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Nintendo have released some turds of consoles before (Virtual Boy, N64, Wii U) but they all had some good games. Super Mario 64 was the first 3d platformer and

Nintendo have released some turds of consoles before (Virtual Boy, N64, Wii U) but they all had some good games. Super Mario 64 was the first 3d platformer and it is still fun and innovative now. The only thing dated about it is the camera control and it’s not that bad.

eckza 8y ago
> N64 In what universe is the N64 a turd? (I am asking objectively, not as a frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy.)
- khedoros1 8y ago
  I like the N64, but for the sake of argument (from a few different directions, and each one debatable whether it made it a "turd"): - Sony moved over three times as many Playstations, and there were about 2600 PSX games and 400 N64 ones. In contrast to the previous generation, the SNES handily outsold the Genesis, even with somewhat fewer released games. - The cartridge format caused problems with production price and storage potential, which disk-based systems didn't have - It was an overly-complex, difficult-to-program machine - The 4K of texture cache and other weird design choices really hampered the graphics quality.
  - eckza 8y ago
    Aha. That's the answer I was looking for. All fair points, all objectively true. Thank you!
- orbital-decay 8y ago
  In the era of optical media and hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, N64 was still using cartriges. They were expensive and offered little space, so a non-trivial amount of hackery was needed to even squeeze a soundtrack there. In fact, all N64 development was arcane magic due to this.
  - gonzo41 8y ago
    I think if would be a bit of fun to see a revival of cartridges. Though just jam a 250bg ssd in it and bang! big games and no restrictions. -edit, on second thought, i don't really want to be paying > $150 bucks for the game and the storage medium.
    - orbital-decay 8y ago
      The biggest advantages of using ROM chips were their speed and ease of access. You could just address any data in the ROM space, without caching or transferring anything to RAM, essentially expanding the avaliable memory. Today you are forced to keep the memory hierarchy because the different memory types have different speeds/latencies, so using cartridges would make little sense in any modern system.
    - laumars 8y ago
      The Nintendo Switch uses cartridges.
      - LocalH 8y ago
        No, they use solid state disks.
        laumars 8y ago
        If you want to get technical, it's flash ROM chips; more akin to an SD card than SSD (though the technology between the two isn't far apart these days). But for all intents and purposes Nintendo's Game Cards are cartridges. They're designed in the spririt of cartridges and thusly are often referred to as cartridges.
        LocalH 8y ago
        But they're not cartridges, regardless of how people refer to them. To be a cartridge, as traditionally applied to video games, the ROM must be directly accessible from CPU space (whether completely, or through banking). They might be designed in the spirit of cartridges, but they load files into RAM from a filesystem, and never access them directly from the storage media. Thus they're fancy SD cards that really, really want to be carts, but aren't. Cartridges died with the GBA. Unless you count the myriad unlicensed, bootleg, or knockoff consoles that exist with multigame carts. Edit (30 minutes later): The inherent nature of cartridges also allows direct access to peripheral chips (coprocessors, etc) found in the cartridge in CPU space as well.
laumars 8y ago
Even thier "turds" weren't because of a lack of customer focus. Sometimes bad decisions can be made for seemingly right reasons. > N64 The biggest problem with the N64 vs other consoles of its generation was the lack of a CD-ROM. But carts were specifically picked because Nintendo, at the time, thought they were better for consumers (eg less time spent on loading screens). > VirtualBoy This was originally planned as a virtual reality handheld device but as the project progressed different safety concerns were raised (eg what might happen to kids wearing the device in the car during a car crash). This is what lead to the device being crippled to the extent it was.

eckza 8y ago

> N64 In what universe is the N64 a turd? (I am asking objectively, not as a frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy.)

khedoros1 8y ago
I like the N64, but for the sake of argument (from a few different directions, and each one debatable whether it made it a "turd"): - Sony moved over three times as many Playstations, and there were about 2600 PSX games and 400 N64 ones. In contrast to the previous generation, the SNES handily outsold the Genesis, even with somewhat fewer released games. - The cartridge format caused problems with production price and storage potential, which disk-based systems didn't have - It was an overly-complex, difficult-to-program machine - The 4K of texture cache and other weird design choices really hampered the graphics quality.
- eckza 8y ago
  Aha. That's the answer I was looking for. All fair points, all objectively true. Thank you!
orbital-decay 8y ago
In the era of optical media and hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, N64 was still using cartriges. They were expensive and offered little space, so a non-trivial amount of hackery was needed to even squeeze a soundtrack there. In fact, all N64 development was arcane magic due to this.
- gonzo41 8y ago
  I think if would be a bit of fun to see a revival of cartridges. Though just jam a 250bg ssd in it and bang! big games and no restrictions. -edit, on second thought, i don't really want to be paying > $150 bucks for the game and the storage medium.
  - orbital-decay 8y ago
    The biggest advantages of using ROM chips were their speed and ease of access. You could just address any data in the ROM space, without caching or transferring anything to RAM, essentially expanding the avaliable memory. Today you are forced to keep the memory hierarchy because the different memory types have different speeds/latencies, so using cartridges would make little sense in any modern system.
  - laumars 8y ago
    The Nintendo Switch uses cartridges.
    - LocalH 8y ago
      No, they use solid state disks.
      - laumars 8y ago
        If you want to get technical, it's flash ROM chips; more akin to an SD card than SSD (though the technology between the two isn't far apart these days). But for all intents and purposes Nintendo's Game Cards are cartridges. They're designed in the spririt of cartridges and thusly are often referred to as cartridges.
        LocalH 8y ago
        But they're not cartridges, regardless of how people refer to them. To be a cartridge, as traditionally applied to video games, the ROM must be directly accessible from CPU space (whether completely, or through banking). They might be designed in the spirit of cartridges, but they load files into RAM from a filesystem, and never access them directly from the storage media. Thus they're fancy SD cards that really, really want to be carts, but aren't. Cartridges died with the GBA. Unless you count the myriad unlicensed, bootleg, or knockoff consoles that exist with multigame carts. Edit (30 minutes later): The inherent nature of cartridges also allows direct access to peripheral chips (coprocessors, etc) found in the cartridge in CPU space as well.

laumars 8y ago

Even thier "turds" weren't because of a lack of customer focus. Sometimes bad decisions can be made for seemingly right reasons. > N64 The biggest problem with the N64 vs other consoles of its generation was the lack of a CD-ROM. But carts were specifically picked because Nintendo, at the time, thought they were better for consumers (eg less time spent on loading screens). > VirtualBoy This was originally planned as a virtual reality handheld device but as the project progressed different safety concerns were raised (eg what might happen to kids wearing the device in the car during a car crash). This is what lead to the device being crippled to the extent it was.