N64 did not age well

Fad or not it was still a step forward and an important advancement. It also influenced VR to some extent.

Minecraft is a game with emergent gameplay. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor has a bit of emergent gameplay with the Nemesis system. To put it simply, it's when complex and unexpected situations arise from the interactions of more simple elements. For example burning an orc in Shadow of Mordor may cause him to become disfigured which may enrage him and give him enough ambition to rise through the ranks. He can then become a Chieftain/Warchief and if you face him again he'll remember you as the one who burnt his face and will rage at you.

Online existed in gen 6 definitely. To be fair it existed even on older Sega consoles but Gen 7 is really when online became a core part of our gaming experience. It was really taken to the next level and now a console would online would simply be inadmissible whereas in in Gen 6 it was still an afterthought. Xbox Live was nice but it wasn't the force PSN/Xbox Live are today. That really came to fruition in gen 7.

Also agreed. Gen 7 did bring about some shitty business tactics and questionable ethics but I still think today's gaming landscape has been far more influenced by gen 5 and 7 than it has been by gen 6 for better or for worse.

It wasn't really an afterthought on Xbox, PS2...maybe.

What PS360 did was integrate the whole social always connected online thing right from the menu.

To gamers who just want to game online and don't care about the social media stuff, it was pretty much the same.

You also have to consider to the general public, they were still getting caught up on online and the internet in general, it was a different time period altogether.

You can thank CoD 4 for helping push the online popularity for them as well, this one game made it "cool" to be a gamer outside of something like GTA or Madden.

VR has always existed regardless of motion controls.

The thing you need to understand from a historical point of view is that many of us who loved video games and had been playing them a while were set in our ways. We didn't ask for or want 3D. At least not in the way it was being given to us. The games looked bad. We were primarily platform gamers and you can't really do platforming in 3D like you could in 2D, it's a whole different thing. I still put Super Metroid well above Metroid Prime and Super Mario 3 above Mario 64. When we went to 3D we had to throw away our old notion of games for the most part and start over. Many of us did not want it and don't feel nostalgic about the transition either. It did have to be done and I will obviously now admit I was wrong.

@ConanTheStoner:
Save one or two examples, I agree. Most N64 games just don't hold up today. And it's a shame, really. Not because it's Nintendo or not, but because for better or worse, these are part of the history of the medium.

So you never imagined what a game would be like in 3D?

It was an afterthought on PS2 and GC. It was great on Xbox but you could get by with no online if you owned an Xbox. I know I did. These days? Good luck getting the most out of your X1 or PS4 with no online.

PS360 did a ton more than that. Patches, DLC's, news, online communities, tournaments on consoles, avatars, marketplace, major step forward in digital distribution. It really put online at the core of our gaming experience something which the 6th gen did not do. If you were to to find a blueprint of today's online gaming, that blueprint would have been left by the Xbox 360. Not the OG Xbox.

COD is yet another example of how influential Gen 7 was. I personally hate its practice but when even Halo copies your online, you've done something right(not good). Love it or hate it, the first Modern Warfare was one of the most influential games of the 7th gen and shaped online gaming for future FPS games.

I mean I'm trying to think of what 6th gen really brought that was unprecedented and I can't think of a single thing whether in terms of hardware or software aside from Xbox Live and GTA III. Got any examples?

Do you see this as a good or bad thing?

It kind of meant devs put a ton of content in their game knowing that a good portion of their users may not have online.

Hence why you see people complaining about paying $60 for half a game.

On to your blueprint, what's funny about is everything relates to business practices. What the OG brought was matchmaking, server list, voice chat, friends list, join session in progress, etc. You know things that actually affect the video game. Btw, patches were not introduced in gen 7.

Everything you mentioned on the blueprint comment were literally things unrelated to a video game, things that an Apple user would love.

Gen 6 brought upon refines and improvements that actually affected the core games, from controls, to seemless online, 60 FPS was common on a lot of GC/Xbox games, to full video games something that started being less of a thing at the end of last gen. Hell it even brought in HD gaming.

All of things you mentioned about online features brought upon later were a result of things like Facebook taking off and social media becoming a thing, and a HUGE market.

Gen 7 pretty much brought in a lot of business practices and pointless social sharing media crap, I'll give it that. Which to hardcore gamers means jackshit.

Those polygons though...

I was working a career and living on my own when the N64 came out to give you some context. I did wonder what gaming in 3D could be like but nothing that came before could easily be imagined if done in 3D. It was new ground and the early 3D games just weren't as compelling as the old 2D ones. 2D games had evolved quite a bit and here we were going back to the drawing board at square one. Like I said, video games were previously platformers on consoles and that doesn't work well in 3D. At least not in the way we had come to know them. There was a rhythm to them that they still don't recreate in 3D.

I could imagine great things but what I imagined and what we got were two different things.

bomberman 64 still holds up great

You're mine!

Bye Bye

look at this gameplay you can't get this kinda stuff on ps4/pc/ or xboner

its pure gameplay its pure fun look at the voice acting the music the skills used.

your just not seeing that in todays walking simulators

It's a double-edged sword and we both know it. Back in the N64 days, some games had terrible exploits that literally broke them. I wish devs could have patched them.

Today the good thing is that if a major balance issue occurs in a competitive game, it can be addressed. The problem is that it gave developers the necessary boldness to release games in an unfinished state because "we'll just patch it later".

I'm not saying Gen 7 was better than 6. Gen 6 was actually probably better but I think Gen 5 and 7 were far more influential in shaping gaming as we know it than Gen 6 was. I really can't think of something Gen 6 did that was groundbreaking and really took gaming to the next level or did something that majorly changed it.

@ProtossRushX: Saturn Bomberman was so much better though.

What did we get

Gen 6 did open world games as we know them. Grand Theft Auto. That's one of the biggest things ever!

Yeah I did mention GTA III earlier which was probably the single most influential game of Gen 6 and probably in the top 50 of most influential games ever.

RE4 influenced every TPS that came after (it started the whole cinematic TPS thing), the whole over the shoulder look came from it. Epic Games even noted that it heavily influenced Gears of Wars game design.

GTA 3/Vice City changed open world games forever.

Halo 1/2 influenced the FPS market on consoles forever, even though I felt some better games released alongside it that were overlooked.

http://www.gamesradar.com/top-7-console-generations-so-far/ - Skip to #1 and read why.

Dual stick console gaming became a standard in gen 6, gen 7 did not have the benefit of this.

What gen 7 games revolutionized anything?

Tell me.

We got the N64.

No....no it did not.

But man....what a revolution in gaming though. I mean...can you really say that the first time you saw Mario 64 or Wave Race you weren't like "Holy shit!!!"

I know I was.

Yeah, which causes people to have somewhat of a blinded view on it.

It had the benefit of being the first console in 3D, that alone would make most people love it.

They could see games in a whole new dimension.

Didn't I mention RE4 earlier? I thought I had. Yeah with its over-the-should camera it did shape 3rd person shooters.

GTA III did shape open-world games.

Halo also did influence console shooters.

Can't disagree with any of that. Only thing is, aside from GTA III all these games were mostly done before and only added something different to the mix. Games like Minecraft, League of Legends or Mario 64 were simply never seen before. That's why I'm saying Gen 6 really mastered what already was there. It didn't really bring something "new" it took existing concepts and brought them to new heights.

Anyway, none of that really matters. I do agree the N64 aged pretty terribly but as said before, it was a necessary stepping stone for the evolution of 3D gaming. Time wasn't kind to it but anyone judging the console must judge it with a context and some perspective. You can't just evaluate it in a vaccum and say it sucks.

I do put timing in perspective when judging an older console (I just beat Shenmue and that game controls weird as hell).

Even back then, it was until something like the Dreamcast (Dat Sonic Adventure 1) where I was truely blown away with 3D visuals.

The controller on the N64 even back then felt weird and clunky, the PS1 controller destroyed it.

I'm not saying the N64 sucked but it's definitely the worst aging 3D era console.

The N64 is still looked at today as somewhat of a godly console but if some were to actually go back and play it they'd think otherwise.

I refer to it as the Atari 2600 of 3D gaming for good reason, an important step.

I believe me I know.

I was longing for older games back in the mid 2000's so I went out and rebought an N64 and some games. Hooked it up...and my initial reaction after putting in one of those games was a crystal clear "ewwwww".

It was not what I remembered, for sure.

The PS1 controller didn't destroy it until it added analog sticks, something the N64 caused it to add. Not saying the N64 invented analog sticks either.

If one were to play the N64 with no prior experience with gaming then they may find it very enjoyable. If one were to play it after having played the 8th gen then yeah, they'd think it sucks.

It also was the one that aged the worse but it was also the one that really tried to push 3D forward in spite of its limitations. Dreamcast came out in 1999 and 3D had made leaps and bounds by then(in no small parts due to the N64). PS1 was released in 1994 but let's be honest, its 3D games weren't a lot better. In fact aside from Gran Turismo, most of its 3D games sucked. You had a couple of rare gems like Vagrant Story or Tekken but they were the exception. Even games like FF VII were actually 2D games with 3D character models. PS1 was good mostly for its 2D games which is why it aged better than the N64 which tried to push 3D in its infancy.

Yeah that plays a big role into it for sure.

Also, there would be plenty of people who would probably be turned off by the N64 controller while having zero gaming experience/knowledge.

@brah4ever: at first I thought comparing it to the Atari was nonsensical but after further thought I think it is apt. The Atari was trying to give us a version of arcade games we could play at home. It was great to have but did what it attempted to do poorly. Same for the N64. It tried to give us something that the technology of the time really wasn't ready for.

Probably but I had com from the NES and then SNES when I first tried the N64 so anything with a joystick looked attractive. Nintendo also did a pretty decent job at adapting games to this weird-ass controller.

My only major complaint was that the joystick would leave this weird white powder and become extremely stiff after repeated use.

it was an excellent piece of machinery in its time

I actually think its hardware held it back. They made all sorts of weird decisions. Cartridges instead of CD's because Nintendo was shitting their pants at the thought of piracy. Caused the storage to be very limited and devs had to put shitty midi format tracks in games. It also prevented the use of cinematics and full voice acting. Capable of rendering at higher resolution than its contemporaries but had a huge RAM bottleneck which made its textures blurry and some of the last games needed the expansion pack to even work. I was so pissed when I gave my expansion pack to my cousin who claimed it couldn't be taken out of a system once it had been slotted in. I spent a whole night staring at Majora's Mask screen saying "Please insert expansion pack".

Dear god was the hardware complete trash. Horrible balance of components.

@brah4ever said:

N64 is the Atari 2600 of 3D.

actually the ps1 is.

just compare ps1 graphics to n64

The graphics aren't bad. Blurry I can deal with better than the PSs sharp graphics with no AA, it's bloody painful to watch, it's aged worse in my opinion, that said, I have a thing for the original Tomb Raider, nostalgia but I wouldn't change it. I can still go back and play N64 games though.

Frame rates, sure, but it was acceptable back then, no one complained.

N64 was the last Nintendo console I loved, I was a hardcore Nintendo fanboy then. Hated the GC though. The Wii U is the closest Nintendo console to go back to their roots imo. There's just something more Nintendo about it then the GC or Wii.

@HalcyonScarlet: I'm surprised you can like the N64 but hate the game cube but then turn around and like the WiiU. Actually I shouldn't be surprised as its the opposite of my tastes and we obviously view Nintendo differently. I love 2d Nintendo and any console they make that doesn't include Metriod to me is not worth my time. The Wii had Metriod but it wasn't near enough to save that lowest common denominator commercial success of a console in my eyes.

Lol, exactly.

The Gamecube was pretty much an improved N64 with twice the amount of games, way better graphics/framerate/controller.

F-Zero GX

2 Star Fox

3 Zelda Games

2 Metroid Prime Games

2 Pikmin games

Mario Power Tennis

Mario Golf

Mario Strikers

Sunshine

Eternal Darkness

Rogue Squadron 1/2

ReMake

RE4

Viewtiful Joe 1/2

Killer 7

Double Dash

2 Pokemon Games

Phantasy Star Online 1/2

Timesplitters 2/3

Tales of Symphonia

Baten Kaitos 1/2

Lost Kingdoms 1/2

Melee

1080

4 Mario Party Games

Paper Mario TTYD

Twin Snakes

Luigi's Mansion

WWE Day of Reckoning (from the creators of No Mercy and ran at a locked 60 FPS and is one of the best looking games of the gen)

3rd party support from EA, Acti, Ubi so in other words, Prince of Persia, yearly sports titles, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, Beyond Good and Evil, SSX, Burnout, James Bond games Fight Night, NBA Street, CoD games, etc.

Nintendo actually tried this generation in terms of games output compared to something like the Wii U, they actually experimented with their games in a way not seen since.

It was pretty much the N64 but with more.

The Wii U is similar to the N64 in terms of games output, zero RPGs and barely any games.

I was in my prime when the N64 launched and it's the last system I'd go back to for 3D gaming.

I never really understood the love for the N64. I didn't care for its controller day 1, and the abysmal way some games ran was offputting (not that absurd load times and poor 3D performance on the PS1 was anything to write home about either). The N64 is one of the only "major" retro systems I have no interest in investing in - I left it behind long ago

"with refinements" is a disservice. There was a huge step forward in all areas over its previous gen, it had the hardware to have gameplay the 6th gen couldn't come close to. The 8th gen is almost literally just a minor enhancement over gen 7, there's no remarkable improvement anywhere really, some graphics are starting to stand out, but it's not blowing me away like a new gen should.

I think it's also wrong to imply that creativity mainly came from Japan.

Also, the N64 had some of the best Nintendo and Rare games.

Where else were the improvements, elaborate. Own me.

Rare was in their prime in that era for sure.

@brah4ever: I thought rare was great in the Snes days and would have been better if they weren't forced into making games for the N64. I don't really know though, just a hunch. They were deffinately in their prime though, I just feel that maybe all of that talent was wasted on crap hardware?

A lot of it is due to it having the "wow" factor of being the first 3D console for many.

Sky would have been the limit.

@brah4ever said:.

N64 is the Atari 2600 of 3D.

There's no Atari 2600 game that looks as good as the above, even in 2D. Some MAME (arcade) games, maybe. But, not the 2600. I think the N64 was a great system. There's nothing in its generation that touched the behavior of that water....not even 3dfx.

The Dreamcast? Sure. But, that was years after 1996.

Nintendo started to have a more casual vibe to their games on the GC and Wii.

F Zero GX is great.

Star Fox hasn't been good since the N64.

Zelda, TP wasn't bad. Don't like WW, never played Skyward Sword.

Didn't like the Prime games. Like RE4, it's just not for me, I like the old school RE games.

Pikmin was alright.

Eternal Darkness was really good the first time I played it. Needs some refinement, but I enjoyed that.

Rogue Leader on the GC is pretty good, It's no Ace Combat, but it's good. Rogue Squadron 3 is horrible though.

Not a fan of ReMake or any version of the first RE, graphics were good though, RE0 was more my thing. Others have just done it better, that's why everyone is begging for a RE2 remake.

Timesplitters is a poor imitation of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. I've played them, they tried to move over the same type of game play, but what worked on the N64s digital C buttons is just weird on an analog stick, it's why PD Zero sucks so bad. Then Halo comes along and raises the bar way past Timesplitters.

Never got on with Smash Bros on any console. It's not my type of fighter.

Lol Day of Reckoning is no where NEAR as good as No Mercy. I played the shit out of all the N64s Wrestling games, and they were never as good after that. And I had both of the Day of Reckoning games.

It's not about quantity, but quality. Later Nintendo games just weren't the same. The Wii U has only 13 games on it that I want, but they absolutely slaughter most of Nintendo's GC and Wii games for me, I mean ****, MK 8 beats the living shit out of all the previous ones put together. I still have the GC and Wii and ironically, I still collect games for it, where as I don't on other consoles. I have most of the games listed here.

I think their first party games were fantastic. Majora's Mask. Ocarinao of Time. Super Mario 64. Banjo Kazooie and Tooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day. Perfect Dark. Some third party games like Turok and No Mercy were dope too. I think it's the system with the highest amount of exclusives that scored over 90. If it's not then its ratio of games that scored in the 90's to its total amount of games is the highest.

What made No Mercy better?

They literally felt the same, it's just that Day of Reckoning felt more refined and updated due to the control scheme (countering system), way better graphics, and 60 FPS compared to No Mercys sub 20. I'm willing to bet $ that your joy from No Mercy came more from you having real life people to play with as when by the time DoR released everyone probably moved off to college or went their own ways.

I have a Wii U and Nintendo's games are the safest they've ever been.

Quantity is still important, when your console has 1-3 games a year and ZERO third party support that is a major problem, one that cannot be ignored. Gamecube still has way more higher scoring games than the Wii U so the quantity/quality argument is moot, nice try though.

Mario Kart 8 is the perfect example, its pretty much an HD Mario Kart 7. They took zero risk and simply made a better looking version of a 3DS game.

@brah4ever: its funny how I can pop in my Crash Bandicoot discs in my PS3 on my HD TV and they still look considerably good (especially Crash Warped).

N64 had some really good titles but they were spread apart- anyone around back then can tell you how bad the game droughts for the system were.

PS1 had pretty much everything over N64- quantity of games, quality of games, genres, graphics and controls. And that's probably because N64 used cartridges. Its funny how some people still today still think cartridges are better than discs.

Sounds like the Wii U.

@jcrame10: Graphics is most certainly not something PS1 had over the N64.

yep. exactly. except N64 actually had some innovative and groundbreaking titles like Super Mario 64, Conker, Ocarina of Time, 007 Goldeneye, Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, etc whereas pretty much all Wii U has offered is niche play-it-safe titles. N64 could at least hold its ground against the monster PS1 and have some respect whereas Wii U has been in the dust for a long time now compared to its competition.

Crash Bandicoot and Spyro both look and play better than almost all of the titles on N64. Check out some screenshots and get your hands on those games and play them for yourself if you can and havent in awhile. They still play phenomenally well (besides Spyro's annoying camera at times)

@jcrame10: Conker's Bad Fur day shits on everything on the PS1. Also Spyro and Crash don't look better than Banjo games or Donkey Kong 64.

Banjo and Donkey Kong 64 dont look that great. They look kind of fuzzy and washed up- probably the framerate and resolution problems other people have mentioned here.

Conker is an excellent game and one of the few titles that can withstand pretty much any PS1 game. Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye being some others.

Own you? Didn't think it was that kind of discussion. :-P

Improvements for 7th gen?

Graphics, obvious big jump, so lets get that out of the way.

Physics were vastly improved. Big examples FM, GT5, Fight Night Champion, crazy amount of physics there, The Force Unleashed. Better physics in general. This gen I only noticed better physics in FM 5 and 6 over last gen.

Ai showed improvements, haven't been a lot lately.

And obviously more RAM, so bigger worlds with more going on in it.

It's an evolution, but it allowed for a big jump in gameplay. They took a lot of the same gameplay from before and they pushed it forwards. I don't feel that jump this gen.

A lot of the improvements were a natural progression sure.

The 7th gen just came with a significant upgrade, where I don't feel that with gen 8.