My copy of Beetle Adventure Racing on N64 went through the washing machine after it got picked up with my bedsheets. Left it in the sun for an hour afterwards and popped it back into the console and it kept working perfectly. I don’t know why any console devs ever decided that discs were better than cartridges; it’s just objectively untrue.
The issue was that you can hold far more data on a CD - 650MB on a CD vs 64MB on the largest N64 cartridges. The N64’s 3D hardware was far superior to the Playstation, so sometimes I wonder if having a larger storage medium could have resulted in even better games.
Yeah I’ve seen his videos - very impressive. He’s spent years working on it though (way more than most N64 devs that built commercially released games), and compiler optimizations that exist today didn’t exist back then.
I don’t think compiler optimizations matter much - supposedly the final build was compiled without optimizations, presumably by mistake, and the N64 has very specific hardware which compilers don’t know how to optimize for.
What we certainly do have are much more powerful machines and software in general, letting you test, analyze and profile code much more easily, as well as vast amounts of freely available information online - I can’t really imagine how they did it back then.
Some optimizations help a lot. There’s a bunch of general optimizations that compiler do that work for any CPU. A simple example would be unrolling small loops. Compilers are fast enough today that they can brute force the best optimization for a given piece of code if needed.
For real. I remember that despite our best efforts discs would get scratched occasionally, and try keeping those disks pristine with kids. That mechanical drive was also a common and expensive point of failure that’s guaranteed to wear out eventually because of those moving parts.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but I think there’s a tendency to glorify the past and hyperfocus on the disadvantages. We forget that there were parts of the past that really sucked.
I prefer waking my console and pressing a button to play, no disc fumbling
Yeah, good times…
Never had this issue with a Nintendo 64 :P
I don’t think I ever had issues with the cartridges.
My copy of Beetle Adventure Racing on N64 went through the washing machine after it got picked up with my bedsheets. Left it in the sun for an hour afterwards and popped it back into the console and it kept working perfectly. I don’t know why any console devs ever decided that discs were better than cartridges; it’s just objectively untrue.
The issue was that you can hold far more data on a CD - 650MB on a CD vs 64MB on the largest N64 cartridges. The N64’s 3D hardware was far superior to the Playstation, so sometimes I wonder if having a larger storage medium could have resulted in even better games.
Take a look at what Kaze Emanuar is doing with SM64 if you’re curious what the N64 can do with modern software practices ;D
Yeah I’ve seen his videos - very impressive. He’s spent years working on it though (way more than most N64 devs that built commercially released games), and compiler optimizations that exist today didn’t exist back then.
I don’t think compiler optimizations matter much - supposedly the final build was compiled without optimizations, presumably by mistake, and the N64 has very specific hardware which compilers don’t know how to optimize for.
What we certainly do have are much more powerful machines and software in general, letting you test, analyze and profile code much more easily, as well as vast amounts of freely available information online - I can’t really imagine how they did it back then.
Some optimizations help a lot. There’s a bunch of general optimizations that compiler do that work for any CPU. A simple example would be unrolling small loops. Compilers are fast enough today that they can brute force the best optimization for a given piece of code if needed.
laughs in unlocked PS2 with HDD
RRoD was 360. PS2 was one of the most durable consoles ever.
I think the 2600 and SNES take the prize for durability. 64 was durable, unless you have the DK64 nightmare game console and played in the sun.
They mean a red screen of death you’d get when the CD was invalid, not a RRoD.
For real. I remember that despite our best efforts discs would get scratched occasionally, and try keeping those disks pristine with kids. That mechanical drive was also a common and expensive point of failure that’s guaranteed to wear out eventually because of those moving parts.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but I think there’s a tendency to glorify the past and hyperfocus on the disadvantages. We forget that there were parts of the past that really sucked.
Cartridge blow jobs