Was the CPU in the N64 more powerful or less powerful than the CPU used by the KI/KI2 Arcade board? What's the difference between the two CPUs?
How much more expensive was KI's CPU than the N64's one?
The CPU for the N64 is an SGI/MIPS R4300i @ 93.75 MHz.
System16 (the website, not the namco arcade board) says that the CPU on the KI/KI2 Arcade board was some kind of R4600 @ 50 MHz.
Was the N64's CPU powerful enough to run KI2 off its CPU alone? If so, then what's up with KI Gold and the fact that it uses the N64's reality coprocessor?
I hope you are also aware that KI1 was ported to SNES, that had a CPU running at 3.67Mhz...
Basically Killer Instinct is a pre-rendered movie game where the player manipulates the limited movie animations, there is nothing real time about it what you saw was constant video footage, think of it as a super duper arcade system that instead of handling digitized sprites like Mortal Kombat it was a fluid movie that was being handled.
also the animations mostly in video type form were designed to fill a hard drive as a storage medium the theory is that yes the N64's hardware could handle and arcade perfect port of KI 1 or 2 as long as you could fit it into a cartridge however the maximum cartridge size that the N64 was limited to was 64MB (512 Mbit) IIRC for shipping games in its last years, if you recall Resident Evil 2 was a 2 CD game on Playstation yet it was compressed and complete in a 64MB cartridge yet it too alot of programming and the game came out years after the original.
Also the N64 CPU could be programmed in the standard SGI microcodes which most games were made or the "custom microcode" mode for more performance but games using this advanced custom microcode programming probably close to assembly like only reached retail in the last years of the N64's lifecycle, a lifecycle that was in the middle of the Sega jumping first to a new generation in 1998 and 1999 (some say the reason why the 64DD was eventually dropped) and Sony having to follow suit with PS2 announced in early 1999 so weeks later Nintendo revealed they were going to make a new console as well.
What I mean is that again an arcade perfect version of KI 1 and 2 could definetly be made possible on N64 as long as custom microcode were to be used and the cartridges were 64MB in size.
However here is the main problem with that:
1: Nintendo chose to please hungry fans or cash in by making a SNES version and fans generaly did not care, they bought the game, it sold millions, many people still play this version on their SNES even to this day.
2: Under the pressure to have KI soon on the new N64 to capitalize on the fans (there was a little backlash though in the media because people started to realize the game was not realtime) so RARE made KI2 Gold as a mix of polygons and the prerendered sprites... we can infer that polygon backgrounds were chosen to give in to the critisizim of the game being prerendered but it does not matter because the game was made very early into the lifecycle of the N64.
3: Appart from the competition (Sony selling tons of PSXs and Sega jumping out of Saturn and to a new gen with DC) Nintendo and RARE were just too busy making games in that kept progressing to as much real time 3d polygons as possible so if all of a sudden they were to say lets make an arcade perfect version of a game that was already played it would have gotten in the way of other projects.
BTW World Driver Championship used custom microcode, was released in 1999, unfortunatly did not have licensed vehicles but boasted 640x480 resolution WITHOUT the 4MB expansion pack and had relatively higher polygon counts than other N64 and PSX's best racing effort Gran Turismo. Unfortunately I don't know how much that game sold thought most N64 big games sold over a million usually and I also don't know what the cartridge size was of the top of my head.
So again as long as you keep in mind how full motion video cutscenes of a 2 CD game port to cartridge like RE2, you throw custom microcode, time and willingness, hell the 4MB expansion cart and a 64MB cartridge the N64 can do it in theory.
However since it did not, it did not so most people will simply say no its not possible because we never saw it.
keep in mind that KIGold was released as a near launch title in 1996 severely limiting the cartrige size it could use due to the fact that it was all new and still expensive.
Also keep in mind that when the 4MB expansion pack was released it was slowly used, first optionally and then in a few big gun games it was required.
The SGI microcode was the easy to develop for standard tools on the N64 and the custom microcode was new and showed up years later obviously so alot of devs did not use (Boss Studios, RARE and Factor 5 being the few) it and those that did were very bold, I don't know if Nintendo's EAD team chose that route but the custom microcode games have proven to be a hassle for N64 emulators meaning that the custom code was really using the N64 much more specificaly.
The 64MB cartridges were only used on big gun games that were either huge franchises, Zelda Majoras Mask, Donkey Kong 64, or games that were expected to be received with huge sales coming from PS platform like Resident Evil 2 port and the planned but cancelled and later sent to Gamecube Resident Evil Zero.
These big carts were also very expensive to make, thats why they were matched with big name games that did indeed sell millions of copies but it did not matter because...
Sega dropped the Saturn and tried to get a head start with what eventually became Dreamcast, a baddly kept secret (public knowledge in 1997), neither Sony nor Nintendo were simply going to allow their competitor to gain a considerable lead so they did what they had to and because Sega went to 1GB Discs, Sony went to DVD-Roms and Nintendo knowing that cartridges were just going to not keep up, decided to go with a custom Mini DVD like format and by that time Microsoft bought RARE so KI is currently dead.
I know I went through history but I hope you understand why I did, I felt it was better to explain it this way then wait for a technical answer that might have fuzzy memory or point to a arbitrary hardware limitation that does not explain or fails to explain why so many high quality titles were made on that console.
Maybe (in theory) if the 4MB+64MB carts+custom microcode would have been standardized and the N64's lifecycle would have been extended (by Sega sticking to Saturn) we might have seen what a SM64 sequel, a Pilotwings 64 sequel a StarFox 64 sequel, etc but this is banking on these games being sold out in the multi million copies as they were still going to be much more expensive to make.
