It's true. The extra bit was disabled by default though, but when the expansion pak was inserted it would unlock the power of the extra bit and advanced 65 bit blast force mode would become engaged allowing one to attain high performance digital gaming experiences, as seen in such classics as International Track & Field 2000 and Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate
No, Rambus requires terminators if the bus isn't full. The same applied to PC with Rambus. I remember upgrading RAMBUS PCs and throwing out the terminators. Then needing terminators later and having buy a bunch for way more than they should have cost.
The main cpu was indeed 64bit, no tricks.
However it had no added value for 5th gen consoles and uses 32bit 'math' instead because its faster
Just sounded nice for marketing purposes.
Depends on what kind of bit we're talking about.
64 bit of address space means being able to use more than 4GB of RAM (obviously the Nintendo 64 didn't have this kind of 64 bit).
64 bit floating point precision operation means it's a tiny bit more precise (not worth the calculation cost. Even right now games don't use 64 bit precision.)
There's also the bus width kind of bit, which is more complex than I'm bothered to explain, but bus width with more bits means it can read the RAM faster.
>64 bit floating point precision operation means it's a tiny bit more precise (not worth the calculation cost. Even right now games don't use 64 bit precision.)
I remember reading once this was actually one of the only major things the hardware gave the console and nobody at the time was ever using FP64 calculations but yeah completely true the extra precision was not required at all.
Also note that the N64 used a 'standard' processer, wasn't designed from scratch just for the n64 so it had some functionality not neccisarily needed for games.
The DKR decompile showed that it e.g. used 64bit floating point operations, and were completely unnecessary. Some guy changed that to a sensible 32bit floats and therefore squeezing some extra performance out of the game.
Most game do not (or should not) use 64bit at all
Depends on what kind of bit we're talking about.
64 bit of address space means being able to use more than 4GB of RAM (obviously the Nintendo 64 didn't have this kind of 64 bit).
64 bit floating point precision operation means it's a tiny bit more precise (not worth the calculation cost. Even right now games don't use 64 bit precision.)
There's also the bus width kind of bit, which is more complex than I'm bothered to explain, but bus width with more bits means it can read the RAM faster.
so, um… are you saying it was pretty much only marketing and almost no real point in it at all? pretty weird since I thought companies tried to optimize hardware as much as possible.
also ironic since Ultra 64 / N64 really stressed the frick out of "SIXTY FOUR" but it never showed in anything important.
Pretty much, just like blast processing on the genesis.
also note that customizing a design to remove it might not be worth it from a cost perspective, since you are not using default parts again.
Nintendo 64 was legit. It was designed to play 3D games for the get-go, as its launch title, Super Mario 64 suggests. Which is in stark contrast to the other older systems on the market. The PS1 is a 2D system. Games like Resident Evil or Final Fantasy aren't fricking 3D games. They're 2D games with flat backgrounds that use simple 3D models. The best 3D games that the PS1 has are very, very basic stuff like Metal Gear and Spyro. The N64 was half a generation ahead of the PS1, and it shows. The PS1 doesn't have any game that properly uses 3D space in the same way that Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye do. The N64's CPU simply allows for much more realized and sophisticated 3D spaces and better game logic/AI too. If you want my honest opinion, the PS1 crippled the 3D game industry in Japan. Even into the PS2 era the majority of Japanese devs were STILL making 3D games with basic-b***h flat 2D arenas as "levels", when Mario 64 was showing not to fricking do this in 1996. Nintendo is probably the only Japanese developer that ever understood 3D games for a long time.
Not sure if serious but the n64 was not that much of a leap over the psx.
Overall polygon performance was similar for both.
N64 did have some nice features the psx didn't have (the 'stable 3d' part) and some less nice features (extreme soft visuals, or the 'blur' filters)
Main advantage was that it could draw 'outdoors' better since it needed fewer polygons as it didnt have to worry about texture warping and such.
But overall the graphics output of the psx is similar to the n64, and depending on who you ask even better due to the sharper image.
>just like blast processing on the genesis.
well, "blast processing" was at least just a made up term, right? and after all, they kind of had a point, since the Genesis CPU was indeed pretty fast. "64 bit" was kind of the opposite really—real term and an actual thing, just no real benefit. >also note that customizing a design to remove it might not be worth it from a cost perspective
I just wonder if a 32-bit CPU would have been cheaper. generally I thought companies cheaped the frick out on components (unless we talk Microsoft who were fine losing $5 billion on the original Xbox).
10 months ago
Anonymous
Blast processing was actually a real feature on the genesis, but had nothing to do with a speedy cpu.
Blast processing is some image generation feature that was never even used in a commercial game. But marketing liked the name and just pretended it stood for fast games.
In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic, but the marketing was super effective.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic
proof?
no way is that true
you can just compare shmups on the mega drive vs the snes and see how despite the snes being graphically superior (ironically from what you're saying about blast processing), aside from actual wizard exceptions they all performed worse
10 months ago
Anonymous
There are Sonic ports to SNES
10 months ago
Anonymous
But... Sega does what Nintendon't... did they lie to us?
10 months ago
Anonymous
>There are Sonic ports to SNES >dad homebrew that still stutters and slowsdown and runs in lower resolution
lol, lmao even.
Blast processing was actually a real feature on the genesis, but had nothing to do with a speedy cpu.
Blast processing is some image generation feature that was never even used in a commercial game. But marketing liked the name and just pretended it stood for fast games.
In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic, but the marketing was super effective.
>but had nothing to do with a speedy cpu.
Because it actually had one.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Talking screen scrolling speed here, e.g. scrolling as fast as sonic (or even a sonic game itself) is something the snes can do without issues. Sparkster is an example of this.
Don't confuse this with smups that have a ton of moving elements on screen.
10 months ago
Anonymous
And even road runner at full speed, but the game itself is shit though.
There are others but I dont know the library well enough for that.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic, but the marketing was super effective.
This is absolutely not true.
10 months ago
Anonymous
We are talking about a 2d platformer that can scroll just as fast as the Sonic games. Nothing fancy there.
Sega's blast processing compaign is still effective 30 yrs later I see.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Give me an snes game with sonic like speed. Genuinelly curious if there are any.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Uniracers
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Uniracers
Pretty fast but the game looks really basic graphics wise and there's nothing else going on besides the unicycle and the backgrounds are just random shapes. Sonic games have alot more going on with speed on top.
Road Runner's Death Valley Rally
>Road Runner's Death Valley Rally
This looks better in comparison but sonic is still more impressive. These 2 examples just convince me that the genesis/megadrive was just better at fast paced games while still having multiple enemy sprites and decent graphics.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Fast scrolling does not really need a stronger cpu.
Same effort is needed for a system to scroll 1 pixel per frame or 10 pixels per frame.
The advantage of the genesis cpu is just to have more complicated sprite shit on screen, think of the segmented bosses in gunstar heroes or alien soldier. Also lots of independently moving objects in smups apply here.
Reason there aren't many fast scrolling games is because that shit becomes unplayable with the vast majority of games on the genesis also use a normal pace throughout.
Sonic is more like the execption, not the norm. And even then the super speedy bits are not the main gameplay sections as it turns into an autoplay section.
Some snes games have some speedy bits (sparkster, or super metroid with the turbo run) but it then quickly becomes 'uncontrollable'
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Fast scrolling does not really need a stronger cpu.
If that's the case then I should be able to smoothly run something like sonic/mario on a IBM PC with vga 256-color graphics and a slow 286
10 months ago
Anonymous
An IBM PC doesn't have hardware scrolling tilemaps.
10 months ago
Anonymous
moron, was obviously a statement that assumed capable 2d graphics hardware was in place.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>it becomes uncontrollable
That's just an excuse. Rom hacks show the potential you deem uncontrollable.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, I emulate all my 16bit games with fast-forward enabled. Plays so much better than their original speeds
moron, majority of games cap their top speed for a reason.
Imagine if castle of illusion, castlevania, landstalker, alisia dragoon, etc all played at x times faster.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Road Runner's Death Valley Rally
10 months ago
Anonymous
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic, but the marketing was super effective.
Remember that Genesis competed with NES for a good period of its life cycle.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic
segasisters… it's over
10 months ago
Anonymous
Blast processing means having more power in general. Moving more sprites, moving more planes of scroll parallax, having less slowdowns, being able to make bosses with more complex attacks...
Road Runner might move fast at some points at the expense of the framerate, but most of the time he seems to be an inhabitant of the moon. The physics are also more simple, the graphics far less detailed, there's almost nothing on the screen except for the roadrunner and Coyote...
10 months ago
Anonymous
>There are Sonic ports to SNES >dad homebrew that still stutters and slowsdown and runs in lower resolution
lol, lmao even.
[...] >but had nothing to do with a speedy cpu.
Because it actually had one.
Sponsored by 90s sega marketing department
10 months ago
Anonymous
Sponsored by someone who played with both consoles a lot and did notice that Megadrive games tended to move more sprites, be faster, have less slowdowns, could more easily make bosses made of multiple sprites, or add more planes of scroll parallax. Games like Thunder Force IV, Gunstar Heroes, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Streets of Rage or Shinobi 3 wouldn't be possible on snes without sacrificing things.
And yeah, you can find a tiny miserable handful of games on snes that move fast at the expense of sacrificing something else, the exceptions that prove the rule. So what? Megadrive has a more powerful processor, you just need to play with both consoles to notice it.
I have never seen anyone claiming that megadrive can show more colors than snes. If someone asked me about making a megadrive port of Cameltry I would say I find the idea complicated because megadrive doesn't have mode 7. Yet you're not the first Nintendo cultist that denies the extra power of megadrive in order to please their God Nintendo. Why can't you people be more honest?
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Yet you're not the first Nintendo cultist that denies the extra power of megadrive in order to please their God Nintendo. Why can't you people be more honest?
Because the point was just about scrolling speed, nothing more or less.
I don't see anyone disputing the other topics you mentioned.
And the original statement that 'blast processing' is a meme still stands as it was an imaging feature never used in a commerial game yet marketing ran with it.
None of this is a negative but I do see some people here that are blowing the made statements out of proportion.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>could more easily make bosses made of multiple sprites
You don't even know what a sprite is. Every single SNES boss (that is made with sprites) is made out of several sprites.
10 months ago
Anonymous
He refers to segmented bosses like you see in gunstar heroes, or contra or whatever. That is something the base snes would struggle with
10 months ago
Anonymous
Sega was correct to go after CPU speed. for the first year the SNES titles really did suffer badly from slowdown. Gradius 3 was memorable with how bad the slowdown was. Western game magazines early on observed that the SNES could not handle fast paced action. Super castlevania and other early titles had similar slowdown issues. Sega took this and ran ads in those same magazine selling their Genesis on speed.
There was an interesting project a few years back where they gave older SNES titles the extra chip that later titles had to help unfrick them (at least in emulation):
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/01/how_one_man_is_fixing_the_snes_biggest_weakness
When Nintendo Life calls it "the SNES biggest weakness" it isnt just sega fanboys doing their consolewar thing. It was a legit issue that developers had to learn to work with, or rely on extra chips to get the results they needed. Sega was right to go after them on this weakness.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Except those comments were a misinformed response to a post that said blast processing is a meme and had nothing to do with cpu speed at all.
I know some like to stress that the genesis has a faster cpu, even when it was not the point of discussion (You)
It was an imaging technique, not related to cpu speed and never used in a single commercial game. That was the post.
Sega marketing liked the name, turned it into something else and made a (successfull) ad compaign out of it.
Anyone still dragging the cpu argument into this proves that point (or is lacks basic reading comprehension)
10 months ago
Anonymous
The conversation moved past blast processing hours (days?) ago and was talking about cpu speed when I replied.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic, but the marketing was super effective.
SNES games really struggle with fast scrolling though.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Like? Sparkster has some fast paced movements in it
Me too, I hated 3DFX in the 90's because of the bilinear filtering. Though it was nice that gameplay had better framerate.
Normies just believed "if you can see the pixels then it means it looks bad!!!" (without realizing how dumb that statement is, because they didn't know what a pixel really was) so they put vaseline on the screen for them. Reviewers probably looked at the screen with a magnifying glass "to make sure you don't see the pixels" too.
And yet your opinion is a minority. Not saying you legitimately dislike it but most saw it as an improvement.
Glquake was awesome, the voodoo1 was game changing
10 months ago
Anonymous
blast processing is just the fast dma which can change data values on all areas, it was used in sonic 2 for certain acts and on ranger x to change colors on the spot or have more colors on screen that it was possible like in sonic 2.
10 months ago
Anonymous
You're overthinking it. It's just a name for the console and the processing is better than previous gen which is what matters. They also will try to name their console something that sounds cool.
I swear, it's like you expected them to name their console.. Trash 64? Or how about Shitendo? Then for GC you call it the Slowcube. Great! That sure shows how bad the console is while saying it's slow to boot lol.
It doesn't fricking matter and it's autistic to overthink some fricking console name.
The "blur" is optional. Developers could turn it off, but didn't because they didn't want everything to look like a jagged mess. The smoothness was a feature and highly desired.
The N64 had pretty beefy hardware for its time. It's only real issues are storage space and lack of blending options (would have been nice to have additive blending that actually works right).
10 months ago
Anonymous
>The smoothness was a feature and highly desired
What, by people with 20/200 vision?
10 months ago
Anonymous
Anti-aliasing has always looked better than jagged edges. People just pretend otherwise due to retro revivalism.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I thought anti-aliasing and texture smoothing looked bad before "retro revivalism". I distinctly remember finding a copy of gl-quake, and thinking it looked like complete smeared shit, the dos version looking better even running at half the resolution. I also remember the first time I saw a n64 thinking it looked like shit.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Me too, I hated 3DFX in the 90's because of the bilinear filtering. Though it was nice that gameplay had better framerate.
Normies just believed "if you can see the pixels then it means it looks bad!!!" (without realizing how dumb that statement is, because they didn't know what a pixel really was) so they put vaseline on the screen for them. Reviewers probably looked at the screen with a magnifying glass "to make sure you don't see the pixels" too.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I thought anti-aliasing and texture smoothing looked bad before "retro revivalism". I distinctly remember finding a copy of gl-quake, and thinking it looked like complete smeared shit, the dos version looking better even running at half the resolution. I also remember the first time I saw a n64 thinking it looked like shit.
You could just turn off bilinear filtering and enjoy the higher resolution and frame rate, you know.
10 months ago
Anonymous
As far as I know, enabling bilinear filtering has basically zero effect on performance. It's purely a stylistic choice.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I meant compared to software rendering. On a GPU bilinear filtering is free in terms of computation but it does require more bandwidth from VRAM. Could see point sampling actually be faster on a Voodoo, at least in some cases, but not sure it happens in practice.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Then why are all the games too blurry and too simple? PS1 at least has shmups and racers. N64 had a racer and a basketball game that ps1 has too. So technically one exclusive. What's the point of your amazing 3D world if you have no games worth playing. Collect-a-thons? more like snooze-a-thon
And to he honest, ps1 isn't THAT impressive either but compared to the 64 it was
10 months ago
Anonymous
Unsubtle troll attempt, first claiming the n64 is too simple with the psx counterargument being that it has racers and shmups, the simplest genres in existance.
Sponsered by disgruntled late 90s sega marketing guy who lost his old job and moved to Sony
10 months ago
Anonymous
I was in high school late 90s. Try again
Wasn't trying troll either just how I see it. I've played most consoles and 64 is the least fun. Thanks though that would be fun to work for sega. They should have put another demolition racer out with side games for it
10 months ago
Anonymous
Except that like 1 in every 10 games is a racer on the n64.
I dont care about the system in a special way but I can spot a larping console warrior when I see one
10 months ago
Anonymous
Lol ok. I'm sure I'm missing a few racers, I just didn't care for what it had to offer (other than fz and ridge racer)
Back then, the only measure of power that stood out to gaming consumers was amount of bits, they just assumed more bits meant better graphics and thus more advanced games.
Not everyone was a compsci autist or was about to become one just to simply learn what a bit actually was.
It's more about "things done per clock"
More bits per word means more complex operations with operands etc means more things can be done in one step. In theory. In reality it used mostly 32 bit operations for the critical steps - the calculations.
While that's true, the N64's CPU doesn't support a 64-bit instruction size. All of its instructions are 32-bits in size. Likewise for the RSP, which is basically a stripped down variant of the CPU.
[...]
so, um… are you saying it was pretty much only marketing and almost no real point in it at all? pretty weird since I thought companies tried to optimize hardware as much as possible.
also ironic since Ultra 64 / N64 really stressed the frick out of "SIXTY FOUR" but it never showed in anything important.
Depends on what kind of bit we're talking about.
64 bit of address space means being able to use more than 4GB of RAM (obviously the nintendo 64 didn't have this kind of 64 bit).
64 bit floating point precision operation means it's a tiny bit more precise (not worth the calculation cost. Even right now games don't use 64 bit precision.)
There's also the bus width kind of bit, which is more complex than I'm bothered to explain, but bus width with more bits means it can read the RAM faster.
The devil is in the details. Even if you are only using 32bit having 64bit registers helps.
For instance, on 32bit x86 when you multiply 2 32 bit numbers, the overflow goes into a third register, so you have to account for this. If you have 64bit registers the overflow just causes it to become a 64bit result in the very register you want it to be in. Less work = faster.
If you're using 32bit ints, you can pack 2x 32bit ints in one register, doing SIMD like operations so you can "double pump" your maths. If you're doing color work, a 64bit register can hold 4x 16bit RGB values and with careful maths you can perform operations on them at near 4x the throughput. Again, faster.
Loads/stores are double width so you can move data around faster, you can use high bits as flags, you can do all sorts of tricks to optimise shit.
Even the compiler will do some of it so even if the code is generic as frick 32bit datatyped C++ written by someone who has never micro-optimised in their life, the compiler will still help you get more performance out of it on a 64bit CPU.
As for why they'd bother with a 64bit CPU, simply because it was a standard design by MIPS. The playstation used a far more cut down CPU design, if Sony had wanted an FPU instead of their customer vector unit they'd likely have wound up with the same 64bit CPU.
Nintendo 64 was legit. It was designed to play 3D games for the get-go, as its launch title, Super Mario 64 suggests. Which is in stark contrast to the other older systems on the market. The PS1 is a 2D system. Games like Resident Evil or Final Fantasy aren't fricking 3D games. They're 2D games with flat backgrounds that use simple 3D models. The best 3D games that the PS1 has are very, very basic stuff like Metal Gear and Spyro. The N64 was half a generation ahead of the PS1, and it shows. The PS1 doesn't have any game that properly uses 3D space in the same way that Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye do. The N64's CPU simply allows for much more realized and sophisticated 3D spaces and better game logic/AI too. If you want my honest opinion, the PS1 crippled the 3D game industry in Japan. Even into the PS2 era the majority of Japanese devs were STILL making 3D games with basic-b***h flat 2D arenas as "levels", when Mario 64 was showing not to fricking do this in 1996. Nintendo is probably the only Japanese developer that ever understood 3D games for a long time.
That’s not true there are ps1 games like gex 3 that have fricking insane level design.tomb raider isn’t just squares everywhere like people love to claim. There’s tons of complex polygons in tomb raider levels. Sm64 levels just fall off into the void most of the time. I’m not trying g to hate on sm64, it’s a great game, but it really only excelled in controlling Mario so accurately. I prefer gex any day.
I think they are still geometrically pretty simple in comparison to something like majora or banjo
But I think if the RAM expansion was utilised properly in more games or if the cartridges stored more data there’s be a lot less people hating on the system
>The PS1 is a 2D system
So is the n64, and the game, and the wii, and the ps2, and the ps3, and the ps4, and the ps5, and the xbox, and the xbox360 and the xbox one. They are all 2d systems with no concept of the third dimension. They all just dumb 2d triangle accelerators.
Hideo Kojima really reinvented 3D with this one. the fact that you could go left, right, up and down really changed the landscape of the gaming industry. this novelty had a profound impact on games like GTA2 and later Zelda: Link to the Past.
Really? That's the best you can muster up? How exactly did MGS push the expectations of 3D level design? With Pac-Man mazes? Did you know that GoldenEye 007 came out over a year earlier, and was a full 3D game, with weapon loudness/silencers, headshots, guards/security cameras that can trigger alarms, and mission objectives? Did you know that? What about Thief from the same year, that took GoldenEye's levels and made them larger and more intricate? The PlayStation is a mediocre system if you're looking at anything 3D.
Mario 64, yeah a niche title I know.
Maybe you should re-read the conversation. I'm saying that Mario 64 is a good game.
To be honest a lot of games have ugly character models, even in the 6th gen. Just compare games like Max Payne to MGS2 and Devil May Cry, they all came out in 2001.
10 months ago
Anonymous
The thing is the spectrum for 5th gen models was kinda all over the place. I'll admit I'm being a bit unfair as it probably falls closer to the middle of the road, but saying it pushed 3D is laughable. The level design is basically just the 2D games scaled up on an axis, but nothing in the game ever makes use of it.
The first person aiming added in later titles helped with this, but really none of the games made full use of 3d until MGS4.
>The PS1 is a 2D system
ps1 was a 3d system and itfailed at that because was inferior to n64,in fact both system have the same issue they don't have a 2d GPU yet they do have 2d games. >n64 3D console >ps1 3d console >sega saturn 2D console with 3D capabilities.
the devil is in the details,just compare any 2d game released on ps1 and sega saturn and the difference is more then clear and absolute
sega saturn >higher resolution sprites >higher quality >faster load times >more frames drawn by second >more action calculated each second.
is laughable how some still praise the ps1 yet forget it wasn't able to match n64 levels.
Even when is pointed "it was unable to rival n64 quality" the only excuse is "it was a 2D system" yet when matched against a real 2D system they have nothing to say.
It fails at 3D and it fails at 2D simple as that.
>the devil is in the details,just compare any 2d game released on ps1 and sega saturn and the difference is more then clear and absolute
You're right. PlayStation wins.
Most people played on a small low quality CRT with composite cables so everything blended together and wasn't as apparent. Which is also why almost no one complained about the N64 being blurry back then either. Because everything was blurry due to shit TVs and cables
The N64 racing library is shit but let's not pretend having large chunks of the terrain constantly suddenly appearing in Sega Rally looks great
10 months ago
Anonymous
It's pop up isn't as bad as Saturn Daytona. Saturn sega Rally was easily the best 5th gen racer on every level. If only it had stsrem link multiplayer.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Saturn sega Rally was easily the best 5th gen racer on every level
Only if you personally don't like Gran Turismo 2. You're pretty much done with all of Sega Rally's content in an afternoon
> Because everything was blurry due to shit TVs and cables
Analog TV was more than capable of resolving a level of detail far above the Vaseline smears of n64, did you all have some bottom of the range ancient piece of trash or something?
yeah it was 64 bits and pieces on the ground after i took them from their pencil neck dweeb owners and smashed them. saturnchads like me were the top alpha big dawgs back then.
People here clearly don't understand what "bits" means. I work in this space so I think i can explain it better than most people. Let's take the 8 bit NES as a basic example. Consider what an NES actually is
- CPU
- PPU
- RAM
- ROM
- Controller Ports
- Cartridge Slot
- RF Adapter
- Power Supply
Notice anything ? That's right. There's 8 bits there. 8 parts if you will. When you combine those 8 bits an NES is created. If the Nintendo 64 has 64 bits then that's a lot more bits. The expansion slot is just one bit for example. I'll leave listing out all the bits of the Nintendo 64 as an exercise for the reader
I don't know, I just know that when I was playing a Nintendo 64 game, the textures and level geometry were all very stable, while when I was playing the PS1, every single game felt like I was in a fun-house and that the games were held together with duct-tape and spit, as I saw the geometry morphing and tearing itself apart every time I changed the camera angle.
It was actually 65, they said 64 to be modest.
It's true. The extra bit was disabled by default though, but when the expansion pak was inserted it would unlock the power of the extra bit and advanced 65 bit blast force mode would become engaged allowing one to attain high performance digital gaming experiences, as seen in such classics as International Track & Field 2000 and Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate
The N64 actually has an unused register
More 64bit than the Atari Jaguar for sure.
Is that why you needed this useless piece of shit pluged into it at all times if you're too poor to own DK64?
No, Rambus requires terminators if the bus isn't full. The same applied to PC with Rambus. I remember upgrading RAMBUS PCs and throwing out the terminators. Then needing terminators later and having buy a bunch for way more than they should have cost.
Miyamoto said we're not supposed to talk about the 65th bit
The main cpu was indeed 64bit, no tricks.
However it had no added value for 5th gen consoles and uses 32bit 'math' instead because its faster
Just sounded nice for marketing purposes.
what was the point then? isn't the main benefit of 64 bit that it can address more than 4 gigs of RAM or something like that?
Depends on what kind of bit we're talking about.
64 bit of address space means being able to use more than 4GB of RAM (obviously the Nintendo 64 didn't have this kind of 64 bit).
64 bit floating point precision operation means it's a tiny bit more precise (not worth the calculation cost. Even right now games don't use 64 bit precision.)
There's also the bus width kind of bit, which is more complex than I'm bothered to explain, but bus width with more bits means it can read the RAM faster.
>64 bit floating point precision operation means it's a tiny bit more precise (not worth the calculation cost. Even right now games don't use 64 bit precision.)
I remember reading once this was actually one of the only major things the hardware gave the console and nobody at the time was ever using FP64 calculations but yeah completely true the extra precision was not required at all.
Also note that the N64 used a 'standard' processer, wasn't designed from scratch just for the n64 so it had some functionality not neccisarily needed for games.
The DKR decompile showed that it e.g. used 64bit floating point operations, and were completely unnecessary. Some guy changed that to a sensible 32bit floats and therefore squeezing some extra performance out of the game.
Most game do not (or should not) use 64bit at all
so, um… are you saying it was pretty much only marketing and almost no real point in it at all? pretty weird since I thought companies tried to optimize hardware as much as possible.
also ironic since Ultra 64 / N64 really stressed the frick out of "SIXTY FOUR" but it never showed in anything important.
Pretty much, just like blast processing on the genesis.
also note that customizing a design to remove it might not be worth it from a cost perspective, since you are not using default parts again.
Not sure if serious but the n64 was not that much of a leap over the psx.
Overall polygon performance was similar for both.
N64 did have some nice features the psx didn't have (the 'stable 3d' part) and some less nice features (extreme soft visuals, or the 'blur' filters)
Main advantage was that it could draw 'outdoors' better since it needed fewer polygons as it didnt have to worry about texture warping and such.
But overall the graphics output of the psx is similar to the n64, and depending on who you ask even better due to the sharper image.
>just like blast processing on the genesis.
well, "blast processing" was at least just a made up term, right? and after all, they kind of had a point, since the Genesis CPU was indeed pretty fast. "64 bit" was kind of the opposite really—real term and an actual thing, just no real benefit.
>also note that customizing a design to remove it might not be worth it from a cost perspective
I just wonder if a 32-bit CPU would have been cheaper. generally I thought companies cheaped the frick out on components (unless we talk Microsoft who were fine losing $5 billion on the original Xbox).
Blast processing was actually a real feature on the genesis, but had nothing to do with a speedy cpu.
Blast processing is some image generation feature that was never even used in a commercial game. But marketing liked the name and just pretended it stood for fast games.
In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic, but the marketing was super effective.
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic
proof?
no way is that true
you can just compare shmups on the mega drive vs the snes and see how despite the snes being graphically superior (ironically from what you're saying about blast processing), aside from actual wizard exceptions they all performed worse
There are Sonic ports to SNES
But... Sega does what Nintendon't... did they lie to us?
>There are Sonic ports to SNES
>dad homebrew that still stutters and slowsdown and runs in lower resolution
lol, lmao even.
>but had nothing to do with a speedy cpu.
Because it actually had one.
Talking screen scrolling speed here, e.g. scrolling as fast as sonic (or even a sonic game itself) is something the snes can do without issues. Sparkster is an example of this.
Don't confuse this with smups that have a ton of moving elements on screen.
And even road runner at full speed, but the game itself is shit though.
There are others but I dont know the library well enough for that.
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic, but the marketing was super effective.
This is absolutely not true.
We are talking about a 2d platformer that can scroll just as fast as the Sonic games. Nothing fancy there.
Sega's blast processing compaign is still effective 30 yrs later I see.
Give me an snes game with sonic like speed. Genuinelly curious if there are any.
Uniracers
>Uniracers
Pretty fast but the game looks really basic graphics wise and there's nothing else going on besides the unicycle and the backgrounds are just random shapes. Sonic games have alot more going on with speed on top.
>Road Runner's Death Valley Rally
This looks better in comparison but sonic is still more impressive. These 2 examples just convince me that the genesis/megadrive was just better at fast paced games while still having multiple enemy sprites and decent graphics.
Fast scrolling does not really need a stronger cpu.
Same effort is needed for a system to scroll 1 pixel per frame or 10 pixels per frame.
The advantage of the genesis cpu is just to have more complicated sprite shit on screen, think of the segmented bosses in gunstar heroes or alien soldier. Also lots of independently moving objects in smups apply here.
Reason there aren't many fast scrolling games is because that shit becomes unplayable with the vast majority of games on the genesis also use a normal pace throughout.
Sonic is more like the execption, not the norm. And even then the super speedy bits are not the main gameplay sections as it turns into an autoplay section.
Some snes games have some speedy bits (sparkster, or super metroid with the turbo run) but it then quickly becomes 'uncontrollable'
>Fast scrolling does not really need a stronger cpu.
If that's the case then I should be able to smoothly run something like sonic/mario on a IBM PC with vga 256-color graphics and a slow 286
An IBM PC doesn't have hardware scrolling tilemaps.
moron, was obviously a statement that assumed capable 2d graphics hardware was in place.
>it becomes uncontrollable
That's just an excuse. Rom hacks show the potential you deem uncontrollable.
Yes, I emulate all my 16bit games with fast-forward enabled. Plays so much better than their original speeds
moron, majority of games cap their top speed for a reason.
Imagine if castle of illusion, castlevania, landstalker, alisia dragoon, etc all played at x times faster.
Road Runner's Death Valley Rally
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic, but the marketing was super effective.
Remember that Genesis competed with NES for a good period of its life cycle.
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic
segasisters… it's over
Blast processing means having more power in general. Moving more sprites, moving more planes of scroll parallax, having less slowdowns, being able to make bosses with more complex attacks...
Road Runner might move fast at some points at the expense of the framerate, but most of the time he seems to be an inhabitant of the moon. The physics are also more simple, the graphics far less detailed, there's almost nothing on the screen except for the roadrunner and Coyote...
Sponsored by 90s sega marketing department
Sponsored by someone who played with both consoles a lot and did notice that Megadrive games tended to move more sprites, be faster, have less slowdowns, could more easily make bosses made of multiple sprites, or add more planes of scroll parallax. Games like Thunder Force IV, Gunstar Heroes, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Streets of Rage or Shinobi 3 wouldn't be possible on snes without sacrificing things.
And yeah, you can find a tiny miserable handful of games on snes that move fast at the expense of sacrificing something else, the exceptions that prove the rule. So what? Megadrive has a more powerful processor, you just need to play with both consoles to notice it.
I have never seen anyone claiming that megadrive can show more colors than snes. If someone asked me about making a megadrive port of Cameltry I would say I find the idea complicated because megadrive doesn't have mode 7. Yet you're not the first Nintendo cultist that denies the extra power of megadrive in order to please their God Nintendo. Why can't you people be more honest?
>Yet you're not the first Nintendo cultist that denies the extra power of megadrive in order to please their God Nintendo. Why can't you people be more honest?
Because the point was just about scrolling speed, nothing more or less.
I don't see anyone disputing the other topics you mentioned.
And the original statement that 'blast processing' is a meme still stands as it was an imaging feature never used in a commerial game yet marketing ran with it.
None of this is a negative but I do see some people here that are blowing the made statements out of proportion.
>could more easily make bosses made of multiple sprites
You don't even know what a sprite is. Every single SNES boss (that is made with sprites) is made out of several sprites.
He refers to segmented bosses like you see in gunstar heroes, or contra or whatever. That is something the base snes would struggle with
Sega was correct to go after CPU speed. for the first year the SNES titles really did suffer badly from slowdown. Gradius 3 was memorable with how bad the slowdown was. Western game magazines early on observed that the SNES could not handle fast paced action. Super castlevania and other early titles had similar slowdown issues. Sega took this and ran ads in those same magazine selling their Genesis on speed.
There was an interesting project a few years back where they gave older SNES titles the extra chip that later titles had to help unfrick them (at least in emulation):
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/01/how_one_man_is_fixing_the_snes_biggest_weakness
When Nintendo Life calls it "the SNES biggest weakness" it isnt just sega fanboys doing their consolewar thing. It was a legit issue that developers had to learn to work with, or rely on extra chips to get the results they needed. Sega was right to go after them on this weakness.
Except those comments were a misinformed response to a post that said blast processing is a meme and had nothing to do with cpu speed at all.
I know some like to stress that the genesis has a faster cpu, even when it was not the point of discussion (You)
It was an imaging technique, not related to cpu speed and never used in a single commercial game. That was the post.
Sega marketing liked the name, turned it into something else and made a (successfull) ad compaign out of it.
Anyone still dragging the cpu argument into this proves that point (or is lacks basic reading comprehension)
The conversation moved past blast processing hours (days?) ago and was talking about cpu speed when I replied.
>In reality the snes could easily match the speed of something like sonic, but the marketing was super effective.
SNES games really struggle with fast scrolling though.
Like? Sparkster has some fast paced movements in it
And yet your opinion is a minority. Not saying you legitimately dislike it but most saw it as an improvement.
Glquake was awesome, the voodoo1 was game changing
blast processing is just the fast dma which can change data values on all areas, it was used in sonic 2 for certain acts and on ranger x to change colors on the spot or have more colors on screen that it was possible like in sonic 2.
You're overthinking it. It's just a name for the console and the processing is better than previous gen which is what matters. They also will try to name their console something that sounds cool.
I swear, it's like you expected them to name their console.. Trash 64? Or how about Shitendo? Then for GC you call it the Slowcube. Great! That sure shows how bad the console is while saying it's slow to boot lol.
It doesn't fricking matter and it's autistic to overthink some fricking console name.
The "blur" is optional. Developers could turn it off, but didn't because they didn't want everything to look like a jagged mess. The smoothness was a feature and highly desired.
The N64 had pretty beefy hardware for its time. It's only real issues are storage space and lack of blending options (would have been nice to have additive blending that actually works right).
>The smoothness was a feature and highly desired
What, by people with 20/200 vision?
Anti-aliasing has always looked better than jagged edges. People just pretend otherwise due to retro revivalism.
I thought anti-aliasing and texture smoothing looked bad before "retro revivalism". I distinctly remember finding a copy of gl-quake, and thinking it looked like complete smeared shit, the dos version looking better even running at half the resolution. I also remember the first time I saw a n64 thinking it looked like shit.
Me too, I hated 3DFX in the 90's because of the bilinear filtering. Though it was nice that gameplay had better framerate.
Normies just believed "if you can see the pixels then it means it looks bad!!!" (without realizing how dumb that statement is, because they didn't know what a pixel really was) so they put vaseline on the screen for them. Reviewers probably looked at the screen with a magnifying glass "to make sure you don't see the pixels" too.
You could just turn off bilinear filtering and enjoy the higher resolution and frame rate, you know.
As far as I know, enabling bilinear filtering has basically zero effect on performance. It's purely a stylistic choice.
I meant compared to software rendering. On a GPU bilinear filtering is free in terms of computation but it does require more bandwidth from VRAM. Could see point sampling actually be faster on a Voodoo, at least in some cases, but not sure it happens in practice.
Then why are all the games too blurry and too simple? PS1 at least has shmups and racers. N64 had a racer and a basketball game that ps1 has too. So technically one exclusive. What's the point of your amazing 3D world if you have no games worth playing. Collect-a-thons? more like snooze-a-thon
And to he honest, ps1 isn't THAT impressive either but compared to the 64 it was
Unsubtle troll attempt, first claiming the n64 is too simple with the psx counterargument being that it has racers and shmups, the simplest genres in existance.
Sponsered by disgruntled late 90s sega marketing guy who lost his old job and moved to Sony
I was in high school late 90s. Try again
Wasn't trying troll either just how I see it. I've played most consoles and 64 is the least fun. Thanks though that would be fun to work for sega. They should have put another demolition racer out with side games for it
Except that like 1 in every 10 games is a racer on the n64.
I dont care about the system in a special way but I can spot a larping console warrior when I see one
Lol ok. I'm sure I'm missing a few racers, I just didn't care for what it had to offer (other than fz and ridge racer)
Back then, the only measure of power that stood out to gaming consumers was amount of bits, they just assumed more bits meant better graphics and thus more advanced games.
Not everyone was a compsci autist or was about to become one just to simply learn what a bit actually was.
It's more about "things done per clock"
More bits per word means more complex operations with operands etc means more things can be done in one step. In theory. In reality it used mostly 32 bit operations for the critical steps - the calculations.
While that's true, the N64's CPU doesn't support a 64-bit instruction size. All of its instructions are 32-bits in size. Likewise for the RSP, which is basically a stripped down variant of the CPU.
Holy googlesmarts! Only an ignorant child would imagine that opcode length is how you measure "bits" in a CPU.
Aarch64 is a modern 64 bit ISA and all its instructions are 32 bits in size. Instruction length has never been how bit width of a CPU is measured.
The devil is in the details. Even if you are only using 32bit having 64bit registers helps.
For instance, on 32bit x86 when you multiply 2 32 bit numbers, the overflow goes into a third register, so you have to account for this. If you have 64bit registers the overflow just causes it to become a 64bit result in the very register you want it to be in. Less work = faster.
If you're using 32bit ints, you can pack 2x 32bit ints in one register, doing SIMD like operations so you can "double pump" your maths. If you're doing color work, a 64bit register can hold 4x 16bit RGB values and with careful maths you can perform operations on them at near 4x the throughput. Again, faster.
Loads/stores are double width so you can move data around faster, you can use high bits as flags, you can do all sorts of tricks to optimise shit.
Even the compiler will do some of it so even if the code is generic as frick 32bit datatyped C++ written by someone who has never micro-optimised in their life, the compiler will still help you get more performance out of it on a 64bit CPU.
As for why they'd bother with a 64bit CPU, simply because it was a standard design by MIPS. The playstation used a far more cut down CPU design, if Sony had wanted an FPU instead of their customer vector unit they'd likely have wound up with the same 64bit CPU.
Nintendo 64 was legit. It was designed to play 3D games for the get-go, as its launch title, Super Mario 64 suggests. Which is in stark contrast to the other older systems on the market. The PS1 is a 2D system. Games like Resident Evil or Final Fantasy aren't fricking 3D games. They're 2D games with flat backgrounds that use simple 3D models. The best 3D games that the PS1 has are very, very basic stuff like Metal Gear and Spyro. The N64 was half a generation ahead of the PS1, and it shows. The PS1 doesn't have any game that properly uses 3D space in the same way that Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye do. The N64's CPU simply allows for much more realized and sophisticated 3D spaces and better game logic/AI too. If you want my honest opinion, the PS1 crippled the 3D game industry in Japan. Even into the PS2 era the majority of Japanese devs were STILL making 3D games with basic-b***h flat 2D arenas as "levels", when Mario 64 was showing not to fricking do this in 1996. Nintendo is probably the only Japanese developer that ever understood 3D games for a long time.
That’s not true there are ps1 games like gex 3 that have fricking insane level design.tomb raider isn’t just squares everywhere like people love to claim. There’s tons of complex polygons in tomb raider levels. Sm64 levels just fall off into the void most of the time. I’m not trying g to hate on sm64, it’s a great game, but it really only excelled in controlling Mario so accurately. I prefer gex any day.
I think they are still geometrically pretty simple in comparison to something like majora or banjo
But I think if the RAM expansion was utilised properly in more games or if the cartridges stored more data there’s be a lot less people hating on the system
>The PS1 is a 2D system
So is the n64, and the game, and the wii, and the ps2, and the ps3, and the ps4, and the ps5, and the xbox, and the xbox360 and the xbox one. They are all 2d systems with no concept of the third dimension. They all just dumb 2d triangle accelerators.
WE WUZ 2D AND SHIEEEET
>Nintendo is probably the only Japanese developer that ever understood 3D games for a long time
/v/tendo, everyone
Name some Japanese games that pushed the expectations of 3D level design.
Metal Gear Solid
Excelent game, but no
Hideo Kojima really reinvented 3D with this one. the fact that you could go left, right, up and down really changed the landscape of the gaming industry. this novelty had a profound impact on games like GTA2 and later Zelda: Link to the Past.
Really? That's the best you can muster up? How exactly did MGS push the expectations of 3D level design? With Pac-Man mazes? Did you know that GoldenEye 007 came out over a year earlier, and was a full 3D game, with weapon loudness/silencers, headshots, guards/security cameras that can trigger alarms, and mission objectives? Did you know that? What about Thief from the same year, that took GoldenEye's levels and made them larger and more intricate? The PlayStation is a mediocre system if you're looking at anything 3D.
Maybe you should re-read the conversation. I'm saying that Mario 64 is a good game.
MGS is a good game but technically very ugly, have you ever looked at the character models up close?
For 5th gen the characters look fine, only real issue is the weird face textures
>For 5th gen the characters look fine
Go back and compare mgs1s models to shit like silent hill 1 or spyro.
He looks better than thai ladyboys on PS2 entries
To be honest a lot of games have ugly character models, even in the 6th gen. Just compare games like Max Payne to MGS2 and Devil May Cry, they all came out in 2001.
The thing is the spectrum for 5th gen models was kinda all over the place. I'll admit I'm being a bit unfair as it probably falls closer to the middle of the road, but saying it pushed 3D is laughable. The level design is basically just the 2D games scaled up on an axis, but nothing in the game ever makes use of it.
The first person aiming added in later titles helped with this, but really none of the games made full use of 3d until MGS4.
Ugly is not the term I’d use
Basic maybe, the game is far from being ugly
Yeah, in hindsight ugly was a bit unfair.
Great game.
The game might as well have been 2D.
Mario 64, yeah a niche title I know.
Nice shader
>The PS1 is a 2D system
ps1 was a 3d system and itfailed at that because was inferior to n64,in fact both system have the same issue they don't have a 2d GPU yet they do have 2d games.
>n64 3D console
>ps1 3d console
>sega saturn 2D console with 3D capabilities.
the devil is in the details,just compare any 2d game released on ps1 and sega saturn and the difference is more then clear and absolute
sega saturn
>higher resolution sprites
>higher quality
>faster load times
>more frames drawn by second
>more action calculated each second.
is laughable how some still praise the ps1 yet forget it wasn't able to match n64 levels.
Even when is pointed "it was unable to rival n64 quality" the only excuse is "it was a 2D system" yet when matched against a real 2D system they have nothing to say.
It fails at 3D and it fails at 2D simple as that.
>the devil is in the details,just compare any 2d game released on ps1 and sega saturn and the difference is more then clear and absolute
You're right. PlayStation wins.
32x was better than psx.
> match n64 levels
Shame that nobody could see these alleged levels underneath the thick layer of Vaseline.
Psx RE2 looks far better than anything on n64. It also looks and plays better than anything n64 has.
The intense dissonance between the prerendered background and the character models makes it look worse.
Would you prefer more blur?
Most people played on a small low quality CRT with composite cables so everything blended together and wasn't as apparent. Which is also why almost no one complained about the N64 being blurry back then either. Because everything was blurry due to shit TVs and cables
I had Sega Rally on saturn and it looked a lot better than n64 rally games that were released 5 years later.
The N64 racing library is shit but let's not pretend having large chunks of the terrain constantly suddenly appearing in Sega Rally looks great
It's pop up isn't as bad as Saturn Daytona. Saturn sega Rally was easily the best 5th gen racer on every level. If only it had stsrem link multiplayer.
>Saturn sega Rally was easily the best 5th gen racer on every level
Only if you personally don't like Gran Turismo 2. You're pretty much done with all of Sega Rally's content in an afternoon
> Because everything was blurry due to shit TVs and cables
Analog TV was more than capable of resolving a level of detail far above the Vaseline smears of n64, did you all have some bottom of the range ancient piece of trash or something?
Can I use this as copypasta to start shit threads?
The 64 stood for how many games it had
I jokingly call it the Nintendo 6 to 4 great games lol but I still love the console. I always find a reason to pull it out when friends are over.
>I always find a reason to pull it out when friends are over.
I bet you do.
Why?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lavOQrZbUC4
yeah it was 64 bits and pieces on the ground after i took them from their pencil neck dweeb owners and smashed them. saturnchads like me were the top alpha big dawgs back then.
If you could understand the answer you wouldn't need to ask the question.
frick no. there's a reason the 64bit architecture is called "amd64"
the first true 64bit consoles were the PS4 and Xbox One
The saturn had two 32bit processors, therefore, it was a 64bit system
64 bits refers to the texture ram size
People here clearly don't understand what "bits" means. I work in this space so I think i can explain it better than most people. Let's take the 8 bit NES as a basic example. Consider what an NES actually is
- CPU
- PPU
- RAM
- ROM
- Controller Ports
- Cartridge Slot
- RF Adapter
- Power Supply
Notice anything ? That's right. There's 8 bits there. 8 parts if you will. When you combine those 8 bits an NES is created. If the Nintendo 64 has 64 bits then that's a lot more bits. The expansion slot is just one bit for example. I'll leave listing out all the bits of the Nintendo 64 as an exercise for the reader
I don't know, I just know that when I was playing a Nintendo 64 game, the textures and level geometry were all very stable, while when I was playing the PS1, every single game felt like I was in a fun-house and that the games were held together with duct-tape and spit, as I saw the geometry morphing and tearing itself apart every time I changed the camera angle.
Hello. Please ignore the entire thread and it can now end. It is the name of the ABI.
https://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/WhatsWrongWithO32N32N64