Why did games like Zelda and Mario have top tier graphics and visuals for its time compared to other games that had shittier graphics?

Why did games like Zelda and Mario have top tier graphics and visuals for its time compared to other games that had shittier graphics? Does it boil down to the skill of the dev and art team or are there other factors involved?

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    leveraging higher end technology but frankly the art design of nintendo games has always been their weakest trait. Many times more advanced effects or one-off details are culled for performance economy reasons to the detriment of the visuals of the game.

    Anyway, the end result is the games run on more advanced hardware (although the N64 for example has a massive amount of limitations that hold it back) but artistically the games do not do much to impress. FF7, 8 and 9 have more detailed and carefully considered towns than the entire game of Zelda. Scan the few areas in Alexandria in the opening of FF9 some time, it's actually a little insane how much is going on.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I was moreso comparing Zelda to other N64 titles as I am aware CD tech is better. Zelda looks great compared to a lot of other N64 games that can look very muddy.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Zelda has its own series of sacrifices, it couldn't run at 30fps so they targeted 20. This was made to use a more aggressive render distance but it does tie to another point I want to bring up:
        The pre-rendered areas in zelda 64 are really, really ugly. I don't actually see a good reason for them even existing. They look legitimately awful and always have, it's like they wanted to say "we can do pre-rendered environments too!" but proceeded to make the worst looking prerendered environments ever They're really ill fitting.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I never thought they were ugly, just not immersive, because they look like some background and not an actual space

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I literally didn't notice any pre-rendered backrounds other than the temple of time. What else was there?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous
              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                wtf are you talking about that looks realer than real life

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              All the buildings in Kokiri Forest.
              All of castle town.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Bro Temple of Time wasn't prerendered, unless you're talking about the outside.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Stuff like castle town. You know, places where there's a fixed camera that at most moves along with you and can't be adjusted because you're effectively moving along a picture.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Bait. The very first room in the game is pre-rendered.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I haven't played in 2 years. Sorry if I don't remember every little detail.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                it looks so good you can easily mistake it

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                yeah this was the point I made when I said I didn't remember any pre-rendered parts. The fact I didn't notice says that they were very well done. But of course people like

                you made my day anon thanks

                interpret that as me just being stupid.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              you made my day anon thanks

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Doesn't a lot of that come down to the fact that N64 relied on proprietary microcode that nintendo didn't share with 3rd parties? So basically everyone besides Nintendo was developing for the system with one handed behind their backs? Or so I've heard

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      are you seriously comparing pre rendered bgs to 3d environments?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah, and also ocarinas own pre-rendered environments.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >the art design of nintendo games has always been their weakest trait
      homie wat?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >frankly the art design of nintendo games has always been their weakest trait
      lol what? that's literally Nintendo's strongest trait

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It's all Fisher Price kid slop.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      this is one of the worst posts I've ever read on this board

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The art of releasing a console 2 years late to the gen with stronger hardware on paper that's actually worse in practice and still losing out.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Time and budget set the maximum limit, skill determines how far it goes based on that limit. There are also other things like whether the team is familiar with the software being used or needs to be retrained.

    One thing you need to also consider is talent. I define skill as the ability to make a 3D model that uses as little computing resources as possible, as quickly as possible. Talent is the ability to just make something look good or aesthetically pleasing. In early 3D skill isn't that important because the shapes are so simple so once you figure out how to use the software there is no much you can do to optimize geometry or speed up the process. Talent is why Ocarina of Time looks better then indie games made with software that is a super-computer compared to the past and they can use much more polygons and a billion other features.

    It looks better because of talent. See that geometric structure under the slingshot icon? The tower. That's just 6 sides and a texture. Anyone could make that within a day of training and the texture is just someone's drawing that was scaled down and they used pre-purchased assets to get the stone and moss look. That's also a very low level task.

    But someone without talent would make it look like shit. You could let them work with more polygons or higher texture resolutio or textures with advanced features such as reacting dynamically. But it would still look like shit without the talent.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >they used pre-purchased assets to get the stone and moss look.
      the amount of people who do not know this about 3d era nintendo and sega makes me lol. so, so many bought assets

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It's not shameful or untalented.

        Would you rather buy an asset pack for $500 or spend $50,000 to have the artists make it? Ok you chose the $50,000 route, now decide what content you are going to cut to adjust for this. If they made the entire game with no asset packs and less content no one on the planet would give them any respect for it. They would juts complain the game is short.

        And there is talent in picking the correct premade assets and applying them. And as we are learning from ai generated art talent is actually the only thing that matters because skill can be outsourced.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They're first party games. They were made to sell consoles, optimized specifically for a single console, and likely had close communication with the hardware design team.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This actually looks amazing. Thought it was the 3DS remake first

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Lighting and perfect colour composition.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    FF7 AND FF8 look horrible.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Nintendos president at the time said they intentionally made it hard to develop on for third parties.
    Something something pressure creates diamonds. It backfired hard IMO, as a lot of third parties said frick it and went to sony like square, with the only ones able to pull off anything close to Nintendos quality were Rare (basically 1st party) and lucasarts (full of tech wizards). Most other N64 games look ugly as sin and are why the console has such a poor reputation for graphics; despite being able to pull off shit the playstation just literally could not do.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The truth is a bit more subtle.
      Companies like Square was on board with shipping their games on the N64.... if they got to deliver FVMs on what would be the 64DD.
      Then the RAM prices got cheap enough for the 64 Expansion pack and 64MB cartridges happened
      And the 64DD died. Even if it didn't it would most likely have failed for the same reasons the Genesis CD addon failed, as many others have.

      Then it turns out Sony bought out a Liverpool studio that made a improved PS1 devkit as well, and said studio was later responsible for the Net Yaroze
      At which point the generation was sealed.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >they intentionally made it hard to develop on for third parties
      Just BS
      Understanding the hardware was no more complicated than understanding the PS1, the thing that made the N64 difficult to develop for was Ninte do cheaping out on the RAM by having the CPU and GPU share the same RAM

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'm not even memeing, but OOT does not look good and there are many games from 1998 that look better.
    What is actually wrong with you people?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Seriously? Name literally any other game from 1998 than Half-Life that has better visuals that OOT.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Unreal

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        MGS, Grim Fandango, RE2, Tomb Rider III, Rainbow Six fricking Unreal. And those are just at the top of my head.
        Tell me I'm wrong. Oot looked nice, but it's nothing out of the ordinary compared to the resto of the AAA vidya at the time, heck IMO it's kind of lacking graphically compared to the rest.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          All of those use "brown is realistic" visuals.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You are legit moronic.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Unreal, Thief, Daytona 2, Tekken 3, Ridge Racer Type 4

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Crash bandicoot is from 1996 and has better visuals, as do most games really

        I like OOT but it's one of the ugliest games I've played.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Sure you do, now go back to bed grandpa

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Sonic Adventure, MediEvil, Spyro the Dragon, Ridge Racer Type 4.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          You honestly think this looks better?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You've cherrypicked a shit screenshot, but I think MediEvil does look better than OoT.
            >More charming aesthetics/art direction
            >Definitely has good use of colour, though some areas are deliberately quite muted
            >Much better in motion, animations have pleasing weight and bounce
            >Better particle effects
            >Nice dynamic lighting for the time
            >Draw distances can feel pretty long in some areas
            >Cutscenes look pretty cool, and far exceed anything Nintendo did before the millenium

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Kind of? It doesn't look bad.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              He was saying it looks better than OOT.

              You've cherrypicked a shit screenshot, but I think MediEvil does look better than OoT.
              >More charming aesthetics/art direction
              >Definitely has good use of colour, though some areas are deliberately quite muted
              >Much better in motion, animations have pleasing weight and bounce
              >Better particle effects
              >Nice dynamic lighting for the time
              >Draw distances can feel pretty long in some areas
              >Cutscenes look pretty cool, and far exceed anything Nintendo did before the millenium

              I just grabbed a google image. I watched a brief playthrough and while it looks good, it just looks like another above-average ps1 game.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Its smoother than OOT, but It only has to draw a few feet around the camera. Not as bad as turok1 but close.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Turok 2 was peak graphics back then.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Duke Nukem: Time to Kill
        That in itself should put a boot in the ass of your opinion.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Uh. Anything 2D. A heap of pc games? Do you mean 98 specifically because from about 95 onwards pc was already shitting them out.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Post a detailed list with screenshots.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    True or false:

    Zelda 64 was considered by N64 early adopters to be a pseudo-follow-up and spiritual sequel to Super Mario 64 when it was released.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      True, if you read game magazines and considered it to be the next Miyamoto masterpiece.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >pseudo-follow-up and spiritual sequel
      Depends on what those words means.
      I factual words used by magazines are closer to THE NEXT 3D MASTERPIECE BY MIYAMOTO! And that is far less subjective.

      You honestly think this looks better?

      MediEvil like a lot of PS1 games look competitive until it has to draw more than just near the camera. And if you can't rig the camera on rails and precalculate the LOD, there is going to be a gap.
      PC games in 1998 on high end hardware could look better, but even for something like Unreal there are tradeoffs being made despite the hardware and engine advancement.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >are there other factors involved
    Of course. If you knew the minimum basics of game design you would know that studio developed games go through a horror process:
    Money, management, publishers, executives, directors as well as deadlines, experience, knowledge, proper vision, thought-out game concepts, play testing, etc. Not in that order obviously.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Console war gays trying to rewrite history (again)
    You can literally look up OOT reviews from the 90s, the graphics get praised consistently in basically every review.
    >POSTED: NOV 25, 1998 7:00 PM
    https://www.ign.com/articles/1998/11/26/the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time-review

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous
      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Middle picture in bottom
        This place poisoned me.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Let me guess, this is from some nintendo magazine?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Nope. Sorry little snoy.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >16pages on N64 crap
            So I was right after all.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              God of war lost.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      yeah its hilarious how people here are like ' umm akshually, OOT wasn't that great. Muh 20fps, muh draw distance, muh pre-used assets" Like it universally got praised for it's visuals and very few games of the era matched it. Some nuclear cope happening here.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >DOODE just trust these paid off reviewers instead of your own eyes!!!
        Nintendo has built it's empire on this shit.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I've played the game myself and many other retro games. It looks far better than any other game except maybe a few cd based games.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >DOODE just trust me, it looks better! Just ignore all these titles named in the thread that are clearly better looking.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Its just one guy having a meltdown 30 years later.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          You keep telling yourself that ndroid.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They get money for doing that, remember cyberpunk?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You Black folk are always the same, just slit your throat and be done with it man. You clearly aren't interested in honest discussion.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >guaranteed replies: the thread

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    This is what Ocarina of Time actually looked like

    It's 240p, horribly blurry, objects like fence posts were corrupted at a distance

    The only reason it looked good was CRT TVs

    If you plug it into an LCD screen you will see this though

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      w. CRT shader

      There's plenty of things I though were emulator issues, and every time they're not, and present on real N64.

      The missing/flickering window when you enter Kakariko village happens on real N64

      The flickering shadow under Link happens in Jabu Jabu on real N64

      etc.

      Angrylion and ParaLLEl are incredibly accurate.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        does slowdown happen sometimes on real N64? it happened to me with ParaLLEl but I didn't know if it was accurate emulation, or my laptop struggling

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Game looked good when used on the hardware it was made for
      No vey

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Yes for sure, Majora's Mask had a lot of it

        The cutscene where the 4 giants stop the moon intentionally had a lot of lag

        ?t=950

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          is meant for:

          does slowdown happen sometimes on real N64? it happened to me with ParaLLEl but I didn't know if it was accurate emulation, or my laptop struggling

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Man, are the people on this thread for real?
    >This actually looks amazing. Thought it was the 3DS remake first
    Jesus christ.

    MML came a year before and blows the frick out of it

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Playing through OoT for the first time now. It's fun. But I cannot comprehend how anyone ever thought it had good graphics. There are hundreds of PS1 games that look better.
    Ugliest Zelda by far. Even worse than the CDi games.

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