N64 vs Neo-Geo

[wiggyx]

Here's my receipt for Waverace 64.

I was mistaken about Shadows of the Empire. I had paid $59.99 for the title at Toys R' Us. Still, the MSRP for the launch N64 titles was $69.99. I'm pretty sure that if you were getting it cheaper somewhere else, the same could be applied to Saturn and Playstation titles. I ended up paying $59.99 for a lot of early Playstation and Saturn games at EB, because Walmart didn't carry them.

You mean Rogue Squadron?

[Jack_Burton_BYOAC]

You guys who doubt me on primitive 3d becoming a thing, just think about where the NES was in the late 90s and early 2000s. Nobody would have ever thought thought those graphics would make a comeback, but they're all over the place now.

Of course, modern "retro" looking games actually do all kinds of things that aren't possible on old hardware, but they have the feel of being old. And I'm sure the same thing will happen to 3d. The game Minecraft is already there a little bit.

[wiggyx]

Dude, Minecraft. Doesn't get too much more primitive looking than that, and people LOVE it!

[IHatedSega]

Well 8 and 16 bit graphics look like cartoons since theyre 2D, the 3D graphics are trying to look like real life mostly, so they can look really bad when they do that. Games that had 3D graphics which looked like they were being 3D cartoons instead of trying to look like what youd see out your window have aged better to me. Look at Banjo Kazooie and then look at Golden Eye.

[Kiddo]

You guys who doubt me on primitive 3d becoming a thing, just think about where the NES was in the late 90s and early 2000s. Nobody would have ever thought thought those graphics would make a comeback, but they're all over the place now.

Of course, modern "retro" looking games actually do all kinds of things that aren't possible on old hardware, but they have the feel of being old. And I'm sure the same thing will happen to 3d. The game Minecraft is already there a little bit.

Again, I repeat: One of the main factors sprite-based games have over 3D in terms of becoming a trendy fad is that they've had a sort of "definitive" appearance as a basis, and this is partly because whenever you talk about someone playing Mega Man or Super Mario Bros., if you also played that game you're certain to know what the game "looks" like. When you emulate a SNES game, it (barring inaccuracies) looks like the SNES game in question. Basically, "Anyone can play the original".

Playstation and N64 are different. Due to 32-bit era stuff onwards having things like "shader plug-ins", "Hi-def texture packs", and fixes for graphics issues that are present on hardware built into emulators (Even, to a limited extent, in official emulators used by the developers for their rereleases), you won't get the same experience running the same game on a different platform other than the original. You could theoretically be playing the same game, but the visual experience would be completely different and incompatible with the "retro" feel.

Furthermore, the fanbases for latter-gen consoles in the 32-bit and some of the following eras were much more grounded in "Graphics whores" who were obsessed with bleeding-edge tech and have abandoned these systems like a burning ship when they became "obsolete" and moved on to the PS3 or whatever their fanboyism ties are to. Those people aren't gonna take kindly to things looking like the original Battle Arena Toshinden -on purpose-. (Or worse, Bubsy 3D.)

One other thing is that 8-bit/16-bit sprites have a "simple" look to them, which most "crude 3D" does not. Remember, many 3D games tried to model characters that looked like real-life persons. Many of this stuff was popular at the time but has aged horribly, thus we'd probably be limited to the cartoony characters, of which there were notably less of in the 32/64-bit era than there was in the "Mascot with Attitude" 16-bit era.

[Gameguy]

You forgot Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. Hehehe.
I never heard about that game before, but it's also on the PS1. Looking it up on youtube....it looks somewhat playable...I guess. Apparently most reviews of this game were negative, the PS1 version got a review of 1/10 from PSM.


What about Gauntlet Legacy? I remember that one pretty well.
By Gauntlet Legacy I assume you meant Gauntlet Legends? It's not really a beat 'em up. It's like a more modern update on the original arcade Gauntlet. It's still not an exclusive either, it was on the PS1 and Dreamcast.

[kedawa]

I could see wire frame or flat-shaded polys being chic, but not PSX era 3D.

The appeal of retro 2D is the simple fact that it's sprite art as opposed to polygons.
'NES graphics' specifically have never been cool, otherwise all these retro games would be full of flickering and slowdown and have horrendous colour palettes.

PSX 3D is defined by pixelated and warped textures, and bad clipping. Nobody wants to see that just like nobody wants the flickering and slowdown of NES games.

[Doonzmore]

I never heard about that game before, but it's also on the PS1. Looking it up on youtube....it looks somewhat playable...I guess. Apparently most reviews of this game were negative, the PS1 version got a review of 1/10 from PSM.


I own both and I can vouch for those reviews. :)

[Gamevet]

You mean Rogue Squadron?


No, that would come out much later, when the price of N64 titles was around $50.


Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was one of the early titles for the N64. I reserved it at Toys R' Us during the holiday season of 96. It was one of the few titles I was excited about for the console at the time, only to be let down by the boring on-foot levels.

[Jack_Burton_BYOAC]

I could see wire frame or flat-shaded polys being chic, but not PSX era 3D.

The appeal of retro 2D is the simple fact that it's sprite art as opposed to polygons.
'NES graphics' specifically have never been cool, otherwise all these retro games would be full of flickering and slowdown and have horrendous colour palettes.

PSX 3D is defined by pixelated and warped textures, and bad clipping. Nobody wants to see that just like nobody wants the flickering and slowdown of NES games.

This is exactly what I was getting at when I said current retro games really aren't retro at all. People will take what they remember fondly and run with it .

And remember, this is talking about N64 3d, not psx. I think N64 3d is closer to what will be imitated.

Also, future emulators of the 32-bit era systems and the N64 will allow many filters, however, as pc specs continue improving it will be possible to render everything in software and achieve a good speed. In this way the emulators can become much more accurate image-wise than they are in their current hardware accelerated form.

I think when emulators for the late 90s systems become as easy to use as things like nestopia, snes9x, or even zsnes we'll start to see some more interest in exploring those systems by curious gamers who never experienced them growing up.


Man, 32-bit 3D games make my eyes hurt anymore :/

This is exactly the sort of thing people used to (and still do) say about 8-bit gaming!

[wiggyx]

No, that would come out much later, when the price of N64 titles was around $50.


Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire was one of the early titles for the N64. I reserved it at Toys R' Us during the holiday season of 96. It was one of the few titles I was excited about for the console at the time, only to be let down by the boring on-foot levels.

But it looks like your receipt says 1998 :/ Not to mention that you wrote "Rogue Squadron" on it, plus the SKU matches Rogue Squadron.

[IHatedSega]

Project64 has some issues still, but for the most part its wonderful, I love how you can just go into cheats and a lot are listed, L to levitate is my favorite cheat of all time, totally exposes what the games REALLY look like. I tried going to the Moon in Majoras Mask, but its like a rainbow. PSXfin is really awesome, theres a list of known bad games for it, but I still have 100 games on my computer I can play with it.

I wish games would come out that encompasses all types of bit eras, from Atari to N64. Itd be a trip, have all kinds of different music, and some stages where you have to run to see whats down across the valley with stuff flickering into sight, I love that about the late 90's graphics.

[Gamevet]

But it looks like your receipt says 1998 :/ Not to mention that you wrote "Rogue Squadron" on it, plus the SKU matches Rogue Squadron.

Yeah, that is the receipt for RS, but another page has Shadows of the Empire on it. These receipts are attached to paper, for an old insurance claim I had in 2000. I was posting the receipt for Waverace 64, not RS. ;)

[wiggyx]

Gotcha. Didn't see any other receipts posted, so I figured you only had the one posted.

[Ed Oscuro]

Project64 has some issues still, but for the most part its wonderful
I'm rooting for 1964 these days.

A couple things to look into:

First, Jabo released his latest plugins for 1.6 (you can read his reasons and extrapolate from there). Unfortunately he decided to release them in a format which only installs to a Project64 1.6 directory for no apparent reason. If you are using 1.6 or even 1.7 these are probably the way to go.

Secondly, early last year an "ultrafast" release of the 1964 emulator was released. It allows overclocking of the N64 which fixes speed issues in a fair number of games. I don't know 1964 very well yet, though, so the games I tried had problems (Aidyn Chronicles runs smoothly and looks amazing, with pretty sharp texture filtering compared to Jabo's on Pj64, but some textures don't render, and I can't get the output to be 4:3 aspect ratio in fullscreen view; WinBack doesn't run at all), but if your PC can run this it seems pretty awesome. Too bad it seems more involved than just changing one frequency oscillator setting, or else lots of people would have hardware modified their N64s already.

It's also pretty amazing to think that the original N64 gets away with using a fanless 100 MHz processor based on a 1995-1996 design. That was pretty quick back then - half the speed of a 200MHz Pentium available then but that needed air cooling.

[kedawa]

This is exactly what I was getting at when I said current retro games really aren't retro at all. People will take what they remember fondly and run with it .

And remember, this is talking about N64 3d, not psx. I think N64 3d is closer to what will be imitated.


Yeah, I could see a less blurry version of N64 graphics having some nostalgic appeal for kids that grew up with it.
As far as home consoles go, I pefer to remember the SNES(or TG16/Genesis) when thinking of 2D games, and Dreamcast when thinking of 3D.
Those are the consoles that really struck me as having mature technology, without all the rough edges of previous consoles.

Some of the later N64 games are nearly Dreamcast quality, especially with the expansion pak, but a lot of earlier games were a blurry mess.

[Jack_Burton_BYOAC]

It's also pretty amazing to think that the original N64 gets away with using a fanless 100 MHz processor based on a 1995-1996 design. That was pretty quick back then - half the speed of a 200MHz Pentium available then but that needed air cooling.

By coincidence, I took apart my n64 today in order to restore it after going through 4 moves and my late teens/early 20s abuse of game systems.

The heat sink inside the thing is massive.
http://i392.photobucket.com/albums/pp5/sciafb/boardN64_05.jpg

And I remember feeling the underside of the system after long sessions and it would always be extremely warm.

[wiggyx]

The most annoying part of that sink is that it's like a tray to collect dust and dirt. I've taken apart many N64s that had heat sinks full of dust and crud, which I'm sure really helped their effectiveness :/

[Ed Oscuro]

There's no fins on it either, it's like they raided a construction site for sheetrock panels or something, lol...not as much surface area as you'd get with a better design. But if you improved the heatsink design, then the question remains - where does the air go?

My original N64 (I've recounted the story here before, but it was years ago) looks pretty much like the day it was bought, despite being bounced off a concrete floor (hitting one of the corners). No damage at all. I was damn lucky with that.

I have been trying to play Aidyn Chronicles via Project64 but truth be told the game (and many other N64 games) give me migraines for a few days. I can sit in front of a LCD screen for 12 hours a day (or whatever it takes) but many N64 games just literally hurt me. I'd like to look into having the bus rate on my N64 overclocked for this reason. Maybe if I get really adventurous I'll look into some kind of "case mod" (more like get a big case that is a heatsink for the system) to solve that potential problem. (Come to think of it, someday I'd like to solve that other N64 problem - the crumbling mess that is the well-used N64 controller. I think I actually have the Hori controller for it but I'm scared to use anything too much and end up with yet another loose and vaguely useless controller).

Great system though, and very nostalgic. It's nice that the PlayStation and the N64 are miles apart in terms of the aesthetics of their games. You don't see that in games anymore - everything is pretty much the same from system to system, even increasingly similar from handhelds to regular consoles.

[Greg2600]

Great system though, and very nostalgic. It's nice that the PlayStation and the N64 are miles apart in terms of the aesthetics of their games. You don't see that in games anymore - everything is pretty much the same from system to system, even increasingly similar from handhelds to regular consoles.

Great point that most ignore. They want one system to have been perfect, with every game possible.