Games That Push the Limits of The Nintendo 64

#pushingthelimits
Keep exploring at brilliant.org/Sharopolis Get started for free, and hurry-the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription
Support me on patreon:
/ sharopolis
Games that push the limits of the Nintendo 64. Pretty self explanatory, I'm going to be looking at some of the games that pushed the N64 the hardest, with my usual technical analysis.

[@thisisjames4474]

In perfect dark you can shoot out the lights and it affects enemy behavior. Even today most games don't do that.

[@V3ntilator]

It also had thermal sight.

[@LITTLE1994]

Yup.

[@deepcovergecko]

Damm, perfect dark was way ahead of the game, I always thought splinter cell was the first to do that.

[@sgillman16]

@@deepcovergecko literally everything from post 2000 fps games were inspired by Goldeneye and Perfect Dark

[@nietzscheente1271]

Yeah. You can shoot enemies weapons out of their hands and they give up, run away, go into close combat, pick up their lost weapon or put a second gun out of their holster. No other shooter had ever done this again. Imo PD is and stay the best shooter ever.

[@JustMe99999]

No Wave Race? The water effects in that game were truly amazing.

[@Video-Game-OST-HQ]

I make video games for a living (R&D programmer at tri-Ace, senior graphics programmer at Square Enix, GPU performance engineer at Apple Inc.) and I have a lot of friends from Rare. I was speaking to Graham Smith, who was a Rare programmer from the days of Diddy Kong Racing up until the end of Perfect Dark, and he told me what he did to really optimize the graphics (of Perfect Dark), and it’s something that even Nintendo didn’t know. The game was not originally running at anywhere near a decent FPS, even with every other trick and optimization they were pulling out of their hats, so he did a deep dive and found that the RSP command lists were all firing at once and starving each other of resources. Not just CPU resources but resource access etc. He looked to see if there was a way to insert a stall/wait command at the front of command lists to get them to run in specific sequences and he found it! His work in allowing the command lists to execute mostly sequentially rather than all at once is the only reason Perfect Dark was able to get above 20-25 FPS (maybe it was even down to 15 most of the time; it’s been a while since he told me this story). He shared this detail with Nintendo and it seems even they didn’t know about this. Here’s another tidbit from a programmer on Chrono Trigger for Super Nintendo Entertainment System. I used to do language exchanges with the programmer of the opening clock in Chrono Trigger and he told me a lot about his work in the game. In particular, he had to make the bike race completely branchless in order to fit within the frame budget. Yep, for all the bike controls, enemy AI, contact physics, etc., there is not an “if” statement in sight!

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks for that info. That's really interesting. N64 disassembly is way beyond my skills, but I probably know enough about the SNES and 6502ish assembly to have a look at what is going on in Chrono Trigger sometime.

[@renakunisaki]

Leaving a comment so I can share this later because there's no share button in this dumb app.

[@yeez13]

Tri-Ace, eh? Nice! Love the Star Ocean series and Resonance of Fate! Keep up the good work

[@jhkuno88]

Cool story bro....and im friends with Elvis, not the alien....

[@infinity2z3r07]

The Leslie Nielsen-sounding voice actor from Infernal Machine is Douglas Lee. He also voiced Indy for Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992 PC)

[@jasonblalock4429]

Yeah, instantly recognized his voice. So at least LucasArts was consistent with their fake Indys.

[@cloudstrife1983]

Surely you can't be serious?

[@jedewitz]

Dude for real. Instantly recognizable.

[@adam1984pl]

Great game ,but really hard,you can stuck in same moments.

[@frankb5728]

I didn't remember the game much but when I heard the voice I knew exactly who it was.

[@felman87]

Digital Foundry has a video on Resident Evil 2 on the N64 for their DF Retro series. It's absolutely fascinating how they managed to compress a game that clocks in at 600MB (the devs said they could've fit everything on a single CD if they weren't pressed for time.) into a 64MB cartridge.

[@V3ntilator]

There is also a dedicated video for this. Only 6 people worked on it. RE 2 is easily #1 as hardest game to port to N64 ever and it isn't even in this video at all.

[@MrMarinus18]

It is also important to remember that the PS1 can not read 2 discs at once. So everything that is present in both versions needs to be on both discs. On a single discs you only need to include those assets once, not twice.

[@Keanine]

@@V3ntilator ...What? RE2 is at 18:15

[@handsomeDRAC]

@@V3ntilator smh

[@JMFSpike]

That massive compression technique was also used to get Mega Man Legends on the N64, retitled Mega Man 64. It was just a little bit less impressive do to the game being around 200MB smaller, and I don't believe anything was added to the game like RE2. However, I have read that the enemy locations are different in the N64 version.

[@C.I...]

"realistic locations" He says as he immediately enters a cave full of 20 foot tall glowing crystals with a road in it.

[@DuckAlertBeats]

You beat me to it :)

[@shaun8062]

So you haven't been there I take it?

[@Interference22]

With regards to lights, a lot of N64 games do use a form pre-built lighting: it's baked into the vertex colours. By this, I mean that every point on a 3D model can be assigned a colour value, which then smoothly combines with the assigned texture to tint it. It's not as sharp as burning these effects directly into textures but, considering the blurriness of the graphics, it looks fine on the N64. This technique is also very handy for getting around the memory limitations of the hardware (both the system itself and the cartridge): games like Goldeneye would use greyscale textures for a lot of surfaces and then add colour using the vertices, as black and white textures take up less space (one channel of data rather than 3 - red, green, and blue).

[@davidmcgill1000]

And this would still be standard for Gamecube as well. Can pretty easily spot the additional vertices added to lerp between vertex colors for lighting. Actually rather rare to see environments use hardware lighting.

[@RosalinaSama]

the rainbow bowser in the final boss of super mario 64 is my favorite use of this

[@vaiyt]

Not an n64 game, but Soul Reaver used vertex painting for the real time transitions between living and spectral worlds. When you changed worlds all the game did was move the vertices around, paint them different colors and load a new object table.

[@ps5hasnogames55]

@@RosalinaSama gay bowser real

[@applebottomjames]

PS2 games did the same thing with black and white textures for most titles.

[@first__last]

2:07 Notice how the car's wheels and grill aren't rendered if they are occluded by the rest of the car. It's that kind of detailed optimization which really shows how dedicated they were to pushing the hardware to its absolute limit.

[@Szala89r]

I guess it was z buffor

[@chairforce0ne]

16:59 omg that speech about the lava gets sampled by Boards of Canada on the track Dandelion

[@bananachild1936]

Great video! But why isn't Conker's BFD on this list? That game I think absolutely pushed the N64 to its limits as well as being a great swansong title to a great console. It's got high-res textures (well, for an N64 title anyway), full voice acting clip on every single character who can talk, high-poly character models (especially on Conker the main character), great lighting effects all around here and there, and a sh*ton more. But most important of all, it's a fantastic game made by Rareware.

[@trapez77]

I notice you didn’t mention the frame rate

[@bananachild1936]

@@trapez77 Oh yeah you're right about that. Like most of Rareware's graphically impressive N64 titles at the time, Conker's BFD's frame rate are sh*tty that's for sure. As is Perfect Dark's. But Conker's I think was capped at like an unstable 20 FPS or something. Which is all the more reason why the game pushed the N64 to it's absolute limits.

[@linkthehero8431]

My mom got me that game as a kid, but once she saw gameplay, she found out that just because the star is a furry squirrel doesn't mean it's automatically safe for children 😆

[@exaltedb]

@@bananachild1936 Rare focused on pushing the visuals as high as they could while keeping the framerate _just_ high enough to be still playable

[@imn0trelevant290]

It also has pseudo reflections, pseudo framebuffer motion blur, real-time pixelated censorship (it is real-time, you can pause during the cut-scene and the menu gets pixelated!) pseudo dynamic shadows and a lot of vertex lighting moving all over the place.

[@scottevensen2615]

Such a fascinating era for games! Really amazing the difference between N64's first and last games. And it was fun to grow up in the thick of it =D

[@1gnore_me.]

f-zero is fascinating, because it's a glimpse into what the world of gaming could have looked like if developers had prioritized FPS just like the 8 & 16 bit generations. sure, it's incredibly simple, but I think there's a certain charm to it. it's funny because I actually think the framerate & minimalist art direction makes it one of the best aged games on the console.

[@desamster]

It was criticized for lack of scenery at the time. Reviews mentioned 'mediocre graphics'. Oh the irony. That basic, low res N64 scenery doesn't look so appealing now. They made all the right decisions with F-Zero X. Still looks great with some added sharpness and draw distance through emulation.

[@Hektols]

Before Internet became mainstream the public only could see games in movement at displays at stores, TV ads or promotional videos, most of the time players only got an idea of how the game looked thought pics in specialized press.

[@renakunisaki]

I think Nintendo could have done themselves a favor with the N64 by focusing on cartoony graphic styles. People have imported Super Mario World textures into Super Mario 64 and they look fantastic.

[@ledorzejean-etienne3747]

Masterpiece, best space Racer ever

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

The graphics are minimal but the speed is fuckin Maxed. I like the plain backgrounds anyway

[@mark902]

turoc 3 was really surprising. the character models in the real time cut scenes are kind of insane for n64 with mouths that were convincingly animated.

[@dangerouslydazzling]

How about Turok: Dinosaur Hunter? Loved that game

[@fictionalmediabully9830]

@@dangerouslydazzling Turok 1 had a limited draw distance in comparison, so it looks less impressive. I will say it was very impressive for an early N64 game, it looked quite good and the framerate kept up. I haven't played 3 but I have played 2, and the framerate in that one was so bad it ruined the entire game.

[@omegarugal9283]

did you know it wasnt a complete game? a late prototype dump turned out to be identical to the final release, rage wars was meanto to be part of it

[@johnsmith-fz5pz]

@@dangerouslydazzling that was cool. never got a copy might have to soon when I can fire up the 64 again :D no.2 was good.

[@johnsmith-fz5pz]

3? I know 2 was on the 64? but 3? also I got it on the cube. after I realised how good it was on the 64. hired 1-2 on 64. and then when I got the cube. I was like yep toruk is happening :D

[@jjc0064]

Rares Jet Force Gemini and Conkers BFD are absolute stunners too.

[@renakunisaki]

A bit surprised they didn't show Dinosaur Planet either. Even if it wasn't released for N64, the unfinished leaked version does show some pretty impressive visuals. Of course it doesn't perform very well and has a lot of bugs, but that's normal for being unfinished.

[@nicklang319]

I always thought resident evil 2 was the most impressive game on the N64. The way they were able to cram a game that was on 2 disks for the playstation on to one cartridge was incredible. Not only that everything was there, and a lot of it looked better on the N64 minus the compressed cut scenes,but the fact the cut scenes were even there was super impressive.

[@enriquedossantos3283]

yeah they could have easily copped out and change the FMVs with a series of stills or flat flash style animation

[@workingmanbh]

The thing that made it easier than we thought, is that a lot of data exist on both disks. Repeated data....

[@lordterra1377]

If you think it looks better on N64 I would schedule an appointment with the eye doctor.

[@MrMarinus18]

The small texture cashe though again as RE2 relies heavily on textures to give detail rather than polygon count. The N64 usually does the opposite with higher polygon counts with lower resolution textures. The N64 did have a lot of power like being able to stretch textures and have sub-coordinates, these features were actually used to compress the video of RE2. They used the texture stretching ability of the N64 as a tool for upscaling so that they could compress it to a format far below what would fill the screen. They also used the sub-coordinate ability to create ghost frames so that they could cut the real framerate in half. The lighting engine of the N64 was used to increase contrast to compensate for the reduced color palate of the video and the multiple data streams and laggy RAM were taken advantage of to show a composed video. One thing many don't know is that on the N64 different parts of the video were stored as static images since they didn't need to move. They also used this same technique on the background with them changing the size of many with some being less than a tenth the size of the original, again using the 3D texture stretch capability of the N64 to stretch them to full size. The real challenge of Resident evil 2 was not necessarily the small cartridge format but rather the fact that because of the small format Nintendo never intended video to be used so the N64 had no video compression or decoding system build in. They had to use the tools of the N64 in very creative ways to create an improvised video decoder and decompression engine to make it happen. It wasn't just a case of cramming the video in, it makes very heavy use of the N64's unique features and it's not usable on anything else.

[@BurritoKingdom]

One of the most impressive aspects of all Factor 5 games is the audio. They developed their own audio middleware, MusyX, for the N64 that was also used in Resident Evil 2 for the N64. The N64 had no audio hardware, so audio really taxed the system. The higher quality and more channels used the more resources it took. Somehow MusyX used fewer resources and also compress the audio files to not take up too much space in a cart. Eventually they ported the MusyX middleware to the GBA and GameCube.

[@omegarugal9283]

instead of dedicated audio, the rsp was the multipurpose cpu for audio and video

[@BurritoKingdom]

@@omegarugal9283 yes I know but this caused many issues. The more resources used for audio, the fewer resources were available for graphics. This is why factor 5 games were so impressive. They looked great and sounded great.

[@Reshyrah]

There is another game that also significantly pushed the limits of the N64's hardware. One that featured incredible draw distance, ambient texture mapping and hours of spoken dialogue with moving speech patterns for each character's mouth. Acclaim Studios - Teeside "Shadow Man," which ran on the more powerful 'Vista' engine. Showcasing massive environments without the use of fog, it also supported the expansion pack for hi-res textures. Acclaim gave tons of support to the N64 and deserve the recognition, not just Rare.

[@omegarugal9283]

they had to cut the world in half but yes, impressive indeed

[@SOOKIE42069]

the n64 controller was built for MY HANDS. I can reach the z button with either middle finger from the outer fin grips. It remains my favorite controller to this day. If it had a second analog stick it'd be perfect.

[@Ricekrispy10]

Where can a second analog stick fit on that thing though

[@SOOKIE42069]

@@Ricekrispy10 replace the d-pad that barely got used in any games

[@MrPoeGhost]

Wait, but if the D-pad barely got used...why not just put your hand on the middle grip where the analog stick is? That way you don't have to reach your fingers three states over to reach the Z button.

[@SOOKIE42069]

@@MrPoeGhost most people did hold it like that. I have really big hands so I held the left fin.

[@Chris-du3jc]

I’m surprised history has not been kinder to the N64 controller. I still think it’s one of the best controllers of all time. Super comfy and really versatile.

[@dreamcastfan]

I agree. I find it fairly upsetting to see something that helped bring analogue control, dedicated camera controls and rumble to the mainstream commonly dismissed as something you need three hands to hold. I think it’s very comfortable too, and I find the sensitivity of the analogue stick much better than many modern sticks. Aiming in GoldenEye is much more accurate than on many modern games with huge dead zones and weird acceleration settings. The whole narrative around the N64 seems to be that it was a huge failure, yet it outsold the Saturn and also its own successor the GameCube. It’s only because the PS1 usurped Nintendo’s dominance that it seems to get no respect, despite being host to classics like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time.

[@jasonblalock4429]

Eh, I think it's over-hated and it was comfy, but there was just no need for the three prongs. Later third-party controllers like the Super Pad 64 came out that put the D-pad and thumbstick next to each other, and those worked just fine. Although they did look kind of goofy and lopsided because the left side was a lot chonkier than the right.

[@stevesteve0521]

It’s mostly just the joystick people complain about. The rest of the controller is pretty good honestly

[@infinity2z3r07]

Can't go with you there lol. It's impossible to go back to one after the RetroFighters Brawler 64 pad

[@inphanta]

There’s a lot of negative revisionist history about the N64 in general, all of which is completely undeserved given the number of innovations it spawned, all of which made gaming what it is today.

[@malcolmar]

Again very well done. The N64 is one of my favorite consoles and a big reason why I am a retro gamer today. Thanks for showing Indiana Jones some love. I don't think that game gets enough attention. It was even better than the PC port of the game. Turok 3 is another game that really pushes the system. In some places, it almost looks like an early Gamecube or Xbox game. Keep up the great work!

[@Soonjai]

Great examples, but to me World Driver Championship is a much more impressive racing game on the N64 than Beetle Adventure Racing. It has really great visuals, runs smoothly with barely any fog or pop up, offers High Resolution modes without the Expansion pack that still run smooth and on the Audio side it has things like Doppler Effects that where very rare on the N64. The whole package really looks and feels more like a very early PS2 game than a N64 one. BTW, I loved the wireframe scene you showed for Beetle Adventure Racing, never expected that it stops rendering whatever front tire you can´t see anyway, always assumed that the player car is always rendered in it´s entirety in those games.

[@V3ntilator]

"World Driver Championship" is indeed the most impressive racer on N64. I still own it on real cart. It's game engine were praised everywhere back then.

[@stavriminev5325]

Wasn't it also pushing like double or triple the supposed polygon limit on the N64? As far as I'm concerned this is the most technically impressive game on the N64

[@andreyansimov5442]

I have both of them. Not played a lot. But I have Beetle adventure racing because Im huge NFS fan, and this is just NFS optimised for kids. WDC is more like pro racing, with high res, but kinda boring. Anyway, Im going to finish them both, just need to fully rework power brick, cause my retrobit just broke.

[@roberto1519]

Time to visit the blurry, misty lands of the Nintendo 64.

[@WaterBug64]

Sega fan, am I right?

[@roberto1519]

@@WaterBug64 Actually, no. But I had the chance to play from Atari up to the PS3. I probably played to the same extent the Genesis and SNES in the generation prior to the N64. I'm no fan of a brand in particular, I would never replace a PS1 by a Dreamcast, nor a Sega Saturn by a N64, but I would totally choose a Dreamcast, PS1 or Saturn over the N64 every single time I had the chance. I have no hate towards the console, I just don't find it appealing, nor I think the PC-Engine is, so no favoritism, just personal opinion. I still remember clearly the pressure magazines put into the Ultra 64, expectations were high, we ended up with a foggy, blurry, low frame rate games console using cartridges and a strange controller, but they did the same mistakes with the GameCube, later Wii, this is what they are, it's not me.

[@desamster]

@@roberto1519 First and second party games made the system shine though. The industry was still figuring out 3D back then. Nintendo did fix all of the hardware mistakes with the gamecube. Contrary to popular belief, it was quite powerful, on par with Xbox, but in a smaller, more energy efricient form factor. It just didn't sell all that well, in part due to kiddy image (purple color and a handle didn't help). In contrast, the PS2 looked sleek, performance was hyped and of course dvd playback was a big deal.

[@desamster]

Take me down to Misty Lands City Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty Oh, won't you please take me home?

[@roberto1519]

@@desamster This console will only be able to take you down to the 20FPS city where the grass is blurry and the girls are misty.

[@Sauraen]

Great video! Looking forward to the follow-up! Few things: The reason nobody can give a definitive answer for how many triangles the N64 can draw per second is because it depends massively on their size. There are a lot of factors affecting how long it takes to draw a triangle, but to a first approximation, it's proportional to the number of pixels which have to be filled, plus an extra overhead per triangle. So it would be possible to make a test program which draws triangles, all occupying only 1 pixel, with as many features turned off as possible, and get some very large number for the maximum number of triangles per frame, but that's not realistic for a game situation. A rough rule of thumb would be about 1000 triangles per 1/60th second with all features turned on, or double that with only using some features. I keep hearing people talking about streaming textures from the cartridge as a solution to the texture cache. This isn't really a thing. Sure you can write code to load textures from the cart to RAM on the fly to save RAM space. But the RDP can't draw polygons with textures directly from the cart. They have to be copied from cart to RAM and then from RAM to the 4 KiB texture cache first. And you can swap textures often, for example if you have a video you can load and draw 32x32 tiles of it, with each tile being two triangles. But any single triangle can only use what's in the texture cache, and this is limited to 4 KiB.

[@Snivy102]

Finally, someone that explains WHY these games push the system to the limit

[@tonybarnes2920]

Hey, thanks for the mention of the technological marvel Nuclear Strike 64. It's so cool that you recognized just how much was going on per-frame in that game, like the fact that the entire landscape is a gigantic unique texture projected over the kilometers of terrain or that every vehicle on-screen was texture mapped, too. Also, if you had the expansion pack, you could use it to up the resolution to 640x480 or run it the way I liked, which was in the normal res of 320x240 but at 60fps. Anyway, thanks for the shout out and your recognition. ;)

[@aidanwalker2568]

any need for the sarcasm?

[@tonybarnes2920]

@@aidanwalker2568 I certainly thought so. Any need to respond to my "sarcasm"? I don't see you commenting on every snarky comment here. Is this video yours? If so, note; Nuclear Strike 64 should be on the list. It's pushing the N64 to its limits, even if you didn't notice or think so, for the aforementioned reasons. There, no "sarcasm", just simple stated.

[@allideni836]

Have you considered doing interviews about Nuclear Strike 64's development?

[@tonybarnes2920]

@@allideni836 I do interviews, mostly general about my long-winded career. Most of the time when people interview me about a specific game, it's about Desert/Jungle Strike. Also, I'm in a few books covering Genesis, Playstation and XBox games. I would post links, but better just to search for "Tony Barnes interview" or "Tony Barnes game developer".

[@micksterminator3]

Seeing you float through the walls in F-Zero X brought back tons of memories

[@nthgth]

Haha I kept expecting him to fall and lose a life

[@SOOKIE42069]

You should check out Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage. One of the few games to use the Expansion Pak to get higher res textures, it had an enormous pseudo-open world for the time and reasonably attractive graphics for just how stuffed full the cartridge was. One of my favorites to this day. I stole my copy by never returning it to Blockbuster.

[@ktvx.94]

I really love this sort of videos because it really gives you ideas for creatively overcoming limitations when developing your own games. Even if they're not the same limitations, it just inspires that kind of clever thinking.

[@dr_ubo]

This is the exact reason I love these videos. I learn so much about creative out of the box ways to defeat adversity, especially when reviewing older, limited hardware.

[@bbloomfield6497]

Great that you're not upscaling footage, way more authentic. I remember renting RE:2 and recording footage to VHS because it really was a technical marvel.

[@MySamurai77]

N64 had no wibbles. PS1 and Saturn graphics all had really bad wibbling. You know what i mean by wibbling? . When you emulate N64 and push up the resolution they look much better than PS1 at high res on an emulator. Clean and without wibbling.

[@V3ntilator]

2D graphics on PS1 looks terrible in high resolution too because you can see all the blocks. PS1 is also famous for texture warping and clipping bugs even on it's best games. I laughed when i tried PS1 the first time at launch because of all it's graphics glitches and wobbling, so i went and bought a Nintendo 64 instead. Also. Let's not forget the insanely slow loading times on PS1.

[@nthgth]

Yeah MVG has a video explaining that "wibble wobble" pretty well. I think it's basically that PS1 (and Saturn) lack a floating point unit but N64 has one. (Not that I fully understand what that does)

[@nelchid]

Love this channel. Great narration. Beautifully written script & expertly edited. I've not seen a badly done video yet on this channel. I wish the channel much future success. Quality deserves to do well because it's always preceded by hard work!

[@Sharopolis]

Thank you so much!

[@Yngdady]

Beetle adventure racing does smoother reflection texture refreshing than some need for speed games on ps2!

[@eyokfla]

Also : Banjo Tooie Conker BFD Donkey Kong 64 Turok 2 and 3 Zelda Majora's Mask Tony Hawk 3 Sin and Punishment

[@dumpmuch]

I don't know them all but I agree with majoras mask, it could be a ps2/xbox game. Also It's so polished and complete, even without framedrops.

[@jedewitz]

Ok it might be fun to hate on Indy's voice of you want, but Douglas Lee was also the voice of Indy in Fate of Atlantis so it's not like they just found some guy off the street.

[@frankcampos8929]

Great video! Please, you need to make a part 2 of this. Very interesting to see these tools helping to understand what happens in our so beloved N64 hardware. There are so many other games that we would be glad to see your analysis of, like Donkey Kong 64, Conker's Bad Fur Day, World Driver Championship, Sin and Punishment, Quake 2, Turok 2 and Zelda Majora's Mask.

[@JD3Gamer]

Honestly, the best example of a game that pushes the N64’s limits is Kaze64s rom hack of SM64. He’s managed to make the game look better and run smoother.

[@nietzscheente1271]

Fun video with nice explainations. Game development always fascinated me. Do another part. There are plenty more of great graphically impressive games on the N64. Forsaken 64, Turok 2 and 3, DK 64, Zelda Majoras Mask, Star Craft 64, Conkers Bad Fur Day.

[@deedeemerry1295]

also World Driver Championship

[@wayofthekodiak3118]

StarFox 64 is up there too.

[@geterdonein01]

WaveRace 64 with its realistic water, Conker's BFD with its completely custom CPU microcode to add extra real time light sources and mpeg decoding to make all the voice acting possible on a 64MB cart, and Rush 2049 for generally having great graphics and uncharacteristically sharp textures, would be some of my notable additions to most advanced N64 games.

[@jhkuno88]

Rush 2049 doesnt have sharp textures at all lmao. It low res as all fk.....it has many different textures tho which goes a long way to make graphics look good......what it does have is amazing draw distance where you can see the whole level in some of the big jumps, thats its biggest win

[@geterdonein01]

@@jhkuno88 I agree, the draw distance is insane. It was an Expansion Pak game though, so it would make sense it would have a leg up on many other N64 games.

[@mstaken4me]

It's funny, because when you said 'it's probably not the problem you're thinking of', I actually *was* immediately thinking of the texture cache, not the cart/ROM size, lol - it's definitely a lame limitation of an otherwise extremely powerful system! I understand it was likely a cost cutting measure, but does anyone actually have any facts on why this 4KB limitation was the case? Seems like a brutal oversight.

[@cube2fox]

I think MVG has a video explaining the technical issues. Basically, Silicon Graphics didn't have a lot of experience with real time rendering hardware (well, nobody really did at the time lol) so there were a lot of mistakes. One thing I remember though, I think it was also possible to stream textures directly from the cartridge ROM, but this had other problems.

[@JPlokford]

I think was architectural. As in they didn't pick a number out of thin air or cheap out on Ram. The chip was designed around a 4k cache which was clearly not enough in practice. If it ran a bit faster it would be less of a problem as you'd just switch textures more often but texture swaps in the final hardware were expensive.

[@mstaken4me]

@@JPlokford thank you, I appreciate this response. Interesting that this would be a chip restriction.

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@mstaken4me For what it's worth, many developers got some extra mileage out of that 4kb by making the textures in monochrome, and then adding color via the polygons themselves. Another trick was to use lots of smaller textures that combined into a larger one - Rare had no problems admitting why their level of detail looked so good.

[@mstaken4me]

@@cube2fox makes sense that real-time rendering wasn't huge yet, especially for SGI, who from what I understand mostly did 3D animation stuff, which was virtually *never* real-time.

[@Ithinkfartsarefunny]

Blast Corps featured what I believe is the first use of real-time bump-mapping in any game ever, and conker's bad fur day had a shitload of wizardry. That's not to even mention games like bangai-o. Another video at some point?

[@V3ntilator]

Body Harvest on N64 were basically a open world tech demo for GTA 3. Same developer.

[@quackman]

@@V3ntilator check out Space Station Silicon Valley, by DMA Design soon to become Rockstar North

[@V3ntilator]

@@quackman I already did back then. I know it were a praised game.

[@brandonginsburg3120]

Bump-mapping in Blast Corps: the dump truck and van.

[@casanovafunkenstein5090]

It's quite impressive how readable the FZero game is in wireframe mode. A bit of touch-up and some bloom effects for the parts of the track that influence your vehicle and you could easily put out a game with that aesthetic today and get commended for the artstyle.

[@michaelcalvin42]

Forgive me if somebody has already pointed this out, but at ~25:17 you mention that you don't think you've seen this duplicated-geometry reflection technique used on anything on the PlayStation. I can think of one example off the top of my head. Metal Gear Solid had some reflective floors (I remember them in the Psycho Mantis fight), and I'm pretty sure they worked the same way (or rather, I always assumed that they do; I've never verified it with an emulator.)

[@shaun8062]

Great video! Please, you need to make a part 2 of this. There are so many other games that we would be glad to see your analysis of from the N64, such as Turok and Conkers bad fur day where there is full voice acting, etc!!!

[@BeefJerkey]

Factor 5 is really cool. Somehow I didn't realize they made N64 games until I saw this video. The Indiana Jones game has a surprising amount of voice-acting, though the character animations in cutscenes are a bit too robotic. Not uncommon for that era, of course. The animations in Perfect Dark are _fantastic._ I think, in part, this was accomplished with motion-capture equipment (the same goes for GoldenEye). Rare games often lacked in-game voice work, but they were the tops in smooth, detailed animations on the console.

[@casanovafunkenstein5090]

I was kinda impressed by the way that woman's hair was able to move. They clearly just did that to show off. It's like the N64 equivalent of the bread eating scene from the Yakuza series.

[@anactualmotherbear]

While the N64 had a limitation for textures, saving those frames as bitmaps must have been stored somewhere else. This is how they were able to do blur effects, leaving a trail of bitmaps that faded out with each frame.

[@ellebhee5045]

Love these videos! I'm not a coder and know barely anything about how people get the best out of things but it's amazing seeing what blew my mind 25+ years ago.

[@billcook4768]

You: Lots of interesting info about Beetle Racing’s graphics. Me: You missed a shortcut!

[@HipsterBlackMetalOfficial]

I would have added Mace The Dark Age to this. The characters looked like a semi early Xbox game.

[@fshoaps]

What a great channel. A Brit, simple editing, talking about real shit.

[@treelzebub]

Probably the first subtle Boards of Canada reference I've ever encountered, in 25+ years as a fan 😄

[@adamcate6770]

You left out the fact that unlike the vast majority of other titles, F ZERO X doesn’t utilize the Z buffer, effectively halving the amount of pixels it has to draw.

[@nthgth]

Huh, interesting. I wonder how it knows what to draw in front of what without the Z buffet then

[@adamcate6770]

@@nthgth I think it just sorts polygons and draws them in that order, similar to the what PlayStation does (which has no z buffer)

[@JetWolfEX]

I didn't notice the reflections in beetle racing until now, it's so well pulled off it blends right in. For suggestions; is a game allowing you to create your own textures and map them on to 3d models you can also custom make without the use of 64DD considered impressive? Dezaemon 3d is a retail game that does exactly that, but even more you can make your own music, levels and create a full game out of all of it. I don't think anyone has actually done it though to this day, it's so much work and extremely complicated to work with. A lot of people are saying Sin and Punishment and it is really impressive but I think Bangai-o is technically the more impressive treasure game for pushing hundreds of sprites on screen at once on a system really not designed for 2d, Yoshi story has slow down with just 20 or so characters on screen.

[@ghost085]

Rally Challenge 2000 had some sort of realtime environment maps. And another cool trick is bumpmapping in Blast Corps.

[@3dmarth]

The polygon rate that people are always quoting is 100K per second, but some games clearly went above that. IIRC, both F-Zero X and Kirby 64 (in cutscenes only) could push 3000+ triangles per frame at 60fps, and San Francisco Rush 2049 and the NFL QB Club games could exceed 10K per frame at ~20fps. Either way, it's about 200,000 per second in those cases- but I haven't spent enough time with geometry dumps and analytics to get stats on every game!

[@Greenchrysopsaro]

That Indy Voice Actor really does sound like Leslie Nelson Every time he spoke it sounded like a clip from Police Squad 😂

[@clanpsi]

Given that a majority of N64 games ran at far less than 60 fps, I'd say most of them pushed the limits of the system.

[@enhancementtank5876]

Really thought the same thing. Games should lagg or they dont push limits. 60 fps is a hardware Pusher though

[@keithlowe5512]

I had a PS1 before I owned an N64 many years later. Loved the PS1 but the sheer scale of the levels on games like Banjo Kazoo-ie really impressed me.

[@mcrsit]

15:58 lol look at that glorious hair physics running on 4mb ram and 100Mhz. And that's without any of that TressFX/Hairworks boolsheet!

[@Johnlmooring]

I can only imagine the power of the N64 had they gone with CD.

[@crazedlunatic43]

It would’ve been prohibitively expensive at launch.

[@DuckAlertBeats]

Nice one. Your driving always makes me nervous though I can't lie

[@Flashfm3000]

Awesome video! The BAR portion reminded me of another boundary-pushing N64 title (that hardly ever gets mentioned anymore): World Driver Championship. That was truly the system’s “answer” to Gran Turismo. Was really difficult to progress in the championship standings but damn I loved those lens flares 😂

[@Myako]

Great video, as usual. 👏🏻👏🏻 Some extra suggestions, if you're willing to consider scene demos and homebrew games: Midwest Gaming Classic 2021 (by Retroactive) Nacho64 (by SPLiT) Portal 64 (by James Lambert)

[@TanookiSuit]

For best Rare game I would have if you want a technology expo I would have done Conker's Bad Fur Day. The game displays some amazing details, layers of it no less, that PD just didn't or couldn't do. Conker himself with the separate parts and depths of the face to have an independent working at all times set of eyes and mouth contents, but also the fur tech so that his tail and the rest had individual fuzzies to enjoy blowing in the wind. Largely the game environment had this similar level of detail going on as well, while also having a heavy amount of cut and live action scenes loaded with a heap of spoken lines and solid sound effects backed with a quality clean musical score. The game had more detail present, more distance to things, clearer cartoony visuals, and above all, didn't chug into the dumpster frame rate wise like PD did quite often unfortunately. This is a solid video and big thanks for Indiana Jones, not enough could be said there, a Factor 5 video could be done on the black magic used with their custom code to get those games doing N64 things N64 was thought just not doable. If another video were done those would be great options, but also pushing the hardware Midway did wonders with Hydro Thunder, it competed well for speed and detail with the dreamcast one minus the millions more polygons going on, and again, it didn't chug and sputter like the PS release did, similar solid work with Ready 2 Rumble and Gauntlet too, Midway at one point did care. I think Mega Man 64 despite the tinny compression to the vocal parts really pushed it with Mega Man 64. And perhaps NST/Namco with the Ridge Racer 64 game as it was no slouch. Ultimately another and it was a Treasure/Nintendo duo doing it, but Sin & Punishment went heavy on the 3D environments. Now while N64 wasn't a 2D powerhouse on paper, I think a nod would have to be made for the N64 version of the Dreamcast game Bakaretsu Muteki Bangaioh would need to be done because the amount of detail, speed, and items on screen at time with the sprites is insane but as it's not a sprite machine I think they were all done as individual polygons.

[@paulgraves1392]

1+ vote from me for mentioning Conkers Bad Fur Day. That game had coloured lighting, dynamic shadows, facial expressions and lip syncing and did not make use of the Expansion Pak.

[@Lunar994]

The RE2 port does omit some things. The FMV where Annette talks about her husband has two variations where she's either talking to Ada or Claire. The N64 version only shows the Claire variation even if Ada is the one talking to her. Additionally, it's missing the 2nd credits theme. There are probably some other small things that didn't make it into the port, but those two are the ones I know about.

[@seriousstuff8887]

Turok 2

[@MichaelPuterbaugh]

"realistic vehicles in realistic locations" 1 second later: 10 foot tall glowing crystals

[@mattwolf2000]

I believe the N64 can also use the cartridge as an additional extra texture cache.

[@channelofstuff6662]

yup, just the lack of storage was the biggest fault.

[@DFX2KX]

@@channelofstuff6662 and swapping from the cart isn't as fast either, if memory serves. so you'd have to be very judicious about how you used it.

[@omegarugal9283]

you can but is not very useful, the cpu can no access it that fast, textures had to go throught the slow rambus to the rsp

[@mattwolf2000]

@@omegarugal9283 I thought Rare games and even Turok 2 and probably many more had really good textures

[@misterlexx2721]

Technology wasn't so advanced. Now, a little micro sd card can you 500 GB .

[@idontwantahandlethough]

Oh god, I'm *never* going to be able to un-see the flowers in metal mario now!

[@sgillman16]

Banjo-Tooie should have been on here. That looked visually impossible

[@xenorac]

You are bang on about the voice sounding more like Leslie Nielsen!

[@rgerber]

I think World Driver Championship is the number one most impressive. It is basically Gran Turismo for the N64 it's got reflections and all the fancy stuff and runs at an impressive 60fps! It was released very late in N64 lifespan and they used tons of microcode to get the result. Unfortunately, like many others, i never heard about this game :(

[@KantiDono]

I feel like the '4KB texture cache' is overhyped as a weakness of the N64. Certainly, it was small, but the technology for high-res graphics wasn't really there on other platforms either. That's why the mascot characters of both platforms - Mario and Crash Bandicoot - used untextured shaded polygons. And nevermind that most people were playing on a cheap CRT TV of the era that made everything look a bit blurry anyway.

[@omegarugal9283]

shaded polygons was all 3d the ps1/n64 were made to do, texturing and everything else came up later

[@anon_y_mousse]

What emulator did you use to get the wireframe images?

[@harrisiliadis4711]

Few games that could have made that lost imo: Donkey Kong 64 real time shadows from characters, lipsync turok 3, conker bad fury day, MegaMan legends for textures and resolution

[@Gigidag77]

Beetle Adventure Racing was amazing. Such a hidden gem.

[@nthgth]

Yes! Fun multiplayer too.

[@Fiddlesticks86]

Perfect Dark also allowed you to shoot out lights, which was amazing at that time.

[@lineriderrulz]

16:58 unexpected moment for something sampled by Boards of Canada to turn up But a more relevant aside, really appreciate you going into some technical detail on the games featured in this

[@jhkuno88]

That Rogue Squadron footage is killer man...the skillz

[@juggalo4life247mfkr]

There were a few games that I liked on the n64,but I enjoyed playing the Playstation, and even the Saturn a little bit more.

[@RPLAsmodeus]

That sourced lighting in Perfect Dark, Rareware first used in Jet Force Gemini in the nightclub.

[@LITTLE1994]

All the 32 and 64MB games (such as Turok 2, Perfect Dark, and Conker Bad Fur Day) are the only ones that BLEW the N64 hardware. F-Zero X was solely for speed, though.

[@EarmonkeyMusic]

Beetle Adventure Racing was such a great game. I miss arcade racers like that. It did look great for its time but it was also really nicely balanced and fun

[@uk4890]

There's a long list games like World Driver Championship, Jet Force Gemini, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Indy Racing 2000, San Francisco Rush 2049, Ready 2 Rumble, Vigilante 8 (With Ultra high rez hidden mode), Rayman 2, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

[@jong2359]

1:37 - It's probably not what your thinking, it isn't storage space..... proceeds to talk about storage space limitations. I am not crapping on the video, it was just kind of funny.

[@franzusgutlus54]

1:17 "real vehicle in realistic locations" Proceeds to drive through a crystal cave...😂👌

[@richardstone8615]

Stunt racer was a Block Buster exclusive and still holds up to this day but it’s costs 💰

[@andrewmitchell3962]

The compression tools that were used to compress the N64 version of RE2 for N64 were the same tools used to compress Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal!

[@chemergency]

Beetle Adventure Racing is a real hidden gem.

[@NiGHTSnoob]

The Playstation actually only has 2kb of texture cache, half that of the N64's. The issue with the N64's is the manner in which it's loaded and read, not the size of it.

[@shagstars]

conkers bad furday has some nice physics and realtime shadows and light which was amazing for n64

[@jordanbenson2980]

Absolutely love these videos mate. Excited to watch.

[@soundspark]

One thing to note is that N64's bilinear interpolation had a bit of a shortcut where it took only 3 samples instead of 4 like modern GPUs do by default. Emulators eventually added the 3-point filter, and so did the remake of Doom 64.

[@thegreathadoken6808]

Any chance of one on the superb, the wondrous, the amazing Commodore Plus 4? Cheers

[@blackenedheart9592]

Wow. Cool. I didn't realize you posted a new video until just now! 😊 I love your channel and your videos my man!

[@TylerMcNamer]

Beetle Adventure Racing is my JAM!

[@nthgth]

I can still hear the announcer saying "niiice wheels" 😄

[@SyntheToonz]

I've got the Beetle racing game and it is great. I also have the Start Wars games. Believe it or not, even though I have a drawer full of carts, I haven't seen most of the other games covered here. Definitely looking for the Indiana Jones game now.

[@KaylaJoyGunn]

For part two, you could look into episode one pod racer, a pleasant surprise at the time.

[@quackman]

Conker's Bad Fur Day! the colored lighting in Rock Solid, all the audio

[@TheGreatBeard]

Looking forward to part 2. World Driver Championship looks amazing

[@dumpmuch]

You forgot Zelda Majoras Mask, that game looked like it could be a PS2 game, and the game itself is soo big. I'm amazed how that could fit in that cardridge without framedrops etc.