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(Somewhat) How Not To Retrospective: The Nintendo 64 Chronicles (Sakhura Baguette)

How did you feel about N64 back then, versus today?

  • Low praise then, mid praise today

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    34
  • Poll closed .
Now, I don't normally like being overly critical on retrospectives. In fact most gaming retrospectives I tend to like quite a lot. However, those same retrospectives also tend to focus almost exclusively on the subject at hand, and any periphery elements included are at most given casual, neutral roles and not treated as a subject in and of itself.

That's usually because if a retrospective is focused on a particular game or system, said game or system is going to have a degree of positive bias unto it. Preferably not one that glosses over or admits any actual flaws of the subject, but the positive bias will be present regardless and it's required to a large degree since this is something you are assumed to have a liking towards (either personally or just from a point of curiosity). Although I suppose, "positive" in this context can also be had ironically if the subject at hand is generally accepted as bad, and such the 'positive' focus is in being tongue-in-cheek.



A couple days ago I came across a retrospective on the N64 done by the Youtube channel Sakharu Baguette. The video itself is linked here. I don't think I've heard of the channel until coming across this video; in fact having checked that would have been impossible because so far this is their only video. As I currently type this thread I'm actually still watching the video; however just shy of 30 minutes in, or a little over 1/3rd ways through to put it another way, while the video is professionally edited and narrated, it has....a pretty clear & evident "bias problem".

As mentioned before, it's a retrospective on the N64. Clearly, that naturally invites some commentary on its main contemporaries to help contextualize it within the market during the period, those contemporaries being the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation. Unfortunately while the peripheral/framing commentary on the Saturn is at least neutral bias, that for the Sony PlayStation is consistently of a negative light, especially in relation to the Nintendo 64 (where the Saturn fares between neutral and light negative), and even the Sega Saturn. This is a problem, because it is a retrospective that is attempting to provide a summation of market history during that generation while also providing an extended summation of the Nintendo 64's place within that market period.

In having such a clear negative bias towards a specific, direct competitor to the main subject of the video, however, the creator slips into being an unreliable narrator. Some stories intentionally do this for storytelling effect, but this video isn't a fictional story. It's a historical accounting of events which actually happened. If they had reserved these biases for a segment within the video expressing their own personal opinions, that would have been one thing. However, biases which are clearly their personal opinions on the periphery and main subjects, heavily flavor the commentary in what a typical viewer would assume is a relatively accurate historical accounting. As such, the viewer would naturally assume that any bias present in such an accounting regarding subjects is neutral....unfortunately that is not the case here with this retrospective when it comes to PlayStation.

I'll list a few of the big problems I noticed (again, I'm still watching through the whole thing as I type this), and will hopefully provide corrections to points noticed.

1: The narrator regularly refers to Sony's promotion of CD technology in gaming as "propaganda". Now, let's look at the definition of the term "propaganda":

prop·a·gan·da
/ˌpräpəˈɡandə/

noun
  1. 1.
    information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

Now ask yourself, what information regarding CD technology for purposes of gaming, was Sony stating at the time which was "misleading"? Because while they did have a vested interest in CD adoption...they were surely not the only console maker using CD for gaming by the mid '90s. Load time issues were a known quantity even by the early '90s since a few microcomputer and DOS games were experimenting with CD versions of their games. The storage capacity of the media was not a lie; it in fact was capable of hundreds of MBs worth of storage at quantities much larger (and more affordable) than cartridges. This, along with standards like Redbook audio, allowed for superior sound compared to cartridge-based systems of the time as well.

Any of the benefits regarding CDs that Sony were promoting for purpose of benefiting the PS1...were effectively the same that companies like Sega promoted for the Sega/Mega-CD and Saturn, or NEC for the PC-Engine CD and PC-FX, or The 3DO Company for the 3DO, or Philips for the CD-i, or FM Towns for the FM Towns Marty, or SNK for the Neo Geo CD....you get the point. These benefits were time and again proven with real-world results quite absolutely even by the mid-90s...so to claim it as "propaganda" is quite misleading. It needlessly invites a negative connotation to the technology, product and in this case, the company with the product leveraging that technology.

2: The narrator misleads with the market share of Sega Saturn and PS1 in Japan. In particular, they attempt using the following image:

3IfrTZ6.jpg

...which mischaracterizes the actual market performance of both consoles, in Japan, between 1994 and 1995. While it is true the Saturn had a lead over the PS1 during that period, there are two VERY important things to consider:

1: That lead was significantly smaller than an image like this would suggest, and...​
2: It only really manifested due to differences in sales reporting between the two companies.​

Sega reported all of their hardware sales during this period as sold-in (to retailers); not only Sega of Japan, as we know now from the leaked Sega documents (FY '96 or '97, I forget which) that Sega of America did the same thing (alongside Sega as a whole having unconsolidated accounting, but that's a different topic). Sony, OTOH, reported their sales as sold-through (to customers), at least when talking to the press (fiscal data still included sold-in). Sold-in will always produce a higher number than sold-through, but sold-through gives a better picture of where market share growth is happening where it really matters: at the consumer level.

And in that sense, the PS1 was significantly closer to Saturn during the '94 and '95 period in Japan, but particularly '95. I actually found the source of the info in the provided graphic the narrator of the video likely used (GAF > Internet > GAF; here's the PDF that post used btw), but that source only specifies hardware shipments in Japan through the end of 1994, while the narrator emphasizes the graphic to suggest a sales split between both platforms in Japan up through the end of 1995.

However, we have actual estimates for end of '95 in Japan and they clearly were closer than suggested in the image. Saturn shipments were seemingly around 2.5 million in Japan by EOY '95, while PS1 shipments were around 2 million. A difference of 500K in Saturn's favor, of course, but there is something else to be specified here. Saturn shipments in Japan for 1995 were lower than PlayStation's, despite having almost 3x the number of shipments in the 1994 period. Sega, being a console manufacturer with a known history, would have curried more favor for orders by retailers at Saturn's launch compared to Sony and the then-new PlayStation, with their unproven track record (in console) at the time. Yet if Saturn sold-through were ~ 3:1 by the end of 1994, you would suspect that Sega would have procured a much larger shipment of Saturns to Japan during 1995, even with a planned American & European launches later in that year.

Instead, we saw Sega rush the Saturn out to both markets in late Spring of that year...why? Well, the assumed reason was to get the jump on Sony in the West to repeat the huge success of doing so in Japan. But, Saturn only launched a week ahead of PS1 in Japan. Why would a strategy that supposedly worked with just a week-ahead launch, need to be turned into a several months-ahead surprise launch in Western markets? IMO, the more sensible read is that Sega did the surprise launch in the West because while sales were strong in Japan, they were not "massively strong" over PS1 particularly as the early parts of 1995 rolled in. This is supported by the massive increase in PS1 unit distribution for Japan during that year while it'd appear orders for Saturn slowed down considerably following the Christmas period. This slowdown for Saturn, and increase for PS1, might have unnerved SOJ executives and thus led them to demand a surprise launch for the Saturn in America & Europe.

The idea behind that is, likely, with several months head start they could have built up a large enough install base to lure 3P to the platform well ahead of PS1's September release, so even if momentum started to slow for Saturn by a point where a lot of PS1 became available for Western customers, the lead built up earlier would have ensured enough 3P software to naturally incline people towards a Saturn over a PS1, skimming back a peak on PS1 momentum enough to play a long game in growing install base.

At least, that is likely what SOJ thought would happen in theory. In practice this obviously didn't occur but, again, I think the surprise launch itself is supported by growing trepidation for Saturn's position in the market of Japan, as they saw the splits between sold-in (shipped) and sold-through (to customers) for the platform, compared to what were likely far closer ratios of both metrics for PS1 and a rapid increase in shipments for the system in Japan following the Christmas 1994 season.

3: There's a part where in talking about the impact of Super Mario 64's first demonstration to the gaming world, that it was a far cry from a lot of the mediocre software released on competing platforms up to that point.

And it's true; a lot of bad 3D games released prior to that showing of Mario 64. However, the narrator only focuses on the PlayStation when mentioning this, as if to suggest it was the only platform between it and Saturn with some bad 3D games released. That simply isn't true, and again it shows an inherently negative bias on the video's part towards how they frame Sony and PlayStation as subjects within the context of historical analysis of the N64.

Both the PS1 and Saturn had a few bad releases 3D-wise during that period but neither system sold simply on the novelty of their 3D. After all the 3DO also existed and if 3D alone were the only requirement for sales then that system would have been flying off the shelves. Even the Atari Jaguar would have performed better than it did.

4: There's a point around the 28 minute mark where the narrator (correctly) brings up that Sony pulling Squaresoft to their side helped draw in other developers. The context of "developers" here seemingly meaning 3P devs & publishers, as Squaresoft fits both labels. However, in listing some names of other studios that were swayed to focus primarily (or exclusively) on PS1 thanks to Sony drawing in Squaresoft, Japan Studio is mentioned.

Now let me remind you, the assumed context here is third party developers and publishers. However, a quick look into Japan Studio's history shows that they were a fully first party developer studio started internally by Sony back in 1993. Why are they being listed among a group of third-party developers & publishers like Enix, Yuke's and Acquire? In doing this, it feels like the video is attempting to associate Japan Studio as a third-party studio that was "lured in" by Sony to focus primarily/exclusively on PlayStation and not other platforms.

While staffing in-house 1P studios may inherently involve some degree of courting talent from other teams, some of whom may be 3P, it is quite a reach to then suggest or insinuate (verbally or visually) that said 1P studio is "basically" a 3P dev driven away from supporting one platform to another.

5: The narrator seems to paint a picture that PlayStation sales in Japan were rather laggy or grim whereas Saturn was dominating the region, at least up to the release of Resident Evil (March 1996). Even then, they posit that PS1 sales were just "slowly and steadily" improving from what is earlier insinuated as a laggy performance in the region. However, they only seem to be leveraging shipment data, from the sources I provided earlier. However, if we're going by shipment data, we can see that in both 1995 and 1996, shipments between Saturn and PS1 to Japan were statistically even. 1.66 million (Saturn) vs 1.7 million (PS1) in 1995, and 2.3 million (Saturn) vs. 2.2 million (PS1) in 1996. 1994 shipments have already been explained as a combination of Sega's Saturn likely initially receiving larger orders from retailers due to their proven hardware track record in gaming up to that point, and Sega's production line likely being a bit more mature.

That said, with the 1995 and 1996 shipments virtually tied, that does not sound to me like PS1 was "lagging behind" in Japan even during a pre-Resident Evil period. In fact, it would at least suggest the platforms were in similar levels of demand. If not, then retailers would simply reduce their quantity of orders, which would have been reflected in shipment amounts. Of course, product manufacturers can provide other incentives, such as pricing margins, buybacks, and so forth, to encourage retailers to order the product. But at some point, if the sell-through rate isn't good enough, retailers will reduce said orders. We're not seeing that for PS1 in '95 or '96, so we have to assume sold-through rates between it and Saturn were at least very similar during that period and, again, even pre-Resident Evil's release. However, depending on who you ask, PS1 had a higher sell-through rate than Saturn.

Again, though, if such were true (and considering shipments for Saturn didn't notably increase in relation to PS1 during those periods despite having near 3:1 shipment lead in 1994, is likely), it was probably not by a massive margin. This would suggest that the two platforms were extremely competitive in Japan from the 1994 to late 1996 periods, so it's befuddling as to why the narrator of the video (indirectly) suggests otherwise.

6: Around the 30 minute mark, the narrator essentially insinuates Sony of price-fixing to bleed competitors, i.e Sega, out of margins on their own consoles, suggesting the $199 price Sony cut the PS1 to in mid-1996 caused them to bleed lots of money on the console, but their corporate size offset those losses and they made them back and then some in software sales. This insinuation, ironically, is the narrator contradicting their own assumptions of lagging PS1 sales from the 1994-1996 period, and I'll explain why in a minute.

For starters, yes Sony as a corporation was much larger than Sega, and even Nintendo. They also did leverage parts of that corporate strength to assist the PS1 in the market, namely with certain technologies (CD-ROM drive, in-house chip production & design) and global distribution chain networks. However, a large degree of this would simply have been expected of such a company at the time to help get its newest product division off the ground.

Moreover, similarly massive Japanese tech companies like NEC did much the same for their PC-Engine and in spite of such, did not see success outside of Japan and even in Japan, saw at best modest success compared to smaller companies like Nintendo. To think Sony would not leverage parts of their company to beef up the PS1 is rather silly (and yes there is a parallel here in modern day to Microsoft and the Xbox, despite my known criticisms of that company and that brand. Though there are significant differences between them and today, versus Sony and the PS1, in how these synergies were realized and the intent of the synergies themselves).

However, even supposing Sony's price cut to $199 was them exploiting their corporate size (it wasn't), the video itself accidentally reveals a flaw in the basis of that presumption. It states that Sony would offset hardware losses through software revenue...which is true. In fact companies like Sega operated on much of the same principal. However, an earlier point the video stresses is that PlayStation sales were "lagging heavily" behind Saturn particularly in the Japan region. If these sales were significantly behind, wouldn't it stand to reason the software sales were similarly behind? And if software sales were similarly behind, wouldn't it stand to reason that 3P publishers would have scaled back software support for the platform earlier on, shifting focus to the Saturn instead?

In reality, that did not happen, because PS1 software sales were in fact quite good during the 1994-1996 periods, and on average higher than on Saturn, even in Japan, the region the video insinuates the PS1 was essentially struggling to keep pace in. Yet we have shipment data for both 1995 and 1996 for both systems in that territory, which are effectively tied, suggesting demand was at worst effectively tied or even, otherwise retailers would have pulled back on number of orders shipped to their stores, unless of course some type of massive incentives were provided for them to keep stock that wasn't selling. Though, I have to think if a certain company (Sony, in this case) were actually having done that, there would have been investigations or reports, maybe even lawsuits, from the era indicating such. And, we would have certainly seen a bleed-over effect of this for the PS2, in retailers being more strongly opposed to stocking the system, or being more receptive of stocking Dreamcasts. Which, of course, didn't happen either, suggesting such an idea never materially manifested.

Therefore we can assume that strong software sales and revenue cuts from 3P software sales on PS1, likely also combined with favorable currency exchange rates or what-have-you (and at least the economy in the West being very strong during the '90s) encouraged the $199 price cut. If anything, software revenue & revenue cuts were able to subsidize and offset a price drop, for a platform in growth phase, ahead of the launch of a seemingly strong competitor in the N64, which was already advertised to release cheaper than PS1's price at the time ($249 vs. $299).

Also remember, a lot of the PS1's chips were designed in-house and manufactured in-house as well, with the CD-ROM drive being in-house in addition to this. All of which meant much less off-the-shelf parts for PS1 versus the Saturn. The Saturn's heavy use of off-the-shelf parts negatively impacted the rate in which the MSRP could be scaled down without losing any, or too much, on each unit sold. However, that was Sega's own problem due to questionable engineering & design choices for the Saturn earlier on, not Sony's.

---------------------------------------

Anyhow, I just wanted to point out some of the odd aspects of this retrospective I noticed in just the first 30 minutes; as I get through the rest (it's ~ 1hr 20 min in length), despite my criticisms above I AM enjoying the watch to a large extent. There aren't a lot of N64 retrospectives out there and the video itself is rather professionally edited, at least on par with other gaming documentaries I've seen on Youtube. Unfortunately, the implicit negative biases the narrator of the video seem to have towards the PlayStation, which is involved as a supporting subject to contextualize commentary on the main subject (the N64), drag down what would have otherwise been an easy recommendation.

As-is, I'd have to give it a 6.5/10 due in large part to those reoccurring negative biases, which weigh against it. As someone with a fondness for all three main systems of this generation (though I, of course, have my own preferences, the N64 generally being my least-preferred of the 3 in retrospect and the Saturn a somewhat close 2nd to the PS1, IMO), one thing I would love to see is more analysis and retrospective of the systems of the era but in a way where any positive bias towards a given platform doesn't create negative bias towards another, especially for needless reasons. For example, expanding out to lesser-known systems, I generally see the Atari Jaguar as a waste of a system for that generation. I would put it below the 3DO and even 32X (tho I view that more as a peripheral), let alone the N64, Saturn, and PS1, all three of which tower above it.

At the same time, if I were recanting events of the era and separating as much of my opinion and bias from the accounting as possible, I would not lean into harping on my personal distaste for the Jaguar in such. The reason being because, I would not want a negative bias to present itself which then could lead to misinforming on aspects of the system in what's otherwise meant as an historical accounting. Historical accountings should aim for historical accuracy, as that accuracy is absolutely important. I feel the best documentaries and retrospectives in gaming, particularly on consoles themselves, strive for and in most cases accomplish this.

This channel, which again I've only found recently through watching this vid, has a lot of potential. Their editing's on-point and they present stuff with good pacing. And, when excusing the issues surrounding reporting of PS1 in particular, it's more or less accurately informative. If they could work better on quelling the negative biases though, they could elevate their work by a good amount.

Welp, just wanted to share my thoughts. I'd still invite you to give it a watch yourself, especially if you're a Nintendo fan of the era. It does embellish some things when it comes to Sony in particular, but it also gives a mostly comprehensive timeline of N64 developments and, I'm assuming, market performance in the remaining hour I've still got to finish watching. That said, I'd be interested in hearing how any of you felt about the N64 at the time, and/or how you feel about it today. Take care!
 
I think the Playstation was a surprise to a lot of people, new kid on the block, cheaper, a lot of "next-gen" looking games.

And I think it's release dampened the shift of focus that Nintendo was going for at the time. Mario 64 is easily one of the most important games ever released as it set the standard and template of future 3D platforming forever.

For me, the N64 was the King of Friday/Saturday night sleepovers if it was more than 2 people. Playing Goldeneye/Wcw vs. NWO: Revenge/Sarge's Heros/BeetleAdventureRacing/Gauntlet Legends with your buddies, pissing yourself with laughter, passing out on soda and chips.

It's tech felt underutilized by almost everyone outside of Nintendo's wheelhouse and it just didn't offer the library that Psx had access to. And as a result, Playstation gained so much more mindshare in my friends group that the N64 was really only for events or blockbuster releases. The Psx was the daily driver for just about everyone I knew.
 
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I think the Playstation was a surprise to a lot of people, new kid on the block, cheaper, a lot of "next-gen" looking games.

And I think it's release dampened the shift of focus that Nintendo was going for at the time. Mario 64 is easily one of the most important games ever released as it set the standard and template of future 3D platforming forever.

For me, the N64 was the King of Friday/Saturday night sleepovers if it was more than 2 people. Playing Goldeneye/Wcw vs. NWO: Revenge/Sarge's Heros/BeetleAdventureRacing/Gauntlet Legends with your buddies, pissing yourself with laughter, passing out on soda and chips.

It's tech felt underutilized by almost everyone outside of Nintendo's wheelhouse and as a result, it just didn't offer the library that Psx had access to.

Nintendo delayed the system so much that even SDKs I assume were LTTP, as was the controller. Devs were transitioning to 3D and Sony just made it monumentally easier for them to do so compared to Nintendo and Sega.

But in Nintendo's case, a lot of it probably could've been avoided with some quick and easy choices. Opening up BTS access to 3P earlier on, and not banning custom microcode (that the devs might've been more comfortable with using versus Nintendo's in-house microcode) would've been great starts. I'm sure some magazines like Next Generation probably suggested mentions like this every now and then back in the day, but the people who needed to hear them the most weren't paying attention.
 
Now at around the 50 minute mark and the video makes another highly exaggerated, negatively connotative (in nature) presumption. It assumes that PS1 sales began expanding/growing out of bounds from N64 in 1997 (for a few periods in 1997 the N64 did outsell PS1 in NPDs, and I would assume a few other locations as well, albeit sporadically) mainly due to software piracy.

While it's true piracy did increase some during the late '90s, and PS1 proliferation increased in part due to it, again the video makes a mistake of letting a continued, negative bias towards the platform color its emphasis of that phenomenon. Going by their tone, you would think piracy was maddingly rampant on the platform which, naturally, would have caused software sales to crater and revenue thereof.

Of course, neither of these things actually happened, as software sales continued to grow by large amounts in 1997, and even more in 1998 (which I guess in terms of big releases many would consider the PS1 peak year). If piracy were so rampant, surely the software sales and revenue would have tanked across the board. However, in truth CD burners weren't easily/cheaply obtainable commodities; quality ones still costed quite a lot of money, and you still needed a pretty good computer to make use of them or any ripping of the games. You still had to buy blank CDs, which while cheap weren't dirt-cheap like they'd become in the early '00s.

And most importantly you'd never once come across those pirated games at commercial stores; you either had a friend or buddy you knew who made some, or you'd have to luck into them at some random thrift market. It's not like people were Bittorrenting the ISOs and even if so, try doing that with even a small handful of games up to 600+ MB in size, on 33K or 56K dial-up back in the '90s. Knowing ISPs like AOL were charging by the minute back then, and assuming you were lucky to download 1 MB per minute and have the entire download uninterrupted...who is honestly paying $1800 a month to download a PS1 game through a torrent or forum server in the mid-late '90s?

Because, if you weren't around the limited circles where pirates were selling their limited quantities of ripped CDs, the internet was your only other option. So basically, the narrator makes another mistake due to a negative bias, but I've seen people make the same mistake blaming rampant piracy for Dreamcast's demise too, FWIW. Again, piracy played a part (and in that system's case Sega left the MIL-CD code deep in the BIOS thinking obscurity/obfuscation meant security), but not as much as people think. If you were downloading off the net you were still limited to 56K for the most part, and a lot of ripped GDI images had botched video and audio for compression's sake, even certain content cut altogether from the game itself.

So just like how factors other than piracy were the major contributors to Dreamcast's market problems and eventual demise, factors other than piracy were the major contributors to the PS1 outselling the N64. Such as, I dunno, a more consistent release schedule of quality games and more affordable (not "practically free", though) prices.
 
Another claim the video makes later on, when talking about OoT, is that Dark Soul's base comes directly from that game, in terms of the gameplay style. While OoT did have a big influence and I'm sure also influenced the Dark Souls series, I'm...almost pretty sure that both King's Field and Armored Core, which predate OoT by several years, were bigger influences in terms of Dark Soul's base.

However, in a roundabout way you could make such a claim if considering Demon's Souls as the absolute base for Dark Souls, because Demon's Souls was itself inspired by OoT (but not exclusively, perhaps not even as the main inspiration). However it's kind of silly to ignore From's own earlier works in King's Field and Armored Core as helping significantly shape stuff like Demon's Souls which then was spiritually succeeded by Dark Souls, even with OoT's influence also present.
 
I know I've highlighted enough of the negative PS bias in the video by now, but there's a classic talking point near the end where the video states that Sony paid 3P to deprive the other consoles (Nintendo, Sega) from their games. It's a "classic talking point" because we've seen it used today by people who were trying to justify MS buying ABK and going back to the 5th gen to do so.

The problem with that talking point though, is that it assumes Sony had all the leverage. At the end of the day, the 3P still had to consent towards an agreement to work on PlayStation either primarily or exclusively, and that would have in part been informed by platform sales. It also would have been informed by willingness of platform holders to even reach out and work with 3P, something Sega and especially Nintendo were notorious for not doing during that era.

Also while the video attempts painting a picture that only Sony had money to spend big in the industry at the time, it ignores that Nintendo was MASSIVELY profitable and simply chose to either shift most of their spending focus to the Gameboy and Pokemon, or be overly conservative due to tradition. Meanwhile it also ignores that Sega chose to spend a lot of its money on half-measured ventures such as Sega Gameworks, and highly expensive arcade machines like Model 3 which most operators chose not to buy. Their choice with off-the-shelf parts for Saturn also was hurting them long-term because the bled money on price reductions of the console, because the suppliers weren't scaling prices down for Sega to match.

Not even to mention, Sega still made rather big investments of their own in gaming at the time even if corporate-wise they were smaller than Sony, such as buying a SDK programmer & manufacturer shortly before Sony purchased Psygonsis, and partnering with Nvidia for the Diamond 3D accelerator PC card (which was literally a Sega Saturn on a GPU card). Ignoring the fact companies like Sega split their funding investments into several directions, some of which cannibalized into each other (a problem that Microsoft has today, IMO, when it comes to gaming), is short-sighted.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
That is an awful lot of analysis that I won't read.

I think the N64 was quite shit at the time, though it had a few occasional gems. That doesn't boost it above the level of an embarrassing laggard to Playstation, and in retrospect, the Saturn is also a much more enjoyable system to go back to.

It was better than the Jaguar, though. Maybe the documentary should have focused on that? I don't know. I'm just responding to the first two sentences of the OP.
 

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
The console was great in 96. I was strictly PC to start and it was the first 3D console I purchased. I have replayed a few times recently but aside from 5 games...it's not that great anymore. Somehow the short control cable slipped past me too but seems almost like a mistake going back to it.
 

kunonabi

Member
I loved it when it came out and I love it now. There are a ton of N64 games in my top 50 with one of them being no.3 and the physical beauty of the console is even more pronounced with how ugly and boring video game hardware has become. It has problems like any console and the games are harder on the eyes since I no longer own my TV that inexplicably made N64 games look amazing but it's still a favorite of mine all these years later.

I will continue to argue that the N64/SS/PS era was the last generation where you really needed to own every console.
 

Geometric-Crusher

"Nintendo games are like indies, and worth at most $19" 🤡
This is a topic that I really like.

Firstly, I respect the N64, I think the ideas contained in it are brilliant, even to be replicated today.

But objectively, Sony and Sega achieved two feats that were fatal to Nintendo.

Reduce cost to the consumer
Increased profit margin for the developer.

A combo that Nintendo couldn't compete against.
 

SaintALia

Member
Nintendo delayed the system so much that even SDKs I assume were LTTP, as was the controller. Devs were transitioning to 3D and Sony just made it monumentally easier for them to do so compared to Nintendo and Sega.

But in Nintendo's case, a lot of it probably could've been avoided with some quick and easy choices. Opening up BTS access to 3P earlier on, and not banning custom microcode (that the devs might've been more comfortable with using versus Nintendo's in-house microcode) would've been great starts. I'm sure some magazines like Next Generation probably suggested mentions like this every now and then back in the day, but the people who needed to hear them the most weren't paying attention.
Wouldn't have made much difference I'd imagine. Microcode was notoriously hard to use from what I understood.

The N64 had a bunch of hardware barriers for devs, microcode was probably the least of their issues. Hell, I even remember a quote from a dev saying that Nintendo made hardware for their devs, and other devs just had to design around that(or maybe that was for the GC?).

Nintendo did have the right idea with 3D and where it was going though, but the use of cartridges, and some other hardware quirks kneecapped the hardware.

I don't think there were any 'easy choices' to make back then. The videocard industry was a lot more vibrant with more competitors abound, but not very many that could do what Nintendo wanted in the price package needed for mass consumer adoption. I think I was still using software acceleration back then too, couldn't even afford those nice Voodoo cards back then. I think the only decent competition to 3Dfx only came out years after the N64 launched in the Riva 128 or TNT, one of those. I think ATi had it's Rage line but I remembered them just being okay. Man, still blows my mind 3Dfx got bought by them lol.

I guess some people were complaining about the controller, but everytime that's brought up I just wonder if people willfully obtuse in how to hold it. Very few games even require use of the 'claw grip'.
 
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Another claim the video makes later on, when talking about OoT, is that Dark Soul's base comes directly from that game, in terms of the gameplay style. While OoT did have a big influence and I'm sure also influenced the Dark Souls series, I'm...almost pretty sure that both King's Field and Armored Core, which predate OoT by several years, were bigger influences in terms of Dark Soul's base.
OoT's biggest standard that it set was contextual buttons and z-targeting. Z-targeting being the bigger game changer for action RPG's, it still is more or less the exact standard still used today, Dark Souls obviously taking it's huge combat mechanics from that specific basis. Waaaayyy more so than what FS took from their own AC and King's Field games.
 
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The console was great in 96. I was strictly PC to start and it was the first 3D console I purchased. I have replayed a few times recently but aside from 5 games...it's not that great anymore. Somehow the short control cable slipped past me too but seems almost like a mistake going back to it.

They prob thought the cord length was good enough for kids and also the largest CRTs families had back then weren't larger than like 25-30 inches. So people likely sat closer to their TVs when playing games (I know I did).

For that type of environment the cord length was fine, I suppose.

Maybe you should start a blog or something.

Nobody reads blogs anymore 🤣. But I've considered it from time to time.

I loved it when it came out and I love it now. There are a ton of N64 games in my top 50 with one of them being no.3 and the physical beauty of the console is even more pronounced with how ugly and boring video game hardware has become. It has problems like any console and the games are harder on the eyes since I no longer own my TV that inexplicably made N64 games look amazing but it's still a favorite of mine all these years later.

I will continue to argue that the N64/SS/PS era was the last generation where you really needed to own every console.

Likely the last gen indeed where you needed all three systems, though I'd argue 7th gen also falls into that category. Maybe a bit less so, but 360, PS3 and Wii had a lot of worthwhile exclusives that generation and a lot of big AAA games still weren't getting releases on Steam/PC.
 
Wouldn't have made much difference I'd imagine. Microcode was notoriously hard to use from what I understood.

The N64 had a bunch of hardware barriers for devs, microcode was probably the least of their issues. Hell, I even remember a quote from a dev saying that Nintendo made hardware for their devs, and other devs just had to design around that(or maybe that was for the GC?).

Nintendo did have the right idea with 3D and where it was going though, but the use of cartridges, and some other hardware quirks kneecapped the hardware.

I don't think there were any 'easy choices' to make back then. The videocard industry was a lot more vibrant with more competitors abound, but not very many that could do what Nintendo wanted in the price package needed for mass consumer adoption. I think I was still using software acceleration back then too, couldn't even afford those nice Voodoo cards back then. I think the only decent competition to 3Dfx only came out years after the N64 launched in the Riva 128 or TNT, one of those. I think ATi had it's Rage line but I remembered them just being okay. Man, still blows my mind 3Dfx got bought by them lol.

I guess some people were complaining about the controller, but everytime that's brought up I just wonder if people willfully obtuse in how to hold it. Very few games even require use of the 'claw grip'.

Nah with Gamecube, Nintendo went out of their way to make sure it was easier to program for. It was probably the second most programmer-friendly console that gen only behind Dreamcast, in that respect.

And you're right that Nintendo had the right idea for 3D; neither Saturn nor PlayStation featured real Z-buffering for example. But Nintendo bottlenecked the console so badly between limited cartridge sizes and the high latency RAM, and not even having a dedicated sound processor to boot. Just too many technical drawbacks stifling experimental creative vision in the transitionary period of 3D gaming.

OoT's biggest standard that it set was contextual buttons and z-targeting. Z-targeting being the bigger game changer for action RPG's, it still is more or less the exact standard still used today, Dark Souls obviously taking it's huge combat mechanics from that specific basis. Waaaayyy more so than what FS took from their own AC and King's Field games.

Yeah, that part is true. Z-targeting in OoT absolutely influences Dark Soul's variant, I'm not necessarily disputing that. However, I mean things beyond a single mechanic or two; in terms of say atmosphere, or storytelling style, art direction, ambiance, character & enemy designs, aspects of level design etc....I think it's safe to say From drew more from the King's Field and Armored Core games for Demon's Souls (and eventually, Dark Souls) than something like OoT.

Otherwise Dark Souls would've been something more like Twilight Princess. So the video making that link between OoT and Dark Souls isn't inherently wrong, but I think it overly emphasizes OoT's influence in the whole scope of Dark Soul's game design, when you consider not just mechanical but also thematic elements. At the very least, works prior to it from the studio should certainly be considered at least as influential (and IMO a lot of people underestimate how much the King's Field games directly influenced Demon's Souls and Dark Souls).
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I spent probably 80% of my gaming time on PlayStation during that generation. N64 was basically for local 4 player multiplayer + a handful of Nintendo/Rare single player games.

I thought it was mid then and still think it’s mid today. It was good as a secondary system or as a dorm room party machine (although Dreamcast knocked it out of that spot pretty quickly). As someone who was mostly into RPGs, racing, and fighting games, it was a big disappointment.

Even for FPS it was disappointing compared to PC. Goldeneye was fun for local MP but it was nothing compared to Quake 2, Unreal, Half Life, Team Fortress Classic, etc
 

Geometric-Crusher

"Nintendo games are like indies, and worth at most $19" 🤡
the person in the video is resentful, lots of alternative theory, sounds like a Nintendo version of Sega-fan Sheath.
Regardless of the strategies Sony used. Sega and Nintendo would have been successful if they had done their homework. that's all.

There is no secret in the games industry, a new console competito has disadvantages compared to established consoles.
To try reverse this disadvantage, strong financial support is needed for agreements with third parties to obtain exclusive games, as well as good marketing. Sony had all that budget.

Nintendo could have done better, but it did reasonably well in NA, but without CD-Rom and RPG it lost the Japanese market.

Sega, however, didn't do its homework, it made more mistakes than Nintendo, reaping an even worse result.
 

Katajx

Member
Moving from the Genesis to the N64, it was a great piece of tech, but carried what are some of what would now be considered the usual Nintendo problems.

The cartridges and them being so successful with the NES and SNES that they get in their own way.
When I moved as a teenager all of my friends had the PSX and that was when I was able to go back and see what I had been missing out on.

SM64, OoT,MM,Mario Kart/Diddy Kong Racing, Wave Race,Conker, Shadows of the Empire, Rogue Squadron, Ogre Battle 64, etc.

For every great game it did it have though it missed out on some other 3rd party greats. Squaresoft and Enix JRPGs, the original Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Legacy of Kain/Soul Reaver.

Nintendo had the kiddie/family friendly console where Sony was better positioned to make games for a more mature audience.
 
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