PS1 vs. N64 - why was the controversy low during that gen?

I remember coming after a heated Genesis/SNES war, there was little friction between the two. I'm wondering why there wasn't a full scale war.

My guess would be that they both targeted different demographics. N64 was for younger people who would become core gamers. PS1 seemed like it was a console for more casual adults who wanted to play a little NHL or something. And the two bases had real little reason to war with each other.

Whereas Sega vs. Nintendo in the 90's and PS3/PS4/X360/PS3 now are all going after the same demographics.

i blame the interwebs

back in the days you would bring the war on the streets you wouldn't know if i slapped soneone with a genesis, today we pwn lemmings digital for you to see on a massive scale!

The industry was losing it's balls at this point, and it was before the interwebs were in full swing to let it flare up again. We went from "Genesis does what Nintendon't" to a few Crash Bandicoot commercials. They just don't take swings at each other like they used to.

@lglz1337: You were alive back in those days. 0_o

@bldgirsh: bring the age counter

was just a fiction

I think it was Sega that started the console war. They had a console that outshined the NES, but as soon as the SNES came out, they realized they were in trouble so they needed a saucy marketing campaign.

The Saturn was a failure from the get go and the N64 launched a year later and never challenged PS1's sales. Sony also had a lower license fee than the other two which got them huge 3rd party support almost immediately.

I remember some hefty arguments about graphics, and over storage formats, but commercially and in libraries there wasn't anything to fight about. Playstation trounced the competition.

Pretty much what I remember, there was quite a war on cartridge speed vs disc storage size from what I remember; where both had some nasty flaws.

I think perhaps Nintendo's Virtual Boy hurt their reputation. Imagine if the Virtual Boy were the N64 instead.

@drekula2: I remember a full scale war...

It was very heated N64 vs. Playstation. Lot's of arguing about Medal of Honor vs. Goldeneye vs. Alien vs. Turok, Tekken and Street Fighter vs. Super Smash Bros, Mario64 vs. every quality PS platformer (ND's Crash, Insomniac's Spyro, Sony's Ape Escape, etc), Pokemon snap vs. the Camera segments of Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7 vs. Quest 64, Twisted Metal vs. Mario Kart vs. Crash Team Racing, Cartridges vs. Discs, $60 N64 games vs. $40 PSOne games, N64 owners "One analog = Future!" vs. Playstation's "Two analogs = future", Rumble Packs, Banjo, Tekken, Star Wars games, Metal Gear Solid Resident Evil 1-3 vs. RE2 N64, lower quality cartridge N64 audio vs. PS amazing CD quality Audio, N64 fog vs. Playstation less smooth textures, WWF Smackdown vs. WWF No Mercy vs. Power Move Pro Wrestling vs. WCW/NWO Revenge, No Capcom fighters on N64, Castlevania 64 vs. Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Playstation let's you play music CDs! vs. Expansion RAM Pack supported games, etc.

In hardware sales it was no contest, except in software sales there were arguments. When a 1st party Nintendo game released it would top the charts (Say a Zelda) after months of droughts and late PS ports.

Goodness gracious, I miss those days.

Because the PC was on the rise.

No you are wrong here.

I remember buying the PS1 for Tekken and since then i became a fan of the console even if it was the newcomer it offered extraordinary exclusives / timed exclusives for a newcomer. It become instant favorite.

Nintendo 64 came and didnt have any impact where i live. I dont know why , noone bothered that much . Maybe the price or the lack of games compared to cheaper PS1 ? Dont get me wrong , some bought it but not even near to what SNES sold here. For every 10 in real life friends i knew , 9 of them had a PS1 and 1 a N64.

Still though i remember sheeps declaring superiority on graphics and fight with cows over that. Specially when the first First person shooters released for N64 they had the laughs over PS1 over graphics ( smoother textures for N64 ). Other fights occured about N64 being 64 bit , aka powerful. But since N64 owners werent that many ... you get it ! It looked like they didnt put a fight but they did !

I dont think Nintendo with N64 , when it came from an excellent gen with SNES for both casuals and hardcore gamers , suddenly targeted different demographics. I think N64 problematic architecture with the addition of limited capacity and super expensive cartridges led many developers away. This means N64 lost massive amount of otherwise Nintendo exclusives ( Final Fantasy for example ) and multiplatforms as well !!

I think it was because their releases were separated by 3 years. They wee almost different gen consoles.

Twisted Metal vs Mario Kart?

A smaller segment in Metal Gear vs all of Pokemon Snap?

I know the battles between visuals and which console had better games, but I didn't think they'd argue those (I would think Twisted Metal vs Vigilante 8, despite the latter being multiplatform).

Were there any arguments like "multitap vs four built in controller ports?"

Everything was up for grabs. Also it's true the multiplatform Vigilante 8 came up but V8 just didn't have the star power and it did release a bit later in the generation. Eventually, Twisted Metal clones like Vigilante 8 vs. Rogue Trip vs. Twisted Metal 2 would be heated debates. All three games were available on PS, but Vigilante 8 was the only car combat clone of that caliber that released on N64. It didn't help that V8 was a late port after Luxoflux completed the PSOne version (typical of that entire era actually from Megaman Legends to Spiderman to Tony Hawk to RE2, etc). Of course, the V8 late N64 port did get the benefit of added 4 player support and other neat bonuses provided you had the RAM expansion Pak. Before Crash Team Racing released, Twisted Metal was the argument against Mario Kart, lol.

Also, yes, Multi tap vs. four controller ports definitely came up. Memory card storage came up. I didn't list every argument but that bit about 4 ports vs. two was another one I wish I remembered when I put that post together. Every little difference was argued, haha.

Na that isn't it. PSX was for the group of NESers entering their teen years, where they may consider something like "mario" to be too childish. Ironically, Nintendo 64 ended up being the console that the older kids adopted.

The biggest impact of the Playstation brand was at the time when the Global Economy opened up and Sony used that as an advantage. Plus another issue with the N64 was a lack of games during its beginning lifecycle, not only was the N64 2 years late from the party, Sony already had an established game library and heavily marketed Sports games to their consoles. Last, it's third parties, not only Sony managed to get all Japanese support, especially stealing the Final Fantasy franchise from Nintendo exclusivity, they also managed to get high profile PC developers to make games for the console.

Because the N64 controller really was completely unintelligible to just about everyone.

Uh... no. PlayStation STILL had that audience.

sony captured that age demographic(around it) with the ps2. I'm not segregating the consoles to one specific age, but simply where it was most popular. There is no question about it that the N64 was more popular amongst the 18ish to 22ish age demographic. N64 in college dorm rooms and apts are a thing of legend. No console in history has ever dominated this area like n64 did, ever.

Of course there was war, and there were casuals, fanboys and non-fanboy hardcore gamers just like there is today, though it was overall a proportionaly smaller demographic. It's just that the contact between people was direct, not fictional (virtual), and it could cause you the impression that it wasn't that way if in your circle of friends and relatives there was no one willing to discuss games "seriously".

Well..first there was lack of internet being as common as it is now. And second....it wasn't really a war. PSX destroyed Saturn completely and waltzed all over N64. There can be no real war when one side has huge upper hand year after a year. PSX user were so secure in their platform they didn't even feel the need to fight with Nintendo fans, while N64 fans generally understood just how badly their console lost, so arguing was pointless

I disagree. Back then it was still relatively uncommon for kids to have two consoles. When games were talked about, all games were talked about. And, whenever there was an ace n64 game being discussed, in light of the psx sales domination, the fans would give a "head hung in shame" look on their face.

I fail to see any real war there though. And who was hunging their heads in shame? PSX owners? If so they didn't have to do it often, considering how much of a wasteland N64 line up for for most months

Can you honestly say that if you actually lived and gamed during the mid 90's as an adult? The controversies were within game magazines and their comment sections. Out in the real world, there is no war, even at present.

The only difference between then and now is the accessibility of the Internet. Even the screaming brats have access to it which is why it seems like there are gaming wars.

It was still there. The multiplayer aspect of the N64 was always sought after by the psx crowd.

No, I'm damn sure the PlayStation still won that demographic. Although N64 was probably popular among them when it came to multiplayer (I know someone on another site who did say they remember playing that system in College). I mean, like you said to AdrianWerner, the multiplayer aspect was the go to aspect of the N64, because that console had Goldeneye/Perfect Dark, Mario Kart, Smash, etc, while the only go to multiplayer games I recall on the PlayStation's front was Tekken 3 (Stuttering Craig makes a mention that Twisted Metal was too, but...).

This.

That is exactly how it went down. As a Sega Saturn owner, I felt the pride of being a sega guy and did see an argument or two won by Saturn with it's superiority with 2d fighters like Street Fighter Alpha 2, Virtua Figher 2 being criticaly proclaimed the best 3D fighter and Panzer Dragoon 2 being a must have game that PS1 had no answer for...but that is about as far as the war wadged on PS1 went with other consoles. PS1 dominated everything else.

PS1 dominated the third party game space, that is why the "war" was a no contest, and while N64 was more powerful than both consoles it was treated it as though it wasn't even part of that generation because of it's anemic selection of games and it's focus on juvenile centric games which didn't attract gamers who grew up with NES/SNES.

TL;DR version: All gamers then kind of knew there place and accepted that reality. I was a sega guy and could brag about having the best 2d fighters but I still knew PS1 dominated the generation and I accepted that fact and enjoyed the system I preferred. There was no reason to fight when when people weren't making up dumb arguments to claim their system was something it wasn't.

It's just that a lot of gamers of this generation just can't accept the facts when their platform is not the best.

From what I remember ( where I lived anyway ) the Saturn dominated at first because of the Nascar and Virtua Fighter which was unbeleivable at that time. Then after a few months Sony released Tekken and Ridge Racer which helped them a lot. During the following year Sony started to be neck and neck to Sega until games like Resident Evil start to come out on the Playstation which was very bad on the Sega Saturn then the N64 came out with only Mario 64 and Wing something 64 so of course the new Mario pulled a lot of people but the sad fact that Nintendo sticked to cartridge killed many exclusive they had ... Capcom and SquareSoft pretty much only released games on the Sony Platform.

Nintendo tried really hard but loosed a lot and only had an handful of good game while Sony had so many games and if you liked RPGs Sony was the way to go.

So it wasn't a very big war. When the Dreamcast came out it was something else. The war between the Xbox PS2 and Gamecube came out it was a different war. Nintendo tried hard and did had a very good line up for maybe 2 years. During that time Xbox catered to people who liked more realistic games and shooter which seems to be the interest of American gamers while Sony had all the Japanease type of games.

I don't think so. Sonys strategy was to capture the teens that were moving on from the snes/genesis. They did this with the psx, and then continued this philosophy with the ps2. Sony maintained their audience. Gaming as a 20 something year old back in 1995 wasn't like it is today. I'd say most people in that demographic were on N64 and PC. And when cards like the 3DFX Voodoo came out there was a large portion of people that went pc gaming over the next few years. I'm not arguing the popularity of the psx, only that its prime popularity was the late middle school-high school crowd; 12 to 17ish.

The PS1 had Final Fantasy 8, the best version of Tony Hawk Pro skater and could play CDs. I had a N64 and a PS1 and the PS1 got the most game time.

If I had to make a top 10 games list for every console I owned, I think N64's would look the best out of any other list. ESPECIALLY OVER LAST GEN. They just don't make games like they used to.

I think the PS1 deciding to use CD's which at the time had a slow loading time and a huge advantage when it came to storage space was appealing to me. Compared to the N64 which used cartridges which had an almost non-existent loading time but at the same time had a much smaller storage space.

I think they aimed at different audiences and are like comparing apples and oranges not to mention they had a TON of exclusives. This was before multiplats gained prominence. I think it was neat how the N64 actually had upgradeable RAM, but the PS1 with its realistic looking backgrounds and much better exclusives (arguable) won the day decisively. Still, I have fond memories of gathering 4 people and playing the latest WWF or WCW game.

Nintendo had a chance to come back with the Gamecube, but again they decided to go with smaller DVD/CD's and literally most of the reason I decided upon the PS2 was it doubled as a DVD player. Way to drop the ball Nintendo.

Sony just entered the market.

The rabid cows were just little babies. They are full grown now with huge fanboy.

this..

the war was still between sega and nintendo.

sony were still unproven....it was until the ps2 that they became huge.

There was no war because at that time we were all so amazed at having these incredible new machines that played brilliant games it didn't occur to us that we should hate anyone who owned a console we weren't playing on.

Kids back then were more mature about gaming than 99% of 'adults' are now.

WTF are you talking about........... After Nintendo stabbed Sony in the back Sony went for Nintendos throat and ended up killing Sega in the process.

PC, PS1 & N64 all had too many good games to play at the time for people to be bothered about arguing

Less internet thus less keyboard warriors.

True dat.

@Shielder7: Not to say Nintendo didn't fight back either:

Are you kidding? There was a ton of friction between Saturn, PS1 and N64 fans during the 32/64-bit era. The only difference was that the battle was mainly taking place in the streets and in the playgrounds, rather on the interwebs (although there were plenty of heated debates there too).

So, it was the awkward middle phase between the immense hype of initial console war and the rise of the internet.

@lglz1337: "i blame the interwebs

back in the days you would bring the war on the streets you wouldn't know if i slapped soneone with a genesis, today we pwn lemmings digital for you to see on a massive scale!"

Dude that read so funny. The war was fought in the streets!!

@santoron: "The Saturn was a failure from the get go"

Yeah the Saturn was my last sega console. I went to ps1 because games I wanted to play were few and far between. I was a big sports gamer but I wanted other stuff also and besides guardian heroes there wasn't enough.

I remember receiving this as a VHS tape in the mail from Nintendo Power.

It's easy, the internet became more prevalent.

All that pent up rage and pent up ridiculous anger people have.
They can now spout it without having to worry about having people know who they are.

I've been gaming for 28 years now and each generation has gotten far worse with system war arguments thanks in large part to the internet allowing you people to not be held accountable for your bull shit.

The war during the 16bit days was far calmer than the 32bit days. System wars bull shit seemed to peak early last gen. It spiked again with the blunder announcement of X1 but it seems to be leveling off quicker this gen then last. We'll see how long it goes though.

The Saturn was a major success in Japan, in fact Sega's most successful console in Japan. When the PS1 and Saturn initially released around 1994-1995, it wasn't yet clear which would win. It wasn't until 1996 that it became clear the PS1 trounced the Saturn worldwide. But in Japan, it remained close between the two until 1997, with the N64 being relegated to third place in Japan.