear Hyper-Bike
Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 2
Extreme-G
Extreme-G 2 (also on PC)
007: The World Is Not Enough (the PS1 game of the same name is entirely different)
Rocket: Robot on Wheels
BattleTanx
BattleTanx: Global Assault (the PS1 version of this game has different, redesigned levels)
Alice's WakuWaku Trump World 64
Indy Racing 2000
Duck Dodgers
Scooby-Doo: Classic Creep Capers
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
Buck Bumble
Dual Heroes
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (also on PC, Nintendo pushed this game in advertising but it was made and published by Lucasarts)
Destruction Derby 64 (flawed game, but decent)
Ridge Racer 64 (not exactly a port of the PS1 games)
Beetle Adventure Racing
Road Rash 64
WCW/NWO Revenge
WWF No Mercy
All-Star Baseball 99, '00, and '01
Stunt Racer 64
Lode Runner 3D

Some other okay (mostly) but not great N64 exclusives include the Doraemon games, Chopper Attack, Xena: Talismans of Fate, Knife Edge: Nose Gunner, Carmageddon 64 (PC port almost everyone other than me hates), Off-Road Challenge, Aero Gauge, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Twisted Edge Extreme Snowboarding, Monster Truck Madness 64 (based on MTM2 for PC), ClayFighter 63 1/3, Clayfighter: Sculptor's Cut, Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs (adapted from a PC series), MRC, GT64, Super Robot Wars 64, WWF Wrestlemana 2000, Virtual Pro Wrestling 1 and 2, Aero Fighters Assault, Super Robot Spirits, Automobili Lamborghini, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack [JP: Baku Bomberman 2 (JP)], NFL Quarterback Club '98 and '99, Penny Racers & Choro-Q 64 2, and some more.

Rakuga Kids, AirBoarder 64, Taz Express, Getter Love, and Last Legion UX are some import-only titles that might have been on this list if I'd played them before.

There are also Superman and Daikatana (also on PC) of course, for bad exclusive games. :)

And on N64 and next-gen consoles (Dreamcast or PS2) but not PS1 or Saturn:
--
San Francisco Rush 2049
Star Wars Episode I Racer
Bangaioh
WinBack: Covert Operations
NFL Quarterback Club 2000
F-1 World Grand Prix II (Europe-exclusive release on N64)


The GC does have more third-party exclusives than are on your list there, but there just aren't nearly as many great ones as the N64 has.

The GC and Xbox sold almost the same amount. The oXbox had ~3 million console lead in the US, but sold next to nothing in Japan. You talk as if the GC was a gigantic flop that trailed behind the oXbox in the same way the oXbox trailed the PS2. They were virtually neck and neck. A single hot selling game would have made all the difference (either to let it catch up, or to push MS further ahead).
I'm not saying Nintendo did the best they could. MS pushed online and made a huge deal of it, making Live a huge deal. Sony didn't get on board with that fully till the PS3... but didn't need to with the PS2, MS wasn't going to catch up.

My whole point is, looking at the GC from Nintendo's perspective and saying, "well, no one cared about competitive hardware" makes no sense. They absolutely could have taken away a few things... like.
1) Maybe demanding to be the sole resource for the media, especially one that is less robust, wasn't a great thing to do again.
2) Hey, that online thing. Wow! MS is kinda of making that a big deal, and making some good money off it. Maybe we should actually seriously look into it.
3) Third parties. We need to figure a better way to market our system to make sure people know about their games and get interested in them as well.

And storage space was an issue for everyone. Your own opinions don't matter when talking about the market as a whole. That a few games managed to work around it, or be good in spite of it, doesn't change the overall perception.

And Japan was still HUGE in the n64 era for games. So, a "problem for Japan" translated to a very big problem for the system.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Better third party exclusives (or PC/N64 only titles). For overall libraries the GC has more games, because porting PS2/Xbox games over to GC was a lot easier than porting PS1 games over to the N64, so I don't know if the overall third party library is better on N64. But in terms of exclusives... for me at least, no contest. And I'd probably pick the N64 for overall third party games too, purely in my personal opinion of course.


All of the strikethrough titles are actually first or second party games, not third, and shouldn't be on this list.

-Eternal Darkness and MGS: Twin Snakes are by then second party Silicon Knights.
-Baten Kaitos Origins is by Monolith Soft from after Nintendo bought 83% of the company; Monolith Soft has been a Nintendo first-party studio since this games' development (Nintendo bought the rest of Monolith Soft in '07. I didn't strike the first game because I think Nintendo didn't have rights to that until after its release (that is, Namco published that game, but then Nintendo got the franchise rights when they bought the developer from Namco.).
-Pac-Man Vs. is a first-party Nintendo title developed by Miyamoto at EAD. Namco then published because it uses a Namco IP, but it's a first-party Nintendo game.
-Chibi-Robo was published by Nintendo, and developed by an "outside" team that only supports Nintendo platforms and I think is partially Nintendo-funded.

Also, I didn't strikethrough them, but Factor 5, the team behind the Rogue Squadron games, had a close relationship with Nintendo in the N64 and GC generations -- they made a music system for the GBC for Nintendo, for instance. I guess they were a third party, but they were a close one.

And finally of course RE4 had a PS2 port less than a year after its GC release, it's not really an exclusive. Super Monkey Ball and Viewtiful Joe also later had PS2 ports.


As for the N64, list wars are kind of silly because the lists are always incomplete, but here's some (including N64 exclusives and games only also on PC but not other consoles), here are some pretty good third-party exclusives (not counting the Cruis'n franchise because Nintendo had partial rights to the name). Note that all titles on this list are N64-exclusive, excluding only the listed PC and arcade versions of the games.:
----
Rogue Squadron (also on PC)
Battle for Naboo (maybe my favorite of Factor 5's Star Wars games) (also on PC)
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (also on PC)
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (also on PC)
Turok: Rage Wars
Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion
San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing (arcade port also on PC)
Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA
California Speed (arcade port)
Mace: The Dark Age (arcade port)
NFL Blitz Special Edition
Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey (arcade port also on PC)
Doom 64
Quake II (redone, not exactly a port of the PC/PS1 game)
Wipeout 64 (adapted from Wipeout XL (PS1/PC/SAT, but not the same game)
Hybrid Heaven
Castlevania
Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon
Goemon's Great Adventure
Flying Dragon and SD Hiryu no Ken Densetsu (there is a related PS1 game, but it's not the same as these)
Fighter's Destiny (1 and 2)
Bomberman 64 (US) (Nintendo published this game in the West, but the original Japanese release is from Hudson) [JP: Baku Bomberman]
Bomberman 64 (Japan)
Bomberman Hero
Mischief Makers (Nintendo published this game in the West, but the original Japanese release is from Enix)
Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage
Tonic Trouble
Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth (arcade port I think)
Chameleon Twist 1 and 2
Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers
Forsaken 64 (different from the PS1/PC game; similar gameplay, but different levels and such here)
Iggy's 'Reckin Balls
World Driver Championship
Rally Challenge 2000
Big Mountain 2000
Top Gear Rally
Top Gear Overdrive
Top Gear Rally 2
Top Gear Hyper-Bike
Mysterious Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer 2
Extreme-G
Extreme-G 2 (also on PC)
007: The World Is Not Enough (the PS1 game of the same name is entirely different)
Rocket: Robot on Wheels
BattleTanx
BattleTanx: Global Assault (the PS1 version of this game has different, redesigned levels)
Alice's WakuWaku Trump World 64
Indy Racing 2000
Duck Dodgers
Scooby-Doo: Classic Creep Capers
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
Buck Bumble
Dual Heroes
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (also on PC, Nintendo pushed this game in advertising but it was made and published by Lucasarts)
Destruction Derby 64 (flawed game, but decent)
Ridge Racer 64 (not exactly a port of the PS1 games)
Beetle Adventure Racing
Road Rash 64
WCW/NWO Revenge
WWF No Mercy
All-Star Baseball 99, '00, and '01
Stunt Racer 64
Lode Runner 3D

Some other okay (mostly) but not great N64 exclusives include the Doraemon games, Chopper Attack, Xena: Talismans of Fate, Knife Edge: Nose Gunner, Carmageddon 64 (PC port almost everyone other than me hates), Off-Road Challenge, Aero Gauge, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Twisted Edge Extreme Snowboarding, Monster Truck Madness 64 (based on MTM2 for PC), ClayFighter 63 1/3, Clayfighter: Sculptor's Cut, Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs (adapted from a PC series), MRC, GT64, Super Robot Wars 64, WWF Wrestlemana 2000, Virtual Pro Wrestling 1 and 2, Aero Fighters Assault, Super Robot Spirits, Automobili Lamborghini, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack [JP: Baku Bomberman 2 (JP)], NFL Quarterback Club '98 and '99, Penny Racers & Choro-Q 64 2, and some more.

Rakuga Kids, AirBoarder 64, Taz Express, Getter Love, and Last Legion UX are some import-only titles that might have been on this list if I'd played them before.

There are also Superman and Daikatana (also on PC) of course, for bad exclusive games. :)

And on N64 and next-gen consoles (Dreamcast or PS2) but not PS1 or Saturn:
--
San Francisco Rush 2049
Star Wars Episode I Racer
Bangaioh
WinBack: Covert Operations
NFL Quarterback Club 2000
F-1 World Grand Prix II (Europe-exclusive release on N64)


The GC does have more third-party exclusives than are on your list there, but there just aren't nearly as many great ones as the N64 has.

---

You listed some pretty crappy games like Aidyne Chronicles, Alice's Waku Waku (wtf?!), Shadows of the Empire (What an overhyped piece of crap that was) and Scooby Doo. You also listed wrestling and sports games. There's easily a half dozen exclusive WWE wrestling games on the GC that I didn't mention, as well as a sports title or 2. Destruction Derby really isn't an exclusive either and it looks like ass compared to the Playstation versions anyways. San Francisco Rush was also on the Playstation and Rush 2049 was on the Dreamcast.

Yeah, I listed exclusive games to North America, since that is where I live. I didn't import Chaos Field, or Ikaruga for the DC and bought those in North America for the Gamecube. The Japanese PS2 version of Tales of Symphonia would pretty much be about as useful as a drink coaster to me (and the world outside of Asia), since it's an RPG that requires being able to read the in-game text; that's why I have never bought an import Japanese RPG. I also didn't list stuff like Resident Evil, since it was pretty much a better looking (a lot better looking) version of the original, with some changes to how the enemies act and some having to be burned up so that they don't come back.

There's a lot of stuff that I didn't list, because I wasn't going to pad my list with crap, while you tried list everything under the sun, like the ultra crappy Turok Rage Wars and the not so great Hybrid Heaven. Shit, I should have thrown games like Geist on my list, just to fill it up.

My view of the 3rd party support for the N64 is that it's flooded with racing games (many of which try to copy hit titles) and 1st person shooters. Shadowgate 64 is about the only real RPG on the console (worth playing) and the genre is pretty much forgotten on the N64, while the Gamecube got at least 3 or 4 good RPGs. And most of the exclusives that I do find worthy of my playtime amounts to less than a dozen titles. I'll take Resident Evil 4 (a hell of a lot better than the PS2 version) and the Rogue Squadron games over that entire list of N64 exclusive 3 party titles.

I bet if there was no Mario 64 on the N64, it would've sold as much as the GameCube.

I'm pretty sure it would have sold worse than the Gamecube. North America was pretty much most of the market for the N64.

I'm shocked people are bashing CGs and FMVs from that generation.
5th generation is the worst of all that I could personally follow (I was not born yet for 1st and 2nd), with so many experimental (and a lot of times bad) ideas for 3D games. However, one thing which was done on it like no other was the animated scenes using CG and anime, mainly the openings.
I miss so much turning on the system and watching things like these before playing the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jscuco8zEk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krY83viRbaM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPw_6K7Bn3Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKM6wVUQsmE

And the best of all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG1V4VC2R8g

If they're going to stick to their same MO with the NX, then they can't be "admitting defeat". :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gamevet

You listed some pretty crappy games like Aidyne Chronicles, Alice's Waku Waku (wtf?!), Shadows of the Empire (What an overhyped piece of crap that was) and Scooby Doo.

---

Have you played those games? Because I have those games, and they are certainly all above average. Aidyn Chronicles is very much a love-or-hate game, and it has some big flaws, but it also has some significant strengths,.. I think it's a great game despite some major bugs. It's very slow-paced, but hugely ambitious and lives up to a lot of its ambition. As for the other two games, Alice Trump World is a solid card game collection with a very nice popup-book graphical style (like Dr. Mario 64 but maybe even better looking), Scooby-Doo is an amusing little graphic adventure game if you like the license, and while Shadows of the Empire was overhyped back in 1996, it's certainly at least average, and some levels -- the first one most of all, of course -- are great.

Quote:

---

You also listed wrestling and sports games. There's easily a half dozen exclusive WWE wrestling games on the GC that I didn't mention, as well as a sports title or 2.

---

Huh, the Gamecube has exclusive wrestling games? I'd forgotten that. None of them are as noteworthy as the N64 games are, but I guess a few do exist. (There are a few more on the N64 too.)

As for GC-exclusive third-party sports games, there aren't many... Beach Spikers, Home Run King, not many more. I think the N64 has more -- Acclaim's sports games were mostly N64-exclusive, some of Midway's were, etc. (Oh, EA's Madden Football 64 is also exclusive, it's not the same as Madden '98 on PS1/Saturn, though it's probably their least interesting of their five N64 football games because it has no NFL license.)

Quote:

---

Destruction Derby really isn't an exclusive either and it looks like ass compared to the Playstation versions anyways.

---

No, Destruction Derby 64 is an original title which isn't a port of any of the PS1 games. It's in the same franchise, but the levels, design, and gameplay is new. It's not quite as good as DD2 on the PS1, and has some issues (I get into that in my summary of the game in my N64 thread), but it's definitely not a port. It's by Looking Glass Studios, by the way, not the teams behind the PS1 games.

Quote:

---

San Francisco Rush was also on the Playstation

---

Not exactly. The N64 Rush game includes the three original arcade tracks, the new Alcatraz track from the second arcade version (hidden behind a super-long password), and three new tracks. The three new tracks were first designed for the N64 game, but then were put into the second arcade version during development as well, so both games have the same track lineups -- seven tracks. The N64 version also has hidden items (Mountain Dew cans, I believe it is) scattered around the levels for you to try to find if you're good at tricky jumps and such in the levels, all of the cars from the second arcade game (SF Rush The Rock: Alcatraz Edition), and more.

In comparison, the extremely shoddy Playstation port has none of that. It's just the three tracks from the original arcade game, the cars from the original arcade game, and one bad new track that's PS1-exclusive. It's NOT the same game, it's just the original SF Rush and not Rush the Rock as the N64 game actually is. It also has awful graphics and gameplay, of course, but those aren't why I listed the N64 game there, the other major differences are.

Quote:

---

and Rush 2049 was on the Dreamcast.

---

Yes, Rush 2049 is in the 'also on DC or PS2 but not other 5th-gen consoles' section of the list. Did you miss the heading?

Quote:

---

Yeah, I listed exclusive games to North America, since that is where I live. I didn't import Chaos Field, or Ikaruga for the DC and bought those in North America for the Gamecube. The Japanese PS2 version of Tales of Symphonia would pretty much be about as useful as a drink coaster to me (and the world outside of Asia), since it's an RPG that requires being able to read the in-game text; that's why I have never bought an import Japanese RPG. I also didn't list stuff like Resident Evil, since it was pretty much a better looking (a lot better looking) version of the original, with some changes to how the enemies act and some having to be burned up so that they don't come back.

---

Oh right, REmake should be on that list if RE0 is, isn't it significantly altered from the original version? As with RE0 REmake now has ports to newer consoles, but for that generation it was GC-exclusive.

Quote:

---

There's a lot of stuff that I didn't list, because I wasn't going to pad my list with crap, while you tried list everything under the sun, like the ultra crappy Turok Rage Wars and the not so great Hybrid Heaven. Shit, I should have thrown games like Geist on my list, just to fill it up.

---

Geist is a first-party-published game, Nintendo funded and published that game even though it was made by an external team. So no. Also, Turok Rage Wars is a good game... sure, it's not as good as Quake III or Unreal Tournament on the PC, but for a 5th-gen console, it's about as close to that as you'll probably get. Also, Hybrid Heaven is flawed, but it's interesting and has some good points.

Really, I wasn't "filling the list up" with bad games, I was listing games I do think are at least decent. Also though, that list should point out how on the N64, many of the better games are N64-exclusive or PC and N64-only titles, and this goes for third-party games as well as first. The list of games on both PS1 and N64 would be a LOT lower quality than that list of exclusives there, I'll tell you that much! On the GC, however, most third-party games were designed first for the PS2 or Xbox and then got ported over to the Gamecube. Third party developers' mindsets changed from making different games for each platform, with multiplatform games mostly for sports games, licenses, some fighting games, etc., to making most of your games on multiple platforms. The GC/Xbox/PS2 era is really when you start to see that shift, and that shows bigtime in the lists of exclusives between generations.

Quote:

---

My view of the 3rd party support for the N64 is that it's flooded with racing games (many of which try to copy hit titles) and 1st person shooters. Shadowgate 64 is about the only real RPG on the console (worth playing) and the genre is pretty much forgotten on the N64, while the Gamecube got at least 3 or 4 good RPGs. And most of the exclusives that I do find worthy of my playtime amounts to less than a dozen titles.

---

The GC has more RPGs, yes, but that's pretty much the ONLY genre that the GC does better than the N64 as far as third party games go. The N64 absolutely crushes the GC in racing games, a genre I love. I have no idea what you mean when you say N64 racing games "just try to copy hit titles", but it's not true, the N64's racing games are as original and innovative as any of their generation. The N64 wins big in 3D platformers too, another genre I like a lot; the GC is weak there. The N64 also has better FPSes, for me at least; nothing on GC is as fun for me as Perfect Dark, or most of the N64 Turok games either. Etc, I said earlier how I like most of the major first-party franchises better on N64 than GC.

Oh, and the best RPG on the N64 is Paper Mario. It's an outstanding game and my favorite Mario RPG ever. I think Aidyn Chronicles is also good. I guess you're on the hate side of that love-or-hate title, if you've played it, but there is a lot to love there if you can get past the bugs and slow pace. Now, apart from some apparently mediocre stuff those are the ONLY RPGs worth mentioning on N64, but at least it has two games. But sure, yes, the GC wins the genre overall for sure, even if I don't think it has any one game quite as great as N64 Paper Mario; I don't like Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door quite as much as the original. Nintendo put effort into trying to get better Japanese developer support on the GC than they had gotten on the N64, and it shows in the GC's better RPG library. That doesn't come anywhere near making up for all the Western games they lost, though.

Oh, Shadowgate 64 is a pretty good game, but it's really a first-person graphic adventure game, not an RPG.

Quote:

---

I'll take Resident Evil 4 (a hell of a lot better than the PS2 version) and the Rogue Squadron games over that entire list of N64 exclusive 3 party titles.

---

Resident Evil 4? Blah, I got bored after like half an hour (maybe an hour at most), got to the first save point and never went back. I'm glad I only paid like $5 for the game, wouldn't have been worth more than that. The graphics are great, but the gameplay is completely uninteresting. I know it's considered to be a great classic, but it's one of those great classics I don't care for.

I do love the Rogue Squadron games of course, but the two N64 games are just as great as the two GC games are, or better. RSII for GC was my first Gamecube game, the game I got with the system, and the only game I had for more than a month, and I loved it (absolutely 100% worth getting the system just for that one game!) and love RSIII as well... but the N64 games are even better, they really are.


Even vaguely notable N64 games that also are available on the PS1: Madden ('99 to '02), NHL '99, NASCAR '99 and '00, Armorines (PS1 version is apparently horrible), NFL Blitz ('99 to '01), Micro Machines 64 Turbo/V3, Gauntlet Legends (N64 version is better), Nuclear Strike 64, Worms Armageddon, Shadow Man (N64 version is better), Susume! Taisen Puzzle Dama, Space Station Silicon Valley (the game got a late, awful Europe-exclusive PS1 version), NBA Hangtime and NBA Showtime, Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey '98, Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness, S.C.A.R.S., Bio FREAKS, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Mortal Kombat 4, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, F-1 World Grand Prix, Hexen, Uchhannanchan no Honoo no Challenger: Denryuu IraIra Bou (J) [Irritating Stick], Rat Attack, Army Men: Air Combat [Army Men: Air Attack on PS1], Space Invaders [the Activision one], Rampage World and Universal Tour, EA Sports Supercross 2000, Hot Wheels: Turbo Racing, Lego Racers, Re-Volt, V-Rally, Vigilante 8 and V8: The 2nd Offense, Powerpuff Girls; Chemical X-Traction, Nightmare Creatures, War Gods (atrocious game on either system), Tarzan, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, more sports and licensed games and a few wrestling games (not any from Aki). That covers all of the N64 games I own that also have PS1 versions, plus a few more I thought of. I think the vastly higher quality of the N64-exclusive-third-party-games list should be obvious. Some of the games in this list are good, a few great (Gauntlet Legends is a favorite of mine for sure!), but many more of those are.

(pretty much the) Same name, different game on N64 and PS1: San Francisco Rush (better on N64), BattleTanx: Global Assault (better on N64), 007: The World Is Not Enough (better on N64), Command & Conquer (N64 has a 3d-graphics remake, PS1 a PC port)

Quote:

---

The GC has more RPGs, yes, but that's pretty much the ONLY genre that the GC does better than the N64 as far as third party games go.

---

What about street fighting, "shoot them up", run 'n gun, simulation, sports and "rythm" games?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

What about street fighting, "shoot them up", run 'n gun, simulation, sports and "rythm" games?

---

Fighting - 2d, GC; 3d - N64. CvS2 is one of my favorite fighting games, and Melee > SSB. However the GC has few great 3d fighters... MK and worse. N64 3d fighters are more interesting.

Shump - GC has Ikaruga, N64 maybe a few more games (Chaos Field isn't very good). I like SSVE and I'm sure N64 Bangaioh is great, but Ikaruga is one of the best shmups ever, so the GC has the edge here for 2d/2.5d shmups. Howver, if rail shooters count here too, and they are basically 3d shmups, it's at least a tie - N64 has two of the best rail shooters ever, GC pretty much none (Star Fox Assault is the closest thing, and it's more third-person action than rail shooter).

Sports - I don't know if I have played any GC sports games other than Mario's Tennis PT & Beach Spikers... and the second of those is good, but the N64 has more I've liked -- NBA Hangtime, the Blitz series are good, Mario's Tennis, Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey, some more. I don't play console sports games that much, though, so I don't know what a big genre fan would say.

Sim - which games for each? I'm not sure here. For building/life sims the N64 is competitive if you include Japan-only releases, I think. Not sure about US-only, though. For plane or other vehicle sims, neither system has many...

Music - Okay, yeah, GC does win this. The GC DDR game is better, and only GC has Donkey Konga games.

A console maker that typically releases a new console every 5-6 years plans to have a new console out around 5-6 years after the current one.

In other news the pope does indeed shit in the woods.

The Wii U is a flop but at least Nintendo are standing by it and are making some of the best games they've ever made for it. I am more than happy with mine. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Huh, the Gamecube has exclusive wrestling games? I'd forgotten that. None of them are as noteworthy as the N64 games are, but I guess a few do exist. (There are a few more on the N64 too.)

---

Day of Reckoning 2 is every bit as good as No Mercy, but neither are as good as Here Comes The Pain or Fire Pro Wrestling.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Have you played those games? Because I have those games, and they are certainly all above average. Aidyn Chronicles is very much a love-or-hate game, and it has some big flaws, but it also has some significant strengths,.. I think it's a great game despite some major bugs. It's very slow-paced, but hugely ambitious and lives up to a lot of its ambition. As for the other two games, Alice Trump World is a solid card game collection with a very nice popup-book graphical style (like Dr. Mario 64 but maybe even better looking), Scooby-Doo is an amusing little graphic adventure game if you like the license, and while Shadows of the Empire was overhyped back in 1996, it's certainly at least average, and some levels -- the first one most of all, of course -- are great.

---

I paid $70 for Shadows of the Empire. The game was a huge disappointment.

I skipped Aidyn Chronicles, because the game was getting hammered in the magazine reviews. Why even bother with it, when the Playstation had a bunch of average RPGs that were better than it.

Quote:

---

Huh, the Gamecube has exclusive wrestling games? I'd forgotten that. None of them are as noteworthy as the N64 games are, but I guess a few do exist. (There are a few more on the N64 too.)

---

You don't know what the wrestling games are, so you're assuming that the N64 games must be better. Yeah.....

Quote:

---

No, Destruction Derby 64 is an original title which isn't a port of any of the PS1 games. It's in the same franchise, but the levels, design, and gameplay is new. It's not quite as good as DD2 on the PS1, and has some issues (I get into that in my summary of the game in my N64 thread), but it's definitely not a port. It's by Looking Glass Studios, by the way, not the teams behind the PS1 games.

---

Okay, but the franchise had pretty much ran its course by the time it had arrived on the N64.

Quote:

---

Yes, Rush 2049 is in the 'also on DC or PS2 but not other 5th-gen consoles' section of the list. Did you miss the heading?

---

There was no 5th generation heading. You put that into your own head.

The N64 was 2 years newer than the Playstation and Saturn, while the DC was 2 years newer than the N64. The N64 and Playstation were the Dreamcast's competition until the PS2 arrived in October of 2000 in North America. So no, Rush 2049 was not a console exclusive for the N64.

Quote:

---

Oh right, REmake should be on that list if RE0 is, isn't it significantly altered from the original version? As with RE0 REmake now has ports to newer consoles, but for that generation it was GC-exclusive.

---

It was altered enough to be considered a Gamecube exclusive, but I chose to leave it off.

Quote:

---

Really, I wasn't "filling the list up" with bad games, I was listing games I do think are at least decent. Also though, that list should point out how on the N64, many of the better games are N64-exclusive or PC and N64-only titles, and this goes for third-party games as well as first.

---

Scooby Doo is not a game that will make someone turn their head towards the N64 and say "Holy shit, it has Scooby Doo!" Seriously, it's a licensed game that more than likely sucks. I hate to even post a Metacritic score, because I believe that there are too many jacked up sources swaying the score one way or another, but the game is below average on both sides of the charts. http://www.metacritic.com/game/ninte...c-creep-capers

Quote:

---

The list of games on both PS1 and N64 would be a LOT lower quality than that list of exclusives there, I'll tell you that much! On the GC, however, most third-party games were designed first for the PS2 or Xbox and then got ported over to the Gamecube. Third party developers' mindsets changed from making different games for each platform, with multiplatform games mostly for sports games, licenses, some fighting games, etc., to making most of your games on multiple platforms. The GC/Xbox/PS2 era is really when you start to see that shift, and that shows bigtime in the lists of exclusives between generations.

---

Most of the 3rd party games were developed for the PS2. It still doesn't change the reality that most of the PS2 versions didn't support progressive scan and looked blurry compared to the GC and Xbox versions of those games, even in 480i. Did you know that the first Burnout game had the Gamecube as the lead platform, or that the Gamecube and Xbox versions of Time Splitters 2 had larger playfield maps than the PS2 version?

The PS2 was always my last console of choice, when it came to purchasing 3rd party titles that were also on the GC and Xbox.

Quote:

---

The GC has more RPGs, yes, but that's pretty much the ONLY genre that the GC does better than the N64 as far as third party games go. The N64 absolutely crushes the GC in racing games, a genre I love.

---

I love racing game too, but the N64 was not the console that I liked playing racing games on. And no, the GC has a ton of great racing games from franchises like Burnout and Need for Speed. It also had Midway's Arcade Treasures 3 that included Hydro Thunder, S.F. Rush 2049, S.F Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition and Super Off Road. There was also Smuggler's Run: Warzone, Roadkill, the Nascar series, XG3 Extreme G Racing (considered to be much better than the N64 games), MX Superfly and ATV Quad Power Racing 2. After that you have 70% and under stuff like R: Racing Evolution, Auto Modelista, Crash Tag Team racing, XGRA: Extreme-G Racing Association, Street Racing Syndicate, Tube Slider, Pro Rally 2002 and Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions.

There's a lot more racing games on the Gamecube and a lot more that are of higher quality than what the N64 had.

Quote:

---

I have no idea what you mean when you say N64 racing games "just try to copy hit titles", but it's not true, the N64's racing games are as original and innovative as any of their generation. The N64 wins big in 3D platformers too, another genre I like a lot; the GC is weak there. The N64 also has better FPSes, for me at least; nothing on GC is as fun for me as Perfect Dark, or most of the N64 Turok games either. Etc, I said earlier how I like most of the major first-party franchises better on N64 than GC.

---

The Extreme G racing games were obvious rip-offs of the Wipeout franchise, right down to the airbrake corners. The Beetle Adventure racing games borrowed the hidden paths and power-up collecting from S.F. Rush and Hydro Thunder.

I hate Turok. The 1st game was a complete joke, with the final level being a complete slide-show that was pretty much unplayable. It was a total waste of the $70 that I had paid for that crap.

Quote:

---

Oh, and the best RPG on the N64 is Paper Mario. It's an outstanding game and my favorite Mario RPG ever. I think Aidyn Chronicles is also good. I guess you're on the hate side of that love-or-hate title, if you've played it, but there is a lot to love there if you can get past the bugs and slow pace. Now, apart from some apparently mediocre stuff those are the ONLY RPGs worth mentioning on N64, but at least it has two games. But sure, yes, the GC wins the genre overall for sure, even if I don't think it has any one game quite as great as N64 Paper Mario; I don't like Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door quite as much as the original. Nintendo put effort into trying to get better Japanese developer support on the GC than they had gotten on the N64, and it shows in the GC's better RPG library. That doesn't come anywhere near making up for all the Western games they lost, though.

---

Yeah, I have Paper Mario for the N64. It's okay, but the combat system is pretty weak and the story is very fisher price. I don't consider it to be a great RPG.

Quote:

---

Resident Evil 4? Blah, I got bored after like half an hour (maybe an hour at most), got to the first save point and never went back. I'm glad I only paid like $5 for the game, wouldn't have been worth more than that. The graphics are great, but the gameplay is completely uninteresting. I know it's considered to be a great classic, but it's one of those great classics I don't care for.

---

Regardless of your own opinion, it's considered to be one the best 3rd party titles ever.

Quote:

---

I do love the Rogue Squadron games of course, but the two N64 games are just as great as the two GC games are, or better. RSII for GC was my first Gamecube game, the game I got with the system, and the only game I had for more than a month, and I loved it (absolutely 100% worth getting the system just for that one game!) and love RSIII as well... but the N64 games are even better, they really are.

---

There is no comparison. Rogue Squadron II is like a Ferrari, while the N64 games are more akin to a Camaro. RS III includes a 2-player co-op of RSII, that's a double win. RS II includes all 3 Star Wars Arcade games hidden within the game.

Quote:

---

Even vaguely notable N64 games that also are available on the PS1: Madden ('99 to '02), NHL '99, NASCAR '99 and '00, Armorines (PS1 version is apparently horrible), NFL Blitz ('99 to '01), Micro Machines 64 Turbo/V3, Gauntlet Legends (N64 version is better), Nuclear Strike 64, Worms Armageddon, Shadow Man (N64 version is better), Susume! Taisen Puzzle Dama, Space Station Silicon Valley (the game got a late, awful Europe-exclusive PS1 version), NBA Hangtime and NBA Showtime, Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey '98, Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness, S.C.A.R.S., Bio FREAKS, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Mortal Kombat 4, Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero, F-1 World Grand Prix, Hexen, Uchhannanchan no Honoo no Challenger: Denryuu IraIra Bou (J) [Irritating Stick], Rat Attack, Army Men: Air Combat [Army Men: Air Attack on PS1], Space Invaders [the Activision one], Rampage World and Universal Tour, EA Sports Supercross 2000, Hot Wheels: Turbo Racing, Lego Racers, Re-Volt, V-Rally, Vigilante 8 and V8: The 2nd Offense, Powerpuff Girls; Chemical X-Traction, Nightmare Creatures, War Gods (atrocious game on either system), Tarzan, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, more sports and licensed games and a few wrestling games (not any from Aki). That covers all of the N64 games I own that also have PS1 versions, plus a few more I thought of. I think the vastly higher quality of the N64-exclusive-third-party-games list should be obvious. Some of the games in this list are good, a few great (Gauntlet Legends is a favorite of mine for sure!), but many more of those are.

(pretty much the) Same name, different game on N64 and PS1: San Francisco Rush (better on N64), BattleTanx: Global Assault (better on N64), 007: The World Is Not Enough (better on N64), Command & Conquer (N64 has a 3d-graphics remake, PS1 a PC port)

---

Nuclear Strike is not better on the N64. The explosions on the N64 version are a puff of smoke, with an occasional bit of flames, while on the Playstation, the explosions light up the surrounding ground and the buildings have pieces flying all over the place. There's reduced radio chatter in the N64 version, no opening video scenes and subdued sound effects.

MK Trilogy on the N64 is missing 7 characters including Goro. It also has reduced player animations, because of the limitations of the cart.'

You're also acting like the Dreamcast didn't exist during that time. Games like Re-Volt, Shadowman, V8: 2nd Offense and Nightmare Creatures were better on that console. You can proclaim the whole 5th generation thing, but the DC was a console that existed between the N64 and the PS2 launches and was very much in competition with the N64 until the PS2 arrived.

Who gives a flying F about Command & Conquer on the consoles? It was a game that was meant to be played with a mouse and it's for that very reason that StarCraft is sort of a forgotten title that appeared on the N64. The use of polygons in Warcraft 3 for the PC, was a step back for the franchise, if you ask me.

Quote:

---

-Eternal Darkness and MGS: Twin Snakes are by then second party Silicon Knights.

---

I'll give you Eternal Darkness, but not MGS: The Twin Snakes. Nintendo had a stake in Silicon Knights stock, but the game was still developed under Konami's guidance and also published by them. Nintendo handled the distribution of the title, but SK went on to do their own thing after those 2 titles.

Quote:

---

Also, I didn't strikethrough them, but Factor 5, the team behind the Rogue Squadron games, had a close relationship with Nintendo in the N64 and GC generations -- they made a music system for the GBC for Nintendo, for instance. I guess they were a third party, but they were a close one.

---

Factor 5 never considered themselves to be a 2nd party developer for Nintendo. They just chose to have a close relationship with them. You can look that up.

I love how these debates always hinge on splitting hairs about what does or does not count as a third-party game, or what games belong to what genres. Either I like a game or I don't; I don't care much about categorization. I do wonder if those games that ABF decreed to be not "actually" third-party, would be allowed if the discussion was comparing first-party libraries, or if he'd disqualify them there too. Because that argument could be made as well.

There's always gray-area cases. If you're the company behind a major game system, you're going to work with outside companies. There will be a partnership on a game, and/or an exclusivity agreement, and/or the providing of funding or resources. Fun fact: The N64 port of Resident Evil 2 is arguably not a true third-party game, as Angel Studios was an official Dream Team developer (lol), operating under an agreement with Nintendo at the time and receiving funding from them as well as development help. Note that they're also the developer of Nintendo's Ken Griffey Jr. baseball games for the N64, and their only non-N64 game around that time was a PC exclusive. They actually had a number of other games in development for Nintendo that never saw the light of day. One such game that was actually announced and marginally shown to the press was called Buggie Boogie.



From a guy that worked there (from an otherwise unrelated story):

Quote:

---

If you want someone to fail, you want them to fail fast, before they spend a lot of money. That's how Nintendo was. When I was working on the Dream Team [at Angel Studios], they wanted us to do this DNA-based driving game called Buggy Boogie. You had these vehicles that would eat other vehicles and adopt their powers and morph. It was really cool. But they would sign three month contracts, and Miyamoto himself would say that he did not want any documents. He would just say, "Find the fun, and I'll be back in three months to take a look at what you have."

We went through about three iterations of that. We busted our hump trying different things, but at the end of it, he kept coming back and saying that it wasn't there, and it wasn't fun. We were a new company that didn't know how to make games. After about six or nine months, he came back and said, "You guys have really worked hard, and we see the progress, but we're not seeing the product. But another opportunity has come up for a fantasy golf game, so why don't you guys work on that? In three months, we'll be back. Show us a golf game."

So rather than getting pissed off at us and canceling the contract after two years and millions of dollars, they spent just a tiny fraction of that with a small team and said, "Well, it was just a bad idea." It maintained the relationship with them, so we could go off and do something else.

---

(And yes I know that RE2 isn't part of the current conversation focused on exclusives, I'm just saying. And of course they were supervised by Capcom providing game assets and mandating features and giving final approval. But, Konami did the same for MGS on the Gamecube.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by j_factor

I love how these debates always hinge on splitting hairs about what does or does not count as a third-party game, or what games belong to what genres. Either I like a game or I don't; I don't care much about categorization. I do wonder if those games that ABF decreed to be not "actually" third-party, would be allowed if the discussion was comparing first-party libraries, or if he'd disqualify them there too. Because that argument could be made as well.

---

I would say that first and second party games should be combined in one list, really. A second party studio is a studio that the first party has a large stake in, after all. It makes the most sense to basically consider them as the same thing as first-party games, for the period that the company was a second party studio.

I would also probably list externally-developed games that were funded and published as mostly "first-party" as well, something Nintendo has done a LOT of since the Gamecube -- this covers everything from Star Fox Assault (Namco) and F-Zero GX (Sega) to Hyrule Warriors (Tecmo-Koei). Anything the first party funded or published or partially owned, one list. Third party games, another. I would, however, probably count games that were originally a third-party game but the first party later released in some other region as third party -- so Mischief Makers, developed by Treasure and published by Enix in Japan and then later released in the West by Nintendo, is third-party.

Or at least that's how I break things down -- the idea is games originally funded by the first party should count as theirs, but games originally funded by someone else shouldn't (this is why Mischief Makers wouldn't count).

Quote:

---

There's always gray-area cases. If you're the company behind a major game system, you're going to work with outside companies. There will be a partnership on a game, and/or an exclusivity agreement, and/or the providing of funding or resources. Fun fact: The N64 port of Resident Evil 2 is arguably not a true third-party game, as Angel Studios was an official Dream Team developer (lol), operating under an agreement with Nintendo at the time and receiving funding from them as well as development help. Note that they're also the developer of Nintendo's Ken Griffey Jr. baseball games for the N64, and their only non-N64 game around that time was a PC exclusive. They actually had a number of other games in development for Nintendo that never saw the light of day. One such game that was actually announced and marginally shown to the press was called Buggie Boogie.

---

Above I say my view on this, but yes, you are right, this is a definite grey area. I don't think I'd consider all of the Dream Team developers to be second-party, though... though you are right, it is a bit of a grey area because many did get Nintendo funding. Sometimes it went beyond that, of course -- Nintendo published Midway's Cruis'n USA, and was going to publish DMA Design's Body Harvest until they parted ways with them (probably a bad idea there).

For Angel Studios, I think I'd call RE2 third party, but the Ken Griffey games first party.

Quote:

---

From a guy that worked there (from an otherwise unrelated story):



(And yes I know that RE2 isn't part of the current conversation focused on exclusives, I'm just saying. And of course they were supervised by Capcom providing game assets and mandating features and giving final approval. But, Konami did the same for MGS on the Gamecube.)

---

The difference is that Nintendo formally owned at least half of Silicon Knights, making MGS: Twin Snakes most definitely a first-party title. Nintendo did not own Angel Studios, they were just working with them. If Nintendo helped fund RE2 specifically maybe I'd count it differently, but I don't remember hearing that that was the case...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gamevet

I paid $70 for Shadows of the Empire. The game was a huge disappointment.

---

Yeah, if I'd paid $70 for the game I'd probably have been disappointed too. I'm glad I didn't buy it then (for PC, since I didn't have a N64 yet), and just stuck to the SotE book for a SotE thing to buy.

Quote:

---

I skipped Aidyn Chronicles, because the game was getting hammered in the magazine reviews. Why even bother with it, when the Playstation had a bunch of average RPGs that were better than it.

---

Okay, so you're bashing the game without ever playing it. I've done that before -- I was looking back recently, and found a 2003 thread from another forum where I was agreeing that Castlevania (N64) was bad even though I hadn't played it... but then a few years later I bought Castlevania: LoD for N64, and loved it! So yeah, you never know until you've actually tried it. Aidyn Chronicles is a very slow-paced (and slow, the framerate's not great) and buggy game (backup your save files and/or save in multiple slots...) with some annoying issues (never let a character die, dead characters are dead forever. You can save anytime not in battle, so make sure to.), but it's got a massive world, a good battle system, nice graphics, and a lot to do. It's easily a hundred hour game if you get into it and want to explore the whole world. They really put a lot of detail into the game, it's too bad they never got a chance to make a sequel.

Quote:

---

You don't know what the wrestling games are, so you're assuming that the N64 games must be better. Yeah.....

---

I may not play wrestling games, but I know that the N64 games are legendary classics, mentioned all the time on the internet as the best wrestling games ever. The Gamecube games are not.

Quote:

---

Okay, but the franchise had pretty much ran its course by the time it had arrived on the N64.

---

It did seem to fade after the second game, sure. Maybe DD Raw is good, but I haven't played that one. But the N64 game still is disappointing, it could have been pretty good if not for those issues it has.

Quote:

---

There was no 5th generation heading. You put that into your own head.

---

Uhh...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

And on N64 and next-gen consoles (Dreamcast or PS2) but not PS1 or Saturn:
--
San Francisco Rush 2049
Star Wars Episode I Racer
Bangaioh
WinBack: Covert Operations
NFL Quarterback Club 2000
F-1 World Grand Prix II (Europe-exclusive release on N64)

---

Bold added.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gamevet

The N64 was 2 years newer than the Playstation and Saturn, while the DC was 2 years newer than the N64. The N64 and Playstation were the Dreamcast's competition until the PS2 arrived in October of 2000 in North America. So no, Rush 2049 was not a console exclusive for the N64.

---

If we go by Japanese release dates, the N64 released a year and a half after the PS1 and Saturn, and 2 1/2 years before the Dreamcast. In the US, it released 1 year after the PS1 and 3 years before the Dreamcast. The N64 is fifth generation, along with the PS1, Saturn, and the 3DO and Jaguar from late '93. The Dreamcast started the sixth generation, so the N64 and Dreamcast weren't direct competition really, the DC was a next-gen platform trying to replace older systems like the N64.

Quote:

---

It was altered enough to be considered a Gamecube exclusive, but I chose to leave it off.

---

I'd probably include it, but it is a remake, so whatever.

Quote:

---

Scooby Doo is not a game that will make someone turn their head towards the N64 and say "Holy shit, it has Scooby Doo!" Seriously, it's a licensed game that more than likely sucks. I hate to even post a Metacritic score, because I believe that there are too many jacked up sources swaying the score one way or another, but the game is below average on both sides of the charts. http://www.metacritic.com/game/ninte...c-creep-capers

---

I wouldn't say Scooby-Doo for N64 is above average, no. It's an average game. But it is one of only two graphic adventure games on the N64, and the only traditional one (the other one is Shadowgate 64, which of course plays quite differently), and I liked that about it, and also it's an actual mostly competent Scooby-Doo game, and I liked the cartoon quite a bit, both the original cartoon and the '00s reboot; most Scooby-Doo games aren't that great. The license also seems perfect for an adventure game, but a bunch of them try to be not-great action games. But as an adventure game, sure, of course it pales in comparison to the greats of the genre on the PC from the time. But for what it is it's okay, for series fans.

Quote:

---

Most of the 3rd party games were developed for the PS2. It still doesn't change the reality that most of the PS2 versions didn't support progressive scan and looked blurry compared to the GC and Xbox versions of those games, even in 480i. Did you know that the first Burnout game had the Gamecube as the lead platform, or that the Gamecube and Xbox versions of Time Splitters 2 had larger playfield maps than the PS2 version?

---

Didn't Burnout actually start as a Dreamcast game? And it kind of looks it, too... great gameplay, but the graphics aren't the best (on GC, the only version I've played). And as for Timesplitters 2, I have never played a Timesplitters game, so no, I didn't know that.

Quote:

---

The PS2 was always my last console of choice, when it came to purchasing 3rd party titles that were also on the GC and Xbox.

---

That was probably the right most most of the time. There are a few multiplatform games that are apparently better on PS2 (NFS Hot Pursuit 2, but that's really a different game, probably some others), but not too many.

Quote:

---

I love racing game too, but the N64 was not the console that I liked playing racing games on.

---

That's kind of crazy, considering that as far as I'm concerned the N64 has the best racing game library of any console ever, probably; certainly the best through the 6th generation, and better than the Wii as well. (I don't have a PS3 so I don't know about that, and while I do have a 360 I don't know if I could say right now if the N64 is better for racing games, for the kinds of racing games I like the most... but probably. I don't like simmish racing games that much, and most modern racing games are that. There are a few great X360 racing games I've played though, such as Hydro Thunder Hurricane, Pure, and Fatal Inertia. Hydro Thunder Hurricane is, so far, the best racing game I've played on the 360. :) )

Quote:

---

And no, the GC has a ton of great racing games from franchises like Burnout and Need for Speed. It also had Midway's Arcade Treasures 3 that included Hydro Thunder, S.F. Rush 2049, S.F Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition and Super Off Road. There was also Smuggler's Run: Warzone, Roadkill, the Nascar series, XG3 Extreme G Racing (considered to be much better than the N64 games), MX Superfly and ATV Quad Power Racing 2. After that you have 70% and under stuff like R: Racing Evolution, Auto Modelista, Crash Tag Team racing, XGRA: Extreme-G Racing Association, Street Racing Syndicate, Tube Slider, Pro Rally 2002 and Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions.

There's a lot more racing games on the Gamecube and a lot more that are of higher quality than what the N64 had.p

---

While the GC does have some great racing games, including some of the all-time greats like XGRA and F-Zero GX, I've always thought of racing games on the GC as being somewhat of a disappointment compared to the N64. The genre didn't fade quite as badly as 3d platformers did, but still, the N64 and GC were my main consoles in those generations, and I definitely didn't think that the GC quite matched up to the N64 in that genre. The first party games were, as I said earlier, mostly better on N64 -- for Wave Race, Mario Kart, and F-Zero I slightly prefer the N64 games, while the GC games are very good too. 1080 I do like the GC game more, but I like that series less than those other three. The GC also had no Excitebike (Excitebike 64 is one of the best motorcycle racing games ever!), and the other 1st party racer it did have is the disappointing Kirby's Air Ride.

And as for third party games, Midway's collapse BADLY hurt for me. I mean, Rush was my favorite racing game series, Hydro Thunder another one of my favorite racers, and I liked other stuff like the Cruis'n games and California Speed as well... and then they were a near-nonentity after 2000, for racing games. It was a serious blow to the genre in general, really.

I doubt that the GC actually has more racing games than the N64, but it certainly has far fewer that are exclusives! Almost all of those games you mentioned there are multiplatform, while the N64 has a great library of exclusives (or arcade/N64 only) games. And as I said above, I think that the N64's racing game library is pretty much second to none. It's one of the strongest things about the platform.

Beyond that, in your list, XG3, "considered to be better than the N64 games"? By who? I LOVE the Extreme-G series, and for me: XGRA > XG2 > XG3 > XG1. XGRA is my favorite 6th-gen racing game, but XG3, while good, was a bit disappointing because it's a blatant Wipeout clone. The other XG games are quite different from Wipeout, much more fun and arcadey and less "memorize every turn" stuff, so XG3 is the real black sheep of the XG series gameplay-wise. It's a great Wipeout clone, sure, and I like the game a lot, but I didn't buy XG to get Wipeout.

Also, I have said many times before about how Midway Arcade Treasures 3 (Gamecube version, the one I have) is one of the worst-ported collections of good games I've ever seen. That should have been SO amazing, and so many of those games are incredible, but the porting jobs are so awful that it's almost completely ruined! Huge disappointment there.

I do like NFS and Burnout, and Burnouts 1 and 2 for GC are good, but and Beetle Adventure Racing is just about as good as most NFS games (remember, BAR was originally going to be a NFS game before they crossed it with Rush, and was published by EA), and I kind of hate the "tuner" style of NFS Underground and beyond.

Tube Slider is disappointingly mediocre. Being a futuristic racing game fan I had high hopes, but it didn't live up to them after I played it. Average game.

As for the rest of the games you mention, few are all that interesting to me; haven't played some of those. (NASCAR, couldn't care less.) For one you don't mention, I will say that SSX 3 (GC) is a great game, liked that one a lot.

Quote:

---

The Extreme G racing games were obvious rip-offs of the Wipeout franchise, right down to the airbrake corners.

---

It sounds like XG3 is the only Extreme-G game you have ever played, because that's the only one with Wipeout-style airbrake corners. Try the other games sometime, they're quite different from Wipeout!

Quote:

---

The Beetle Adventure racing games borrowed the hidden paths and power-up collecting from S.F. Rush and Hydro Thunder.

---

Actually BAR is Need for Speed crossed with SF Rush, as I said above it started out as a NfS game. The hybrid makes it a quite unique game unlike other titles. I do like Rush more, but BAR is a very good, and original, game.

Quote:

---

I hate Turok. The 1st game was a complete joke, with the final level being a complete slide-show that was pretty much unplayable. It was a total waste of the $70 that I had paid for that crap.

---

I don't love Turok, but I do like it. Turok 3 is my favorite one though, Turok 2 is too hard and Turok 1 somewhat rough in comparison. The first game's good, though, particularly for its time.

Quote:

---

Yeah, I have Paper Mario for the N64. It's okay, but the combat system is pretty weak and the story is very fisher price. I don't consider it to be a great RPG.

---

I thought Paper Mario was really amazing when I played it in early 2002, it's still one of my favorite console RPGs. (It's not #1 on the list, Skies of Arcadia is, but it's on the list somewhere.)

Quote:

---

Regardless of your own opinion, it's considered to be one the best 3rd party titles ever.

---

Maybe so, but I'd probably put it on my list of popular games I don't like much at all myself, along with stuff like all popular music games, Minecraft, and some others.

Quote:

---

There is no comparison. Rogue Squadron II is like a Ferrari, while the N64 games are more akin to a Camaro. RS III includes a 2-player co-op of RSII, that's a double win. RS II includes all 3 Star Wars Arcade games hidden within the game.

---

Actually, there is a comparison. As I said, I was a fan of the series back then. I got Rogue Squadron 3D for the PC in early 1999, and absolutely loved it. Then in late 2000 I got Battle for Naboo for N64, and it was even better. About a year later I got RSII with my Gamecube, and it was a great game, but I felt like I wanted more... the graphics were amazing, and it's an incredible game, but it does have some issues. The targeting computer thing is kind of weird, for instance, and then forcing you to not use it to get good medals is cruel. Also the gameplay is just as simplistic as the first two games or maybe even simpler (targeting computer!), I was hoping for maybe a little more depth. Still though, it's certainly a great and very fun game. Overall I'm not sure offhand if RSII or BfN is my favorite game in the series, they're both fantastic. As for RSIII, it's very good and highly under-rated, but the gameplay is pretty much the same as RSII.

Quote:

---

Nuclear Strike is not better on the N64. The explosions on the N64 version are a puff of smoke, with an occasional bit of flames, while on the Playstation, the explosions light up the surrounding ground and the buildings have pieces flying all over the place. There's reduced radio chatter in the N64 version, no opening video scenes and subdued sound effects.

MK Trilogy on the N64 is missing 7 characters including Goro. It also has reduced player animations, because of the limitations of the cart.'

You're also acting like the Dreamcast didn't exist during that time. Games like Re-Volt, Shadowman, V8: 2nd Offense and Nightmare Creatures were better on that console. You can proclaim the whole 5th generation thing, but the DC was a console that existed between the N64 and the PS2 launches and was very much in competition with the N64 until the PS2 arrived.

Who gives a flying F about Command & Conquer on the consoles? It was a game that was meant to be played with a mouse and it's for that very reason that StarCraft is sort of a forgotten title that appeared on the N64. The use of polygons in Warcraft 3 for the PC, was a step back for the franchise, if you ask me.

---

For the Dreamcast, again, the DC and N64 are in different generations. I was comparing same-generation ports, not cross-gen games. Yes, the DC version of Re/Volt wipes the floor with the N64 and PS1 versions, but that was about PS1/N64, not N64/6th-gen. Oh, and Nightmare Creatures 2 is the one on Dreamcast (PS1 and DC only), not Nightmare Creatures 1 (PS1 and N64 only).

C&C - Actually, the game works surprisingly well on N64. Starcraft 64 probably does struggle more (though I have not played it myself), because that game is more complex and because they brought over the 2d PC artwork to the lower-resolution, interlaced TV monitors of the day, but C&C 64 is actually decent. It's not as good as the PC game, but the controls work as well as console controls for the game could, and the polygonal 3d graphical overhaul works better for a console of the time than miniscule sprites would have.

Nuclear Strike - I haven't played the PS1 version, but I'm sure the FMVs would be amusing. The ingame graphics are probably mostly better on N64, though. I wasn't saying that all of the N64 versions of those games are better, though, just that they are multiplatform titles. (War Gods and A Bug's Life are probably equally abysmal on both platforms, for instance...)

As for MK Trilogy, most people seem to prefer it on PS1, but those who value no load times like the N64 version more despite the missing characters. I've only played the game, like, once ever, so I have no opinion on that myself.

Quote:

---

I'll give you Eternal Darkness, but not MGS: The Twin Snakes. Nintendo had a stake in Silicon Knights stock, but the game was still developed under Konami's guidance and also published by them. Nintendo handled the distribution of the title, but SK went on to do their own thing after those 2 titles.

---

As I said in my last post, MGS: Twin Snakes was developed by a company that Nintendo had a large ownership stake in, probably at least 50%. That makes it absolutely a second-party game, regardless of who technically published the game -- just because Namco published Pac-Man Vs. it isn't any less of a EAD-developed first-party title!

Quote:

---

Factor 5 never considered themselves to be a 2nd party developer for Nintendo. They just chose to have a close relationship with them. You can look that up.

---

Yeah, I know that, but they were closer to Nintendo than perhaps any other third party studio, that was my point. Yes, their games ARE third party, but it was a close relationship.

I think most people who bash on Castlevania 64 have never played it, at least not past the first level or two.

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/...20111013035932