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[alucard0712_rus]

I'd like to like Nintendo but cartridges killed it for me. No textures - no win.
Also hated PS for texture warping, lol.

 

[ReBurn]

Dude, no, that thread is the worst place to get informed about the N64. Sega 16 members are absolutely biased agaist the console and will scratch the bottom of the barrel to find things to say against it.

Yet, they didn't even know Wipeout on their beloved Saturn run at 20 fps.

It was a good forum a long time ago where some knowlegable members would share technical info but they left and its been just a Sega fanboy pit for a while now.

I wouldn't hold Wipeout at 20 FPS against Saturn in a comparison with N64. The frame rate of this game is hardly an indictment of the hardware. The truth is that N64 was also a strong contender for 20 FPS chugfest champion and Wipeout 64 slowed down in multiplayer like a lot of multiplayer games. So many N64 games had slowdown, even top titles like Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time and Mario 64. Frame rates weren't scrutinized then like they are now. We kind of accepted it as part of the transition to 3D polygons from 2D sprites.

But you're right. A sega enthusiast forum is no place to get info on N64 or it's games.

 

[Trimesh]

and it's a bit exaggerated about Saturn not being able to do "true" transparencies.

I think "only usable under limited conditions" is a better description - but the conditions were sufficiently limited that even a lot of highly competent developers decided not to bother. The basic issue is that the Saturn texture scaling does quite large amounts of overdraw - with a fully opaque texture you can't see this because whatever was written last wins (although it sometimes causes texture shimmer with a moving camera) - but with blending turned on the results were pretty ugly because the blending effect was applied multiple times and the more times it was applied the less of the background color remained. The worst case was when dealing with a degenerate quad with two coincident vertices - as you got closer to the merged vertices the overdraw rate went up and the transparency effect got weaker.

If you were using a texture that only used a shear transformation, it rendered OK because each pixel was only being written once. But a lot of developers (IMO, quite reasonably) just threw their hands in the air and decided to use screen door transparency on the 3D stuff and only use HW transparency for the BGs since that worked without problems.

 

[nkarafo]

Growing up with N64, I can confirm that most of the games did not age well imho.

It's only one game but Doom 64 is the most well aged game from that whole generarion IMO. Perfect 30 fps frame rate, sharp graphics and textures and the best use of the Doom engine oficially, ouside modern source engines ofc.

There are a few other games that aged well. Banjo-Kazooie has a nice balance of good enough frame rate, good textures and architecture. F-Zero X is still as fluid as ever and controls feel much tighter than GX IMO. Graphics are simple yes but that doesnt prevent it from being a well aged game.

Most N64 games will benefit from a CRT, more so than PSX or Saturn. On a modern display the N64 faires the worst. But on a CRT, Banjo-Kazooie might as well be the best looking game of that generation.

 

[nkarafo]

I wouldn't hold Wipeout at 20 FPS against Saturn in a comparison with N64. The frame rate of this game is hardly an indictment of the hardware.

I didnt say it was. Neither it does for the N64. I pointed out the lack of knowledge by the Sega 16 members for their favorite console. They were so eager to point out how some N64 games like Wave Race run at 20 fps but when they learned Wipeout on Saturn also does run like so it was like a red pill moment for them.

 

[teezzy]

It's only one game but Doom 64 is the most well aged game from that whole generarion IMO. Perfect 30 fps frame rate, sharp graphics and textures and the best use of the Doom engine oficially, ouside modern source engines ofc.

There are a few other games that aged well. Banjo-Kazooie has a nice balance of good enough frame rate, good textures and architecture. F-Zero X is still as fluid as ever and controls feel much tighter than GX IMO. Graphics are simple yes but that doesnt prevent it from being a well aged game.

Most N64 games will benefit from a CRT, more so than PSX or Saturn. On a modern display the N64 faires the worst. But on a CRT, Banjo-Kazooie might as well be the best looking game of that generation.

Yeah Banjo Kazooie is tight. Conker too

I still have a soft spot for Jet Force Gemini after all these years

Among my favorites

 

[Gameplaylover]

Growing up with N64, I can confirm that most of the games did not age well imho. This includes fan favorites like Mario Kart 64 and the original Smash Bros.

N64 games didn't age very well. I love NES/SNES games and even 90s Build Engine Shooters or DOOM and so on, but N64 are tough to play for me.

 

[Kilau]

Hey, did you guys know that the PSX was the first CD player ever?!

Wonder who’s alt that was.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Is that even a question? That what started PlayStation's unprecedented domination.

 

[Kenpachii]

n64 not even close.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

PS2 graphic wise succeeded partly to the support but the other and very important part was that the system had the capability for displaying those effects it was very difficult to use but the capabilities are there and developer little by little exploited most of it, is not enough to give support to a system the system requires something on it to achieve the desired effects and performance, in saturn case it was difficult to use but only to obtain a subpar result(in 3d) in most cases compared to playstation,

Well I think in a lot of cases it came down to the developer. Sega's own 1P efforts, the ones that weren't rushed, were up there with the best 3D PlayStation games from 1995-1997 and in some cases exceeded them. VF2 was the best-looking and running 3D fighter on the market for a while from a technical POV, and had higher resolution than any PS1 game. Internal efforts like Clockwork Knight were visually as good as early 2.5D platformers on PS1, etc.

The problem was that only Sega's 1P studios had best SDK access at the start, and most of their internal teams were more accustomed to parallel processing, especially the arcade studios like AM2 (who made the much-improved SGL 2.0 SDK for later 1995 that eventually got out to 3P devs). I'm well aware that certain 3D effects that were automated on PS1, like transparencies and certain lighting effects, you had to put in more work to get them on Saturn. I also know that there were pipeline issues with the dual CPU approach since they couldn't both access the bus simultaneously, and other things like that.

But, not every subpar 3D game on Saturn was purely due to the hardware, considering a lot of them were from 3P devs who prioritized PS1 in part due to its design and in part due to "Sony money" currying favor with the publishers who then dictated what the teams would focus on. Because, again, the hardware itself was very capable of 3D in the right hands when you look at 1P efforts; there was very little on the market for ANY market that matched the visuals of PD Zwei in 1996, for example.

there were interesting ideas like the infinite planes, but there were a lot of resources wasted in the way the quads get together wasting fillrate, saturn while relied on multi processing it wasnt the only console to do that, other earlier consoles also used many processors, even in playstation we saw very amazing at the time effects such as a video in the background with 3d graphics on top that requires multi processing too,

This isn't what I meant by parallel processing. I purely meant in terms of the CPU; Saturn was one of the earliest home consoles that implemented dual CPU architectures for parallel processing, something that didn't become standard in gaming hardware until consoles like the 360 and PS3 two generations later, using their implementation of what'd eventually become known as multicore CPU designs as established by Intel with their Core series.

Multicore would prove to be the better means of implementing parallel processing designs, but if you wanted that in the '90s, you needed to network multiple CPUs together and Sega had more experience there than any other platform holder. What you're referring to isn't parallel processing in the way it's used in the computing field, because the GPU, audio etc. are peripheral processors that need to be instructed by the CPU in order to do anything, and all of those other examples you listed have only one central processing unit.

ps2 was a difficult to use console because it was radically different in its way of doing 3d, but it had a clear idea of what it wanted to achieve and had paths to use it in an easy way and others more complex, in saturn it appear as a mismatch and by some interviews of the time it appear it was a lot of different engineers wanting to put something on it just for the sake of it, it has very memorable games and is a good system but oh boy it has lot of problems

Its design problems are somewhat exaggerated though. The biggest things that hurt Saturn dev were Sega not nurturing a strong enough SDK environment early on; unlike systems like the Jaguar the Saturn actually had all of its processor elements completed and functioning as intended. They also provided all hardware documentation so devs could learn each chip explicitly. But, that meant they would be spending a lot of time in assembly language.

Sony liberated dev work on that front because they leveraged C as the main programming language for PS1, and had that sorted out from the get-go when it came to the SDK. But back to Sega, the idea they just "threw in" a bunch of extra chips with no rhyme or reason is ridiculous; you can point to various interviews all you want but also keep in mind corporate politics was in play and if certain programmers felt that throwing Sega under the bus could, for their publisher, net them sweeter deals with Sony, well then that's the kind of thing they would exaggerate. There's an EA dev infamously (and wrongly) claiming that Daytona USA (the rushed, buggy original) was the limit of Saturn's ability and that its theoretical polygonal limit was 60,000 polygons (which is obviously false).

Those were the kind of statements certain devs did back in the day, but you can't take all of them at face value. And all the same, there are other developers who have said great things working on the Saturn hardware. It's also wrong to claim that they had no vision with the hardware design; Sega thought that 2D would stick around as a mainstream draw for another generation. They knew getting great 3D hardware into a home console that era would be expensive, and figured 3D wouldn't be "good enough" until you could get tech like the Model 2 into a home console at an affordable price. Considering how awful many of the 3D games that gen have aged from a technical POV, Sega were right. However, they underestimated the market's demand for home 3D gaming, and underestimated Sony's ability to hype them up for it.

do you have any idea of how the game internally work in order to do those transparencies?, they are extremely important because the game is everything about translucent fire any third party at the time in their place will simply cancel the game or move it to playstation

Ill search for a video that explains

I've seen LowScoreBoy's video on Saturn transparencies, if that's the vid you're trying to link. And, I know what you're talking about in general. However, it doesn't change the fact that the Saturn could do "true" transparencies with a bit of extra work. There are games on the system like MegaMan 8 which make a lot of use of true transparency effects, getting the hang of it for 3D games required managing the ordering of displays between VDP1 and VDP2 because IIRC, any pixel generated through the VDP1 framebuffer would overwrite one in the same place drawn by the VDP2 framebuffer.

But, the VDP2 supported multiple scrolling layers, I think part of the trick was to use one of the foreground-most layers to do a transparency effect and then do something else with what VDP1 generated. I'll look back at the video sometime to see what they said. Still though, the hardware grunt was there to do the effect and with CRT displays of the time even dithered "fake" transparencies worked like real ones due to properties of those displays, you just needed to handle more of the grunt work in software via one of the CPUs.

I think "only usable under limited conditions" is a better description - but the conditions were sufficiently limited that even a lot of highly competent developers decided not to bother. The basic issue is that the Saturn texture scaling does quite large amounts of overdraw - with a fully opaque texture you can't see this because whatever was written last wins (although it sometimes causes texture shimmer with a moving camera) - but with blending turned on the results were pretty ugly because the blending effect was applied multiple times and the more times it was applied the less of the background color remained. The worst case was when dealing with a degenerate quad with two coincident vertices - as you got closer to the merged vertices the overdraw rate went up and the transparency effect got weaker.

If you were using a texture that only used a shear transformation, it rendered OK because each pixel was only being written once. But a lot of developers (IMO, quite reasonably) just threw their hands in the air and decided to use screen door transparency on the 3D stuff and only use HW transparency for the BGs since that worked without problems.

Thanks for the explanation. There was definitely some fussing-about to do transparency effects ("true" transparency, should add) on Saturn compared to PS1, but if a developer wanted to craft up a software-based solution, they could.

The dot mesh/screen door approach for faking transparencies wasn't necessarily a bad one in and of itself, it played well with the natural softening and slight blurring of lower-resolution CRT televisions of the day. Was it a compromise and not forward-thinking, though? Yes.

 

[Alexios]

Well I think in a lot of cases it came down to the developer. Sega's own 1P efforts, the ones that weren't rushed, were up there with the best 3D PlayStation games from 1995-1997 and in some cases exceeded them. VF2 was the best-looking and running 3D fighter on the market for a while from a technical POV, and had higher resolution than any PS1 game. Internal efforts like Clockwork Knight were visually as good as early 2.5D platformers on PS1, etc.

I think, as shown in the "Most impressive 3D-Games for the Sega Saturn" thread, it wasn't just about huge/first party productions but simply the level of know how, talent and care of the studio involved in a game's development. Many of Saturn's great looking games are by smaller companies and teams. Not that they reach peak performance and leave the best of PlayStation in the dust (like most PlayStation games don't do that either), but good, solid games with good, solid graphics that on the whole don't look like they come from a different generation as some people seem to believe.

Multiplatform games that were quickly ported by random teams never utilized the strengths of the hardware and worked around the limits of the original production that likely targeted Sony after its sales spikes. The same goes for the N64 where, for one example, even though the system could render large polygon surfaces without a huge hit in performance (leading to the great vistas of games like OoT) a port would still utilize the arrangement of a PlayStation game that divided even flat ground to smaller chunks of triangles because size did affect performance on it and nobody was going to remake it all. Also, PlayStation didn't standardize technologies, Sony simply happened to choose things that later became standard in a period (during the design of these systems) where 3D tech was in flux (arcades by SEGA that trumped anything and some PC GPUs used quads etc.).

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Alexios Agreed, and WRT the porting stuff, a lot of people think Capcom handled the Saturn port of RE1 internally but in reality that was farmed out to another company, Tose IIRC, because Capcom had no 3D experience on Saturn (which is evident when you look at Final Fight Revenge).

I wouldn't go as far as to say PS1 didn't help standardize some things; stuff like CD-ROM were already trending, that's true. But the way the system handled certain stuff in hardware like transparency effects was novel, other systems had a harder time doing that type of thing. There's also the way devs like Naughty Dog structured data on the disc of games like Crash Bandicoot which was pretty novel, I think Mark Cerny (he assisted in development of that game IIRC) talked about it and there was something mentioned either by him or someone else at Sony on how it was, in its way, an early testing of data structuring they've built upon for the PS5's SSD I/O.

But your points about how budgets, lead platforms and development constraints enforced by publishers, often hindered 3P ports to Saturn (and N64) leaving a lot of performance on the table, is absolutely true. That happened a lot.

 

[polybius80]

Well I think in a lot of cases it came down to the developer. Sega's own 1P efforts, the ones that weren't rushed, were up there with the best 3D PlayStation games from 1995-1997 and in some cases exceeded them. VF2 was the best-looking and running 3D fighter on the market for a while from a technical POV, and had higher resolution than any PS1 game. Internal efforts like Clockwork Knight were visually as good as early 2.5D platformers on PS1, etc.

The problem was that only Sega's 1P studios had best SDK access at the start, and most of their internal teams were more accustomed to parallel processing, especially the arcade studios like AM2 (who made the much-improved SGL 2.0 SDK for later 1995 that eventually got out to 3P devs). I'm well aware that certain 3D effects that were automated on PS1, like transparencies and certain lighting effects, you had to put in more work to get them on Saturn. I also know that there were pipeline issues with the dual CPU approach since they couldn't both access the bus simultaneously, and other things like that.

its debatable but at the time the best looking fightiung game was considered to be battle arena toshinden the scenes in VF2(and tekken) were very poor in comparrison, I suggest you to read the game press of the era from america and japan they directly compared it to VF2(saturn version) and tekken and considered toshinden the better looking game

But, not every subpar 3D game on Saturn was purely due to the hardware, considering a lot of them were from 3P devs who prioritized PS1 in part due to its design and in part due to "Sony money" currying favor with the publishers who then dictated what the teams would focus on. Because, again, the hardware itself was very capable of 3D in the right hands when you look at 1P efforts; there was very little on the market for ANY market that matched the visuals of PD Zwei in 1996, for example.

PD2 Zwei is an on rail shooter and even then its visuals arent as good as warhawk(free movement) to give an example, you can speak about its awesome music, lore, art and design were top notch at the time but not its graphics or its tech were better than other games on the market

sorry but what you mean by this?:

part due to its design and in part due to "Sony money"

so if the game is not as good then sony paid the dev? sorry but this sounds as a very poor argument you said "very little in the market compared to PD2 Zwei(1996)" but you obviously missed games like warhawk(1995) it indicates you are unaware of what was in the industry at the time and then you claim sony paid developers when "the system design wasnt a problem", how you determine when the system is not a problem or if dev couldnt come up with a solution or every other problem in game development?, how you know sony paid developers on every other case? sorry but sound as a baseless accusation akin to a fanboy and I am surprised you dont accuse nintedo too since Yamauchi was in office back then and we know how he pressed third party specially during the master system era

the technical problems of the saturn are well known you can read about it

Questions about Sega Saturn

Good day! Have some questions about Sega Saturn. Actualy I have a lot of them, but I will not ask all already. 1) What advantage was to have two CPUs in Sega Saturn? 2) How big really was the problem with two CPUs with one memory bus? 3) Why did main RAM was split in two parts SDRAM and DRAM...

forum.beyond3d.com

 

[teezzy]

N64 games didn't age very well. I love NES/SNES games and even 90s Build Engine Shooters or DOOM and so on, but N64 are tough to play for me.

I'd actually go a step further and argue that a large majority of games from all gens havent aged well or weren't even that enjoyable for their era to begin with.

JRPGs, fighting games, NHL titles, and shmups seem to hold up best. Maybe I'm just biased to my taste though.

 

[Gameplaylover]

I'd actually go a step further and argue that a large majority of games from all gens havent aged well or weren't even that enjoyable for their era to begin with.

JRPGs, fighting games, NHL titles, and shmups seem to hold up best. Maybe I'm just biased to my taste though.

I generally would say that 2D games aged much better than 3D games.

 

[teezzy]

I generally would say that 2D games aged much better than 3D games.

My heart belongs to the 6th gen most of all, but there's fun to be had everywhere.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

its debatable but at the time the best looking fightiung game was considered to be battle arena toshinden the scenes in VF2(and tekken) were very poor in comparrison, I suggest you to read the game press of the era from america and japan they directly compared it to VF2(saturn version) and tekken and considered toshinden the better looking game

Well that's a MASSIVE lol for whatever press at the time considered Toshinden better-looking than Saturn VF2 or even Tekken 1 IMO. You can say it arguably had better character designs than those games, but VF2 Saturn was a lot smoother and so was Tekken. Both games also had better texture work and better attack animations in terms of fluidity.



vs



vs



Watch them @ 480p, and it becommes increasingly obvious Toshinden is the least visually impressive of the three. It also had a lower native resolution; you might be confusing VF2 with VF1 (non-Remix); Japanese and especially American magazines regularly compared Toshinden to VF1 on Saturn and considered Toshinden better visually, which it was. But very few said similar for Toshinden when compared to Tekken 1 (outside of probably character design), and especially when compared to VF2 on Saturn.

PD2 Zwei is an on rail shooter and even then its visuals arent as good as warhawk(free movement) to give an example, you can speak about its awesome music, lore, art and design were top notch at the time but not its graphics or its tech

Graphics include art and artistic design, and those were areas where it shined especially over games like Warhawk. While a more apt comparison would be to other on-rail shooters, games like PD Zwei still look as good if not better than many of the best-looking PS1 games from that pre-1998 period, and in Zwei's case art design played a massive role in it.

And, for what things it would've had a hard time replicating tech-wise if it were a more open shooter like Warhawk, the same could be said for Warhawk if it were a rail shooter. Zwei did a lot of great work with VDP2 tech which would've been very difficult to replicate on PS1 hardware.

sorry but what you mean by this?:

part due to its design and in part due to "Sony money"

this sounds as a very poor argument you said "very little in the market compared to PD2 Zwei(1996)" but you obviously missed games like warhawk(1995) and then you claim sony paid developers when "the system design wasnt a problem" how you determine when the system is not a problem? how you know sony paid developers on every other case? sorry but sound as a baseless accusation I am surprised you dont accuse nintedo too since Yamauchi was in office back then and we know how he pressed third party specially during the master system era

It's not a poor argument; that's part of what happened at the time. Sony did in fact make lucrative deals with a lot of 3P publishers, including Western ones, in an effort to sway support away from Nintendo and Sega and towards PlayStation. If you think financial incentives weren't in play for securing things like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest or (late into its dev cycle) prioritizing PS1 for extra polish on games like Tomb Raider, then you should probably think on it a bit more.

I'm not saying money is the only reason a lot of developers ended up preferring PS1, far from it, but it DID factor pretty notably into that preference. That's the way it is with any other entertainment industry, so a company knowing how that could work in those fields like Sony, why would they not leverage it to gain an advantage in gaming when the opportunity was there to do so?

When I said "very little in the market compared to PD Zwei", I don't know why you bring up Warhawk to contest that when that would probably be one of the few games which did, so it would justify my statement. Even so, they are two different styles of shooters, and artistically they go for very different things, tho if I were being honest on as an artistic whole, Zwei trumps Warhawk but that doesn't make Warhawk unimpressive for its era, far from it. I also don't see how me saying Sony used their financial resources to curry up various deals and provide support for developers which in turn would've leaned their preferences to PS1, contradict with me also saying that the system design was friendly to work with. Both things can be true simultaneously.

These aren't baseless accusations; they're common-sense conclusions based on what we know in terms of business practices from platform holders today, combined with understanding of their financial and technical resources available to them at the time they entered the market. And, in Sony's case, knowing they would have expertise in terms of marketing and product deals from other entertainment sectors like film and music, they would utilize within their gaming efforts as well. Speaking of Nintendo, I've definitely talked of their anti-competitive licensing agreements in the Famicom/NES era, and the fact they were among the worst with licensing costs for platform holders of the time. They were even successfully sued in NA on anti-trust violation grounds in 1991 and had to provide rebates to NES owners due to it!

So I definitely haven't forgotten about Nintendo in this but, this specific topic you and I were on is more or less about Sony, not Nintendo, so I didn't bother to bring Nintendo into the discussion. And FWIW, I'm not saying what Sony did in leveraging their resources was "nefarious" or even bad; they did the right thing in business terms to grow their presence and lure support, they did what they should've done. I'm just a bit surprised that simply mentioning it outright is considered controversial by some

the technical problems of the saturn are well known you can read about it

Questions about Sega Saturn

Good day! Have some questions about Sega Saturn. Actualy I have a lot of them, but I will not ask all already. 1) What advantage was to have two CPUs in Sega Saturn? 2) How big really was the problem with two CPUs with one memory bus? 3) Why did main RAM was split in two parts SDRAM and DRAM...

forum.beyond3d.com

I'm aware of them, but all 3 systems that gen had their own technical shortcomings. Depending on your preferences as a programmer, a very specific flaw in one system might've exacerbated the perception of a given shortcoming relative to other designs, even if in totality the differences in capability wasn't as grand as some have mythologized them into appearing in years passing.

That said, knowledge of those shortcomings change nothing that I've discussed in this thread WRT Saturn.

 

[Lognor]

Laugh all you want dude, but I'm picking the console with Tekken, Ape Escape, and the Squaresoft games every time.

Not the one time that mattered....when you chose the N64 over the PS1 as a child! LOL!
Don't feel bad though. You chose the most innovative console for its time.

 

[tygertrip]

Dude, no, that thread is the worst place to get informed about the N64. Sega 16 members are absolutely biased agaist the console and will scratch the bottom of the barrel to find things to say against it.

Yet, they didn't even know Wipeout on their beloved Saturn run at 20 fps.

It was a good forum a long time ago where some knowlegable members would share technical info but they left and its been just a Sega fanboy pit for a while now.

That sucks, it was really good back in the day (if I am remembering the correct site, that is).

 

[tygertrip]

its debatable but at the time the best looking fightiung game was considered to be battle arena toshinden the scenes in VF2(and tekken) were very poor in comparrison, I suggest you to read the game press of the era from america and japan they directly compared it to VF2(saturn version) and tekken and considered toshinden the better looking game

Are you sure you're not thinking of VF1 or VF Remix? VF2 was one of the few Saturn games that the American gaming press praised. For good reason. I'm sure there were exceptions, but I vividly remember BAT always being compared to VF1 and Remix, because VF1 and BAT were both launch titles. VF2 took shit to a different level, but that is just my opinion. I don't think I was as impressed with such a graphical leap until Quake (and probably GLQuake, at that).

 

[tygertrip]

I'd actually go a step further and argue that a large majority of games from all gens havent aged well or weren't even that enjoyable for their era to begin with.

JRPGs, fighting games, NHL titles, and shmups seem to hold up best. Maybe I'm just biased to my taste though.

Every generation has the cream everyone remembers and the shit everyone doesn't. Hell, I consider Yar's Revenge to be one of the greats, and that's from the 2600 era. I still play it a couple of times a year. I don't mean "for it's time", I mean fucking GREAT.

 

[Alexios]

Well that's a MASSIVE lol for whatever press at the time considered Toshinden better-looking than Saturn VF2 or even Tekken 1 IMO. You can say it arguably had better character designs than those games, but VF2 Saturn was a lot smoother and so was Tekken. Both games also had better texture work and better attack animations in terms of fluidity.

P polybius80 is just willfully ignorant of what the Saturn has showcased and doesn't want to educate himself but just start list wars shit so he can always point to this one prettier game, as if anyone ever said the Saturn trashed the PlayStation rather than that it wasn't so awful in comparison.

For a game showcasing technology in the style of Warhawk, Ace Combat, etc., there's Stellar Assault SS (as in my previous link). It's a much more arcadey game so missions are shorter but the engine itself is still full 6 DOF 3D, with great draw distances for relevant objects. Note this player uses one ship, there's a second one that has rapid fire as primary and lock on missiles as secondary with trails like you see in Warhawk, also you can double tap the acceleration button for an instant boost, there's a function you can use to ram and more, very anime. I'm timestamping this level because even though it's primarily a space combat game it shows effects like starting over the clouds and being able to dive underneath with wholly different terrain but that player does finish levels a bit too fast so could make it seem like the game needs to load often when it's simply how missions are set up, it loads pretty quickly anyway and the level after the next one seamlessly changes from space, to terrain, to indoor and back. Yes, it has simpler aspects, like effects and models, but it's also way smoother than Warhawk (and has a cleverly implemented interlaced 60 fps mode too).


From early titles there is Firestorm: Thunderhawk 2/Thunderstrike 2 which has obvious pop in but it was a game set up differently, even though you were in the air it still worked more like a grounded game like MechWarrior 2 or Gungriffon. Very smooth too (even in PAL as above). Another one is Wing Arms. It's not exactly amazing but the engine is pretty damn decent for its time with very good draw distances, polygon wise at least because large structures and terrain switch texture lod so close I'd prefer to have just the low quality distant textures (this early prototype is doing similar).


Saturn could easily hold its own, early on with ports like Tomb Raider not showing any significant gap in power (in this case with lower performance in a more unoptimized version with higher draw distances and water distortions over the PS) and up to its death with rare great exclusives too.

 

[polybius80]

Graphics include art and artistic design, and those were areas where it shined especially over games like Warhawk. While a more apt comparison would be to other on-rail shooters, games like PD Zwei still look as good if not better than many of the best-looking PS1 games from that pre-1998 period, and in Zwei's case art design played a massive role in it.

not tech wise

And, for what things it would've had a hard time replicating tech-wise if it were a more open shooter like Warhawk, the same could be said for Warhawk if it were a rail shooter.

no sorry, an on rail shooter commonly looks better than other games for their simple nature of being a corridor where scenes are severely restrictedand even in those circumstances zwei have a lot of grahical problems compared to games like warhawk for example you can compare episode 3 of zwei and the walls and the same giant 3d sprites trees repeated over an over





the same applies to the rest of the game, its graphics tech wise are not really on par to what was available in similar games

Zwei did a lot of great work with VDP2 tech which would've been very difficult to replicate on PS1 hardware.

sure the infinite planes are good feature that PS1 and N64 can have a hard time replicating, but on the other hand when it comes to more basic features like the gouraud of the saturn where the banding is way more pronounced and ilumination doesnt looks as good or look basically absent then the saturn had a difficult time replicating and lets not forget that while infinite planes are nice and good the drawdistance of the rest of elements was tipically shorter than the other consoles so pop up was a more annoying problem on saturn, even with the gradient of travelers tale

It's not a poor argument; that's part of what happened at the time. Sony did in fact make lucrative deals with a lot of 3P publishers, including Western ones, in an effort to sway support away from Nintendo and Sega and towards PlayStation. If you think financial incentives weren't in play for securing things like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest or (late into its dev cycle) prioritizing PS1 for extra polish on games like Tomb Raider, then you should probably think on it a bit more.

I am not saying there are no deals but you refer to every time "the system is not a problem" then not recognize the shortcoming of the games and now you are mixing art style as the technology involved in graphics which is the discussion

I'm not saying money is the only reason a lot of developers ended up preferring PS1, far from it, but it DID factor pretty notably into that preference. That's the way it is with any other entertainment industry, so a company knowing how that could work in those fields like Sony, why would they not leverage it to gain an advantage in gaming when the opportunity was there to do so?

there are thousands of games that generatation you first said that sony paid when the system wasnt a problem then you argued that the deals sony did were proof wich is a poor argument as there are thousands of games, then you back tracking saying that money wasnt the only reason it appear you are trying to hard to not recongnize the playstation was a mucn more attractive system for its simplicity and power instead you try to sustain that sony paid everybody to prioritize over saturn which is ridiculous

When I said "very little in the market compared to PD Zwei", I don't know why you bring up Warhawk to contest that when that would probably be one of the few games which did, so it would justify my statement. Even so, they are two different styles of shooters, and artistically they go for very different things, tho if I were being honest on as an artistic whole, Zwei trumps Warhawk but that doesn't make Warhawk unimpressive for its era, far from it. I also don't see how me saying Sony used their financial resources to curry up various deals and provide support for developers which in turn would've leaned their preferences to PS1, contradict with me also saying that the system design was friendly to work with. Both things can be true simultaneously.

oh don't be confused, I chosed warhawk because it was the most similar games and was already on the system I wanted to use elemental gearbolt but was released in 1997 so its not fair



I could simply say "crash bandicoot" as that also works in a corridor(in most scenes) its not a flying shooter but tech wise has better textures, illumination, probably better polycounts overall and how the character 3d model works was very innovative but of course can be argued its a different game which I try to avoid in a comparison, warhawk' freedom works against it graphic wise yet it still its better tech-wise than PD2

These aren't baseless accusations; they're common-sense conclusions based on what we know in terms of business practices from platform holders today, combined with understanding of their financial and technical resources available to them at the time they entered the market. And, in Sony's case, knowing they would have expertise in terms of marketing and product deals from other entertainment sectors like film and music, they would utilize within their gaming efforts as well. Speaking of Nintendo, I've definitely talked of their anti-competitive licensing agreements in the Famicom/NES era, and the fact they were among the worst with licensing costs for platform holders of the time. They were even successfully sued in NA on anti-trust violation grounds in 1991 and had to provide rebates to NES owners due to it!

yes they are, you are using false equivalence to try to make an argument wich you are trying to change above as you realized made exaggerations, just because sony made some deals it doesnt mean there are deals to prioritize ps1 over saturn on every game released for both system or canceled in saturn, in fact there are notable examples of the contrary as takara released a toshinden 2 ura a special version with lot of exclusive content despite toshinden games being very related to playstation brand at the time yet tech wise was horrible, another example is quake, why sony didnt paid for a quake port specially when lobotomy already had a working prototype? why duke nukem was worst on psx and the saturn used slavedriver as engine if sony pays everybody? shouldnt playstation use that engine instead? oh it was published by sega so sega paid to sabotage playstation version? of course not, the dev had trouble with the engine and nobody offered a bigger budget as simple as that similar to the doom port for saturn

 

[tygertrip]

Watch them @ 480p, and it becommes increasingly obvious Toshinden is the least visually impressive of the three. It also had a lower native resolution; you might be confusing VF2 with VF1 (non-Remix); Japanese and especially American magazines regularly compared Toshinden to VF1 on Saturn and considered Toshinden better visually, which it was. But very few said similar for Toshinden when compared to Tekken 1 (outside of probably character design), and especially when compared to VF2 on Saturn.

I already said so in another post, but that is EXACTLY my memory of the time, regarding BAT vs VF in the press (and USENET wars, lol). I do remember, after VF2 (Saturn) came out, a LOT of coping about how the high frame rate didn’t matter because “the eye can’t see more than 30 fps” and “VF2 resolution sucks because it’s interlaced”. Heh.

 

[Esppiral]

Dude, no, that thread is the worst place to get informed about the N64. Sega 16 members are absolutely biased agaist the console and will scratch the bottom of the barrel to find things to say against it.

Yet, they didn't even know Wipeout on their beloved Saturn run at 20 fps.

It was a good forum a long time ago where some knowlegable members would share technical info but they left and its been just a Sega fanboy pit for a while now.

The game is artificially locked at 20 fps I hacked the game to unlock the frame rate and it goes beyond 20 fps

 

[teezzy]

You're officially the first person I've put on Ignore on NeoGAF.

You can take him off ignore now, looks like he got banned

 

[polybius80]

Are you sure you're not thinking of VF1 or VF Remix? VF2 was one of the few Saturn games that the American gaming press praised. For good reason. I'm sure there were exceptions, but I vividly remember BAT always being compared to VF1 and Remix, because VF1 and BAT were both launch titles. VF2 took shit to a different level, but that is just my opinion. I don't think I was as impressed with such a graphical leap until Quake (and probably GLQuake, at that).

yes my bad wrong bat and wrong vf

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

not tech wise

Do you have proof of this? Do you have info on poly counts for character models in both, environment in both? Texture resolution for background and character objects? Etc.? Again when I said "better than a lot of PS1 games during the period" I wasn't just referring to the technical side of the visuals.

no sorry, an on rail shooter commonly looks better than other games for their simple nature of being a corridor where scenes are severely restrictedand even in those circumstances zwei have a lot of grahical problems compared to games like warhawk for example you can compare episode 3 of zwei and the walls and the same giant 3d sprites trees repeated over an over

Okay....and? Lots of games that gen did this, even some of the more impressive PS1 games post-1998 like Gran Turismo did this. Most developers were not going to waste limited VRAM budgets on populating a level with a bunch of unique tree assets when that is not going to be the focal point of the action visually. You had to be VERY smart with your texture budgets back then for those early 3D systems, if anything Zwei was incredibly smart in prioritizing what were and weren't worth certain VRAM budgets.

Besides, you make it out as if it's the same one tree model, when it's actually a small handful of tree models in that mix. In any case, it works to give the illusion you're in a forest, which is the main intent by the developers I'm sure, and it blends in very well with the rest of the presentation aesthetically. They could've thrown in 100 different tree model textures if they wanted but what would be the point if it detracts from the main focus and comes with a penalty cost? BTW, these same concerns were present with PS1 and N64 games as well.

the same applies to the rest of the game, its graphics tech wise are not really on par to what was available in similar games

Yes it was; it leveraged texture-mapped polygons, goraud shading techniques, various advanced particle effects, and unlike a lot of PS1 games had very little texture warping or shimmying effect. And in integrating 2D elements like the planes for VDP2, did so extremely well, better than a lot of other 3D games integrating certain 2D elements into their visual design, for any system of that period.

Zwei got very good reviews for its time and part of that was in thanks to its visuals; you can't (erroneously) cite reviews to try backing the claim Toshinden was more visually impressive than VF2 or Tekken, and not accept the same when simply pulling up a few archives of Zwei reviews of the period give it very high remarks for its visuals.

sure the infinite planes are good feature that PS1 and N64 can have a hard time replicating, but on the other hand when it comes to more basic features like the gouraud of the saturn where the banding is way more pronounced

It depended on the game and again one of the bigger culprits were the hastily ported 3P games that didn't take certain Saturn design features into account. Color depth on Saturn was at least as good as on PS1 and N64, and with certain ports like RE the color depth and saturation on textures is actually higher on Saturn vs. PS1.

and ilumination doesnt looks as good or look basically absent then the saturn had a difficult time replicating and lets not forget that while infinite planes are nice and good the drawdistance of the rest of elements was tipically shorter than the other consoles so pop up was a more annoying problem on saturn, even with the gradient of travelers tale

Again it comes down to the games and usually the hasty PS1 ports exhibited these issues. 3P exclusives and 1P games? Not so much. I'm not saying Saturn didn't have a more difficult time with certain visual effects which were essentially "automated" on PS1 but this back-and-forth began with you challenging my claim that there were Saturn 3D games from the 1995 - 1997 period that were at least as good as many of the best 3D PlayStation games in that time frame, as well as me qualifying that with saying it was mostly in regards to Sega 1P and certain 3P releases.

But now much of your contention is as if I said Saturn didn't have particular weaknesses at all, when that was never what I said or insinuated.

I am not saying there are no deals but you refer to every time "the system is not a problem" then not recognize the shortcoming of the games and now you are mixing art style as the technology involved in graphics which is the discussion

You are using "games" extremely broadly because some of those games...could in fact be games that were hastily ported from PS1 for double-dipping quick bucks by publishers, meaning they wouldn't have been afforded the "A-team"s, had smaller budgets, and less resources available to them to get the ports done. Meanwhile, you're spinning this into an argument on purely technical side of visuals when my original statement WRT Saturn releases from '95 - '97 period being visually competitive with some of the best PS1 games, also factored in artistic design elements and choices, not just purely technical ones.

I.e a few of Sega's 1P teams had better taste in art direction combined with a pretty robust understanding of Saturn hardware, to develop select games (3D and 2D, but for sake of this discussion 3D) that competed with quite a few of the best PS1 games during the aforementioned time period. That isn't really up for debate.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

there are thousands of games that generatation you first said that sony paid when the system wasnt a problem then you argued that the deals sony did were proof wich is a poor argument as there are thousands of games, then you back tracking saying that money wasnt the only reason it appear you are trying to hard to not recongnize the playstation was a mucn more attractive system for its simplicity and power instead you try to sustain that sony paid everybody to prioritize over saturn which is ridiculous

I didn't say Sony "paid" anyone, or "paid" everyone. Didn't even say money was the only factor as to why they got a lot of the support they did, if you read my other posts ITT you'd know this. I'm simply not going to underplay or completely ignore the role money played in them securing certain deals, because it absolutely did play a role. Nintendo and Sega may've dipped into moneyhats every once in a blue moon, but Sony really spearheaded that practice as a platform holder once they entered the market...and it was well within their right to do so.

You're acting like it's a dirty sin when it's not, they (Sony) just leveraged their resources of the time. Not all deals involved moneyhats, either; some might've involved Sony providing extended technical support, or assisting the development costs, or marketing costs & distribution, buying publishing rights etc. Fact is, they all leveraged their financial and technical resources in ways Sega and Nintendo couldn't compete with, because they had a lot less of them...and that's simply a fact.

oh don't be confused, I chosed warhawk because it was the most similar games and was already on the system I wanted to use elemental gearbolt but was released in 1997 so its not fair



I could simply say "crash bandicoot" as that also works in a corridor(in most scenes) its not a flying shooter but tech wise has better textures, illumination, probably better polycounts overall and how the character 3d model works was very innovative but of course can be argued its a different game which I try to avoid in a comparison, warhawk' freedom works against it graphic wise yet it still its better tech-wise than PD2

At this point we'll just have to agree this is your opinion, and it's okay for you to have it. However, I'm not going to 100% agree because stating "tech-wise" is still extremely generic. There may be specific techniques where it (Warhawk)'s better, and other specific techniques where it isn't. And, IMO, it's the lesser of the two artistically, which plays a large role into the visual punch of a game.

yes they are, you are using false equivalence to try to make an argument wich you are trying to change above as you realized made exaggerations, just because sony made some deals it doesnt mean there are deals to prioritize ps1 over saturn on every game released for both system or canceled in saturn,

It's not me saying Sony explicitly went to publishers, cut deals and said "Hey, so we gave you some money, right? Well, shelve that work on the Saturn version and just focus on this PS1 version instead!", that's an outlandish way to interpret what I'm saying xD. No, I'm just stating the fact that, if you're working with two parties, and Party A incentivizes you with more money or more perks, you are going to naturally prioritize returning them the favor over Party B. That's how business works, hell that's how people in general work.

Nothing has to be explicitly declared by that point; the gesture alone is enough for goodwill and practically ensuring you'll get some type of preferential treatment.

in fact there are notable examples of the contrary as takara released a toshinden 2 ura a special version with lot of exclusive content despite toshinden games being very related to playstation brand at the time yet tech wise was horrible,

Nextech handled URA on Saturn; Tamsoft just assisted/oversaw its development here and there. URA was also not technically a mainline Toshinden game, and by the time of even Toshinden 2 the series had lost a lot of luster, so not much to lose by having it go multiplat.

another example is quake, why sony didnt paid for a quake port specially when lobotomy already had a working prototype? why duke nukem was worst on psx and the saturn used slavedriver as engine if sony pays everybody?

I see you're hung up on me mentioning Sony leveraging their financials, but you didn't understand what I truly meant, nor understand that they obviously would do things differently with different devs & pubs, hence this part of your statement.

shouldnt playstation use that engine instead? oh it was published by sega so sega paid to sabotage playstation version? of course not, the dev had trouble with the engine and nobody offered a bigger budget as simple as that similar to the doom port for saturn

Now you've gone into paranoid conspiracy territory just because I suggested Sony asserted use of their strengths when entering the gaming market, strengths their competitors didn't have as much of, one of which being financial resources. I even said it wasn't a "bad" thing to do, but you definitely have loaded it with a ton of negative connotations xD.

I think we've pretty much said what we had to say on this; the thread isn't even about Sony business vs. Sega, it's PS1 vs. N64 for which was more innovative. I'd like to return it to that but if you're interested in continuing this topic and have some stuff to add that hasn't already been mentioned, we can do it through DM.

 

[IFireflyl]

<snip>

Honestly, I'm sure several (a lot of?) developers needed an actual incentive to make a game for the PSX. Nintendo and Sega had been in the console game for forever, and Sony was a new unknown (with consoles, that is). If I'm a developer I have to ask myself if it's worth it to bother trying to learn the ropes for coding a game on a new console that was made by a company who has never made a console before. I mean sure they worked with console parts, but this was Sony's first foray into an industry that they had only had background/behind-the-scenes involvement in up until this point. I think incentives definitely helped some developers work with Sony, and I think that once they began working with Sony they found that there was a lot Sony had to offer to solidify their involvement with the PSX going forward. I could be wrong, but it makes sense in my head.

 

[nkarafo]

The game is artificially locked at 20 fps I hacked the game to unlock the frame rate and it goes beyond 20 fps

All games with locked fps will go higher if you unlock them. The lock is there for consistency and to maintain a stable frame rate that syncs with the TV. Most devs prefer that over a higher but also variable frame rate.

20 fps means the machine would drop below 30 fps too often so they locked it at 20.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Honestly, I'm sure several (a lot of?) developers needed an actual incentive to make a game for the PSX. Nintendo and Sega had been in the console game for forever, and Sony was a new unknown (with consoles, that is). If I'm a developer I have to ask myself if it's worth it to bother trying to learn the ropes for coding a game on a new console that was made by a company who has never made a console before. I mean sure they worked with console parts, but this was Sony's first foray into an industry that they had only had background/behind-the-scenes involvement in up until this point. I think incentives definitely helped some developers work with Sony, and I think that once they began working with Sony they found that there was a lot Sony had to offer to solidify their involvement with the PSX going forward. I could be wrong, but it makes sense in my head.

Exactly, and this would be one of the other ways in which they garnered developer support. There were a lot of things to PlayStation at the time that just on their own merit, even ignoring Sony's capital, tech resources, distribution and marketing resources etc....I mean just things about the PlayStation console itself in design that would've naturally attracted developers to support it, or try certain things on the platform.

But it doesn't have to an either/or thing because in reality it wasn't. While what you and I are talking about right here certainly was the case, I think for some people it's hard to fathom that Sony also (selectively) used their financial, technical, marketing and distribution resources to offer deals to some publishers for various content, including content that might've been taken away from other consoles. Why is that so hard for some to understand, though? I mean they do it today, Microsoft also does it. These are large companies with roots outside of the gaming industry, how do you think they became successful in those other markets?

It's always a combination of various things.

 

[marquimvfs]

I think this thread could use a mod cleanup. Most saturn discussion should be moved to a saturn thread. Or a new one could be created. Don't get me wrong, saturn is a very interesting platform and a discussion about it is very welcome, but it is completely off topic here. Mod of War

 

[Trimesh]

Honestly, I'm sure several (a lot of?) developers needed an actual incentive to make a game for the PSX. Nintendo and Sega had been in the console game for forever, and Sony was a new unknown (with consoles, that is). If I'm a developer I have to ask myself if it's worth it to bother trying to learn the ropes for coding a game on a new console that was made by a company who has never made a console before. I mean sure they worked with console parts, but this was Sony's first foray into an industry that they had only had background/behind-the-scenes involvement in up until this point. I think incentives definitely helped some developers work with Sony, and I think that once they began working with Sony they found that there was a lot Sony had to offer to solidify their involvement with the PSX going forward. I could be wrong, but it makes sense in my head.

My understanding is that the primary incentive Sony used was waiving the license fees for the first {x} games for the early adopters/. They were also a lot more flexible in their handling of excess production - if you ordered too many carts from Nintendo and the game didn't sell well, that was your problem. Sony were willing to consider cancelling the license fee in this case although you still had to pay the media costs that was a much smaller amount of money than would be the case with ROM carts.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

My understanding is that the primary incentive Sony used was waiving the license fees for the first {x} games for the early adopters/. They were also a lot more flexible in their handling of excess production - if you ordered too many carts from Nintendo and the game didn't sell well, that was your problem. Sony were willing to consider cancelling the license fee in this case although you still had to pay the media costs that was a much smaller amount of money than would be the case with ROM carts.

True, but none of this was unique to Sony and in the case of 3DO publishers didn't have to pay any royalties whatsoever. But back to Nintendo, they also had a practice of limiting cart production by certain publishers and even certain game releases. IIRC Square got pissed at them doing this with one of their latter SFC/SNES releases (and that of course played a part in them leaving Nintendo 5th-gen).

Sega's own policy with cart orders had its strictness too but it was a ways bit more lenient than Nintendo's, and publishers like EA got very good agreements altho even then, they were up to their shady practices that have made them infamous today (reverse-engineering MegaDrive and using it against Sega).

 

[Trimesh]

True, but none of this was unique to Sony and in the case of 3DO publishers didn't have to pay any royalties whatsoever. But back to Nintendo, they also had a practice of limiting cart production by certain publishers and even certain game releases. IIRC Square got pissed at them doing this with one of their later SFC/SNES releases (and that of course played a part in them leaving Nintendo 5th-gen).

Sega's own policy with cart orders had its strictness too but it was a ways bit more lenient than Nintendo's, and publishers like EA got very good agreements altho even then, they were up to their shady practices that have made them infamous today (reverse-engineering MegaDrive and using it against Sega).

I can definitely see them limiting how many carts one company could order when using ROM cartridges - you normally have to book the fab time for the ROMs some time in advance and if one customer puts in a huge enough order it could result in you not having any production capacity for anyone else. Sure, the same thing also applies with CD-ROMs - but you can ramp a disc pressing plant a lot more quickly than a fab.

The real problem that Sega had with unlicensed carts came from _Sega Vs. Accolade_ - the conclusion of which boiled down to the position that you can't use copyright or trademark law to protect functional elements - so if you design your console so that you have to display "SEGA" on the screen for it to work that's now a functional element. I think this surprised a lot of people, since Sega were far from the only people doing similar things (the fact that GameBoy games has to have a "Nintendo" bitmap in ROM that the boot ROM displayed on screen was similar).

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Trimesh Well sure on the logistics level you'd have to manage total cart production supply and balance it out by publisher. But, Nintendo were a bit stricter than others because they had a minimum order requirement (250K IIRC), and they still kind of screwed over longtime partners like Square on certain games when they should've tried working better with them. Then again, Square could have tried working with Sega or NEC anytime, given those two had less strict policies, but I guess that just goes to show the Catch-22 situation certain developers and publishers ironically make come true when they decide not to support alternatives.

I should look into the Sega/Accolade case more, don't know too much on it. Just more familiar with the EA and Tengen stuff. It was the wild west back then though, surprising how many publishers tried fighting against early on (mainly for money-driven reasons of their own, TBF) the system of licensing and royalties the industry operates in today.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

What was innovative about PSone? Buying out 3rd party exclusives? N64 by a mile.

CD ROM.

 

[YCoCg]

Audio innovations: N64 had support for surround sound, so, the list will also have: *Dolbly Surround
* ADPCM compression (here's why the N64 sounds doesn't take the same space as redbook audio)

You need to remove these ones as PlayStation had them too (hell even Windows did).

The PSX had support for Dolby and used both Pro-Logic and Pro-Logic II mixing if the game included a mix for it. Off the top of my head I believe Croc on PS1 even had the Dolby logo to indicate that in the options screen. I believe Alien Resurrection was one of the few late stage PS1 titles to use Pro-Logic II mixing.

The PS1 danced around different types of audio compression, you had uncompressed (44.1Khz/16bit), you had Type B streaming compressed, sometimes denoted as .XA (37.8Khz/8bit) and then you had their version of ADPCM which derived from IMA ADPCM on Windows, these were often denoted as .VAG (22.05Khz/4bit). And then there was variable VAG which used higher frequency ranges to get closer to .XA without using up as much space, a good example if that is MGS1 which had speech at roughly 33.15Khz/4bit.

It's also worth noting that Sony literally wrote the book when it came to CD-DA formatting, so the PS1 could handle all versions natively.

 

[XTA]

n64, but only by a hair, and mainly because of game design best practices that certain N64 exclusives established.

ps1 was no slouch in terms of innovation, both on the software and hardware side of things - PS1's switch to discs is a hardware innovation that def shouldn't go understated thanks to its overall impact on the industry.

dead-ass I'd go for PS1 if it was that simple, but OoT and Mario 64 are hugely important, landmark titles when it comes to 3D game design, so if libraries count then I'd have to go with N64.

 

[snatcherjunker]

N64 was really great for multiplayer games in ways you couldn't really do before but the overall game gallery was pretty limited. Spent so many hours playing Mario Party, Mario Kart 64, Diddy Kong Racing, etc on 4 player mode (trying to do that on PlayStation multitap was a pain and most games didn't really support 4 players). The cartridge was such a limiting thing at the time though.

PlayStation had a much more expansive game gallery with technologically advanced features. Great RPG selections (Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy VII-IX, Dragon Quest VII) that pushed FMV to a new frontier (Sega CD and Sega Saturn set the groundwork).

Both systems had innovative controllers, but PlayStation's controller had a much longer industry impact, while the N64 was a one-time thing. Graphically of course PS1 wins, just compare Resident Evil 2 on the N64 to the PlayStation or Mega Man Legends.

Memory-wise thanks to CD-Roms we finally weren't just limited by what was on a cartridge even though the price of memory back then was insane lol. Metal Gear Solid had such an insane amount of voice dialogue and cutscenes for its time as well. Discs just let them stretch things so much further with some games being near 4 discs.

 

[marquimvfs]

The PSX had support for Dolby and used both Pro-Logic and Pro-Logic II mixing if the game included a mix for it. Off the top of my head I believe Croc on PS1 even had the Dolby logo to indicate that in the options screen. I believe Alien Resurrection was one of the few late stage

Thanks for the input. I'll edit my post to reflect this info.

But, continuing on the topic, someone is able to summarize the innovations that the first Playstation brought to the table?

 

[YCoCg]

Audio innovations: N64 had support to
*MP3 playback.

I know you've just edited this in, ...but that's also something the PS1 could do with a plug-in too. Hell in that case the PS1 also supported VCD and SVCD too via plug-in cards to inject custom BIOS.

 

[marquimvfs]

I know you've just edited this in, ...but that's also something the PS1 could do with a plug-in too. Hell in that case the PS1 also supported VCD and SVCD too via plug-in cards to inject custom BIOS.

Oh, another thing that I didn't know. I knew that I've missed some things when I was making the list and was wondering what cuold be in the place of what was removed, then I remembered that some Rare games use MP3 to encode audio, and putted that in. Out of curiosity, what's the case when PS1 make use of MP3?

Edit: you talked about VCD features through a third party accessory, but N64 also had that, music CD and ROM on CD with Doctor V64. In fact, when making the N64 list, I choose not to include any 3rd party accessory or adapter of any kind, as, in my opinion, they don't represent an innovation made by the console manufacturer itself.

 

[Trimesh]

Oh, another thing that I didn't know. I knew that I've missed some things when I was making the list and was wondering what cuold be in the place of what was removed, then I remembered that some Rare games use MP3 to encode audio, and putted that in. Out of curiosity, what's the case when PS1 make use of MP3?

Edit: you talked about VCD features through a third party accessory, but N64 also had that, music CD and ROM on CD with Doctor V64. In fact, when making the N64 list, I choose not to include any 3rd party accessory or adapter of any kind, as, in my opinion, they don't represent an innovation made by the console manufacturer itself.

The PSX was capable of playing Video CD without any add-on hardware - but only if you got the specific model that could do that. It never sold very well simply because the third-party cards were cheaper and hence it was dropped after a single product generation.

 

[marquimvfs]

The PSX was capable of playing Video CD without any add-on hardware - but only if you got the specific model that could do that. It never sold very well simply because the third-party cards were cheaper and hence it was dropped after a single product generation.

Cool! I will look for some footage of it playing some VCDs. I think that could make a huge success if it were launched here in Brasil. In any case, that's some pretty interesting thing to put in a PSX list, of someone is willing to make one.

 

[Trimesh]

Cool! I will look for some footage of it playing some VCDs. I think that could make a huge success if it were launched here in Brasil. In any case, that's some pretty interesting thing to put in a PSX list, of someone is willing to make one.

The model number is SCPH-5903 - if you have problems finding any video then I can record some for you, although I'm not sure I have any VCDs around any more - if not, there are usually still people selling them at the market in Sham Shui Po so I'm sure I can get my hands on some.

 

[marquimvfs]

The model number is SCPH-5903 - if you have problems finding any video then I can record some for you, although I'm not sure I have any VCDs around any more - if not, there are usually still people selling them at the market in Sham Shui Po so I'm sure I can get my hands on some.

Thank you very much, but I found a pretty interesting video. It's in this link, if anyone is curious:

 

[Hayabusa83]

I liked both. Playstation for its sheer variety of games, and the N64 for its multiplayer features.

I feel like the Xbox borrowed a bit from both in terms of design. Four controller ports on the N64 was a totally awesome feature.