I miss the N64

And here I thought games like Doom, Wolfenstein, and Marathon kick started the FPS world. :-) It was a good system for the time though. It had some nice games, and the controller couldn't be beat. However, when I am feeling truly nostalgic, I like to break out my old NES.

With just the mention of N64 007 Goldeneye popped into my head. Without a doubt the best console FPS and multiplayer FPS to date. Just with the latest 007s didn't suck so much. (It's not like they don't have a perfect example to work from)

Since the Playstation/N64/Saturn era, all game systems are essentially the same, aren't they, with the only differences lying in # of polygons they can draw? I gave up on game systems ever since all the games started looking the same (race game, fight game, race game, fight game, race game, fight game).

As an addendum, and as one who made his living programming games (SNES, Saturn) for three years, I would add that the very limitations deplored in the earlier systems (SNES, Genesis, and their predecessors) forced creativity in game design in way we've not seen for a long time. You entered another world, with its own reality, and not merely an extension of this world.

I remember that on slashdot a while ago, some random guy thought that the 64 was for 64bit processing...

Um are you serious? OK the controller was good, but the GameCube one is far far better, even if only for the fact that you can reach all the buttons at the same time (remember when you had your left hand on the middle prong of the N64 controller and you had to press the L button or D Pad... ouch!).

TOM

CPU: 64-bit R4300i RISC (93.75MHz) / 64-bit data paths, registers with 5-stage pipelining

Co-processor: 64-bit RISC (62.5MHz)
RAM: 4MB (36Mb) upgradeable

Graphics: Pixel Drawing Processor (RDP) built into co-processor

Colors: 16.7 million (32,000 on screen)

Polygons: 150,000 per second

Resolution: 640x480 pixels

Sound: 16 to 24-channel 16-bit stereo (up to 100 PCM channels possible)

N64s had an annoying tendency to put pixelated near-invisible 'squares' all over 3D textures, much like the Rage 128 put feint fuzzy lines all over OpenGL scenes. Plus the 64's visuals always seemed much too blurry.

Never got too attached to mine; limited supply of my favourite games, crappy 128MB(IIRC) limit on the cartridges meant hardly any music etc in games, and the very badly lubricated joystick which went saggy *very* quickly due to the plastic components shaving themselves badly -after a while the major components of the device were nothing but a pile o' dust...

Saturn felt cheap, PlayStation's graphics sucked, but I enjoyed those two much more than the 64.

Although I think that the PlayStation and Saturn has better games, no game ever has as cool and big weapons as Turok. The Redeemer in UT is a mere pea-shooter in comparison, IIRC with the biggest one you could only fire on something you couldn't see (aah, the "N64 fog") and the entire screen went white for a second or two.

The gameplay stank, but the weapons.... ohh, mama!

You have to be kidding me! The N64 had one of the best controllers ever made! The NES and SNES were to small, the PSone had WAY to many buttons and the Dreamcast, ugh, don't even get me started. And plus, very few games even COULD use the d-pad. And even though I like the Gamecube, it just looks like it belongs in a sci-fi movie.

1. I thought the N64 Ran on a variant of the 604 PPC Processor?

2. I LOVED the game : PilotWings , That is a fun game. I sold my 64 a long time ago, but I will never give up that game. I may pay the $75 the stupid shops charge for them, just to play the game again. The 64 PW is better than the SNES one. Oh, and may I mention the Smash Bros.?

I opened mine up and I looked at the proc' and in very small letters (mixed in with a bunch of other crap) I saw "90604E". Maybe it is a ppc.

Nope, the internals of the N64 are SGI MIPS processors and graphics accellerators.

I vote for the GameCube controller, despite the fact that I can hold two in one hand!