/vr/ - Retro Games

>>8462068
or would it look something like this

>>8462068
>>8462068
Probably not. Way more backgrounds, music and characters/geometry all around

>>8462068
Yes probably
Make the videos 72x64 @ 6 frames per second

>>8462068
It doesn't use red book audio, the music is midi generated from the sound chip. The game size comes from the backgrounds, summons, and fmvs

Not the 64mb one that Resident Evil 2 used. You could go bigger but at that point the cost of the cartridge in the late 90s starts growing to Neo Geo prices.

You might be able to get by with cutting some of the more unnecessary FMV clips and replacing the scenes with in-game sequences, along with dropping the background FMVs you walk on top of.

There probably just wouldn't be so many pre-rendered elements if it was on N64, and it would look something more like Ocarina of Time.

>>8462081
I unironically would be interested in the stylistic choices involved. Say they make slideshow cutscenes in lieu of fmvs. This would be a neat experiment even if it were just making the PC version fit within 64mb.

>>8462091
Most likely they would just use the game engine to animate cutscenes, rather than relying on cutaways to video files. That's what N64 games generally did, with a few exceptions.

>>8462078
>summons
There's not a dramatic difference between summons and regular character/monster battle models; animation data and even geometry is very inexpensive in terms of storage space, specially when it's untextured like in this case.

Besides the FMVs, the real hurdle to fit everything on a cart would be in the backgrounds mostly.

Some of the backgrounds could judiciously be done in real time 3D to ease the burden. Most of the town exteriors, for example, while retaining the pre-rendered house interiors. It would change the appearance pretty dramatically in a side by side for those specific locations but the game itself could remain faithful that way without being too jarring.

There are a decent number of FMVs that used the shittier character models. These could easily be done in real time using the in-game assets. I'm guessing an N64 port would make much more use of the in-battle models for cinematics.

https://www.giantbomb.com/final-fantasy-vii/3030-13053/forums/final-fantasy-vii-fits-on-a-regular-2gbit-cartridg-15513/

This is about the DS rather than the N64 but it gives a good rundown of all the issues and possible solutions.

>>8462087
That would be more difficult than compressing the PS1 version. There weren't any N64 RPGs because the system just couldn't handle the globetrotting scale that RPG stories tend to take. See Ogre Battle 64, which is barely interactive and still doesn't look good.

>>8462128
These shitty fmv's are kino. See Tekken endings for more of these.

>>8462137
>Final Fantasy VII was never known for it's high polycount
Well he got some basic info wrong. battle models feature polycounts that wouldn't be commonly seen until late 6th gen.

>>8462146
It wasn't really the scale of the world that was the problem for the N64. It was the pitiful texture cache. If you make everything look like Super Mario 64 then scale is not really a problem. One good thing about FFVII for a hypothetical N64 port is that it uses Gouraud shading.

>>8462101
>>8462137
This is cool. I would love to be someone that helps gimp things like cutscenes. By making them approximated with game models.
>13 years ago
holy shit

>>8462146
I feel like that sense of scale is mostly an illusory thing. A lot of it comes down to proper story pacing, and a clever use of the resources at your disposal. There are RPGs on the GB that maintain that feel of an epic adventure.

>>8462174
Right. FFVII is entirely an illusion. It's a combination of the backgrounds and the dynamic scaling of the character models that give the illusion of scale.

https://youtu.be/McenDl9NdYE
Boundary Break does a great job showing off all of the little tricks.

>>8462159
>It was the pitiful texture cache
It was what made the few 2D backgrounds in ocarina look so hideous.

>>8462159
There are pluses that come with not relying on the pre-rendered backgrounds. If you look at the Zelda games on the N64, the pre-rendered areas look "better", but the fully 3D areas feel more immersive and real, because of the free camera. Any hypothetical Final Fantasy on the N64 would be more like that, which could really work out in the game's favour. It would just be very fundamentally different in it's design.

>>8462068
could have been great if done something like Octopath Traveler, 3D environment with 2D sprites or something, probably still could have done the 3D battle scenes and some of the cutscenes could have been done like normal N64 cutscenes just using the in-game models. Honestly, it probably wouldnt have looked that different in the long run.

>>8462227
Maybe on an emulator.

>>8462234
Right but at that point you're not really porting the game but more or less remaking it entirely. Which, yeah, if FFVII were made for N64 originally that's how it would have been done. But for an intellectual exercise of how the PS1 game could be ported with as few changes as possible, things get dicey. You could compress the shit out of the backgrounds and FMV but I'm not sure what a realistic ratio would be for the time.

>>8462239
They never passed for even the illusion they were attempting. Always looked out of place and bad.

>>8462258
That looks fine to me. I didn't even notice they were 2D elements when I was a kid.

>>8462264
I did when I was a kid. You may have been a dumb kid.

>>8462258
That doesn't really look bad. It's just weird because there aren't many times you run into them so their appearance feels out of place.

For what it's worth, FFVII's ending FMV includes the credits as part of the animation. There's no reason whatsoever for that to be a video file and it's a big chunk of the runtime of that sequence.

>>8462258
>>8462265
zoom harder kiddo

>>8462264
>I was a brainlet at 5 therefore everyone else was
You are dumb

>>8462258
looks fine. if i wanted high fidelity graphics id play modern games

>>8462068
even RE2 was something they just barely managed with a heroic effort to fit onto a cartridge

>>8462312
>I understood the concept of pre-rendering when I was a child
Maybe if you were an eighteen year old "child" playing it on Project 64.

>>8462068
RE2 did a lot more than that. Some FMV bits were taken out, all textures were scaled down, the backgrounds were cropped and turned into jpg, etc

>>8462339
Pre-rendering was a pretty common conversation in the gaming world in the 90s thanks to things like Donkey Kong Country Nintendo Power VHS tapes.

>>8462342
I'm trying to find out what the compression ratio was for the RE2 FMVs but I'm having trouble finding that information. JPG is about 10:1 so all the backgrounds could be reduced to 30-40MB just with that alone.

>>8462068
Gimping every element of the audiovisual showcase they were putting on just to please a handful of fanboys wasn't going to do shit. It would've been savaged for looking like a shit downgrade. And a 64 MB cart in 1998 instead of 2000 would've been even more expensive.

>>8462386
They would probably add analog control so that'd be...something?

If Alone in the Dark could work on a Gameboy Color, FF7 could work on N64

>>8462128
This is an incredible overestimation of both the N64 and the tools available to devs at the time. Nobody was scripting real-time cutscenes of this complexity, which is partly why MGS1 was considered groundbreaking. Even after MGS1, it was considered a challenging effort only tackled by prestige devs.

For proof of this, look at Ocarina of Time, which released well after FF7 and even a couple months after MGS1. Its cutscenes have little more complexity than a FF7 summon sequence.

>>8462464
What counts as "at the time"? Conker may have come years later but it was still the same console. We aren't necessarily talking a simultaneous release.

>>8462410
Problem with that logic is that GB was the handheld market leader by far, while the N64 was a distant second in home consoles.

>>8462069

Maybe Angel Studios could work their magic and compress it all down to 2 64MB cartridges?

>>8462504
>Maybe Angel Studios could work their magic and compress it all down to 2 64MB cartridges?

I mean, if such a port did actually happen. Nintendo would have to make a speciality 128-256 cartridge and take a loss on the price. Or something like that.

>>8462493
Are you equating "literally any cutscenes" with a 5th-gen Final Fantasy game? They made a (shitty) movie purely on the praise FF7 received for its unprecedented caliber of visual storytelling. I'm not exaggerating, either. FF7 was vaunted akin to a hit blockbuster film at the time, which had never really happened to a videogame before.

You just can't do this shit on an N 6 fucking 4.

>>8462510
You don't need FMVs for story telling, you troglodyte. MGS doesn't use them.

>>8462513
Read what I'm responding to, dumbass:
>>8462128
>There are a decent number of FMVs that used the shittier character models. These could easily be done in real time
No they fucking couldn't lol

>>8462239
Cope. This is your mind on nintendo

>>8462268
When you compare it to those ff7 screenshots above it looks awful.

>>8462526
>No they fucking couldn't lol

Examples of real time cienamtics on the N64:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjmK2DoVbrU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDeMJ2QIUfk
https://youtu.be/rdORFULKwZA?list=PLB2DF7D54DDEA222B&t=118
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9xAUVseJLM

>>8462526
Do you remember that scene?
https://youtu.be/pptqkAUME04

It's not hyper complex storytelling. It wouldn't look the same obviously but the sequence of events could be done in real time to convey the same information.

>>8462068
I think you'd have to remove the FMVs altogether. Even the 2D backdrops would be pretty hefty, though. This game has quite a few more locations than RE2.

>>8462076
soul

>>8462552

Resident Evil 2 on the N64 is the only N64 game to have FMN cutscenes? Angel Studios had to use a 64MB cartridge and all sorts of compression and downsize techniques to get it to fit:

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

>>8462168
>female lion

>>8462574
Pokemon Puzzle League had them too.
https://youtu.be/tDN-Lq2OSQU

>>8462552
Thanks, I've played N64 games. Those cutscenes are extremely basic. Take a look yourself.
>one or two characters
>usually in a closed, featureless, boxy space
You couldn't even come close to the iconic FF7 intro.

>>8462556
In your mind, that isn't "hyper complex," but in 1997, to do anything resembling that in realtime, especially on a cart... you just wouldn't. And they didn't.

>>8462583
>You couldn't even come close to the iconic FF7 intro.
Now who isn't reading. Nobody said "do EVERY FMV in real time."

>>8462076
They could just use Sonic 3D Blast's custom FMV encoding.
https://youtu.be/IehwV2K60r8

>>8462583
>to do anything resembling that in realtime, especially on a cart
>especially on a cart
This is why you don't know what you're talking about. The cartridge format is irrelevant to the specific issue of real time animation.

>>8462583
What exactly is "complex" beyond the N64's ability to move the camera around collapsing geometry and two character models falling off a cliff?

>>8462589
To be honest, I'm not even sure which of FMVs would qualify without ending up an embarrassment. The wheelchair example given is pretty much the most straightforward in the game, and even that would need to be demoted drastically (especially in the context of fitting the whole game on a cart).

>>8462594
Realtime animation has assets too, anon.

>>8462615
Precisely, collapsing geometry and two character models falling off a cliff. There is a reason OOT runs at 15fps my friend.

>>8462583
>In your mind, that isn't "hyper complex," but in 1997, to do anything resembling that in realtime, especially on a cart... you just wouldn't. And they didn't.

The Dreamcast really did impress me when I saw games like Shenmue, resident Evil Code Veronica and even D2's real time cutscenes. They came so much closer to pre-rendered FVM than any of the consoles that came before it. I'm trying to think of PC games from tnat era with impressive real time cinematics. The N64 cartridge is not really an issue with real time cinematics. Actually the fast loading may have been beneficial from loading new scenes. But Cartridge space would still limit texture sizes, audio sample quality and other things.

https://youtu.be/1Bg_HZNyan0?t=84

>>8462068
Yes, it would.

>>8462579
>okemon Puzzle League had them too.

So it does!

>>8462552
Watch this until you realize how different it is from anything ever accomplished on N64
https://youtu.be/0rXuckSvA4c

>>8462624
>Realtime animation has assets too, anon.
Not to the extent where this will make a difference. You're not going to be doing animations and realistically find yourself out of storage in this context. Hell, for that scene it's especially true since Cloud barely even moves at all. He's more or less static and just glides around the screen.

>Precisely, collapsing geometry and two character models falling off a cliff. There is a reason OOT runs at 15fps my friend.
This makes no sense. If anything the N64 is actually better at manipulating geometry than it's contemporaries. It's not the geometry that bottlenecks OOT.

>>8462639
Retard:
>>8462589
>>8462128

Read what's written.

>>8462567
>>8462590
Here's 72x48 @5 out of morbid curiosity for shits and giggles
I'm sure I could do some magic tricks (interlacing etc) to appear better.

>>8462642
>You're not going to be doing animations and realistically find yourself out of storage in this context.
You really have no idea what a premium storage comes at on a cart. Textures in N64 games are often smaller than a SNES sprite. The visuals would need to be cut back dramatically, to the point of being totally different. Add to that the storage load of (severely downgraded) prerendered backgrounds and FMVs (maybe just the intro and ending?), and there is obviously nothing left for crafting real-time scenes of any quality.
>It's not the geometry that bottlenecks OOT.
lol what is it the AI?

>>8462653
Can you blow it up to 320x240? I'm really curious.

>>8462646
That video has all the cutscenes. Pick out which ones would work on an N64, by your estimate.

>>8462656
>Textures in N64 games are often smaller than a SNES sprite.
Who said anything about textures? Again, nobody is suggesting the exact video be replicated in real time.

>>8462658
It looks absolutely horrid trust me
You might want to save the gif and just zoom in

>>8462663
>nobody is suggesting the exact video be replicated in real time
That's why I said they would need to be totally different. That said, I still doubt you could fit the game on a single cart even if you replaced every FMV with a mere text description, let alone a cutscene.

>>8462639
>Not to the extent where this will make a difference. You're not going to be doing animations and realistically find yourself out of storage in this context. Hell, for that scene it's especially true since Cloud barely even moves at all. He's more or less static and just glides around the screen.

Some games would use cinamatic models for real time cutscenes. Special models made for specific camera angles/ animation sequences, etc.Like Metal Gear Solid on the PS1:

https://youtu.be/1Bg_HZNyan0?t=84

There were N64 games that would use cinematic models too. They don't really take up much data for the animation and models. But for textures and such, they do. It was more common with Gen 6 consoles. Shenmue used them heavily and that was 1999. The Code Veronica example, was early 2000.

>>8462668
>Like Metal Gear Solid on the PS1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLTqIXZ1jQQ

>>8462674
Honestly if it weren't for all the VA, you could probably do a very smudgy port of MGS1 to N64.

>>8462659
I'm not going to watch nearly 45 minutes of FMV but off the top of my head there are a lot of incidental sequences that could be done in real time that don't rely too much on visual flair to tell the story. For example all the FMV background transitions like elevators would universally be either cut entirely or those areas would be 3D environments. Like the platform which I think is at Junon? The lifestream whirlwind in the North Crater, things like that.

Then there are the incidental scenes that really just link one event to another. Like Cloud jumping on the train or falling after the Airbuster boss. No reason those have to be FMV. Sure, the game loses some of the flair but you aren't losing any narrative information.

Then there's just the showpiece stuff. Like Jenova in it's tank and showing the audience the reactor in the Nibelheim mountains. Jenova might just be a still image. I forget if it was actually an FMV.

Point is that in addition to doing whatever compression necessary on the FMVs you definitely want to keep, the game has a decent amount of footage that isn't all that critical to the experience.

>>8462689
I'm kind of annoyed that Kojima vetoed the N64 Metal Gear. It would have been cool to see what that even would have been. Hybrid Heaven has the bare bones of it, but they obviously ended up going in a very different direction.

With a resi Evi 2 cart you could easily fit ff7. Not all the cgi cutscenes, but you probably don't need them all. The problem is the game would look worse than the PS1 for 70% of the time. The battles would look much better though. In the end, it was better on the PS1.

>>8462689
>Honestly if it weren't for all the VA, you could probably do a very smudgy port of MGS1 to N64.

Perfect Dark on the N64 had a lot of voice acting:
https://youtu.be/7w1rAswwh5o?t=128

Though it doesn't have anywhere near the amount of Metal Gear Solid's. The codec conversations contain a lot of dialogue.

>>8462667
>That's why I said they would need to be totally different.
It depends what you mean by "totally." This may be a bit of a ridiculous example but Mortal Kombat 4 uses real time on N64 where PS1 had FMVs.

https://youtu.be/pGW8hYeyLUU
https://youtu.be/t1I2u5d-W0w

And for curiosity again here is a conversion akin to the specs of the RE2 N64 fmvs. slightly less fps (12.5 vs. 15) and slightly wider.
The N64 pulled tricks and actually doubled width and height, as well as interpolating frames. Pretty much doubled all around from the base fmv file.

>>8462717
That doesn't look half bad. On a CRT hooked up with composite? Probably perfectly adequate.

>>8462713
You could maybe get all of the basic cutscenes in, but I don't know about codecs.

>>8462734
>You could maybe get all of the basic cutscenes in, but I don't know about codecs.
I would imagine that unless some extreme compression is used, most of the non essential codec conversations would be reduced to just text. While the important ones would get priority. Like for example, you can equip any weapon and contact the Russian weapons chick, and she will give you a history lesson on the weappn you are using.

>>8462717
>The N64 pulled tricks and actually doubled width and height
thats called scaling, something every console that gen can do.

https://ultra64.ca/files/other/Game-Developer-Magazine/GDM_September_2000_Achieving_Full-Motion_Video_on_the_Nintnedo_64.pdf

Here's a very detailed breakdown of how N64 RE2 was done. I don't quite have the mental chops to understand it all but it seems like it would have laid a ton of the groundwork that FFVII might benefit from.

>>8462306
Literally coping

>>8462785
>https://ultra64.ca/files/other/Game-Developer-Magazine/GDM_September_2000_Achieving_Full-Motion_Video_on_the_Nintnedo_64.pdf

That's actually a good technical write up.

>>8462306
>heh zoomers lack critical thinking
>hmm this static image with visible artefacting and looks different to the rest of the game is surely not 2D

https://youtu.be/LtBFKdT-D2M

If the GBA can do Shrek...

>>8462068
Not even close. They could out right cut every FMV and wouldn't as there weren't nearly as many of those as people remember. 64mb cart vs a game that duplicate info between the discs removed is still over 1 gig.

Where it falls apart is the textures. N64 shaded a lot of things which is why so many of its games had that crayola cheerful look as the 4kb texture buffer meant any image was passing through a keyhole instead of a door. Its why games like Goldeneye that actually had textures were so rare and interesting to see on the N64. N64 had an impressive GPU in its time, but it was like a V8 in a pinto in some ways. Polygon wise though I do question if N64 could handle some parts, its GPU was good but the lack of direct access hurt it and FF7 uses its painted backgrounds as an advantage to dump all its polygons into a few models at a time sometimes, I don't know how able or easy that is to do on the N64 as I can't think of any examples of it. I might be able to but same problem of lack of background texturing to get away with it.

So really what would be needed:
>remove FMVs (I know RE had them but it was a smaller game)
>drastically cut music variety and quality
>strip out textures and shade instead
>replace painted backgrounds and areas with shaded terrain
>probably chibi battles to avoid high poly counts as more polygons would be needed for battle areas

Once you remove the music, backgrounds, atmosphere, and style you really would just end up with a standard super soldier goes bad story and a boring to look at game. When it was originally being made for N64 it was going to be a 2D game more like previous FF, but lacking good 2D abilities among other things sent them to Playstation so you really have to cut the game out of the game for it to work.

just remove the OST and the FMVs altogether and it can all fit into 1 cartridge.

Also, I find it impressive how much the graphics improved in just 1 year from FFVII to FFVIII/PE. THAT was impressive.

>>8462753
I meant the chroma-subsampling (it's on Youtube), thanks

>>8462075
thats not why its three cds lel. its only because of the fmvs that it needed multiple cds. even the music in VII is midi, not cd audio.

>N64 games are smaller than PS1 games

laughs in Rayman 2

>>8462068
Yes. Would it make a sufficient amount of money? No.

>>8462849
Its not though. Textures are nearly always the bulk of a games file size from back then to now. N64 games were light on textures due to its limitations and FF7 and other RPGs at the time used a lot of hand made individual backgrounds. Every floor, battle arena, inside of a room, outside of a room, etc is a little universe of textures. I ripped the FMVs to a computer back in the day, there really aren't that many and they are a tiny aspect ratio. In my modded copy where the aspect ratio and quality are upscaled many times over they are under 600mb. I think the originals are about 1/6th of that off the top of my head. Still far too large for an N64 cart but nowhere near the reason for 3discs.

>>8462902
The third disc was solely because of the ending. The early previews of the game were expecting it to be on 2 discs, not 3. That's why the third disc is so short gameplay-wise. The only reason it exists is because the ending juuuust tipped the scales. I bring this up because RE2 was two CDs and it seems that people are getting tripped up because while FFVII is three it's only barely three.

are PS1 OST's full CD quality at 44.1kHz or are they 22.05kHz? Some guy ripped NFS 3's OST and the sample rate was 22.05kHz. Any info?

>>8462929
It's sample based and the n64 has no sound hardware.

>>8462929
Depends on the game, many games even used sequenced audio

>>8462930
That's not especially a problem here though. It's not like FFVII is especially demanding on the CPU. There would be plenty of headroom for the sound.

>>8462929
>>8462936
FF7 used sequenced music.

>>8462941
>>8462930
>>8462936

I'm talking in general. Some games even have licensed music in them (NFS as an example). I doubt they are full 44.1kHz.

>>8462938
> It's not like FFVII is especially demanding on the CPU
The gooks who programmed this game made EVERY value a 32 bit integer

Was the N64 REALLY a 64bit system? 64bit as in CPU? Even though the first 64bit chip was made by AMD (literally the codename for 64bit architecture is amd64) and the first true 64bit consoles (first to exceed 4GB RAM) were the PS4/Xbox One.

>>8463049
there were 64 bit cpus in the 80s, pc is always late to the game. n64 is 64 bit but not in any useful capacity it can just process big words as if it mattered, most code is 32 bit but it does use 64 bit precision in its geometry for....some reason

>>8463049
>Even though the first 64bit chip was made by AMD (literally the codename for 64bit architecture is amd64)

AMD were not the first to make a 64bit CPU. It's just that AMD made 64bit the standard on the x86 architecture. Intel was dragging their feet with 64bit architecture, and AMD went with it first. The N64 CPU was designed by MIPS Computer Systems, who were best known for designing the CPU's and GPU's in the Silicon Graphics workstations. Their r4000 line of CPU's are 64bit, but the R4300i (which is what the N64 uses) is a low-end 4000 series chipset, and is reduced in price. It is still classified as 64bit, but has a reduced 32bit bus, I think. The PS1 uses a MIPS R3000, which is a 32bit CPU. The PS2 uses a variant of the MIPS R5000, which I think is also a 64bit CPU?

>>8462068
If you take off all the bullshit minigames and such, you still can adapt if somehow.

>>8463041
>>8462938
Not to mention the game makes a stupid amount of checks each second. The amount of flags here is completely unnecessary and inefficient

>expected thread to be console war shit posting
>outside of a few tards it's not
Huh.

>>8462715
>It depends what you mean by "totally."
Totally. I mean, look at this. Two characters in a interior, boxy space. This is the power of N64 cutscenes.

I'm not being a console warrior, I'm actually a dev. I know what I'm talking about.

>>8463291
I'm surprised too, but a lot of cope about what the N64 can do. No way you're getting this game in fewer than 3 carts, and you aren't getting realtime cutscenes to magically change that.

what was the state of compression in 1994-1996? ive wondered recently if Nintendo could have mitigated their low cart storage with heavy compression. if there was a small extra custom chip on the board to handle decompressing on the fly could the carts have handled more bigger than 64mb?

>>8463367
>what was the state of compression in 1994-1996?
Pretty sure they used ZIP.
>if there was a small extra custom chip on the board
The problem with carts is that they cost a lot, while CDs cost almost nothing. You could add a chip to do anything, but the N64 was a sales flop, so no one was going to do that.

Are we gonna have a "could it have been on N64" thread every day?

>>8463487
take your meds

>>8463651
take yours delusional faggot

>>8462068
Never think about it.
Imagine if Squaresoft lost that much of development resources to port such a giant game to an inferior system. Many new rpgs that exist would not exist
I bet Resident Evil 3 turned out not to be so great due to the resources spent on the RE2 N64 port.
Now imagine this same context, but applied to Squaresoft rpgs. God... no!

>>8463302

You're greatly underselling what's possible. N64 cinematics aren't limited to two guys talking in a room. There are actual games that have pretty impressive sequences for the day.

https://youtu.be/Ay0EFYYx-F0?t=05m30s

They just wouldn't have made the same game.

The game would have been altered and adapted to fit the N64.

>>8462068
of course it would, you would need a $500+ cart though

>>8463313
It is a fun scenario. I think it could be done. It would be more heavily cut than RE:2. And it would have to be on larger cart than any other game used.

Could Mario 64 be done on the PS1?

The cutscenes are pointless anyway, just show what's happening with ingame graphics. The game is a total mess with its FMV choice anyway, there was no need to make one for Cloud jumping on a train, yet they didn't bother making one for the important bit where Cloud drops Sephiroth in the reactor.

>>8462668
Source?

>>8464702
FFVII itself does this. Cloud has several models specifically for real time cutscenes like Jessie's train explanation.

>>8464702
>Source?

Do you mean the source of the .webm?

D2 for the Sega Dreamcast. came out in 1999.

>>8464425
The N64 didn't use a whole lot of cart-side hardware compared to the SNES. Mostly because it didn't need to for the games they were making but there's no reason it couldn't employ something, alleviating the need for a massive ROM. On board decompression chips and shit.

https://youtu.be/BaX5YUZ5FLk

What confuses me though is that all the FFVII FMVs combined come to about 850MB. A compression rate for the FMVs of 165:1 like RE2 means all the FMVs of FFVII would come to about 6MB. That's way smaller than the 24MBs of RE2's compressed FMVs. What gives?

>>8463302
>I'm actually a dev
did your uncle at nintendo help land you the job, faggot

lol

>>8462359
that sounds about right, the background take up about 30mb, almost half of the cartridge space

And with all this effort on optimizing space they still had quite a lot of unused / beta backgrounds left in there including some which aren't even in the PS1 version, ha!

>>8462068
make the fmv real time
cgi clashing with 5th generation real time graphics always sucked

>>8462902
you are retarded

>>8463302
>I'm actually a dev
it shows

https://gbatemp.net/threads/watch-spongebob-squarepants-on-your-n64.561354/

This is proof of concept that it is definitely possible.

>>8463694
you first. or better yet prove we have threads like this everyday. bitch.

Anyone that says "I'm actually a dev. I know what I'm talking about" you can be sure is well of shit

btw I'm actually a dev, I know what I'm talking about. Really.

>>8465394
The Metroid one is still up rn

>>8462590
Yo I remember that Youtube channel. Unsubscribed ever since he made that video shilling that rom streaming service. Fucking retard. Real shame too, since he had some great content.

>>8462068
If they were to fit it on one cartridge they'd have to get rid of pre rendered cutscenes. Maybe have heavily compressed versions of 1-5 extremely important scenes, but even then that might be pushing it. Everything else would either have to cut or redone realtime with in game models.
Other than that, everything else should be fine in terms of storage. The only thing that could possibly become an issue after cutscenes is how many backgrounds there are, those would probably need compression.
Afterwards a lot of the data bloat is ironically because it's on multiple discs, so a lot of assets needed to be copied across the set.

>>8465545
Lol what about that fuckin dude the immortal John hancock. Who claimed he was making a video game museum. Took donations. Game donations and all kinds of shit and just never did it and then bans any one who brings it up on his channel ?

If the game were trying to be as close to the psx version, while fitting on a 64 meg cart- I imagine you’d be looking at major downsampling of all of the assets. Not even just the backgrounds but 3D models too. The n64 was pitiful in regards of its texture cache- and is why most detail on its characters were done with just adding more flat shaded polygons (or even gourad shaded) over textures.

If you were to remove all animations from every background in FF7- so that every area is completely static. Then crush every image to a quarter of the size- then blowing the image up to a full raster (the same way Pokémon puzzle league does it) chopping the size of the games art assets down to nearly an 8th of what it is on CD you could maybe squeeze it onto a cart.

Being on cart would also mean less duplicates of data throughout one or multiple discs.

As for cutscenes I imagine most of them would just be run in engine. Whoever was saying that it wouldn’t be possible to run the animations real time is wrong.

The same workstations used to render the cutscenes in the first place would be where they would be developing the n64 game. The whole point of the n64’s graphics hardware is that it’s directly compatible with scripting and assets made with those types of workstations.

What you would probably see though is cutscenes playing out from one perspective. Cut any camera sweeps out of it and have cloud cry in his wheelchair from a birds eye view

tldr I think you could squeeze all of the backgrounds for the game into 64 megabytes with the advanced compression algorithms that the n64 was capable of taking advantage of, if you cut them down enough

I think that the cutscenes could be done in real time- but would be simplified.

And I think all in all it would have been a much worse version of the game. So I don’t think we missed out on much XP

>>8465535
irrelevant. we rarely talk about metroid64 because it doesnt exist.

>>8465626
>Not even just the backgrounds but 3D models too. The n64 was pitiful in regards of its texture cache- and is why most detail on its characters were done with just adding more flat shaded polygons (or even gourad shaded) over textures.
FFVII doesn't texture its models. N64 would have no problem replicating them.

>>8462068
The simple answer is you don't need fmv. Just put static images with text ala Shadows of the Empire, and boom you're done. You got the "we have ffvii at home" port

>>8465736
I meant battle scenes. But looking at them again- I think it would be doable actually

>>8465743
Even the battle models aren't textured. Some of the battle arena ground textures might have to be downgraded though.

>>8462639
>20:51
damn cthulu just took a giant shell to the face what was that

>>8462717
Them tiddies though

Strip all the fmvs, turn all animated backgrounds to static ones, lower the resolutions of all background and foreground pics, and either compress or midify all the music and FF7 might fit on a 64mb cart, as easily as fitting a basketball into a shotgm glass

>>8466156
The music is already midi

>>8466160
Sorry you bought the Steam version

>>8466168
It's always been midi you dumbfuck. The music runs off the PSX soundchip

>>8465315
https://www.retroreversing.com/n64-sdk

Maybe someone who knows what they're doing can use that hvq2enc.exe to whip up a quick proof of concept of either an FMV or pre-rendered background just to see what it would look like on N64.

Yeah I remember him shilling some retard streaming service and also being a Christ fag... Shame too because he was a master on the genesis.

>>8466171
>download link just leads to the same page
What

>>8462068
Prob could have been done if the 64 DD was not canceled. I'd imagine the cartridge would have the most commonly used assets and code and there would be multiple zip drives for the game.

>>8466337
https://ultra64.ca/resources/software/

>>8462068
Resident Evil 2 on the N64 was heavily compressed of 2 game discs. FF7 has 4 discs. Besides, even RE2 64 is barely doable.

>>8467492
Three discs, not four. And the last of those three was barely used.

>>8462068
no, because the n64 couldn't handle a single character model from the game without melting.

Man, this thread really makes me wish there was a FF7 N64 port

I'm fascinated by the types of ports like RE2 N64, Gunstar Heroes on Game Gear, DKC2 on the GB, NuDoom on Switch, just all games that by all means shouldn't work on their target hardware, yet they somehow manage it either by creatively recreating the experience or working tech magic.

>>8467617
The N64 could theoretically push more polygons than the PS1. Something like one million per second (not realistic in practice but still...) But the N64's z-buffer was a significant performance hit. So if you were going to do a slapdash conversion its possible the N64 would perform worse than it's real potential.

>>8467706
Framerate is always going to be an issue, but FF7's graphics don't run at a high framerate. It only feels like it does because the menu runs at 60 fps.
They just weren't doing it right. Comparing FPS games on both platform, the N64 is definitely more capable.

>>8467706
One thing to keep in mind is that early 3D models were segmented, for animation and rigging purposes, which increased the amount of triangles being rendered. This is a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxnaZscU6zk

A port of FFVII could work, but it would be a massive undertaking that probably wouldn't pan out commercially and visually would look drastically different due to how things would need to be approached.

>>8467754
An actual port is out of the question, yes. The thread concept is more like if the game were built for the N64 instead.

>>8467756
Anything is possible given enough time and budget to do so. The question then would be if whether or not the effort pays off in the end.

>>8467754
The issue with that 2000 poly count (and I don't know if this is specifically the case for Bahamut but its one generally for PS1 games) is that devs would often hide seams by throwing more polygons at the problem whereas the N64 didn't have to worry about it due to having a Z-buffer. So you could make the same model with fewer polygons and still have it look right and not jitter all over the place. Things like a Malboro with all its tendrils would look like it was falling apart on PS1 unless you took great care and probably used far more polygons than necessary if the machine actually knew their location.

>>8467770
The Resident Evil 2 port had a budget of $1 mil. Even if you double that for FFVII around the same time and aimed for a 2000/2001 release I can't imagine it wouldn't have done gangbusters.

>>8462068
The Nintendo 64 is actually powerful enough to decode H264 video (modern compression format used in Blurays and streaming services):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i89f_CMn7bw

FF7 has around 50 minutes of 15fps 320*224 FMVs. Lets say we can simplify some of them (various elevator videos, videos with minor variations, etc) and get it down to 42 minutes of FMV. Using H264 @ 200Kbps the full set of FMVs would take up around 47mb.

In terms of background images, FF7 contains 723 uncompressed 320*224 images. If we were to compress these using a modern tool like compressor.io in a jpg format then each image would be around 30kb, which would mean the entire image set would be around 22mb.

The FF7 midi files used for the soundtrack only take up about 2mb or so (except One Winged Angel).

>FMV = 47mb
>BGs = 22mb
>Sound = 2mb

I'm not sure how much space the game logic and models use.

If you were to go back in time with modern compression knowledge then I would say yes, it would be possible to do some sort of FF7 port using a 64mb cartridge. H264 decoding uses a log of CPU power so it probably wouldn't be able to pull off the "models over FMV" thing that the PS1 did.

Ogre Battle 64's prerendered backgrounds look pretty good for what that's worth.

>>8467881
I think it's somewhat cheating to rely on modern compression. I think what would have been done in the late 90s is the decompression algorithm would have been offloaded onto the cartridge with a dedicated chip similar to what the SNES did with the SDD-1. That would alleviate a ton of overhead from the N64 while squeezing the assets into 64MB of rom.

really, what i'm getting from this thread is that the big issues here would be storage. if the 64dd didnt completely eqt shit and came out as planned, with some compression it seems like a port was more than doable. but with 64meg cartridges, incredibly difficult without reworking cutscenes into in-engine ones and compressing the hell out of assets.

>>8462068
Didn't a Square dev say that even if they put it on the 64DD, it would be 10+ discs?

>>8468424
Sure, if you were to just copy/paste everything.

>>8467918
yeah that doesn't look too bad for n64

>>8467918
nah looks terrible compared to ff games

I like how people are convinced the N64 is incapable of doing this.

>>8462128
Was there ever any reason why they did that? I doubt it took up more memory, was it just a weird artistic choice or was it just cost and time reducing by animating the simpler, small models

>>8462509
Or Zip-base 250 cartridges

>>8467881
The H264 codec for N64 isn't 200KB/s, it's 200kbps. So that's pretty low. It works fine if there's not a lot of movement, but if there's a lot of movement or action, it goes to crap very quickly. Which some of FF7's cutscenes may be problematic there. So if you need more bitrate to have a better looking video, you'll need a different codec which will probably take up more space.

Also with Resident Evil 2 people really need to stop parroting the "They crammed 2 CDs into 64MBs!" myth. While it is impressive compression, the fact of the matter is it wasn't 2 full CDs worth. The reality is that RE2 is only on 2 discs because of an oversight the devs made. On both discs there's a lot of duplicate data. When you take this into consideration the total data of the game is actually less than that of 1 CD. So the game could actually fit on 1 disc but was put on 2 due to a developer mistake. So really they crammed less than 650MBs into 64MBs. While still impressive, people really need to keep this in mind when they try to apply it to stuff like Final Fantasy VII.

>>8468829
FFVII had a complex genesis so it wouldn't surprise me if some cutscenes were filled in later on to pad the FMV runtime.

>>8468958
My guess it was done for consistency when they were scenes that were intended to play seamlessly from the field engine. The ones that use the higher end models usually don't play in a similar seamless manner. They're usually used for key story scenes, the scenes at the end of a disc, etc.

>>8462689
Didn’t Hybrid Heaven start out as an MGS64 port?

>>8469013
Not sure on the details.

If you emulate the PS1 FF7, upscale, downscale, and use a CRT filter, it looks like a N64 game.

>>8468791
The stupid retarded chibi models is easily attainable. The battle animations? N64 would crash and burn during Bahamut

>>8463302
You're actually an inbred subhuman retard. You have no idea what you're talking about.

You know what, anons? If you're talking so much about a N64 FF7 port, go start working on it.
If you know how the hardware works, then start learning how to work with it! There are many sites out there talking about how to work with both the PS1 and N64's hardware, and now that the decompilation movement is in full swing it's easier than ever!
I've also seen a decompilation project for FF7 on Github, although it's for the PC port rather than the original PS1 version, so even if it helps it might not be ideal for you if the port ever comes to fruition.

And of course, remember to not give up. Don't let your dreams be dreams.
Know your console hardware. Learn how to code if you haven't, C is arguably the most useful language for this. Become familiar with decompilation and conversion tools.
I don't want to see all the things talked about on this thread to go to waste. I want to see them applied.
And I really think that a FF7 N64 port would be an magnificient feat.

Thanks for reading my blogpost wall of text. I don't really care if you don't get any of it, but I've seen this kind of thread a couple times already and have been wondering on when or why hasn't anyone actually done that yet, so I just had to write some thoughts.

I hope it becomes a reality.

>>8470584
>compress the game to fit in n64
>???
>profit
it does not need to be 1:1 but we have the technology

>>8470584
>>8471701
Meanwhile in the PSX Homebrew scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM6NLjlK0tE

>>8471971
wow that looks like shit

>>8471971
Man, the PSX was really the standout hardware design of that generation.

>>8472196
No

>>8469013
that explains a lot if true.

>>8471971
I will now play your n64 game

>>8472205
Yes, look soulless

>>8471971
>>8472256
Nintendo PlayStation is real...

>>8471971
NINTENDO

>>8464397
Imagine this ending was 96’ cutscenes.

>>8462258
At the time they didn't seem so weird. The 3D "vocabulary" that has been built up since marks them as odd raytraced cgi in a realtime game, but you have to remember that 3D games were a wild west back then. We had gone from fake-3d tilemapped dungeon crawlers, to Wolf3D to Doom Raycasting to Quake's brushes and along the way you had flat shaded Model 1 and freaking Voxels entertaining the PC gamer. By the late 90s the gaming industry thanks to fixed function graphics cards had settled on rasterised polygons with texture mapping and vertex lighting and so you can look back on the prerendered backdrop and see something out of place. But to us everything was its own technique and we didn't know what to expect from one game to the next.

>>8472716
That's why I love that generation so much. Saturn/PS1/N64...every single machine had it's own "personality" to what their games looked like simply because everyone was doing it differently. I miss the days where you could tell what console a game was running on just from a screenshot.

The movie files from disc 1 alone come to about 400MB. Compressing them with libx265 with a CRF of 30 which is basically minimum quality brings that down to 18MB with NO pcm audio (because most of the audio was SFX with the music as midi so you could in theory add some SFX back as another MIDI track so as not to use up space on compressed PCM).
RE2 also cut the resolution of the video down too, so if we go to 160x112 instead of 320x224 you get that down to: 5MB give or take.
So can you compress all the video down to fit in 16MB? Yes.
But that leaves 200MB per disc that's some mix of backgrounds and realtime 3D assets. I don't know how to extract those. Even if we assume 150MB of that is backgrounds and you get a massive compression ratio from something modern like HEIF or something then that still leaves 50MB of game assets which are already compressed on the PS1 version. You can save a buttload on images and sound with lossy compression, but the lossless compression necessary for other assets isn't going to be massively improved over what looks like LZH.
So, could it be done theoretically? Maybe with a 128MB cart. If you need it to fit in 64MB you'll have to take a hit on quality and lose a few things along the way.

>>8464397
Mega Man Legends 2's opening is entirely realtime, in-game and at 30fps and it's incredible both the scene switching, the scale, and the animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SikYAE2ycJI

It's really well done and I never see anyone give it fair praise despite how much it's flexing the PS1. Excuse the shitty emulation capture, it seems nobody has captured the real thing on real hardware. I think I'll do it right now.

>>8468424
Square programmers were a bunch of incompetent retards, and just barely are considered acceptable nowadays, because everyone else is also shit.

>>8472825
Well this is how they attempted to get actual professionals to submit their resumes so...

>>8472825
Famously incompetent programmer Nasir Gebelli, what a loser faggot.

>>8472831
classic 90s cringe

>>8472839
This is sarcasm in case you're mentally retarded from Re*ddit.

>>8467881
Sadly, late Nintendo president was boomer.

>>8464397
I think Conker pretty much blows everything else out of the water, what with it having full voice-acting, lip sync, and a lot of dynamic character animation.

>>8472868
>largest cart MB
>near console lifespan expires

>>8462068
The fmvs would need to be still pictures, and the stage backgrounds more compressed.

>>8472937
What's your point? It's the best on the console.

>>8472839
>>8472848
I sometimes forget that there was only a ten year gap between Squaresoft being broke as shit and having to outsource programming to one guy who didn't even speak Japanese and Final Fantasy VII. It's amazing how fast the gaming landscape moved back then. Today two games ten years apart barely look any different.

>>8462513
>MGS doesn't use them
not for its cinematics no, but there's a few FMVs sprinkled throughout in the form of archival footage if you recall... it's why Konami had to remove MGS from digital storefronts temporarily recently while they work out licensing/copyrights or whatever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srTqxL_6Ysg

>>8473462
>not for its cinematics no, but there's a few FMVs sprinkled throughout in the form of archival footage if you recall... it's why Konami had to remove MGS from digital storefronts temporarily recently while they work out licensing/copyrights or whatever

There was an animated sequence from Policenuats, and some random footage of Alaska?

>>8473468
right, plus some footage from missile silos and also scientists working in a lab, probably some other stuff I'm forgetting

not sure why any of that needs to be cleared but copyrights are a funny thing

>>8462849
1 CD is still way too much for the biggest N64 cart. Anon is right. Even discounting fmv altogether ff7 doesn't come close to fitting.

>>8462902
You're all wrong. The ff7 backgrounds don't fit onto N64 but fmvs are the only reason why the game is 3 discs

>>8473907
The pre-rendered backgrounds also take up quite a bit of space.

>>8473896
Mega Man 64 was a decent port of Mega Man Legends. I know it's a very different beast from FFVII but there's a lot more to it than "1 CD can't fit on N64."

>>8474576
They're uncompressed though. One side effect of the near infinite space of CDs was that they didn't have to be conservative so they didn't bother. In fact, FFVII ushered in something of a marketing gimmick where multi-disc games and their fat jewel cases conveyed a grandiose quality. So you didn't really want to squeeze your game too much.

For music, somebody's already ported many FF7 music to SNES platform and still listens OK.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S6fhj0dRYYA

>>8474617
This mix on Nicovideo is even better I think.
https://sp.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm8294363

>>8474598
Compression was still used with CD based games. Heavily in fact. In many cases it's faster to read a smaller compressed file off the disc and decompress it than it is to read the entire uncompressed file off the disc.

Final Fantasy 7 is no different and is already using compression on it's pre-rendered backgrounds:
https://wiki.ffrtt.ru/index.php/FF7/Field_Module

>>8474617
The SNES ultimately only restricted by sound channels. The real question is how big those samples are and could you get them into a reasonably sized game.

>>8474617
Not bad but it is lacking some depth. Though that makes sense considering the original used 16 channels:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcYCuFTKCb0

That said, most SNES games sound better than N64 games...
>>8474734
It's also limited by only having 64K of Audio RAM and cart size.

It's no surprise the SNES can do great versions of FFVII's music since the PS1's sound processor is in the same family as the SNES's.

>>8473013
My point has prove.

>>8475212
Controller and SFC logo infamous copy by Sony

>>8475212
the PSX version of FFVI has much better ssound than the SNES version. I don't mind the loading times (on PS3)

>>8472196
At least you can actually see something rather than having a thick smear of Vaseline over the entire screen.

>>8475873
The N64's design is so baffling. The thing is incredibly powerful for the time but you'd never be able to tell because they skimped out on everything critical to take advantage of it, such as texture displaying ability and sticking to carts.

>>8475991
Nintendo always prioritized X at the expense of Y. The Game Boy design was so focused on maximizing battery life that the rest of the system was rudimentary even by 1989 standards. The SNES prioritized the PPU at the expense of raw horsepower. The N64 is an extremely powerful machine but to keep costs reasonable they cut corners in areas like texture memory.

>>8475991
Its not even a case of skimped out, the blur was deliberate.

>>8476070
>Its not even a case of skimped out, the blur was deliberate.
https://youtu.be/eKlbx5niBu8?t=42

That's because point sampling is for chuds. The true SGi chad uses trilinear mipmap interpolation on everything! I'm just joking, BTW
https://youtu.be/eKlbx5niBu8?t=42

The CPU and graphics core were designed by MIP's, and has features taken from SGI workstations like filtering. Though the video they showed was an approximation on what the final hardware would actually do. MIP's and SGi actually pitched the N64 hardware to Sega of America first. But SOJ deemed that it wasn't suited for their needs, and MIP's pitched it to Nintendo after that. Nintendo jumped onboard instantly. Nintendo wanted to break into 3D gaming. Also, their partners like Rare were using SGi workstations for DKC. Funny how SGi/ MIPS approached Nintendo first.

>>8476070
I realize that it was deliberate, but it was necessary to cover up how shit it truly was at handling textures.

>>8462146
>There weren't any N64 RPGs because the system just couldn't handle the globetrotting scale that RPG stories tend to take.
but yet the SNES could?

>>8476426
Huge difference between sprite based and 3D world RPGs. FF7 had to take a lot of creative approaches to get the same sense that the classic RPGs had down on such a system and even it cheats a lot to pretend there's much more than there is.

>>8476426
The discussion is whether the N64 could support a next-generation RPG, not a previous-gen one. Of course the N64 could support an RPG if it was scaled to its capabilities, but that would preclude telling a large-scale story with 3D graphics

>>8475732
I didn’t realize it had different music from the SNES version. Maybe I’ll check it out in DuckStation, which can eliminate load times in most games.

I don't even think FFVII is the most interesting game for this intellectual exercise. It's mostly just a pure storage space thing. Games like Mega Man X4 and SOTN are much more layered for whether or not the N64 could do them justice.

>>8476706
Technically, it could handle them fine. But I wonder if they would be too blurry to be playable.

>>8462346

Five year old kids aren't "in the gaming world" you cheetodust covered fatfuck. They just play the fucking games.

>>8473896
>>8473907
retards

>>8462510
Quest 64 wasn't even a bad game, it definitely would've been better if they hadn't rushed it, though

If you were to delete every cinema in ff7, could n64 run it?
would the backgrounds still suffer or something?

>>8473452
>Today two games ten years apart barely look any different.

Today, two games in ten years would be the average output of an AAA game studio.

>>8462902
Most of the models were gouraud shaded with no textures.

>>8462510
Fucking soul incarnate right there.

>>8477849
>If you were to delete every cinema in ff7, could n64 run it?

The question isn't whether the N64 could run it, it's if they can fit everything on the cart or not.
The largest known carts on the N64 used 64mbyte (Conker and Resi2). Add some very efficient (jpeg-like) compression for the backgrounds, they could probably fit them all in.

According to that DS article linked above, the game has 723 backgrounds at 320x224. In the Playstations 15-bit RGB graphic mode, that's 100 megabytes - uncompressed. However they could use 8-bit color and basic zlib to reduce them to something like a third, or even use something like JPEG and reduce them to maybe a sixth (quality would obviously suffer in this case, but not so much that you could tell on a CRT and especially not compared to the blurry shit output of the N64). Hell, since all N64 games are blurry as fuck, you could even halve resolution and then the background art would take so little space, you could probably fit the entire game, minus FMVs, on a 32MByte cart... which was still extremely expensive to produce back in the day mind you.

You'd need a lot of extremely good compression employed, but if they could fit Conker's Bad Fur Day into a N64 cart (which has full voice acting for everything in the game!), then FFVII could fit there too. Sans FMVs of course.

I feel like the whole conversation is kind of moot, because if there was some high end Final Fantasy style game on the N64, it would probably look more like Majora's Mask, and less like anything that relies heavily on pre-rendering. A good developer plays to the strengths of the system, and on N64 that was the fully 3D environments.
Why are we having this thread?

>>8478175
>the game has 723 backgrounds at 320x224
>In the Playstations 15-bit RGB graphic mode, that's 100 megabytes - uncompressed
The backgrounds are not all 320x224 resolution. Some are much bigger than that and scroll. Others have multiple layers to them with additional animations. They are also not in 15-bit color. They are broken up into blocks using multiple 256 color palettes. So they're already use that to reduce the size down on PS1.
>Add some very efficient (jpeg-like) compression for the backgrounds, they could probably fit them all in.
The backgrounds in FF7 are already compressed on the PS1 disc. It uses a variant of LZSS compression. So It's not 100MBs of uncompressed high color data. It's 100MBs of compressed, palette-based, image data.

I really wish N64 fanboys would stop thinking that things like compression is something exclusive to cart based systems. It's used heavily in PS1 and Saturn games as well. It allows developers to fit more data on a disc, while also helping speed up load times.

its a really interesting topic imo.
i wish we'd could get a demo up to the first reactor as a proof of concept or something.
someone did something similar with sonic 1 on snes, and that was impressive.

>>8478281
>ran like shit, slowed down constantly
>lower resolution
>physics and collision were off
>muffled, off-sounding music
It was not impressive.

>>8472831
classic 90s based

>>8467617
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AvErgY6HpX8

>>8478452
And even the PC version has issues as the transparencies aren't rendered correctly.

>>8467918
One might even say they're LOOKIN GOOD. Holy fuck all those seams, smudging, and bilinear/upscaling artifacts. It looks terrible on hardware and on a CRT too, but you really pulled the stops here.

>>8478186
The question is could the game have been ported to the N64, not if it would have been made that way if it originated on the N64.

>>8462359
The compression ratio was 165:1, yeah the fmvs on playstation are compressed with a codec that the MDEC chip can decompress on the fly, the n64 lacks a hardware decompression feature, so they had to cram almost 4GIFABYTES of uncompressed frames in to 25megabytes only for the fmvs without the audio

>>8472831
Goddamn, Tifa's tits look so nice in this artwork

>>8462826
>Remove the OST

https://youtu.be/ImQm0vxsTq4

CBFD had 2hours plus of spoken audio , without the music

>>8479172
Where did you get those specs? There's about 600MB of FMVs across both discs, and of those some are duplicates. So at most it's probably about 450MB of FMV. Going further there's a lot of scenes that are mostly identical but have slight alterations. The N64 port in most cases throws the alternate version out, so we're again looking at even less FMV. So it's probably about 200MBs of FMV that were compressed down.

That's no where near a 165:1 compression ratio.

>>8469430
https://youtu.be/3Vn3DZaRfIE

>>8479273
The battle models in Final Fantasy VII have higher polygon counts than that.

>>8479269
It might not mean literal compression. The number could take into account changes to the videos themselves, like fucking with the resolution and framerate.

>>8479279
See:
>>8467831

>>8479269

https://ultra64.ca/files/other/Game-Developer-Magazine/GDM_September_2000_Achieving_Full-Motion_Video_on_the_Nintnedo_64.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiwgubn3pT1AhUorZUCHaVSA3oQFnoECDAQAQ&u

4,147,200,000 bytes of uncompressed frames , get an online calculator , you will get 3.86gb of data

>>8478304
definitely impressive for something recreated by one guy on a weaker processor

>>8479279
Top kek the Conker from Conker’s Bad Fur Day on N64 apparently had around 1100-1200 tris (1193 faces)

Also on N64, Turok 2 had 3000 polygon models in a cutscene , I doubt a single model on FFVII could top 1000 polys

Single cart? Absolutely no way. It took 3 discs for PS, and FF7 used almost all 650mb for all 3 discs.
Even if they would scale it down to N64 specs, would it be good? Would it even be playable?
Square inevitably chose to switch to PS for this exact reason. And even if there was a way to switch carts mid-game on the 64, Nintendo never bothered with it.

>>8463049
>Even though the first 64bit chip was made by AMD (literally the codename for 64bit architecture is amd64)

Uh huh

>>8479330
Those specs are marketing nonsense. It's referring to the original raw renders that were at higher color depth and quality than what was on the PS1. Most of what got the size down on N64 wasn't compression, but quality reduction. Color depth was significantly reduced, frame rate was reduced, videos were cut down in length, some removed entirely, and resolution was reduced, etc. All of that was done long before compression came into the mix. A more accurate compression ratio would be what the final quality reduced videos were before compression, or comparing to the original PS1 videos. Which if we remove duplicates we're looking at about 300 - 200MBs going down to 25MBs. Which is about an 8:1 or 12:1 compression ratio.

>>8479362
The behemoth enemy for Final Fantasy VII apparently has 2000 polygons. The party characters are about 700 each. So just drawing the party and the enemy you'd be at ~4100 Polygons. And you still need to draw the scenery for the battle field, weapons, magic, summons, etc.

I've just checked , this peculiar scene from the pub in Conker's is made of more than 7k poly's witch is a insane number, FFVII has most no textured and unlit models, considering the N64 shit ton of filters are enabled it is a pretty remarkable feat for rare

https://youtu.be/V9z0DgITmfQ

>>8462087
>There probably just wouldn't be so many pre-rendered elements if it was on N64, and it would look something more like Ocarina of Time.

This makes me think we should have got a FF game for N64 with some real time combat. It could have been great tbqh if done right and was polished to the standard of OOT. Story could have even avoided FMV and just did what OOT did to tell them. Just use in game graphics.

>>8479513
Rare's games are notorious for having very poor and unstable framerates on N64. Conker is no different. Sure N64 could probably render FF7's battle scenes, but the frame rate would be too low for Square's standards. Rare's standards though were so low that they didn't give a shit if the game dropped to single digit frame rates.

>>8462068
Technically, it would be possible. Replace fancy FMVs with in-engine cutscenes, remove unnecessary sound files, replace all backgrounds with low-res static images similar to OoT, and you could possibly run it on N64.
But Square was already stretched thin when developing FF7, so it was not gonna happen.

>>8479339
You neglect to mention that this same lone wolf developer was capable of porting Mega Man X to the Mega Drive, and in doing so, the game has a higher resolution, far higher quality audio, more aggressive enemy AI, and no slowdowns, thus entirely improving the game compared to the SNES original, and breathing some much-needed life into it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idHWNe4vS20
All the SNES Sonic port did was prove what we had all suspected about the SNES all along, it was simply not capable of running a game such as Sonic, the hardware was just not up to task, it was dead in the water even at launch and already being run circles around by the 2 years older Mega Drive.

>>8480383
>All the SNES Sonic port did was prove what we had all suspected about the SNES all along, it was simply not capable of running a game such as Sonic, the hardware was just not up to task, it was dead in the water even at launch and already being run circles around by the 2 years older Mega Drive.
meds

>>8480309
FF7's battle scenes are insanely low framerate because the playstation could barely handle them you retard. what a weird cope

>>8479665
I'm not even a very big JRPG fan, but it's kind of a shame that we never really got to see what that kind of a game would look like, with a more competent developer at the helm (not the literally who's who made Quest 64).
I guess Hybrid Heaven, or even Paper Mario up to a point, but they're oddball games that aren't even attempting anything too similar to the FF experience.

>>8480441
The battle scenes animate at 15fps on PS1, but the menu and game logic is running at 60fps. So even if it's animating at 15fps, it's at least a consistent and solid 15fps. Rare's stuff on N64 is erratic and all over the place an in many cases is dipping well below 15fps and going into single digits. Conker for example is constantly going below 15fps and at best hits 20-30fps if the player has the camera staring at the floor. and not moving.

>>8480854
>it's at least a consistent and solid 15fps
This is cope

>>8463049
Linux 5.10 was ported to the N64 last year and uses the 64-bit Linux Kernel:

https://github.com/clbr/n64bootloader/tree/master/n64linux

So there's your answer. Whether any game on the N64 ever managed to leverage it is a different question...

Someone here claimed the Glover 64 port used 64-bit precision for the ball physics.

>>8480874
A consistent framerate is better than an inconsistent frame rate.

>>8480854
Yeah, and Rare's stuff on N64 is more complex and fills the entire screen... your point?

VII would fit in just barely. VIII and IX would be impossible.

>>8480893
Sure, but it's asinine to think that the N64 can't handle a solid 15fps for an FFVII battle scene. Remember, the N64's performance takes a hit from the Z-buffer. Take that out of the equation (because it's not necessary since the PS1 doesn't have a Z-buffer) and the battles could probably be a solid 30fps. Or keep the Z-buffer and use fewer polygons for the models because you no longer have to waste a bunch of them to hide seams. Either way the N64 would perform better.

>>8462068
No. Texture data for hundreds of enemies alone will probably fill up several cartridges. And I'm pretty sure there are hundreds of megabytes of pre-rendered backgrounds, many of them animated.

>>8481036
Enemies are not textured, dude.

why didnt we ger this ff7 remake
>updated prerendered backgrounds
>updated 3d models
>updated animations and vfx
>updated music and sfx, with option for original soundtrack
>bugfixes
>cut and unfinished content added back and polished
>harder difficulty / more strategy required
>expanded golden saucer and minigames
>more stuff to explore on world map, more vehicle fun, more submarine areas

>>8481343
They don't have the original shit anymore, they have had to build off the shit PC port for years for a reason

>>8481414
>2021
>cant reverse engineer a ps1 game

>>8481443
That doesn't get you the original renders for the backgrounds or the original materials used to make them back. So you'd just get something trashy like the modern FF8 version that looks like mishmashed garbage.

>>8481457
I'm mad butthurt that during the heyday of pre-rendered graphics HDD space was still at a premium so nobody kept the uncompressed renders. Imagine playing a Donkey Kong Country reskin that looked like the promo art.

>>8481343
>be square-enix
>recreate the ballroom cutscene from FF8 using PS2 hardware for an early tech demo
>gets well-received
>continue tradition for PS3
>recreate the opening cutscene of FF7 for an early tech demo (in 2005)
>fans go nuts
>everyone upset when Square Enix doesn't jump on the idea and doubles down on it being nothing more than a tech demo
>demand for FF7 remake spikes
>FF7 remake releases 15 years later to mixed results
kek

>>8481491
no wonder, they completely butchered it
>splitting it in 3 parts
>not showing any update
>molesting the pacing, characters and dialogue
>forcing in all the extended univeese garbage anime writing

>>8481496
>forcing sephiroth in constantly and as the final boss randomly at the end of midgar in a ridiculous advent children sequence instead of having him be the phantom you chase around and realize he's been dead the entire time

>>8480917
Rare's stuff isn't more complex polygon wise. The N64 can get away with using very large polygons for scenery which is what Rare's stuff is using. Still it struggles to keep a framerate in the teens.

Final Fantasy VII wouldn't really benefit from that since it uses controlled camera angles to avoid the issues that larger polygons cause on the PS1.

>>8481032
You don't use more polygons to hide seams. You use it to avoid texture warping by subdividing polygons as the camera gets closer. Final Fantasy VII however doesn't have this issue as the character models are Gouraud shaded and the game maintains full control of the camera to avoid the warping issues for the few parts that are textured.

As for disabling some of the N64's effects, Nintendo forbid developers from doing that, which is why few games do it and the ones that do are very late in the system's life. Even so, there's still areas where the N64 would have issues. The lighting and transparency effects would be a big one. While the N64 isn't as bad as the Saturn here, it's not that much better either. Transparency effects aren't anywhere near as nice as what's on the PS1 and they have a big hit to performance.

The N64 does a lot of nice things, but high polygon counts and high frame rates aren't either of them.

>>8481496
the ff7 and ff8 remasters made me cynical enough to not really pay attention to the remake at all. guess i didn't miss anything

>>8481507
The N64 can theoretically push more polygons than the PS1. It tends not to because the CPU has a lot of additional overhead but it's not cut and dry.

>>8481507
>>8479513 vs >>8479468
The N64 destroys the Playstation in raw 3D rendering power, that's never been up for debate. It's kneecapped in other areas which is what most of this thread is about for a reason.

>>8481507
>As for disabling some of the N64's effects, Nintendo forbid developers from doing that, which is why few games do it and the ones that do are very late in the system's life.
Nintendo's bitchiness over the microcode is arguably more responsible for the N64's perceived limitations than the actual hardware. I still don't understand the logic there. But if we're talking hypotheticals I don't think we need to hold ourselves to those restrictions.

>>8476324

Project Reality promo video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1z9HmDuYgs

Charles Martinet in 1992 at Summer CES being strapped into a motion capture rig that is powered by a Silicon Graphics 420 VGX workstation. This is like proto Mario 64.
https://youtu.be/R1t6iNG28zI

Donkey Kong Country Exposed VHS promotional video from 1994. One of the Stampers is talking about using an SGI challenger workstation to create the graphics for DKC.
https://youtu.be/Rv_YCSbWP78?t=343

>>8481951


And Square Softs old Final Fantasy VI SGI real-time demo, that was playable at Siggraph 1995. magazines like Game Fan reported this as being early images for FFVII on the Ultra 64:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPO7c_XmesU&t=16s

Though, Square soft actually did have 'early' N64 dev kits at their offices. They said that it was a massive SGI workstation. It's very possible that the above tech demo was some sort of conceptual prototype for what a 3D FF game could look like on Ultra 64 hardware. Square still did use SGI workstations for the pre-rendered BG's in FFVII, and many other PS1 era titles. Capcom used SGi workstations to creates the 2D backdrops in the Resident Evil games.

Here's Squares tech demo of Chocobo DeBattle at Siggraph 1997. I think this demo used an SGi Onyx 2, while the FFVI demo used an Onyx 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqXNBHoEAvY

Name a worse fantasy character than Amielle Leroux, the FFXIV character on Balmung that complains on twitter about turning Final Fantasy into wokescold trannyshit and ruins Hydaelyn EX trials.

Oh, wait. You can't. ;)

Go get him, fellas!

>>8464662
after all nintendo did for square
not like this...

>>8464662
>The game is a total mess with its FMV choice anyway, there was no need to make one for Cloud jumping on a train, yet they didn't bother making one for the important bit where Cloud drops Sephiroth in the reactor.

Jumping on the train happened early on. If you front load your efforts into the part of the game that everyone will experience and fill out the end of the game as your budget/schedule allows then you can maximize sales. FFVII still had soul so the actual game wasn't affected but the heavily marketed cutscenes certainly were.

>>8462258
It was only "off" in hyruke market because it contrasts entirely with how other places dont have a fixed camera, shops did it best since it changes angle depending if youre talking to the NPC or not so it's not as "2D", not a bad idea for non-combat areas and it gives you a magazine screenshot that isn't a bullshot.

>>8478304
>FFVI
butthurted sega fan detected

>>8465741
Wasnt that very common in the GBA? For intros and stuff like that, literally just pictures with text before the title screen and called it a day. People seem to underrate how well the N64 handled both 2D sprites and lightning, a real adaptation job like the chinese NES take on it would not only look as appealing but likely better because while it maybe "cut down" on some key moments the overall picture quality would be probably better. Let's pretend for a second that the PS1 and N64 castlevanias switched consoles, the N64 could easily play back anything in SOTN except the audio and of course it could handle Chronicles, the same could probably not be said for the PS1 handling CV64 and legacy of darkness

>>8471971
SOUL

>>8462258
SOUL
i always loved how hyrule market was a panorama. I don't think any PS1 game did that probably due to having less RAM and half the texture cache.

>>8475212
FFVII also probably used similar synths to the ones the past game used so that helps, Uematsu didn't really change sounds that much until VIII where he did a whole overhaul to get a more "live instruments" feel and Kondo also used tons of Roland sounds across the SNES/N64 era so even if it's a unintentional coincidence you can probably port most if not all N64 music and some PS1 (depending on the dev) into the SNES and the only differences would probably be losing some sharpness

>>8462825
>drastically cut music variety and quality
Don't see why this was necessary, FF7 uses MIDI, compositions take up extremely little space.

>>8465098
I figure you could compress down the important ones, and then cut out a bunch of less important ones, either omitting them or replacing them with basic in-engine sequences.

>>8462068
If Angel Studios got the project, absolutely. Most of the FMVs in FF7 are completely superfluous and can be made into simple in-game animations, especially when most of them already used the overworld models. The only three you'd really want to keep intact are the intro, Aerith's death and the ending, but even then if you wanted to cut corners, Aerith's death could have been shifted to in-game considering you already have to see pic related for maximum visual clashing anyway.
The backgrounds would need to have reduced animation but that's far from impossible. Overall, I feel like you could have easily fit the game onto a RE2-sized cart. Sure, it'd be missing a lot of the whole WOAH SO CINEMATIC pull they were advertising the PS1 version with, but this is under the assumption the port would be in 1999/2000 when people already flocked to FF8/9/10 for that aspect. Honestly I feel like FF7 being marketed the way it did was bullshit considering hardly anyone went to it for anything other than the RPG pedigree the series carried.

>>8480309
To be fair Conker ran better than Goldeneye and Perfect Dark for the most part. This is more of an extreme comparison to say "well if Conker could do this and run at a mediocre framerate, surely a lesser load in competent hands can run better"

>>8483670
The original japan version of FFVII had fewer FMVs

About the frame rate

https://youtu.be/7VhNBvLke4A

>>8483004
I always wondered why I couldn't move the camera around on some screens, but I can't say it takes me out of it at all. Hyrule Castle Town feels like this big bustling place, because the camera is pulled way back, which gives you the sense of being a little kid lost in a crowded market, whereas Kakariko feels homelier because the camera is pulled right in, and you can get up close and personal with the different locations and NPCs.
The sign that it was a good artistic choice is that they recreated the effect in Twilight Princess, when there was no real need to.

>>8483696
I could be wrong about this but didn't Rare games have framerate issues because they had a really complex workaround to the N64's texture limitations? Given textures are muuuuch less of an issue for FFVII, really just the floors of the battle screens, there wouldn't need to be as much wizardry.

>>8483670
That just gets you from three CDs to one CD. You're still nowhere close to fitting the prerendered backgrounds on an N64 cartridge, which is the real meat of the game and probably the main reason why it takes 4+ hours to even reach the overworld.

>>8483670
the fmvs are like half the soul of the game (the other being the music)

>>8478186
>A good developer plays to the strengths of the system
They also play to their own strengths and Square had never done a fully 3D RPG. None of the big JRPG franchises had. Capcom's strength was its spritework, so Breath of Fire III (1997) has 2D sprites in 3D environments and plays like an isometric game, and is still over 400MB. Dragon Quest didn't manage to publish a 5th gen entry until DQ VII in 2000.

Remember, Final Fantasy VII came out in January of 1997. When Square was impressing people with the incredibly detailed pre-rendered CGI environments and the 5th generation upgrades to their standard gameplay formula, Ocarina of Time was still almost 2 years away, Majora's Mask was 3 years off.

I don't really think there is any game that could have come out in 1997 on the N64 that would have made anything like the impression FF7 made. Mario 64 had only just been released 6 months earlier.

>>8484886
>I don't really think there is any game that could have come out in 1997 on the N64 that would have made anything like the impression FF7 made. Mario 64 had only just been released 6 months earlier.

1997 had Mario Kart 64, which was one of the biggest selling game son the N64, it also had Goldeneye in 1997, which became a surprise hit for the system. There was also Star Fox 64 and Diddy Kong Racing that year.

The N64 got some giant games pretty quickly but I think the year long delay really caused a rift between the N64 and PS1's libraries. Had it come out in 1995 (and gotten games like Killer Instinct like it was supposed to) there probably would have been more parity because dev kits would have been delivered earlier, before they went full steam ahead with PS1.

>>8462068
What if they made it for the N64DD?

>>8462576
The lion isn't female, he just has long hair you faggot.

>>8462339
>I understood the concept of pre-rendering when I was a child
Not him, but yes, unironically. Donkey Kong Country came out when I was 4 years old and I watched the Nintendo Power tape about it many, many times before we actually ended up getting the game a couple years later. In it they explain how they pre-rendered all the in-game sprites and backgrounds and how they flattened them and put them in the game. By the time the N64 came around I was plenty familiar with the difference between a real-time rendered model and a pre-rendered 2D image, as did all my friends.

>>8485032
That's literally a female minifig face, dipshit.

>>8485116
Looks more like a custom-painted cowardly lion minifig face to me.

>>8462209
>illusion
I mean, it's a clever combination of visuals. Every piece of media should be aiming for a successful illusion.

>>8484973
None of the major N64 games out in 1997 had the kind of large, explorable world characteristic of an RPG. Mario Kart 64 was a racing game, Goldeneye was an FPS. Those genres were well-suited to existing 3D conventions and required few major innovations over existing paradigms. Console RPG designs were heavily 2D-oriented and FF7's design was completed before Mario 64 had even been released. The FF7 Demo was released around the same time as Mario 64 (a genuinely innovative and impressive game).

I'm not saying the N64 had no good and popular games in 1996 and early 1997. Just that there was nothing even remotely RPG-like, nothing remotely comparable to FF7 on any of the things it does well. Later on you had the Zelda games, Paper Mario, and some other action-adventure games that are sometimes labeled RPGs for no real reason except to try (badly) to refute the point that there were no RPGs on the N64 (who cares?)

My ultimate point is that there's no timeline where any big player was going to make an RPG (or RPG-like game) on the N64 in 1997 due to the system's emphasis on 3D and the limitations of cartridge format.

>>8485771
Mario 64 felt at least as "big" as FFVII if we're talking about large, explorable worlds. FFVII felt more epic but in terms of pure scale Mario 64 was tops.

>>8485776
Like I said before, it's really a case of presentation and clever trickery. If Mario had to take a boat ride to get from Bob Omb Battle field to Thwomp's Fortress rather than it all being centralized around the hub of the castle, the game would feel that much more big and epic.
You don't need to model an entire ocean, and the boat itself can literally just be a sprite that scrolls across the screen. The important thing is you give the player that sense that they've been on a journey, and that's what they remember.

>>8466204
I bet you have an amazing fedora collection.

>>8485776
>Mario 64 felt at least as "big" as FFVII if we're talking about large, explorable worlds.
It wasn't, though, especially not in terms of the kind of detail present in Final Fantasy 7. Super Mario 64 has 15 areas, FF7 had FAR more than that.

>>8462653
And yet it still looks and performs better than anything else on the 64

>>8485771
>None of the major N64 games out in 1997 had the kind of large, explorable world characteristic of an RPG

I thought you were talking about game sales. when you said 'big games'. Pretty sure FRFVII was the best selling console game of 1997, but as far as sales go. Mario Kart 64 was a big hit, and so were Diddy Kong Racing and Goldeneye. Though Goldeneye was a bit of a sleeper hit at first. But the game had real legs. It was one of the top selling N64 games up to 2000. But as far as large scale RPG's go, sadly the N64 didn't have much in the way of those. One of the weakest aspects of the N64 library. I kinda agree. It's not like the N64 couldn't do a large scale RPG. I know cartridge sizes would be a limitation. But even then, if they could make a game like FFVI and Chrono Trigger were 4MB cartridges? The developers would have to forgo FMV cutscenes, and use real time models. But something could have been done. Mario 64 is an 8MB cartridge. Biggest N64 carts were 64MB. But FFVII didn't even really have any voice acting and was mostly text.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KsLxmNWPzI

"that guy's a maniac! Why'd he bite me?"
My favourite piece pf recorded dialogue from RE2.

>>8488974
>It's not like the N64 couldn't do a large scale RPG.
If the original Mother 3 is of any indication, then it's theoretically doable; the issue is getting a team together with the necessary know-how for 3d game design and especially dealing with the n64's hardware, which were the biggest hurdles for the team working on that project.

>>8487797
Areas in FF7 are mostly just flat images that your character scrolls around on though.

>>8489520
I don't know why it has to be theoretical. There are N64 games that feel quite large. Mario 64's Wet Dry World alone feels pretty big. Zelda dungeons, of course. Castlevania 64 has a couple of levels, like the Villa and the Castle Center, that feel quite large. FFVII has a ton of areas but most of them are small towns with four or five houses/shops or transitional dungeons that, barring random battles, take about 30 seconds to pass through. What makes FFVII feel large isn't any specific location but what the game is in aggregate when those things are all stitched together. In fact, that's actually important to what makes it good. You don't want an RPG like that to feature locations that overstay their welcome. Meanwhile in Mario 64 there aren't as many locations but there are a lot of things to do in each one.

>>8489696
>I don't know why it has to be theoretical.
I was just saying that in terms of doing a game in that particular genre for the system. Maybe "theoretically" was the wrong term to describe it, I admit.

>>8489603
The whole question here is "what would FF7 have looked like, if it had been made from scratch for the N64?" (IOW why aren't we talking about that, instead of just wondering how FF7 could have been crammed onto an N64 cart). My argument is that neither question is really plausible. Square was never going to be able to fully rework their proven RPG formula from 100% 2D to 100% 3D in time for a January, 1997 release, especially when they didn't even SM64 as a model to work with.

>Areas in FF7 are mostly just flat images that your character scrolls around on though.
And this is perfectly suited to the franchise's existing gameplay formula. This allowed them to keep all the gameplay formula elements the same, while substantially upgrading the aesthetic variety of the very large game world, which is an important selling point of RPGs in general including Final Fantasy.

>>8489696
>Mario 64's Wet Dry World alone feels pretty big.
Mario 64 is a platforming game, its world feels big by having a great combination of objectives and level design. Mario's worlds use textures (economically) to establish a theme and then design a lot of unique geometry, 3D puzzles, and platforming/3D navigation challenges. Having multiple objectives for each level gives the player reason to explore every corner of the 3D environment, and each area has a unique set of challenges to overcome.

Final Fantasy hasn't ever taken that approach. Physics and geometry (2D or 3D) has never been a major part of the gameplay. While each area has a unique layout, FF has never been heavily about puzzles or mazes, and definitely not platforming challenges. So the kinds of geometric variety that makes Mario 64 seem big are useless for Final Fantasy.

By going with the pre-rendered backgrounds, FF7 massively upgraded the aesthetic quality of its world presentation. Instead of Kaipo and Toroia having the same tileset/buildings but one emphasizing a desert look while the other emphasizing forest and water, every single area in the game can look TOTALLY unique, from train platform in Midgar to the bar in the slums to the beach at Costa del Sol to the Golden Saucer. The fact that interaction is limited was irrelevant because nobody expected to be able to do that. The benefits to immersion and sheer aesthetic "wow" factor were huge.

So yes, it has to be theoretical. There were no big players making JRPGs who knew how to leverage the N64 to make a good RPG, and CERTAINLY not in a way that would have blown people away like FF7.

>Zelda dungeons, of course.
As mentioned, Ocarina came out almost 2 years after FF7. Ocarina took a LONG time to make, by the standards of the time and used developed for Super Mario 64. (And many of the points made about Mario 64 apply to Zelda also. Although Zelda is much more RPG-like, it's still a game focused on 3D exploration.

>>8476706
N64 couldnt do basic 256x224/240 right?

>>8491691
Pretty sure it can. Some games had bizarre resolutions on the N64. Conker comes to mind.

>>8463146
ps2 is 256bits.