A Couple PS1/N64-gen questions

[Nesh]

I know this is OT but could you clarify why don't think games like:

Mario 64
Zelda: OoT
Zelda: MM
Pilotwings
Rocket: Robot on Wheels
Resident Evil 2
Sin and Punishment
StarFox 64
Ridgeracer 64
Exitebike 64
1080 degrees Snowboarding
Waverace 64
Rakuga Kids
F-zero X
Mario Kart 64

(just to mention a few of the top of my head) are great?
In my mind the N64 had more AAA games than either Saturn or PSone.

A very huge portion of N64's good games came around its first year, while the PS1 started slowly but was getting huge games later. Also another problem the n64 had was that many of its AAA games didnt appeal to everyone.

Its easier to mention even more good titles for the PS1 that appealed tomore people.

There are also games on the PS1 that ran at 640x480 resolutions at 60fps.

It was obvious that the PS1 had the support and I guess better tools too.

Games that were at least technically a masterpiece to watch at were

Wipeout XL
Tekken3
Soul Blade
Rapid Racer
Gran Turismo
Crash Team racing
Crash Bandicoot series
Omega Boost
Metal Gear Solid
Final Fantasy series
Dino Crisis
Ridge Racer 4
Tunnel B1 (that was an extremely impressive looking game in its time)
Ace Combat 3
Soul Reaver (simply amazing how the world formed from one world to another on your demand)
Destruction Derby2
Spyro the Dragon
Xenosaga
Quake 2
Vagrant Story
Silent Hill
Tomb Raider
Pandemonium
Battle Arena Toshinden1
Colin McRae
Porsche Challenge
V-rally
Nightmare Creatures
Croc
Fear Effect
Forsaken (for some reason I prefered PS1's crispier graphics over N64's)
G-police
Jumping Flash
Motorhead
Oddworld
Parasite Eve
Rollcage


I had my PS1 chipped back then since I had it in Saudi Arabia and original games were non-existent so I got them extremely cheap. I was literally filled with quality games every year.

 

[fearsomepirate]

i had thought the ps1 could do 180,000 real world, and that the n64's real world performance was 160k polys/sec.

Comparing PS1's polygon performance to N64's when the N64 is doing perspective correction, bilinear filtering, and anti-aliasing is like comparing the polygon performance of the PS2 to the Xbox when the PS2 is just single-texturing and the Xbox is applying normal and/or specular maps to all the surfaces and depth of field to the entire scene. If you want to compare Playstation to N64, you have to consider what the N64 could do if it weren't applying all its texture level effects. And according to SGI, it could render about 500,000 triangles/sec at PS1 quality.

Squeak, Quake 2 on PS1 looked pretty nice for a PS1 game, but come on, that was at the expense of loading at nearly every single doorway. I suppose it had somewhat higher-res textures than its 64 counterpart, but the N64 version was prettier in pretty much every other way.

 

[swaaye]

I know this is OT but could you clarify why don't think games like:
Mario 64
Zelda: OoT
Pilotwings
Waverace 64
F-zero X
Mario Kart 64

Of the games you mentioned, the above are what I would consider definitely good. It's all subjective. There are a ton of absolutely horrible games on the system (and I don't mean the games you mentioned that I omitted).

Superman 64
Carmageddon
Hexen
War Gods
GT 64
Battlezone
The various Mortal Kombat failures
Dual Heroes
Offroad Challenge
Cruisin
Megaman

the list goes on. I wouldn't be surprised if 50% of the library got scored 5 or below. Heh. The library is so small, too. And there are like 3 RPGs (which are all rather poor).

Obviously there are rousing successes, too, though. But they had a ridiculous 3rd party deficiency. Nintendo, Rare, and Boss Games were really the saviors of N64, IMO.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Obviously there are rousing successes, too, though. But they had a ridiculous 3rd party deficiency. Nintendo, Rare, and Boss Games were really the saviors of N64, IMO.

What about Iguana Studios? I think the Turok games really helped, too, even if Turok 3 was a dud. Weren't both Acclaim's and THQ's wrestlers pretty well-liked, too?

 

[ballsweat]

I've never been into the fighting games so that didn't affect me much. Undoubtedly though, that was one genre N64 lacked sorely in. It does have a few interesting fighters tho, just not really "serious" Japanese games. My friends and I had a blast with the Xena fighting game, believe it or not. lol.

Art is definitely the foremost consideration if you want your game to look good, however. EQ2 is my favorite example of a failure there.

I remember all the dream team bull nonsense that Nintendo spouted about N64. In the end, it is the console with the most pathetic library in my memory. Easily. It taught me just how much companies will lie/boast/BS to protect their product.

y'know, i agree. 1/2 those games were cancelled that were announced for the ultra 64 (btw, they should've stayed w/ ultra) as games from their dream team developers, and something else i believe, but don't quote me on this, is that nintendo falsely overstated the chipset's power when making a comparison of it to the ki and ki2 chipset.

to the previous poster, i agree 100% also, b/c iguana is probably one of my 3 favorite folded game studios. pirates of dark water for the genesis was excellent, the vc is incomplete w/o it. they really knew how to make exploring games, and i believe some iguana employees brought their turok 1st person adventure style with them to retro studios and applied it metroid prime.

and no one can forget aero 1 and 2 and zero.

and remember their ports of nba jam? they put bill clinton and al gore in there.

 

[ballsweat]

I know this is OT but could you clarify why don't think games like:

Mario 64
Zelda: OoT
Zelda: MM
Pilotwings
Rocket: Robot on Wheels
Resident Evil 2
Sin and Punishment
StarFox 64
Ridgeracer 64
Exitebike 64
1080 degrees Snowboarding
Waverace 64
Rakuga Kids
F-zero X
Mario Kart 64

(just to mention a few of the top of my head) are great?
In my mind the N64 had more AAA games than either Saturn or PSone.

i need to get off my ass and order sin and punishment and a convertor, i've wanted it for years, but i always wind up buying something else.

what was rakuga kids? i've never heard of it before.

 

[Sonic]

Yes, I do recall the THQ wrestling games on the N64 absolutely annihilating the wrestling games on the Playstation. The Wrestlemania games have always been pretty decent. If my memory stands correct, I think the wresling engine used in the WWF games on the N64 was the same one used for a Japanese wrestling game.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

i need to get off my ass and order sin and punishment and a convertor, i've wanted it for years, but i always wind up buying something else.

what was rakuga kids? i've never heard of it before.

Sin and Punishment is simply amazing! You don't even need to know any Japanese to play the game. The best part is that the voice acting's all in English. If you can't buy the game, try emulation for now. I was able to beat the game even on keyboard (not an easy feat).

 

[fearsomepirate]

Here's a question for the more knowledgeable: Any idea why the framerate in Quake 2 is so good, but Turok 2's is so crap? Their textures and geometry look about equivalent in quality, the lighting doesn't seem disparate, and Quake 2 manages to sport a much, much greater draw distance as well. So what's Turok 2 doing so badly? Or did the team that did Quake 2 just have better programmers/access to ucode?

 

[Rainbow Man]

From memory I seem to recall Turok levels were a lot more complex. Quake had extremely coarse geometry.

Or at least the PC version did - I never played the N64 version but I don't think it'd be much better if any at all.

Anyway I remember the senior engine programmer left Iguana after Turok so that may have something to do with the rather crappy performance of the sequel. Even in low-res it ran much slower than the original.
Peace.

 

[ballsweat]

From memory I seem to recall Turok levels were a lot more complex. Quake had extremely coarse geometry.

Or at least the PC version did - I never played the N64 version but I don't think it'd be much better if any at all.

Anyway I remember the senior engine programmer left Iguana after Turok so that may have something to do with the rather crappy performance of the sequel. Even in low-res it ran much slower than the original.
Peace.

the pc version was superior if you played in glide. the n64 one was superior if you played the pc version with a riva 128.

i think the reason why turok 2 ran so much slower than the original was b/c the textures were much more complex, and the lighting fx. the 1st turok had pretty undetailed textures.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I don't think you can see any more polygons in Turok 2 than you can in Quake 2, not when you consider the great disparity in draw distance. Maybe the lighting model was more complex; your flare gun emitted a vertex light, which would indicate a lot of lighting was done realtime, whereas I'll bet most of Quake II's vertex colors were predefined.

 

[ken_masters]

A very huge portion of N64's good games came around its first year, while the PS1 started slowly but was getting huge games later. Also another problem the n64 had was that many of its AAA games didnt appeal to everyone.

Its easier to mention even more good titles for the PS1 that appealed tomore people.

There are also games on the PS1 that ran at 640x480 resolutions at 60fps.

It was obvious that the PS1 had the support and I guess better tools too.

Games that were at least technically a masterpiece to watch at were

Forsaken (for some reason I prefered PS1's crispier graphics over N64's)

Ahm... I love the N64 version of Forsaken, and this game in high res mode using the expansion 4mb memory pack, could be seriously awesome!! But I think that the N64 version looks better than the psx version :-\

 

[Nesh]

I found the N64 version a little too blurry for my tastes

 

[Quaz51]

in addition to the classic 320x240 there are many PS1 games which are 320x480 or 512x240 but i know only two 3D games which really are 512x480 (Tobal1 and Tobal2)

 

[ken_masters]

N64 version of Shadowman it's also crispiest than the PSX version.

Iguana and Prove 4EVER.

 

[swaaye]

IMO most N64 games look better than PS1 games. I really never could stand the pixelization or the perspective errors. I had a hard time figuring out what I was looking at in some games. If only N had gone with a CD-ROM things probably would've been a lot more interesting for N64.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Ironically, what was a mistake for the 90's has made the N64 a much better retro system than the Playstation IMO. I simply can't do PS1 load times, and a lot of CDs don't hold up so well around their 10th birthday or so. Nintendo's faster, more durable storage media has made it my late 90's console of choice.

 

[taucias]

I always felt the N64 was smoother/more stable but super chunky. If you compare games like Ridge Racer and Wipeout on both systems, they are superior on the PS. I think only Nintendo and Rare really did the machine justice.

 

[fearsomepirate]

If you compare games like Ridge Racer and Wipeout on both systems, they are superior on the PS.

Actually, you can't compare. N64 had bilinear filtering and perspective-correct texturing in every single game, Wipeout 64 and Ridge Racer 64 included. I think Wipeout had edge AA as well, although I don't think it had trilinear. Bilinear was a big deal in 1997, probably about as big a deal as normal mapping was in 2003.