/vr/ - Retro Games

"Frame rate -- we've written it into our holy programming bible -- we will try to keep a constant frame rate of 30 frames per second. Constant is, of course, a relative term. It can happen in all three games that everything drops down to 20 frames for a moment, but then it will quickly go back to 30. It's almost impossible to keep a constant frame rate in a 3D game, at least with the detail that we've got going. If you've got a game like F-Zero X, of course, the whole thing runs at 60fps, but then you also have flat-shaded cars, a track that's made up of three textures or a flat background. If you limit yourself to those elements, then you've got total control. But as soon as you want to bring more detail into your game then 30fps are suddenly a real challenge."

Yep, Factor 5 were the Infinity Ward of the N64 era. Rareware didn't give a fuck about framerates, but F5 were obsessed with 30FPS.

>>We immediately liked the N64 because we didn't have to deal with CDs.
>>Redbook soundtracks ... sound professional, but switch off the game and you've forgotten them.

Hear that sound? That's PSX fanbois screaming in denial.

>>437830
what kinda agitprop is that shit? why would it be true by definition?

>>437738
30 FPS is still shit though.

>>437830
Can you keep this shit off /vr/? You have a place for pointless fanboy bullshit

>>>/v/

We asked for this board precisely so we could get away from this sort of shit.

Requesting everyone to sage/report this and similar threads.

>>437840
>what kinda agitprop is that shit? why would it be true by definition?
Because Factor 5 were highly respected game developers owned by Lucasarts, of all people, with an intimate understanding of how both PSX and N64 soundtracks were written and composed. They highly praise a number of PSX games if you read the interview, but they emphasize that red-book made composers lazy because devs put too much focus on graphics. They were especially harsh on American developers.

>>437849
Are you nuts? This is rarely seen interviews with a highly respected 3rd Party N64 developer explaining the N64 hardware. How is this fanboi bullshit? People argue over this topic when they could actually refer to stuff like this, an authority on N64 hardware, to decide it.

>>437862
Look at your fucking post (assuming you're OP).

> This stuff is priceless for settling those N64\PSX\PC Master Race disputes.

No one gives a fuck about that crap, you're just bringing down the overall quality of the board. Delete your thread.

>>437849
The problem here is that every other N64 thread gets flooded with PSX fans claiming that the N64 couldn't possibly do better music than the PSX because it didn't use CDs. Well Factor 5 explain how this isn't true, and go into detail about how they managed multithreaded audio on the N64, the compression, etc.

>>437876
>every other N64 thread

No it fucking doesn't. People should report the trolls anyway.
We've had awesome mods dealing with this shit since day 1.

>>437875
>No one gives a fuck about that crap, you're just bringing down the overall quality of the board.
OP here.

Why should I delete the thread? This isn't about arguing over the PSX\N64\PC power struggles. This is about arming ourselves with knowledge so we don't need to bog down threads with shitty arguments which could be easily resolved by these interviews.

>>437882
It started devolving into that after TWO posts.

>>437883
Then let's move on and discuss the interviews.

>>437882
I'm idort master race so I don't actually give a shit either way, but this thread is clear fucking bait.

>>437889
It's not bait. It's an attempt to counter a lot of the anti-N64 bullshit on /vr/ recently.

>>437889
And which part of the OP is bait? It's mostly quotes taken directly from interviews with one of the most respected team of games developers we ever had. When they said they were grateful not to have to use CD's, it's a direct quote.

Read this one - http://au.ign.com/articles/1998/02/24/factor-5-interview-part-i

"Yeah, it was a great game, so we decided on doing Ballblazer for PlayStation. From a marketing standpoint, the question remains whether it's such a great idea to make updates to old games. But nevertheless, we wanted to do it, LucasArts wanted to do it, and we received a prototype of the PlayStation. It was a nightmare. The development time was penciled in for one year -- but we had never done 3D. We basically spent the first year on re-doing the 3D engine about 10 times, and it was very, very nice of LucasArts that they supported us the way they did. Every other publisher would have just pulled the plug and would have said "that's it, give us our money back, off into the desert with you." But they kept us going and supported us financially until we had the necessary 3D know-how -- and then, one day, we actually finished Ballblazer (laughs).

As an ambitious second project, we did the PSX conversion of Rebel Assault 2. Nobody had really used FMV well on the machine before that, you know, what you can do technically with FMV by mixing it with polygons. That was one big technology trip -- very interesting for our research."

They were also PSX devs, so nobody can accuse them of being N64 fanboi devs.

As OP, I had to cut down their quotes to make them fit. Here is full CD vs Cart quote:

"IGN64: Which brings us to the N64 -- a console that is certainly less than ideal for FMV.

Factor 5:

Exactly, and that's a good thing. We immediately liked the N64 because we didn't have to deal with CDs. You shouldn't underestimate what a battle it can be to make a CD game on the PlayStation. You have to fill it, you have to burn it -- which takes an hour every time you want to see a new version of your game, you have to work around loading errors, and so on. CDs can be a real pain."

>>437919
IGN64: But don't CDs also offer a lot of freedom and space for programmers and make it easier to code a game?

Factor 5:

You shouldn't forget that RAM ultimately limits everything and that's roughly the same for both cart and CD consoles. With CDs, people tend to spend a lot of cash on rendering, something that's often not necessary. Of course, sound is a lot easier on CD consoles. On the other hand, the N64 is really sexy because it combines the performance of an SGI machine with a cartridge. We're big arcade fans, and cartridges are still the best for arcade games or perhaps a really fast CD-ROM. But there's no such thing for consoles yet.

Factor 5:

Well, if you've played Yoshi for an hour then you'll probably find it hard to get those melodies out of your head, too. It's burned into your skull, forever (laughs). But you're right, many melodies nowadays are not as recognizable as in the good old 16-bit days. I don't think it has anything to do with the number of voices because I notice a similar trend on the PSX. You've got these wonderful Redbook soundtracks and they all sound professional, but switch off the game and you've forgotten them. There are of course exceptions like Soul Edge or Castlevania. Konami did great stuff on the SNES, and they do incredibly good music on the PSX, too.

When it comes to melodies, it's simply a question of creativity and that creativity can easily be impaired by a lack of voices. Nevertheless, some of the more motivated developers are trying to be more creative and stand out from the rest. Again, Rare is a good example. The Indian singing in Diddy Kong Racing was hilarious.

If third parties could have access to easier sound tools and would recognize the importance of music a little more... You won't be able to do CD music on the N64 with the ease you can pull it off on a CD system. But I'm sure that with better tools the current level of music can be pushed way up. We are finishing up our sound tools and we will definitely approach Nintendo and show them. There needs to be some kind of solution for third parties. A company like Nintendo has almost unlimited resources to develop tools, but a small third party team, especially when they don't have any sound know-how, they just don't have the manpower or background to make their own tools just for sound.

Does anyone have any HQ screens of this?

It seems as though none of Factor 5's N64 games have decent screenshots, possibly because they can't be emulated.

I'm an N64 fan boy and a musician\producer. PSX with its CD has objectively better sound quality.

Of course sometimes people will write shit music for a PSX game and great music despite the N64s limitations. That does change anything.

>>438024
Exactly, and as OP I sincerely didn't mean to make the PSX look bad. The system runs CD quality audio for crying out loud. What I meant, is that Factor 5, who worked on both systems, said that there were two problems with the N64 and PSX.

American developers were lagging behind their European counterparts technologically.
And a focus on graphics combined with large storage space was making a lot of developers lazy. N64 devs fell back on generic techno, and PSX devs failed to push the system musically because there were no limits to the music.

I believe we can celebrate the N64 without dragging the PSX down, and vice versa

>>438019

To be fair, it does have a PC port. So did Rogue Squadron.

I'm guessing you want to compare that and the N64 version though?

>>438079
>To be fair, it does have a PC port.
The N64 version was released later, and is allegedly a far superior version. Factor 5 discuss the porting in this interview: http://ign.com/articles/2000/11/10/bringing-indy-to-n64

But I've never been able to find a side-by-side comparison demonstrating the new lighting engine, new animation, new models, etc.

>>438096

Oh, really? That's really interesting.

I was wondering why IGN was so good for a moment, then I realised the article was from 2000.

>>438108
>I was wondering why IGN was so good for a moment, then I realised the article was from 2000.
HA! Me too! Remember when games journalism ACTUALLY DISCUSSED THIS STUFF? Today, you never get an interviewer asking technical questions in a form casual readers can understand as well.

Man, I miss old IGN...

How interesting. Factor 5 developed the audio compression tech used in Resident Evil 2 and Pokémon Stadium. I was always impressed by the amount of audio samples the announcer had in PS.

Image relevant: The game which killed this amazing developer.

The N64 had one other thing that the PSX did not that made the N64 have a lot better graphics: floating-point support.

Ever notice how PSX games have a really chunky, low-res look? How textures sometimes shift around, polygons change shape slightly as they move, and aliasing is insane?

Turns out, that is because the PSX doesn't support floating-point. All graphics calculations are done with fixed-point, which are basically whole numbers. This causes an obvious loss in precision. If you want to move a vertex from point 1 to point 2, you might only go to 10 places inbetween. On the N64, the same movement might have 10000 places inbetween, and the movement is a lot more fluid. And forget about subpixel rendering.

The N64 had one hell of a CPU and GPU combo. It supported floating-point, had Z-buffer support, and was reprogrammable using microcode. The only real issue is the tiny texture cache, but that can be worked around. This wasn't easy, however, so a lot of N64 games have lower quality textures. The N64 did do bilinear filtering on the textures, though.

And that's why PSX games have the chunky look, but better textures, and N64 games have blurry textures, but are really sharp.

>>437862
>>437661
Dont delete it OP, this is a great informative thread without these fascists shitting it up

>great developer
>games were all license crap that was terrible

Just the facts here. The dude seems articulate, though. But a lot of you have too much reverence for the console.

Please quit shitting this fine thread up.

Redbook audio making things "too easy" has nothing to do with all the generic music on the PS1. Sega-CD is known for its great redbook music. It has more to do with tastes changing. During the the PS1 era, devs made their music sound like the sort of boring, generic electronic music that was popular at the time.

N64 had hard to use hardware which therfore, made it shitty.

>>438263

I still have my N64. But I actually played these games back in the day, the like three they actually developed anyway, and they just weren't very good.

>>438323
This.
Unless you have developers who love masochistic hardware you won't get everything out of it.
They're always rare.

>>438323
Sounds like the Saturn. There's that old quote about the machine:

"If you program for the Playstation you learn C++. If you program for the Saturn you learn the hardware."

>>438247
You can work around the 4KB texture cache from an aesthetic perspective by clumping textures together, but you can't work around it from a performance perspective.

Having to stream textures one at a time through that tiny cache is an absolute killer on the fill-rate. I have a good friend that programmed for the N64, and he was of the opinion that the machine would be very much free of bottlenecks if it wasn't for that small texture cache. He said that the N64 was far superior to the PSX in absolutely every other way.

>>438410
The cache was a truly baffling design decision. Very few developers were able to overcome it, and those who did had mixed results. (And if we're honest, only Rareware, Nintendo themselves, and Factor 5 ever came close.) As you say, the techniques to map smaller textures to create larger ones used up precious fill rate.

Factor 5 mentioned it thusly:

Factor 5: We are using every trick possible in terms of optimal use of the 4K texture cache for every single texture. The programmers figured out the weirdest texture formats to get every texture to maximum resolution. An elaborate tool analyzes each original source texture and tries to come up with the best texture format for it on the N64. The tool also allows manipulating and choosing these texture formats by hand, something which we had to do in a lot of cases.

The sheer amount of textures was possible due to the streaming from the cartridge. While the player is running through the level, the program figures out which parts of the level need to be streamed in and does that in the background. So the amount of textures and size of levels is only limited by the cartridge, not the RAM of the N64. To achieve this, we had to rewrite not only all of the microcode but also quite a bit of the N64s operating system.

Your bait thread is shit.

>>>/v/

>>438456
>OP makes cool thread about N64 hardware
>Sonyfags flood in from /v/ to shit it up.

>>438451
It wasn't so much a design decision as a cost-cutting measure. It would have been internally justified because when you use bilnear filtering your textures don't need to be as high res.

Factor 5 wouldn't have been able to do anything to TRULY overcome the texture cache issue. What it sounds like they did is to re-write the microcode so the fill-rate doesn't commit suicide trying to process so many textures.

They did a good job on Gamecube too.

It's quite interesting how they made the most of the 32MB game cart and streamed directly off it instead of loading assets into ram. This was the same trick Bad Fur Day (Which was 64MB) used, I believe. The crazy thing is that this made the expansion pack almost redundant. Why? Because of that bloody fill rate. There is no way to exploit 32-64MB of streamable memory plus 8MB RAM without running face-first into N64's inability to draw all this awesome shit onscreen, even if the polygon count is well within the limit.

>>438261
>Rogue Squadron
>bad
That's your opinion but it's a terrible shitty opinion.

>>438495
That is correct. The reason why Banjo Tooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day did not support a high-res mode was because they had already reached the fill-rate ceiling.

Adding more RAM wouldn't have changed that.

Actually from that perspective you could argue that the base Nintendo 64 was a well balanced machine.

The extra RAM is really only useful for games that can push their fill-rates a little higher, or for storing non-rendering information (camera photographs in Majora's Mask for example).

>>437847
except human eyes can;t see past 30. stop being a /v/ faggot

>>438532
Are you retarded?

Factor 5 are totally right about the music - on N64, especially. So many developers resorted to loud, unsubtle techno stuff. But I notice they sorta gently hint that they wish Nintendo would help out developers, because while the big devs like Rare and F5 and Konami can afford to rewrite the N64's music systems, including the quite amazing practice Factor 5 used - running music on both the RSP and MIPS processor and cycling between them to squeeze more performance, smaller devs had to make do with a music system they didn't understand, and which hogged precious CPU power with every voice added.

The reason it makes me sad is the amount of people who innocently say the N64 had no good music compared to the PSX. I say "innocently" because most likely their only exposure to the console was the cheap, CPU-light techno Factor 5 were talking about.

>>438563
I could be wrong about this, but didn't Conker's Bad Fur Day use MP3 files? I remember reading something like that Rare programmed an MP3 decoder for N64.

>>438532
Get out.

>>438538
>>438592
regardless of what framerate we can see it depends on what refresh rate your screen has.

And despite having a 60fps boner most consoles don't actually run at 60, it's only certain games on them that do.

>>438604
When you play PC games frequently, you can very easily tell the difference. And yes, console games don't generally run at 60.

>>438604
Every 2D console renders at 60hz, locked, always.

>>>/v/

>>438574
BFD used MP3 for voices. Music was sequenced. Rareware's MP3 decoder was different to Factor 5's one... Actually I'm not sure what format Factor 5 used. The F5 system was used in Pokemon Stadium and Resident Evil 2, in addition to their own games. Rareware used MP3 in BDF and Perfect Dark.

Then there was another system - the audio compression used in Turok 3. That game had a lot of pretty good quality speech on a 32MB cart. But I dunno what codec was used.

>>438604
>what refresh rate your screen has.
That would be 60hz in most of the civilized world.

>And despite having a 60fps boner most consoles don't actually run at 60, it's only certain games on them that do.
Older consoles were very tightly synchronized to video scan-out and couldn't run slower if they tried.

>>438604
Factor 5 actually mention in one of the interviews the fact games like F-Zero X could run at 60FPS on the N64. They personally made do with 30 because they wanted to have more detail.

But their dedication to 30fps was pretty remarkable, since a lot of N64/PSX games were locked at 20fps.

>>438654
>since a lot of N64/PSX games were locked at 20fps

Noticed this playing Zelda.


As for 60fps, I think that's what really gives Smash 64 a lot of its charm. It's got sparse 3-D modeling, sprites sprinkled everywhere, and as a result, nice and smooth 60fps. Something about how smoothly it all plays out just makes it more comical.

That and the audience cheers, and sound effects that give it a sort of distinct identity from the later Smash games.

Man, I love fucking around in Smash 64.

>>438676
That and F-zero really stand out for their super smooth gameplay. Its very easy to forget that the graphics in either aren't that "good".

>>438617
It's pretty impressive to get MP3 decoding working on the N64. The CPU is borderline under-spec to do so.

>>438676
Mario 64 runs at 25/30fps (PAL/NTSC) vs OoT/Majora's Mask's 17/20fps. My God, Mario 64 feels silky and fluid compared to all the other N64 games. Though that's due to the animation system as much as the higher framerate.

>>438696
Factor 5 seem to have used a form of multithreading - running the sound/music on both the main MIPS processor and the Reality Signal (Co)Processor.

How Rareware handled it, I don't know. But Rareware always had issues with framerates. I wish they'd teamed up with Factor 5 and exchanged notes.

>>438685
I can't say from experience since I haven't played F-Zero, but in Smash's case it definitely added to the charm. It's like watching little toys beat each other up in realtime. When you play other n64 games first, then pop in Smash, the effect is more pronounced, naturally.


More on-topic, devs pushing console limits is always fascinating to hear about, be it in terms of graphics, music, anything.

The NES and Gameboy had what, 4 audio tracks? Including percussion? The gameboy pokemon games have some of the best soundtracks in all of gaming as a result.

>>438729
Not entirely on topic, but here's an article discussing the GB and some of its most impressive games.
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/nintendo/gameboy/game-boy-games-that-pushed-the-limits-of-graphics-sound

>>438729
>The NES and Gameboy had what, 4 audio tracks? Including percussion? The gameboy pokemon games have some of the best soundtracks in all of gaming as a result.


The Game Boy has four sound channels: two square waves with adjustable duty, a programmable wave table, and a noise generator.
The NES board supported a total of five sound channels.
two pulse wave channels
one fixed-volume triangle wave
one sixteen-volume level white noise channel
one differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) channel

The Famicom Disk System added yet another channel

>>438621
Except in PAL countries it's 50hz...

>>438771
That list was a good read.

60Hz was only the defacto standard because Japan and America dominated the games industry numerically. Yes, PAL vs NTSC is a huge argument with silly nicknames like "PERFECTION AT LAST" and "NEVER THE SAME COLOUR TWICE", but looking at the issue internationally, a lot of games were developed in regions using PAL 50Hz.

Is PAL vs NTSC even an issue nowadays?
Don't we use the same stuff (digital) now?

>>438849
It's an issue for older consoles, because of poor framerate conversions.

>>438815
Factor 5 were originally German. So PAL was the system they were familiar with.

As such, their early games, such as Turrican run too fast in NTSC mode.
In fact, there were a large number of European games which the American market either got sped-up ports of or simply never heard about at all.

>>437661
>To say it bluntly, in that respect it seems that European and Japanese companies -- with few exceptions -- are simply bette

Japanese and US devs _both_ lagged behind Europe for music quality

>>438853
With that in mind there are a few N64 games (pretty much all of them developed by Rare) that actually take advantage of the higher PAL resolution.

>>438815
What pissed me off is that some companies...

LOOKING AT YOU SQUARE, YOU FAGGOTS

... didn't readjust the game to run at 50hz properly. A PAL version of FFX or Kingdom Hearts runs about 17% slower and has ugly black borders on the screen. It's the reason I began to lose faith in Square. By the time they released 12, my loyalty went to Nippon Ichi and Atlus.

>>438771

Never heard of Wendy: Every Witch Way. Is it as good as it looks?

ITT: One Nintenyearold fanboy tries to defend his nogaems console

>>438849
Even the Wii can run PAL 50, I think. But it depends on the dev. A PAL dev making a game might just use PAL 60 + NTSC. But yea, even though the TV standards aren't as relevant, it still lingers. That Doctor Who episode airing in a few hours will still be PAL 25fps, for example.

>>438865
>Japanese and US devs _both_ lagged behind Europe for music quality

See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRejS-izaZo&list=PL7ACBE540FC2DF52D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbGM9KW781Q&list=PLDC50E287F01D7D4B

>>438896
>Nintenyearold
>N64 was release 1996

>>>/v/

>>438924
>you in charge of understanding memes

>>438896
Stop fagging up the board. Go away.

>>438930
>>438896
Actually you're wrong. Back in the day, even 10 yos didn't play that shit. More like 4-5 yos.

>>438935
This entire thread was a poorly-disguised attempt at inciting a console war

>>438940
>Thread is console war bait.
These interviews may, you know, be some of the most important material ever posted on /vr/, casting a much needed light on developer attitudes towards the SNES/PSX/N64, but all anybody notices is the potential for a flame war.

>>438969
It is. Admit that OP was trying to provoke a 5th gen console war.

>>438984
It seems these days you can't post anything on 4chan that isn't already in the hivemind without being labeled a troll.

>>438984
And now you are trying to do the same thing

>>438886
FF12 was a near-perfect PAL port, AFAIK. It was Persona 4 to FFX's Persona 3.

But on the subject of PAL ports, some PAL games from Dreamcast to Xbox 360 offer PAL 60. In PS2's case, this means upping refresh rate to 60Hz while dropping resolution to NTSC. Which when you think about it, isn't exactly a great trade-off in a game like Resident Evil 4, making Pal 50 the much better option.

>>438930
>memes

shitposting, you mean

>>438815
It pissed me off that Nintendo used the PAL version of Ocarina of Time to make Master Quest. Those 10 frames per second weren't purely graphical either, since movement was synced to frames.

The marginal slowness just made the game that more aggravating.

>>438984
Nobody here is talking about console wars except people from /v/ trying to stir shit up.

>>439101

Just so we're clear here: You're saying that Persona 4 had an awful PAL port, right?

>>439113
You're thinking of the refresh rate. The actual framerate difference was only 3fps, since OoT was locked at 20fps on NTSC. However, your point stands. Wheras Mario 64 ran pretty well on PAL at 25fps versus the 30fps of NTSC, dropping below 20fps for OoT had all sorts of subtle negative effects.

I think it may have just been an oversight. Or maybe no NTSC rom for Master Quest existed. Some hacked the rom to make it run at NTSC speed, and it fixes the issue.

A better solution would have, of course, been a less crappy PAL conversion.

>>439190
>>Persona 4 awful PAL port?
Not as far as I can tell. While Persona 3 was a horribly chuggy piece of rubbish in the PAL port, Persona 4 PAL runs very well. I haven't played the NTSC and PAL ones side by side, only individually.

>>439223
>dropping below 20fps for OoT had all sorts of subtle negative effects.
What amused me was that the Master Quest release, since it was on the Gamecube running off an in-house N64 emulator, did stuff the N64 hardware couldn't do. Even then, it chugged in one or two places due to puzzle or enemy placement. There was one particular room in Dodongo's Cavern where there were about 10-15 Armos all together. You could throw a bomb or two into the midst of them and watch them all explode at once, which brings down the FPS even on beefy PCs running emulators (either PJ64 or Dolphin).

And I'm just sitting here gazing at my beautiful Saturn.

Kids...

>>439251

It runs approximately 16,7% slower, has black bars both top and bottom, character portraits have been lazily squashed together (especially noticeable on guys like Teddie. just look at his outline. the worst part is that if you go into the S-link menu and view character profiles you can see the nice and clean regular portraits), the animated FMVs equally so on top of the audio in them "popping" every few seconds presumably due to them having been lazily converted to the PAL format.

And what do you know? Squeenix was in charge of that one! They did fix one or two typos though and added more items that could be found in the school restroom.

>>439313
Shame you can only look at it.

>>439313
The Saturn is indeed underappreciated. However, since we don't have any testimony from developers who worked on games for both the Saturn and, say, N64, it's hard to know how devs felt. Although I believe Factor 5 did refer to the Saturn in one of their interviews.

The Saturn unfortunately died before developers were able to exploit its hardware effectively.

>>439334
I have to ask if you tested them personally. It's been a long time since I tested the NTSC version, so my recollection is foggy.

AFAIK, only some people experienced popping during FMVs on PAL.

And the PAL resolution problems were caused by using the wrong cable or having a crappy TV, according to some sources. I just can't remember how the NTSC version looked, since it's been 4 years or so.

Yea, so I'm not doubting your story, just whether it happened to everyone.

>>439386
The Saturn unfortunately died because Sega overcompensated in everything and went full retard by 1993. Their shitty marketing, shitty third-party support, and shitty policy decisions killed it before any devs had a decent chance to get used to it. I bet it would have given the PS1 a run for its money by the end of its life if Sega wasn't so completely fucking retarded.

As powerful as the N64 was, stretched low-res textures just look awful.

>>439386
Both the Saturn and the N64 were hard to develop for but for different reasons.

>>439467
Saturn was doomed from the start because Sega of Japan was sticking so hard to the Megadrive that Sega of America had to come up with the 32X to compete. THEN Sega of Japan announced the Saturn, so everybody lost confidence in Sega. Never mind the bullshit Stolar pulled, basically setting fire to the sinking ship that was the Saturn in the US.

>>439473
Least those textures are filtered. Pixel textures on the PS1 don't look great either.

>>439473
In the N64's defense, 2nd/3rd Generation N64 games look much better texture wise. Just compare Ocarina of Time to Majora's Mask, Goldeneye to Perfect Dark, and Mario 64 to Paper Mario.

NShittyFour music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtkNltbInw8

Saturn music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a0RHC1XWk0

>>439513
I prefer it.

>>439530
>holding on to your console wars almost two decades after the fact
>not enjoying all consoles and vidya heritage
How petty and childish can you get?

>>439462

Tested on two TVs (both HD flatscreens though) with both component and composite. Same results.

I hardly think that it is even possible for this to be a problem though. If it was, wouldn't the music and audio also play slower (similar to PAL Sonic 1)? Why would the audio only pop during FMVs where whatever codecs used will try to sync it up to the video? Why would the portraits in the S-link menu look completely fine? These things simply can not be related to a simple upscaling or cable issue.

Now if maybe whatever print run my particular copy was part of was bad for some reason? Well, I can't really say much to that I suppose. Feel free to emulate them and compare. I would if I could on this laptop.

>>439556
>waaaaah someone said something bad bout mah console

>>439569
>Waaaaah someone is trying to be mature

>>439537
Please don't use pictures from that amateur website known as Lens of Truth.

Showing polygonal character models is a really lousy way to compare textures.

On that note bilinear filtering (N64) is inherently superior to nearest-point (PSX/Saturn). There's a reason texture filtering was invented.

>>439556
>implying N64 isn't objectively bad
>somehow a fanboy because I don't like a console for good reason it has no good games and it's not impressive technically either

where did you crawl from?

>>439595
>it has no good games and it's not impressive technically either
You could say the exact same thing about the Saturn.

>>439513
>Pixel textures on the PS1 don't look great either.

Yes they do. To me at least. Just as an example, here's what Sin and Punishment looks like when emulated with out the N64's hardware bilinear texture filtering

>>439595
The N64 was technically impressive for 1996. This is beyond dispute.

The N64's "Reality Co-Processor" GPU outperforms all PC GPUs prior to the Voodoo which was released 6 months later.

>>439632
Looks like a fucking meth addict.

>>439631
Ah but if only they'd used CDs, Sony would be a footnote in gaming history

>>439614
>trying to nitpick on POINT #2

ahhahaha... but it has good games

I JUST SLAMDUNKED YOUR FACE IN, BOZO! BOOMSHAKALAKA!!

>>439530
>posts Saturn vs N64 music comparision.
>picks N64 game which isn't by Rareware or Nintendo.
>Which explains why the Saturn one is better.

If in doubt, pick a Perfect Dark track. http://youtube.com/watch?v=W63jrJfxR3k&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DW63jrJfxR3k

>>439592
Why should I ignore the fact that character models look blatantly better on the PS1?

>>439618
Bilinear filtering is ALWAYS a good thing. It can make low-resolution textures look higher-resolution than they are. Excusing the fact that the N64 doesn't render in 1024x744 like that bullshot...

People complaining about blurry N64 textures should see what they would really look like without the bilinear filtering.

>>439631
Yet the games looked bad even back in the day. Less attractive than most PS1 games. All that disgusting blur on textures and low polys.

>>439642
With no Square or Enix backing them up, that's a pretty good possibility.

>>439651
That was your entire point, not half of it. And the N64 had far more games than the Saturn, unless you know Japanese and want to import a Japanese console.

>>439592
>On that note bilinear filtering (N64) is inherently superior to nearest-point (PSX/Saturn).

for big realistic textures maybe. the problem was that neither of the consoles could push textures that large so developers were basically making pixel art for them. and we all know how great filtered pixel art looks

>>439669
>what they would really look like without the bilinear filtering

but... that's what the pic posted actually shows?

>>439669
They look awful. No one is saying they shouldn't have been filtered, just that the low-res textures themselves really hurt the graphical capabilities of the N64. Even blurred, the backgrounds in OoT look awful.

>>439667
>That was your entire point

heh

>present two points in one post
>1. good games
>2. technical proves
>idiot insists it's the one whole point for some reason
>nitpicks
>trying to win some sort of an argument over opinions

/vr/, so mature

>>Posts Sin & Punishment as example of N64 textures.

Dude. S&P sacrificed not only textures but polygon counts in order to keep a high framerate and have squillions of enemies onscreen at once. The game looks like Metal Gear Solid even with filtering on.

Why not post some Turok 3 screens? Or Majora's Mask? Or Bad Fur Day? We can't post Factor 5 games because we can't emulate them, which is kinda ironic.

>>439642
>Ah but if only they'd used CDs, Sony would be a footnote in gaming history

Only partially true. Developers went with Sony for the primary reason to escape Nintendo's insane licensing costs (which continued into the early Gamecube era - a console that used discs, mind you).

>>439664
>Less attractive than most PS1 games.

There are no full-3D PS1 games that look better than the top-tier of N64 games. Many PS1 games use pre-rendered 2D backgrounds with 3D character overlayed on top.

>>439668
>Why should I ignore the fact that character models look blatantly better on the PS1?

Only when there was cheating (fixed camera angles like Crash Bandicoot), or pre-rendered 2D backgrounds that didn't offer proper 3D freedom.

Often the PS1 could have higher-polygon counts because the N64 far greater native-fillrate would be consumed trying to correct the sort of problems the PS1 had with 3D graphics (polygons jiggling, textures warping when looked from different angles, unfiltered textures, etc - all of which were non-existent on N64).

>>439668
c-c-cuz I owned a n64 when I was a kid so it's da best!

>>439719
Licensing costs and expensive, postage-stamp sized cartridges

>>439719
>fixed camera angles and pre-rendered 2D-backgrounds are cheating
Wow.

>>439724
idk about you but my first console was a PS2

>>439692
If you show that picture with bilinear filtering it will look better.

>>439719
>There are no full-3D PS1 games that look better than the top-tier of N64 games.

This is your smelly opinion.

ZMany PS1 games use pre-rendered 2D backgrounds with 3D character overlayed on top.

I'm surprised you don't claim some ridiculous amount here like half. Would fit considered how half-baked and heavily biased and childhood-nostalgia glazed your opinions on the matter are.

>>439732
Reported for underage

>>439742
oh no my meme arrow broke *sad face*

>>OP quotes actual developer saying carts made the N64 better than CD based systems and it allowed for better games.
>>Anons still insist CDs would have been better.

>>439756
>stop arguing with devs, they know what's best for everyone!

>>439642
After they booted out Philips and Sony for the CD addon?
Nintendo later probably got so butthard that they even dismissed the Philips Zelda games.

>>439731
Both of those things are limiting factors when creating 3D games. There's a reason why there are no games like Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask on PS1 - the system can't handle them.

Hyrule Field would be impossible on PS1 for two reasons - the console lacks mipmapping so the long draw distance could not be done. The second reason is that the PS1 does not have enough RAM to store the entire Hyrule Field mesh - the N64 having a cartridge allowed higher quality sections of the mesh to be quickly streamed in as you approached them.

>>439734

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG7w77cF-DE

I guess that's simply where we don't agree?

>>439756
If you interviewed guys from Square or Namco or whatever, I'm sure they would have said CDs are better

>>439763
Good reason for that.

>>439742
>This is your smelly opinion.

No, this is a fairly objective statement of fact. I'm waiting to here what full-3D PS1 games look better than the likes of Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and Conker's Bad Fur Day.

>>439765
Saturn probably could have done it ;)

>>439754

>>439782
satrunfag pls

>>439769
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG7w77cF-DE

So we're comparing a badly emulated version of Sin and Punishment in a 380p video to a high quality 1024x772 bullshot? Righto.

>>439782
>>439789
As I understand it, the main issue with the PS1 was that it only had 1MB of (non-expandable) VRAM. The other two 5th gen consoles both had memory expander cards.

>>439779
>No, this is a fairly objective statement of fact

And this confirms my doubts. Have a good day... guy.

>>439779
Even with polygon jiggling, Vagrant Story is aesthetically superior to all 3 games you mentioned.

>>438201
RIP. I loved Rogue Squadron.

>>439772
Minor flaw in your logic. Factor 5 were also a PSX developer. So why would they blindly believe the N64 was better when they'd worked intimately on the PSX? In fact, doing pioneering FMV work on the system?

If Factor 5 say the N64's storage format was a positive thing, doesn't that count for something?

Trying to argue that OOT wasn't possible on the PS1 is a weak argument because you could then argue that there are a lot of PS1 games which aren't possible on the N64. Or that the Saturn did 2D games better than both of them.

>>439779
Ape Escape.

>>439815
>Or that the Saturn did 2D games better than both of them.
That's only because both Nintendo and Sony pretty much outright forbid devs from making 2D games, while Sega was willing to take whatever it could get.

>>439804
Thank goodness. The last thing I want to do is argue with somebody who stamps their foot down like a child to asset their opinion and doesn't offer a shred of evidence or coherent argument.

>>439806
Maybe the art-style is better, but it is technically no match for any of those games.

>>439824
Partially true but it was also for technical reasons. Saturn has proper 2D/sprite support while the other two can only fudge it by putting flat textures over top of polygons.

Look at everyone bitching and ignoring the fucking articles in the OP.

>>439834
Yeah. And?

>>439834
Shut up, OP, and stop guzzling down the words of one developer as the word of god when clearly the majority of other developers disagreed.

>>439815
Resident Evil 2 showed there was very little the PSX did which the N64 couldn't replicate.

And why isn't anyone posting GOOD N64 screenshots? Stuff which shows off the N64's superior lighting effects, for example.

Or, you know, something from Rareware.

>>439815
>Trying to argue that OOT wasn't possible on the PS1 is a weak argument because you could then argue that there are a lot of PS1 games which aren't possible on the N64.

If you hooked a CD-drive to an N64 it could do everything the PS1 could do - and better.

On the other hand, you'd need to completely change the CPU and GPU of the PS1 for it to rival the N64's horsepower.

>Or that the Saturn did 2D games better than both of them.

Aside from storage space issues, the N64 could do 2D better than the Saturn as well. It's just that there were so few 2D games on N64 nobody was able to really prove it.

>>439816
Ape Escape looked pretty alright, but even the oldest of the three - Banjo Kazooie, has much better graphics.

>>439830
>game looks better
>doesn't have as many polygons or draw distance
>is graphically inferior
So we only care about numbers? Good talking to you.

ITT: People who still believe the technically superior system wins a console generation

If that were so, why does the NES have 8x the games of the Saturn

>>439859
oh please, n64 fanboy

>>439849
see
>>439537
And note that N64 port was released almost two years later and still looked worse.

>>439779
Omega Boost looked pretty damn nice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om0zImeTFpc

>>439873
>worse
Not really, no.

>>439859
>If you hooked a CD-drive to an N64 it could do everything the PS1 could do - and better
Absolutely so. It had tremendous potential if Nintendo weren't completely yogurt-heads. As it were, the console ended up a huge design clusterfuck.

>>439843
Oh, dear, another person who thinks the N64 only had 20 games by 3 different developers.

The N64 had games by a wide swathe of developers. The fact Rareware's were best was because, as Factor 5 explained, Rareware gathered the best devs in Europe, leaving B-teams and lesser companies in their wake.

ITT: People who believe the superior hardware wins a console generation

Disproven by the fact that the NES has 8x the game library of the SMS

>>439894
>Oh, dear, another person who thinks the N64 only had 20 games by 3 different developers
That was pretty much all the worthwhile games on there unless you want to play Elmo's Letter Adventure

>>439864
Uh...NES and Saturn weren't in the same console generation.

>>439912
Midway and Activision released some good games too.

>>439901
This guy gets it.

It's interesting to discuss the technical stuff but it doesn't determine the overal quality of a system.

>>439862
We're talking about technical specifications here (something objective) rather than art-style preferences (something subjective) which I'd rather not spend hours arguing about.

If Vagrant Story was on N64 there's no question that the graphics would look far better.

>>439101
PAL is completely unacceptable for games running at 50fps, because PAL is intolerably flickery on a CRT or CRT-style display. But at lower framerates this isn't a problem, because the motion quality will be shit no matter what so you might as well run them on an LCD.

>>439901
I see what you did there

>>439912
Elmo's Letter Adventure was a multiplat, so you didn't even have to buy an N64 to play it!

CHECKMATE, ATHIESTS.

>>439859
I don't that's true at all.

>>439920
>If Vagrant Story was on N64 there's no question that the graphics would look far better.
With tiny low-res textures blurred to hell? Not at all.

>>439901
Master System is actually about the same as the NES. Better color but worse sound so it balances out.

Cool I can share some awesome N64 music I lo-
>devolved into shitty console wars
fuck you guys

>>439936
The picture on the right lacks definition (symptom of a low resolution perhaps?) and the draw distance looks quite poor.

The irony is that PS1 games actually look better in screenshots than they really are because you can't see the jiggling polygons and texture warping in stills.

>>439957
The N64's only weakness (the texture cache) would be offset by having an advantage in every other possible area. Also the texture issue is slightly exaggerated. The PS1's textures are fairly low resolution as well.

>>439901
Dreamcast is 10x the console the N64/PS1 are yet it was largely a flop

>>440009
It was also supposed to compete with the gen after the PSX/N64.

>>439830
>Maybe the art-style is better

>man wearing a halter top and assless chaps-shorts

>better

no, that looks like shit

As far as audio, xenogears, ff7, ,nitrous oxide even parappa alone proves audio on psx is superior. However the artist plays the most crucial role in good audio and really the best composer did their work on psx games

"Boo, hoo, the N64 had 64MB games."
"Each game was practically ram. Theoretically, a 32MB game gave the N64 32MB of additional ram."

Why is everyone ignoring that all the best N64 games streamed data in real time instead of keeping it in memory? You cannot do that with a CD. Simple. Factor 5 explained this. Nobody is paying attention.

And N64 lovers, post better screenshots. How about Mission Impossible N64 vs Mission Impossible PSX?

And where are the Perfect Dark screenshots? That game had possibly the crispest textures of any non-Factor 5 game.

>>439970
>devolved
Heh, read the OP
>You've got these wonderful [PSX] Redbook soundtracks and they all sound professional, but switch off the game and you've forgotten them.
Funneh ain't it?

>>439989
>The N64's only weakness (the texture cache) would be offset by having an advantage in every other possible area

>extremely limited storage space
>weak music because no CD audio
>some pretty severe system bottlenecks
>overall a bitch to program
>expensive as fuck cartridges

That's a lot more weaknesses than just one. But ok, it had no load times and memory expandibility, so...

>>440028
I'd love to post screenshots but there are too many emulation bullshots for both consoles floating around online.

>>440034
It's an interview quote, it just means that the guy at Factor 5 liked one thing over another.

Fuck you guys just take one statement and turn it into a goddamn warzone.

>>438697
I always thought OoT was kinda choppy. Majora's Mask was a lot better in that regard

Maybe it's because I'm EuroPAL

>>440057
>Fuck you guys just take one statement and turn it into a goddamn warzone.
Welcome to 4chan.

Ah the old N64 vs PS1 argument

PS1 came out late 94, N64 mid 96, no shit N64 was stronger

At the time Quake was all the rage graphics wise anyway, Unreal made consoles look like a joke

>>440043
>extremely limited storage space

Not an issue with 3D rendering. 64MB of memory is plenty enough for a variety of textures in a 5th generation game. It's only an issue when it comes to FMV and audio.

>weak music because no CD audio

No, not weak music. It just means you have to sequence the music instead of having redbook audio. All the Final Fantasy games on PS1 had sequenced music. And not too many of the samples instruments used were very high quality either (particularly FF7 with its SNES-esque soundfont). Factor 5 actually argue in OPs posts that redbook audio made developers lazy and the music actually sounded worse overall.

>some pretty severe system bottlenecks

Just the texture cache, really. The RAM had an insanely high latency, but the bandwidth was also incredibly good as compensation so it evened out.

>overall a bitch to program

Only in the first few years due to a lack of documentation. Saturn had the same issue.

>expensive as fuck cartridges

Price shouldn't even enter our technical discussion.

>>439989

No, the N64 was also less capable than the PS1 at raw poly count also. Its only real strength was the texture filtering that avoided making everything look like warped shit (for the most part).

The #1 question that Nintenyearolds can't answer:

If cartridges are better, then why did they totally vanish except in handhelds after the 5th gen?

>>440057
Read the darn interview. He explains the problem with both N64 and PSX music as overemphasis on graphics, N64 using CPU to handle music, and PSX developers creating lazy soundtracks using the plentiful storage of CD.

And as for emulation, you HAVE to emulate the game to remove texture filtering. (Use Glide64) in order to show side by side with PSX screenshots.

OP clearly doesn't want console war.

>>440096
Because CDs have higher data capacity. Duh.

>>440096
Because it'd be impractical

>>440096
Because the companies want to cut costs and optical media is dirt cheap compared to any cartridge or even solid state/SD solution.

Honestly it's a shame console don't go back to using "cartridges" even if it's just a SD card in a case or something.

>>440079
that is true. N64 can move 160,000 polygons vs PS1's 360,000. Saturn I think was like 500,000 (dat dual CPU power). Certainly its Resident Evil looks worlds better than on the other two consoles.

>>440096
Even Nintendo doesn't use carts anymore

>>440119
That's essentially what the 3DS and Vita are doing right now.

>>440108
>and PSX developers creating lazy soundtracks using the plentiful storage of CD.

>he thinks Square didn't have memorable soundtracks

>>440079
>No, the N64 was also less capable than the PS1 at raw poly count also

Incorrect. The N64 had a far higher raw poly count than the PS1. The issue was that the N64's fill-rate would be consumed trying to correct the 3D rendering by using an overly accurate setting (using the ironically named Fast3D microcode).

Nintendo forbade anybody using the Turbo3D microcode, which would have created low-accuracy PS1-style rendering (but with 3x the poly count of the PS1!).

>>438532
That's not even remotely true, and even if that was true, the input lag would at least noticeable.

>>440096
Because carts are prohibitively expensive and solid-state media didn't catch up to optical media in terms of storage space/price until about 2007ish.

Now things are just direct digital downloads.

>>440143
Square wasn't the only company developing for the PSX.

>>440147
That was true. Nintendo had an obsession at that time with trying to make smooth as possible graphics and they refused to approve games that didn't meet their standards. They could have had a lot more polygons, but at lower resolutions.

>>440158
No but Nintendo and Rareware were the only relevant devs for the N64 ;)

>>440164
Didn't Factor 5 have to beg them to use 480i mode?

>>440096
Expense.
Trends.
And why do you think your PS3/Xbox 360 installs some games to the HDD? Because discs simply don't read fast enough. A HDD is nowhere near as good as solid state memory, but it matters.
It's a tradeoff between fast access speeds and capacity.
Don't you just love load breaks?

>>440170
How is that relevant to the conversation?

>>440143
Chrono Trigger has awesome music, and that's on a SNES cartridge.

>>440170
Only 2 devs. Pretty sad.

>>440096
CDs held WAY more data and were cheaper to make, plus optical drives were only getting faster and faster as the years went on.

Though flash memory is once again pushing ahead with most handheld games being sold on cards, it is possible that home consoles might soon start doing the same.

During the 90s, it was debatable that the technology was still too new. There were plenty of issues the CD had that cartridges didn't, but what's more is that no console could even come close to rendering anything that would require a lot of space. Most of that shit was taken up by music and FMVs.

My uncle used to program NES games. He said Nintendo's documentation was ass and hard to read since it was translated from Japanese. Of course the console was not that hard to figure out as he'd already done Apple II programming (both 6502 machines)

>>440184
Nintendo had a very conservative design philosophy and didn't believe CDs were then mature enough to risk using. Also they were afraid of piracy and that little kids would drop and break discs.

>>440176
Yes they did, but they had to guarantee Nintendo that they would keep bilinear filtering and perspective correction enabled (together with some sort of Z-buffering). These graphical standards were non-negotiable with Nintendo.

Factor 5 had to program one hell of a custom microcode to make it all work. That's why their games can't be emulated - nobody knows how to replicate kind of wizardly they pulled off.

>>440197
>that little kids would drop and break discs.
This is a very real thing to be afraid of.

>>440197
>Also they were afraid of piracy
Dreamcast dropped the ball on that one, hilariously enough.

>that little kids would drop and break discs.
Which reminds me of all the "my console tipped over while the disc was revved up and now the game is unusable" problems that the PS2, 360 and Wii had. I didn't hear too many of those issues for the PS3, GC, or Xbox since the PS3 and GC had different loading mechanisms (and were sturdy as hell) and since nobody in their right mind put their Xbox in a vertical orientation.

>>440143
Read.
The.
Damn.
N64 Music Interview.

The Factor 5 guy specifically mentions PSX devs doing good work with red book. But you obviously didn't bother to read it.

>tfw my ancestors in 500 years time will still be able to enjoy playing my N64 games because ROM chips have an indefinite lifespan

>All the chemicals that make up CDs will have expired a long time ago

>>440248
and by ancestors i meant descendants

>>440248
>ROM chips have an indefinite lifespan

>>440248
>implying it's hard to manufacture a CD

Also

>my ancestors
>500 years in the future
Wut?

>>440263
Best trick ever.

>>440253
>implying you'll ever breed

>>440248
>ROM chips have an indefinite lifespan
h-h-h-here I go

>>440183
Actually, there was a long list of developers who made games for the N64.

Ocean.
Konami.
Natsume.
Capcom.
Acclaim.
Activision.
And a bunch of others I can't recall at 4:50AM.

But since nobody in the gaming industry were making games as good as Rareware's, many amazing N64 games got heavily overshadowed.

>tfw nobody will be able to watch based 90s cartoons in 500 years because all VHS tapes will have crumbled to dust

;_;

>>440248
Mask roms last a very long time. Probably thousands of years.
Eeproms and flash last a few decades.

>>440170
Only good N64 dev was Treasure.

>>440330
">tfw nobody will be able to perform Shakespeare plays in 500 years because the ink and paper on the manuscripts will have crumbled to dust"

-- Some faggot, 1592

>>440140
and still not a single home console is doing it

>>440384
>he thinks Shakespeare is the same thing as some shitty cartoon like Cow and Chicken

>>440203
CEN64 will emulate RS1

Dolphin probably won't emulate RS2/3 for a while

>>440406
Someone somewhere has a videotape saved on their hard drive somehow.
This is why peer to peer filesharing is a good thing. Best possible archival ever.

>>440406
Not everyone liked his shit back in the day. A lot of people derided those plays as appealing to the lowest common denominator. I know that Voltaire (admittedly almost 200 years after Shakespeare) raged against them.

>>438247
>How textures sometimes shift around

That's actually due to the PSX's missing perspective correction when doing texturing.

>>440434
Maybe, but it's no doubt that a lot of things will be completely forgotten.

I mean, imagine how many obscure plays have been lost over all these years, and how many of those plays might've been absolutely amazing? Even someone's magnum opus? It's a depressing thought that we'll never know, and an even more depressing thought that the things we love now will also likely be forgotten with time.

At least I won't live to see it happen.

>>440541

Ultimately nothing matters and you'll be lucky to get a footnote in future history books as part of a culture known as "gamers". So just enjoy it while you can and try not to worry about what happens after you die.

>>440394
Because all of them save the Wii U were made before flash memory caught up with disks in affordability.

>>440541
>It's a depressing thought that we'll never know, and an even more depressing thought that the things we love now will also likely be forgotten with time

But you cannot know for sure what gets forgotten and what isn't.

This is why this blatant match-in-a-gas-tank kind of shit should be banned from even being brought up on /vr/.

Keep this kiddie shit on /v/ with all the other fuckholes that wanna sit around and bang their heads together over which console is better.

You like Saturn? Keep that shit up.
You like N64? Right on man.
You like PSX? Awesome.

Just because you think a console is better doesn't mean we have to start the goddamn Scopes Monkey Trial and make everyone think like you do. Some people like other shit, it works for them.

Let it fucking be and quit arguing like a bunch of dick-slapping kumquats.

>>440046
With a Gameshark Pro and parallel cable connected to my PC, I can take screen shots running on the actual console.

It's remarkable how anything which uses actual data and developer interviews in an attempt to put the PSX/N64 on relatively equal footing instead of fanboism is seen as all-out war on the PSX.

This thread is about the N64. Not the PSX. Nothing in the OP says "PSX is shit."

>>443316

I can't believe that people have continued to blatantly mispell "fanboy" th entire thread ever since one faggot got it wrong.

>>443410
All three instances of the word were by me. I like Italian-style word endings. And you don't put "y" before "ism".

On a more positive note, these articles will be useful anytime we're trying to have a sensible debate over the N64 and its games and some shitposter comes along. Although said shitposters have clearly demostrated in this thread that they don't give a shit about facts, since they don't even bother the read the articles before mouthing off.

The Dreamcast had half the RAM of the PS2. (16/32) but twice the video memory. (8/4)

If we're going to evaluate consoles entirely based on whether they can desplay high resolution textures, the Dreamcast was objectively a better console than the PS2. But a system's hardware is more nuanced than fanatical fans want to discuss. I'd like to think /vr/ is mature enough to discuss this stuff.

>>438685

Don't forget Star Fox 64

This is the sort of thing which people should be using as an N64 texture reference point.

Turok 3 is a good example of character textures. (Unfiltered)

Though not all were made equal.

>>439882
>lower fidelity pre-rendered backdrops
>less detailed textures
>stretched or MISSING textures at places
>shit fire effects
>shit FMVs
>not worse
k

>>438261

Rogue Squadron was the best dog fighter of the gen.

Nigger.

>>444294

If a thread somehow manages to attract the attention of /v/ maturity goes right out the window.

>>437661
Stoped reading after:

>hurr, don't have to deal with CDs!

That right there spells moron to me. A fuckton of devs jumped ship from Nintendo to Sony because CDs were a better format. Period.

His whole opinion seems based on his being a massive nintendo fanboy and fearing change, so yeah. Great article OP. Very informative...

If you interviewed the same guy now, he'd probably tell you the Wii U is better because of the touchpad, and bash the PS4 for being superrior in almost all ways imaginable. So you haven't exactly swayed me with this. At all.

Tell me when you have an interview with Hideo Kojima where he says that he only made PS1 games because it was a more popular platform and he thinks the N64 was just better in every regard, and I MIGHT take your BS seriously.

>>445207

They stated the advantage it had. READ!

You could get an increase in RAM from the cartridge.

Fucking hell.

>>445207
>>fuckton of devs

Define fuckton. Most Japanese and British devs made an N64 game or two.

Square doesn't matter. Accept this.

>>445242
Let's get one damn thing straight. Square didn't stop making Nintendo games on account of the N64 hardware.

They stopped making them because Sony forbade them making non-Sony games as part of their contract. They didn't find a workaround until the Gamecube.

"The Game Designers Studio, Inc. (株式会社ゲームデザイナーズ・スタジオ kabushiki-gaisha geimudezainaazu sutajio?) was a shell corporation founded by Square to create video games for the Nintendo GameCube, even though Square had an exclusive deal with Sony Computer Entertainment to create games only for PlayStation consoles. To evade that deal, Square held only 49% of the shares while Akitoshi Kawazu, head of Square's Product Development Division-2, held 51%. The formation of a new company also made it possible to take advantage of Nintendo’s Q fund for new game developers who develop for GameCube. Game Designers Studio only released a single game, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was de facto developed by Square Enix's Product Development Division-2. Publishing was done by Nintendo."

So everyone saying that Square "abandoned" Nintendo are blowing hot air out their arses. Do some basic research first.

>>445534
I thought it was because Enix merged with Square, which reduced the proportional stake that Sony had in the company

>>445565
It's no different to when Rareware signed a deal with Microsoft which included a ban on non-Xbox games. People don't seem to understand that signing an exclusivity contract and "hating the Nintendo 64" are entirely different things.

After all, Halo was originally a PS2\Xbox game before Microsoft took control and made it an exclusive - this made PS2\Xbox rivalry a rather laughable exercise.

>>445601
Did they sign it in return for the marketing of Final Fantasy VII? I remember Sony spent a shit ton of money advertising that game.

resolution differs, but here is PSX Mission Impossible.

And here is N64 Mission Impossible.

>>445617
>Did they sign it in return for the marketing of Final Fantasy VII?
I believe it involved FFVII, yes. Sony used it as a massive title to push the PSX internationally. A very cunning move designed to undercut the N64 by showing lots of FMV instead of actual graphics.

>>445617
Seriously, this was the trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru9zzFEdGWk
There isn't a single piece of the actual FFVII game in that trailer. It's just FMV, something the N64 was poor at.

>>445660
Of course FF VII would have been totally impossible on the N64's miniscule cartridges.

>>445687
>Of course FF VII would have been totally impossible on the N64's miniscule cartridges.
Actually, the game itself could have theoretically fit. The FMV was the issue. The N64 was much better at using compression than the PSX.

A lack of FMV drove N64 devs to create more dynamic gameplay and focus on real-time cutscenes.

>>445712
Oh look, another uninformed Nintenyearold who thinks that PSX games are like 20MB of code and like 100GB of FMV

>>445687
>Of course FF VII would have been totally impossible on the N64's miniscule cartridges.
Remove FMV and the game compressed down to about 120MB. 2 N64 cartridges could have easily contained the whole game.

But it's kinda moot since an N64 FFVII would have used 3D instead of prerendering. No sane developer wasted the N64's capabilities on prerendered stuff.

It's notable that the N64 game with noticable load breaks are usually PSX ports.

But once again, the PSX wasn't a bad console. The N64 was just way better than people give it credit.

>>445726
Actually there is some truth in that. If you strip away all the FMV from Final Fantasy VII, the data from all three discs (after removing duplicate data) adds up to 120MB.

Two 64MB cartridges or one 128MB cartridge would have done a straight port. If you recreated all of the games graphics in 3D instead of using pre-rendered backgrounds, it would be closer to about 40MB.

>>445726
>Oh look, another uninformed Nintenyearold who thinks that PSX games are like 20MB of code and like 100GB of FMV
Actually, it's been shown that FFVII can theoretically be compressed down to 200MB including all the FMVs. Notable, FFVII used uncompressed textures.

>>445726
The code itself takes up way less than 20MB I assure you. The data and the textures are what send it sky high.

>>437661
Good lord OP. I could already tell by the infantile tone of your post that this stuff would be pretty hard to take seriously, but these interviews are from 1998 and 2000, DURING the system's lifecycle? You don't think those conclusions were just a wee bit premature, or subject to bias given the fact the dev being interviewed was making games for N64 at the time? What do you expect him to say? "Yeah, we chose an inferior platform. Who knew!"

>>445754
This guy is getting dumber with every post

>Two 64MB cartridges

You can't swap cartridges like on a CD, silly.

>or one 128MB cartridge would have done a straight port

Not cost effective. The game would have sold for like $130 or something.

>>445762
>The data and the textures are what send it sky high.
And the N64 could perform compression techniques the PSX was incapable of.

Just a reminder - someone once made a NES port of FFVII which included a large chunk of the game. Yes, it was crap, and nothing like FFVII. But the fact remains.

>>445775
>You can't swap cartridges like on a CD, silly.
Actually, you can. Rareware intended to do this at one stage, and the hardware supports external memory cards.

>>Not cost effective. The game would have sold for like $130 or something.
Beside the point. If they pushed really hard, they could have found ways to fit it into 64MB, anyway. The Resident Evil 2 team managed.

>>445771
>"Yeah, we chose an inferior platform. Who knew!"
You evidently failed to notice the blindingly obvious fact Factor 5 were also PSX developers who designed very advanced FMV tech for the console.

>>445775
>You can't swap cartridges like on a CD, silly.

Controller Pak for game saves.

>Not cost effective. The game would have sold for like $130 or something.

Hence why it would have been better to recreate the game's locations in full 3D rather than use pre-rendered 2D backgrounds. Of course, doing them like that on the PS1 would look shit, but with the extra power of the N64 (think Ocarina of Time) it would have looked great and made for a better game (you can explore every nook and cranny of a town).

Final Fantasy VII was only made on PS1 because Square were addicted to their FMV movies, and continue to be addicted as the gameplay slowly goes down the toilet.

>>439673
Finally somebody who knows what they're talking about.

Anybody feel free to take a look at Animal Crossing on N64 and say texture filtering was an improvement.

>>445813
>think Ocarina of Time
Forget OoT. Look at Majora's Mask, which solved OoT's crummy backdrops issue.

Why do PSX fans get so pissy over this? We're just pointing out how the N64 was not an inferior console. We're not the ones trying to drag down the PSX.

>>445791
>Actually, you can

Hmmno you can't. No cartridge-based architecture works that way.

>Beside the point. If they pushed really hard, they could have found ways to fit it into 64MB, anyway

64MB carts didn't appear until the end of the N64's lifespan and there were only a couple of those which also weren't cheap. And even then it's still a mere 10% of the capacity of a CD (which also costs you only 55 cents a piece)

>>439742
the PS1 has no Z buffer, the N64 can do real 3D.

Do the math

>>445827
>Hmmno you can't. No cartridge-based architecture works that way.
Can so. Do your research. Rareware's Stop 'n' Swop was meant to use the N64's 10 second RAM life after switching off to shift data from one game to another.

And memory cards. Seriously.

>tfw Jurassic Park for the SNES had better music than anything on either N64 or PSX

>>445813
>Controller Pak for game saves

just stop, you're making my head hurt with your total stupidity

*sigh* Lemme explain carefully. You can not swap a cartridge because that's where all your game code is. No cartridge=no game.

It doesn't work like that on CD architectures because the code is loaded in RAM and stays there while you swap the disc.

>Hence why it would have been better to recreate the game's locations in full 3D rather than use pre-rendered 2D backgrounds

Would have looked like ass and still not fit into 64MB. Nintendo at that time was extremely picky about games looking as smooth as possible and wouldn't approve ones that didn't meet this requirement.

>>445805
I'm not going to try to infer psychological analyses from a decade old article, but the interview was done for IGN64.com during the console and the developer's product life. You honestly don't think devs tailor their message?

>>445889
He also overlooks the point that two carts for a game would have been, well, expensive. Even worse than the games already were.

>>445848
The Z-buffer is supposedly why N64 got such a good port of San Francisco Rush while the PS version was remade into a pile of garbage that coincidentally resembled the source material. N64 could do floating point math that PS couldn't.

I find it really impossible to believe a better dev couldn't have done a successful port or rebuild of the game for PS though.

>>445889
>*sigh* Lemme explain carefully. You can not swap a cartridge because that's where all your game code is. No cartridge=no game.
Pretty much every game console can execute from RAM. If a game is designed to allow cart swapping, it's possible.

>>445942

Demonstrate it.

>>445889
>*sigh* Lemme explain carefully. You can not swap a cartridge because that's where all your game code is. No cartridge=no game.
RESEARCH THE N64. IT COULD DO IT.

Fact: N64, Playstation and Saturn were all woefully underpowered for the kind of 3D games the industry was transitioning to at the time of their release.

End of thread.

>>445956
>Save game cart 1 to memory card.
>shut down.
>Insert cart 2.
>Load from memory card.
>Simple.

Was never done, but N64 specs allowed it.

>>445889
>*sigh* Lemme explain carefully. You can not swap a cartridge because that's where all your game code is. No cartridge=no game.

You do know that the Controller Pak is a memory card right?

1. "End of Cartridge 1"
2. Save to Controller Pak? Y/N
3. Turn off N64
4. Remove Cartridge 1
5. Insert Cartridge 2
6. Turn on N64
7. Your save file loads from Controller Pak
8. "Welcome to Cartridge 2!"

>Would have looked like ass and still not fit into 64MB. Nintendo at that time was extremely picky about games looking as smooth as possible and wouldn't approve ones that didn't meet this requirement.

It would have easily fitted into 64MB. 3D environments don't take up much space. That's why you can fit all the big worlds of Mario 64 into 8MB.

Here is a local craigslist post. Should I bite?

N64 Console (Great Shape)

2 Controllers (Black and Grey, Great Shape)

A/V and Power Supply Cords

Memory Card Plus

3 Games (Some Madden game, One game I can't identify, and Star Wars Shadows of the Empire)

$75... should I barter down?

>>445904
>You honestly don't think devs tailor their message?
There isn't a scrap of anti-PSX bias in those articles. FACTOR 5 WERE A VERY GOOD PSX DEVELOPER, TOO! WHY IS EVERYONE IGNORING THIS!

>>445942
Confirmed for knowing shit how cartridge architectures work. They don't load code into RAM, instead the ROM simply maps into the CPU address space. RAM is only used for the video buffer and game variables.

The PS1 and Saturn both have 2MB of main RAM where game code is loaded into.

>>445956
How?

I don't have the hardware to write cartridges right now.

>>445970
not guy you're arguing with but what you can do on paper and in practice are two different things

>>445974
>It would have easily fitted into 64MB

But see >>445827

>>445984
I never said there was. Trumpeting their own N64 products doesn't even imply bashing the PS. You (or someone) just said it yourself, they were also a PS dev. Of course they're not going to knock their own shit. But they're going to promote each product to its respective audience. Even if the promotion only amounts to "yeah we made a game with a high camera angle so the field of view is short."

Weren't they going to make a disk drive for the N64 but it never got released?

>>446020
64DD. It was released in Japan.

>>445995
They TYPICALLY do not load code into RAM. It's entirely POSSIBLE to load code into RAM and execute there.

I've been ass-deep in the Neo-Geo for the last 4 weeks. Don't fucking tell me how cartridge systems do or do not work.

>>446032
That thing wasn't a CD drive, it was a glorified floppy disk and still limited to 64MB

>>446040
>It's entirely POSSIBLE to load code into RAM and execute there

Which games did this?

>>446016
I think you could probably get away with a 40MB cartridge, but in any case, the consumer would have been happy to pay a little extra for such a big game like Final Fantasy VII.

There were plenty of jumbo-sized games on SNES and Genesis that people happily paid more for. Strider on Genesis was like $90 on release for a MASSIVE 1MB cartridge.

>>446052
I don't know the specifics in the N64's case.

I know that it was common on the Sega 32X to have at least one of the CPUs running from work RAM so that you weren't contending with the other CPUs for the cart bus. The SH2s were seriously bottlenecked if you left them executing from ROM.

>>446052
Stop N' Swap

>>446064
Also, from Charlie MacDonald's documentation:

> When a transfer is done out of the ROM area ($000000-3FFFFF), the machine will lock up unless the write that triggers the DMA operation is done using RAM.

> Usually this means putting the command word or the latter half of the command word in RAM and moving that into the control port, putting the command word on the stack and moving that into the control port, or having the instruction that moves the command word into the control port execute out of RAM.

>or having the instruction that moves the command word into the control port execute out of RAM.
>execute out of RAM

Actually they abandoned Stop'N'Swap because of a design change to the N64 (in fact they made at least eight revisions to the PCB) where the RAM retained data for only 3 seconds instead of 30

>>446058
nah we already established that FF VII was over 200MB minus FMV and music

>>OP posts highly technical interviews which both praise and criticise the N64.
>>Anons accuse interviewees of bias.

Grief. How many of these people have played Bad Fur Day or Majora's Mask? Or seen how many cutscenes Perfect Dark had?

The argument that developers abandoned the N64 over hardware has been demolished.

>>446142
120MB actually.

But I'm talking about a version that had been specifically designed for N64 which was without 2D pre-rendered backgrounds and used 3D environments instead.

>>446150
>The argument that developers abandoned the N64 over hardware has been demolished

Err yeah it was. A serious headache to program, expensive, limited space, and Nazi licensing agreements.

>>446109
Why did they modify the PCB so many times?

This dispute will only be resolved if someone on /vr/ attempts a homebrew port of FF VII to the N64

FFVII on N64 would be smaller because it wouldn't use as many sprites and background textures. Plus compression. Estimates put it at 120MB for a DS port with FMV removed. Music would be 8MB.

And people... It's "Stop 'n' Swop" not "Stop 'n' Swap."

>>446172
Cost reductions. Manufacturing tech improves, more stuff can be done on a single chip, board layout changes to accommodate.

>>446172
Trying to cut costs and improve system performance by having fewer chips

>>446163
>>Devs totally abandoned the N64.

Name one. Which isn't Square. Name a single SNES-era Nintendo developer who suddenly refused to make games for the N64 and defected to Sony. Other than Square.

All I need to know is PS1 had better games. If hardware power mattered none of us would play retro titles. The games matter and Sony released more quality titles than Nintendo, as did third parties on the PS1.

>>446190
3D games don't use sprites
>>446193
Right. They revised the NTSC models at least 8 times and probably a similar number for PAL ones. The 30 second data retention was purely an accidental design feature that Rare discovered and came up with the kewl idea that they could swap cartridges. Nintendo apparently thought it was a bad idea which would end up causing users to damage their consoles and it's been suggested that they purposely modified the PCB to prevent Stop'N'Swap from working.

The main CPU was revised at least one and apparently the RCP as well since gradually improving manufacturing techniques during the N64's 5 year lifespan (an eternity in electronics time) allowed them to produce chips in higher quantities.

>>446236

both capcom and konami put out WAY more content for the PSX than the N64. only capcom game i can even think of for the '64 was mega man legends.

>>439824
>while Sega was willing to take whatever it could get.
The Saturn was more of an arcade machine than the other two. What was dying again at the time outside of DDR? What was and still is living in Japan? There are other reasons to why the Saturn did better in Japan than in the west.

>>446236
Reminds me of the old "Nintendo Curse". Developers that leave Nintendo die.

Factor 5 left Nintendo, made Lair and died.
Rare left Nintendo, and is now the living dead.
Silicon Knights left Nintendo, made Too Human and died.
Square left Nintendo, made The Spirits Within and almost died if it wasn't for a merger with Enix.

>>446259
>3D games don't use sprites
The fuck am I reading?

>>446272
And yet Square still pumped out many great games after their time with Nintendo, but you are ignoring portable systems as well and Square was still releasing games for the Gameboy and GBA.

>>446237
i guess kind of like the Amiga had better hardware than the PC, yet we're not posting to /vr/ on an Amiga, are we?
>The Saturn was more of an arcade machine than the other two
Right, which is why it had actual sprite hardware and the other consoles didn't.
>There are other reasons to why the Saturn did better in Japan than in the west
Saturn was well-stocked with the one genre that's a must-have to sell in Japan.

>>446259
>Nintendo apparently thought it was a bad idea which would end up causing users to damage their consoles

why's that

>>446283
3D objects are comprised of polygons, silly.

>>446302
The trees in Mario 64 are definitely not three dimensional.

>>446252
The fact you're ignorant of the N64's library proves nothing.
Add Resident Evil 2 for Capcom. They spend a million dollars porting it.
And Konami had a number of titles.
It's not unusual for there to be fewer Japanese titles. Like the 360, the N64 didn't do especially well in Japan.

Didn't stop the Evangelion game being N64-exclusive, though.

>>446307
I guess they thought little kids couldn't handle swapping cartridges and would insert it backwards or something

>>446294
The Saturn had more than one genre, unless you are saying Arcade games are one genre then there is no reason to have classifications like fighting games, Shmups, puzzle, and so on.

>>446308
And those aren't sprites, they're flat-textured polygons

Ho boy did this thread bring out the dummies

>absolutely no idea how cartridge architectures work
>thinks you can fit a 200MB game into 40MB
>thinks 128MB cartridges were feasible or cost-effective
>doesn't know what a sprite is

I think my IQ fell by 10 points reading this shit

>>446320
Although in fact all 2D PS1/N64 games are just putting flat textures on polygons since only the Saturn actually can do 2D sprite-based stuff.

>>446343
I didn't know IQ can fall below 0.

N64 has no games

>>446310
I'm just jumping into this thread at the end but you already sound like someone who knows he's losing an argument.

N64 has no games. Accept it.

>>439748
>Reported for underage
>PS2 came out in 2000
>If the poster got it when he was 6, he'd be 19 now.

Christ, I feel old.

>>446354
What the fuck am I reading

Can I get a concise definition of what you think a "sprite" is?

>>446293
>And yet Square still pumped out many great games after their time with Nintendo, but you are ignoring portable systems as well and Square was still releasing games for the Gameboy and GBA

They did all of that after their merge with Enix.

>>446372
>N64 has no games. Accept it.

Logic of PSX fanboi:

I never played any N64 games.
Therefore there are no good N64 games.

You all played your Medal of Honor while N64 gamers played Perfect Dark. A game you've never played but feel an expert on because somone told you it had a slow framerate and was too British.

>>446343
>thinks you can fit a 200MB game into 40MB

If you redesign a game for a cartridge system you certainly can.

>>446434
i don't remember PD looking so shitty

>>446428
Just as Rareware made some NS games, Square could still make GBA and DS games. Those contracts often didn't specify portables, since neither Sony nor MS had a handheld at the time.

>>446445
You misunderstand. I said that Square almost died after they left Nintendo, which they did after making the 100 million dollar flop that was The Spirits Within. I'm not saying they stopped making good games.

>>446441
PD had much better skin textures compared to MOH, but it was a 3rd Generation N64 game, when you divide N64 titles into vague generations.

>>446434
Dude I own a copy of Perfect Dark. I acknowledge that it's one of the games worth owning. It wasn't hard for me to get all of them, there's like eight.

>>446441
I am glad I wasn't the only person who thought that. I don't think Perfect Dark looked that bad like that screen shot, but maybe I should boot it up once again to check the Villa mission again.

>>446464
It's not about graphics it's about gameplay. That Goldeneye engine was pretty solid and they really should have licensed it out and released a ton of games using it but they didn't.

>>446460
>It wasn't hard for me to get all of them, there's like eight.
Your loss. Here's a shortlist of must have titles:

Goldeneye.
Perfect Dark.
Mario 64.
Banjo Tooie.
Banjo Kazooie.
Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Body Harvest. (Precursor to GTA 3.)
Diddy Kong Racing.
Donkey Kong 64.
Harvest Moon 64.
Indiana Jones & the Infernal Machine.
Paper Mario.
Mischief Makers.
Jet Force Gemini.
Rayman 2.
Pokemon Snap.
Rocket - Robot on Wheels.
Super Smash Brothers.
Zelda - Ocarina of Time.
Zelda - Majora's Mask.
Rainbow 6.
Sin & Punishment.
Mission Impossible.
Turok 3.
Yoshi's Story.
Vigilante 8.

That's 26 games, every one must have, and I haven't mentioned a bunch of other excellent games.

>>437876
I really thought /vr/ was going to be above console wars.

I still don't even understand them. If someone liked the N64 more, who cares? Seriously, why does it bother you? If Glover is my favorite video game ever, what of it?

My taste is shit? Maybe it is. So?

>>437919
There are things I wish the N64 could do that PSX didn't, since I was an owner only of the former.

But I never ever cared about a lack of FMV. Man, it's just pretty icing, the cake is what matters.

>>437952
>The Indian singing in Diddy Kong Racing was hilarious.
Man, that popped right in to my head. Dude knows what he's talking about.

>>446505
>If someone liked the N64 more, who cares? Seriously, why does it bother you?
I can't figure that out myself. OP post is about how the N64 hardware was solid, and the lack of a CD drive was embraced by developers. PSX fans never stop claiming that the N64 was rubbish because it didn't use CD's, something one of the best N64 devs (not to mention PSX devs) clearly and carefully refutes. Then N64 managed to give us amazing, innovative games BECAUSE of the hardware, not in spite of it.

But some people just won't listen. They hate the idea that this testimony puts the PSX and N64 on even footing, both with strengths and weaknesses. They just want to hate, instead of embracing the wonderful games the N64's hardware allowed devs to bring us.

>>446504
Vigilante 8 is a multiplatform game, Goldeneye has aged like milk, Turok 3 is the worst of the triology, Rayman 2 is multiplat as well, Mischief Makers is alright but there is too much filler, and Donkey Kong 64 is tedious. Sin and Punishment is okay, I got it back when the N64 was actually still alive at an import store, it isn't anything special like the Treasure games on the Genesis.

>>446504
>Body Harvest
>Diddy Kong Racing
>Indiana Jones
>Rayman 2
>Pokemon Snap
>Rainbow 6
>Mission Impossible
>a bunch of other excellent games
Are you sure? You already seem to be reaching pretty hard and half of the other ones aren't exclusives.

With the exception of the very few (seriously, less than 10) true in-house hardware showcase titles that shine from the N64 library I guarantee you we can name two games for Playstation that are better than every game you can name for N64... Which worked out just fine considering N64 games cost twice as much as Playstation games did.

>>438045
>I believe we can celebrate the N64 without dragging the PSX down, and vice versa
God, yes. Please, more of this.

>>446526
>Vigilante 8 is a multiplatform game
N64 version has better graphics.
>Goldeneye has aged like milk
Even if it has, Perfect Dark replaced it.
>Turok 3 is the worst of the triology
Your opinion. It's the dark horse with much better technology than 2, and it has amazing textures and character models. Plus it solved the framerate issues.

>>446537
I hope you aren't this guy then: >>446472

>>446529
>half of the other ones aren't exclusives.
How does a game being exclusive automatically make it better? Halo was originally a PS2\Xbox game. It became exclusive to Xbox over politics, not technology.

>>446526
>Goldeneye has aged like milk

No it hasn't. Hard to learn controls aside, it's better than modern FPS.

>>446540
Not the same guy. The only people who could work on the GE engine were Rareware. As Factor 5 explained, the best of the European games industry were working for Rareware. Lesser teams would have made crappy games with their tech.

>>446526
>Turok 3 is the worst of the triology

okay fuck YOU

>>446546
>Hard to learn controls
You cited the biggest reason as to why it aged poorly. I loved it back then, but going back to it now is just painful. Perfect Dark is still great but not Goldeneye.

>>446534
>>I believe we can celebrate the N64 without dragging the PSX down, and vice versa
>God, yes. Please, more of this.
I'm the OP, and I said that. I never wanted a fight. I wanted this hereto obscure data to help us RESOLVE disputes by pointing to facts instead of arguing in circles. I love how Factor 5 are not only humble enough to admit Rareware are better than them, but they treat both the PSX and N64 with respect.

>>446553
>going back to it now is just painful.
Change the control scheme. Solitaire is best. Honey is for noobs.

>>446553
>You cited the biggest reason as to why it aged poorly. I loved it back then, but going back to it now is just painful. Perfect Dark is still great but not Goldeneye.

Goldeneye has the same controls as Perfect Dark. Also Goldeneye's controls are not poor, they are just hard to learn because they are different.

The N64 control stick was 100% analogue, unlike modern control sticks which are partially analogue and partially digital. What it means is that the N64 control stick has an extremely high level of precision. Too high if you aren't used to it but awesome if you are.

>>446543
Uhhhh it doesn't make it better, it makes it relevant to the conversation. I swear to god sometimes I think you N64 fanboys are like PC master race dudes who truly believe that it's about power or graphics or anything other than having a large library of appealing games.

Sure politics has a huge hand in that behind the scenes. Nintendo wasn't "nice" back when every single NES game had to have a chip manufactured by Nintendo in it that came with not only a huge price tag but heinous license agreement.

Sony made smart moves and Nintendo made dumb moves. If the Playstation had been a CD-Rom drive for the SNES as per the original plan, Nintendo could have just coasted pretty right into the 21st century but no they had to slap Sony right in the face and they paid the price.

They're still paying the price.

>>446553
>Perfect Dark is still great but not Goldeneye.
There's an argument we'll be having until the end of time. I vote PD. For the simple reason that it made you feel like an utter shit for killing people - they'd surrender, beg, cry out upon death, etc. We don't get that enough in FPS games, which generally just throw angry mobs at you.

>>446569
>They're still paying the price.
Last time I checked, Sony was struggling, not Nintendo.

>>446572
They are handled a bit differently even if they control set up is the same. It is like Castlevania I and Castlevania IV. They have the same control scheme but when you give you input it can be a bit altered, mainly the jumps. Just moving and looking around felt more sluggish in Goldeneye than in Perfect Dark.

>>446572
>The N64 control stick was 100% analogue, unlike modern control sticks which are partially analogue and partially digital.
You know, someone could start a thread innocently stating this documented fact, and /v/irgins would pile in with bullshit objections.

>>446580
Nintendo could have been the undisputed king, not a toy for children.

>>446595
>Nintendo could have been the undisputed king, not a toy for children.
That's what happens when Microsoft steals your primary 3rd party developer.

>>438772
Is there a way I could understand what you're saying in a short amount of time?

I am not even close to a developer, but I'm extremely interested right now.

>>446595
>Nintendo could have been the undisputed king
Let's be honest, dude, the whole games industry is rotting from the inside. That time when Nintendo was King, they had Rare as their right hand man, and both Nintendo and their 3rd party developers pumped out quality game after quality game are long gone.

For a start, Nintendo used to ban publishers from releasing more than a certain number of games per year. Ensured publishers didn't rush more than a certain amount.

>>438984
How about we not care about the OP at all and enjoy the tidbits in these nice links and the intelligent portions of the ensuing discussion?

>>446586
>>446572
Please explain exactly what you mean by this.

Do you consider optoencoders "more analog" than potentiometers?

>>446635
Optoencoders are technically digital devices and potentiometers are technically analogue devices, but the precision of optoencoders is higher. The higher the precision the more analogue the readings are.

>>446631
>enjoy the tidbits in these nice links and the intelligent portions of the ensuing discussion?
They don't want to hear any of it. Every attempt to investigate what Factor 5's info meant for N64 games has been met with "NO CARTRIDGE BASED SYSTEM COULD POSSIBLY BE AS GOOD AS MA PSX!"

For fuck's sake, OP only mentions PSX once, to clarify what Red Book audio was. It's only because PSX fans are so precious that arguments keep flaring up.

>>446649
This doesn't change the fact that both the N64 stick and, for example, the PSX sticks are both digitized before being sent to the console.

>>446572
Really? That would explain a lot. When I made the jump from n64 games to later consoles I thought my aiming had gotten shitier (I was so good with the n64 controller) or the joysticks were different somehow, but I couldn't imagine controllers getting worse as time went on, so I thought I had gotten too reliant on pc mouse aiming but this if true explains everything.

>>437661
In retrospect, I worded "This stuff is priceless for settling those N64\PSX\PC Master Race disputes" poorly. I meant it to mean that we don't have to argue anymore. But some took it to mean something else. Yes, it's their fault, not mine. But I could have pandered more...

>>446663
>This doesn't change the fact that both the N64 stick and, for example, the PSX sticks are both digitized before being sent to the console.
Yes, but the raw input is more precise.

>>446561
I don't mean just in this topic. I mean everywhere.

>>446663
No, you misunderstand. What it means is that the N64 controller is setting analogue stick data to the console which has more decimal places (a higher level of precision) than other controllers.

>>446701
>>446691
Okay, but that doesn't mean that the N64 analog stick is "100% analogue" while modern control sticks are "partially digital". It means the N64 analog stick reports a more precise digitized position.

>>446698
>>I don't mean just in this topic. I mean everywhere.

Agree totally, dude. You can passionately love something without pissing all over something someone else loves.

By the by, I'm finishing up Resi 2 on my N64, and am about to start Resi 3 on my PSX. And I've got Dino Crisis on both PSX and Dreamcast.

Isn't it great when we embrace hardware for what it is, and also embrace games irrespective of hardware?

>>446710
My terminology was just a little confusing, but it works like this:

N64: Control stick position (analogue) -> Optoencoder (digital) -> Console (digital)

Other consoles: Control stick position (analogue) -> Potentiometer (analogue) -> low precision analogue to digital converter (ADC) -> Console (digital).

Because the N64 sensor was already digital, the results don't have to be digitised with an ADC which is where you lose a lot of the precision. The result is completely pure raw.

With other controls you have an analogue input which then has to be converted into digital by a chip and is less precise.

>>446710
Also, I just looked this up, and they both report 8-bit values to the console. The N64 doesn't use the whole range, though - the maximum values physically possible are about +/- 80 (out of -128...127). This would seem to indicate that the N64 controller's analog stick is less precise than the PSX controller's.

>>446740
Do you have any data which demonstrates that the PSX controller's analog sampling is noisy?

I'm testing things over here and I can resolve individual values cleanly.

>>446741
>>446750
Potentiometers are also noisier sensors in general as compared to optoencoders.

>>446741
This may be a case of the N64's typical excesses. It's contestable whether the higher precision has any benefits if the reported range is lower. That said, the stuff which happens INSIDE the N64 controller is significant, since the higher precision allows it to detect movement, even if it doesn't report all of it.

>>446759
>Potentiometers are also noisier sensors in general as compared to optoencoders.
I'm under the impression they drift, as well.

That said, the point is a bit moot. Both stick styles work well enough. The N64 stick is more of a technical achievement than a practical one.

>>446537
So you're claiming Turok 3 runs at 60fps? Because if it doesn't then the framerate issues are not "solved".