Nintendo 64 vs PlayStation

Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Turok 2 Seeds of Evil, Majora's Mask, Goldeneye, Banjo Kazzooie, Rogue Squadron...

See even for 3D platformers, I'd rather play Spyro 2 and 3 than Rares stuff. Hated the weighted mechanics in their platformers so much. Obviously Mario 64 was king and still holds up as excellent even today.

Kart Racing again, I'd take Crash Team Racing over Mario Kart 64. Diddy Kong Racing was good though.

Other than that, I'd agree with you. PS1 was the better console by far honestly though no game on it could match Mario 64.

Word, **** Mario Kart, trash can series.

So salty

Crash Team Racing is way more satisfying to play than Mario Kart 64 though. Better than Double Dash even. Especially the hopping and boosting.

No salt, all truth.

One thing I am very sad about is that I never played CTR at the time- I am sure it would have been great!

As of right now, I suppose maybe it is nostalgia, but I do prefer Mario Kart 64 over what I played of CTR.

And modern Mario Kart games are of course a league above.

@mesome713: so a multimillion dollar franchise like tomb raider is less significant than a one time game like goldeneye 64?

Not sure what your getting at.

How the hell was "Goldeneye" a "one time?" You realized that the James Bond series has existed in games before and after it right (granted under different companies like EA and Activision)?

What makes DKR not as fluid as Crash Team Racing?

@nintendoboy16: the series was the biggest with goldeneye, was not as relevant for any other game in the series.

What makes goldeneye so great anyways? I get it, it was a fun game and I enjoyed it as a kid. But why is it considered so much better and innovative? Because it was published by nintendo? Tomorrow never dies came out and never received the same kind of praise.

Back then, the N64. Today, the PS1, easily.

@GameboyTroy: the physics, the cars handle much better. Both Diddy and crash are miles above mario kart 64 too.

Great post, sums it up really good. I owned both back in the day, in retrospective I give an edge to the N64 mainly because Mario 64 and Zelda OoT & MM and Mario Kart. Not many PS1 games have aged well over time.

So there was really no need for the 4 MB expansion pack on the N64? It was just milking of the consumers then. Probably cheaper for the consumer to pay for just one expansion pack than to have a little higher price on a number of cartridges but it felt a bit like a ripoff back then. Another thing that bugged was that some N64 games required a memory card on a friggin cartridge system.

I remember CTR's camera/car movement being SHITE.

I'll fire it up when I get time just to be sure of how much of a shite handling game it is and report back.

PS1 had the quantity, N64 had the quality. Wouldn't trade the N64 Mario, Zelda, Banjo, Goldeneye/Perfect Dark games for anything on PS1.

Seeds of Evil (86/100 Metacritic) was super legit, dawg.

I never heard of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 9, Tekken 3, Resident Evil, Medal of Honor, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Final Fantasy Tactics, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Gran Turismo 2, but everywhere I look there are mountains of articles and posters everywhere talking Seeds of Evil.

Let's be real, there wouldn't be a Bayonetta, Gears of War, Pikmin, The Last of Us, Halo, or Starcraft II if Turok Seeds of Evil has never released.

The impact of that game is far-reaching. I don't have my camera on me, but I would take a 25 megapickles shot of all my Seeds of Evil merch and posters if I had the time.

Turok SoE FTMFW!!!

The N64 was superior to the PS1 when it came to textures. PS1 textures were unfiltered and pixelated, whereas N64 textures had trilinear filtering and anti-aliasing. PS1 games had slightly more detailed textures than early N64 games that only used small 4-8 MB cartridges (giving early N64 games blurry textures), but later N64 games that used larger cartridges had far more detailed textures than PS1 games. Even a 12 MB cartridge like GoldenEye had significantly more detailed textures than any PS1 games, let alone the 16-64 MB cartridges that came later on.

ROM is equivalent to RAM, but not exactly the same thing, because ROM is read-only, whereas RAM is programmable. The advantage of a ROM cartridge is that its almost RAM-like speed means you could stream textures (as well as audio samples and video clips) directly from the cartridge, freeing up the RAM for other things like the gameplay, resolution, fillrate, polygons, lighting and physics (or for even more textures on screen), all of which can be further improved by a RAM expansion. ROM cartridges could basically be used like an extended texture cache (streaming up to 4 MB of data every frame at 264 MB/sec).

As for the memory card requirement, save memory was expensive back then, so some developers were presumably trying to reduce costs by not including save memory on the cartridge.

@SolidTy: Well played bro, almost had me going there for a second. I was like.. "this mutha... oh."

Your comment to the other guy about Seeds of Evil was on point and made me laugh, so I figured I owed you some sort of comical payment. :P

Honestly, 3D platformers on both the PS1 & N64 haven't aged all that well, including even Mario 64, but that has at least aged way better than the other 3D platformers of that era. So, with Mario 64 and Rare platformers like Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, the N64 takes the edge in the 3D platformer category.

I'd say Mario Kart 64, Diddy Kong Racing and Crash Team Racing are about on-par. But since the N64 had two good kart racers, compared to just one on the PS1, the N64 takes the edge in the kart racer category. However, I think kart racers on both the PS1 & N64 have aged quite badly compared to Mario Kart Double Dash on the GameCube.

Overall, the PS1 definitely had the superior software library, with way more variety, offering quality in almost every genre. On the other hand, the N64 had the superior hardware.

as someone that only played on N64 for a couple of years I do understand the struggle that it was being a Nintendo fan during those days. When I finally got a PS1 I never looked back, the amount and variety of games was just too great.

Games like Parasite Eve, Symphony of the Night, Gran Turismo, Metal Gear, SF Alpha, etc. even with all the Zeldas and Mario in the world the N64 just couldn't compete.

I owned both, and I enjoyed both. For sheer quantity of games the PS won, but quality wise the N64 was better. I still go back and play classic games on my N64 to this day. Other than the original Crash I really can't remember the last time I played an original PS exclusive game.