It’s been N64 week for me, having finally received my Japanese unit.
And it’s really felt like coming home in more ways than I expected. A few things really stood out to me:
The N64’s antialiasing completes the visual makeup of many games. Kirby 64, which I’ll post a few videos of, looks phemonenal in motion with antialiasing. Such smooth edges to complement the soft visual appearance of the game. But with many other games the antialiasing, combined with the low rendering resolution, just completes that simplistic mid-90s CGI appearance. Drake Lake in Wave Race 64, both with and without the mist, looks as perfect as it could look.
The analogue stick is amazingly precise. In Pawapuro you aim your baseball bat by moving a little crosshair inside a square box, and this rather indirect and abstract system really revealed how accurate the analogue stick can be. I had no trouble moving the tiny dot around and holding it in place to aim my shots.
Also, playing Wave Race 64 with the original controller really transforms the game. It feels so right with that Z button trigger. I only previously had the game on Wii and Wii U Virtual Console.
It’s so good, there’s so many vistas in the game levels themselves which I found myself stopping to stare at. I’ll post some photos on the CRT thread later this week.
I’d only previously ever seen emulated screenshots of the game where it’s rather ugly, you can tell the game’s textures and models were designed to look perfect at 240p and with antialiasing. Kirby and Waddle Dee appear perfectly round here.
This all again reminds us how the contemporary consensus on N64 visuals is based on assessments of false image quality via inaccurate emulators displaying their image on modern pixel-driven displays.
I agree - N64 gets a very unfair reputation for its visuals. Textures are soft and that’s a fair thing to criticize at times when they’re stretched along large surfaces like floors and walls without accounting for that softness and designing around it. But most games do, and the actual polygons usually look fantastic on a CRT.
That contributes but there were plenty of complaints of blurry graphics from back in the day, too. I’m pretty sure terms like “vaseline covered” have been around since the CRT days.
It varies a lot by game, though. Lots of N64 games still look great.
Anything with lots of solid colors and without very detailed textures tends to look great on N64. Mascot platforms and kart racers are excellent for example. Things do fall apart with more intricate texture work though.
Generally, most first party games look excellent in my humble opinion.
Good case in point is Banjo Kazooie vs Banjo Tooie. The former is gorgeous, while the latter is a blurry mess as they tried to be more intricate with the texture work.
Yeah, this is true, probably because PS1 and Saturn games tended to appear more crisp due to the lack of texture filtering, greater reliance on pixel art textures, and lack of antialiasing.
@Peltz‘s comment also makes a lot of sense. N64 games don’t look best when you’ve got low resolution textures occupying a large amount of space. Some of Pilotwings 64’s islands just don’t look good because the textures aren’t really communicating the detail of the environments. The urban areas in Little States (not sure how it was called in the English version) suffers because of this.
I’m curious if anyone thinks there’s an N64 3D fighter that, visually, compares favorably with the Saturn/PS’s best? ie VF2, Tekken 3, Tobal, SF EX etc etc.
I’ve been trying to take some nice photos for the 240p thread, but they just come out so bad compared to the 32 bit machines. The higher res, crisper textures, no blur (often at a faster framerate!) just look way better. Admittedly it’s on S-Video compared to RGB, and the games are… not as good looking period, but still.
I want to imagine that N64, in the right hands, could have handled something like Tekken (Soul Blade maybe) pretty nicely. But with its display output, I struggle to imagine it looking better than the other 2.
Have you checked out Mortal Kombat 4? Underrated game, that runs smooth and is fun to play. The visuals I believe do what they set out to but that doesn’t stop the player models from looking/moving a little goofy.
Sure it’s on PS1 too but this is the superior version.
I haven’t recently, though i did play the N64 version back when it came out. I was fairly impressed given at the time, Street Fighter EX didn’t feel much like the 2D SF, but MK4 played pretty similarly to 2D MK. Unfortunately neither version came out in Japan so I’m unlikely to stumble across a copy!
Didn’t realise it didn’t come out in all regions. Might be interesting to see if there were many regional exclusives that didn’t end up in Japan as I just assumed they got everything but we would miss out if anything.
Yeah I’m not well versed on which PS1 games didnt come over, but a lot of later Midway stuff for N64 didn’t. MK Trilogy i think was the last MK released in Japan. Not sure if that was originally due to lacking popularity or violence, but these days it’s definitely cause of violence. Modern MK would have to be severely censored to even get a Cero Z rating.
Also Killer Instinct (SNES version too), Conker… which i guess you can put down to Nintendo protecting their image back then?
Whenever i discover a game that never came out here it makes me wonder who really had it worse back in those days. I always felt I was missing out on a lot, but Japan was too!
I don’t think so honestly. Those games are some of the best looking of the generation. Personally, I think Soul Blade on PS1 may have the very best graphics overall of any game in the entire generation (but I’ve never really touched the Tekken series so maybe Tekken 3?)
Dark Rift on N64 looks fine at times. Smash Bros looks great for what it’s going for, but it’s obviously less detailed and more about getting a ton of characters on screen instead.
