The Nintendo 64 thread!

[Ed Oscuro]

Wrong number? No answer to what? The guy who keeps interrupting the N64 thread with off-topic whiny garbage?

You're special, congrats.

P.S. way to walk back your defense of the PS2 with that "well it had a better port of Gauntlet Dark Legacy."

[Obiwanshinobi]

Answer to: what platform had car games that YOU thought looked better than what YOU thought looked best on the PS2 before 2005. At least one example.
(I believe some PC games did, but then there's a question what kind of PC you needed to make them look better and perform well.)
If you don't wanna continue here, but want to have the last word or two, make it "PM sent" or something along those lines.

[Ed Oscuro]

Answer to: what platform had car games that YOU thought looked better than what YOU thought looked best on the PS2 before 2005.

Oh you mean that topic that I obviously wasn't responding to? Yeah sorry to keep you hanging for nearly a page on that one. I'll get back to you on that. Also gonna sell you a bridge real soon, just wait a while longer

Whether you liked it or not, this is not the "find some angle to support the PS2" thread, this is the N64 thread. There's not just "two people" in the thread staying on-topic, either.

Also, Extreme-G 2 is good fun, you should try it sometime

[Obiwanshinobi]

You know all too well that the thread about N64 (games; count 'em all) is 6 pages long not because I have so little to tell about N64 games, but because the machine misfired miserably so the lads had to perform the rituals. Could be as well "the Xbox in Japan" thread and would've ended up the same.

[Marc]

I.S.S. '98. Best footy game ever.

[louisg]

You know all too well that the thread about N64 (games; count 'em all) is 6 pages long not because I have so little to tell about N64 games, but because the machine misfired miserably so the lads had to perform the rituals. Could be as well "the Xbox in Japan" thread and would've ended up the same.

I don't think so-- it wasn't a huge success, and it failed hard with 3rd party devs, but it had enough firsts to make it an interesting subject and an important system in console history. There are a handful of good games for it that could be discussed in most detail. I didn't mean to help derail the thread-- the only reason I went off on the tangent was that it seemed interesting for a couple posts, but quickly devolved into PS2 vs. DC fanboyism. Sorry!

I'd love to learn more about the architecture of the N64-- it seems like a confused mess, but an interesting confused mess. There's an odd look to the games which is strangely endearing.

Regarding the texture cache, this seems interesting to me because I think a lot of the games did have much better textures than that. I wonder if it involved multiple passes or something, because the framerate was often so low on those games, that'd make sense.

I'll totally check out Extreme-G 2.

[Skykid]

Answer to: what platform had car games that YOU thought looked better than what YOU thought looked best on the PS2 before 2005. At least one example.

Fuck your fucking PS2! This is an N64 thread! Go and play Michael Jordan in the Windy City and other such remarkable games.

[EmperorIng]

Answer to: what platform had car games that YOU thought looked better than what YOU thought looked best on the PS2 before 2005. At least one example.

Fuck your fucking PS2! This is an N64 thread! Go and play Michael Jordan in the Windy City and other such remarkable games.

I'm actually considering getting Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City as a sort of joke present for my older brother this Christmas.

I really need to beat Mischief Makers one of these days too. When I found it in a used game shop for $7.00, I excitedly snapped it up. Then again I haven't really hooked up my N64 in a loooong time.

[KAI]

Played Ridge Racer Revolution. Things like this shit are giving me the impression that N64 players didn't care about good physics and mechanics on their driving games.

[Jonathan Ingram]

Played Ridge Racer Revolution. Things like this shit are giving me the impression that N64 players didn't care about good physics and mechanics on their driving games.

???

The N64 Ridge Racer game is called Ridge Racer 64. Revolution was for the PSX.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I don't think so-- it wasn't a huge success, and it failed hard with 3rd party devs, but it had enough firsts to make it an interesting subject and an important system in console history.

Interesting for sure. In the cold light of XXI-st century, the difference between PSX and Saturn games is smaller than between SNES and MD/Genesis games. N64 looks like the most "leftfield" console since Vectrex and I wonder whether it really was underpowered, or the idea of 3D gaming developers had was all wrong.
Model 1 games look timelessly attractive to me and I doubt any texture mapping was neccessary back then to make nice looking 3D at decent speed. I hope we'll see more purely polygonal (cel-shaded maybe) and voxel graphics in the future.

[KAI]

Ups sorry, I mean 64. I've been playing Revolution to compare mechanics.

[null1024]

Regarding the texture cache, this seems interesting to me because I think a lot of the games did have much better textures than that. I wonder if it involved multiple passes or something, because the framerate was often so low on those games, that'd make sense.

I'll totally check out Extreme-G 2.

I'm pretty sure quite a few games do multiple passes. Fat lot of good it did. More textured objects, but the textures were still absolutely tiny and the games ran at sub-30fps most of the time as a result.
Then again, S&P clearly has to be using multiple passes and doesn't run like dogshit, so eh. Might just be late-gen magic.


also, I never liked XG2, the tracks didn't feel like they flowed nicely

Ups sorry, I mean 64. I've been playing Revolution to compare mechanics.

RR64 has the option to enable classic Ridge Racer drifting. I've barely played it though.
also, RR:R is amazing

[BryanM]

the idea of 3D gaming developers had was all wrong.

We're honestly talking about an era that was barely more mighty than the original Star Fox. It really is comparable to the Atari 2600 in its prowess. That the stylized look so prevalent on the 64 doesn't look like horseshit today, I'd say they were better on average than the competition when it came to making worlds within the limits of the hardware of the day.

I was always amused by Silent Hill exploiting the same problem in the opposite way. "We can't have a deep draw distance with geometry this complex? That's 'aight. We'll fog the shit out of this thing. But it won't be ordinary fog - this'll be super spooky shit-your-pants fog."

As opposed to Turok fog. No wonder Mario 64 was so freaking great. You could see forever.

Speaking of Turok, talk about franchises that only survived one generation, like Battle Arena Toshinden. Wikipedia says a reboot was launched in 2008, but I know I didn't feel it or care. It kind of feels like that era had more of these things than average (Crash Bandicoot to a lesser extent, for example), kind of a massively toned down wild west from the 2600 era.

Then again it may be selective bias. Vectorman and the most terrifying survival horror game ever, Ecco, were a kind of two/threeish and done kind of deal too.

But please don't say that levels only have 4K worth of data for textures, that's just silly.

But how will I rile up sperglords without saying ludicrous things that can be disproven by the first 2 polygons in M64?

Pi is exactly 3.

6 pages long

Precisely the sum size of all vertex data in the entirety of the N64 catalogue put together.

[KAI]

There's a Toshinden game for Wii and there's Turok for PS2/XBOX/GC/PC/PS3/360.

[BryanM]

Oh I just remembered this hack I've been... well, very slowly playing. Like one star every six months.

Super Mario 64: Star Road. It isn't completely terrible and it's more Mario 64. What more could you want?

There's a Toshinden game for Wii.

THE VIRTUAL CONSOLE DOESN'T COUNT.

[R79]

I'd argue that the second Shenmue game was pretty flickery and jaggy :/

It might be lower res or even framerate than what we have today, but the graphics were smooth, intricate and astounding, especially stood next to anything on PS2 at the time. Go fire up your Dreamcast and check it out

PS1? That system got interesting to me around the time of RE2, which this century I only ever played on... a Dreamcast. The Namco conversions didn't interest me at the time, as I had access to the arcade cabinets. The Capcom 2D ports on it? Don't ask.
Nice little machine for Zanac Neo, Gradius Gaiden and a few SquareSoft games though, hardly any of which ever got a shot on PAL format.

Anyone ever played Beetle Adventure Racing or Excitebike 64? Forgot I had those tucked away in a box, with some other loose carts.
Personally, I was blown away by Perfect Dark (with the add-on pack) at the time, and waited long and hard for it, lol
By then though, Joe Gamer was all on that Sony dripfeed: a situation that continued until Microsoft got really $erious about the console market.

[KAI]

[BryanM]

The worst port of a Queen's Blade game ever.

[louisg]

I'd argue that the second Shenmue game was pretty flickery and jaggy :/

It might be lower res or even framerate than what we have today, but the graphics were smooth, intricate and astounding, especially stood next to anything on PS2 at the time. Go fire up your Dreamcast and check it out

Nah, the resolution is the same as the Wii's and the framerate was good, it's just that I thought when it came to the models, textures, and audio, that the same level of care wasn't taken as with the first game. I think the flicker comes from all the brick textures when viewed on an interlaced display (with no mip-mapping I think..?). The first game I think is a lot smoother, and I remember wondering that before I booted it up again. It makes sense-- the first game was years in development and was expensive enough to destroy Sega. The second one came out a year (or less?) later.

Anyone ever played Beetle Adventure Racing or Excitebike 64? Forgot I had those tucked away in a box, with some other loose carts.
Personally, I was blown away by Perfect Dark (with the add-on pack) at the time

I was disappointed that Excitebike 64 was more sim-like. I think they nailed it with ExciteTruck, but in the N64's day, realism was all the rage and Excitebike 64 paid the price- I can't think of anything that really sets it apart aside from rather nice graphics.

I remember hearing that Beetle Adventure Racing was like a good version of Cruis'n. What'd you think of it?

Perfect Dark-- definitely good looking, and it came pretty close to what people were experiencing on much more powerful systems. The graphics were great, with reflective glass, good-looking models (in contrast to the more-obviously polygon people in games like Goldeneye or Quake), and it packed tons of detail without having a much worse framerate than other N64 games. Sure, the outdoors parts were shameful, but the indoors areas ran fine by the (admittedly not great) standards of the day.

I wasn't a fan of how they did some of the missions though.

For example, on hard, the first level has a part where you have to blind enemies by finding and flipping a light switch in a dark room. I could never find the switch, and you only have a couple seconds to locate it before you die and have to replay the mission. I'm not sure how you'd figure out that this is what you had to do without a FAQ-- there's no foreshadowing afair. The same level has a part where you have to shoot down a chopper using a rocket launcher, which is really the sole reason the launcher exists. It plays like the Dragon's Lairization of a previously open genre, which is a shame. I preferred GoldenEye, Doom 1, and Heretic which let you run around and explore to the more cinematic and scripted-out FPS games that were more towards a "do the right thing or die" design.

Goldeneye in particular I think has an underappreciated single player mode. Everyone talks about deathmatch, but let's face it: It's not as good as any of the PC deathmatch games. BUT: It came out at the time that Quake 2 ruled the PC world, and brought back the dense number of enemies and gunfights which had been missing from FPS games since they went full polygon, due to system limitations at the time. Quake 1 and 2 are downright bland by comparison.

Not only that, but it was mission-oriented in a way that action FPS games just weren't at the time, and it did it well without sacrificing gameplay. The control options were also very good-- I particularly like the off-center aiming scheme which feels a lot more natural than the nose-gun approach. IIRC, Goldeneye also had the zoom-in-for-accuracy thing which ended up being in every subsequent console FPS.

The whole game taken together seems like a step in the evolution of FPS games that's missed when following just the PC games or just the console games. Man, now I want to fire this up when I get home.

Shame about the bugs

EDIT: Oops, looks like Goldeneye came out a few months before Quake 2. Pretty impressive! What is interesting about that is that G.E. defaulted to full 3d control. With Quake 1, you had to edit a config file and specify +mlook-- the only options presented to the user in the menu only enabled you to look with the mouse if you hit or held a key, and it'd snap back when you started to move. I think that'd mean that G.E. would be the first home release to offer controls like this (GunBuster was the first, but that's arcade).

[R79]

GE one player was a masterpiece IMO. The speed runs for the cheats gave the game serious longevity. Taken as a whole, it has to be one of the very best games of the '90s.
I must've rented out about three Halo games now, and never even touched the 'campaign' modes.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I think Project I.G.I. and XIII on the PC and Urban Chaos: Riot Response on consoles owe Goldeneye a thing of two. Not sure if TimeSplitters are anywhere near mechanically, but the sub-genre is latent rather than dead.

[louisg]

I don't think so-- it wasn't a huge success, and it failed hard with 3rd party devs, but it had enough firsts to make it an interesting subject and an important system in console history.

Interesting for sure. In the cold light of XXI-st century, the difference between PSX and Saturn games is smaller than between SNES and MD/Genesis games. N64 looks like the most "leftfield" console since Vectrex and I wonder whether it really was underpowered, or the idea of 3D gaming developers had was all wrong.
Model 1 games look timelessly attractive to me and I doubt any texture mapping was neccessary back then to make nice looking 3D at decent speed. I hope we'll see more purely polygonal (cel-shaded maybe) and voxel graphics in the future.

Oh! I wanted to chime in on this too. That generation was full of so much flailing. It makes sense: before that gen, 3d games really just meant flight and car simulators, with few exceptions. Better 3d cameras, better culling techniques (smartly chopping out scenery without lots of pop-up)-- all that seemed to come later. The fact that Saturn and N64 hardware were so confused points to that the flailing wasn't all on the software side, too.

I agree that, for many situations, the PSX/Saturn difference isn't very big unless you're comparing to the last year or so of PSX. Even looking at a 3rd party game like RayStorm, as far as I can tell the big difference is that the PSX version tears while the Saturn one frame drops, and the PSX one has translucencies while the Saturn one does not. Though I guess the counterpoint might be a game like Burning Rangers which flickers like crazy attempting to bring the Saturn to PSX-level detail. I don't think anything on PSX was that flickery.

You'd think that, with Saturn, Sega might've said "hey, let's make a really scaled-down version of model 2" instead of the mess they came out with! And yeah, flat shaded with very limited texturing would've looked a lot cleaner in most cases.

[Ed Oscuro]

But please don't say that levels only have 4K worth of data for textures, that's just silly.

But how will I rile up sperglords without saying ludicrous things that can be disproven by the first 2 polygons in M64?

Pi is exactly 3.

just kidding, that pic is for obiwank

[Ganelon]

Anyone ever played Beetle Adventure Racing or Excitebike 64? Forgot I had those tucked away in a box, with some other loose carts.

Beetle Adventure Racing is a solid casual racer. It looks nice, is easy to play, and has some decent casual replayability with hidden paths and collecting. The elephant in the room? You can only race in Beetles; there's a healthy selection of them but the car adored by Hitler as well as hippies certainly doesn't do it for me. I recall the game getting a lot of solid reviews in its day but it's definitely not for the serious racing fan. For that, I'd point back to Midway's WDC (not to be confused with Ocean's mediocre MRC).

[Ed Oscuro]

the car adored by Hitler as well as hippies

Designed by Hitler, actually (although his sketch looks kind of like a kubelwagen...)

uh oh, Godwin's law!

N64-Hitler connection has been established.
I bet his ghost is responsible for that 4K texture cache limit. Maybe that's why Nintendo was so harsh on iD Software releases up until the N64...

[Ganelon]

Well, I was hoping to avoid a potential argument about how Hitler only authorized such a vehicle instead of designing it and how the concept of the Bug was stolen, fully invented by Porsche, commissioned from an unknown designer, came from an N64 sent back to the past, etc. but I'll be happy to let you take those folks on.

[KAI]

How many of you guys have played on a real N64?

[louisg]

How many of you guys have played on a real N64?

(raises hand)

I think though it is one of those systems that can benefit a lot from emulators-- and I'm usually one to insist on the opposite! Crisp edges, high resolution, and in some cases I've noticed a much higher framerate for some reason (I guess the emulator is cranking at full speed and most games are coded not to care..?). Try Rush 2049 on an emulator. Very impressive.

[EmperorIng]

How many of you guys have played on a real N64?

Psh, I remember the Christmas Eve when our family got one.

We had ourselves Ocarina of Time, Mario Kart 64, Mario Tennis, and Goldeneye. Starfox, JetForce Gemini, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and a few others came later. I don't think our entire library ever went past 15 or so games!

I have actually never played Mario 64. With the later Mario titles, I really doubt I need to.

It's funny to say, though, that our SNES still got regular use during that time all the way up to the Gamecube generation. It was about at that time, you could say, we finally had enough games to actually compete with the longevity of the SNES library!