4 ms·

What did take so long for Nintendo?

skhr0680 3y ago
A heroic, and ultimately unnecessary considering the mundane reasons that slowed the N64 down, attempt to consumerize exotic hardware. The hardware was actually pretty great in the end. The unreleased N64 version of Dinosaur Planet holds up well considering how much more powerful the GameCube was. /edit Nintendo were largely the architects of their own misery. First, they set expectations sky high with their “Ultra 64” arcade games, then were actively hostile to developers in multiple ways.
VyseofArcadia 3y ago
I'm not 100% sure of the specifics, but Nintendo took a pretty different approach from Sony or Sega at this time. Sony and Sega both rolled their own graphics chips, and both of them made some compromises and strange choices in order to get to market more quickly. Nintendo instead approached SGI, the most advanced graphics workstation and 3D modeling company in the world at the time, and formed a partnership to scale back their professional graphics hardware to a consumer price point. Might be one of those instances where just getting something that works from scratch is relatively easy, but taking an existing solution and modifying it to fit a new use case is more difficult.
- MBCook 3y ago
  The cartridge ended up being a huge sore spot too. Nintendo wanted it because of the instant access time. That’s what gamers were used to and they didn’t want people to have to wait on slow CDs. Turns out that was the wrong bet. Cartridges just cost too much and if I remember correctly there were supply issues at various points during the N64 era pushing prices up and volumes down. In comparison CDs were absolutely dirt cheap to manufacture. And people quickly fell in love with all the extra stuff that could fit on a desk compared to a small cartridge. There was simply no way anything like Final Fantasy 7 could have ever been done on the N64. Games with FMV sequences, real recorded music, just large numbers of assets. Even if everything else about the hardware was the same, Nintendo bet on the wrong horse for the storage medium. It turned out the thing they prioritized (access time) was not nearly as important as the things they opted out of (price, storage space).
  - VyseofArcadia 3y ago
    Tangentially related, but if you haven't already, you should read DF Retro's writeup of the absolutely incredible effort to port the 2 CD game Resident Evil 2 to a single 64MB N64 cartridge: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2018-retro-why-resident-evil-2-n64-is-one-of-the-most-ambitious-ports-of-all-time https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2018-retro-why-resi... Spoilers: it's a shockingly good port.
  - nebula8804 3y ago
    >There was simply no way anything like Final Fantasy 7 could have ever been done on the N64. Yes but I don't see how a game like Ocarina of time with its streaming data in at high speed would have been possible without a cartridge. Each format enabled unique gaming experiences that the other typically couldn't replicate exactly.
    - favorited 3y ago
      Naughty Dog found a solution - constantly streaming data from the disk, without regard for the hardware's endurance rating: > Andy had given Kelly a rough idea of how we were getting so much detail through the system: spooling. Kelly asked Andy if he understood correctly that any move forward or backward in a level entailed loading in new data, a CD “hit.” Andy proudly stated that indeed it did. Kelly asked how many of these CD hits Andy thought a gamer that finished Crash would have. Andy did some thinking and off the top of his head said “Roughly 120,000.” Kelly became very silent for a moment and then quietly mumbled “the PlayStation CD drive is ‘rated’ for 70,000.” > Kelly thought some more and said “let’s not mention that to anyone” and went back to get Sony on board with Crash. https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/06/making-crash-bandicoot-part-5/ https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/06/making-crash-ba...
      - nebula8804 3y ago
        Crash Bandicoot is a VERY different game from Ocarina Of Time. They are not comparable at all. They literally had to limit the field of view in order to get anything close to what they were targeting. Have you played the two games? The point still stands, Zelda with its vast open worlds is not feasible on a CD based console that has a max transfer rate of 300KB/s and the latency of an iceberg.
- mairusu 3y ago
  Nintendo did not approach SGI. SGI was rejected by Sega for the Saturn - Sega felt their offering was too expensive to produce, too buggy at the time despite spending man hours helping fix hardware issues,, and had no chance to make it to market in time for their plans. For all we know, Nintendo had no plans past the SNES, except for the VirtualBoy. But then again, the VirtualBoy was another case of Nintendo being approached by a company rejected by Sega…

A heroic, and ultimately unnecessary considering the mundane reasons that slowed the N64 down, attempt to consumerize exotic hardware. The hardware was actually pretty great in the end. The unreleased N64 version of Dinosaur Planet holds up well considering how much more powerful the GameCube was. /edit Nintendo were largely the architects of their own misery. First, they set expectations sky high with their “Ultra 64” arcade games, then were actively hostile to developers in multiple ways.

VyseofArcadia 3y ago

I'm not 100% sure of the specifics, but Nintendo took a pretty different approach from Sony or Sega at this time. Sony and Sega both rolled their own graphics chips, and both of them made some compromises and strange choices in order to get to market more quickly. Nintendo instead approached SGI, the most advanced graphics workstation and 3D modeling company in the world at the time, and formed a partnership to scale back their professional graphics hardware to a consumer price point. Might be one of those instances where just getting something that works from scratch is relatively easy, but taking an existing solution and modifying it to fit a new use case is more difficult.

MBCook 3y ago
The cartridge ended up being a huge sore spot too. Nintendo wanted it because of the instant access time. That’s what gamers were used to and they didn’t want people to have to wait on slow CDs. Turns out that was the wrong bet. Cartridges just cost too much and if I remember correctly there were supply issues at various points during the N64 era pushing prices up and volumes down. In comparison CDs were absolutely dirt cheap to manufacture. And people quickly fell in love with all the extra stuff that could fit on a desk compared to a small cartridge. There was simply no way anything like Final Fantasy 7 could have ever been done on the N64. Games with FMV sequences, real recorded music, just large numbers of assets. Even if everything else about the hardware was the same, Nintendo bet on the wrong horse for the storage medium. It turned out the thing they prioritized (access time) was not nearly as important as the things they opted out of (price, storage space).
- VyseofArcadia 3y ago
  Tangentially related, but if you haven't already, you should read DF Retro's writeup of the absolutely incredible effort to port the 2 CD game Resident Evil 2 to a single 64MB N64 cartridge: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2018-retro-why-resident-evil-2-n64-is-one-of-the-most-ambitious-ports-of-all-time https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2018-retro-why-resi... Spoilers: it's a shockingly good port.
- nebula8804 3y ago
  >There was simply no way anything like Final Fantasy 7 could have ever been done on the N64. Yes but I don't see how a game like Ocarina of time with its streaming data in at high speed would have been possible without a cartridge. Each format enabled unique gaming experiences that the other typically couldn't replicate exactly.
  - favorited 3y ago
    Naughty Dog found a solution - constantly streaming data from the disk, without regard for the hardware's endurance rating: > Andy had given Kelly a rough idea of how we were getting so much detail through the system: spooling. Kelly asked Andy if he understood correctly that any move forward or backward in a level entailed loading in new data, a CD “hit.” Andy proudly stated that indeed it did. Kelly asked how many of these CD hits Andy thought a gamer that finished Crash would have. Andy did some thinking and off the top of his head said “Roughly 120,000.” Kelly became very silent for a moment and then quietly mumbled “the PlayStation CD drive is ‘rated’ for 70,000.” > Kelly thought some more and said “let’s not mention that to anyone” and went back to get Sony on board with Crash. https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/06/making-crash-bandicoot-part-5/ https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/06/making-crash-ba...
    - nebula8804 3y ago
      Crash Bandicoot is a VERY different game from Ocarina Of Time. They are not comparable at all. They literally had to limit the field of view in order to get anything close to what they were targeting. Have you played the two games? The point still stands, Zelda with its vast open worlds is not feasible on a CD based console that has a max transfer rate of 300KB/s and the latency of an iceberg.
mairusu 3y ago
Nintendo did not approach SGI. SGI was rejected by Sega for the Saturn - Sega felt their offering was too expensive to produce, too buggy at the time despite spending man hours helping fix hardware issues,, and had no chance to make it to market in time for their plans. For all we know, Nintendo had no plans past the SNES, except for the VirtualBoy. But then again, the VirtualBoy was another case of Nintendo being approached by a company rejected by Sega…