Is It Me, or Does the Nintendo 64 SUCK?!

[Lync]

I know this is a Sega forum and all, but I'm sorry the SNES was easily the best that gen(back then, Sega didn't know the difference between arcade gaming, and console gaming, so most of the genesis library was mainly filled up with arcade games, and do we really need to mention the sound quality). The wii is easily the best "console" last gen(first party games sucked so bad granted, but there were a bunch of awesome 3rd party games, and the Nintendo Channel is the greatest thing to ever happen to the gaming community, period), and thus far the wii U is easily the best console this gen(however the PS4 does have a very good fighting chance to end up on top). Next E3 the wii U is gonna have to have another string, a pretty damn epic string of games coming out seen for it, to hold up against the line of games the PS4 has coming the following year

Does this fit in this thread somewhere?:

[Zoltor]

1)Yeah filtering isn't the direct problem but when your texture memory is so low to that of PS1 and Saturn resolutions the filtering becomes a problem. There's a threshold for filtering and it starts at Quake1(PC) texture resolution and up, anything below that just washes out with filtering no matter how good quality the textures are.

2)Well you won't get texture tiling behavior unless you build towards it, I get the impression N64 developers just built geometry that ran well and then proceeded to texture it with whatever texel resolution they could fit in. Because of that you get a lot of giant texels, usually even bigger than you'd see on PS1 or Saturn on average.


GTA3 and beyond made building meshes like N64 models with single skin textures but those were used as a distant LOD rather than right in your face which was what we got on N64. I don't hate the machine but compared to PC hardware in the 90s it was finicky and hard to work with, the texture cache limit and the poly budget had you building mesh content in a way you wouldn't have to do anywhere else, the N64 is not cross platform friendly. As a developer back then I'd have either just make a N64 version of my game or delayed it to see how the PS1 or PC versions sold just from a budgetary planning stance.

I actually like the cartridge format of N64 despite the loading and space limitations, kind of a last hurrah for the format. I think the biggest pitfall was sound capacity on N64 in that you really had to cut down sound effects and music while voice tracks were almost always removed, so much easier to get "long" sound off a CD.

The 3D versus 2D+3D was definitely a regional division as far as developers when you look at all that great content on the Saturn that was never exported from Japan. In that regard I think the stronger Japanese influence was beneficial to the N64 in that more 2D graphics when used compared to the Saturn and PS1.
While a step above 3DO and Jaguar the post Saturn/PS1/N64 graphics landscape was still very crude and primitive for 3D graphics that despite western developers avoiding sprites like the plague they were still required to make any kind of visual elegance or abundance on the hardware of that era.

I personally think the lack of space is a million times worse then having lower sound quality(if the SNES taught us anything, is that you can have godly sound, even in a cart, without eating up much room), where as space limitations, can't be easily bypassed, "not in cart form anyway" (CDs are dirt cheap, making additional carts for a single game, is not a viable option at all).

[Obviously]

Next E3 the wii U is gonna have to have another string, a pretty damn epic string of games coming out seen for it, to hold up against the line of games the PS4 has coming the following year

The next E3 the Wii U is going to be put out to pasture in favor of the NX. Nintendo has no incentive to release any big titles on a system they're already planning to kill.

[Gogogadget]

I know this is a Sega forum and all, but I'm sorry the SNES was easily the best that gen(back then, Sega didn't know the difference between arcade gaming, and console gaming, so most of the genesis library was mainly filled up with arcade games, and do we really need to mention the sound quality). The wii is easily the best "console" last gen(first party games sucked so bad granted, but there were a bunch of awesome 3rd party games, and the Nintendo Channel is the greatest thing to ever happen to the gaming community, period), and thus far the wii U is easily the best console this gen(however the PS4 does have a very good fighting chance to end up on top). Next E3 the wii U is gonna have to have another string, a pretty damn epic string of games coming out seen for it, to hold up against the line of games the PS4 has coming the following year

Lol at the Wii and Wii U being the best consoles of their generation, they can barely even compete with the more powerful consoles and the games are nowhere near fun enough to make it less painful to deal with, plus the Wiimote takes so much away from every game.

Next E3 nobody will even care about the Wii U

[Zoltor]

Lol at the Wii and Wii U being the best consoles of their generation, they can barely even compete with the more powerful consoles and the games are nowhere near fun enough to make it less painful to deal with, plus the Wiimote takes so much away from every game.

Next E3 nobody will even care about the Wii U

Power is not everything, games, and game related feature is much, much, much more important then power.

You can use the Classic controllers/Classic Controller Pro for most game, and usually any game that supports the Classic Contollers, also support the GC controllers, so It's very rare, that you "have" to use the wii remote.

[BladeJunker]

It's too bad that we didn't get more games like that. I'm not a fan of Yoshi's Story or Yoshi's World, but YS would have been so much better without pre-rendered cgi and as such, doesn't look as nice as the SNES game. Bomberman 64 could've been something special like Saturn Bomberman, instead it's a downgrade after the Super Bomberman series. I'm not a Mortal Kombat fan and can't be bothered to nitpick the details of all the versions, but I was impressed by the existence MKT for N64 bitd. I don't like the look of most Bust-A-Move sequels, but '99 is pretty cool. I don't like the Worms games, but the visuals are a step backward in Armageddon. Pokemon Puzzle League has very disappointing visuals. I hate the designs of Killer Instinct in general and the N64 backgrounds were a real letdown. I really don't like Dr Mario in general, but I appreciate how they did the N64 game. I don't like the 90's cgi-craze visuals of Rampage 2 and felt like it was such a waste of a 2D game for N64. Pretty much the same deal for Mischief Makers. Wonder Project J2 has some of the nicest visuals of the N64 library (same for the SFC game). Too bad they mixed it up with boring 3D sections.

Yeah the SGI(chuckle) graphics of the 90s were a mixed bag, some of it I like but a lot of it looks like poorly molded plastic. It's actually quite strange how Mischief Makers used CG sprites when you look at Treasure's then past works, I guess they just wanted to try it out. I can't fault Nintendo, everybody was doing the CGI shuffle.

I'd say the pixel resolution was still too low for CG in the 90s, RARE did a good job scaling Donkey Kong Country models so the details would show up through the resolution but a lot of CG detail was invisible outside of splash screen renders.

The modeling resolution was also too low in the 90s since a lot of the models were quite plain upon closer inspection, splash screens and FMV would actually highlight all the shortcomings. Realism sure wasn't there, definitely would have stuck to cartoons back then for CGI.

Probably the thing I notice a lot with early CGI sprites is dark edging on the exterior of the sprite, comes from rendering to a black background color even though the background won't always be black. My buddy found a way around it by making the background color transparent for the prerendering, getting the lighting average to be more medium and key better.

I think Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey in 1997 was about the most impressed I got with CG graphics in the 90s, late 90s lol. The attention to detail was SO much better than any other developer was doing, MK4 looked like crap in 1997 in the arcade and it still looks like crap. Doom64 is decent, while I don't like some of the design changes in the characters I still find it fun to play and easy on the eyes.

It was a learning curve for CGI that came with growing pains, I remember the Futurama guys talking about how new technology always makes visuals uglier than the standard before it before it gets good again which I think the 90s definitely showed.

[Zoltor]

Yeah the SGI(chuckle) graphics of the 90s were a mixed bag, some of it I like but a lot of it looks like poorly molded plastic. It's actually quite strange how Mischief Makers used CG sprites when you look at Treasure's then past works, I guess they just wanted to try it out. I can't fault Nintendo, everybody was doing the CGI shuffle.

I'd say the pixel resolution was still too low for CG in the 90s, RARE did a good job scaling Donkey Kong Country models so the details would show up through the resolution but a lot of CG detail was invisible outside of splash screen renders.

The modeling resolution was also too low in the 90s since a lot of the models were quite plain upon closer inspection, splash screens and FMV would actually highlight all the shortcomings. Realism sure wasn't there, definitely would have stuck to cartoons back then for CGI.

Probably the thing I notice a lot with early CGI sprites is dark edging on the exterior of the sprite, comes from rendering to a black background color even though the background won't always be black. My buddy found a way around it by making the background color transparent for the prerendering, getting the lighting average to be more medium and key better.

I think Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey in 1997 was about the most impressed I got with CG graphics in the 90s, late 90s lol. The attention to detail was SO much better than any other developer was doing, MK4 looked like crap in 1997 in the arcade and it still looks like crap. Doom64 is decent, while I don't like some of the design changes in the characters I still find it fun to play and easy on the eyes.

It was a learning curve for CGI that came with growing pains, I remember the Futurama guys talking about how new technology always makes visuals uglier than the standard before it before it gets good again which I think the 90s definitely showed.

FF 7 did a great job with CGI, specifically in Midgard, the interactive movie segments.

[BladeJunker]

FF 7 did a great job with CGI, specifically in Midgard, the interactive movie segments.

Sorry not a big FF fan so I forgot it, but sure FF7 is beautiful compared to what we usually saw with CGI on PS1 that's it's too bad so few could match it. I actually felt bad for N64 owners bitd when they jumped ship to PS1 as they were really psyched. Kind of like Mac owners losing Halo to Microsoft, ouch.

[Zoltor]

Sorry not a big FF fan so I forgot it, but sure FF7 is beautiful compared to what we usually saw with CGI on PS1 that's it's too bad so few could match it. I actually felt bad for N64 owners bitd when they jumped ship to PS1 as they were really psyched. Kind of like Mac owners losing Halo to Microsoft, ouch.

Yea, aside from FF 7, the only thing I think that really did a good job near the lv of FF7 on the PS, was Dragon Warrior 7, but Dragon Warrior 7 used CGI super sparingly, and the commonly used ones no doubt used a pull from directory code, so they didn't have to copy/paste it, thus making the CGI it does have, take up next to no space, not like there are many anyway(note: To date It's the biggest RPG ever made, 2nd biggest is ironically on the Super Famicon FF5).

1999 counts as the 90s right lol? It's so cheating(nothing really beat this, until this gen lol, when you consider the entire game is so great looking, and omg the faced are masterpieces, talk about being ahead of its time), Shenmue 1.

You really can't beat Shenmue 1, It's a shame HD TVs didn't even exist back then, yet for some reason Sega made the DC(every other console only did enhanced definition, and even then, only a handful of games supported such, where supposedly every DC game, except for like 20 total, supported HD) capable of true HD(they probally knew TV companies were starting to develop them, but I doubt Sega ever imagined the greedy TV companies would be asking a whopping 10k bucks lol)

[BladeJunker]

I personally think the lack of space is a million times worse then having lower sound quality(if the SNES taught us anything, is that you can have godly sound, even in a cart, without eating up much room), where as space limitations, can't be easily bypassed, "not in cart form anyway" (CDs are dirt cheap, making additional carts for a single game, is not a viable option at all).

I think it just depends what you have in mind for a game design as it was a huge change going to CDs, on PC they had 1.44 MB disks before that so everything was made much more compact that when CDs came they just dumped a bunch of FMV and Redbook audio on them to fill all that extra space as it was a challenge to make the actual engine or game content bigger when you consider the system memory limits or optical drive limits. We've actually reached a point now where even Blu-rays are competing with cheaper large capacity hard drives so it's kind of like going back to cartridges in a way.

Yeah cartridges were costly compared to CDs but we were already complaining about loading screens, it was a change to wait between levels when I got my PS1 which my cousin avoided with his N64. I think the lack of dedicated sound hardware is a million times worse that cartridge space limits, it always cuts deeper than you think it will. Take for example Doom on Jaguar where given the option of employing the GPU for better rendering instead of software music the developers cut out music.

[BladeJunker]

Yea, aside from FF 7, the only thing I think that really did a good job near the lv of FF7 on the PS, was Dragon Warrior 7, but Dragon Warrior 7 used CGI super sparingly, and the commonly used ones no doubt used a pull from directory code, so they didn't have to copy/paste it, thus making the CGI it does have, take up next to no space, not like there are many anyway(note: To date It's the biggest RPG ever made, 2nd biggest is ironically on the Super Famicon FF5).

1999 counts as the 90s right lol? It's so cheating(nothing really beat this, until this gen lol, when you consider the entire game is so great looking, and omg the faced are masterpieces, talk about being ahead of its time), Shenmue 1.

You really can't beat Shenmue 1, It's a shame HD TVs didn't even exist back then, yet for some reason Sega made the DC(every other console only did enhanced definition, and even then, only a handful of games supported such, where supposedly every DC game, except for like 20 total, supported HD) capable of true HD(they probally knew TV companies were starting to develop them, but I doubt Sega ever imagined the greedy TV companies would be asking a whopping 10k bucks lol)

Oh yeah Dragon Warrior has always been a beautiful series, although that Wii title was a bit crappy.

Yeah 1999 counts, looking back the early 90s were still quite 80s, it's a gradual transition.

Love Shenmue, still looks great to me, too bad it doesn't have the broader appeal of Yakuza but I'm pleased Shenmue3 went the Kickstarter route, fits better.

Still haven't got a VGA box, back when I got my first DC it had just got discontinued with a price drop so I spent my money on more games for it mostly, I didn't even have a second controller for it lol.
Hadn't heard about the TV company gouging but I'm not surprised, if they can gouge they will regardless of whether it helps or hurts anything.

[Jump Space]

You can use the Classic controllers/Classic Controller Pro for most games, and usually any game that supports the Classic Contollers, also support the GC controllers, so It's very rare, that you "have" to use the wii remote.

Not "most games", more like 1 in 10. In terms of Game Cube controller compatibility it's even less. There are over 100 or so of them available though and some of them are pretty good. There are options for those who don't like the motion controls, but they are buried under a mountain of games that are not. It takes a bit of work to sift through it all. In my experience, most of the Nintendo published titles outside of Smash Brothers do not let you use either the classic controller or the Game Cube one. This is unfortunate.

[Zoltor]

Lol yea, if only we knew how bad things would get, oh dear god(play SC 4 on PS3, omg what a nightmare the loading is)

Oh yeah Dragon Warrior has always been a beautiful series, although that Wii title was a bit crappy.

Yeah 1999 counts, looking back the early 90s were still quite 80s, it's a gradual transition.

Love Shenmue, still looks great to me, too bad it doesn't have the broader appeal of Yakuza but I'm pleased Shenmue3 went the Kickstarter route, fits better.

Still haven't got a VGA box, back when I got my first DC it had just got discontinued with a price drop so I spent my money on more games for it mostly, I didn't even have a second controller for it lol.
Hadn't heard about the TV company gouging but I'm not surprised, if they can gouge they will regardless of whether it helps or hurts anything.

Yea sigh, even the POS Square dared to call a DQM game(DQM Joker, what a perfect name for it though) looked better(and that's on the DS).

It has more appeal then one would think, but Sega's lack of marketing for the 2nd game, combined with selling the US Senmue 2 release to MS(back in the day, I didn't even know Shenmue 2 existed), gave the series a bad rep, because now It's considered a commercial failure(the first game sold over 1m copies, which considering the amount of DCs recorded to have been sold, is pretty damn good)

Yea, VGA boxes(good ones anyway) are pretty damn expensive(expensive enough, you might as well just pay someone to mod your DC instead).

[Gogogadget]

Power is not everything, games, and game related feature is much, much, much more important then power.

You can use the Classic controllers/Classic Controller Pro for most game, and usually any game that supports the Classic Contollers, also support the GC controllers, so It's very rare, that you "have" to use the wii remote.

Power is quite important when the majority of games by developers that actually matter will miss Nintendo consoles because they keep making souped-up Gamecubes, Wii only owners really got shafted after 2010 when every single important game missed their console entirely and Nintendo didn't even bother throwing them any bones because they focused on shitting out their newest gimmick.

More like a handful of games that support Classic Controller, even fucking Metroid Prime forces you to use the stupid waggle stick.

[Zoltor]

Not "most games", more like 1 in 10. In terms of Game Cube controller compatibility it's even less. There are over 100 or so of them available though and some of them are pretty good. There are options for those who don't like the motion controls, but they are buried under a mountain of games that are not. It takes a bit of work to sift through it all. In my experience, most of the Nintendo published titles outside of Smash Brothers do not let you use either the classic controller or the Game Cube one. This is unfortunate.

If It's not a 1st party game, odds are overwhelming is supports normal controllers. I only ran into 2 that really didn't, SC Legends, and Blaster Master Overdrive(this is not motion control based, but using the wii remote as a makeshift NES controller sucks big time). I'm sure there's some more, but no there aren't a lot, that doesn't let you use other controllers.