Nintendo president and revolution

Ciaran500

With which console?

They seem to have given up on the GC in Europe.

Dont be at yourself

Nintendo, Nintendo, Nintendo.

On one hand, I have huge admiration for them. They push boundaries, take more risks than anybody, release more ground-breaking titles than anyone else... they seem to be able to accomplish whatever they want.

On the other hand, they ignore Europe, ignore 3rd party developers, refuse to even acknowledge what the competitors are doing, don't address their faults....

Nintendo undoubtedly has the potential to be the number one brand in videogames again. It's got some of the most talented developers on the planet working for them, the biggest franchises in the world, deep pockets, legions of fanatical followers... and yet they never seems to fulfill that potential.

Nintendo's "Revolution" could just be more of Nintendo stubbornly doing things Their Way, even though if they played ball, released a ps3/xb2-a-like console with a blackbuster launch title (Legend Of Zelda, say) and got the likes of EA on board, they'd probably sew up the next generation.

honru

The main problem I can see with the Revolution is if they complicate matters for third-parties by making a console that forces them to make completely different games. They really need to win back that third-party support before going the niche route. It would be amazing if they could pull it off, however if they lose that support this could be Nintendo's last system.

If there's anything I want to see from Nintendo in the next generation race, it's original IP. With Animal Crossing, Eternal Darkness, Pikmin and Doshin the Giant being the only Nintendo Gamecube games with new IP (two of those games being N64 ports), they're really playing it safe in terms of releasing games. New IP that appeals to the older market is what they need right now. A killer ap at launch would be extremely helpful (the new Zelda GC could be switched to the Revolution, perhaps).

And get online. Really.

Retr0gamer

Whats the odds like that nintendo will be late releasing the Revolution just like every console they have ever made

I have to agree with freak scenery. During the lifetime of the GC Nintendo have managed to form very strong ties with Konami, Sega, Capcom and Namco, in my opinion, the 4 best large game developers other than Nintendo themselves. It would be a huge shame if they pissed those ties away by making a console so unique that traditional games would not work on it. Games and designs would have to be made from the ground up and with development periods and costs set to rise during the next generation the time would be best spent developing for other consoles.

Retr0gamer

BloodBath wrote:

It wasn't superior to the playstation, graphically or feature wise.

What bull, the N64 was a far more powerful console than the PS1 graphically and feature wise. Not only did it have better processing power but had better graphical tricks such as bilinear filtering. As for features sony was always playing catch up with nintendo. They had the analogy stick, rumble packs, 4 joypad ports (take note of that one sony for the love of god) and inexpensive ram expansion upgrades (it did use cartridges which was stubborn idiocy on nintendos part).

Rew

Cannt belive anyone would think the PS1 GFX were better then the N64...

TerrorFirmer

It wasn't superior to the playstation, graphically or feature wise.

What?? Are you suggesting that the fact that the N64 is 64bit as compared to the 32bit PSX allows for no graphical improvement? Anyone who has played an N64, even a kid, could instantly recognise the smoother gameplay and graphics the N64 could offer.

As for features, you are wrong there as well. 4 controller slots? Rumble pack? Analogue stick? None of these were in sonys console prior to N64 release.

skywalker

flogen wrote:

No, you misunderstood me, It's not that I want something thats new and exclusive regardless of the quality, its just that I have a PS2 at home and I'm not pushed into playing it on the bus instead, the DS offers games that can't be played on any other console, even their own (even the remakes are different). Now that doesnt mean I'd buy it, the unique games have to be worth it and at launch I can see three titles I want to have, and there are more on the way soon. In the same breath the PSP is offering a lot of racing games, not my thing, and otherwise a lot of remakes of ps2 titles. I may change my mind if I see a lot of really good and fresh titles coming out but for now it just seems to be ps2 ports.

flogen

i did completely take you up the wrong way. apologies.

Q_Ball

steviec wrote:

the PSP has been far more 'Revolutionary'(and if you'd played one you'd understand), sure its basically like a PS2 shrunk down, but whats wrong with that? I mean by that logic you could say that the DS is just a palm pc with a second screen attached for no good reason...

The PSP is not revolutionary by any means. I believe it was an eventuality (hehe i love big words wont go near perpetuated or you'll have a rant on your hands!). The PSP was always going to be made when existing technology enabled it to be made cost effectively. It makes sense business wise because there is already a huge number of games that can be ported without having to be developed first.

I haven't got an opinion on the DS yet. I think the dual screen may be evolutionary (in the handheld market) more than revolutionary. I'll hold out opinionating till i get one tho.

As for games, both handhelds are suffering and going to suffer from rehashes and sequels for the most part but thats to be expected. Original titles will be more prolific once both systems are established.

As for the term revolutionary, i think you have to put what nintedo said in context. I think whats being pushed around here is that the DS or the revolution wont be revolutionary based on hardware. If thats the case the new playstation wins for the cell processor which looks to be unbelievable. Great hardware doesnt make for great games tho. As far as i can see, when nintendo say revolutionary, they mean to break the boundaries of how games are played and the way we perceive gaming as a hobby. You dont need revolutionary hardware for that (but it probably helps).

What i fear will be most crippling is the potential lack of 3rd party titles tho. There are not a lot of companies in the industry like nintendo, who are one of the few that seem not to be driven by the $. The costs for developing a game these days are extremely high, and its very hard for a new or even most established development houses to survive. Hence why multi-platform titles are so rampant. Developing for one console is a greater risk.

Fair play to nintendo tho. Its always great to see someone is committed to the occasional shake up.

[/RANT]

BloodBath

What bull, the N64 was a far more powerful console than the PS1 graphically and feature wise. Not only did it have better processing power but had better graphical tricks such as bilinear filtering. As for features sony was always playing catch up with nintendo. They had the analogy stick, rumble packs, 4 joypad ports (take note of that one sony for the love of god) and inexpensive ram expansion upgrades (it did use cartridges which was stubborn idiocy on nintendos part).

Right maybe feature wise the n64 was better but definitely not graphically. Have you ever played a game that looked as good as gran turismo 2, tekken 3 resident evil 2, nemisis ect on a n64? I didn't think so. Decent games like tony hawks were ruined on the n64 as well with the crappy audio compressed to fit on the cardridges. I know th n64 had better technology packing inside than the ps1. It's a pity they couldn't put it to use on cartridges though.

What?? Are you suggesting that the fact that the N64 is 64bit as compared to the 32bit PSX allows for no graphical improvement? Anyone who has played an N64, even a kid, could instantly recognise the smoother gameplay and graphics the N64 could offer.

Haha as if it being 64 bit has anything to do with it's graphical abilities. The atari jaguar was 64 bit. It doesn't make a difference.


BloodBath

Retr0gamer

Are you taking the piss. Did you not notice that the N64 had bilinear filtering while everything on the PS1 was blocky low res textures, how easy it was for the N64 to handle transparencies and reflections, how everything ran smoother on the N64 and at higher res. Mario 64 was a launch game and yet nothing on the PS1 could touch it for graphics. Also look at perfect dark, goldeneye and quake 2 on the N64 and compare them to the closest thing the PS1, quake 2 and the medal of honour games. There is a huge difference. As for the resident evil games, have you seen Resi 2 on the N64.It looks much better than the PS1 version. Its in high res with lovely filter effects. The N64 was like a whole new generation above the PS1 technically. The cartridges limited storage space but nothing more. The N64 wipes the floor with the PS1 in terms of raw power and visuals. The sound processor was also far better but wasn't put to good use due to the limitations of the cartridges.

TerrorFirmer

Haha as if it being 64 bit has anything to do with it's graphical abilities. The atari jaguar was 64 bit. It doesn't make a difference.

I'm sorry but this is one of those rare times you just have to say - you are an idiot. I think what retrogamer said is exactly right - are you taking the piss??

Haha as if it being 64 bit has anything to do with it's graphical abilities. The atari jaguar was 64 bit. It doesn't make a difference.

And the difference there was it was never used to its full abilites. Also, it ran at 2 x32bit then true 64bit.

honru

BloodBath wrote:

Right maybe feature wise the n64 was better but definitely not graphically. Have you ever played a game that looked as good as gran turismo 2, tekken 3 resident evil 2, nemisis ect on a n64?

Have you ever played an N64?

BloodBath

Lol I have the nintendo freaks on me now. Sorry to say anything bad towards the company you all obviously love so much but seriously.

Are you taking the piss. Did you not notice that the N64 had bilinear filtering while everything on the PS1 was blocky low res textures, how easy it was for the N64 to handle transparencies and reflections, how everything ran smoother on the N64 and at higher res. Mario 64 was a launch game and yet nothing on the PS1 could touch it for graphics. Also look at perfect dark, goldeneye and quake 2 on the N64 and compare them to the closest thing the PS1, quake 2 and the medal of honour games. There is a huge difference. As for the resident evil games, have you seen Resi 2 on the N64.It looks much better than the PS1 version. Its in high res with lovely filter effects. The N64 was like a whole new generation above the PS1 technically. The cartridges limited storage space but nothing more. The N64 wipes the floor with the PS1 in terms of raw power and visuals. The sound processor was also far better but wasn't put to good use due to the limitations of the cartridges.

Not much point having biliniar filtering if there isn't much to filter in the first place. Textures need memory. Most n64 games to keep em cheap, had **** all memory. The likes of mario64 used very simple textures to keep the memory usage to a minimum. Your saying that no game on the ps1 looks better than mario64? Are you ****ing barny the dinosaur? If your idea of great graphics are brightly coloured blocky polygons then good luck to you. It suits the game, yes but to say nothing on the ps1 looked better is a joke. The reason resident evil 2 looked good was because the cardridge was a massive 512mb. This was also 2 years after it came out on the playstation. Resident evil nemisis cam out before this conversion. That was the point I was making earlier. The N64 had better hardware than the ps1 but it wasn't able to make use of it without the storage space. Resident evil 2 is a rare example. The sound processor was better? The n64 didn't have a dedicated sound processor. It used the main cpu afaik. Not much point without cd's. That console would have been huge if Nintendo had chosen cd's.

Btw I did own a ps1 and an n64 and it's just my opinion that the ps1 was the better machine. Maybe not technically but they threw out some great games and a lot of them too. At the same time i've spent a lot of hours on mario64, ocarina of time, mario kart 64, golden eye, most of the n64 clasics.


BloodBath

TerrorFirmer

Your saying that no game on the ps1 looks better than mario64? Are you ****ing barny the dinosaur? If your idea of great graphics are brightly coloured blocky polygons then good luck to you

Brightly coloured blocky polygons the PSX found impossible to reproduce. You have a point with the sound issue, which is obvious given the cartidges - however we were discussing visuals, which you started by saying the N64 was in no way better than the PSX. The bottom line really is, saying the N64 is the same as a PSX is the same as saying a PS2 is as good as an X-Box, and at the end of the day its just not true, no matter what way or how hard you analyse it.

Most n64 games to keep em cheap, had **** all memory.

Of course there are some cheap games on the N64, which are of bare PSX quality, but there are on every console. This isn't really a valid point however, as even the smaller carts on average had much smoother and better textured visuals then even a good PSX game.

Btw I did own a ps1 and an n64 and it's just my opinion that the ps1 was the better machine. Maybe not technically

And of course, thats personnal preference, not fact - which you earlier seemed to be arguing that the visuals were the same on both machines.

Also - without trying to cause offence - this statement has got to be the most ignorant one ive seen in a long time

Haha as if it being 64 bit has anything to do with it's graphical abilities.

Retr0gamer

We aren't Nintendo freaks, we are just stating the blatantly obvious.

BloodBath

Exactly that's just my opinion. They both have their merits.

Also - without trying to cause offence - this statement has got to be the most ignorant one ive seen in a long time

My point was a 64bit console is not necessarily better graphically than a 32 bit console.

Just looking back on some screenshots made me realise how poxy the graphics are on both machines. Great for their time though.


BloodBath

steviec

Being 64 bit or 32 bit has nothing whatsoever to do with graphics.

Technically the X-Box is 32 bit and the PS2 is 128 bit, its really not that important. This is veering off topic anyway, the N64 was technically superior to the PS1 in all but its choice of using cartridges but that is most certainly not simply because 'it's 64 bit!'.

Peteee

Bits have nothing to do with it!

If I remember rightly playing my friends N64 the graphics were a mess, they looked like a crayon drawing (about 256 plain colours, no textures) that had been taken with a camera that was out of focus. And the draw distance was horrendous in some fps (golden eye and errrr south park come to mind!)

Not to say ps1's graphics were good, but gran turismo etc showed how you can push the system to its absolute best

Retr0gamer

It depends what games you played on the system. Gran Turismo 2 was a miracle on the PS1 but the N64 at it's best in, say, Jet Force Gemini or Perfect Dark looked a hell of a lot better than any PS1 game. Then there was Superman on the N64. That looked like a vector graphics C64 machine.

TerrorFirmer

Being 64 bit or 32 bit has nothing whatsoever to do with graphics.

Absolutely true now, but it did matter in older consoles.

If I remember rightly playing my friends N64 the graphics were a mess, they looked like a crayon drawing (about 256 plain colours, no textures) that had been taken with a camera that was out of focus. And the draw distance was horrendous in some fps

The only thing I can say here is buy some fúcking glasses! Although you are definately right about South Park,what a terrible cash in.

We aren't Nintendo freaks, we are just stating the blatantly obvious.

I actually hate Nintendo most of the time.

Peteee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:N64_Super_Mario_64.jpg

no textures on mario, the tree or that big balck thing in the background. Its all just flat colours with gouraud (sp?) shading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PSX_Wipeout.png

textures everywhere, even if the ones on the wall are a bit blocky (although the n64 had twice the ram as the playstation)

i'd take the playstation anyday

Oh and yes i do wear glasses! And south park was a blatant cash in

The prosecution rests!

Retr0gamer

That black thing in the background had more polygons than in that pic of wipeout. Wipeout had nice textures but much smaller amounts of polygons. Also notice how dark and grey wipeout is. Another thing of note is just how massive the level you show in Mario 64 is and it's also the smallest in the game. The playstation would die if it tried that ( example is how small the levels are in most PS1 game, example ape escape and MGS.

Racing games tend to look better than free roaming games and FPS games since they can take shortcuts with gfx. Try comparing two similar games in the same genre like goldeneye or perfect dark to Medal of Honour or th ePS1 version of Quake 2.

Peteee

Retr0gamer wrote:

That black thing in the background had more polygons than in that pic of wipeout.

You serious, that "round" black thing is terrible, it could do with twice the number of polygons that it has. You can see the edges

Retr0gamer wrote:

Wipeout had nice textures but much smaller amounts of polygons. Also notice how dark and grey wipeout is.

Fair enough, although wipeout is meant to be a bit bleak if i remember correctly

Retr0gamer wrote:

Another thing of note is just how massive the level you show in Mario 64 is and it's also the smallest in the game. The playstation would die if it tried that ( example is how small the levels are in most PS1 game, example ape escape and MGS.

Racing games tend to look better than free roaming games and FPS games since they can take shortcuts with gfx. Try comparing two similar games in the same genre like goldeneye or perfect dark to Medal of Honour or th ePS1 version of Quake 2.

Good points, although i remember the quake 2 graphics we're pretty good, if a tad blocky in places.

Although i'd take that over (i still think they are) blurry, under textured games (imo)

BloodBath

Absolutely true now, but it did matter in older consoles.

Did it?

Also notice how dark and grey wipeout is.

Wipeout is supposed to be dark and grey. Do you want it to be bright and cute like mario?

Racing games tend to look better than free roaming games and FPS games since they can take shortcuts with gfx. Try comparing two similar games in the same genre like goldeneye or perfect dark to Medal of Honour or th ePS1 version of Quake 2.

It's kind of hard to compare genres as the N64 was pretty much missing some completely especially in it's early life. Rpg's? Can't think of any good ones on N64. Zelda is not an rpg. FF7 actually started development on the N64 until square realised that they were nver gonna fit it on a cartridge so they moved the project over to playstation. The ps had the sports titles in the bag with big backing from EA. Fighting titles has to go to ps1 again with the likes of the tekken series. Super smash bros is probably the n64's best effort. Which looks better? It's all down to opinion really.


BloodBath

Retr0gamer

Quake 2 was a miracle of a game on the PS1. They even managaed to almost eliminate the texture warping seen in every other PS1 game. However Quake 2 on the N64 was a much nicer and smoother game. As for the black thing you may be able to see the edges but for its time that was a lot of polygons. If the PS1 was to do that they would use sprites (actually Mario 64 cheated quite a bit in the same way) there are just too many polygons in rounded surfaces. Mario 64 may have used a lot of gouraud shading but look at ape escape which used almost entirely gouraud shading or the crash bandicoot games that used a lot as well and even lower res textures and lots of sprites (of note check out crash 3 that used some nifty filter effects that the PS1 should not have been capable of).