Games That Push the Limits of The Nintendo 64

[@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.

[@rars0n]

Those water effects looked great but they didn't push the limits of the console at all. That's more of a "clever implementation" kind of thing.

[@haggy102]

@@rars0n One can argue that many limits were pushed by a "clever implementation" so not sure why that would disqualify the OPs comment about wave race.

[@rars0n]

@@haggy102 Because it doesn't fit the criteria of the video. The game is visually great, and it still holds up well today, but it's not really "pushing the hardware."

[@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....

[@xtr.7662]

Perfect dark is around 10-15fps 99% of the time no way it got above 20fps in a significant amount of time

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@rars0n]

@@Szala89r Exactly, that was a hardware feature. One of the main features touted over its competitors, and specifically the Playstation.

[@chairforceoneYT]

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

[@briannagravely9349]

So happy to see someone recognize boards of Canada.

[@cleaver5326]

Me too. 😊it’s weird to hear that I thought it was from some 1970s documentary

[@EbonySaints]

​@@cleaver5326After looking up a lot of the samples for Music Has the Rights to Children, I'm shocked that it isn't from 70s Sesame Street or The Electric Company.

[@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?

[@bluedistortions]

He said "relatively realistic," and that cave is about the only one that's not.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.)

[@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

[@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

[@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.

[@lmk10000]

@@BurritoKingdom I've read that for each of the sound channels the CPU use is about 1%. So, for example Final Fantasy VII uses about 16 sound channels on the PSX just for the OST (most of the time really about 12 channels). So it would be 16% of the N64 CPU just for an audio of that quality.

[@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

[@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!

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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".

[@bluedistortions]

​@@tonybarnes2920oh man I loved desert and jungle strike. Got the latter brand new for Christmas, and my grandma said it had better be good, because it was $80! It was!

[@Snivy102]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

With mipmaps and on standard definition ( not HD resolution in emulator), screen resolution would be the limit on most polygons. Only huge polygons would need to be split up into a grid. So you would “stream” the tiles from RAM to TMEM. This is almost similar to how the PSX cache works, but more efficient because the N64 would use the complete TMEM content and not randomly have cache misses. The SDK has code for this so that RSP manages this for us instead of running idle while the RDP fills the pixels.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@MrMarinus18the RSP has floating point but also integer instructions. If Nintendo would have published the documentation, it would have been easy to port a software codec from Windows (Pentium MMX).

[@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

[@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.

[@Nightweaver1]

When you think about how far gaming has come in only 25 years, think about how tiny the resolution was for the N64. You wonder why when going back to those games they look all blurry and pixelated? It's because they are. A 320x240 resolution is anywhere from 1/4 to 1/8 the size of resolutions we use today, with a much lower polygon count as well. But the N64 was amazing for the late '90s. It was the first 3D-capable console I played.

[@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.

[@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.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

It is loaded by the RSP . We already got this demo where the CPU is used to split triangles into tiles, but where is the benchmark of the API function which you just have to call instead of the default triangle item?

[@MichaelPuterbaugh]

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

[@housewyfe]

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.

[@housewyfe]

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

[@juststatedtheobvious9633]

@@housewyfe 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.

[@housewyfe]

@@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.

[@fritzeyok]

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.

[@xenorac]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@HipsterBlackMetalOfficial]

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

[@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!!!

[@billcook4768]

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

[@craftymulligar]

Good thing about n 64 that is its weakness. Is it don't take up much memory on SD card. You can put the whole n64 games collection and hacks and new fan games on one card.

[@nthgth]

Good point. I suppose a PS1 ROM would be the same size as the actual game on the discs. Not terrible for today's SD cards but you probably won't fit _hundreds_ of games on one.

[@syncmonism]

Kaze has argued that the 4k texture cache isn't as limiting as people seem to think it is. I don't remember what his argument was exactly, as it was pretty technical, but he might be the most knowledgeable programmer in terms of how best to optimize N64 performance with the benefit of modern programming knowledge combined with knowledge of how to program for the system itself, so he probably has a point. I can't recall if he was arguing that a significantly larger texture cache would be a waste, or if it was just not nearly as big of a deal as a lot of people say it is. From what I've heard, the latency of the system memory is a bigger limiting factor than the size of the texture cache, though my understanding is also that a larger texture cache likely would have helped to mitigate the drawback of the latency of the memory. The memory had extremely high bandwidth for the time, with literally 100 times more memory bandwidth than the Playstation, but, as I understand it, it would have been better if they had used the slower but lower latency memory that the Playstation was using. I'm sure it would have still been possible to have achieved a higher bandwidth than the playstation's memory system by simply using a wider bus. The N64's two main chips really did kind-of deserve lower latency memory and also a higher capacity storage medium to go with them. The floppy disk drive honestly would have actually been really good if Nintendo had actually launched it early on in the life cycle, as those floppy disks were far cheaper to make per MB than cartridges were, and it would have been feasible for larger budget games with lots of content (such as RPGs) to have used multiple disks and still been significantly cheaper than using a much lower capacity cartridge. Cartridges could be made to hold the same capacity as one of those floppy disks, but there was an enormous difference in cost, and while the floppy disk load times were slower, they were still MUCH faster than CD loading times on the PS1 or Saturn.

[@fshoaps]

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

[@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.

[@franzusgutlus54]

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

[@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

[@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!

[@PickleRicktusGrin]

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.

[@LocrianDorian]

Beetle Adventure Racing was a real treat back in the day, especially on a CRT which further smoothens the visuals, it looked stunning for the time.

[@DuckAlertBeats]

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

[@ghost085]

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

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@MrDamo34]

Nintendo gimped the Super NES with the crap CPU then gimped their next console with the texture cash when they had a decent CPU that because of the limited texture cash, couldn’t be fully utilised.

[@renakunisaki]

Then the GameCube was pretty good but couldn't compete.

[@crazedlunatic43]

@@renakunisakiContrary to popular belief, the system’s install base is very much on par with the Original Xbox and unlike Microsoft, Nintendo made a solid profit of off the GameCube since software attachment was high at a 9.59 ratio. GameCube definitely couldn’t compete with the huge success that the PlayStation 2 generated, but it was able to better compete against the Original Xbox.

[@andreasng]

the "coronas" is lens flares. and they are (back in the day) always a quad with a texture on it. The quad draws on top of the entire screen and if it is being occluded it'll fade a away. The dual world reflection is a completely standard way of doing reflections, again... back in the day. See whiteboard in MGS for ps as an example of it being done.. .well on ps.

[@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.

[@first__last]

The small (by today's standards) size of the N64's 4 KB texture cache isn't quite the problem it's been memed up to be. What people often overlook is the fact that the PS1's texture cache is only half that size (in spite of PS1 games overall having (arguably) better graphics). And, while the PS1 could natively handle larger texture sizes without resorting to subdividing polygons, in practice they often had to subdivide anyways to reduce texture distortion. And that's not even mentioning the performance degradation you can get from using larger textures due to the extra cache misses (nothing comes for free, I suppose).

[@antusFireNova]

On this topic, I would recommend Kaze Emanuar's channel: he focuses on optimizing mario 64, and he's done an incredible job in pushing the limits of the engine, and is currently working on a fan game in that engine that has much more detailed environments with a much higher frame rate, all ok og hardware!

[@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)

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@adamcate6770others here commented that PS1 graphics had glitches for this reason. How do you sort within a vehicle? The track is just a tube, easy. At least on Jaguar the z-buffer shared a circuit with Gouraud shading, but not texture mapping. It kinda runs parallel to it. So the cost is actually about loading and storing the z spans through the RAMBus .

[@ConnorDeeg]

The World is Not Enough is also impressive and looks amazing. It is one of the few games I have played that efficiently utilizes the expansion pack for higher resolution. The environments are impressive and character models are high quality for the hardware.

[@treelzebub]

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

[@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 :(

[@gillesfleury2619]

@10:30 Some of the N64 features were indeed juicy about its rasterizer process but the amount of polygons the console was able to render wasn't higher than PS or Saturn it was actually lower.

[@sgillman16]

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

[@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.

[@LennyMarcusNY]

I just can't take. The cadence of. The voice over. It's like. It's an impression of what. A commentary should sound. Like.

[@FuelAirSparkTime]

Yes! I knew I was not alone in being irked by that.

[@juggalo4life247]

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.

[@djmips]

16:59 - you didn't slip that by me - actual Leslie Nielson from a documentary ""Dive to the Edge of Creation", and also used by Boards of Canada - Dandelion

[@Johnlmooring]

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

[@crazedlunatic43]

It would’ve been prohibitively expensive at launch.

[@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)

[@RetroDawn]

@@V3ntilator Of course you had to wait a year until the N64 released.

[@RetroDawn]

@@nthgth FPUs allow for fast math using a floating decimal point, otherwise you're stuck with integers (whole numbers) for math if you need to execute fast, and integers have much lower resolution, since you have to round up or down. You end up with jumps between two whole numbers (and can "wobble" back and forth between them if there is even a small change up or down) instead of a smooth gradation.

[@V3ntilator]

@@RetroDawn Of course i didn't need to wait one year as i owned PC and AMIGA...

[@umadbro4493]

15:23 there is even ambient occlusion

[@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.

[@Octolicia]

21:18 : Well... Rare is a British company and British has a tendency to look into consoles to pull out all of the potential. That's how Argonauts ended up impressing Nintendo of America with their 3D prototype running on a Game Boy (Nintendo had no idea their handheld could do 3D.)

[@idontwantahandlethough]

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

[@SegaMario]

Many of Rare's games back in the day always pushed the console's limits. Battletoads on NES, Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day on N64, maybe even Conker: Live & Reloaded on the OG Xbox, because it looks like an Xbox 360 game, and at times an early Xbox One game!

[@jhkuno88]

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

[@chemergency]

Beetle Adventure Racing is a real hidden gem.

[@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

[@Gigidag77]

Beetle Adventure Racing was amazing. Such a hidden gem.

[@nthgth]

Yes! Fun multiplayer too.

[@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.

[@Midekai]

Honestly the lighting capabilities of the n64 were something only insanely kitted out PCs could do at the time. 7 light sources without the microcode is always impressive to me, but the fact they managed so much more with the game running so good on top of it is just amazing.

[@ChairmanMeow1]

I watched like a 90 minute MVG about RE2 on N64 and I still dont understand how they pulled that port off. One of the most incredible ports of all time in my opinion. They even included the FMVs somehow.

[@G.L.999]

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!

[@Greenchrysopsaro]

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

[@Pridetoons]

The N64 controller was an ambidextrous controller. Some games like Sin Punishment took advantage of this feature. Most people don't seem to understand this fact.

[@mattwolf2000]

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

[@DFX2KX]

@channelofstuff 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 .

[@renakunisaki]

Not exactly. To use any texture, it must be loaded into that 4K cache. You can swap them out all you like, and you can copy directly from cartridge to cache, but there's no getting around the cache itself. The best things you could do for performance was to use smaller textures (so you can fit a few in cache at once) and add details using vertex color, lighting, and filter effects; organize your scene code so that you don't switch textures very often (that takes a while); and not spend all your time waiting for one task when you could be doing another.

[@NotHere2SellCookies]

0:24 idk why but it really annoys me to hear people complain about the controller. I was playing this system when I was 3 years old and the controller always made perfect sense....some games let you choose which hand to use the control stick with, and some games made you use the d pad instead. It's not rocket science, nor is it difficult to figure out.

[@c704710]

The Z-buffer can be abused for storing textures and the task of depth sorting can be optimized and rest solely on the CPU. Depth sorting was achieved on 386 CPUs , the VR4300 is much better equipped for the task. I have no idea what's going on with Beatles racing, but this would be my guess.

[@ralphjames1211]

Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask!

[@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.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

How is this a shortcut? It reduces the noise as well. It may be a bit cheaper, but it also is a little less blurry.

[@ChrisLodyMusic]

Nice Leslie Neilsen\Boards of Canada Easter egg there sir 😁👌