That's what a good dad does. Your dad obviously cared about your happiness. My dad hated video games. I always felt stressed out when I played my SNES games in front of him, and then he started yelling about selling my N64 as soon as my mother brought it home. She refused to sell, but the only time I could play it was when he was out. Two thumbs up for your dad not being like mine. 👍👍
@@RedPill780 That's sad,man. My dad,my mom and I were walking through downtown when I was 7 years old. The N64 had just released and I saw it through a storefront window. My dad said "you want one?" And my mom said "we're tight with money right now" and my dad said "I don't care,I get my son what he wants" and I'll never forget my dad's love for me. I have so many great memories with that N64. I wish my dad was still alive,he was the best man I ever knew.
I’ll never forget the first time I walked into a Blockbuster Video and saw the Super Mario 64 kiosk. I had never seen anything like it. It was like a caveman being shown fire. Even my parents were impressed.
As an autistic kid I saw it when I was in Norway on vacation and without my parents knowing I went back into a mall to play it because I couldn’t stop myself haha they were super angered when they found me haha
I played a demo version of Mario64 in my local game shop when I was around 14 years old. It was different to the proper release (more primitive with bits missing), and I remember a small crowd standing around it and it felt like being on holiday.
The N64/PS1/Saturn era was the big transition from 2D gaming to 3D gaming. The biggest jump between console generations at the time, and even to this day there has never been a jump between console generations that was that big. I am glad to have been a kid during that time to see it all play out.
It's pretty fascinating how huge the jumps in graphics were back then, and how closely tied those jumps were to evolutions in gameplay. Even jump from PS1 > PS2 was pretty huge (though obviously nothing like 2D to 3D). I feel like PS2 > PS3 was substantial as well, but has run into a wall since then. Games have increased fidelity and scope, but it feels as though most games today are just highly polished iterations of the platforms built in the PS3 era.
I completely agree, the leap from 2-D to 3-D when the PlayStation first came out and the Saturn and then later on the Nintendo 64 was truly amazing to be there as a child and get to experience firsthand!!! We have not had a leap like it since- And games today are just also so homogenized that we don’t have nearly as much variety, there’s no more magical feeling of getting something truly revolutionary and new and the amount of games that are truly worth experiencing I feel is decreasing but I am also getting older and so there is that.. When games started to go online of course they would follow the marketing practices that were set up by the smart phone and this ultimately has resulted in video games and their quality and that feel of “magic“ deteriorating- I wish it wasn’t the case..
I am not strictly disagreeing with your statement, but Gen 6 introduced Internet and Online services/connectivity which hugely influence the gaming industry. Not to mention, it was so thoroughly legitimized by that point that AAA game studios were normal and games had become productions with vast amount of resources being thrown at it. Gen 5 was definitely the dawn of the AAA game, but Gen 6 made it normal. There are some incredible heavy-hitters on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. I think that 2D to 3D is a very, very big deal, and the technology to accomplish that was very impressive, but Gen 6 made video games what we know them as today. Blockbusters worth billions of dollars with live services, online play, and many of the genres we know and love came out of that generation.
@tylerb6981 the Dawn of AAA games? I guess Nintendo, Atari, etc., just indie devs lol. Also, I highly disagree with the impact on quality with the rise of internet use. If anything, online play has retarded new ideas as everyone needs those sweet microtransactions, led to the dawn of incomplete titles cause patches and DLC, the feeling of genuine community as some tweenager drops another N-bomb on the mic, etc. Did the net impact the landscape? Yes. Do I kind of wish it didn't (looking back)? YES. Now we have the age of indies that arguably, is making it all even more terrible as they're treated with kid gloves.
This was the party console of the 90s. I wasn't even a gamer at all, but I have extremely fond memories of playing 4 player on rotation, drinking Surge soda until only 4 of us were still awake. The sun started to come up so we could go skateboarding and grab breakfast for everyone. Legendary times.
@@shaun8062 every time i think of goldeneye, I can smell cat shit lol. Because we used to geek for DAYS in a row at my friends house, and his cats litter box was in his room. The crazy things we tie to our memories haha..
I wish younger people today could experience the excitement we felt every time there was a big leap in technology. Everything is just hands-down amazing looking these days, so nothing is new or exciting in the way it was back then. I will never forget having my mind blown by a 3d game. Even the menu for SM64 was amazing
@@50bricks You mean that enormous flop that was promised to us as a "world changing innovation that would unlock the metaverse" but then all the headsets were prohibitively expensive and made everyone nauseous?
When I have kids I definitely want to introduce them to gaming chronologically. Born in 1995 I started on Windows 98, but really began using computers when Windows XP was around. For my 8th birthday or something I got a second hand Nintendo 64. A friend of mine also had one, and nobody else in my friend group had a different console at the time. I played a lot of Age of Empires I and II, and the graphics and complexity of Age of Mythology blew my mind. I always lagged behind a bit on games, as I only had a N64 and my PCs were generally never good enough to play anything that just came out decently. In 2008 I was playing the first Call of Duty and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. But that was fine. I never particularly cared for graphics, though I definitely could appreciate it. But Mohaa and COD were good enough for me. Nowadays, after playing a modern game for an hour I can easily return to Perfect Dark or Mario Kart 64, but I can imagine it would be a jarring experience for anyone who's used to mosern graphics and gameplay. So yeah, I want my kids to first witness N64 graphics, early Simcity, Age of Empires I, some random puzzle or sidescroll games I played as a kid, before advancing to newer software. I hope that can make them appreciate older games more. Same with movies. If you grow up only watching the newest Marvel movies, I can imagine anything from before the 2000s will feel slow and have terrible special effects. My girlfriend is my age and falls asleep watching most pre-2000s movies because they're just a bit slower than she can handle nowadays. I want to watch stuff with my kids and make sure they can appreciate games for what they are without needing cutting edge graphics. Old games can be great fun but you need to be able to look past the sometimes quite janky graphics.
I'll never forget the first time I seen SM64. My friends and I rode our bikes further than we ever had to go see both the PS1 and 64 on demo, and I was making my choice that day which console id be getting for my birthday , and soon as I seen SM64 , Mario just playing around outside the castle I was completely blown away , it was such an incredible leap forward, I chose the 64 in about 2 minutes 😅
I was the programmer for the 3d engine on N64 Hot Wheels Turbo racing from EA. I mostly remember how zbuffering was such a huge leap and made the design of the 3d engine so easy - no more sorting and polygon artifacts.
I tried out the new hot wheels game that released recently and the 64 version beats it out of the water! You had shortcuts and cars you could collect and find mid race. It was so fun! Thank you for helping create one of my favorite childhood games that I'm proud to have kept to this day!
I loved my N64 so much when i was a kid. My parents were honestly impressed with the visuals. even remember dad saying "in a few years games will look like Jurrasic Park". And he wasnt wrong.
I know right, it's like, games are so "normal" now, like movies and TV shows. But we were on the cusp of the next huge leap in technology; half of the hype was pure fantasy, half of it was legitimate. I guess the best way to describe it to someone who wasn't there, is like - we were being told the future is finally arriving and we're all going to get our jetpacks and hover cars now XD
Too true. I remember getting one for Christmas in '96 and having an absolute blast with it. Made it easier to come inside and thaw out after sledding in the snowstorm that started the night before.
I remember us in junior high school waiting for this Nintendo Ultra 64.😅 Wow, Mario 64 made me feel something no other console ever made me feel before. I'll never forget that dreamy feeling of awe and amazement as I made Mario jump and run in circles, and that new sensation of momentum and weight was hard to ignore.
It was a great time to be alive. The only info that was available to me was in the issues of the EGM magazines which made the machine that much moreb of a mystery.
I was in highschool when the N64 came out. It was incredible. The multiplayer games Like Mario Party, Smash Bros, Goldeneye gave me some of the best memories of my childhood.
I still have my system and I agree. Some of the best memories of my child hood. Late night pizza parties and then early morning at it again!! Such a blast!!!
I gotta say my favorite game on 64 was Turok 2. Was my first FPS game and that blew my mind. Years and years and years later purchased on Steam. Man, I'd say that game was really meant to play with keyboard and mouse!
I had already played plenty of 3d PlayStation games before playing Mario 64. It didn't matter... it was like seeing 3d again for the first time. The frame rate was noticeably higher, a true revolution in tech that I can only compare to my first time seeing Unreal, Quake 2 and Half Life. These being powered by Voodoo graphics cards.
Yea it was a big shift in what we were used to for so long, I had a gap in my love for video games because I was deeply into pc's at the time so I never ended up with an n64 and was into playstation but my friends had them.
I remember seeing - and trying out! - Mario 64 at a kiosk in my town's game shop. My little 8-year old mind was completely blown LOL N64 and PS1 graphics may look awful now, but it's hard to explain to younger people how revolutionary they were at the time.
Bro true story, I'm a 7 year old in Walmart, finally getting to try super Mario 64. Stood there for a good 3 minutes wondering why I couldn't move. Finally I used the stick instead of the D pad and my mind was blown lmao in fact I was like "you don't even use the pad?! Wowwwww" and as soon as I was able to start doing stuff, I had to go with my parents lmao but that's all it took to sell me. It was so revolutionary that when I finally got one , even my mom, who is definitely not a console player if it's not tetris and Dr Mario, helped me get the 120 ☆'s. 90s was such a fun time.
you managed to avoid all other 3d games before that? i grew uo durign that time as well. at my local gaming store they have all the systems set up. of course everyone wanted to play the new system at first but once people realized it was just a blurry mess, only new people ever played the 64, for all the locals it was back to playstation. we called it the steamhouse or the fog macine. never knew anyone there buying the thing. obviously that was a but of a anomality seems there are quite a few peple able to tolerate that.
Honestly one of the best childhood memories I have is playing n64 golden eye and Mario cart into the early hours with all my mates, nothing like having everyone there in person
Even to this day TBH. People talk about the physics but the real deal is how it connects to the gameplay element and the "feel" of it. I would be hard pressed to find another game equaly good or better than Wave Race 64 in that regard.
Wave Race will remain one of the best of all time IMO it hasn't been topped nor replicated. Blue Storm on the Cube was alright but it didn't have the same feel as the N64 version with regards to presentation and physics. I much preferred the music and announcer of the N64 game where the Cube version attempted to have a more serious tone and I do feel the Jetskis were more difficult to control and felt worse than the N64 game I'm not sure if it was more realistic but the N64 game feels like how I would imagine it against the waves.
the tech industry in the 90s was very "fake it til you make it" and sometimes that works and other times it doesnt, this is one of the examples where it actually worked out pretty good imo
It's amazing how just recently with unreal engine 5, we really don't have to fake it anymore, we can actually use real life physics and photography in 3d design.
In that regard, the tech industry hasn't changed much. Granted, Microsoft isn't regularly announcing vaporware anymore, but for how long have we've been promised self-driving cars and proper AR headsets?
I was in my early teens when the Ultra64 was announced, remember going to the grocery store with my mom and going straight for the magazine stand to flip through gaming magazines trying to absorb as much news on Nintendo's console as we didn't have access to the Internet at home. I was a big N64 fanboy back in the day😅
I think the sole reason for me to get on the internet was to watch incredibly bad resolution video footage of Mario 64 at my friend's house. I remember being astonished by the graphics quality on that video! My friend's dad got mad at me and they didn't invite me there after that because I cost so much to them in phone bills during the modem era!
@@rheokalyke367 i now use roms i got a emulator and use rom world so nice and its free not $199 what i paid for ps1 and ps2 was $259+taxt 274 no i emulate and save but ps1 and ps2 graphics weren't what they said it would be back then and the 3d launch never even made it till now ps2 ps3 promised use and never made it till end of ps4 now ps5 only close way we got was like wii style ps3 ps4 then ps5 now we need a modded system lounch were u can use make mod menus infinite ammo,moon jump,god mode, and not get band for useing it allso thats how the will get systems to sell back in the game if not its going to be rinse repeat and were sick of that even reverse engineering to play both or three games on one system has passed its time but i bet that is whats next before modded systems i just want to play my ps2 ps3 ps4 and modded game menu no ban on server but this is a lot of talking im sorry i talk alot just sayn
The visuals on the N64 was impressive for its time. I remember the first time i seen Turok the Dinosaur Hunter; the visuals was jaw dropping for its time.
Boy do I remember it well. Turok was a fun, albeit punishing game at that framerate. I remember being so pent up waiting for Turok II to come out. Nintendo Power magazines were hyping that one up and overpromising the hell out of it. They promised advanced enemy AI and graphics and all these bells and whistles. They were absolutely shameless trying to show all this lush scenery that was frankly far outside of the hardware's capabilities. Heck, they even made us buy that RAM upgrade for the console just to run it. Then I started playing it and it was... stark and bare. Still a fun game with the most iconic, pointlessly brutal weapons of all time, but the marketing behind it was borderline criminal.
Only impresive if you were a console peasant. On PC we already had way better graphics thanks to 3DFX and 1280x1024 resolution and unlike the N64 no washed out shit textures and no fog like everything takes place in the world of Silent Hill.
It was a big deal back in the day.. Seemed everyone had an N64 back then. It was truly magical as a youngster and even is for me presently. Sure, it might look dated today, but games like SM64, OoT, Goldeneye, etc will always hold a special place in my heart!
I never met another child with an Nintendo 64. I was the only one I knew of. Everybody else had PlayStation. That's why I had to get a full set of controllers. Everybody wanted to play.
@@darek4488 kind of depended on where you lived. I was born in the late 90s on the Portuguese countryside, took me a while before I saw a N64 for the first time, most people had a PS1 and were slowly transitioning into the PS2 at the time. I guess it's also in part because Nintendo hardware just wasn't that popular here back in the day, outside of handhelds, so SEGA and Sony could dominate more easily (more Megadrives around than I could count, followed by everyone getting Playstations in the following gens, until the Wii)
@@DavidBelga Even still, in 2023 Nintendo of Poland hasn't yet been established. Nowadays the electronic shops which sell Nintendo products handle warranty repairs through third parties or through Nintendo of Germany. However in the 90's in Poland the warranty was mostly fictional. Buying Nintendo in Poland always meant you were on your own if something happened. Most people didn't even knew Nintendo 64 even existed. The only recognizable Nintendo product was the original Gameboy and Gameboy Color later on, since there was nothing like it. The piracy was also an aspect in Nintendo's popularity as literally everyone was running burned CDs on PS1. And for the price of 2 original Nintendo cartridges you could get a whole console bundle. For a long time I only had Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. It wasn't until the Gamecube's release when I was able to buy many N64 games for 20% or even 10% of the price.
I remember this timeline very well because of being a teenager when it took place. The hype for the system for those 2-3 years BEFORE it came out were just crazy with all the different rumors, leaks & officially released material issued by all the different outlets covering the subject.
That was an awesome era, because each new generation of consoles reinvented gaming. Beginning of this century each new gen is pretty much same but with better looking games. Except Nintendo
The N64 was pivotal to my childhood. I got the system with the "Limited Edition" Gold Controller from Toys 'R Us for my birthday in 1997 with Mario Kart 64. Played the hell out of it. Before that, I played Super Mario 64 at the kiosk in Wal-Mart and was blown away. A friend in middle school would bring in his manual for Goldeneye 007 and talked about how amazing it was. I got it for Christmas that same year. I would bring Goldeneye over to another friend's house for sleepovers and we would stay up all night playing multiplayer and eating pizza to the point where we literally wore the cartridge out. Great times.
Actually, the super Nintendo was pivotal for me. The Nintendo 64 plain stunk going to the bad 3d graphics. At that point, just play computer games as the 3d games were better. Super Nintendo had far more fun games, the 2d was the way to go during that time.
Back then there were a lot of people in the gaming press who were conflating the offline rendering capabilities of Silicon Graphics with the realtime rendering capabilities of these machines. By the time that the N64 launched I was a little bit underwhelmed that the graphics didn't look anything like the mid90s CGI renders that you used to see all throughout Nintendo magazines.
Yeah, 'official' Nintendo mags were by far the worst for it, and they should have known better, frankly. I looked at those images as a teenager and thought that it looked too good to be true, and it was. I ended up by weird coincidence having both consoles (PS1 and N64) and to be fair, I put hundreds of hours into Gran Turismo 1/2 and also into Goldeneye/Perfect Dark - they both had their pros and cons, but I always preferred the N64s controllers, particularly using two controllers in Goldeneye and PD years before dual stick control methods were considered the norm for FPSs. Edit: In hindsight I suppose it's easy to look back and go "lol millions of polys per second, what a joke" but back in the day, real time antialiasing, mipmapping and the sort of things being introducted in the N64 were pretty feckin' new so I can understand why some elements of the tech press weren't that savvy about it....
Exactly. Even that $100,000 workstation couldn't do those graphics, unless you want everything to run at 30 _seconds_ per _frame_ (or worse). This part didn't hit me until MVG mentioned it, though: the N64 launched for less than it was announced for. If fewer corners had been cut- put in a bigger texture cache, plus either beef up the clock speeds or add a dedicated sound chip- some of the console's weaknesses could have been smoothed over. And still at a competitive price.
@@3dmarth Yeah people often didn't realize just how freaking *long* a render could take. I remember getting into POVRay back in the day, and could make cutscenes which blew away my old at that point N64, then with a new workstation GPU (Oxygen Labs Vx1 6MB, lol) obliterating my *Xbox*. But those 30 second renders took *all night*. Even now some of them would take me an hour to re-render.....
Even their Arcade games lied. I remember Killer Instinct and Crusin USA coming soon to the "Ultra 64", when we actually got them "Well, we didn't even get KI1, just Killer Instinct 2 rebranded as KI Gold" there was a LOT of corners cut, no videos or cut scenes like in Killer Instinct, or anything like that.
Yep. In 1994 Nintendo lead the gaming press to believe the Ultra 64 would get the same graphics like those expensive Silicone Graphics render machines that were used for movies like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2. After the first N64 games like Pilotwings 64 and Mario 64 were shown, everybody realized Nintendo was lying for years. The N64 was ahead of the Playstation, but not by much. Definitely not by 20 years.
Even though the PlayStation & Saturn had already been out for awhile when the N64 was released, there was nothing like it. I remember playing SM64 for the first time as a kid and being amazed at how open the world was and how much freedom you had. It was truly revolutionary & set a standard for games to this day.
My friends had already moved on to the PS by the time this finally dropped. One of us bought an N64 and we had fun with it, but we had grown up and moved on from Nintendo's style of games and were already getting more into PC gaming by that point thanks to LAN parties taking off.
How was there "nothing like it", when 3d Platformers, even with polygon graphics already existed since the 80's on computers? The N64 really wasn't anything special unless you were a console peasant stuck in your parents basement and all you knew was the SNES or NES.
I bought one at launch, because I was absolutely blown away by the 3D graphics of this $200 console. Remember, at the time, we were playing on analog TVs that generally rendered 320x200. I managed to get an early peek at the N64 as I had a friend who worked for SGI, and he brought me in to their Mountain View HQ where we played for a bit on one of the final prototype units, maybe a week or two before release.
NTSC televisions displayed roughly 640x480 pixels, if they were only capable of 320x200 pixels, there would be no point to the N64 expansion pack that enabled games to render at a higher resolution closer to/at 480i. Most console games/consoles before the Dreamcast tended to not hit that resolution, but that doesn't mean analog TVs weren't capable of more.
I think as far as raw specs go it definitely did seem like the most powerful hardware at the time. However there were three major flaws that kept it from reaching its full potential first obviously being on cartridges, second was the small texture cache and finally was the poor video output that even on TVs on the time looked blurry compared to the PSone. It was prevented from ever reaching its full potential because of these things.
PS1 maybe sold a lot compared to N64, but N64 was still a gigantic success. People even were disappointed by the Gamecube not living up to the N64. Its laughable looking back because the GC is probably one of the best consoles ever. But again, it was squished by the PS2. But basically Nintendo was on a success train never seen. NES (10/10) - SNES (10/10) - N64 (9/10) - GC (8/10) - Wii (10/10) - Wii U (3/10). Imagine being on a roll for almost a quarter of a century. The N64 was considered a flop? The Gamecube was considered a flop? Its crazy. And after the Wii U they basically destroyed the competition with the Switch. An underpowered device that still beats devices like the PS5 just with its type and the games it has (like new Zelda).
The lead up to N64's release was absolutely insane. I subscribed to Nintendo Power devouring every morsel of information.Once I heard my local Toys R Us had a demo for Mario 64 I raced over there to try it out. I pre-ordered the N64 with Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 and ultimately picked them up on day one. Mario 64 completely blew me away and gave me memories that stayed with me until this day.
My first experience with the N64 was incredibly disappointing and frustrating. For weeks, we went to different stores with demo models, but lines were too long to play - or even see the TV. After long enough, I finally went to a store with an opening and had 5 minutes with Mario 64, but I couldn’t get Mario to move. I tried everything, but Mario was just standing there. Was something wrong with the controller? My time ended, an older kid took over, and he had Mario zipping around! Turned out I didn’t use the D-Pad to move Mario! I didn’t get another chance to play until Christmas. It was an agonizing wait, but so magical when I finally got to play it.
Yea the people that complain about games now or complain how low res they look now just don't understand how the graphics really made you feel. There was something to it, when we were working on CRTs in wood frames sitting on your living room floor.
@@Epic_C That's true. It really is hard to explain how it felt when 3d graphics came to major consoles. Especially the N64, because it looked a lot better than the polygons from the Playstation. There was definitely some kind of magic to it.
It’s shocking to me how well those first N64 games worked, esp a platformer like Mario, just getting the camera to work right must’ve taken forever, never mind trying to design a 3D game that is challenging, fun and bug free and uses the brand new thumbstick controller. A totally new way of thinking about game design and they made it work
Credit where it's due as well, Nintendo was willing to delay the launch of the console in order to make sure those games were as good as they could be.
I was born in the ‘80s, I saw the video game industry going from blocky stuff in Atari to the 3D on the N64. I’ll admit to being mostly impressed by the beautiful games, reading magazines on how cool this was and feeling my first N64 on 1998. Mario 64, GoldenEye and Bomberman were absolute blasts… I remember fondly consuming more magazines to get on with what to buy next. I was never disappointed, even with the console’s not-so-good games like Quest 64, it was still a bliss to move around the realized 3D world and seeing fully physical characters and not just sprites.
I had the same experience. went to toys r us when I was 16, because a friend told me they had N64 and Mario on display, there was a ton of kids there playing it to this day, almost 30 years later, no other game has given me that same sense of amazement. I wish I could share that feeling with people who weren't around to experience it, what a great time for gamers
I remember being about 13 years old when N64 came out. I remember a family trip to my uncle's place in August, and my cousin was in his 20s and still living at home, and so he was able to afford an N64 and Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64. My little mind was absolutely blown. I spent every moment of that family trip that I could playing one or the other, swapping between the two whenever I got anything approaching bored. Best couple of days of gaming of my life, hands down. And this was after playing a bunch of Doom and Warcraft and Rise Of The Triad and Monty Python shovelware on a friend's Pentium PC, I should add. That Christmas, my siblings and I were gifted an N64 along with Turok and Extreme G, which were far from disappointing. Then my brother got Shadows Of The Empire as a birthday present and my sister got Diddy Kong Racing as a birthday present. I forget what I even got for my birthday, because hot damn, just between just those titles and rentals, we had a really good couple of years. And then of course things blew wide open with Rogue Squadron, Ocarina Of Time, Goldeneye 007, Extreme G 2...... what a time to have been alive.
I remember the N64 incredibly well. All of the kids at school were talking about it. When it came out, demo consoles were at every store and rental places were packed. Bedrooms were full of kids, pizza, and soda cans. It was a great time to be a kid.
@@RichV20 bro hes not saying thats a thing hes doing now its not that deep lmao plus the pizza and soda / fizzy drinks chilling with your friends is a great experience, just take the rubbish out after and you're all good. have a little fun some time lol
SGI workstations were also being used by some games companies. Primarily to produce 3D intros / cut scenes etc. Lightwave & 3D Studio were more common however. As for why the N64 wasn’t well received by the industry. Sony had a really big P&R budget, put on amazing events for people who worked in the industry and also a lot of video games companies were fed up of the costs of carts and Nintendo’s restrictive practices. Sony was a breath of fresh air..
Sony also made a console that was WAYYY easier to develop games for. It was so easy that Sony even had special Homebrew PS1s for making games at home. Compared to game development on other consoles of the time, the PS1 was like Baby's 1st Dev Box. Sony used to sell Net Yaroze consoles for people to make the games, and even maintained a Usenet community for it. They continued this trend (kind of) with the PS2 and PS3. They are harder to develop for than the OG PS1, but Sony supported Linux on the 2&3 so you could turn them into homebrew dev kits. Never actually saw that done, but that's the official reason for PS2&3 supporting Linux on launch. Sony just supported ALL developers for a while and it paid off for them. I don't think LSD Dream Emulator or anything like that could have released on any other console other than the PS1 because of Sony's insane dev support for the console.
@@OmegaSMG I have long suspected that Sony’s choice to use a CD and weak copy protection was intentional. Sony really needed to saturate the market with consoles and a lot of people bought into the PS1 platform because you could get cheap pirated games. The same wasn’t true for the N64 / cartridge based systems that came before it. Pirated carts had a premium and were hard to get hold of.
No, the reason was Sony gave their console "normal" margins for consumer electronics not knowing that game consoles typically had almost zero margin. Sony treated all their partners (retail, developer, etc.) well like they usually did while Nintendo, Sega were like "You're just lucky to be here."
To be fair, many companies were already fed up with working with Nintendo. Their restrictive policies started from the NES era to the 32/64 bit era, and it was what angered many third party companies. While the SNES is well remembered for it’s great catalog of games, it’s library is smaller compared to the Sega Genesis and Sony’s arrival was indeed a breath of fresh air for companies.
@@Spark010 Also Sony updated the BIOS only for the Japanese PS1 model 3000 and later with additional protection against modchip. But never put that protection in the US nor PAL consoles.
LOVED THIS EP! I'm Aussie too and was around 13 at that time and was crazy for the Ultra 64. I used to sneak into Monash university and log in with my older friends account to download new images from the, even then at a university, slow internet. One image still took about 30 seconds or so on their broadband.. Maybe it was adsl? Dunno. Then I finally got to play it by renting the console Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 from a store that imported the Japanese version 7 months before it released in Australia. I was literally shaking when holding the controller. It was incredible and blew my mind. Between the Toy Story film, playing Mario 64, and experiencing Metal Gear Solid, I knew that making 3d graphics for games is what I wanted to do with my life. Now I make video games in Japan, so the Ultra 64 was quite literally life changing for me. ❤
I actually studied Computer Science at Monash and graduated just a few years before the N64 released. good memories. congratulations on your journey to making games!
At 12 years old, coming from having a SuperNES and Genesis, to seeing Mario 64 running for the first time was truly an incredible experience. Kids today will never understand how big of a graphical jump it felt like.
@@Fidodo Doom came out in Dec 1993. Are you trying to tell me the "64 bit" N64 (it wasn't 64 bit anything) was better than a PC at the time? Because it wasn't.
Grew up with the 64 and i love it to this day ! I see people complaining a lot about the fog in 64 titles, but ps1 had those weird polygons and the loading times Every platform has their characteristics, but we all have fun in each one of them !
I think It was just an awkward time for 3d graphics in general. The N64, Sega Saturn and PS1 were all trying out different things, and each approach had its own limitations and compromises.
Most people are either blinded by nostalgia or haven't played on original PS1 hardware, or even didn't have any prior or other console experience at the time. They don't remember about the warping textures on all games (fixed by emulators by default), the generally very low resolution, the low poly look of many games, the loading times, etc. That is not to say the N64 didn't have any flaws, all 5th gen consoles had major flaws that characterised their graphics. Truth be told, the first console to do 3d absolutely right and make 3d games fully enjoyable was the Dreamcast and the rest of the 6th gen followed suit.
N64 only had fog because the majority of games were poorly optimised and to increase framerates fog was added to hide the limited rendering of distant objects in the poorly optimised games purely because Nintendo refused to provide developers with the chipset Microcode (the CPU command line/instruction set), it was as mysterious as the Playstation 3's assembly. The N64 did not operate like an x86, ARM or PowerPC system which are well known, you couldn't look at the compiled assembly and go "ok this looks optimised" based on a traditional understanding of coding, you had to guess purely based on the number of lines the code translated to when using the development tools, if it had less lines devs were like "well looks optimised to me" and if the game ran badly their only option was to reduce the draw distances and inject fog to hide it. The N64 had a unique chipset which used the silicon graphics architecture, which meant that the only developers, even those without access to the Microcode from Nintendo who understood the assembly were those who had worked with SGI tech before such as Rareware and Factor 5. Even Nintendo themselves didn't fully understand their own machine because even Mario 64 could of ran at a framerate 10fps higher than it ran at in the launch version if the devs optimised it, which it wasn't.
I was lucky to be 15 around this time and was able to work and buy all three. I had N64 for Nintendo games like Mario64, Golden eye, the ps1 for RPGs and grand Turismo 2 and Saturn for fighting games like X-men vs Street Fighter all unique and fun in their own way
Mario 64 was mind boggling as a kid and still have a old school TV that I use for my old game consoles. My 12 year old cousins played Mario 64 for the first time and to see them play it with the same mesmerized expression I had as a kid made me almost shed a tear of joy.
I was around when it came out, buddies and me heard there are TWO consoles show cased in a store in the next town. our parents would not drive us so we went by bike 23km/14.2 miles to the store to see the console ourselves. there was a massive line and we got yelled at for walking up but we said we only wanted to see the console and everyone was suddenly chill. just seeing this was mind blowing. :D
Love it. I still remember seeing it in magazines and it blew my mind. I sold my Playstation, bought the N64, and played Mario 64, Wave Race, and Killer Instinct Gold for years on end without getting bored.
The 90s were an amazing time for gaming. I had grown up with the NES and Genesis. But the fist time seeing Mario 64 in person in the summer of 96 was nothing short of mind blown. From that moment off i busted my ass in school and bugged my parents non stop to get me the n64 for Christmas. Best. Christmas. Ever!
I was 8. Seeing Mario 64 for the first time was life changing. You had seen 3D graphics before but here was the g.o.a.t., Super Mario doing freaking triple jumps, back flips, and wall jumps in a 3D space for the first time. That paired with the music and the visual effects, like the post level breakdown, and jumping in the painting. It was magical at the time.
That was an era of games, they either worked or they didn't. No one cared what they looked like as long as they were fun to play. I was very lucky in a family of the Vic20, Commodore 64 and eventually PC. With all that instilled in us, when my brothers and myself got our own place, we had all bases covered. I had the Nintendo 64, my younger brother had the PS1, and the youngest of us had the Sega. Long story short, eventually we all on PS now, although my heart still wants to find a Dreamcast.
Much like how PS1 fans are nostalgic for the console’s distinctly jagged graphics rendering and texture warping, the N64’s blurry visuals and low resolution textures are insanely nostalgic for me. Its limitations lent it a unique, otherworldly feel that fascinated me as a child. Definitely my favorite early 3D console.
One of my favorite games, Digimon World, does not look the same at all without a good CRT shader. Even something simple as the text stands out as “wrong” on an LCD unaided. CRT Royale gets me about 90% of the way there. It’s quite effective, actually.
I remember going in to college over the summer and printing everything I could about Project Reality off of Nintendo's website. All the Dream Team stuff. I actually still have it all in plastic sleeves all these years later. And today I own multiple N64s and a 64DD
@@Domarius64 oh, 100%. It was something that was special at the time. More details than what the official mags put in print. Some early screenshots, like when Mario Kart 64 was named Super Mario Kart R
I remember getting our N64 Christmas of 1996 and was blown away by the graphics on Super Mario 64. We still have it to this day and it's still one of my favorite game consoles of all time
@@InsidiousOne As a Nintendo kid, I always envied de PS for having Spyro. Because I thought it doesn't belong in that dirty ugly game library that the PS had. I thought it belonged more on the N64 because it looked so colourful and pretty.
@@Wilma_Dickfit_huh can't agree there. The biggest N64 platformers never really impressed me visually. Super Mario 64 had very blocky and abstract enviroments, they felt like test levels sometimes. The Rare platformers were fun to play, but they still looked very brown and not really appealing. And PS1 had such vibrant and colorful games, like Ape Escape, Bugs Bunny: Lost in time, Tomba 2, Crash Bandicoot 2-3, and so on. Well, the only N64 game that looks on par with them is probably Conker's Bad Fur Day, this one looks great.
It's kinda of fun hearing that entire studios had a really bad time trying to develop for n64, while today, we have guys like Kaze Emanuar, single handled making a superior version of Super Mario 64, running @60fps on the actual console.
@@superdaveozy7863Analog controls out of the box too. People forget but the PS did not launch with analog sticks, and as such many early games for it do not support analog control. N64 was designed from the ground up to have an analog stick so even its launch titles had smooth movement control.
I remember renting Turok as a kid, and getting so nauseous from it that we had to return the game early. I had goldeneye (I think it was already out) and was fine with that, but something about the controls made me sick.
@@superdaveozy7863 Right, instant loading but, lot smaller games. The CD of the time could do something like 50x the average Nintendo cart. It's a real balancing act here, instant loading, or larger games with video.
Coming from a Commodore 64 and a Sega Genesis, the Nintendo 64 was huge for me. Taking those initial steps outside the castle in Mario 64 for the first time was one of those wide-eyed, mind blowing moments that'll stay with me for the rest of my life. That feeling kept returning with each new game I picked up - Lylat Wars (Starfox), Goldeneye, Zelda OOT (OMG!!), Rogue Squadron, and tons more. So many good memories four-player multiplaying with friends - at the time nothing beat it. Graphically it wasn't a very big technological leap over the PS1, but I really loved how the N64 rendered graphics. It pushed less polygons, but it the graphics it produced were smooth and looked SOLID, unlike the PS1's weird texture warped environments. I think if you weren't there to experience it back when it was released, and you look at the N64 today... it's very underwhelming. The graphics are murky, blurry, and the sound in most games is quite average. But make no mistake - playing it back in the late 90's on a Sony CRT with four of your mates was groundbreaking stuff.
The N64 was actually quite a bit more powerful than the PS1 in terms of polygon pushing but it lagged behind the PS1 and Saturn ***HARD*** in some areas. Quite a few of the PS1’s most hardware-pushing games were actually coded in assembly not because the hardware was stronger, but because the architecture was just much better-balanced for developer needs & was much easier to optimize for. The N64 was really good at some things, and really, REALLY bad at others. The Saturn was just alien technology for the time.
Random memory- spring 1993, going into 7-11 to buy a slurpee and play Mortal Kombat, seeing a magazine on the rack with a huge Sonic on the cover. Bought it before leaving the store. It was my first EGM, it had mindblowing previews of Sonic CD and Secret of Mana, and big news stories about how Nintendo was partnering with SGI on their next console "Project Reality" and the first info and specs on Sega's next console codenamed "Saturn" that was expected in late 1994.
Why is everyone always now attempting to go back and question the N64?? For its time, it was straight-up legendary. Playing Golden Eye, go-karts, Mario party, Tony Hawk, Madden, NHL, and many other titles was beyond fun and can't be recreated. Using the Z button to juke in Madden, OMG, when that 1st was added, straight 🔥. Soooo many 007 sleepover tournaments. Expansion pack. N64 was absolute perfection. Anyone who didn't live it should have ZERO opinions.
Imagine if SGI bought nVidia and we were running SGI cards in our PCs now (with the awesome oldschool hypercube logo illuminated by LEDs, of course). They could have absolutely dominated the PC graphics market if they had been willing to undercut their $30k+ workstation market in exchange for selling millions/billions of sub-$1k cards, but that's not how 90s UNIX vendors thought...and why most of them went extinct with the rise of linux.
@@treelineresearch3387 All of the graphics talent left SGI after the N64. They formed ArtX which went on to design the Gamecube GPU before being bought ATi. So they basically did exactly that, just without the SGI name or incompetent leadership.
I remember the hype of the Ultra-64 being a close cousin of the SGI Indigo workstation. Of course, the reality turned out to be far more limited, but it did share the DNA.
I don't think anybody really believed it was going to be TOO close to an Indigo workstation. The Indigo was going for $25k in 1993 and they were looking to sell the N64 for $200. Corners were going to have to be cut. But despite all of that, Nintendo did pretty good at delivering on their promise.
I kept a journal when I was in 6th grade when the N64 came out. I was reading through it recently and found an entry where I wrote that my brother and I had come to the conclusion that the graphics on the N64 were the best that could ever be made and that there would never be anything better. I got a big laugh out of that.
I’m just old enough to remember when it was new. I was at my grandparents house and the neighbor kid just got a shiny new N64. One of my early and most deeply engrained childhood memories was seeing Ocarina of Time and just being completely blown away by it. Sadly I didn’t get my own till several years later in 2005. I bought it at blockbuster and I went straight for OOT, Majoras Mask, and Goldeneye. I still have them to this day and I still play them.
The best thing about the n64 for me is the load times. It boots up in seconds. I do wonder why MK trilogy on n64 can render more background layers than the ps1 port. Good video 👍
Yeah the load times were great. I had the Saturn, PS1 and N64. All three of those consoles had their strenghts and weaknesses Luckily, they all had great libraries of games to play (albeit Saturn was considerably smaller).
Playing Mario 64 on the demo machine at Best Buy was mind blowing at the time. The jump from SNES to N64 was the most dramatic leap in graphics quality.
The most significant aspect of the N64 was that it never became a hacked emulation console. I Can guarantee all those wanting Switch 2 to come out are mostly the types that will expect it will be cracked in a fortnight running roms and wares.
I was working at Toys R Us when the N64 launched, and I remember the price of those launch bundles were eye watering. I think Turok was one of the bundled games along with Mario 64. Some Saturdays i would be posted on the demo booth to try and maintain some order. In the end all the hype turned out to be short lived, and the PlayStation outsold it massively, those were good times as we got to test some of the games before they were officially released.
No other console could get away with 2 launch titles.... But Mario64 and Pilotwings were unique enough and the wow factor in Mario64 made it so that we forgave a lot of its shortcomings. The N64 was truly a pioneer in so many ways, the controller being another big one. Ahhh, great memories!
I remember going to Toys'R'Us in 1996 and watching some kid trying to play Mario 64 cross-handed. The controller design just completely stumped the poor little fella... haha, he's probably a dentist or an MBA now.
If it was anything other than Mario, I doubt it'd be as successful. Mario 64 is still a blast to play today. Having that as a launch title was perfect. It was worth buying the console just for that game. Other great games came after that, of course, but no one was disappointed when they got "Mario 64" because it was one of the two games available at launch. It was THE game at the time.
I got it on release day and I'd invite people round just to see their reaction. It blew everybody away that saw it. There won't be a game changer like it again.
I pe-ordered the N64 with Mario and Waverace. The water in Waverace 64 was like having it in your tv. Best graphics me or any of my friends had ever seen including those who had DX4100 computers. Also as the first major console to have 4-player optionality built in combined with the lack of internet gaming, sitting around with your group of friends and playing Goldeneye, Mario Kart and 1080 was an experience you really cant have today. It was the best.
i miss this era so much.The mistery behind every system was unmatched.Nowadays were just fed truckloads of leaks, kind of boring imo.I remember the rumors about zelda64, Disc drive,beta builds of games and this was the pratice of the market
One wonders how much more incredible the N64 could have been if they had simply stuck to their guns with CD. Imagine how much larger and more immersive Ocarina of Time could have been had it had access to 700mb of data instead of 32. We could have had a BOTW sized game all the way back in 1998.
I probably played my 64 for thousands of hours between 1996 and 2001. The first time I got to experience it myself was when a friend of mine that had a few hundred dollars saved up (I was 16-17) got his hand on one during launch day with Mario 64. Not gonna lie, we all skipped school the next day and played that game relentlessly until we beat it a couple of times. It just blew our minds so much!
I read a book in 1994 that said by 2000 kids will go to school in a VR classroom and be taken on field trips around the world. My childhood was full of lies.
Considering in 1994 my school had 2 PCs everyone had to share, that was a very farfetched belief. That everyone was going to carry around pocket computer phone with internets was definitely farfetched. Mobile phones were for high paid professionals and drug dealers back then.
im not super familiar with 3rd gen, but the snes and megadrive are pretty much equivalent at the end of the day. sega had a better cpu and some cool dma stuff going on (blast processing) and nintendo had a wider colour palette and audio hardware that is IN THEORY better (in practice cart size limitations result in snes music aging terribly) n64 absolutely was the most powerful of its time gc was usurped by the xbox when that came out
@jesusramirezromo2037 blast processing was a name for this really specific DMA technique that allowed for more colours on screen, so it was real ill give you transparency though, even if i think the megadrive looks great with dithering
I remember going to a Toy Story premiere and they had a 'super computer' at the theatre running a realtime 3D demo. I dont remember what the object was but you could move it around on screen and it was a pretty high frame rate.
The N64 was the first console I bought with my own money, and even at that point I'd known to be wary of hype- therefore I wasn't really at all disappointed with what I got. Despite its shortcomings, I had many an hour of enjoyment with that machine. Fellow _Blast Corps_ lovers especially know what I'm talking about!
Blast Corps is an awesome game if you grew up playing it (it's one of my favorites) but it is so crusty with jank that I can't in good faith recommend people try it nowadays lol
Same here--I gave my dad the money to buy the game and the console on day one. He came back with just the cartridge and told me he lost the money because he "Had a hole in his pocket". He had a bad gambling problem back then. All I could do was read the SM64 instruction.manual over and over again! 😂
@@uglybad4, could not disagree more with that! It's still awesome to play. I'd say it's probably one of the games from that era that's held up the best
@@HoistusMaximus I know what I'm talking about, I still have my 64 set up and I've been replaying the game recently. There's so many things wrong with it; vehicles are made of rubber and bounce off walls and other obstacles in very strange ways, the driving mechanics aren't interesting enough to warrant 20 race missions, and some very cryptic puzzles that you would never figure out without a guide (like the underground scientist in Argent Towers or the first boat leading to TNT in Oyster Harbor), just to name a few examples off the top of my head. I *adore* the game but that's a lot to throw at somebody, especially if they've only played newer games and aren't ready to deal with all the rough edges
I still have my N64, and I do think it is one of the most ground breaking consoles, and I always get a kick out of the fact that it uses Silicon Graphics tech, which was similar to what we saw in Hollywood at the time.
The N64 set standards that we still follow in gaming today such as rumble on controllers, thumb sticks, the ability to move the camera in game, the ability to play your handheld console games on your tv
@@musicvideoenhancer There were no console fanboys back then from my memory, most titles were exclusive as well so there was a reason to own multiple consoles. If you had an N64 you didn't have GTA, Crash Bandicoot, Sim City, Spyro or Fifa96, if you had a PlayStation you didn't have Mario Kart, 1080 Snowboarding, Cruis'n USA, Banjo Kazooie or 007 etc etc.
The N64 came out when I was in high school, my parents got the console for me and my brother in Xmas of 95 and we were absolutely blown away. Some of the games were amazing, Stars Wars Return of the Empire, Golden Eye, Turock kept us entertained.
The Nintendo 64 and Gamecube tried to compete on hardware but then chose the worst data storage methods, this is why Playstation edged them out of the big boy status...
Hiroshi Yamauchi made a big error not wanting to license DVD technology for the Gamecube. No surprise he was out less than a year after the Gamecube's launch, and control of Nintendo left the Yamauchi family for the first time since its founding.
Disc's and cartridges both have positives and negatives, and honestly had little to do with Playstation taking the lead over Nintendo at the time... N64 was more difficult to develop for and Nintendo was even more cut throat back in those days, in essence Nintendo double dipped, forcing developers to buy cartridge's from them. I'll gladly take faster load times over have pre-rendered cut scenes I'd likely watch once then skip the rest of my life... anyone remember having time to make a sandwich while waiting for the next level to load on the PS?? 😜😜
While I love the N64, and it's one of my favorite systems to go back too, as there is no modding need to play ROMs just a cheap flash cart, and no optical drives to go bad, at the time it really was a poor decision on Nintendo's part to stick with carts.
@@DevMeloy "honestly had little to do with Playstation taking the lead over Nintendo at the time" this is historically untrue. Nintendo lost multiple major third party publishers to Sony, who neither Nintendo nor SEGA took seriously as a new competitor in the gaming hardware space. Sony managed to woo big players like Capcom, Konami, and of course SQUARE with a system that yes was easier to develop for, but also afforded much more storage space *AND* profit margin per unit sold than Nintendo's proprietary cartridges. This is why Nintendo went running to a bunch of western developers to hastily assemble the "dream team" for the N64 launch...and most of those games ended up being delayed into 1997 or beyond anyway.
The first time I walked into Bradlee's and saw the N64 kiosk, with a line 10 kids deep waiting to play Mario 64. I just stood near the screen for what seemed like hours, mesmerized by the 3d graphics and game play. It was life changing.
I remember reading Gamepro and Electronic Gaming magazines all the time about the Ultra 64 with the cd drive coming. I was 13 years old waiting in line at best buy at 6am to get the N64 on day of release @ $200. They only had 10 units. Mario 64 was a fucking amazing treat. That system had some amazing games, but the overall game roster was so small. Like stated in the video, there were always huge gaps in generations of consoles back then. Today everything just feels like a cluttered mess and just a gradual upgrade over time. I miss the old days. As far as Nintendo going for the strongest hardware at the time, I'd argue that NES and SNES were competitors in that field as well as the GameCube afterwards. They changed trajectory with the Wii trying to counter the uprise in Playstation / Xbox systems that gained popularity and both N64 and Gamecube not doing so well. Poor Dreamcast :( Now that was a system that hit at a time where it outshined its competition as far as performance goes. Ahh nostalgia. I miss gaming back in the day
I was watching a friend play BioShock for the first time the other day, and remarking on how pretty the graphics still are. I said "now imagine that only two years earlier the pinnacle of video game graphics on console was the original Resident Evil 4." New console generations used to bring MASSIVE leaps in visuals. We're seeing diminishing returns on that since the 360/PS3 transition.
@@ShadowEl I definitely agree with you, but I want to state one game (not the console) that blew my mind visually recently. Final Fantasy 7 Remake on the PS4. I cannot believe that game was developed for the PS4 and not the PS5. That is the most visually stunning game I've seen to date and the game is fantastic.
I don't think any other console has wowed as much as the N64 did on it's release. It was such a leap forward. It was the most exciting to time to be a gamer.
@Ceratisa because Mario 64 was launched alongside it and it revolutionised 3d gaming. Don't forget the ps1 didn't even have analogue sticks on the controllers when it was first launched.
@@6Stevo Yeah? And? Don't forget the N64 only had a single analogue stick when it launched. And for the entirety of it's life. That's such a dumb argument to make lmao
Few experiences can top the incredible feeling of turning on Mario 64 for the first time and moving him around the castle courtyard with the N64's amazing controller. The fluidity of Mario's movement paired with the amazing feel of the stick was absolutely mind blowing at the time!
It took me a long time to play Mario 64 the first time I got it. I remember at first thinking it was bad because it was hard to control for me as Mario 64 was my first 3d game. But the more I learned the better I got. I think my first N64 game was Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Killer Instinct Gold. Like mostly 2d games. I wasn't sold at first on the more 3d experiences until a bit later.
@@Epsilonsama I can imagine it being difficult to control Mario at first and I'm sure many in my family had problems. For me, however, it was utterly seamless and natural. As allude to, many N64 games were entirely forgettable or in my opinion trash and did no favors for the popularity of the system. As I mentioned in another comment, I sold my N64 not long after I beat Mario 64 because the launch games were so underwhelming.
I liked the N64, but was never a fan of it's controller TBH, stick in particular. the instant I tried a Dual Shock my reaction was "Why couldn't Nintendo put something like THIS in my controlelr?" that stick was a first-class ticket to thumb pain, lol.
I still remember walking near the Killer Instinct arcade after playing a lot the SNES version and being blown away by the arcade graphics and sounds. The announcer saying “ONLY ON NINTENDO ULTRA SIXTY FOUR!” still gets me hyped! Great arcade cabinet!
I brought a N64 just after release, had young kids then and that little machine stood the test of time, it was still going strong long after they had lost interest, rugged and reliable, one of my best choices.
I have great memories of playing all the big titles from the N64 with my friend after school each day. Goldeneye, SM64, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, gods what a console.
The N64 really pushed the envelope in 1996. It made my Pentium and PSX games look like pixellated, jagged messes by comparison. It was literally the first consumer hardware to deliver solid-looking 3D that didn't suffer from aliasing and z-fighting. Funny enough, people complain these days that Nintendo makes underpowered hardware, but the only two times they flirted with the bleeding edge (N64 and Gamecube), it ended up selling terribly. Why would they make the same mistake again? They learned their lesson, it's better to make a console that is affordable with technology that is mature.
N64 and GameCube didn't sell terribly (not even in Japan), but the Nintendo 64 did fall short of sales expectations and the GameCube underperformed to the point where it was just about outsold by the Xbox.
@@blitzerblazinoah6838 I mean terribly is a relative term here, the N64 got outsold 4:1 by the PSX and everything got stomped by the PS2. I'm sure the big N still made money though, they always seem to emerge unscathed.
@@blitzerblazinoah6838 I suspect it was because people were super excited about Halo! That Halo still lives on in the Windows PC world as Halo Custom Edition 1.0.10. Albeit with online multiplayer being the staple of Halo now.
@@LittleBrother-t6n Sure but neither of them were bleeding edge, arcade hardware like Capcom's CPS1 was much more powerful than the NES, and by the time 16-bit came around, my 486 PC was more powerful than the SNES or the SEGA Genesis.
A friend of mine was a very early adopter of the N64. So I got to see a lot of games during the first two years of release. The lack of loading times was wonderful, when compared to the Saturn and Playstation. But I never felt like the games were truly on another level from those consoles. Also, I remember my friend being bummed out that I could get new games for my PS1 for $40, while the vast majority of early N64 games were around $60, with some pushing $70.
I remember paying £80 (US $102) as a teenager in 2000 for Perfect Dark and the N64 memory pack thing. Inflation adjusted that's now £144 (US $184). Even as a grown adult working full time, there is no way I'd ever drop £144 these days for a single game. Absolute madness.
I have a few scattered memories of when the N64 came out but I had just turned like 3 a couple weeks prior. I remember watching my mom (who had been gaming since the days of the NES) play Super Mario 64 and much later on Zelda OoT and be blown away by how realistic they were. Whereas games had traditionally been 2D, you were actually running around a 3D world in all it's polygonal glory, it was mindblowing for me as a child to see this shit, to the point where in my burgeoning ability of trying to puzzle out how things worked, I had come to the conclusion that all the levels in the game were physically constructed inside each cartridge and you were piloting a tiny Mario around them and that glitches were defects in the manufacturing process. Between the N64 and my dear, late mother, it pretty much set me on the path of being the geek that I am today. The 90s were a wild time for electronics, man.
That is so difficult for me to imagine your mum being a huge gamer, and so cool, like too cool to be true. The closest thing I had to that (which is still pretty cool) is my dad and uncles would get super competative at some of the racing games, and the golf games. But still it was more like a continuation of male sports in that way, they were not really "gamers" like it sounds like your mum was. I imagine her being a fairly young mum at the time?
@@Domarius64 That still counts just as much! I've honestly heard more of that sort of thing (dads and uncles) than my situation, to be fair. To answer your question, the NES released in September of 86 here in the states, so my mom would've been 27 at the time, and so you could argue she was fairly young, and I'm also certain I remember her telling me about gaming even before that with arcade games such as Pac-Man/Mrs. Pac-Man, Breakout and Pong. She was never really into sports games, beyond racing games like Mario Kart (if you want to count that), Need For Speed, Burnout, etc. The games I can remember her mentioning on the NES were Mario (naturally), Contra, Castlevania (One of my favorite series' to this day) and Zelda (Ditto)
@@vincent9068 see that is so cool. I almost wouldn't count dad's & uncles having the occasional competitive session on a racing game or other sports game, there is no way in heck I can imagine my dad or uncles playing Mario, or Sonic or literally anything outside the racing games and sports games. That would be Enduro racer on the Atari 2600, and then Stunts and Jack Nicklaus golf on the MS-DOS PC. That's why I think your mum was so cool, she was a real gamer! And female gamer too, which is rarer, especially back then.
Great episode. I vividly remember lusting after Silicon Graphics hardware. I wanted an Indy at my house so badly. I believe HPE owns what was left of their IP now. I really wish they would revive the brand (and especially the logo) for their high-end workstations.
i can remember getting a gaming magazine with a write up about the ultra 64, and reading it over and over, one game that it talked about as well was blast corps and the silicon graphics it used. so many good memories
It was a great system but when everyone saw what Playstation was capable of it was like no comparison, sure you'd play the 64 for Zelda, Mario etc, but the serious games were on Playstation. Even more serious gamers were running PC's with Graphics cards and 56k modems for online play. It was a great time to be a gamer. Sadly it was also a lot of overkill. The gaming epidemic had it's origins in this era and it really ruined some people.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
He wasn't lying: The N64 _was_ like having hundreds of computers in your living room: Hundreds of IBM 5150 PCs.
Certainly less impressive nowadays when you can have the equivalent of _millions_ of computers entirely within your pocket.
@@angeldude101True
Connected to AS400 servers
@@angeldude101 No.
With less than half the IBM PC's library and variety 😉
My dad bought the 64 for me when he barely had enough money. I love you,dad. Rest in peace pops 🙏🏻
That's what a good dad does. Your dad obviously cared about your happiness. My dad hated video games. I always felt stressed out when I played my SNES games in front of him, and then he started yelling about selling my N64 as soon as my mother brought it home. She refused to sell, but the only time I could play it was when he was out. Two thumbs up for your dad not being like mine. 👍👍
@@RedPill780 That's sad,man. My dad,my mom and I were walking through downtown when I was 7 years old. The N64 had just released and I saw it through a storefront window.
My dad said "you want one?" And my mom said "we're tight with money right now" and my dad said "I don't care,I get my son what he wants" and I'll never forget my dad's love for me.
I have so many great memories with that N64. I wish my dad was still alive,he was the best man I ever knew.
@@ShinkuGoukiwas your dad a gamer?
@@peteyv No,just the occasional Pac Man arcade player
RIP, he was a good man bro.
I’ll never forget the first time I walked into a Blockbuster Video and saw the Super Mario 64 kiosk. I had never seen anything like it. It was like a caveman being shown fire. Even my parents were impressed.
As an autistic kid I saw it when I was in Norway on vacation and without my parents knowing I went back into a mall to play it because I couldn’t stop myself haha they were super angered when they found me haha
Same with me but with Star Fox I was blown away.
I called up to Blockbuster everyday to see if the kiosk had finally arrived.
I played a demo version of Mario64 in my local game shop when I was around 14 years old. It was different to the proper release (more primitive with bits missing), and I remember a small crowd standing around it and it felt like being on holiday.
Same here. I finally found one for sale and it’s in my game room right now. The feeling it provides walking back up to it as an adult is unmatched
The N64/PS1/Saturn era was the big transition from 2D gaming to 3D gaming. The biggest jump between console generations at the time, and even to this day there has never been a jump between console generations that was that big. I am glad to have been a kid during that time to see it all play out.
It's pretty fascinating how huge the jumps in graphics were back then, and how closely tied those jumps were to evolutions in gameplay. Even jump from PS1 > PS2 was pretty huge (though obviously nothing like 2D to 3D). I feel like PS2 > PS3 was substantial as well, but has run into a wall since then. Games have increased fidelity and scope, but it feels as though most games today are just highly polished iterations of the platforms built in the PS3 era.
I completely agree, the leap from 2-D to 3-D when the PlayStation first came out and the Saturn and then later on the Nintendo 64 was truly amazing to be there as a child and get to experience firsthand!!!
We have not had a leap like it since-
And games today are just also so homogenized that we don’t have nearly as much variety, there’s no more magical feeling of getting something truly revolutionary and new and the amount of games that are truly worth experiencing I feel is decreasing but I am also getting older and so there is that..
When games started to go online of course they would follow the marketing practices that were set up by the smart phone and this ultimately has resulted in video games and their quality and that feel of “magic“ deteriorating-
I wish it wasn’t the case..
I am not strictly disagreeing with your statement, but Gen 6 introduced Internet and Online services/connectivity which hugely influence the gaming industry. Not to mention, it was so thoroughly legitimized by that point that AAA game studios were normal and games had become productions with vast amount of resources being thrown at it. Gen 5 was definitely the dawn of the AAA game, but Gen 6 made it normal. There are some incredible heavy-hitters on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.
I think that 2D to 3D is a very, very big deal, and the technology to accomplish that was very impressive, but Gen 6 made video games what we know them as today. Blockbusters worth billions of dollars with live services, online play, and many of the genres we know and love came out of that generation.
Ps2 to 3 and xbox to 360 would have to be the biggest jump especially with added players and online
@tylerb6981 the Dawn of AAA games?
I guess Nintendo, Atari, etc., just indie devs lol.
Also, I highly disagree with the impact on quality with the rise of internet use. If anything, online play has retarded new ideas as everyone needs those sweet microtransactions, led to the dawn of incomplete titles cause patches and DLC, the feeling of genuine community as some tweenager drops another N-bomb on the mic, etc. Did the net impact the landscape?
Yes.
Do I kind of wish it didn't (looking back)?
YES.
Now we have the age of indies that arguably, is making it all even more terrible as they're treated with kid gloves.
Goldeneye with the boys on a Friday night, what a time to be alive
Don't look at my part of the screen!
New players can select Odd Job. Otherwise, he's banned.
So good!
The N64 was a reason to have 3 friends.
This is either super wholesome or the N64 went on a friend killing spree.
Both the N64 and the Gamecube were the go to platforms if you wanted to enjoy your friendships (or destroy them) lol
Or cousins if you couldn't make friends 😂
WWF NO MERCY AND GOLDENEYE 007 WITH THE BOYS
N64 was the only real choice since I had two brothers and limited gaming time.
This was the party console of the 90s. I wasn't even a gamer at all, but I have extremely fond memories of playing 4 player on rotation, drinking Surge soda until only 4 of us were still awake. The sun started to come up so we could go skateboarding and grab breakfast for everyone. Legendary times.
So many core memories unlocked by this comment. Truly the best times of my life.
Oh maaan Surge! Hahahaha!
Surge, Little Ceasars pizza, and 007 with the bros. Sigh... i wish we could go back.
@@shaun8062 every time i think of goldeneye, I can smell cat shit lol. Because we used to geek for DAYS in a row at my friends house, and his cats litter box was in his room. The crazy things we tie to our memories haha..
It’s still a party console to this day.
I wish younger people today could experience the excitement we felt every time there was a big leap in technology. Everything is just hands-down amazing looking these days, so nothing is new or exciting in the way it was back then. I will never forget having my mind blown by a 3d game. Even the menu for SM64 was amazing
Have you heard of VR
I remember Sega Genesis blowing my mind.
@@50bricks You mean that enormous flop that was promised to us as a "world changing innovation that would unlock the metaverse" but then all the headsets were prohibitively expensive and made everyone nauseous?
When I have kids I definitely want to introduce them to gaming chronologically. Born in 1995 I started on Windows 98, but really began using computers when Windows XP was around. For my 8th birthday or something I got a second hand Nintendo 64. A friend of mine also had one, and nobody else in my friend group had a different console at the time. I played a lot of Age of Empires I and II, and the graphics and complexity of Age of Mythology blew my mind. I always lagged behind a bit on games, as I only had a N64 and my PCs were generally never good enough to play anything that just came out decently. In 2008 I was playing the first Call of Duty and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. But that was fine. I never particularly cared for graphics, though I definitely could appreciate it. But Mohaa and COD were good enough for me.
Nowadays, after playing a modern game for an hour I can easily return to Perfect Dark or Mario Kart 64, but I can imagine it would be a jarring experience for anyone who's used to mosern graphics and gameplay. So yeah, I want my kids to first witness N64 graphics, early Simcity, Age of Empires I, some random puzzle or sidescroll games I played as a kid, before advancing to newer software. I hope that can make them appreciate older games more. Same with movies. If you grow up only watching the newest Marvel movies, I can imagine anything from before the 2000s will feel slow and have terrible special effects. My girlfriend is my age and falls asleep watching most pre-2000s movies because they're just a bit slower than she can handle nowadays. I want to watch stuff with my kids and make sure they can appreciate games for what they are without needing cutting edge graphics. Old games can be great fun but you need to be able to look past the sometimes quite janky graphics.
I'll never forget the first time I seen SM64. My friends and I rode our bikes further than we ever had to go see both the PS1 and 64 on demo, and I was making my choice that day which console id be getting for my birthday , and soon as I seen SM64 , Mario just playing around outside the castle I was completely blown away , it was such an incredible leap forward, I chose the 64 in about 2 minutes 😅
I was the programmer for the 3d engine on N64 Hot Wheels Turbo racing from EA. I mostly remember how zbuffering was such a huge leap and made the design of the 3d engine so easy - no more sorting and polygon artifacts.
That was the first video game I ever played. That and DK64. Oh the nostalgia rush.
Did you work on any Saturn games? If so how did it compare to working (difficulty wise) on N64?
I loved that game as a kid.
I tried out the new hot wheels game that released recently and the 64 version beats it out of the water! You had shortcuts and cars you could collect and find mid race. It was so fun! Thank you for helping create one of my favorite childhood games that I'm proud to have kept to this day!
Oh my god I loved that game, thank you for your work!
I loved my N64 so much when i was a kid. My parents were honestly impressed with the visuals. even remember dad saying "in a few years games will look like Jurrasic Park".
And he wasnt wrong.
Games can look better than the real world sometimes now, crazy.
@@420Gold time to put down the pipe, mate
2 s's not 2 r's.
@@kevinclark6934Dude's worn his VR headset way too long.
In a few years we were playing Unreal 1 on a 3dfx voodoo card! Pretty darn close to Jurassic Park!
That Killer Instinct intro is still amazing all these years later. That game was SO LOUD in the arcades.
ULTRAAAA COMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
It was the equivalent to hearing a lion roar at your local zoo. That game sang through the entire arcade.
COMBO BREAKER!!!!
“Available for your home in 1995 only on Nintendo Ultraaaaa 64” ❤
C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!!!
If you weren't there to experience the astronomical levels of hype before the N64 release you will never understand. Such an epic time to be alive.
I know right, it's like, games are so "normal" now, like movies and TV shows. But we were on the cusp of the next huge leap in technology; half of the hype was pure fantasy, half of it was legitimate. I guess the best way to describe it to someone who wasn't there, is like - we were being told the future is finally arriving and we're all going to get our jetpacks and hover cars now XD
Too true. I remember getting one for Christmas in '96 and having an absolute blast with it. Made it easier to come inside and thaw out after sledding in the snowstorm that started the night before.
I remember us in junior high school waiting for this Nintendo Ultra 64.😅
Wow, Mario 64 made me feel something no other console ever made me feel before.
I'll never forget that dreamy feeling of awe and amazement as I made Mario jump and run in circles, and that new sensation of momentum and weight was hard to ignore.
The only marketing I can think of that even competes was the PS2 marketing. The N64 changed gaming, and I can honestly say, the N64 saved my life
It was a great time to be alive. The only info that was available to me was in the issues of the EGM magazines which made the machine that much moreb of a mystery.
I was in highschool when the N64 came out. It was incredible. The multiplayer games Like Mario Party, Smash Bros, Goldeneye gave me some of the best memories of my childhood.
GoldenEye and conkers bad fur Day 💯
@@LJAY95 F*ck oath mate. Perfect Dark too.
I still have my system and I agree. Some of the best memories of my child hood. Late night pizza parties and then early morning at it again!! Such a blast!!!
I gotta say my favorite game on 64 was Turok 2. Was my first FPS game and that blew my mind. Years and years and years later purchased on Steam. Man, I'd say that game was really meant to play with keyboard and mouse!
@TheRexhim Thats awesome! I loved those Turok games. The cerebral bore was fun in multi-player lol
Being stuck in side scroller universe and playing Mario 64 for the first time absolutely blew my mind
I had already played plenty of 3d PlayStation games before playing Mario 64. It didn't matter... it was like seeing 3d again for the first time. The frame rate was noticeably higher, a true revolution in tech that I can only compare to my first time seeing Unreal, Quake 2 and Half Life. These being powered by Voodoo graphics cards.
Yea it was a big shift in what we were used to for so long, I had a gap in my love for video games because I was deeply into pc's at the time so I never ended up with an n64 and was into playstation but my friends had them.
I remember first playing it in the mall and I was blown away and thought bobombs world was the complete gamen
doom pc had 3d in 1993, ps1 was '94, n64 was '96 ... consoles always late to the party 😁
It was like experiencing another universe
I grew up and remember seeing Nintendo 64 for the first time, Mario 64 blew my mind. It was 3d, I was really exploring a 3d world.
I remember seeing - and trying out! - Mario 64 at a kiosk in my town's game shop.
My little 8-year old mind was completely blown LOL
N64 and PS1 graphics may look awful now, but it's hard to explain to younger people how revolutionary they were at the time.
But Proto...!
Bro true story, I'm a 7 year old in Walmart, finally getting to try super Mario 64. Stood there for a good 3 minutes wondering why I couldn't move. Finally I used the stick instead of the D pad and my mind was blown lmao in fact I was like "you don't even use the pad?! Wowwwww" and as soon as I was able to start doing stuff, I had to go with my parents lmao but that's all it took to sell me. It was so revolutionary that when I finally got one , even my mom, who is definitely not a console player if it's not tetris and Dr Mario, helped me get the 120 ☆'s. 90s was such a fun time.
you managed to avoid all other 3d games before that? i grew uo durign that time as well. at my local gaming store they have all the systems set up. of course everyone wanted to play the new system at first but once people realized it was just a blurry mess, only new people ever played the 64, for all the locals it was back to playstation. we called it the steamhouse or the fog macine. never knew anyone there buying the thing. obviously that was a but of a anomality seems there are quite a few peple able to tolerate that.
@@messinround4810 that must have been so awesome growing up during so much technological progress in gaming
Honestly one of the best childhood memories I have is playing n64 golden eye and Mario cart into the early hours with all my mates, nothing like having everyone there in person
I played so much goldeney without sleep I started seeing the red crosshairs over real life people lmfao
For sure man. I spent so much time with friends playing Goldeneye. We spent a good deal of time having 4 way brawls on WWF No mercy as well.
The two games that blew me out of the water had been Super Mario 64, and Waverace 64. The wave physics had been out of this world at the time.
Even to this day TBH. People talk about the physics but the real deal is how it connects to the gameplay element and the "feel" of it. I would be hard pressed to find another game equaly good or better than Wave Race 64 in that regard.
@@RottenMuLoT They nailed the physics in that game and with such limited resources and inspiration.
Wave Race will remain one of the best of all time IMO it hasn't been topped nor replicated.
Blue Storm on the Cube was alright but it didn't have the same feel as the N64 version with regards to presentation and physics.
I much preferred the music and announcer of the N64 game where the Cube version attempted to have a more serious tone and I do feel the Jetskis were more difficult to control and felt worse than the N64 game I'm not sure if it was more realistic but the N64 game feels like how I would imagine it against the waves.
the tech industry in the 90s was very "fake it til you make it" and sometimes that works and other times it doesnt, this is one of the examples where it actually worked out pretty good imo
It's amazing how just recently with unreal engine 5, we really don't have to fake it anymore, we can actually use real life physics and photography in 3d design.
In that regard, the tech industry hasn't changed much. Granted, Microsoft isn't regularly announcing vaporware anymore, but for how long have we've been promised self-driving cars and proper AR headsets?
90?! Gran Turismo 2000, Killzone 2. What the hell are you talking about.
It still is today, but now it's even less likely that they'll actually bring a product to market.
Mmm, like the Atari Jaguar claiming to be 64 bit when it had 2 32 bit chips instead
I was in my early teens when the Ultra64 was announced, remember going to the grocery store with my mom and going straight for the magazine stand to flip through gaming magazines trying to absorb as much news on Nintendo's console as we didn't have access to the Internet at home. I was a big N64 fanboy back in the day😅
Are you me!?
Haha same here, was so hyped for the Nintendo 64 and was not disapointed.
The scarcity of information in a time when Internet was not widely available sort of added charm to the experience of a console or game launch.
I think the sole reason for me to get on the internet was to watch incredibly bad resolution video footage of Mario 64 at my friend's house. I remember being astonished by the graphics quality on that video! My friend's dad got mad at me and they didn't invite me there after that because I cost so much to them in phone bills during the modem era!
same here =) read every article, reread them, loved it ...
I remember seeing Mario 64 for the first time and genuinely felt we had reached graphic perfection. It was smooth and perfect. Crazy now looking back.
😂 mmmm no we did not at that time ps1 was it
@@williamtetreault4035 ps1 was 32 bit graphics. N64 was.......64 bit.
@@williamtetreault4035Bro have you SEEN PS1 games?
The PS2 was more considered the peak of graphics if anything!
@@rheokalyke367 i now use roms i got a emulator and use rom world so nice and its free not $199 what i paid for ps1 and ps2 was $259+taxt 274 no i emulate and save but ps1 and ps2 graphics weren't what they said it would be back then and the 3d launch never even made it till now ps2 ps3 promised use and never made it till end of ps4 now ps5 only close way we got was like wii style ps3 ps4 then ps5 now we need a modded system lounch were u can use make mod menus infinite ammo,moon jump,god mode, and not get band for useing it allso thats how the will get systems to sell back in the game if not its going to be rinse repeat and were sick of that even reverse engineering to play both or three games on one system has passed its time but i bet that is whats next before modded systems i just want to play my ps2 ps3 ps4 and modded game menu no ban on server but this is a lot of talking im sorry i talk alot just sayn
The visuals on the N64 was impressive for its time. I remember the first time i seen Turok the Dinosaur Hunter; the visuals was jaw dropping for its time.
Only other time my jaw dropped like that, was Halo ❤
The PC didnt have very many competetive shooters like goldeneye the year it came out.
Boy do I remember it well. Turok was a fun, albeit punishing game at that framerate. I remember being so pent up waiting for Turok II to come out. Nintendo Power magazines were hyping that one up and overpromising the hell out of it. They promised advanced enemy AI and graphics and all these bells and whistles. They were absolutely shameless trying to show all this lush scenery that was frankly far outside of the hardware's capabilities. Heck, they even made us buy that RAM upgrade for the console just to run it. Then I started playing it and it was... stark and bare. Still a fun game with the most iconic, pointlessly brutal weapons of all time, but the marketing behind it was borderline criminal.
Only impresive if you were a console peasant. On PC we already had way better graphics thanks to 3DFX and 1280x1024 resolution and unlike the N64 no washed out shit textures and no fog like everything takes place in the world of Silent Hill.
I remember Turok being $80 at best buy
It was a big deal back in the day.. Seemed everyone had an N64 back then. It was truly magical as a youngster and even is for me presently. Sure, it might look dated today, but games like SM64, OoT, Goldeneye, etc will always hold a special place in my heart!
I never met another child with an Nintendo 64. I was the only one I knew of. Everybody else had PlayStation. That's why I had to get a full set of controllers. Everybody wanted to play.
@@darek4488 kind of depended on where you lived. I was born in the late 90s on the Portuguese countryside, took me a while before I saw a N64 for the first time, most people had a PS1 and were slowly transitioning into the PS2 at the time.
I guess it's also in part because Nintendo hardware just wasn't that popular here back in the day, outside of handhelds, so SEGA and Sony could dominate more easily (more Megadrives around than I could count, followed by everyone getting Playstations in the following gens, until the Wii)
@@DavidBelga Even still, in 2023 Nintendo of Poland hasn't yet been established. Nowadays the electronic shops which sell Nintendo products handle warranty repairs through third parties or through Nintendo of Germany. However in the 90's in Poland the warranty was mostly fictional. Buying Nintendo in Poland always meant you were on your own if something happened. Most people didn't even knew Nintendo 64 even existed. The only recognizable Nintendo product was the original Gameboy and Gameboy Color later on, since there was nothing like it.
The piracy was also an aspect in Nintendo's popularity as literally everyone was running burned CDs on PS1. And for the price of 2 original Nintendo cartridges you could get a whole console bundle. For a long time I only had Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. It wasn't until the Gamecube's release when I was able to buy many N64 games for 20% or even 10% of the price.
Oh Goldeneye, I lost so many hours to paint all mode.
People had an N64, EVERYONE had a ps1.
I remember this timeline very well because of being a teenager when it took place. The hype for the system for those 2-3 years BEFORE it came out were just crazy with all the different rumors, leaks & officially released material issued by all the different outlets covering the subject.
Ultra 64
Ultra 64
Did it live up to the hype? I was like 3 years old during that era lol
That was an awesome era, because each new generation of consoles reinvented gaming. Beginning of this century each new gen is pretty much same but with better looking games. Except Nintendo
@@monsterhunter445for me, it did. Super Mario 64 was unbelievable.
The N64 was pivotal to my childhood. I got the system with the "Limited Edition" Gold Controller from Toys 'R Us for my birthday in 1997 with Mario Kart 64. Played the hell out of it. Before that, I played Super Mario 64 at the kiosk in Wal-Mart and was blown away. A friend in middle school would bring in his manual for Goldeneye 007 and talked about how amazing it was. I got it for Christmas that same year. I would bring Goldeneye over to another friend's house for sleepovers and we would stay up all night playing multiplayer and eating pizza to the point where we literally wore the cartridge out.
Great times.
Actually, the super Nintendo was pivotal for me. The Nintendo 64 plain stunk going to the bad 3d graphics. At that point, just play computer games as the 3d games were better.
Super Nintendo had far more fun games, the 2d was the way to go during that time.
Going to the video rental store to rent and try out new games was in itself an adventure.
Back then there were a lot of people in the gaming press who were conflating the offline rendering capabilities of Silicon Graphics with the realtime rendering capabilities of these machines. By the time that the N64 launched I was a little bit underwhelmed that the graphics didn't look anything like the mid90s CGI renders that you used to see all throughout Nintendo magazines.
Yeah, 'official' Nintendo mags were by far the worst for it, and they should have known better, frankly. I looked at those images as a teenager and thought that it looked too good to be true, and it was.
I ended up by weird coincidence having both consoles (PS1 and N64) and to be fair, I put hundreds of hours into Gran Turismo 1/2 and also into Goldeneye/Perfect Dark - they both had their pros and cons, but I always preferred the N64s controllers, particularly using two controllers in Goldeneye and PD years before dual stick control methods were considered the norm for FPSs.
Edit: In hindsight I suppose it's easy to look back and go "lol millions of polys per second, what a joke" but back in the day, real time antialiasing, mipmapping and the sort of things being introducted in the N64 were pretty feckin' new so I can understand why some elements of the tech press weren't that savvy about it....
Exactly. Even that $100,000 workstation couldn't do those graphics, unless you want everything to run at 30 _seconds_ per _frame_ (or worse).
This part didn't hit me until MVG mentioned it, though: the N64 launched for less than it was announced for. If fewer corners had been cut- put in a bigger texture cache, plus either beef up the clock speeds or add a dedicated sound chip- some of the console's weaknesses could have been smoothed over. And still at a competitive price.
@@3dmarth Yeah people often didn't realize just how freaking *long* a render could take. I remember getting into POVRay back in the day, and could make cutscenes which blew away my old at that point N64, then with a new workstation GPU (Oxygen Labs Vx1 6MB, lol) obliterating my *Xbox*.
But those 30 second renders took *all night*. Even now some of them would take me an hour to re-render.....
Even their Arcade games lied. I remember Killer Instinct and Crusin USA coming soon to the "Ultra 64", when we actually got them "Well, we didn't even get KI1, just Killer Instinct 2 rebranded as KI Gold" there was a LOT of corners cut, no videos or cut scenes like in Killer Instinct, or anything like that.
Yep. In 1994 Nintendo lead the gaming press to believe the Ultra 64 would get the same graphics like those expensive Silicone Graphics render machines that were used for movies like Jurassic Park and Terminator 2. After the first N64 games like Pilotwings 64 and Mario 64 were shown, everybody realized Nintendo was lying for years. The N64 was ahead of the Playstation, but not by much. Definitely not by 20 years.
Even though the PlayStation & Saturn had already been out for awhile when the N64 was released, there was nothing like it. I remember playing SM64 for the first time as a kid and being amazed at how open the world was and how much freedom you had. It was truly revolutionary & set a standard for games to this day.
Not even just that, the game played smoother than anything else out there.
My friends had already moved on to the PS by the time this finally dropped. One of us bought an N64 and we had fun with it, but we had grown up and moved on from Nintendo's style of games and were already getting more into PC gaming by that point thanks to LAN parties taking off.
@@frogbutts3628and to find out 20 years later it could have been even smoother with the "optimize" toggle on the C code compile. masterpiece
How was there "nothing like it", when 3d Platformers, even with polygon graphics already existed since the 80's on computers? The N64 really wasn't anything special unless you were a console peasant stuck in your parents basement and all you knew was the SNES or NES.
@@ShadowAngel-lt8nw Super mario 64 had literally no equivalent on pc. Maybe not even now. you are smoking crack over there
I bought one at launch, because I was absolutely blown away by the 3D graphics of this $200 console. Remember, at the time, we were playing on analog TVs that generally rendered 320x200. I managed to get an early peek at the N64 as I had a friend who worked for SGI, and he brought me in to their Mountain View HQ where we played for a bit on one of the final prototype units, maybe a week or two before release.
$250
@@brkbtjunkie No. $200, at least in the USA. I don't know if it was priced differently elsewhere.
@@davidaitken8503$500 and the Japanese version was $700
@@davidaitken8503 It was £250 in the UK (console with 1 controller and no game, if I remember correctly).
NTSC televisions displayed roughly 640x480 pixels, if they were only capable of 320x200 pixels, there would be no point to the N64 expansion pack that enabled games to render at a higher resolution closer to/at 480i. Most console games/consoles before the Dreamcast tended to not hit that resolution, but that doesn't mean analog TVs weren't capable of more.
When did Nintendo ever NOT lie to us? They're even worse than Apple at supporting software you've already bought.
I think as far as raw specs go it definitely did seem like the most powerful hardware at the time. However there were three major flaws that kept it from reaching its full potential first obviously being on cartridges, second was the small texture cache and finally was the poor video output that even on TVs on the time looked blurry compared to the PSone. It was prevented from ever reaching its full potential because of these things.
Agreed.
The controller wasn't great either.
Don’t know how Nintendo could f up all three of those things.
PS1 maybe sold a lot compared to N64, but N64 was still a gigantic success.
People even were disappointed by the Gamecube not living up to the N64. Its laughable looking back because the GC is probably one of the best consoles ever.
But again, it was squished by the PS2.
But basically Nintendo was on a success train never seen.
NES (10/10) - SNES (10/10) - N64 (9/10) - GC (8/10) - Wii (10/10) - Wii U (3/10).
Imagine being on a roll for almost a quarter of a century.
The N64 was considered a flop?
The Gamecube was considered a flop?
Its crazy.
And after the Wii U they basically destroyed the competition with the Switch.
An underpowered device that still beats devices like the PS5 just with its type and the games it has (like new Zelda).
@@rettro6578Trying to be too different and end up hurting themselves.. Being different sometimes isn't a good thing..
The lead up to N64's release was absolutely insane. I subscribed to Nintendo Power devouring every morsel of information.Once I heard my local Toys R Us had a demo for Mario 64 I raced over there to try it out. I pre-ordered the N64 with Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 and ultimately picked them up on day one. Mario 64 completely blew me away and gave me memories that stayed with me until this day.
It blew us all away, man. Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Starfox 64 were very impactful
My first experience with the N64 was incredibly disappointing and frustrating. For weeks, we went to different stores with demo models, but lines were too long to play - or even see the TV. After long enough, I finally went to a store with an opening and had 5 minutes with Mario 64, but I couldn’t get Mario to move. I tried everything, but Mario was just standing there. Was something wrong with the controller?
My time ended, an older kid took over, and he had Mario zipping around! Turned out I didn’t use the D-Pad to move Mario! I didn’t get another chance to play until Christmas. It was an agonizing wait, but so magical when I finally got to play it.
I used the internet exclusively for researching UFO's and the Ultra64 back then.
Yea the people that complain about games now or complain how low res they look now just don't understand how the graphics really made you feel. There was something to it, when we were working on CRTs in wood frames sitting on your living room floor.
@@Epic_C That's true. It really is hard to explain how it felt when 3d graphics came to major consoles. Especially the N64, because it looked a lot better than the polygons from the Playstation. There was definitely some kind of magic to it.
The N64 release was amazing. Playing Mario 64 for the first time was a mind blowing experience never to be duplicated to this day. A first of its kind
It and Shadows of the Empire, it really felt like the movies. Not now of course but back then with no equivalent it was all so mind blowing.
@@somehow_not_helpfulATcrap yes it was, miss those days
It’s shocking to me how well those first N64 games worked, esp a platformer like Mario, just getting the camera to work right must’ve taken forever, never mind trying to design a 3D game that is challenging, fun and bug free and uses the brand new thumbstick controller. A totally new way of thinking about game design and they made it work
Credit where it's due as well, Nintendo was willing to delay the launch of the console in order to make sure those games were as good as they could be.
I was born in the ‘80s, I saw the video game industry going from blocky stuff in Atari to the 3D on the N64. I’ll admit to being mostly impressed by the beautiful games, reading magazines on how cool this was and feeling my first N64 on 1998. Mario 64, GoldenEye and Bomberman were absolute blasts… I remember fondly consuming more magazines to get on with what to buy next. I was never disappointed, even with the console’s not-so-good games like Quest 64, it was still a bliss to move around the realized 3D world and seeing fully physical characters and not just sprites.
I'd like to hear this kind of breakdown of the Sega Saturn because of how strange the architecture is
I did watch the dude from Traveller's Tales videos about it
@@jakethreesixty Can you kindly share the channel name? Thanks!
@@FacchiniBRTVGameHut!
@@SalivatingSteve thanks a lot!
💯
Mario 64 was the most mind blowing experience I ever had when I first played it at a toys r us back in 96
I had the same experience. went to toys r us when I was 16, because a friend told me they had N64 and Mario on display, there was a ton of kids there playing it
to this day, almost 30 years later, no other game has given me that same sense of amazement. I wish I could share that feeling with people who weren't around to experience it, what a great time for gamers
@@joesaiditstrue Same here, Friend called me and let me know toys r us had Mario 64. I jumped on my bike. good times.
Except unreal was also out...
@@the_ure Unreal came out in 1998 : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_(1998_video_game)
I remember being about 13 years old when N64 came out. I remember a family trip to my uncle's place in August, and my cousin was in his 20s and still living at home, and so he was able to afford an N64 and Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64. My little mind was absolutely blown. I spent every moment of that family trip that I could playing one or the other, swapping between the two whenever I got anything approaching bored. Best couple of days of gaming of my life, hands down. And this was after playing a bunch of Doom and Warcraft and Rise Of The Triad and Monty Python shovelware on a friend's Pentium PC, I should add. That Christmas, my siblings and I were gifted an N64 along with Turok and Extreme G, which were far from disappointing. Then my brother got Shadows Of The Empire as a birthday present and my sister got Diddy Kong Racing as a birthday present. I forget what I even got for my birthday, because hot damn, just between just those titles and rentals, we had a really good couple of years. And then of course things blew wide open with Rogue Squadron, Ocarina Of Time, Goldeneye 007, Extreme G 2...... what a time to have been alive.
I was a bit underwhelmed when I saw actual N64 games didn’t match the SGi hype footage/quality.
I remember the N64 incredibly well. All of the kids at school were talking about it. When it came out, demo consoles were at every store and rental places were packed. Bedrooms were full of kids, pizza, and soda cans. It was a great time to be a kid.
Do you wants ANTS, because that is how you get ANTS!!
@@RichV20 bro hes not saying thats a thing hes doing now its not that deep lmao
plus the pizza and soda / fizzy drinks chilling with your friends is a great experience, just take the rubbish out after and you're all good. have a little fun some time lol
@@ElDisable dude was being sarcastic, hes having a little fun right then
Curious to know, did anyone of those kids had PC at that time, and some experience with PC games ?
@@a88pockets ah very difficult to tell I’ll take fault for that
SGI workstations were also being used by some games companies. Primarily to produce 3D intros / cut scenes etc. Lightwave & 3D Studio were more common however. As for why the N64 wasn’t well received by the industry. Sony had a really big P&R budget, put on amazing events for people who worked in the industry and also a lot of video games companies were fed up of the costs of carts and Nintendo’s restrictive practices. Sony was a breath of fresh air..
Sony also made a console that was WAYYY easier to develop games for. It was so easy that Sony even had special Homebrew PS1s for making games at home. Compared to game development on other consoles of the time, the PS1 was like Baby's 1st Dev Box. Sony used to sell Net Yaroze consoles for people to make the games, and even maintained a Usenet community for it.
They continued this trend (kind of) with the PS2 and PS3. They are harder to develop for than the OG PS1, but Sony supported Linux on the 2&3 so you could turn them into homebrew dev kits. Never actually saw that done, but that's the official reason for PS2&3 supporting Linux on launch. Sony just supported ALL developers for a while and it paid off for them. I don't think LSD Dream Emulator or anything like that could have released on any other console other than the PS1 because of Sony's insane dev support for the console.
@@OmegaSMG I have long suspected that Sony’s choice to use a CD and weak copy protection was intentional. Sony really needed to saturate the market with consoles and a lot of people bought into the PS1 platform because you could get cheap pirated games. The same wasn’t true for the N64 / cartridge based systems that came before it. Pirated carts had a premium and were hard to get hold of.
No, the reason was Sony gave their console "normal" margins for consumer electronics not knowing that game consoles typically had almost zero margin. Sony treated all their partners (retail, developer, etc.) well like they usually did while Nintendo, Sega were like "You're just lucky to be here."
To be fair, many companies were already fed up with working with Nintendo. Their restrictive policies started from the NES era to the 32/64 bit era, and it was what angered many third party companies. While the SNES is well remembered for it’s great catalog of games, it’s library is smaller compared to the Sega Genesis and Sony’s arrival was indeed a breath of fresh air for companies.
@@Spark010 Also Sony updated the BIOS only for the Japanese PS1 model 3000 and later with additional protection against modchip. But never put that protection in the US nor PAL consoles.
LOVED THIS EP!
I'm Aussie too and was around 13 at that time and was crazy for the Ultra 64. I used to sneak into Monash university and log in with my older friends account to download new images from the, even then at a university, slow internet. One image still took about 30 seconds or so on their broadband.. Maybe it was adsl? Dunno.
Then I finally got to play it by renting the console Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 from a store that imported the Japanese version 7 months before it released in Australia. I was literally shaking when holding the controller. It was incredible and blew my mind.
Between the Toy Story film, playing Mario 64, and experiencing Metal Gear Solid, I knew that making 3d graphics for games is what I wanted to do with my life.
Now I make video games in Japan, so the Ultra 64 was quite literally life changing for me. ❤
I actually studied Computer Science at Monash and graduated just a few years before the N64 released. good memories. congratulations on your journey to making games!
At 12 years old, coming from having a SuperNES and Genesis, to seeing Mario 64 running for the first time was truly an incredible experience. Kids today will never understand how big of a graphical jump it felt like.
Doom was out 3 years earlier and had better graphics.
@@damienwarlock you are out of your mind.
@@Fidodo Doom came out in Dec 1993. Are you trying to tell me the "64 bit" N64 (it wasn't 64 bit anything) was better than a PC at the time? Because it wasn't.
I see the console vs. PC argument is still going on 30 years on. You gotta realize it’s apples and oranges.
@@damienwarlock classic Doom was great…but it’s nowhere near as impressive as Mario 64 looked. Also Doom was technically 2.5D
Grew up with the 64 and i love it to this day !
I see people complaining a lot about the fog in 64 titles, but ps1 had those weird polygons and the loading times
Every platform has their characteristics, but we all have fun in each one of them !
I think It was just an awkward time for 3d graphics in general. The N64, Sega Saturn and PS1 were all trying out different things, and each approach had its own limitations and compromises.
Most people are either blinded by nostalgia or haven't played on original PS1 hardware, or even didn't have any prior or other console experience at the time. They don't remember about the warping textures on all games (fixed by emulators by default), the generally very low resolution, the low poly look of many games, the loading times, etc.
That is not to say the N64 didn't have any flaws, all 5th gen consoles had major flaws that characterised their graphics. Truth be told, the first console to do 3d absolutely right and make 3d games fully enjoyable was the Dreamcast and the rest of the 6th gen followed suit.
N64 only had fog because the majority of games were poorly optimised and to increase framerates fog was added to hide the limited rendering of distant objects in the poorly optimised games purely because Nintendo refused to provide developers with the chipset Microcode (the CPU command line/instruction set), it was as mysterious as the Playstation 3's assembly.
The N64 did not operate like an x86, ARM or PowerPC system which are well known, you couldn't look at the compiled assembly and go "ok this looks optimised" based on a traditional understanding of coding, you had to guess purely based on the number of lines the code translated to when using the development tools, if it had less lines devs were like "well looks optimised to me" and if the game ran badly their only option was to reduce the draw distances and inject fog to hide it. The N64 had a unique chipset which used the silicon graphics architecture, which meant that the only developers, even those without access to the Microcode from Nintendo who understood the assembly were those who had worked with SGI tech before such as Rareware and Factor 5. Even Nintendo themselves didn't fully understand their own machine because even Mario 64 could of ran at a framerate 10fps higher than it ran at in the launch version if the devs optimised it, which it wasn't.
I was lucky to be 15 around this time and was able to work and buy all three. I had N64 for Nintendo games like Mario64, Golden eye, the ps1 for RPGs and grand Turismo 2 and Saturn for fighting games like X-men vs Street Fighter all unique and fun in their own way
I preferred the PS1's graphical shortcomings to the N64's graphical shortcomings. I just couldn't stand the blurriness of everything.
Mario 64 was mind boggling as a kid and still have a old school TV that I use for my old game consoles. My 12 year old cousins played Mario 64 for the first time and to see them play it with the same mesmerized expression I had as a kid made me almost shed a tear of joy.
I keep an old TV for my classic consoles too, and my niece and nephews love playing them
Mario64 is to Video Games what The Wizard of Oz is to movies
I was around when it came out, buddies and me heard there are TWO consoles show cased in a store in the next town. our parents would not drive us so we went by bike 23km/14.2 miles to the store to see the console ourselves.
there was a massive line and we got yelled at for walking up but we said we only wanted to see the console and everyone was suddenly chill.
just seeing this was mind blowing. :D
Love it. I still remember seeing it in magazines and it blew my mind. I sold my Playstation, bought the N64, and played Mario 64, Wave Race, and Killer Instinct Gold for years on end without getting bored.
The 90s were an amazing time for gaming. I had grown up with the NES and Genesis. But the fist time seeing Mario 64 in person in the summer of 96 was nothing short of mind blown. From that moment off i busted my ass in school and bugged my parents non stop to get me the n64 for Christmas. Best. Christmas. Ever!
I remember renting an N64 and Waverace when I was a kid. It was *mind-blowing* at the time. It felt like a huge leap in graphics. Optimistic moment.
I remember riding one of the courses backward to unlock rideable dolphins.
Waverace still impresses me, those wave mechanics
I was 8. Seeing Mario 64 for the first time was life changing. You had seen 3D graphics before but here was the g.o.a.t., Super Mario doing freaking triple jumps, back flips, and wall jumps in a 3D space for the first time. That paired with the music and the visual effects, like the post level breakdown, and jumping in the painting. It was magical at the time.
That was an era of games, they either worked or they didn't. No one cared what they looked like as long as they were fun to play. I was very lucky in a family of the Vic20, Commodore 64 and eventually PC. With all that instilled in us, when my brothers and myself got our own place, we had all bases covered. I had the Nintendo 64, my younger brother had the PS1, and the youngest of us had the Sega. Long story short, eventually we all on PS now, although my heart still wants to find a Dreamcast.
Much like how PS1 fans are nostalgic for the console’s distinctly jagged graphics rendering and texture warping, the N64’s blurry visuals and low resolution textures are insanely nostalgic for me. Its limitations lent it a unique, otherworldly feel that fascinated me as a child. Definitely my favorite early 3D console.
When played on the average television set at the time both look much better than through an emulator or a modern TV.
One of my favorite games, Digimon World, does not look the same at all without a good CRT shader. Even something simple as the text stands out as “wrong” on an LCD unaided.
CRT Royale gets me about 90% of the way there. It’s quite effective, actually.
Maybe it's just me but both consoles have this weird atmosphere that can't be beat today.
No other console or games on PC have it for me.
I think for PC, you could try out the Unreal Gold. That game gave me that kind of feeling that I think you might be talking about.
@@ConcavePgons I stated with Unreal Tournament. I do agree game's like Unreal and Duke 3D has that atmosphere. Man I miss the 90s. Lol
I remember going in to college over the summer and printing everything I could about Project Reality off of Nintendo's website. All the Dream Team stuff. I actually still have it all in plastic sleeves all these years later. And today I own multiple N64s and a 64DD
That's really cool - in a way, the excitement itself was it's own relic of the past to treasure, separately from the actual hardware itself.
@@Domarius64 oh, 100%. It was something that was special at the time. More details than what the official mags put in print. Some early screenshots, like when Mario Kart 64 was named Super Mario Kart R
Please, please put out video of the 64DD.
I remember getting our N64 Christmas of 1996 and was blown away by the graphics on Super Mario 64. We still have it to this day and it's still one of my favorite game consoles of all time
The gameplay holds up incredibly, as evidenced by the amazing speedruns gamers are producing to this day
Honestly, as a PS1 kid, I always found N64 games kinda ugly. There weren't a single N64 game as vibrant looking as Spyro.
ok cool
@@InsidiousOne As a Nintendo kid, I always envied de PS for having Spyro. Because I thought it doesn't belong in that dirty ugly game library that the PS had. I thought it belonged more on the N64 because it looked so colourful and pretty.
@@Wilma_Dickfit_huh can't agree there. The biggest N64 platformers never really impressed me visually. Super Mario 64 had very blocky and abstract enviroments, they felt like test levels sometimes. The Rare platformers were fun to play, but they still looked very brown and not really appealing. And PS1 had such vibrant and colorful games, like Ape Escape, Bugs Bunny: Lost in time, Tomba 2, Crash Bandicoot 2-3, and so on. Well, the only N64 game that looks on par with them is probably Conker's Bad Fur Day, this one looks great.
It's kinda of fun hearing that entire studios had a really bad time trying to develop for n64, while today, we have guys like Kaze Emanuar, single handled making a superior version of Super Mario 64, running @60fps on the actual console.
The big difference I remember between the PS & N64 is not having FMV's, but it had such awesome games. Turok was one of my absolute favourites.
N64 games had instant loading as well.
@@superdaveozy7863Analog controls out of the box too. People forget but the PS did not launch with analog sticks, and as such many early games for it do not support analog control. N64 was designed from the ground up to have an analog stick so even its launch titles had smooth movement control.
I remember renting Turok as a kid, and getting so nauseous from it that we had to return the game early. I had goldeneye (I think it was already out) and was fine with that, but something about the controls made me sick.
Funnily enough, a lot of FMV on PS1 where made using SGI stations like Onyx and Iris, which were used as N64 dev kits.
@@superdaveozy7863 Right, instant loading but, lot smaller games. The CD of the time could do something like 50x the average Nintendo cart. It's a real balancing act here, instant loading, or larger games with video.
Coming from a Commodore 64 and a Sega Genesis, the Nintendo 64 was huge for me. Taking those initial steps outside the castle in Mario 64 for the first time was one of those wide-eyed, mind blowing moments that'll stay with me for the rest of my life. That feeling kept returning with each new game I picked up - Lylat Wars (Starfox), Goldeneye, Zelda OOT (OMG!!), Rogue Squadron, and tons more. So many good memories four-player multiplaying with friends - at the time nothing beat it. Graphically it wasn't a very big technological leap over the PS1, but I really loved how the N64 rendered graphics. It pushed less polygons, but it the graphics it produced were smooth and looked SOLID, unlike the PS1's weird texture warped environments.
I think if you weren't there to experience it back when it was released, and you look at the N64 today... it's very underwhelming. The graphics are murky, blurry, and the sound in most games is quite average. But make no mistake - playing it back in the late 90's on a Sony CRT with four of your mates was groundbreaking stuff.
The N64 was actually quite a bit more powerful than the PS1 in terms of polygon pushing but it lagged behind the PS1 and Saturn ***HARD*** in some areas. Quite a few of the PS1’s most hardware-pushing games were actually coded in assembly not because the hardware was stronger, but because the architecture was just much better-balanced for developer needs & was much easier to optimize for. The N64 was really good at some things, and really, REALLY bad at others. The Saturn was just alien technology for the time.
Random memory- spring 1993, going into 7-11 to buy a slurpee and play Mortal Kombat, seeing a magazine on the rack with a huge Sonic on the cover. Bought it before leaving the store. It was my first EGM, it had mindblowing previews of Sonic CD and Secret of Mana, and big news stories about how Nintendo was partnering with SGI on their next console "Project Reality" and the first info and specs on Sega's next console codenamed "Saturn" that was expected in late 1994.
Why is everyone always now attempting to go back and question the N64?? For its time, it was straight-up legendary. Playing Golden Eye, go-karts, Mario party, Tony Hawk, Madden, NHL, and many other titles was beyond fun and can't be recreated. Using the Z button to juke in Madden, OMG, when that 1st was added, straight 🔥. Soooo many 007 sleepover tournaments. Expansion pack. N64 was absolute perfection. Anyone who didn't live it should have ZERO opinions.
Those SGI Irix machines were something else. To blunder that lead is a story as well.
Imagine if SGI bought nVidia and we were running SGI cards in our PCs now (with the awesome oldschool hypercube logo illuminated by LEDs, of course). They could have absolutely dominated the PC graphics market if they had been willing to undercut their $30k+ workstation market in exchange for selling millions/billions of sub-$1k cards, but that's not how 90s UNIX vendors thought...and why most of them went extinct with the rise of linux.
@@treelineresearch3387 All of the graphics talent left SGI after the N64. They formed ArtX which went on to design the Gamecube GPU before being bought ATi. So they basically did exactly that, just without the SGI name or incompetent leadership.
I remember the hype of the Ultra-64 being a close cousin of the SGI Indigo workstation. Of course, the reality turned out to be far more limited, but it did share the DNA.
There was never a dash (-) in the name; it was just Ultra 64.
I guess they shared one gene on one chromosome because they were nothing alike outside of marketing nonsense.
I don't think anybody really believed it was going to be TOO close to an Indigo workstation. The Indigo was going for $25k in 1993 and they were looking to sell the N64 for $200. Corners were going to have to be cut. But despite all of that, Nintendo did pretty good at delivering on their promise.
I kept a journal when I was in 6th grade when the N64 came out. I was reading through it recently and found an entry where I wrote that my brother and I had come to the conclusion that the graphics on the N64 were the best that could ever be made and that there would never be anything better. I got a big laugh out of that.
I’m just old enough to remember when it was new. I was at my grandparents house and the neighbor kid just got a shiny new N64. One of my early and most deeply engrained childhood memories was seeing Ocarina of Time and just being completely blown away by it. Sadly I didn’t get my own till several years later in 2005. I bought it at blockbuster and I went straight for OOT, Majoras Mask, and Goldeneye. I still have them to this day and I still play them.
The best thing about the n64 for me is the load times. It boots up in seconds. I do wonder why MK trilogy on n64 can render more background layers than the ps1 port. Good video 👍
by stitching textures
Yeah the load times were great. I had the Saturn, PS1 and N64. All three of those consoles had their strenghts and weaknesses Luckily, they all had great libraries of games to play (albeit Saturn was considerably smaller).
Playing Mario 64 on the demo machine at Best Buy was mind blowing at the time. The jump from SNES to N64 was the most dramatic leap in graphics quality.
I also remember being blown away at the mall when the demo Mario was on display it just looked so real at the time
Was the clearest jump of tech in all game history
N64 was my second console, the first was the original Nintendo. This console has a special place in my heart and gave me awesome childhood memories
The most significant aspect of the N64 was that it never became a hacked emulation console. I Can guarantee all those wanting Switch 2 to come out are mostly the types that will expect it will be cracked in a fortnight running roms and wares.
I was working at Toys R Us when the N64 launched, and I remember the price of those launch bundles were eye watering. I think Turok was one of the bundled games along with Mario 64. Some Saturdays i would be posted on the demo booth to try and maintain some order.
In the end all the hype turned out to be short lived, and the PlayStation outsold it massively, those were good times as we got to test some of the games before they were officially released.
Turok 64 and SM64 were my first N64 games. Must've been the bundle my Mother bought
No other console could get away with 2 launch titles.... But Mario64 and Pilotwings were unique enough and the wow factor in Mario64 made it so that we forgave a lot of its shortcomings. The N64 was truly a pioneer in so many ways, the controller being another big one. Ahhh, great memories!
I think the world collectively lost years of sleep to GoldenEye at the time.
Plus it helped that Mario 64 was a very long game. It didn't take 2 days to beat like most launch games today.
I remember going to Toys'R'Us in 1996 and watching some kid trying to play Mario 64 cross-handed. The controller design just completely stumped the poor little fella... haha, he's probably a dentist or an MBA now.
the ps5 got away with it
If it was anything other than Mario, I doubt it'd be as successful. Mario 64 is still a blast to play today. Having that as a launch title was perfect. It was worth buying the console just for that game. Other great games came after that, of course, but no one was disappointed when they got "Mario 64" because it was one of the two games available at launch. It was THE game at the time.
Agreed, N64 was king! Got it for my 15th birthday with Goldeneye and Zelda oot. Man what a time that was!!!
I got it on release day and I'd invite people round just to see their reaction. It blew everybody away that saw it. There won't be a game changer like it again.
the first time I saw the 3D mario face on mario 64, I knew shit was serious
I pe-ordered the N64 with Mario and Waverace. The water in Waverace 64 was like having it in your tv. Best graphics me or any of my friends had ever seen including those who had DX4100 computers. Also as the first major console to have 4-player optionality built in combined with the lack of internet gaming, sitting around with your group of friends and playing Goldeneye, Mario Kart and 1080 was an experience you really cant have today. It was the best.
i miss this era so much.The mistery behind every system was unmatched.Nowadays were just fed truckloads of leaks, kind of boring imo.I remember the rumors about zelda64, Disc drive,beta builds of games and this was the pratice of the market
One wonders how much more incredible the N64 could have been if they had simply stuck to their guns with CD. Imagine how much larger and more immersive Ocarina of Time could have been had it had access to 700mb of data instead of 32. We could have had a BOTW sized game all the way back in 1998.
I probably played my 64 for thousands of hours between 1996 and 2001. The first time I got to experience it myself was when a friend of mine that had a few hundred dollars saved up (I was 16-17) got his hand on one during launch day with Mario 64. Not gonna lie, we all skipped school the next day and played that game relentlessly until we beat it a couple of times. It just blew our minds so much!
The jump from 2 to 3D was insane in my mind as a kid…. “wtf is this!?!” 😳
I was born in 1994, now working on VR games, it is amazing to see what things used to be exciting
I read a book in 1994 that said by 2000 kids will go to school in a VR classroom and be taken on field trips around the world. My childhood was full of lies.
@@kweejee lol I wish that would haveen been true
@@ThyTrueNightmare So, what exactly are you working on and what is the future of VR games/experience ?
Considering in 1994 my school had 2 PCs everyone had to share, that was a very farfetched belief. That everyone was going to carry around pocket computer phone with internets was definitely farfetched. Mobile phones were for high paid professionals and drug dealers back then.
@@kweejee Technology has stagnated since the 70's. No new breakthroughs in anything that matters that is public knowledge.
0:28 Wdym? The NES, the SNES, N64 and game cube where all the most powerful consoles when they launched
im not super familiar with 3rd gen, but the snes and megadrive are pretty much equivalent at the end of the day. sega had a better cpu and some cool dma stuff going on (blast processing) and nintendo had a wider colour palette and audio hardware that is IN THEORY better (in practice cart size limitations result in snes music aging terribly)
n64 absolutely was the most powerful of its time
gc was usurped by the xbox when that came out
@jalipeno97 The SNES was capable of true transparency, the Genesis wasn't, Not to mention that the blast processor was just something made up
@jesusramirezromo2037 blast processing was a name for this really specific DMA technique that allowed for more colours on screen, so it was real
ill give you transparency though, even if i think the megadrive looks great with dithering
What good is power when it can't be harnessed to its full potential?
I remember going to a Toy Story premiere and they had a 'super computer' at the theatre running a realtime 3D demo. I dont remember what the object was but you could move it around on screen and it was a pretty high frame rate.
The N64 was the first console I bought with my own money, and even at that point I'd known to be wary of hype- therefore I wasn't really at all disappointed with what I got. Despite its shortcomings, I had many an hour of enjoyment with that machine.
Fellow _Blast Corps_ lovers especially know what I'm talking about!
Blast Corps is an awesome game if you grew up playing it (it's one of my favorites) but it is so crusty with jank that I can't in good faith recommend people try it nowadays lol
Same here--I gave my dad the money to buy the game and the console on day one.
He came back with just the cartridge and told me he lost the money because he "Had a hole in his pocket". He had a bad gambling problem back then. All I could do was read the SM64 instruction.manual over and over again! 😂
@@uglybad4, could not disagree more with that! It's still awesome to play. I'd say it's probably one of the games from that era that's held up the best
@@timothylewis2527, dude, that's horrendous! I'm glad you can laugh about it, because man, that's rough
@@HoistusMaximus I know what I'm talking about, I still have my 64 set up and I've been replaying the game recently. There's so many things wrong with it; vehicles are made of rubber and bounce off walls and other obstacles in very strange ways, the driving mechanics aren't interesting enough to warrant 20 race missions, and some very cryptic puzzles that you would never figure out without a guide (like the underground scientist in Argent Towers or the first boat leading to TNT in Oyster Harbor), just to name a few examples off the top of my head.
I *adore* the game but that's a lot to throw at somebody, especially if they've only played newer games and aren't ready to deal with all the rough edges
I still have my N64, and I do think it is one of the most ground breaking consoles, and I always get a kick out of the fact that it uses Silicon Graphics tech, which was similar to what we saw in Hollywood at the time.
What was the story with the expansion pack? I remember I begged my parents to buy me one. Still no clue what it did.
The N64 set standards that we still follow in gaming today such as rumble on controllers, thumb sticks, the ability to move the camera in game, the ability to play your handheld console games on your tv
Sony created the Dualshock controller due to how popular the n64 controller was.
@@Mike_B622 Sony being Sony, always copying, never creating.
@@musicvideoenhancer There were no console fanboys back then from my memory, most titles were exclusive as well so there was a reason to own multiple consoles. If you had an N64 you didn't have GTA, Crash Bandicoot, Sim City, Spyro or Fifa96, if you had a PlayStation you didn't have Mario Kart, 1080 Snowboarding, Cruis'n USA, Banjo Kazooie or 007 etc etc.
The N64 came out when I was in high school, my parents got the console for me and my brother in Xmas of 95 and we were absolutely blown away. Some of the games were amazing, Stars Wars Return of the Empire, Golden Eye, Turock kept us entertained.
*Shadows of the Empire
Xmas of 96
The Nintendo 64 and Gamecube tried to compete on hardware but then chose the worst data storage methods, this is why Playstation edged them out of the big boy status...
Yes what an obvious fail.
Hiroshi Yamauchi made a big error not wanting to license DVD technology for the Gamecube. No surprise he was out less than a year after the Gamecube's launch, and control of Nintendo left the Yamauchi family for the first time since its founding.
Disc's and cartridges both have positives and negatives, and honestly had little to do with Playstation taking the lead over Nintendo at the time... N64 was more difficult to develop for and Nintendo was even more cut throat back in those days, in essence Nintendo double dipped, forcing developers to buy cartridge's from them.
I'll gladly take faster load times over have pre-rendered cut scenes I'd likely watch once then skip the rest of my life... anyone remember having time to make a sandwich while waiting for the next level to load on the PS?? 😜😜
While I love the N64, and it's one of my favorite systems to go back too, as there is no modding need to play ROMs just a cheap flash cart, and no optical drives to go bad, at the time it really was a poor decision on Nintendo's part to stick with carts.
@@DevMeloy "honestly had little to do with Playstation taking the lead over Nintendo at the time" this is historically untrue. Nintendo lost multiple major third party publishers to Sony, who neither Nintendo nor SEGA took seriously as a new competitor in the gaming hardware space. Sony managed to woo big players like Capcom, Konami, and of course SQUARE with a system that yes was easier to develop for, but also afforded much more storage space *AND* profit margin per unit sold than Nintendo's proprietary cartridges. This is why Nintendo went running to a bunch of western developers to hastily assemble the "dream team" for the N64 launch...and most of those games ended up being delayed into 1997 or beyond anyway.
The first time I walked into Bradlee's and saw the N64 kiosk, with a line 10 kids deep waiting to play Mario 64. I just stood near the screen for what seemed like hours, mesmerized by the 3d graphics and game play. It was life changing.
I remember reading Gamepro and Electronic Gaming magazines all the time about the Ultra 64 with the cd drive coming. I was 13 years old waiting in line at best buy at 6am to get the N64 on day of release @ $200. They only had 10 units. Mario 64 was a fucking amazing treat.
That system had some amazing games, but the overall game roster was so small. Like stated in the video, there were always huge gaps in generations of consoles back then. Today everything just feels like a cluttered mess and just a gradual upgrade over time. I miss the old days.
As far as Nintendo going for the strongest hardware at the time, I'd argue that NES and SNES were competitors in that field as well as the GameCube afterwards. They changed trajectory with the Wii trying to counter the uprise in Playstation / Xbox systems that gained popularity and both N64 and Gamecube not doing so well.
Poor Dreamcast :( Now that was a system that hit at a time where it outshined its competition as far as performance goes.
Ahh nostalgia. I miss gaming back in the day
I was watching a friend play BioShock for the first time the other day, and remarking on how pretty the graphics still are. I said "now imagine that only two years earlier the pinnacle of video game graphics on console was the original Resident Evil 4." New console generations used to bring MASSIVE leaps in visuals. We're seeing diminishing returns on that since the 360/PS3 transition.
@@ShadowEl I definitely agree with you, but I want to state one game (not the console) that blew my mind visually recently. Final Fantasy 7 Remake on the PS4. I cannot believe that game was developed for the PS4 and not the PS5. That is the most visually stunning game I've seen to date and the game is fantastic.
I don't think any other console has wowed as much as the N64 did on it's release. It was such a leap forward.
It was the most exciting to time to be a gamer.
How so? The ps1 comes out nearly 2 years before
@Ceratisa because Mario 64 was launched alongside it and it revolutionised 3d gaming.
Don't forget the ps1 didn't even have analogue sticks on the controllers when it was first launched.
@@6Stevo Yeah? And? Don't forget the N64 only had a single analogue stick when it launched. And for the entirety of it's life.
That's such a dumb argument to make lmao
N64 made the PS1 seem like an already redundant game console,
Nintendo blew playstation out of the water with SM64, Waverace, Goldeneye etc.
Few experiences can top the incredible feeling of turning on Mario 64 for the first time and moving him around the castle courtyard with the N64's amazing controller. The fluidity of Mario's movement paired with the amazing feel of the stick was absolutely mind blowing at the time!
It took me a long time to play Mario 64 the first time I got it. I remember at first thinking it was bad because it was hard to control for me as Mario 64 was my first 3d game. But the more I learned the better I got. I think my first N64 game was Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Killer Instinct Gold. Like mostly 2d games. I wasn't sold at first on the more 3d experiences until a bit later.
@@Epsilonsama I can imagine it being difficult to control Mario at first and I'm sure many in my family had problems. For me, however, it was utterly seamless and natural. As allude to, many N64 games were entirely forgettable or in my opinion trash and did no favors for the popularity of the system. As I mentioned in another comment, I sold my N64 not long after I beat Mario 64 because the launch games were so underwhelming.
I liked the N64, but was never a fan of it's controller TBH, stick in particular. the instant I tried a Dual Shock my reaction was "Why couldn't Nintendo put something like THIS in my controlelr?" that stick was a first-class ticket to thumb pain, lol.
Don't stop making videos! The information is great and I actually use your style of explaining how things work in my own job.
I still remember walking near the Killer Instinct arcade after playing a lot the SNES version and being blown away by the arcade graphics and sounds. The announcer saying “ONLY ON NINTENDO ULTRA SIXTY FOUR!” still gets me hyped! Great arcade cabinet!
I brought a N64 just after release, had young kids then and that little machine stood the test of time, it was still going strong long after they had lost interest, rugged and reliable, one of my best choices.
I have great memories of playing all the big titles from the N64 with my friend after school each day. Goldeneye, SM64, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, gods what a console.
The 4-player capability was big. Dozens and dozens of hours with friends over doing 4-player Goldeneye and Mario Kart 64 battle mode.
I miss those days of the big technological leaps. PS4 to PS5 was hardly noticable by comparison.
The N64 really pushed the envelope in 1996. It made my Pentium and PSX games look like pixellated, jagged messes by comparison. It was literally the first consumer hardware to deliver solid-looking 3D that didn't suffer from aliasing and z-fighting. Funny enough, people complain these days that Nintendo makes underpowered hardware, but the only two times they flirted with the bleeding edge (N64 and Gamecube), it ended up selling terribly. Why would they make the same mistake again? They learned their lesson, it's better to make a console that is affordable with technology that is mature.
N64 and GameCube didn't sell terribly (not even in Japan), but the Nintendo 64 did fall short of sales expectations and the GameCube underperformed to the point where it was just about outsold by the Xbox.
The NES and SNES were powerful than their direct competition.
@@blitzerblazinoah6838 I mean terribly is a relative term here, the N64 got outsold 4:1 by the PSX and everything got stomped by the PS2. I'm sure the big N still made money though, they always seem to emerge unscathed.
@@blitzerblazinoah6838 I suspect it was because people were super excited about Halo! That Halo still lives on in the Windows PC world as Halo Custom Edition 1.0.10. Albeit with online multiplayer being the staple of Halo now.
@@LittleBrother-t6n Sure but neither of them were bleeding edge, arcade hardware like Capcom's CPS1 was much more powerful than the NES, and by the time 16-bit came around, my 486 PC was more powerful than the SNES or the SEGA Genesis.
A friend of mine was a very early adopter of the N64. So I got to see a lot of games during the first two years of release. The lack of loading times was wonderful, when compared to the Saturn and Playstation. But I never felt like the games were truly on another level from those consoles. Also, I remember my friend being bummed out that I could get new games for my PS1 for $40, while the vast majority of early N64 games were around $60, with some pushing $70.
Yeah , $60 back then it's like $100 now 🤣, That why I sold my N64 and got a PS1.
I remember paying £80 (US $102) as a teenager in 2000 for Perfect Dark and the N64 memory pack thing. Inflation adjusted that's now £144 (US $184).
Even as a grown adult working full time, there is no way I'd ever drop £144 these days for a single game. Absolute madness.
I have a few scattered memories of when the N64 came out but I had just turned like 3 a couple weeks prior. I remember watching my mom (who had been gaming since the days of the NES) play Super Mario 64 and much later on Zelda OoT and be blown away by how realistic they were. Whereas games had traditionally been 2D, you were actually running around a 3D world in all it's polygonal glory, it was mindblowing for me as a child to see this shit, to the point where in my burgeoning ability of trying to puzzle out how things worked, I had come to the conclusion that all the levels in the game were physically constructed inside each cartridge and you were piloting a tiny Mario around them and that glitches were defects in the manufacturing process.
Between the N64 and my dear, late mother, it pretty much set me on the path of being the geek that I am today. The 90s were a wild time for electronics, man.
That is so difficult for me to imagine your mum being a huge gamer, and so cool, like too cool to be true. The closest thing I had to that (which is still pretty cool) is my dad and uncles would get super competative at some of the racing games, and the golf games. But still it was more like a continuation of male sports in that way, they were not really "gamers" like it sounds like your mum was. I imagine her being a fairly young mum at the time?
@@Domarius64 That still counts just as much! I've honestly heard more of that sort of thing (dads and uncles) than my situation, to be fair.
To answer your question, the NES released in September of 86 here in the states, so my mom would've been 27 at the time, and so you could argue she was fairly young, and I'm also certain I remember her telling me about gaming even before that with arcade games such as Pac-Man/Mrs. Pac-Man, Breakout and Pong.
She was never really into sports games, beyond racing games like Mario Kart (if you want to count that), Need For Speed, Burnout, etc. The games I can remember her mentioning on the NES were Mario (naturally), Contra, Castlevania (One of my favorite series' to this day) and Zelda (Ditto)
@@vincent9068 see that is so cool. I almost wouldn't count dad's & uncles having the occasional competitive session on a racing game or other sports game, there is no way in heck I can imagine my dad or uncles playing Mario, or Sonic or literally anything outside the racing games and sports games. That would be Enduro racer on the Atari 2600, and then Stunts and Jack Nicklaus golf on the MS-DOS PC. That's why I think your mum was so cool, she was a real gamer! And female gamer too, which is rarer, especially back then.
I remember those days. You were that kid on the block if you could get an expansion pack. A chip that slide in the front top of the console
Great episode. I vividly remember lusting after Silicon Graphics hardware. I wanted an Indy at my house so badly. I believe HPE owns what was left of their IP now. I really wish they would revive the brand (and especially the logo) for their high-end workstations.
i can remember getting a gaming magazine with a write up about the ultra 64, and reading it over and over, one game that it talked about as well was blast corps and the silicon graphics it used. so many good memories
Lol. I was just playing Blast Corps the other day. That game is still fun.
STEAM DECK!
Bro blast corps was my jam! Brought back some mad memories there.
Always appreciate the deep dives and info. Thanks for the video MVG
God damn. My man speedran the video in 2 mins
same story was told like 100 times on RUclips...
@@FinnishmanniTAS no less
It was a great system but when everyone saw what Playstation was capable of it was like no comparison, sure you'd play the 64 for Zelda, Mario etc, but the serious games were on Playstation. Even more serious gamers were running PC's with Graphics cards and 56k modems for online play. It was a great time to be a gamer. Sadly it was also a lot of overkill. The gaming epidemic had it's origins in this era and it really ruined some people.