@NaviAndMii I think N64 graphics are easier to stomach if you have some nostalgia for them. I didn't grow up playing N64, so Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time are almost physically painful to look at (and play, in the case of Mario 64). The ripped-up-construction-paper-soaked-in-vaseline look of Mario 64, in particular, is stomach-turning.
Currently Playing on January 13, 2026: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (PC)
I fully understand your reasoning though. I'm not saying Rare made bad games at that time, on the contrary. I just think they are way overrated to the point they are often seen as the second coming of Christ... which they are not.
Yeah, I'll openly admit that I do look at my N64 (like the rest of my childhood) through a pretty thick pair of 'nostalgia goggles'
I, personally, would probably say that Rare were responsible for the best two shooters of the generation (GoldenEye and Perfect Dark) - the 2nd and 3rd best platformers (Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day, behind Mario 64) - and arguably the best racing game (Diddy Kong Racing) ..and that includes the games I played on rival consoles at my friends' houses - but that's just me (and I'm more-than-likely biased!)
Diddy Kong Racing and Perfect Dark, in particular, stand out as real real gems of the era - DKR, to me, improved on the 'Mario Kart' formula in almost every conceivable way - and I still consider that Perfect Dark has the best single-player story, co-op mode, weapon-selection, local multiplayer and replayability of any shooter I've ever played (which is kind of a shame in a way ..controls, connectivity and graphics may have moved on - but that's pretty much all that has IMO)
...but, yeah, I can't deny that I'm a bitlot of an N64 fanboy at heart - so I probably can't be trusted to look back on the era with any amount of reasoned objectivity!
While I still love Rare's 90s games, it's not really "they made games I really liked" that make that era so impressive to me nowadays. It's that during their time with Nintendo, they made a lot of games for one developer, most of them were very, very well received, several of them were very influential and significant for the genre (Goldeneye being the most obvious example), and they did so with like half a dozen different genres. That's the thing that makes Rareware absolutely legendary to me, because I can't think of a single developer since then that has even remotely been able to pull off anything similar.
And srsly, Nintendo would be borderline ****ed in the late 90s without them. Rare was like 1/3 of Nintendo's games on the N64, and probably 1/2 in terms of games people care about, either then or now.
And srsly, Nintendo would be borderline ****ed in the late 90s without them. Rare was like 1/3 of Nintendo's games on the N64, and probably 1/2 in terms of games people care about, either then or now.
True that! Rare's games were absolutely necessary and they were, almost all of them, great titles for their time.
@Rextephan Back then Rare was considered as one of the best studio of the industry. They made games of varied genres, well written with typical british humor, technically impresive, great musics, plenty of game design ideas (especially Perfect Dark and Conker Bad Fur Day which were probably their peak in quality).
Very few studio came close to the quality Rare provided during the late 90's. They were good in every field.
@DiscoGentleman I was. On PS1. Which is why I can look at something like FF7 and find it visually charming, but I'd totally get someone not familiar with it finding it hard to look at.
Thanks to the different hardware and design philosophies involved, most games on the systems just... looked different. N64 games were usually more colorful and textures were blurrier, adding to that vaseline-slathered look I discussed. 3D PS1 games (I played a lot of 2D JRPGs and shmups on the system) usually had some level of darkness to the visuals, which hid the visual blemishes now. Although some later N64 and PS1 games hold up well (particular Conker's Bad Fur Day which, I swear to god, looks like a very early GameCube title). Not poor FF7, though, where the characters are look like deformed Lego creatures horrifyingly brought to life. But I still love that game, and at least the PS version didn't give the characters stupid O-faces like the PC version did.
I did play one back in the day, but, unfortunately, I was only interested in Pokemon games. So I have a lot of memories of Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Stadium, and Hey You! Pikachu (I didn't say there were all good memories...) The rest of my time was spent on PS1.
Actually, historically speaking, aside from my precious NES, I'm an extremely recent convert to Nintendo, which means I'm still playing a lot of the classic games I missed out on for SNES/N64/GameCube (aside from REmake, Metroid Prime 1 and 2, and Eternal Darkness, which I played on the system and absolutely loved in that generation).
@Ralizah N64 graphics ALWAYS looked bad, even at the time. The 3D was super impressive, and was unlike everything else on console, but it always kind of looked bad. Coming from NES and SNES I kind of looked at it as sideways and weird. I envied it (the one Nintendo console I never had and always wished I did....well, I didn't have a GCN either, but the Wii was also a GCN so I caught up then during the massive droughts of good games on Wii.) But even when I'd look at the in store demos, there just was a "something" that gave it a Fisher Price feel that seemed so wrong after the "Playing with Super Power" era of SNES. That was the slide into "kiddy Nintendo" perception, or rather Nintendo appearing to embrace the light Sega successfully cast them in.
Though I never thought much of PSX either, being scarcely aware of it. I was jaded by my Virtual Boy, missed out on N64, and during the N64 life cycle discovered Doom and Quake and Warcraft 2 on PC and for a decade+ never looked back until Wii launched
I think in the hands of a good developer the N64 could produce some very attractive games (some of Rare's later games like Perfect Dark and Jet Force Gemini were pushing the limits of the system and could have passed as Gamecube games) but in general they were all a bit ugly at the time and they're mostly all complete eyesores now. Most games looked muddy because the console didn't have enough bandwidth for textures or storage space for them or something.
Personally I think they looked better than (polygonal 3d) PSX games at the time (and they continue to look better today in hindsight) but that's being damned with faint praise. At least the polygons on N64 looked solid and N64 games rarely relied on the trick of using a "high resolution" 2d jpeg background.
Still it's my least favourite Nintendo console by a country mile though - ironically - I have a decent sized collection of N64 games.
As to Rare - I think they made a few great games on N64 (DKR, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark) but I never really loved many of their in-house Euro-home computer esq visual design choices.
Design wise they fell into a trap of making bigger and bigger worlds though rather than making more refined and interesting ones. In many ways Rare games like Donkey Kong 64 are forerunners of open world structure before anyone really understood how to make that work.
@DiscoGentleman I mostly ignored Nintendo and its games post-NES until last gen. I played Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii, a system I otherwise hated, in 2009 or so and was... awakened? That sounds a bit cultish, but what I mean is that, while I always played games, I had lost the joy I once felt from the hobby. Galaxy was, to my shock, joy personified. I didn't jump on the Nintendo bandwagon right away because, as I mentioned, I hated (and still hate) the Wii, even if I love that game to death. What I did do, however, is buy a 3DS in 2011, which fully immersed me in the world of Nintendo. It was the only system I played until late 2013, when I got a PS Vita. In the meantime, though, I was experiencing many Nintendo franchises for the first time. Star Fox 64 was my first Star Fox game. Ocarina of Time 3D was my first 3D Zelda experience. Mario Kart 7 was my second MK game, and the first I played with any real interest or passion. Fire Emblem: Awakening was my first FE. Paper Mario: Sticker Star was (unfortunately) my introduction to that franchise. So on and so forth. After I got my Wii U in 2014, I started immersing myself in games I'd never had the opportunity to play until then. Primarily SNES games. Some of them were incredible experiences (Super Metroid, A Link to the Past, Super Castlevania IV, Contra III, Yoshi's Island, Donkey Kong Country 2, etc.). Others I was... less thrilled with (Earthbound, Super Mario World, and Chrono Trigger come to mind).
@NEStalgia PS1 (where did the "X" in "PSX" come from, anyway?) is possibly my all-time favorite console. I think part of what I loved about it is that, unlike Nintendo and the N64, developers on Sony's system didn't seem to jump as fully into embracing 3D gaming right away. I mean, certainly, there were a lot of full 3D games on the system, but a LOT of big Japanese titles were either 2.5D or focused less on manipulating objects in 3D space. And even 3D power houses at the time like MGS often-times flattened their models out with overhead viewpoints. And, as I mentioned, games on that system tended to not be as colorful. The end result is that most games on the PS1 hold up better nowadays than Nintendo 64 and its very 3D (and very ugly) games.
With that said, Nintendo did a good job on the GameCube: so many games looked utterly gorgeous on that system. Still do today, as far as I am concerned.
@Ralizah My path to Nintendo isn't entirely dissimilar. I was an NES and SNES junkie with secondary reverence for Sega. Got burned by Virtual Boy. Skipped N64. Then migrated to PC for a good long while until getting sick of the CONSTANTLY breaking $500 hardware and constant system/windows troubleshooting problems relating to gaming (months and months with "system freezes completely after x time of gaming, throw more fans in, rig more fans at odd angles, still happens....way too much troubleshooting) so I bought a PS3 (its bad performance didn't impress me so I bought an X360 too.) But until the PS2 launched (while I was on PC) I was almost completely unaware of the very existence of PlayStation at all. Consoles = Nintendo/Sega and to me there were no others. Jumped back into Nintendo when Wii launched (Metroid Prime and Galaxy...couldn't resist.) and had a love-hate relationship with it. Those games and a number of others (Kirby both Return and Epic Yarn, DKCR, Kart, Smash, etc kept me hooked a few years before losing all interest in Wii. But in the intervening time I bought a 3DS and it began to pull me into gaming addiction like nothing since the SNES. Best darned system ever. Even better than SNES. Switch is going to easily surpass it for me though, I can tell already. Which is amazing. I liked my WiiU and some of my experiences on it. Some great games. But really 3DS stole the show from both it and PS4.
But yeah after the time of the X-BOX launch, PC gaming changed. It changed into what is now "AAA gaming". And it felt dead inside. PC was awesome until around 2001....it changed and not for the better. I've heard via indies its kind of back.....but....it still feels off to me now. It's not what it was in the late 90's, early 00's.
Your'e right about the PSX 2D graphics though. In hindsight I probably would have loved that system most of all at the time. But I was more or less oblivious to its existence until FF7 came out on PC
@Ralizah "I'll call the eventual tenth Playstation console the PSX."
Hipster.
I like game droughts. Gives me a chance to breathe/catch up with everything or replay old favourites. I would genuinely be quite happy if the entire industry stopped making games for like a whole year and gave us all a chance to clear our backlogs.
It's easier with other media. I mean, you could watch all five seasons of Breaking Bad or every James Bond film ever made in the same time it takes to complete one Xenoblade bloody Chronicles... (though obviously most games aren't anywhere near as long as Xenoblade Chronicles. Thank God). So yeah, I yearn for a nice game drought now and then.
Have to agree with @CreamyDream in that if you don't have time to play new releases...don't. Although I can @Haywired 's somewhat in that, even if you don't have time to play new releases, there's always the temptation when everyone's talking about them.
On that note, I'm going to say that I'm not particularly bothered about game droughts or delays. I have enough to tide me over in the mean time and whereas I'd like, say, a Switch Pokemon game, I'm content to know that it will come out at some point, if not soon.
@subpopz To be fair, you could just...ignore the elitists. I mean, I don't even know who or what you're talking about, and the PS4 has been my main platform for over a year now (can't afford a Switch). I'll take that as a sign that it's entirely avoidable so long as you don't seek it out...
This year I had so much fun WITHOUT a current-gen system that I think I won't be getting a new one in 2018 like I had originally planned. I believe I have reached a zen-like state with an old PS3 and an Android phone.
When Shenmue III comes out I'll probably get a PS4, but for now I'm perfectly happy with mobile games and the occasional old and cheap PS3 game for more convoluted stuff. I haven't had a healthier relationship with videogames in a long time.
Top-10 games I played in 2017: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (WiiU) - Rogue Legacy (PS3) - Fallout 3 (PS3) - Red Dead Redemption (PS3) - Guns of Boom (MP) - Sky Force Reloaded (MP) - ...
1. I think the Master Key in Dark Souls 1 is an overrated starting item.
It only works on a handful of locks in the game and you never have to go that out of your way to get the actual keys that go to them.
2. I think Platinum Games working on Star Fox Zero was more of a bane than a boon.
Platinum's MO is fast and frenetic action and they always incentivize players to complete stages as quickly as possible. This, coupled with the lack of interesting set pieces (like the train on Macbeth, the blockade run on Area 6, and the 4-v-4 Star Wolf fights, especially the Wolfen II battle on Venom), just make the player acutely aware of how much time they're spending on each stage, and thus how short Zero actually is overall, even though it has roughly the same number of stages as 64. All of 64's stages took what, like 5 to 7 minutes to complete? definitely less than 10, but it never felt like it when playing any given level.
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