A Couple PS1/N64-gen questions

[taucias]

Filtering effects aside, Wipeout64 especially felt inferior. Now of course, it was designed for the PS1 hardware. On the actual machine (not emulation) the game lacks clarity compared to Wipeout 2097.

Often the mip mapping and AA stuff made the games blurry. If Nintendo had allowed some flexibility with their microcode then I suspect the N64 would have looked a lot more impressive, but the typical result was disappointing.

The best looking game was probably Conker and that was because Rare created their own microcode.

 

[swaaye]

N64 had all sorts of issues that added up into a nightmare. That texture cache was the biggest factor in the blurrovision, and the memory latency made it hard to make the thing go fast unless the devs were very careful. The lack of a sound processor put even more load on the CPU/GPU and the audio in general wasn't all that great simply due to storage considerations. It was superior to PS1 in a number of ways, but it had so many flaws that kept it from really being impressive.

 

[ken_masters]

The particle effects from the first Turok (weapons fire) or Jet Force Gemini was great, like the water bump mapping in Turok. I can't imagine the same games in a PSX, included Rogue Squadron. PSX was a more raw polygon power but with a bad anti alias, clipping and culling, and a lot of popping, more than N64. I think that is more important how can move polygons, not how many can move... I preffer blurry textures, the first step in non-pixelated graphics, than very pixelated like Saturn or PSX games.

U can't compare Shadowman, highres mode with no slowdowns.

 

[swaaye]

Command & Conquer 64 is the best version of that game. Seriously, the 3D overhaul is cool. It gets pretty choppy in high res mode during battles, but it looks pretty amazing. The controls aren't even that bad for a gamepad RTS. Can group stuff, etc.

Perfect Dark in high res is really great too, but it isn't very playable much of the time. Too bad N64 couldn't have had 2x the fillrate. lol

Factor 5's port of Indiana Jones runs full-time 640x480 with no option at all for low res. The game's not all that fun, but it looks pretty good. I believe Battle for Naboo is only high res too. These two games run 640x480 with quite acceptable speed.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Often the mip mapping and AA stuff made the games blurry

Whereas PS1's primitive texturing made games look like absolute messes of jags, giant square pixels, jittering, and warping. A handful of games on PS1 looked ok, but the vast, vast majority of them looked like crap. N64 had its flaws, but its IQ was way, way ahead of PS1's, which is why N64 is still playable to me while I can't be bothered with PS1. I actually think that Wipeout 64 looks pretty danged good. It's just really boring.

 

[Nesh]

The particle effects from the first Turok (weapons fire) or Jet Force Gemini was great, like the water bump mapping in Turok. I can't imagine the same games in a PSX, included Rogue Squadron. PSX was a more raw polygon power but with a bad anti alias, clipping and culling, and a lot of popping, more than N64. I think that is more important how can move polygons, not how many can move... I preffer blurry textures, the first step in non-pixelated graphics, than very pixelated like Saturn or PSX games.

U can't compare Shadowman, highres mode with no slowdowns.

Well rarely you would see pop-up in N64 because a huge deal of games for some weird reason had excessive fogging in the distance.

the blurriness in n64 games often irritated me. Especially in FPS games. There were many instances were I got myself on to a wall and couldnt quite get where I was and where should I turn.

The PS1 may have had a few problems with the surfaces and low resolution, but the games that were specifically designed for the PS1 in mind look crispier and often presented huge draw distances too. Shadowrun is not one of these games.

The blurriness in n64 games often hid important details.

 

[schmuck]

I think its kinda pointless to compare ports.. The two machines are so diffrent. Theoretically n64 might have been better..But imho the best looking games on psx looks better than the best looking ones on n64..

Chrono cross, vagrant story, ridge racer 4, crash bandicoot 3, crash team racing, dino crises are the best looking games of the generation.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

The N64 is definitely better for emulation though. Have you guys ever seen the retextured roms? They look INSANE. I have Ocarina of Time cel-shaded running on my emulator! The N64's biggest weakness became its strength in the hands of hackers. You guys should seriously take a look at the forums on emutalk and take a look at the many amazing retexture work being done.

 

[swaaye]

Obviously it all comes down to personal preference.

PS1's "filtering" gave it a "sharper" image simply because there wasn't really any filtering at all. It's pixelated as hell and textures warp all over the place and objects continually pop up. N64 on the other hand had 3D hardware that was more like what we use now, with regards to effects. It couldn't handle big, high res textures though because of storage capacity and its quirky texture "cache". Still, the fact that most N64 games have anti-aliasing and decent filtering really gave some games an excellent look.

Conker's Bad Fur Day was an amazing example of what could be done with the hardware if you knew exactly how to deal with it. I'd argue that World Driver Championship looks better than any racer on PS1, too. Any game in high resolution on the machine looked really great and almost contemporary in ways, but the performance usually wasn't there.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Don't forget Wave Race 64. That game had better water effects than most PS2 games. And IMO, just about anything with bilinear looks better than just about anything without...but I think I said that already. There are maybe a few exceptions, but pixellation, jaggies, pop-in, and warping are simply not compensated by a handful more polygons or somewhat higher-res textures. THPS3 looks really, really good on N64.

 

[schmuck]

N64 games looked horrible blurry. And everything was much less detailed both when it comes to models and textures. And rarly did they use any lightning techniques. Not to mention very few games run in framerates above 20fps.

Later psx games had great models and textures. And the pixelation wasnt as notecible due to more ambient use. So great in fact that they could be ported straight to dreamcast with nothing changed except filtering.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Great AF on the floor there! Didn't know PSX had it in it...

 

[schmuck]

Never said it did.

 

[almighty]

I remember when i brought Resident Evil 2 for the N64, Id already had and completed the PS1 version and i re-brought it because it was going cheap. Now the N64 version from what i remember was massively better compared to the PS1 version, better AA, smoother textures, hi-res and if i remember it even had surround sound.

N64 games CAN look better if dev's take there time.

 

[fearsomepirate]

And rarly did they use any lightning techniques.

If your N64 games are just producing solid black screens, you should try using acetone on the cartridge pins.

 

[ken_masters]

I remember when i brought Resident Evil 2 for the N64, Id already had and completed the PS1 version and i re-brought it because it was going cheap. Now the N64 version from what i remember was massively better compared to the PS1 version, better AA, smoother textures, hi-res and if i remember it even had surround sound.

N64 games CAN look better if dev's take there time.

Yes, I bought RE2 for N64 in the release date and all my friends with the PSX version came to my house to graphic whore

 

[schmuck]

Resident evil 3 looks even better than 2..

But neither are really impressive psone games.

Dino crisis has almost as good models as resident evil 3 does.. only it has full 3d backgrounds..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNraFFSXK5g

 

[swaaye]

The only reason PS1 has so many fairly good looking games is simply because it got way more good developer attention. N64 was almost an abandoned ghost town because of various reasons, especially the lack of a CDROM and its cheap production costs. Carts are ridiculously expensive to build, especially back then when the ROM was still quite costly. Even today it would be very disparate cuz pressing a disk is so super cheap.

But c'mon. The evidence is all over that N64's 3D hardware is more capable. Its CPU is a lot faster as well. The lack of audio processing hardware, MPEG hardware (FMV was all the rage back then), and mass storage were killers. Considering it didn't have storage for FMV tho, not having MPEG encoding wasn't much of a weakness. But they should've had real audio hardware. Nintendo loves to go cheap though. Just look at what they have on the market right now.

Does that mean that they couldn't make awesome games for it? Not really. But everyone was sucked into the annoying FMV phenomenon and the devs loved to be able to use that and be able to make way more money with the cheap CD format.

 

[schmuck]

I agree. Psx had the best developers in the world and the biggest budgets, cd-rom(and rgb-cables. This is constantly massivly underated...Money and talent is almost everything.

N64 probably would had better graphics if it didnt use cart and had the same support.

But thats sorta my point. Im not arguing psx hardware supperiorty, because i wouldnt know anything about it. What i am saying is (imho) the best looking games of the generation where almost all on psone.

Vagrant story, dino crisis, crash bandicoot 3, ridge racer 4, chrono crooss are the best looking games of the "32/64bit" generation.

 

[swaaye]

I'd say instead that most of the good games in general were on PS1. There are only a handful of really high quality games on N64, IMO. But yeah, because of that there were certainly more high quality titles with finely-tuned graphics on PS1.

But I would say that there are games on N64 that look better than PS1's best. Nothing major, but the best on N64 were really pretty impressive.