Overclock the n64?

People always grossly overestimate the space needed for the actual game data.

 

All I know is I never saw loading times on the N64 while on the other CD consoles I did. I'm not sure about that allowing bigger worlds though. That's a matter of CPU+GPU+RAM and not of loading.

 

They weren't fast enough relative to system bandwidth to not have to load program files etc into RAM (the Atari 2600, by contrast, executed the program file directly off the cart), but I think they were a lot faster than a 2x CD.

 

Nah alot of N64 games had the liberty of constantly loading data off the cartridge almost as if it were RAM. Factor 5 were streaming level data, textures, animations, music, sound and program code on the fly for Indiana Jones.

SM64's game world plays pretty seamlessly I don't think it would be possible on CD without being redesigned. If it was so trivial we would have seen similar efforts on the other CD based consoles prior to the Dreamcast. If you look at comparable PS platform/adventure games (Crash/Spyro/Gex/Croc) they had smaller environments in comparison to similar games on N64 (Banjo/Conker/SM64), and those worlds were segmented with long load times sometimes upwards of a minute. This affected the type of gameplay in those titles they tended to be much more linear with less free roaming.

 

Remember Soul Reaver on the PS1?

Huge seemless environments.

And lets not forget Tomb Raider

But I think Soul Reaver was a more astonishing achievement

 

Honestly I'd rather have an overclocked PS1, with interpolation

Oh and higher draw distance programmed into Ace Combat 2 and 3

 

Its been some time since I played AC3, but didnt 3 have a long draw distance?

Some of the latest Namco games on the PS1 had an outstanding draw distance for the console. Ridge Racer Type 4 come in mind. That one was mindblowing

 

They're "seamless" the way Metroid Prime's were. They hid a lot of it under transitional animations. It's quite an achievement, anyway. Anyway, the transfer speed of a 2x CD-ROM (like the Playstation had) is only 300 KB/sec, so I highly doubt the N64's ROMs were anywhere near that slow...given the much shorter load times in cross-platform games, this really isn't surprising. That's not even taking into account the access time...I read somewhere the original concept had an average .34 second access time, although that would have been lowered by the time of release. Obviously, a ROM cart would be faster.

 

Again the question is not so much transfer speed, where 300 Mb/s would be quite ok with a good compression scheme. The real issue is latency. This is where solid state memory's like ROM and Flash wins big.

 

BTW, I want to add that a couple of years ago, people did in fact overclock the N64. They were able to run PD and Goldeneye at 60fps.

 

by the way, didn't PD have extra hardware in the cart?

 

No. As far as I know, no N64 cartridge has any special add-ons.

 

I think he's talking about the expansion pack which added some extra ram. I believe you couldnt play some levels of PD without it. Also games like zelda required it for the whole game if I remember right.

 

What Zelda would that be? Definitely not Ocarina of Time and I doubt Majora's Mask.

 

Majora's Mask did require the RAM expansion. Perfect Dark required the RAM expansion for one player mode, but the multiplayer maps could be played without it.

 

AC3's draw distance I'd put at about 5-6 km (~3.5 miles). ACs on the PS2 was 15 km at the most, and even AC6 on the 360 is no more than 30 km either. While AC6's draw distance was perfectly fine, I'd still like to see the 40 mile max or "unlimited visibility" that you see in flight sims on the PC.

And yes, R4 was badass on the PS1. Great draw distance, 30 FPS instead of 24, and great music to boot. I love that game

 

Oh okay, wouldn't know that about Majora's Mask, I only played it on an emulator. OoT definitely didn't need one tho

What's R4?