So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

ryanch09

Just got an N64 online and have been glued to Goldeneye the last few days, looking at building up a collection of games for this system

peter_utv

I played Golden Eye for days straight the reason for this is It's made by Rareware who I don't think ever put a foot wrong
everything they ever made was a masterpiece. They made Donkey Kong Country for the snes which looked space age in comparison to
games like street fighter. Rareware used "Silicon Graphics" Station computers to do their renderings these computers in the day would cost more than a new car.

Retr0gamer

Goldeneye ain't so good anymore and Donkey Kong Country was just a cheap magic trick. DKC is a very simplistic platformer even compared to super mario world. It looks really ugly these days compared to the much cleaner graphics of pixel art games from the same time. Street Fighter 2 is a far better looking game.

I feel Rare are quite over rated. On N64 only jet force Gemini, banjo kazooie and diddy kong racing are great with blast corp an absolute classic. Everything else was go hum to a bit crap and was just chasing what Nintendo were doing. Goldeneye was certainly a trendsetter but has aged horrendously while Perfect Dark was out paced by games such as Half Life on release.

peter_utv

Have to totally disagree Rare Ware were better solely because everything they made was so polished, street fighter looked like cardboard cut out's. Donkey Kong Country was smooth and flowed it was no cheap magic trick it was probably the finest platform game ever made.

MrVestek

peter_utv wrote: »

Have to totally disagree Rare Ware were better solely because everything they made was so polished, street fighter looked like cardboard cut out's. Donkey Kong Country was smooth and flowed it was no cheap magic trick it was probably the finest platform game ever made.

I think what he means by cheap magic trick is that that pretty much everything in that game was pre-rendered and not actually being generated on the console at the time.

o1s1n

peter_utv wrote: »

Have to totally disagree Rare Ware were better solely because everything they made was so polished, street fighter looked like cardboard cut out's. Donkey Kong Country was smooth and flowed it was no cheap magic trick it was probably the finest platform game ever made.

Not sure if serious or trying to troll Retr0gamer...

Retr0gamer

Yep basically all they did was take images of SGI renders and used them as tiles. Nothing special there and it wasn't the first game to do it either. They were slapped on top of a very basic platformer with dull level design.

Andrew76

MrVestek wrote: »

I think what he means by cheap magic trick is that that pretty much everything in that game was pre-rendered and not actually being generated on the console at the time.

But is it not a bit unfair calling it a cheap magic trick though (retr0 not you)? I seem to remember the pre-rended look was a big deal at the time - we're talking about a SNES here not a PC after all. Aside from the looks I thought it was a pretty good game even if it's not in the same league as SMW. Pixel art type graphics don't age because they're not as hardware dependant as the pre-rendered stuff or 3D for example.

And no comment on the comparison of a FPS on the N64 to PCs... apples and oranges. Maybe Goldeneye isn't so great these days but neither is Half-Life - it looks terrible when compared to modern FPSs - that's called progress.

o1s1n

Half Life still looks and plays better than most modern FPS games :P

Retr0gamer

The thing is Nintendo presented it as this crazy and innovative idea, why get a PS1 or Saturn when your SNES can do graphics just as good. It definitely worked, the SNES had it's best year and finally over took the Megadrive in sales but it retrospect the game is really flat and plastic and the game not so good. DKC2 was at least an improvement in the level design sense and did some really nice graphical effects that made the game pop out a bit more. Good art doesn't age, DKC looks pretty ropey now.

As for Goldeneye and Half-Life the difference is half Life runs at 60FPS, Goldeneye struggles to get into double digit framerates meaning it plays pretty crappily while Half Life is smooth as silk and much more playable.

MrVestek

Retr0gamer wrote: »

The thing is Nintendo presented it as this crazy and innovative idea, why get a PS1 or Saturn when your SNES can do graphics just as good. It definitely worked, the SNES had it's best year and finally over took the Megadrive in sales but it retrospect the game is really flat and plastic and the game not so good. DKC2 was at least an improvement in the level design sense and did some really nice graphical effects that made the game pop out a bit more. Good art doesn't age, DKC looks pretty ropey now.

As for Goldeneye and Half-Life the difference is half Life runs at 60FPS, Goldeneye struggles to get into double digit framerates meaning it plays pretty crappily while Half Life is smooth as silk and much more playable.

Donkey Kong Country will never be as good as Sonic '06. Never.

Andrew76

o1s1n wrote: »

Half Life still looks and plays better than most modern FPS games :P

Definitely not in the case of looks - it's aged badly (to use a retro phrase). Half Life 2 still looks decent though.

o1s1n

Andrew76 wrote: »

Definitely not in the case of looks - it's aged badly (to use a retro phrase). Half Life 2 still looks decent though.

Running original HL at 60fps+ in OpenGL mode with the as resolution as high as it will possibly go still looks great IMO.

Andrew76

o1s1n wrote: »

Running original HL at 60fps+ in OpenGL mode with the as resolution as high as it will possibly go still looks great IMO.

Well fps has no bearing on how good a game looks (different to how good it runs ofc), but you're telling me Half Life running as best as it can on 1998 PC tech still looks good and comparible to todays PC shooters? (Just so we're being fair when some folk compare Goldeneye running on 1997 N64 tech...)

o1s1n

Andrew76 wrote: »

Well fps has no bearing on how good a game looks (different to how good it runs ofc), but you're telling me Half Life running as best as it can on 1998 PC tech still looks good and comparible to todays PC shooters? (Just so we're being fair when some folk compare Goldeneye running on 1997 N64 tech...)

'At the time' tech is not comparable between PCs and consoles though.

It was possible in 1998 to run HL maxed out at an extremely high FPS if you had a PC capable of the grunt work. It made things like Goldeneye look like a joke.

When I was playing HL when it first came out, my PC was fairly crappy with no dedicated graphics card. The result? An ugly ugly game. I think I was playing it in 640X480 in software mode. And that's when the game was all new and sparky and everyone was raving about it - they wouldn't have been doing so if my version was a benchmark :eek:

My mate on the other hand had a lovely top of the range PC with a fancy Voodoo 3D card and full OpenGL/Glide driver fancyness enabled. Had every setting maxed out. It was a thing of beauty (and pretty much how we'd still be playing the original game today, which I think still looks great)

Sure, it doesn't look as good as a modern game, not debating that. But I don't think it's dated in the same way console games at the time did. It was a PC exclusive, so was years ahead with the hardware it at it's disposal.

Retr0gamer

Half-Life the biggest problem for those older FPS games. Once it came along it really made practically everything before it seem like it was years behind in terms of how a FPS should play. Only really Doom wasn't affected since it's still quite a unique FPS experience.

Shapey Fiend

I remember being blown away by HL1's graphics. All the little details in the demo like the sparks flying when the marines blow torch through doors. It had that real world detail you didn't get in something like Quake 2. I'm pretty sure I'd not 3D card and had to play at some crappy resolution but coming off Playstation games a year earlier that certainly didn't bother me.

The game still looked pretty decent well into the 2000's. What modders achieved with that engine was pretty incredible. There was a period around 2005 when I was playing stuff like The Battlegrounds, The Specialists, The Trenches and Zombie Panic constantly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjIrwicN7UI

I really disliked HL2 from a gameplay perspective but the graphics have aged well. You still see a lot of modern FPS ape it's art direction and not execute it nearly as well.

o1s1n

It's the first game I remember playing which used the WASD keys as default. Before that I'd been playing everything with the arrow keys and never really changed it to anything else.

Actually I remember at the time wondering how people could possibly use WASD as they're not in a standard aligned cross shape and it must be incredibly awkward. Oh the ignorance

Andrew76

o1s1n wrote: »

'At the time' tech is not comparable between PCs and consoles though.
...
It was a PC exclusive, so was years ahead with the hardware it at it's disposal.

Which is exactly my point. Comparing Goldeneye on N64 to Half Life on PC is not a fair comparison. Even worse is comparing it to modern day shooters with all the hardware advances they run on (by saying it's aged badly).

Compare Goldeneye to other console shooters of that era - that's fair.

Btw, Half Life was a fabulous game (whatever about how it looks these days). Which reminds me, I must get back to playing those HL2 Episodes.

Shapey Fiend

I still played HL with the arrow keys. I think I used to chat in all caps (despite constant requests from clanmates to stop) as well because I didn't want to use the shift key. I wasn't the most sophisticated of 12 year old internet users.

DKC was a dull game.

You could make a more apples for apples comparison between HL1 and Goldeneye by running it through an emulator. I was playing N64 via emulation in '99 or whenever Ultra HLE came out and it looked pretty nice with 3D acceleration and a proper framerate.

o1s1n

Andrew76 wrote: »

Which is exactly my point. Comparing Goldeneye on N64 to Half Life on PC is not a fair comparison. Even worse is comparing it to modern day shooters with all the hardware advances they run on (by saying it's aged badly).

Compare Goldeneye to other console shooters of that era - that's fair.

Btw, Half Life was a fabulous game (whatever about how it looks these days). Which reminds me, I must get back to playing those HL2 Episodes.

Oh I'm not disagreeing with the unfair comparison at all. HL was leagues ahead of Goldeneye back when they were both released and it was all down to the hardware differences.

Which does raise an interesting point - if you were playing PC FPS games at the time Goldeneye was released, and had a higher end PC, then you would have been as horrified about the low framerate in Goldeneye back then as Retr0 is about it now.

So it's not an issue which has sprung up over time or a 'dated' one for that matter, it's actually one which was there all along.

Retr0gamer

Goldeneye in it's defence brought a lot to the table and changed FPS games as much as Half Life did. It was way ahead of most games on the PC at the time. Half Life took a lot from Goldeneye as well. The framerate just really lets Goldeneye down because it severely affects the playability.

The Last Bandit

o1s1n wrote: »

Oh I'm not disagreeing with the unfair comparison at all. HL was leagues ahead of Goldeneye back when they were both released and it was all down to the hardware differences.

Which does raise an interesting point - if you were playing PC FPS games at the time Goldeneye was released, and had a higher end PC, then you would have been as horrified about the low framerate in Goldeneye back then as Retr0 is about it now.

So it's not an issue which has sprung up over time or a 'dated' one for that matter, it's actually one which was there all along.

Don't forgot the cost differential in those hardware differences. A high end PC probably cost 3 times that of the N64 at the time.

But ya still prefer to play HL than GoldenEye anytime..

Star Lord

o1s1n wrote: »

Which does raise an interesting point - if you were playing PC FPS games at the time Goldeneye was released, and had a higher end PC, then you would have been as horrified about the low framerate in Goldeneye back then as Retr0 is about it now.

Not quite at the time it was released, but I did go back to Goldeneye much later, after playing Quake, Unreal Tournament and Half Life, and managed to slog my way through all of the missions, in all of the difficulties, without the frame rate bugging me too much. (In fact, playing 2 player, with proximity mines as the only weapons in the Facility, and making the game almost shudder to a halt with so many explosions was part of our fun then too!)
Probably still my proudest gaming achievement. All I'll say is god damn that Aztec complex. The subsequent, final level was much easier. (Once you could manoeuvre across the floor!)

peter_utv

A high end PC cost a couple of grand an N64 cost 170 quid as far as I can remember. Out of the box the N64 cae with 4MB of ram and a slow risc processor that ran a 93 Mhz (a cheap modern mobile phone is ten times the power). So comparing HL with Golden Eye is a bit lame given HL came out 2 years later and ran on computers with vastly greater resources.

Retr0gamer

Well it's more that Goldeneye has aged really badly in comparison to Half Life, mostly due to the awful framerate. I still think there's a few duff levels in there as well, particularly the tank mission. At the time it was released I'd say Goldeneye was way ahead of anything on the PC in terms of the ideas and innovation it brought to the genre. It was completely different to anything on the PC (and is still kind of unique in fairness to it). Half Life came out a good year after Goldeneye as well. Half Life has aged in ways but no where near as much as goldeneye. Something like Doom as well I feel is just as playable as the day it came out.

CiDeRmAn

I played and finished Half Life on the PS2 (as well as PC)
And I first played and finished HL2 on the Xbox
Neither of these statements should surprise anyone here!

Retr0gamer

Oh also saying you needed a super PC gaming rig to play Half Life at it's best isn't correct. You could play it on a P166 with old 3DFX at about 1024x768 at the time of release. It was running on a modified Quake engine and was hardly taxing at all. Any old PC could run it fine at full specs. That was part of why it was so popular and even though the engine wasn't that powerful the art direction made up for it.

krudler

I was sticking some MAME stuff on my tablet when it occured to me I'd never played the arcade version of Ghouls N Ghosts :eek: it's a bit easier than the SNES one but still a balls in places.

Retr0gamer

Oh the Super Ghouls n'Ghosts is far easier than the arcade Ghouls n'Ghosts. The arcade version gets evil later on. The SNES one only gets difficult when it gets chessey with too many red arremers in some later levels.

I finished Lost in Shadow on the Wii during the week. It's a game that could have been an indie classic but somehow was released as a commercial release by Hudson. I say could have been because it's got some great ideas at times and plays really well but could do with being about a third of the size. It really out stays it's welcome in the end. Still it looks great but not one to play a marathon session of. It also has really lame backtracking later on.

I started FFX on the Vita. I'm not liking it as much as I used to. The problems are two fold, the game takes ages to actually get going and can be very dull at the start until you leave Luca after the blitzball game which is a couple of hours in. Secondly I'd forgotten how bad the encounter rate is. Still it's picking up now at least.