/vr/ - Retro Games

Sixty four cartridges.

>>6117351
Aerith dying would have been a whole cart.

>>6117346
Short term, not a big one. They knew what to focus on for their system and they sold millions of consoles that millions of people still love today. Long term they lost out on some big money makers, games and 3rd party devs.

>>6117361
FFVII is actually a tiny ass game, that's only multiple disks due to the FMVs. In fact, the entire game is on each disk and only the FMVs are different per disk. I think it could have worked on N64 had they turned the FMVs into still images and compressed the back grounds.

>>6117393
This.
Instead of the dated CG cutscenes, we might have gotten soulful sprite-based cutscenes if it was on a cart, kinda like the awesome sprite cutscenes in Shadows of the Empire compared to the ugly ass goofy CG FMVs from the PC version.

they were fucked in the head for going down the route of
>no load times!
instead of
>put whatever the actual fuck we want on cd's and get a fuck ton of good developers in on this shit like the snes

>>6117393
>>6117437
Damn, good takes here

>>6117439
No load times and no shitty FMV certainly aged better

>>6117448

>>6117393
>>6117439
>>6117448

While the FMVs and Pre-rendered backdrops do take up a lot of space, what remains isn't really tiny. You're still looking at ~100MB of data. That's pretty huge by N64 standards. And if you honestly think they weren't already compressing the data to provide as much space as possible on the discs for all those FMVs and backgrounds you're probably in for a surprise.

FF7 came out in 1997, were N64 games even hitting 32MB at that point?

>>6117346
HUGE. Probably the entire reason Sony became the dominate force in consoles.

>>6117346
Not that big of a deal. FF7 is the most returned game in video game history due to Sony’s fraudulent advertising campaign.

>>6117529
What the fuck are you talking about?

>>6117536
Many normies bought the game on the FMVs thinking it was an action game with amazingly advanced graphics, only to find it actually was a turned based game with lego men

>>6117529
Source?

The only N64 game to sell more than FF7 was Mario 64. And a good chunk of that has to do with the fact that for a good while Mario 64 was the only game worth owning for the system.

>>6117541
>for a good while Mario 64 was the only game worth owning for the system.
didn't Wave Race 64 came out relatively early in the N64's life?

>>6117539
Never happened.

FF7 didn't go to the N64 because the N64 couldn't handle it.

>>6117545
Yeah, but wave race 64 is nothing special. Just has pretty water.

>>6117513
Funny how all the revisionist Nintoddlers have no answer for this.

Nintendo was hostile to third party developers and used a shit media system that lost them all the goodwill they built up during the SNES era. And no, there was no demand for "soulful" static sprite art over FMV in FF at the time. The FMV and early 3D are what set the tone of the game. Seriously, stick to Mario and Quest 64.

Are we in 5th gen console war season?
Because if so, remember:
N64 = Best 3D
Saturn = Best 2D
PS1 = best video codec for the FMVs.

>>6117513
Only 3 N64 games used 64MB carts (the largest available), Conker's Bad Fur Day, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Resident Evil 2. Plenty others used 32MB. If the N64DD had been more successful, FF7 may have been more feasible to port as the 64MB disks were much cheaper to produce, they could probably get it to fit on 2 of them without too much issue.

>>6117549
>but wave race 64 is nothing special.
It has incredible physics and controls.
FF7 is fine, but at the end of the day it really is just another RPG.

>>6117553
>It has incredible physics and controls.
It's what I'd expect, not a very fun or interesting game. Don't know why 64 fans hype up yet another racer when it's just another racing game.

>>6117549
NOOOOOOOOOOOO ITS A TINY GAME THE N64 CAN HANDLE IT SQUARE DEVELOPERS DONT KNOW ANYTHING NOOOOO I DONT WANT TO PLAY QUEST 64 ITS NOT FAIR

>>6117554
>64 fans
Nah not really, I was always an idort.
> it's just another racing game.
I actually wish there were more jetski racing games like WR64. There isn't.
Blue Storm on Gamecube was outsourced and not nearly as good.

>>6117561
jet moto is pretty good.

>>6117556
Anon, are you okay? console wars might be affecting you.

>>6117562
It's actually very clunky.
WaveRunner by Sega is an actual good water racing game, but still not as polished as WR64.

>>6117552
>IF Nintendo released this periphrial in the west, and IF Square cut all FMV, and IF they used multiple cartridges of the maximum size, and IF Nintendo wasn't so hostile to third party's, and IF.......

>>6117565
Not very familiar with the genre, wave race 64 may be the peak but I really don't see the appeal.

>>6117568
That's the thing, it's barely a genre because there are very little water racing games. And yeah WR64 is the peak it's ok if it's not your thing though.

They could have done a base cart for the game and fmv carts you stick on top for fmvs. FF7 coming to the N64 for only $500.

>>6117571
I think one of the ff7 ads jokes about this.

>>6117571
>final fantasy & knuckles & knuckles & knuckles...

>>6117573
Interestingly, that ad campaign was funded and managed by Sony. That was one of Sony's clever ideas, offer Squaresoft to pay and manage for the advertising of FF VII outside of Japan.

>>6117576
I read that EA handled FF7's marketing.

>>6117578
Nope, Sony. Which is why that ad had a jab at Nintendo.

>>6117561
Not /vr/ (though neither is Blue Storm) but Splashdown for ps2 was pretty great

>>6117437
Cringe.

>>6117581
>sprites are cringe
2020 has brought us neo-/vr/.

>>6117579
Publishers usually handle marketing and Square-EA was established as a NA/Asia publishing relationship. I'm gonna need to see some proof that it was a Sony ad.

>>6117539
Take your pills.

>>6117585
First time I'm hearing about Square-EA, but FF VII was published by Sony outside of Japan, and Sony handled the marketing too.
It's on wikipedia btw.

>>6117590
It's why FF7 says Square Electronic Arts when you boot it up, it was a multi-year partnership.

>>6117346
Massive. I think people forget how big of a game this was and how it really kicked off JRPG's in the west

>>6117539
If after watching these commercials you thought this was an action game, then you're retarded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDz9A4ByHIQ

It's very clearly hyping the story and movie like aspect of the game.

>>6117551
Hey! The Saturn can do decent FMV when it wants to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gqC3ntPUe0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC9krM2k8hI&t=44s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcAInbGkzcM

>>6117595
A common technique for some Saturn "FMV"s that aren't really FMVs (but are on other platforms) is to use simple backgrounds but really fucking huge sprites. It made it so cutscenes were lossless in quality. I believe Tengai Makyou IV does this. One of the Lunar games does too, Lunar 2 I think? Cutscenes on the PS1 are FMV but in the Saturn are just massive sprites.

>>6117573
And that's just a pre rendered background. You were just running on paintings and it blew everyone's fucking mind.

>>6117598
Tengai Makyou IV uses standard Cinepak, as does Lunar Silver Star Story and Lunar 2 Eternal Blue. Eternal Blue uses a later version of Cinepak that allows ADX audio which frees up more bitrate for the video, which is why it looks better than Silver Star Story.

Lunar Silver Star Story Complete on the Saturn uses MPEG-1 encoding as it requires the Video CD card which can give you this kind of quality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih4QdZmCpcQ

>>6117584
That's not what he said you ESL

>>6117603
It's a real shame that so many of these pre-rendered backgrounds were never properly archived, many of them had so much detail that got obscured or erased after being compressed so hard.

>>6117614
>ESL
thanks for the compliment.
And yeah you claimed "cringe" to someone saying sprite-based cutscenes are better than 3D FMV ones.

>>6117617
That's not the same as saying sprites are shit like you claimed, he's just saying your opinion that FFVII shouldn't have used FMV was shit

You're making it sound like he was shitting on all sprite art

>>6117616
Yeah, it really is sad for not just FF7 but other games as well.

This guy actually used to work for Duck Corporation who created the TrueMotion codec that some Saturn and Dreamcast games used as well as FF7 on the PC. He actually found years ago that he still had some of the original raw video files he was sent by developers to help them figure out the best way to encode them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY6D7BznAMw

>>6117607
My mistake then, I swear there's one game out there for the Saturn that just uses massive sprites for a character talking to you while on the PS1 the same animation is used but compressed to a video file.

>>6117437
Except that FF was NEVER known for sprite based cutscenes but rather in game engine cutscenes.

>>6117632
That's pretty neat, certainly looks better than some of those upscaled fan versions that look smeary and weird.

>>6117648
Are you sure you're not thinking of the Sega CD? As that is a common technique on that system and a lot of people seem to confuse the two.

The only instance of that situation I can think of with the Saturn is Street Fighter Alpha 2. On Saturn it's still the Arcade sprite animation, where as on PS1 it's a poor video recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KouetycH04

>>6117549
>used out of the box figures and had such trash code to run 50% less polygons when the limit was more like 60-70% of what the PS1 could do with the stock N64 performance.
>didn't even bother to get to the point to rewrite Fast3D microcode for the RCP on the N64 to get better performance like Factor 5.

How did this guy even manage to get on the programming team with doing the stuff FFVII did? Unironically, >>6117556 sums up part of my feelings.

>>6117549
>FF7 didn't go to the N64 because the N64 couldn't handle it.
Ah it’s the guy with the interview containing Square’s opinion of N64 hardware two years before it actually went to market.

>>6117563

>he became a console-war invalid

Sad really. Imagine him sitting in his chair and telling his grandchildren

>"I was there, the Great Console War of 2020, tech-comparison bombs and console-library-mortars, I saw my comrade getting hit by a PS1-texture-perspective-mapping-post - he died right in my arms, it was gruesome..."

>>6117682
You realize that Nintendo had an iron grip on that kind of stuff early on and Factor 5 and other devs didn't really get to start messing with that kind of stuff until around 1998/1999 right? The early dev kits and tools for the N64 were very limiting on what they allowed developers to do.

People like to say the Saturn was a nightmare to develop for, but many aren't aware that the N64 was no picnic either. A lot of developers who worked on both systems have said they were equally difficult to develop for, just in different ways.

>>6117694
Not him, but it’s kind of irrelevant to that FF7 interview. If you read interviews from developers of early N64 games, they quite clearly state that prototype N64 hardware was buggy as fuck and didn’t perform properly, that’s why people had to test their games on SGI workstations instead.

The N64 that Squaresoft is talking about was in the very earliest stages of protection. It would have been a version not long after the SGI prototype that Sega rejected because the 3D performance wasn’t good enough, which suggested it did 3D even worse than the Saturn. So the early N64 prototype was really really shitty.

>>6117707
Even with that in mind though, with the final N64 pushing tons of polygons at high frame rates isn't something it's really known for. The Saturn and PS1 can both push more polygons than the N64, the main difference is they're not filtered, anti-aliased, or perspective correct.

The big strength of the N64 is that because it can render polygons perspective correct with filtering, it can just render giant polygons where as on Saturn and PS1 they have to render smaller ones to avoid texture warping issues.

This works well for big 3D worlds that you see in 3D Platformers, racers, and action games, but for something like FF7 it wouldn't help as much. There the big push is displaying a decent amount of models with higher polygon counts during the battle scenes. Which I could see the N64 struggling with, especially during the era where Nintendo wasn't allowing developers to disable AA and Texture filtering, or letting them mess with the microcode.

>>6117694
Yeah I know, it really sucked that it prompted Square to go but really, the main thing was the fact that PS1 had sane programming tools and no weird stuff with memory like what Sega and Nintendo did.
Which really boggles the mind how PS2 and PS3, Sony then starting complicated machines that were no different. In some respects, thank god current generation consoles are PC based and the hardware design is generally sane.

>>6117718
>the final N64 pushing tons of polygons at high frame rates isn't something it's really known for. The Saturn and PS1 can both push more polygons than the N64
Actually the N64 is entirely memory bandwidth limited on the number of polygons it can push. The official statement on final hardware was that with z buffer on and anti-aliasing on, the achievable "real world" limit based on memory bandwidth is about 100,000 polygons per second. That's assuming utilization of memory bandwidth is pretty much perfect (and it often was far from being good due to the N64's difficult memory architecture).

On PS1 the limit was about 90,000 polygons per second with all features on; that's not limited by memory bandwidth or GPU, but CPU and GTE.

I'm not sure what the exact "real world" amount is for Saturn because Sega never gave a non-bullshit figure with all features on. But the Saturn couldn't practically push more polygons than the N64 (even when the N64 is having a bad day) because VDP1 suffers from horrendous and virtually unfixable overdraw problems due to its unique rendering architecture.

That Square interview claims that the N64 had troubles with Behemoth, a 2000 polygons model. Since FF7 battles run at 15 FPS, that's 30 000 polygons a second. Let's say rendering the rest of the scene is another 30 000 polygons for 60 000 polygons per second total.

That's still under the 100 000 polygon limit with z-buffer on. Alright now real world considerations. FF7 doesn't use texturing for battle models (gouraud shading only), so that's major thing less that could cause bottlenecks in the N64's memory architecture. The battle scenes don't have very much depth (it's just a room with characters and enemies standing in them) so the z-buffer doesn't have to work very hard in this situation. My estimation? FF7 was perfectly doable on final N64 hardware even with z-buffer and AA on.

>>6117757
Delete this

>>6117757

Do you know how many polygons later 3D platformers had?
If it struggled with one simple model because of how the polygons add up over a second then how did it managed things like Banjo-Tooie or Conker with their often many character models on screen and the whole game world to render as well each frame? I really cannot believe that a whole frame of Banjo just in total has 6000 polygons on screen (for just 15 fps for a total of 90000 pgs)...

>>6117814
No idea, though I know that the model for Conker alone is 1200 polygons.

I think the 100,000 figure is for the original microcode, and later microcodes which improved memory bandwidth/z-buffer efficiency (better sorting or culling?) may have somewhat increased the ceiling. 90,000 per second seems pretty high for Banjo-Tooie though (especially considering the relatively high-res textures in that game), World Driver Champion which doesn't use a z-buffer only claimed around 120,000 or so...

Rare seemed pretty fucking efficient with memory bandwidth so that might have been it. Though if I recall, both Banjo-Tooie and Conker ran at sub-240p, so that might have been the memory bandwidth secret sauce right there.

>>6117757
Daytona USA was supposedly doing 50k Polygons per second at 20fps, so about 2500 Polygons per frame. CCE runs at 30fps and is supposedly rendering more as the car models tend to be a bit nicer and the draw distance is further. So that could be hitting the 75k-85k mark.

Again though, any ability to render more polygons doesn't tend to show itself as much on the Saturn and PS1 when compared to the N64 since they have to use smaller polygons to avoid texture warping issues. So where the N64 could draw a large surface with say one polygon, the Saturn and PS1 have to do it with a bunch of smaller ones or else they get massive texture warping issues.

>>6117814
Again, the N64 can get away with drawing very large polygons. This really helps when you need to draw a big 3D world.

>>6117840
Yeah that's worth mentioning. The N64 makes better use of its polygons since subdivision isn't really required (though it's needed in one situation - you can only map 4K worth of textures to a single polygon, if you want larger textures than that, you need to subdivide the polygon as well as refresh the cache).

Another way the N64 will make better use of polygons is using the z-buffer will reduce overdraw, which is a problem on PS1 and a MAJOR problem on Saturn. No point drawing shitloads of polygons if people can't even see them.

Also the reason that some PS1 -> N64 ports like Mega Man 64 have a lower draw distance (fewer polygons on screen at once) is because the porting devs fucked up memory bandwidth utilization. To be fair, it's really easy to do that on N64.

>>6117552
The N64DD was an absolutely atrocious idea and Nintendo did the best thing by taking it out back and shooting it.
The N64 should have used disc media from the beginning, not have it tacked on after release.

If the N64 used the DD format from the beginning, that would have been amazing.

>>6117879
Why was Nintendo scared of CDs anyway?

>>6118006
They got burned in the 80’s with their Famicom Disk System.

>>6118029
But that was magnetic media. Just like they tried to do again with the 64DD. They never learned.

>>6117437
Yep. Look at Shadows of the Empire. The N64 cutscenes have aged way better than the ones from the PC version.

>>6118006
Sticking with cartridges let them keep load times down, can you imagine ocarina with PS1 load times?

>>6118057
Hmm, Ocarina with three times the content but ps1 load times. Tough choice.

>>6118061
>Ocarina with three times the content
Do you actually believe OoT would have had more dungeons if the cartridge was bigger? lol

>>6118071
What they would have wasted it on graphics instead? Not like the 64 had much left anyway.

>>6118072
No you idiot, the reason OoT doesn't have more dungeons is because it takes a lot of time to design ones that makes Miyamoto happy, nothing to do with storage space

>>6118057
>>6118061
>load times

The only time load times are truly awful on disc based systems is when the developers didn't take the time to think about where the data was going to be on the disc and how that was going to impact seek times.

Many PS1, Saturn, and even Sega CD games have very fast load times due to developers being smart and putting data in areas of the disc that reduce seek time, combining data into archives so you have less files to load, and using compression so there's less data to load in general. And that's not even getting into things like RAM carts.

>>6118102
the only cd console with bad load times I've experienced is the neogeo cd.

>>6117346
Not big at all
Poor people would have flocked to the ps1 for a cheap cd player regardless. As well as overall cheaper to buy games for ps1. FFVII most likely would not have pushed more 64 consoles sold or made more developers want to develop for the 64 because of the inflated cost of carts.

>>6118105
Dreamcast can be pretty bad. But it plays its own fax machine type elevator music.

>>6118160
Nah, never had much of an issue with DC.

>>6118075
Cope, LTTP had fare more well designed dungeons just a generation before

>>6117351
Imagine being the guy tasked with putting ff7 on a cartridge

Imagine ff7 without the fmv

I just dont see this working.

>>6117552
In hindsight they should have used Mini CDs, in a non-standard size. If they would have produced discs in a slightly larger size, like 3.5", they could have really screwed with pirates. Assuming they designed the system itself so pirates could not get around the custom media size by coming up with a replacement tray/lid that allowed the standard 4.75" CDs to fit. Like they did with the Gamecube replacement lids. Jam some capacitors and heatsinks in there, to congest it up.

>>6118032
They certainly learned how easy it is to pirate something on an easy to reproduce medium, but then Famicom carts coming from HK were everywhere too.

>>6118434
Picking an inferior format over piracy concerns isn't very smart. The ps1 had rampant piracy but still made stacks of cash and buried Nintendo.

>>6117346
If it came out for N64, would it be called Final Fantasy IV (in keeping with the misnumbering of past games) or Final Fantasy 64?

>>6118510
64, definitely. N64 was a lot of peoples first console so it wasn't a good idea to number sequels, at least not so blatantly. It's actually kind of weird now that I think about it, there's very few blatant sequels on the N64 that don't feel stand-alone, but something like symphony of the night is blatantly a sequel to an earlier game. Mega Man X4 and 8 exist. I wonder if this was a thing for the N64.

A switch cart exists now and tendy has all of the jrpgs ever once more so it really didn't ever make a difference in the end really.

>>6118057
I never found load times excruciating, I'd gladly much more content in exchange for loading between separate segments.

>>6117550
>Nintendo was hostile to third party developers

Companies only admitted this once Nintendo stopped being the golden goose. They just sucked up and carried on during the NES and SNES because where else were they going to make money, the Amiga? Same reason why developers don't really care about Sony censoring games, where else are they going to make money, on Steam? A successful business works their laborers to the ground, they should never give them too much.

>>6118105
The worst loadtimes I ever had was Duke Nukem Forever on PS3, but that doesn't say much about the PS3.
Load times for Symphony Of The Night on PS1 were tolerable, if anything the pause helped set up the soundtrack in whatever area you went to, what bothered me more about that game on the technical/performance side was huge sprite heavy effects slowing everything down to a crawl, ergo every time you beat a boss, to name one.

I guess what I'd like to say is that unless load times are like 5 minutes, or they are constant and very inorganically halt the gameplay, I don't mind them.

>>6117552
>get it to fit on 2 of them without too much issue.

That would be without FMVs though. Even taking away 100mb per CD for the game, you're looking at 1500mb / 1.5gb of data.

>>6118434
Purposely making your media more bothersome just to fuck with pirates and unlicensed devs stopped making much sense after the 80s. Just put some basic copy protection on the discs and go.

It could have just came with a vhs tape that you pause and play at times the cart asks you to. Of course people would watch ahead and ruin the story but that's their fault.

>>6119414
How that I think about it FF7 would have made a great laserdisc game.

>>6117552
>two units of the most expensive version of the format
>still no FMVs
>would probably have to bundle with a memory card, or maybe include a coupon for one
It would be fucking unsellable, N64 games were already more expensive than people liked, now you'd have to pay a ridiculous premium for a gimped version of a game that was cheap on the competing PS1 (itself cheap), if anything it'd convince some people to sell their N64 to buy a PS1, memory card, FF7, and probably one or two more games.

>>6117552
No, wait, I reread your post, the N64DD, that stupid piece of shit, two of those discs, which still would lack the FMVs.
That just highlights what a bad afterthought the N64DD was, 'buy this peripheral to play the worst version of a game you only need a memory card for on the competing console.'

>>6117346
It lost me as a teenager, I loved FF 2 and 3 (that's what they were known as then) on Super Nintendo and I bought a Playstation just to play FF7

If Nintendo had the next Final Fantasy game I would have bought their console. Instead they went the route of making an early childhood-oriented system. While that lost me and my friends as customers, in the end I guess that was a good move for Nintendo for the toddlers who played their games remain lifelong fans of their properties.

>>6117437
>kinda like the awesome sprite cutscenes in Shadows of the Empire compared to the ugly ass goofy CG FMVs from the PC version.

I don't know if this anon is right but there is no better example

>>6117581
You don't even know what cringe means

>>6119485
Meanwhile on PC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo9M0XQKgs

>>6118006
Both piracy and the fact that they made money from publishers for every cartridge sold

>>6118061
>Hmm, Ocarina with three times the content but ps1 load times. Tough choice.

If you admit "content" is just better sound and video it's not

>>6118061
Yeah it's called Megaman Legends, and it worked out fine.

>>6119496
If they didn't have to worry about cartridge space and had CDs from the get go, we probably would have gotten a complete Ocarina of Time with all the scrapped N64DD content.

>>6119494
They're really well animated, well acted and have nice direction. A bit hammy but it wouldn't be star wars if it didn't have that tone to it. Why would people prefer the N64 cutscenes?

>>6119494
Dash's voice actor is a perfect choice for a talking golden retriever and nothing else

>>6118263
Probably could fit on 2-3 64MB carts with recompressed fmv's, shortened fmv's, dropped frames or videos replaced with in-engine cutscenes. To justify the increased price they'd have to add additional content, at the very least better graphics. Hard and not profitable but doable.

>>6117595
>If after watching these commercials you thought this was an action game, then you're retarded
It's clearly misleading. The first commercial even says "if you fail, you can always hit the reset button", which you would never do in an RPG.

>>6119507
>Why would people prefer the N64 cutscenes?

Because they weren't hammy at all and had good artwork, and they let joel mcneely's soundtrack do the talking.

But mostly because everything you said is a wrong opinon

>>6119514
That's right up there with making a gun out of PVC pipe, you could shoot it, once, but besides suicide, what would be the point?
If it involves pricing your product out of the typical consumer's range on top of making it shit, I'm just going out on a limb and saying that it's impossible from a practical standpoint.

'Fixing' 32X Doom by making it a 32X+CD game would be a saner prospect than a double cartridge Final Abortion 7

>>6119517

I hit reset plenty of times when I screwed up a boss battle or a mini game.

>>6119514
>2-3 carts

At that point just make 1 $200-$300 256MB cartridge and call it a day. And again, it's not like FF7's cutscenes and assets weren't already heavily compressed or running at a low framerate of 15fps or less. And that's not even getting into the disaster that would be trying to recreate the music with no proper sound chip and having to fit it on the cartridge as well.

>>6119507
>Why would people prefer the N64 cutscenes?
I frankly think they look better. It's classic golden-era LucasArts spritework.
The PC version cutscenes look like some quick cash-in thing they did to justify using a CD-ROM.

>it's another "it was only the FMVs' fault!" thread
the n64's weak-ass hardware couldn't even display one single character model from ff7 without the framerate becoming a powerpoint slideshow.

>>6118006
they weren't scared of CDs. they just didn't want to give up cartridges. they wanted to keep the status quo where they had full control over manufacturing and could charge outrageous royalty fees.

>>6119580
Sony fanboys were already BTFO here: >>6117757
Anyway, before you call me a N64 fanboy, nah, I think 5th gen in general was trashy, but PS was the trashiest of the bunch, at least N64 can do proper 3D, and Saturn had good 2D.

>>6119557
>At that point just make 1 $200-$300 256MB cartridge and call it a day.
That seems like it'd require special tooling that would cost more to develop or buy, still not making it any more viable.

Seems no matter how you slice it, the N64 was just not gonna have FF7

>>6119584
yeah, i'm sure a shitposter on 4chan knows better than the people who actually developed the game.

>>6119582
In retrospective, I like how the N64 was the last system to use carts. Feels good slamming a N64 cart nowadays and don't have to worry about the disc drive drying, disc errors, loading times, etc.
By the way, the reason Nintendo might have stuck with carts might have something to do with the feud with Sony. Sony owned most of the factories where CDs were pressed, for example, Sony got a small fraction of profit for each Sega Saturn game sold.
Sega of America tried to fuck Sony by buying all the longboxes (this is why playstation games in USA had to change to normal jewel cases later)

>>6119589
Read the whole post again, the point is that the N64 proto Square was using at the time wasn't the finished N64 we all know.
Stop being a brand loyalist, anon. Sony won't give you a cent for defending them online.

>>6119505
>we probably would have gotten a complete Ocarina of Time with all the scrapped N64DD content.

Does anyone know what this was supposed to be?

Then you'd have to support that this content was withheld because of cartridge size and not every other constraint in the development.

>>6119584
I just default to Carmack's position on the systems, and it's the most accurate perspective in hindsight and encapsulates how devs felt at the time.

>>6119590
>Sega of America tried to fuck Sony by buying all the longboxes (this is why playstation games in USA had to change to normal jewel cases later)

This doesn't pass my 2 neurons test

1) The entire music industry was using longboxes. There's no way anyone could buy all the folded cardboard like it's helium

2) longboxes were a solution to shelving CDs alongside vinyl. Games need no such consideration.

3) longboxes didn't make economic or ecological sense to anyone. Wikipedia says it was phased out as early as 1993

>>6119619
Sure, from purely a developer stand point, developing for the easiest system to develop for would be the logical choice.
But good developers crafted great 3D stuff on N64, and great 2D stuff on Saturn. Stuff that couldn't be made on the PS1.
PS1 was the jack of all trades, which isn't a bad thing per se...

>>6119624
>But good developers crafted great 3D stuff on N64
I don't feel it has held up as well.
>Stuff that couldn't be made on the PS1.
In terms of game play I think everything the Saturn was doing could be done on the PS1, except stuff like infinite planes which didn't get used much for game play anyway. In terms of 2D horsepower the PS1 could easily do much of the same things, often even easier than it was on the Saturn.

Developers getting their best results out of certain things made the best games for us as gamers.

>>6119619
>all the folded cardboard
Are you talking about the PAL Saturn boxes?
I'm talking about the jewel long boxes in USA.
Anyway, maybe it's just a myth, but that's what I've read around.. would be interesting to confirm it.
>Wikipedia says it was phased out as early as 1993
This makes sense, if Sega bought them all around 1996 or so, it makes sense there weren't many around anymore, since they phased out in 1993.
Mind you Sega kept using longboxes until 1998 or whenever was the final SS game released, while Sony switched to regular jewel cases shortly after the PS1 launch, with only a handful of PS1 games getting longbox releases.

>>6119630
>with only a handful of PS1 games getting longbox releases.
There's two variants of PS1 longbox too. Sega CD style jewel cases and plastic+cardboard style ones. I think those plastic+cardboard ones are like PAL Saturn.

>>6119628
>I don't feel it has held up as well.
Well you can say that about 5th gen as a whole, but regarding 3D; N64 was the only one that had 3D that didn't look like the polygons were gonna colapse any second.
Have in mind N64 was the most powerful hardware on the market in september of 1996, and it wasn't until the end of 1996 that PCs actually surpassed the N64 technology with the advent of the 3dfx voodoo cards.
>In terms of game play I think everything the Saturn was doing could be done on the PS1
I'm talking in all terms, we weren't discussing "gameplay-only" criteria. Anyway, missing frames in a fighting game can actually affect gameplay depending on the player.
>often even easier than it was on the Saturn.
Yeah, "eaiser" was never being discussed, I granted PS1 was the easiest to develop for.
>Developers getting their best results out of certain things made the best games for us as gamers.
True. Too bad Sony went full retard with the PS2 and made a system that was kind of weak and difficult to program for. But developers had no choice, Sony already made the PlayStation brand literally too big to fail at that point.

>>6119594
kawai flat-out says in the interview that they were using the dev kits that nintendo gave them for the system. it wasn't a "prototype," that's just a bullshit excuse.
the n64 was too weak to run ff7 according to the people who made the game, period.

>>6119639
>dev kits that nintendo gave them for the system. it wasn't a "prototype,"
Well, but it was.
I really don't see how any of the 3D stuff in FF VII couldn't be done on N64, honestly. Especially since it's a turn-based game.
But have in mind N64 is notorious for being difficult to program for, and there's little documentation, so maybe Kawai-san wasn't able to use the hardware to the fullest. But I still think he was using an early prototype.
I wonder if Square still has those FF VII 64 models though, would be interesting to see. All we know are these 3D FF VI teasers.

>>6119590
cartridges were bad for third parties because of how nintendo nickel-and-dimed them, and bad for the consumer because the games were so much more expensive than CDs. and let's not pretend cartridges didn't come with their own malfunctions, like the batteries dying and deleting your saves. load times were really the only advantage.

>>6119643
>I really don't see how any of the 3D stuff in FF VII couldn't be done on N64, honestly.
considering that behemoth alone was too much for the n64, it would have melted trying to run the whole game.

>>6119646
>like the batteries dying and deleting your saves
Don't quote me on this, but don't N64 carts have a different kind of memory battery from earlier system carts?
I have yet to find a N64 cart with a fucked memory battery.

>>6119647
Pic related has more polygons than any FF VII boss, and it's a real-time action game.
The Square developer interview is a nice anecdote, but it's not the be-all end-all of N64 discussion.

>>6119637
>Well you can say that about 5th gen as a whole
Nah, mostly N64 games.
>N64 was the only one that had 3D that didn't look like the polygons were gonna colapse any second.
Not sure I follow, you could easily clip the camera to see the void in almost every N64 game.
>, missing frames in a fighting game
That's maybe the only other thing I can really see besides infinite planes.
>Yeah, "eaiser" was never being discussed
just means to get the same effects on saturn, devs would need to put in more work.
>Too bad Sony went full retard with the PS2 and made a system that was kind of weak and difficult to program for
In some ways Sony was very forward thinking with the PS2 design, it's telling that it kept up with the Xbox, left the gamecube behind and the best looking games of that generation were designed for the PS2.

>>6119649
Some N64 games used batteries, not many. Some required controller paks (which are battery powered unfortunately) and some had flash ram on the cartridge.

>>6119650
>Pic related has more polygons than any FF VII boss
Maybe in a model to model comparison but the scenery is clearly cut down. FF7's battle scenes are pretty elaborate.

final fantasy vii battles are barely more demanding than a mario party minigame.
and I mention mario party because it's a game that's notorious for its low-poly models.

>>6119649
a few n64 games and the memory pak used SRAM batteries with a typical lifespan of around 15 years.

>>6119651
>Nah, mostly N64 games.
Hah. You really think PS1 3D holds up?
You're a fanboy.

>>6119650
and notice how the background looks like a commodore 64 game to compensate.

>>6119657
>You really think PS1 3D holds up?
Definitely, Square made some gorgeous games.
>You're a fanboy.
Nah but alright man. What now?

>>6119657
ps1 3d looks better than the n64's vaseline-smeared mess.

>>6119651
>FF7's battle scenes are pretty elaborate.
really?

>>6119662
>gamera 2000
Good game. Sin and Punishment is better though.
Anyway, not interested in 5th gen console wars myself. Not a big fan of the whole gen, but I do prefer N64 and Saturn over Playstation.

>>6119667
>mentioning a Treasure game on a sony fanboy thread
LMAO you evil motherfucker.

>>6119662
Something like Raystorm is gorgeous in action.

>>6119663
Yeah. Usually lots of environmental details, accommodations for all summons, etc. The battle scenes probably took the most engineering, planning and optimization of the entire game

>>6119663
was that square programmer really not able to render that thing on n64?
fuck, I think that mario 64 water dinosaur thing had more polygons than that.

>>6119673
I think FF VII was the first time Square ever tried 3D, before that it was all 2D games.

>>6119651
>Not sure I follow
pretty sure he's talking about the famous ps1 wobbling textures

>>6119678
How boring

>>6119663
compared to the n64's shit? really.

>>6119662
Not bad!
Could use some vaseline to cover all those jaggies tho

>>6119683
Quest 64 sucks and was an unfinished game, but if you never played it, the battles happen on the actual playing field of the game, unlike FF 7 where battles have their own separate screen from the actual map.

>>6119585
That was kind of the point. Doing 3 64MB carts is no more viable than one giant 250+MB cart.

>>6119584
Here's polygon counts of Models in N64 games. Keep in mind these are models, not what you actually see on screen at any given time. What's actually being rendered per frame is going to be much lower than these numbers.:

https://www.oocities.org/zeldaadungeon2000/polygonchart.html

So with Ocarina of Time, it runs at 20fps. Link + Epona is about 1200 Polygons, but again they're not all going to be rendered at once. The Z-Buffer is going to make it so it only renders what the camera see's. So let's say 600 Polygons there. Now, all of Hyrule field is ~3000 polygons. You never see the entire thing from one shot, ever. It's designed so parts hills, walls, etc. block the view. At most you'll see maybe 1/4 of it. So maybe 750-1000 Polygons. So ~1600 polygons per frame at 20fps. That's 32,000 polygons per second.

The PS1 and arguably even the Saturn can draw more polygons than the N64 when the N64 has all it's effects (Z-buffer, perspective correction, anti-aliasing, filtering, etc.) turned on. That's why developers starting writing their own microcode to turn that stuff off. The trade off is the N64 can draw much larger polygons than either the PS1 or Saturn without having to worry about texture warping. So it can get away with drawing less polygons and still have large 3D objects and worlds.

Take a look at a Saturn or PS1 game running in Wireframe mode and you'll see what I'm talking about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8yLq45tDGc

You don't see N64 games doing that aggressive level of subdividing.

>>6119684
the jaggies look appropriately video-gamey. n64 games just look like really bad 3d.

>>6119685
>the battles happen on the actual playing field of the game
twinbee rpg did the same thing on ps1 without being as offensively ugly.

>>6119687
>the jaggies look appropriately video-gamey.
considering playstation's best thing was its video codec, I don't think you can say playstation is the most "video-gamey".
>n64 games just look like really bad 3d
Eh, 5th gen in general. Look at that ugly brown thing you posted
if you haven't noticed yet, I don't give a shit about n64, I'm just here to fight sonyggers

>>6119693
I'll never get why the PS1 made so many people so upset. I just like good games, it's not that hard to do.

>>6119693
based. fuck Sonyncels.

>>6119695
>I'll never get why the PS1 made so many people so upset.
PS1 doesn't make me upset. Sony fanboys need to be put in their place, though.
Remember: you're only able to post on /vr/ by chance. 5th gen wasn't allowed here at the beginning. Consider yourself lucky, but I don't think Sony has a place in the retro board.

>>6119695
>I'll never get why the PS1 made so many people so upset.
blame nintendo and sega for making "console wars" a thing in the 16-bit generation. mindless consumers picked one of those brands and became loyal to it. so when sony came along with a product that was objectively superior to what nintendo and sega were offering, it made those fanboys extremely bitter. and for some bizarre reason, they've STILL never gotten over it.

>>6119701
>but I don't think Sony has a place in the retro board.
Why not? Sony's MSX machines and Sony Imagesoft/989 Studios-published games aren't retro enough for you?

>>6119704
>acting as if console wars didn't get 10x worse during the social media era.
7th and 8th console wars are probably the worst they've ever been, and you can probably blame Sonyggers for like 90% of the consolewar shitposting.
Back then, the nintendo vs sega "console war" was merely a marketing scheme by Sega of America (not Japan). Most kids got excited to hear their friend had the rival system, because it meant you could play the games that weren't on your system.
Nowadays, console wars are truly bitter because
>no games
>movie games
>all games are the same across all systems with minuscule differences
But nice deflection attempt, sonygger. Nice attempt.

>>6119706
>Sony's MSX machines and Sony Imagesoft/989 Studios-published games aren't retro enough for you?
They are, but sonyggers don't care about MSX (unless it's metal gear, and still they'd rather play the MGS III versions rather on an actual MSX).

>>6119704
0.50 U$D were deposited in your bank account.
4ThePlayers!

>>6119704
At least ninty and sega developed their own games. I can respect them a hell of a lot more than soiny and understand why people would prefer the latter two companies.

>>6119724
former two*

>>6119712
actually, outside of 4chan, "console wars" are barely even a thing anymore. the companies themselves don't negatively advertise against each other anymore, unless one of them really fucks up like microsoft did with the xbone launch. the media shames people for wanting exclusive games (unless it's a nintendo exclusive). most developers have long since sold out to the multiplatform bandwagon. something like "genesis does what nintendon't" or "$299" would be unheard of today.

>>6119724
sony developed their own games too. they just realized that they didn't need to treat third-parties like shit to make their first-party games sell (unlike nintendo) and they provided stability (unlike sega).

>>6119729
>outside of 4chan
I take it you don't use kikebook (and you're doing good by not using it), but console wars in vidya FB groups can get pretty ridiculous.
Anyway, it's like the opposite of how it was back then.
Back then, companies wanted console wars, but consumers just enjoyed video games, because many good games were coming out all the time.
Now, companies try their best to be as PC as possible, yet consumers spend more time shitposting online about whether this or that version of the game has 1 or 2 frame drops more than on the rival system.
It's sad.

>>6119628
>except stuff like infinite planes which didn't get used much for game play anyway.

You'd be surprised how often that's used. Grandia uses it for the floors in most it's maps (it's why they look worse on PS1 and some areas run worse).
Shining Force III uses it for floors.
Shining the Holy Ark uses it for floors and ceilings.
Sonic Jam's Sonic World uses it for the floor.
Just about every 3D Fighter uses it for the floor and ceiling.
Mass Destruction uses it for the ground level which is why the Saturn version runs at 60fps while PS1 is at 30fps. Sonic R uses it for the lowest level of all it's maps.
Quake uses it for Skies.
The Panzer Dragoons use it for floors and all those nice cloud/water effects they do.

Those games and more all use those planes to have larger words and better performance.

> In terms of 2D horsepower the PS1 could easily do much of the same things, often even easier than it was on the Saturn.

Not really, the Saturn has actual dedicated 2D hardware with VPD2's background layers, and VDP1's sprites. Throw in the RAM carts and there's no competition, Saturn wins in most areas. Only areas PS1 will win is flashy transparency effects.

>>6119732
>sony developed their own games too. they just realized that they didn't need to treat third-parties like shit
Yeah, instead, they treated their own in-house developers like shit.

>>6119732
Sony didn't even make games before the PS1 lmao. How can you claim they're in the same league as Nintendo, Sega, Namco, Taito, etc. Also the few IP's they did for PS1 are now dead and buried, because they frankly weren't that good.

>>6119695
PS1 has a lot of good games.
The problem isn't the system, it's the fanboys.
You have people in this very thread saying things like "all N64 look dated" (as if PS1 games didn't), or "nah, PS1 can do 2D just fine if not better then Saturn".
This kind of attitude brings people to finally hate Sony fanboys. It's like they're actively seeking to be hated.

>>6117346
A standard nintendo 64 cartridge fits a maximum of 64 MiB.
A standard Playstation 1 black disc fits a maximum of 660 MiB.
Final Fantasy 7 used three CDs. That's the equivalent of 660 × 3 / 64 = 30.9375 cartridges.

lmao nintenbabies

>>6117346
Big mistake. FF7 is a top tier best seller which will entertain manchildren until they die. Unlike jump n collect coin main

>>6119787
You're just assblasted you'll never make the journey to the 21st cartridge of resident evil 2

>>6117553
>>6117682
Look at these genius bad-asses off /vr/ showing the actual MIT-graduate game devs of the era who worked with the technology what's what.
If only /vr/ were making the games back then history would have been different.

>>6119830
Did you reply to the wrong posts?

>>6119687
You know, that just about sums up how I felt about N64 vs PS1 graphics all along.

>>6119826
Resident evil 2 would never fit on a n64 cart

>>6119701
this is someone very gotten to, which is why he feels so strongly about shit that in reality means nothing

>>6119580
Or they could compromise on Behemoth, it's not like that's an unthinkable idea for 5th gen console development.
Not that I think the N64 was at all viable for FF7, but have some fucking imagination.

>>6117346
Not that important because they'll always be able to live off of Mario Zelda and Pokémon and absolutely nothing else.

The mistake was using limited storage carts when PSX CD games could be over 1gb. The N64 was obsolete the day it launched and this didn't go unnoticed by devs or gamers.

It was definitely a blow to Nintendo and their decision to use cartridges looked bad almost immediately once this came out a few months after the N64 did

>>6119619
As much as I adore the man and his programming talents, I'll remind you that he made a poor judgment call when it came to the development of Doom's Saturn port, forcing the devteam to choose a rendering technique which was very inefficient and memory intensive for the system, leading to consistently poor framerate. This was over a much faster renderer which exhibited texture warping, a subject Carmack refused to compromise on.

Lobotomy Software would later port Quake on the Saturn, using their own Slavedriver engine, used to run Duke Nukem 3D and Powerslave/Exhumed on the PS1 and Saturn. Quake was also gonna be ported for the PS1 with that engine, and they did it, but no publisher picked it up for some reason, so it wasn't published (a shame, more people should have played Quake).
Point is, you can probably do more with a console than people think if you apply some creative solutions. Admittedly, a different engine is a bit of a tall order to just conjure up during development of a massive game like FF7, and makes more sense for ports like that, but the N64 didn't a have a media capable of housing the game anyway.

>>6119646
My old N64 carts still save and load.
Also didn't some N64 games utilize memory cards?

>>6119837
It did though?

>>6119693
I think most 3D of that era just looks kind of ok, often crude and blocky. Some games look better than average, of course.

>sonyggers
Console warring and brand tribalism is worse than smoking, please stop for your own good.

>>6117439
would Mario Kart 64's sprites have fit into RAM?

>>6119604
>Does anyone know what this was supposed to be?
Aside from being rewarded for chasing down that running fruitloop, not much is known.

>>6119619
The clown that made coders cripple ports of Doom is the last person that should be calling anything 'nuts'.

>>6117439
Consider their deals with Philips and Sony both failed for CD drive consoles, they probably saw it as lost time and effort

>>6117682
>didn't even bother to get to the point to rewrite Fast3D microcode for the RCP on the N64 to get better performance like Factor 5.

Yeah, how dare they not bother to rewrite the fucking system at launch

>>6119624
In consoles it's always Survival of the Good Enough, not Survival of the Fittest.

Game Boy was weaker than Game Gear and the Lynx, but because it had a longer battery life and was more affordable no one cared.

PS2 wasn't as powerful as its competitors, but it was a lot of people's first DVD player.

And do I really need to mention the Wii?

Pushing hardware is great, but don't expect to always reap the benefits. A pioneer is the guy in front who gets an arrow in the head.

>>6117527
Nintendo couldn't even beat Saturn in Japan, laughable.

>>6117346
So big of a mistake I no longer purchase Nintendo consoles. Their handhelds are ok.

>>6119517
ever get the wrong colored chocobo?

>>6119995
Just meant N64 games couldn't be moviegame shit by playing FMV's all the time, which is alright with me.

>cinematic garbage for edgy protoemo pre-teens
they lost nothing

>>6120105
i don't think you understand the history. its not like they even had alot of time to work with sony. there was no benchmark/stress test for the snes/ps1 console thats never seen the light of day. the niptards thought it would be a great idea to work with philips because they showed them a mario demo (aka they rode their nuts) and it made them feel important so they went with it, and backstabbed sony right on stage at EGE/E3. Its a sad tale.

>>6120526
but enough about majora's mask, this thread is about ff7.

>>6120536
When did I ever say that 3D Zelda is anything but garbage, you obsessed console warring nigger?

This whole thread is the prime example of why Sony fanboys are hated so much.
>b-but nintendo
fuck nintendo, but fuck sony even more.

It's the entire reason they're a "third pillar" entity now. But, that's turned out to be the best thing for them. Blessing in disguise, maybe.

>>6120595
Sony's the only reason Nintendo isn't the draconian presence it used to be in third party software. "Licensed By Nintendo" wasn't just a catchy ad slogan. They were claws-deep in fucking everyone who wanted to put games on their consoles. Everyone knows by now what a storied cutthroat asshole Yamauchi was.

>>6120676
And? I'm not talking about Sony or Nintendo as companies. I'm talking about Sony fans being insufferable.
Last year /vr/ was infested by anti-Saturn thread by seething sonycucks. Now it seems they switched back to anti-n64 threads.
They like to boast about the "big library" of ps1, but it seems they spend way more time shitposting than playing games.

>>6120676
And not surprisingly, games were better when Nintendo was still in charge and forcing third parties not to make shovelware shit.

>>6120697
>And not surprisingly, games were better when Nintendo was still in charge and forcing third parties not to make shovelware shi-

If i remember right it came from a falling out after the N64DD failed because sony decided to break off the partnership with Nintendo to make the PS1. Not getting FF was kind of a byproduct of that fallout.

>>6121370
N64DD
You mean SNES CD.
And yeah kindof. Sony offered Square to publish and market FF VII outside of Japan, so that saved Square a lot, lot of money, and made them mad profit in return. In return, FF VII stayed exclusive to playstation, or at least wasn't ported to the rival consoles, but FF rarely got ports to other systems back then, except for maybe FF1 on PC-98.

>>6117549
Didn't read, don't care.
Your series sank to new depths of cringe and cultural irrelevance once Square betrayed glorious Nintendo.

>>6121398
meanwhile in reality, ff reached its peak in both quality and cultural relevance immediately after leaving nintendo.

>>6117346
Missing out on the game itself wasn't the problem, it was the deal with Sony falling through to make the Nintendo Playstation and thus being stuck with the cart-based N64 and losing more than just Squaresoft but also other developers, and being outsold by Sony.

>>6118006
CD media was not as advanced in 1993 when the protoypes for these consoles were being drawn up.

You can't just retcon 1993 with late 2010s technology.

>>6119662
Sorry to burst your bubble man but if you seriously think this is better than N64 3D then you're either really deluded or you've never played an N64.

>>6117448
I know what you are saying but considering the generational turnover of video games should a company every concern itself with long term value?

>>6119686
>The Z-Buffer is going to make it so it only renders what the camera see's. So let's say 600 Polygons there. Now, all of Hyrule field is ~3000 polygons. You never see the entire thing from one shot, ever. It's designed so parts hills, walls, etc. block the view. At most you'll see maybe 1/4 of it. So maybe 750-1000 Polygons. So ~1600 polygons per frame at 20fps. That's 32,000 polygons per second. The PS1 and arguably even the Saturn can draw more polygons than the N64 when the N64 has all it's effects
Doesn't work that way. Firstly, the N64's z-buffer doesn't eliminate overdraw. It's not tile-based deferred rendering like Dreamcast. It will eliminate some overdraw of course, but the main advantage vs PS1 is that polygons will always be drawn in the correct order (though some individual pixels may still z-fight and draw in the wrong order).

Secondly, PS1 games will also generally use some sort of visibly testing to prevent non-visible polygons from being drawn. Think portal engines or BSP tree equivalents. They won't be pixel accurate of course (unless they are Crash Bandicoot, which uses pre-computed visibility tables) but will also eliminate some overdraw.

Thirdly, Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time is an idiotic example to use. Raw polygon count is quite obviously not the limit in Hyrule Field (it would be if it were on PS1 due to the required subdivision) because the N64 can draw the terrain with huge polygons. The actual limit would be speed of filling in all the required mipmaps for distant textures.

OoT would push more polygons in something like Kakariko Village where there are a lot of NPCs or in dungeons when fighting multiple high-poly enemies like Stalfos.

Also OoT doesn't really push the N64 that hard. Banjo-Kazooie came out 6 months earlier and has better visuals.

>>6119686
>>6121993
>That's why developers starting writing their own microcode to turn that stuff off.
That was only necessary if you wanted to push well above the 100,000 limit with z-buffer on, or wanted to render in higher resolutions. It's pretty clear that Nintendo was aiming with the N64 to have PS1 level polygons but with cleaner rendering (hence why the 100,000 figure is close to the PS1-full-features maximum). In practice it often didn't work out because many N64 devs fucked themselves on poor utilization of memory bandwidth. Low-res textures on N64 aren't the consequence of the texture cache, but an easy way for developers to try and claw back some memory bandwidth without having to re-engineer their game engine.

A good example of a game which pushes a slightly larger number of polygons than PS1 while still having the z-buffer on is SF Rush 2049. Something like World Driver Championship (z-buffer off) has more polygons than PS1's GTE can even T&L (assuming L is used).

The lead programmer of World Driver Championship said that people thinking the PS1 rendered more polygons than the N64 is actually due to low-res textures in many N64 games, not due to more polygons being rendered. High-res textures can sometimes make it look like there are more polygons.

>Take a look at a Saturn or PS1 game running in Wireframe mode and you'll see what I'm talking about:
>You don't see N64 games doing that aggressive level of subdividing.
That's a rather stupid argument. Subdividing flat polygons are wasted polygons. It's nothing to crow about when arguing for a system's superiority. By your argument the Dreamcast is a piece of shit due to its tile-based deferred rendering eliminating every unseen triangle. What matters is "effective" polygon count.

>>6121521
>Sega Saturn release 1995
>PlayStation release 1995
>N64 release 1996
64 was an outdated shitheap on release.

one of the things people often don't appreciated about square is that they were technically incompetent, and relied on nintendo r&d to provide technical support before they split to go with PS

if they had stayed, we probably would have seen something technically better (not to mention gameplay) than PS FF7 on the N64

sorry, but these are just the plain facts

read more about it in julian kingsley's book "To RPG and Beyond"

>>6122014
technically Saturn and PS1 are '94

>>6117346
They could have got the game on a cart, but without the fancy cutscrnes, people's focus would have instead been solely on the bland gameplay and overly cheesy melodramatic story.

>>6121529
It is better

>>6122082
Makes 64 look even worse.

>>6121993
>it would be if it were on PS1
I imagine hyrule field on the ps1 would make use of LOD techniques that the PS1 started to popularize with spyro, where distant polygons are untextured but gourad shaded.
>Also OoT doesn't really push the N64 that hard. Banjo-Kazooie came out 6 months earlier and has better visuals.

So what is it finally going to take to drive Nintendo into the grave? Things were looking pretty grim for them with the Wii U but the switch gave them a fresh gimmick. Are they just gonna coast on gimmick consoles for eternity?

>>6117580
Always been a hydrothunder man myself

>>6120484
It also meant the games would be more expensive, and usually still be missing content and otherwise be the inferior version.
I like N64 games, but you'd never have anything like Symphony Of The Night, and even though I never liked it, Final Fantasy 7, big games with lots of content.

The meager capacity of the cartridges were holding developers back, recorded music was a no-no, voice acting was sparse, if you wanted lots of levels and characters you would probably have to spend time optimizing the shit out of your game and reuse assets as much as possible, whereas on disc media you wouldn't have to focus as much on that could instead dedicate more time to develop the actual content. To say that the only loss would be FMVs and "le movie games" is the biggest cope imaginable.

>>6122375
How the fuck would they? Don't they make so much money they could operate on a constant loss for decades and stay in business? Miyamoto probably has a giant moneybin which he dives into and swims in like Scrooge McDuck

>>6120484
This is incredibly frustrating. Games like PSX DOOM, SOTN, Tomba, Megaman 8, Oddworld, DDR or any other sprite/art heavy or games with amazing soundtracks weren’t possible on the N64. Could you imagine SOTN without the iconic soundtrack, voices, sound effects and varied backgrounds? I really couldn’t. This stuff wasn’t possible on the N64 because of multiple decisions Nintendo made that crippled the otherwise excellent hardware besides just the exclusion of a CD drive. Whether you like these games or not they weren’t possible on the system.

>>6122463
Them, Sony and Ms are like this. None of them are going anywhere within our lifetimes given their bankroll and motivation. That’s why they’re the best for the Big 3 and it’s unlikely there will be anyone to usurp them. Apple is catering to the casual crowd with the Apple TV and Apple Arcade and is really successful there but that’s about it. DESU some of the best modern RPGs have been coming out on Apple arcade

>>6122375
they're too big to fail now. they replaced their old core fanbase with a new, larger "blue ocean" fanbase who will eat anything they shit out uncritically.

>5th gen console warring devolves into "nintendo is doomed" /v/-style

>>6121993
>Z-Sorting doesn't eliminate overdraw!
>PS1 uses Z-Sorting to prevent non-visible polygons from being drawn!

The point of Z-Sorting is to draw polygons in the correct order as well as reduce overdraw. One of the more challenging aspects of 3D rendering back then was figuring out the fastest way to sort your polygons not just so it looked nice, but so you didn't end up wasting resources drawing a bunch that weren't going to be visible because another polygon was blocking all of them.

But ok, let's use the full polygon count of Link and Epona which is ~1200 polygons. so let's say about 2200 polygons per scene. At 20fps that's still only 44,000 Polygons per second. Well below the 100,000 limit. And again the game is struggling to run at 20fps.

Let's take a look at Banjo Kazooie. Banjo's model is 783 polygons, Spiral mountain is 3354 polygons. Again we're not going to see the entire map at once, so we're not going to draw the entire thing. So let's say maybe 1/4 of it. So that gets us to about 1600 Polygons. Let's round up to about 2000 per frame to account for some objects and enemies. At 30fps, that's 60k Per second. Again well below 100k. And again, Banjo Kazooie has some pretty bad frame rate drops going on. Banjo Tooie is even worse.

>Subdividing flat polygons are wasted polygons. It's nothing to crow about when arguing for a system's superiority.

I think you've missed the point here. On Saturn and PS1 you have to subdivide your polygons as they get closer to the camera, otherwise you get horrible texture warping. The point is that the PS1 has the polygon pushing power to still render a lot of effective polygons while doing all that subdividing. So a game like FF7 that has total control over the camera can take advantage of that to avoid texture warping and using more polygons more effectively.

>>6123489
>but so you didn't end up wasting resources drawing a bunch that weren't going to be visible because another polygon was blocking all of them
Technically, N64 doesn’t really save that many resources on z-buffer because the console doesn’t support Early Z. It means overdraw pixels/polygons still get textures loaded into them, but the pixel/polygon never gets written into the framebuffer.

And there’s still a lot of idiotic assumptions in this post on calculating polygons. If you want tomake calculations, you need to base it on the highest poly scenes, not the lowest as you are doing. I mean, we were talking about Behemoth which was considered the highest-poly scenario. OoT has fairly high-poly enemies relative to Link (and so does Banjo-Kazooie, so even on Hyrule Field which is a shithouse choice for looking at polygons anyway, you’d need to factor in Poes. Or with child Link, three Stalkids and a Peahat.

And Spiral Mountain is by far the smallest level in Banjo-Kazooie.

>The point is that the PS1 has the polygon pushing power to still render a lot of effective polygons while doing all that subdividing
Subdividing doesn’t cost any additional fill over a large polygon because the polygon is flat. The cost of subdividing is in additional triangle setup and T&L. Because the N64 with z-buffer is limited only by fill, the N64 could also effortlessly subdivide. But of course it’s pointless and a waste of resources.

PS1 generally isn’t fill limited, but by CPU and GTE, so subdividing really takes away from its ability to do other things.

>So a game like FF7 that has total control over the camera can take advantage of that to avoid texture warping and using more polygons more effectively.
FF7 doesn’t really need to subdivide anything but the ground in battles.

>>6118434
If you are going to use a non-standard size of optical media, go bigger not smaller.

>>6119394
have you ever in your life done or had experience in any form of business? jesus lol.

>>6118057
Not only Ocarina of Time, but looks like even Mario 64 had to constantly access data from the cartridge, even within levels for some reason.
https://youtu.be/N2fuUhLxGFg?t=216

>>6117346
If Resident Evil 2 was possible, then Final Fantasy is possible. It just requires sheer will.

>>6117346
Considering Nintendo is making bank with the Switch not much. YOU'D FREAKING KNOW THIS IF YOU USED SOME COMMON SENSE ZOOMER!

>>6117393
>turned the FMVs into still images
that would have straight up sucked though

>>6117571
Or they could've wrote an actual good story and not rely on flashy FMVs to sell normies with fancy visuals on the garbage that actually came about.

A huge one, one of the biggest mistakes in gaming history, the whole gaming landscape would be way different if they went with cds.

>>6117346
FF7 on cart, I really think this could be done in their time by reducing/encoding fmv with a lower resolution, using the best codec in their time, or, just plain images.
Game data it's not that big, hell, they could even use the PC version workout for sound music: soundfont and midi.
Also, they could try to expand the memory of carts, similar to mmc chips on NES and spawning the game in 2 carts.

>>6124872
um FF7 used PSF which is basically midi.

>>6124753
Resident Evil 2 isn't really comparable.

>>6124872
Awful solutions. Also FF7 already did music like that.

>>6121272
For every shovelware game on a Nintendo system, you can find 10 on a Sony system.

>>6122524
nice shill

>>6125419
That really depends on what gen, the Wii and DS had crazy amounts of shovelware.

>>6119747
Then what is pic related? I played quite a few Sony games on the SNES including Hook. Hell Sony put their own sound chips in the SNES.

>>6125812
Sony Imagesoft didn't develop games.