I will never understand the Gamecube

[Ignatius_S]

That's the impression I got. Everybody I knew who had an N64 essentially used it as a Goldeneye machine.

Well, that's certainly one game you can put in the 'important' category for the N64.

However, I wasn't referring to just Goldeneye.

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

Come on, there were so many interesting and unique Playstation games. Yes, there was a lot of tat and shit licenses, but that's because there was a lot of everything.

You can't pretend that this list doesn't have lots of important games in it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playstation_games

I'm not saying there weren't good games, or people are wrong for liking them. Actually, maybe I am. I can't remember what my point is anymore. Except just that I can't be rational or objective about the N64, I have so many happy memories playing it that I doubt any other system can give me. Golden years!

EDIT: "Important" games. Not really a criteria I'm interested in. My enjoyment is far more important, whether it's a revolutionary game or just a good implementation of old ideas. Rare's N64 games were good examples of the latter, I think.

Footnote: I must be one of the few N64 fanboys that doesn't actually rate Goldeneye that highly. It's pretty good, but never grabbed me. Much preferred Perfect Dark.

[I accept the terms of the]

Well, that's certainly one game you can put in the 'important' category for the N64.

I disagree that it was important, but it was very good.

I'm not saying there weren't good games, or people are wrong for liking them. Actually, maybe I am. I can't remember what my point is anymore. Except just that I can't be rational or objective about the N64, I have so many happy memories playing it that I doubt any other system can give me. Golden years!

That's fine, and good and pure! I'm talking more objectively (or at least trying to) and from the perspective of somebody who didn't get that much out of the machine and its rubbish wobbly stick that would break off and then a child would choke on it and that's murder, buddy.

[The Boston Crab]

maybe one of the 3D Zeldas.

- Context-sensitive controls.
- Camera/lock-on/Z-targeting.

More significant than any other game of its generation.

[mikeyg27]

Oh good, PS1 vs N64 console wars. It's like I'm in Year 8 again.

I remember Digitiser did this article for one of their weekend specials[nb]but not by Biffo, can't remember who did it[/nb] which was an account of a mock battle between PS1 owners, N64 owners and PC owners. If I remember correctly the N64 owners were winning until their mums called them in for dinner time.

[The Boston Crab]

P.S. I had a PlayStation, not an N64, I loved the former and thought the latter had too few good games.

[I accept the terms of the]

Oh good, PS1 vs N64 console wars. It's like I'm in Year 8 again.

Complete with the person who interrupts to announce that he's above it all!

[The Boston Crab]

BURNED

[mikeyg27]

Complete with the person who interrupts to announce that he's above it all!

Almost, actually it's interrupted by the jealous kid whose parents won't buy him either console and is fed up with the constant reminders of this fact.

[I accept the terms of the]

I'm going to bully you now because you've made yourself look lower status than me and I need to improve my own profile. Poory poory poor poor! Why do you smell of milk? Do you live in a sandpit mikey, with all of the cat piss? I think you in a sandpit with cat piss.

[mikeyg27]

Alas, it was because my parents were so highbrow they didn't want me getting distracted from doing homework or some other tenuous bullshit that ignored the fact that EVERY OTHER KID HAD ONE including the smarter, harder-working ones. At least, that's what they told me...

Might I also add that for the first half of the N64 / PS1 era I didn't even have a reasonable PC. We had a Mac. A MAC! Before the Re-Jobbing renaissance as well. There's only so many shareware games that you can play before your soul breaks (I do however wish that there was a version of Power Pete that worked on the modern Intel Mac, I never did complete it...). I spent so much time at the houses of friends with more enlightened parents. Course, then we switched to a PC, I discovered Half-Life and picked my side, and I've had to spend the ensuing decade playing catch-up with my video-game literacy.

Man, this is dredging up a load of repressed childhood memories...

[I accept the terms of the]

Haha! Stupid Billy no games! etc.

Maybe your parents had a point. I have turned out to be a dick.

[Ignatius_S]

I disagree that it was important, but it was very good....

I would say that generally, Goldeneye is seen an important game in the FPS genre and a landmark in that type of game on the console platforms.  Objective-based missions, zoomable sniper sights and headshots are now exceedingly common in FPS games, but they weren't when Goldeneye came out. Not only, did Goldeneye have these elements, they were excellently executed.

Goldeneye was the first console game to feature headshots - and I'm almost certain, the only games to have headshots pre-Goldeneye was an updated version of Team  Fortress and MDK (although that's not a FPS), both of which only came out a few months before the N64 game out. As well as being one of the first games to have headshots, Goldeneye is often credited as being the game that drive the popularity of that feature. Similarly, there's a strong claim for Goldeneye popularising zoomable sniper sighting.

Both the solo campaign and multi-playing elements were fantastically well done.

All in all, pretty groundbreaking at the time.

[Puffin Chunks]

Fuck you guys. Not including those already mentioned the below were all good games (just of the ones I owned)

Conkers Bad Fur Day
F Zero X
Turok 2 - Seeds of Evil
Blast Corps
Shadow Man
1080 Snowboarding
Rogue Squadron
ISS 2000 (the best football game ever created, bar none. FACT)
Mario Kart 64
Body Harvest (actually, I hated this game, but a lot of people swear by it as the true GTA III Pre-cursor, so...)
F1 World Grand Prix
Star Fox 64
Wave Race 64

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

If indeed the N64 is now remembered more fondly than the Playstation, I wonder if it is because of the PS1 being the first mainstream console and thus appealing to folk who have fond memories of clubbing and such instead.

[thecuriousorange]

Answer me this. Did nintendo invent the D-pad with the NES, the shoulder buttons with the SNES, the thumb waggly analogue stick with the N64? Because that would mean they gradually invented the control pad its entirety. Pretty impressive if so. Or did they "borrow" some of this from other consoles that flopped before anyone knew about them?  At the very least, everyone nicks whatever their consoles selling points are. I don't know much about modern games and have little time for the Wii, but I see everyone is copying that console's "flail about the room like a twat " stuff.

[I accept the terms of the]

D-pad is pretty much from the NES, yeah. It's hard to say that Nintendo invented the analogue stick, because it's just a joystick. I suppose they came up with putting it on a system's standard control pad though it though (and then Sony made one that doesn't feel like it will fall off).

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

There was some ancient console, before the NES, that used analogue thumbsticks on the controllers, but couldn't actually interpret the data from them, making them rather redundant. I think you could get analogue joysticks for the PC (that did actually work) before the N64 too.

The dualshock pad seemed pretty blatantly made to play catchup with the analogue and rumble features of the N64 controller though.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The N64 is a weird mix of ambition and experimentalism with conservatism. Quite japanese really.

The controller is appalling and it doesn't have many good games. And like a lot of Nintendos titles, the purported good ones are all of a similar kind of thing and in my case that kind of thing carries little interest, as more of a PC gamer. With the Gamecube and Wii you can multiply that issue by about a hundred.

I'm afraid no matter how excellent the next Mario is, I still find the whole thing retrogressive and tired, and not even interestingly designed. When I played it I found no major differences on offer to platformers of 15 years ago. And recently Nintendo showing off that Zelda is available on the DS now. Whoopee shit, I already played that rather disappointing game, and now I have the ability to relive the letdown on a smaller screen.

I'm not really arsed with Gears Of Men War Two Thousand And Murder type games either by the way. It's just nearly every time a Nintendo fan has gone on about how amazing a certain game is, I've been underwhelmed. It's just taste I suppose. I do find them fun and diverting for a bit but I don't get the rich/wonderful/deep hyperbole about them at all.

And the consoles themselves have just been poor- the Gamecube especially showed no intent to advance computer games whatsoever, which for a new release of hardware is fucking criminal.

[mikeyg27]

Re: the earlier comments about Sega - I think it's telling that nobody's brought up the Saturn into this N64/PS1 debate. It's not because it was a bad console, it's because no one had one - I think it's literally possible that I didn't know anyone with a Saturn at school (certainly none of my close friends did). That's probably where all the damage was done and was too much ground for Sega to make up.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Surprisingly for a non-gamer, I acquired both a Playstation and an N64, and while the former undoubtedly had more varied and a greater breadth of available games, the latter had the Ocarina of Time which is my favourite game by such a large distance that it has no credible competitors for the title. 

Could never get the hang of Goldeneye, mind - but then I rarely get the hang of most games.

[lazyhour]

Really interesting thread, especially as it's evolved out of a dimensions-based complaint.

I had both a PS1 and an N64, though I didn't get either until they were all-but-dead machines. Going from memory (and my own personal experience), I felt that both machines had only a fistful of truly great games (apols for tedious list which only really repeats what others have said):

N64:
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Zelda: Majora's Mask
Goldeneye
Perfect Dark
Mario Golf (this was amazingly great)
Mario 64
Banjo Kazooie
Mario Kart 64
Resident Evil 2
Pokemon Puzzle League
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2

PlayStation:
Parappa The Rapper
Um Jammer Lammy
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII
(never played FFX, but I'm sure it was good)
Resident Evil 1+2 (I never got around to playing Silent Hill)
Metal Gear Solid
The Misadventures of Tron Bonne
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (it's amazing how original these seemed at the time)

There must have been other good PlayStation games, but I never discovered them. Given that the N64 didn't have many releases and the PlayStation had fucking hundreds, the evenness of my lists doesn't speak well for the PS.

Something that really held the PlayStation back for me was the terrible, juddering, blocky graphics. Someone once told me that it wasn't really designed to be a 3D machine, and if that's true then I suppose it's quite impressive what they managed to achieve.

The Dreamcast had a bunch of brilliant games, and it's such a shame that it never caught on. If they'd only put a DVD player in it, I'm sure they'd have fared better.

In fact, I think the Dreamcast, for all its short-lived-ness, had a selection of excellent games that easily rival the PS and N64:

Rayman 2: The Great Escape
Capcom vs SNK
Jet Set Radio
Virtua Tennis
Marvel vs Capcom 2
Tony Hawk's 1+2
House of the Dead 2
Typing of the Dead
Chu Chu Rocket
Crazy Taxi
Quake 3 Arena
Sonic Adventure
Samba de Amigo
Powerstone 2
Resident Evil: Code Veronica
Shenmue
Space Channel 5 (much more limited than Parappa or Um Jammer Lammy, I'll admit)

And there are others that I never got a chance to play that looked great, like Grandia 2 and Phantasy Star Online. The Dreamcast was great!

I'm not sure what the point of this post was, but I've done it now.

[The Region Legion]

Yes, the Dreamcast was by far the better system when put against the PS1 & N64. The problem is they took so fucking long to release it after the abortion of the Saturn that it was up against the PS2 (or rather, the rumours of it), as well as Sony's limitless promotional funds.

Dreamcast remains my favourite console ever, in fact.

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

Yes, the Dreamcast was by far the better system when put against the PS1 & N64.

As you would expect (from a technical standpoint anyway) - PS1 & N64 being 5th generation consoles and Dreamcast 6th generation.

[I accept the terms of the]

I often wonder what gaming would look like now if the PS hadn't been a 2MB RAM, shit-at-pushing-polygons cripple. Probably a bit like it does today, but with memories of better textures.

[Famous Mortimer]

Er, Wipeout 2097 you bitches

I remember the Leadmill in Sheffield had it on a bunch of screens / consoles in the back room for a few years; everyone I knew played it to death; loads of other places had it for patrons to play; that shit was everywhere.

But I loved both consoles equally.

In summary: breezes.

[madhair60]

the Gamecube especially showed no intent to advance computer games whatsoever, which for a new release of hardware is fucking criminal.

Why?  At the time, its "thing" was that is played games.  PS2 was packing DVD capabilities, Xbox was all about Live.  The Gamecube was all about games - smooth, fast, excellent ones.  Smash Bros Melee alone got played from release day until its sequel came out.

On a tangent (that probably doesn't help my case), my favourite thing about the 'Cube is that with the two Sonic and Mega Man collections, it's got a shit-ton of my favourites right there.

Other Gamecube games I love, based on the few I have piled up behind me:

Warioware, Inc Mega Party Game$ (Amazing multiplayer to this day)
Soul Calibur II (The best, smoothest version)
Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (Bizarre bongo-based platform game, absolutely beautiful)
F-Zero GX (The fastest racing game I think I've played)
Wario World (Treasure-developed, batshit insane platformer)
Mega Man Network Transmission (Obscure, really rewarding the more it's played)

The rest are downstairs, or I'd list some more.

[Consignia]

The Gamecube had Donkey Konga, the only Taiko no Tatsujin (albeit completely bastardised) game to make it to these hallowed shores. It gets points off me just for that.

[buntyman]

I got a lot of play out of my gamecube. Super Monkey Ball, Resident Evil 4, Mario Golf, Zelda Wind Waker, Pikmin, Kuru Kururin and Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes all got a lot of play out of my as well as a few of the games that have previously been mentioned in the thread. I really like the controllers too (still use them on the Wii) and the Wavebird was another pretty good Nintendo innovation in wirelessness.

[I accept the terms of the]

That controller was an excellent thing, with GOOD, SOLID STICKS.