Pick one: pixelated jittery PS1 look or N64 vomit looking textures?

[Deleted member 17210]

I was in college and I was lucky that I had access to a PS1, N64 and Saturn along with a decent PC at the same time.

Looking back we were kind of idiots because most of us dismissed the Saturn, even though it had a lot of amazing games. We still preferred playing 2D fighters on the PS1 and 3D was much better on it.

And I played both and I enjoyed Tomb Raider but it seemed like a huge step backwards compared to Mario 64 in every way. At least that was the sentiment amongst me and my friends.

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Super Mario 64 was my GOTY but I was happy to see various styles of 2d games being translated to 3d in 1996. Crash Bandicoot was beautiful for linear 3d platforming. Fade to Black mostly failed as a follow up to Flashback so I was pleased when Tomb Raider did Prince of Persia-style gaming well. NiGHTS was also one of the best looking games that year. It helped that it was mostly on-rails but it made great use of the hardware.

 

[AlwaysSalty]

The only reason N64 games were good was because of how amazing Nintendo devs have always been. They were good in spite of the hardware. IMO nintendo devs would have made some amazing stuff with ps1 hardware. And that's the only reason I'm going PS1. Nintendo devs are why game like BOTW look amazing in spite of it running on extremely outdated hardware.

 

[darkazcura]

The only reason N64 games were good was because of how amazing Nintendo devs have always been. They were good in spite of the hardware. IMO nintendo devs would have made some amazing stuff with ps1 hardware. And that's the only reason I'm going PS1. Nintendo devs are why game like BOTW look amazing in spite of it running on extremely outdated hardware.

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What? The N64 was far from outdated hardware wise. This is not the right take here. Nintendo could not pull off Mario 64 on the PS1. There were very real limitations with both the N64 and PS1, and games could not cross over very easily.

Nintendo stopped competing with hardware with the Wii. They were always near the top before that if not the best.

 

[bionic77]

The only reason N64 games were good was because of how amazing Nintendo devs have always been. They were good in spite of the hardware. IMO nintendo devs would have made some amazing stuff with ps1 hardware. And that's the only reason I'm going PS1. Nintendo devs are why game like BOTW look amazing in spite of it running on extremely outdated hardware.

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Nintendo had almost no 3rd party support on the N64.

It's impossible to know what Capcom or Namco could have done if they had made the N64 their priority.

Super Mario 64 was my GOTY but I was happy to see various styles of 2d games being translated to 3d in 1996. Crash Bandicoot was beautiful for linear 3d platforming. Fade to Black mostly failed as a follow up to Flashback so I was pleased when Tomb Raider did Prince of Persia-style gaming well. NiGHTS was also one of the best looking games that year. It helped that it was mostly on-rails but it made great use of the hardware.

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I agree. Also I could always and still enjoy games that might be 'technically inferior'. I loved Crash, Resident Evil, etc.

The only reason N64 games were good was because of how amazing Nintendo devs have always been. They were good in spite of the hardware. IMO nintendo devs would have made some amazing stuff with ps1 hardware. And that's the only reason I'm going PS1. Nintendo devs are why game like BOTW look amazing in spite of it running on extremely outdated hardware.

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Nintendo had almost no 3rd party support on the N64.

It's impossible to know what Capcom or Namco or any other top dev could have done if they had made the N64 their priority.

 

[Mung]

N64 vaseline vision was poor.

 

[Herne]

I'll take the N64's solid graphics over the PS1's jittery mess any day. That lack of perspective correction screwed the PS1 just as much as the tiny texture cache did the N64.

 

[AlwaysSalty]

What? The N64 was far from outdated hardware wise. This is not the right take here. Nintendo could not pull off Mario 64 on the PS1. There were very real limitations with both the N64 and PS1, and games could not cross over very easily.

Nintendo stopped competing with hardware with the Wii. They were always near the top before that if not the best.

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Actually you know what you're right. I forgot that I replayed most of my ps1 games on ps2/DC-bleam so my memory might be skewed.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

I feel like the N64 held up better on CRTs, but once you blow-up those really limited textures to HD resolutions with the common blur filter on top of that, it really looks like an eyesore.

 

[Cow Mengde]

N64 for sure. Even upscaled, things look fine since they were already blurry. The PS1 textures upscaled look horrendous. Like everyone else, the jittering and wrapping is just distracting.

 

[fiendcode]

I feel like the N64 held up better on CRTs, but once you blow-up those really limited textures to HD resolutions with the common blur filter on top of that, it really looks like an eyesore.

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I'd agree with this. N64 looks better on a CRT but emulation improves PSX a lot more substantially out of the box than N64 by correcting it's hardware based flaws. With N64 it's really the assets holding things back which is why texture mods can improve things so much and there's a big community around that. Heck, even Nintendo/NERD did that for Mario 64 on 3D All-Stars.

 

[Deleted member 6511]

I had both, and while the blurriness of top gear 2 really bother me, vagrant story is almost unplayable

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

Generally I hate the term that something aged really well or poorly as I find it a really ignorant and dismissive way to discuss things and I will check out as soon as I see anyone post it.

It DOES apply to this generation though because that was the birth of 3D graphics in gaming. I don't you can understand (not talking of you just speaking general) how exciting it was as a gamer unless you experienced it at the time. From arcades, to consoles to PCs you were likely to see something new or amazing every 3-6 months. There was a lot of shit too and even more mistakes, but I give them all a pass because they were pioneers at the time.

But your Atari analogy is a good one because the technical power was just not there for these consoles. Just like it took about 8 bit CPUs to properly process 2D side scrolling the same is true with these consoles as the games we are used to now took shape and became commonplace with the DC, PS2 etc in the next generation when it didn't take a genius team to just put together a working 3D game.

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Good post, but the Atari 2600 is also 8-bit. The real distinction is the speed of that 8 bit cpu and what supporting graphics chips there were.

 

[ReggieBC]

fkkkkkk MGS1 still looks good.

 

[Crayon]

As far as what you get out of original hardware, I'd take ps1 easily.

 

[fiendcode]

The only reason N64 games were good was because of how amazing Nintendo devs have always been. They were good in spite of the hardware. IMO nintendo devs would have made some amazing stuff with ps1 hardware. And that's the only reason I'm going PS1. Nintendo devs are why game like BOTW look amazing in spite of it running on extremely outdated hardware.

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It's funny to think about but in a way DS almost felt like PSX 3D but fixing it's core hardware flaws and bottlenecks (Z-buffering and perspective correction, double the RAM and faster ROM access). I think in a way Mario 64 DS felt like a weird what if scenario.

 

[Optional Objectives]

At the time, I very much preferred N64 textures. But somehow, PS1 textures have aged much better. It also simply has the better catalogue.

 

[TheYanger]

I'll take the N64's solid graphics over the PS1's jittery mess any day. That lack of perspective correction screwed the PS1 just as much as the tiny texture cache did the N64.

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According to the poll, it did not ;)

The N64 just looks like a foggy muddy mess in every game that wasn't just flat or gourad shaded. It doesn't mean there aren't good games, or even good looking games, but overall for all the shit people give the 360 era unreal engine games for 'muddy brown' - the entire N64 library honestly meets that criteria more, besides the brown part. It's simply not possible for a game NOT to look like mud when the texture resolution is worse than my high school calculator. Shit is stretched to bonkers degrees and just look like smears on the floor/walls/people's bodies/etc.

EDIT: And just like people are going 'ooh nice' at those crt mario pictures, I think it's super disingenuous to be posting random emulator or ps2 versions of ps1 game images. PS1 games were aliased to hell and textures were blocky, but the CRTs we were using at the time really did a lot of work in that regard as they did with all pixel art.

Look at stuff like Chrono Cross battle scenes, the N64 was just not capable of making things that looked that clean and dynamic, and the perspective correction problems get blown out of proportion - yeah they were mega noticeable, but it wasn't literally shit just jumping randomly all over the screen.

 

[bionic77]

Good post, but the Atari 2600 is also 8-bit. The real distinction is the speed of that 8 bit cpu and what supporting graphics chips there were.

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You are right.

I was thinking of the 386 chips and the hardware in consoles around that time that was exponentially more powerful and finally allowed realized 2D games at home.

 

[LetsEatSnacks]

Genuinely thought this poll would be a runaway win for Playstation. I feel like there's been this weird rose colored glasses trend for the 64 the last few years for a lot of millennial types (the number of N64 shirts and hoodies I see always makes me shake my head) that I just don't understand. I would never argue that the 64 didn't have some good looking games but not a single one was able to avoid that blur and fog look.

 

[jett]

The N64's blur filter is frankly fucking awful (on top of the low-res, soupy textures). People forget how terrible it looks because they only look at emulation footage either on PC or on Nintendo's BC services, but stuff like Digital Foundry's Dinosaur Planet video really shows how the output on the N64 actually looked like.

 

[Traxus]

Late era PS1 games looked incredible.


That gif is running in higher res so here's a native res one:

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This is a perfect comparison because Tronne Bonne's big brother Mega Man Legends was ported to the N64 where even with lower texure resolutions, it holds up better today. These are from N64th Street, a tumblr that does exclusively non-emulated N64 gifs: Edit: [Scratch that, they are apparetly emulated]

Mega Man 64

Notice the seamless textures and lack of warping.

 

[kurt]

N64 , which is the evolution of what is been.
Not sure why someone choose pixels for 3d games.
For 2d games, ps1 is better ofcourse

 

[darkazcura]

Genuinely thought this poll would be a runaway win for Playstation. I feel like there's been this weird rose colored glasses trend for the 64 the last few years for a lot of millennial types (the number of N64 shirts and hoodies I see always makes me shake my head) that I just don't understand. I would never argue that the 64 didn't have some good looking games but not a single one was able to avoid that blur and fog look.

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I feel the complete opposite. Blur and fog didn't give me headaches. The jitters on the PS1 are some of the worst things I've seen visually, and I feel like I'm in a bizzaro world of rose colored glasses for the PS1 personally lol. That warping will always make feel sick unfortunately, and I'm a bit shocked how many are willing to overlook that for cleaner textures.

This thread is mainly about 3D games, I thought. N64 did those technically and objectively better.

 

[bionic77]

The N64's blur filter is frankly fucking awful (on top of the low-res, soupy textures). People forget how terrible it looks because they only look at emulation footage either on PC or on Nintendo's BC services, but stuff like Digital Foundry's Dinosaur Planet video really shows how the output on the N64 actually looked like.

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The blur and fog was bad, but at the time it didn't look as bad because you got real 3D environments.

Based on the poll a lot of people seem to forget how horrible full 3D games looked on the PSX. It took a good 3-4 years for devs to put out solid 3D games and very few devs could pull it off.

Everyone has very selective memory in this thread. Banjo Kazooie and Conker had full 3D environments and razor sharp textures (for the time) but it was definitely not normal for a N64 game. And Metal Gear Solid and Vagrant Story had rock solid 3D visuals but that was not representative for the PSX either. A lot of PSX games had incredibly crude 3D graphics that were surrounded by very high res (for the time) backgrounds. And a lot of N64 games had low quality textures.

Both could be overcome but it took top developers to do so.

I still think the higher end of N64 (Mario 64, Perfect Dark, Star Fox 64, Banjo, Zelda64, etc) was never equaled on the PS1. If you were ok with prerendered backgrounds then you could get higher res environments but the interactivity was horrible.

 

[Dr. Mario]

In stills, PS1.

In motion though, I'll take N64 all day every day. PS1 often doesn't even feel actual 3D. Like Wolfenstein with higher quality textures.

 

[Listai]

The N64's blur filter is frankly fucking awful (on top of the low-res, soupy textures). People forget how terrible it looks because they only look at emulation footage either on PC or on Nintendo's BC services, but stuff like Digital Foundry's Dinosaur Planet video really shows how the output on the N64 actually looked like.

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Yeah, while games like Mario 64 looked excellent via Svideo anything that wasn't bright primaries and high contrast just disappeared into the blur. Less so with RGB and HDMI mods but that wasn't how it looked back in the day. It's also worth nothing that N64 games by and large ran like complete shit - even prestige titles like Banjo and Conker really chug.

 

[super moustique]

Yeah, though I would say PS1 much more so needs a CRT or CRT filter to look presentable in many cases. N64 doesn't, due to the inherent softness of the image. So going back to PS1 is rough, unless you're fortunate enough to possess a good CRT display.

As ironic as it is given how anti-2D Sony was at the time, it's 2D or mostly-2D games where PS1 really shines.

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N64 is even rougher on a CRT as it didn't even have a RGB output iirc.

 

[yaoji]

I pick Saturn quads.

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Saturn definitely had its own charm:

 

[Listai]

Saturn definitely had its own charm:

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Absolutely, especially in games like Panzer Dragoon that utilised both VDP1 and VDP2 to their full potential. Once you realise that it's a bunch of geometry floating on an infinite plane though it's hard to unsee.

 

[Fart Master]

N64 games legitimately looked bad to me back then. PS1 isn't perfect but if your game had good direction it'd make up for jitter.

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

It's maybe nostalgia, but the PS1's messiness is sort of endearing npw. The N64 never felt like that for me.

 

[IrishNinja]

I pick Saturn quads.

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my man

 

[Siresly]

Warbling is nostalgic for me. I certainly noticed it back then, but far as I knew that's just what 3D games looked like.

 

[Mabase]

Pixels in the morning, blurs in the evening!

 

[AlwaysSalty]

I guess in terms of having raw power the N64 was better at 3D stuff. But PS1 could push itself to kind of get close. In terms of audio though they are generations apart. I feel like overall you get a more balanced experience in the ps1. If I had to go back to those graphics and could only pick one. I still think I would go ps1. Especially given how many tricks devs have now they could do more with it. There's nothing you can really do with the audio on the N64. Unless you get really creative with low-fi stuff. Also cartridges were expensive AF. Even more expensive then PS5 games now. You can have epic, extremely long rpgs like xenogears on a ps1, you couldn't really do that on a N64 cartridge. Multi-discs sucked but it was an option thats better than nothing.

 

[Gestault]

Unfiltered textures are an easy "yes" for me style/artistically, but I really dislike actual texture warping.

 

[Listai]

This is a perfect comparison because Tronne Bonne's big brother Mega Man Legends was ported to the N64 where even with lower texure resolutions, it holds up better today. These are from N64th Street, a tumblr that does exclusively non-emulated N64 gifs:

Mega Man 64

Notice the seamless textures and lack of warping.

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Notice also how those are shots from an emulator and in no way indicative of the actual output from an N64.

*edit* with the exception of the one in the bottom left that looks to be from real hardware.

 

[bionic77]

Notice also how those are shots from an emulator and in no way indicative of the actual output from an N64.

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That's a PS1 game....

 

[Listai]

That's a PS1 game....

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Nope - that's from the N64 port of legends, check the post.

 

[bionic77]

Nope - that's from the N64 port of legends, check the post.

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My bad. Doesn't look like a game either system could output .

 

[Listai]

My bad. Doesn't look like a game either system could output .

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Yeah, like I said at least 3/4 of those shots are clearly from an emulator - the internal resolution is far too high and you'd be able to spot the N64's idiosyncratic anti-aliasing from a mile off as even via HDMI there are these telltale edge artifacts on sharp lines. Not to mention the horizontal blur is missing.

 

[ray_caster]

The N64, in many ways, was ahead of its time, for better and for worse. The image quality with regards to sub-pixel precision, proper texture filtering, perspective-correct texture mapping, and a dedicated depth buffer, was a top priority even before the core 3D technologies had matured, and it showed. The pixels were accurate, but the quality of the visual content was lacking as a result of the tradeoff. Even though I grew up with the N64 and not the PSX, in hindsight I think Sony made better choices in that regard; Not wasting precious cycles enabled developers to focus on the visual content, resulting in rich visuals in spite of the low image quality. Furthermore, image quality is one of those things that emulators can trivially improve upon which has massively benefitted PSX games, but not N64 games to the same extent.

 

[Faceless_Caesar]

If anyone knew how to do 3D in those days it was SGI. I think the potential of what N64 can display is now realized by mods like UltraHDMI at least on the consoles that have it installed.

 

[Traxus]

Yeah, like I said at least 3/4 of those shots are clearly from an emulator - the internal resolution is far too high and you'd be able to spot the N64's idiosyncratic anti-aliasing from a mile off as even via HDMI there are these telltale edge artifacts on sharp lines. Not to mention the horizontal blur is missing.

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My bad, thanks for the informed eye! Yeah, I wish there were a reliable places around to find non-emulated gifs from actual hardware. That's one of the problems with these comparisons since everyone is looking at a different quality source.

 

[killuglypop]

People talk about how Rare games on the N64 looked incredible at the time, but nothing on the N64 looks as good as say Vagrant Story.

 

[Matthias]

I voted neither. I was so disappointed with the look of games for PS1 and Nintendo 64 that I skipped console gaming altogether until the Dreamcast was released. Yet today I have played very few games from that generation.

Edit: I did eventually buy a PS1 to play Symphony of the Night though. Easily one of the best games I have played.

 

[bionic77]

People talk about how Rare games on the N64 looked incredible at the time, but nothing on the N64 looks as good as say Vagrant Story.

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I didn't like Conker but Conker and Perfect Dark are beyond anything done on the PS1 IMO.

Vagrant Story, MGS and Gran Turismo are IMO the peak of PS1 3D graphics and look as good as a lot of the high end N64 games but both systems had different weaknesses and the best looking games knew how to get around them.

 

[Bulby]

Ultimately I prefer PS1.

But at the time, navigating a 3D world was way more pleasant on the N64.

 

[discotrigger]

Lol, people in here calling native MSAA 'blur'. Of course, at such low resolutions and with CRTs in mind, the benefits of multisampling are called into question somewhat.

 

[Y2Kev]

I didn't like Conker but Conker and Perfect Dark are beyond anything done on the PS1 IMO.

Vagrant Story, MGS and Gran Turismo are IMO the peak of PS1 3D graphics and look as good as a lot of the high end N64 games but both systems had different weaknesses and the best looking games knew how to get around them.

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Conker and pd run at atrocious frame rates. I don't think we should be talking about general appearance in just a texture or warping debate because vagrant story runs well I think.