Board 8 > What's the most technically impressive Nintendo 64 game? (Day 7) + Game G. final

(+) Yeah! (+)

Super Mario 64

Perfect Dark

For your consideration:

F-Zero X - True 60 fps gameplay on a console known for most games running at <30 (and as a fast paced racing game it actually needs all those frames)
Pokemon Stadium 2 - All of the Transfer Pak stuff plus some of the top of the line graphics and animations on the console. Also had mobile connection support on the JP version ("online" before wifi). Oh and also consider how much full voice acting the game has (the narrator has at least several hundred if not thousands of unique lines).
Donkey Kong 64 - Don't forget that many of the reasons why people trash this game are a direct result of the devs trying to push the specs to their limit (past it, really). Really just trying to make it as technically impressive as possible to the point where you could argue that they should have delayed it for the GameCube instead.

Conker's Bad Fur Day

Perfect Dark crumbles under the ambition of its own systems with its framerate at times. Conker doesn't care about framerate because his gameplay's already a clumsy mess. Plus the facial animations alone are leagues above even what a lot of early Gamecube was offering.

Conker was honestly my second thought and I'm still able to be swayed.

Just watched some Conker's BFD gameplay, and I think that gets my vote. I didn't know N64 could look that good.

F-Zero X

Perfect Dark is ambitious, but it really suffers in some parts.

I may be a homer, but F-Zero X has an excellent case. I also want to give a shout-out to Rocket: Robot on Wheels, which probably had the best physics out of any game on that system.

Vote

my first thought was mario artist but that doesn't really count so uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

part of me wants to give it to a racing game other than f-zero (beetle adventure racing has the most detailed courses tbh, wave race's water physics are highly elaborate, and there are several f-zero clones that while lacking x's high perfomance metrics, also vastly outclassed it visually). also that one mech game, last legion ux, is pretty cool too

buuut after thinking about it a bit i think i have to just give it to the original Animal Crossing, or Doubutsu no Mori

Perfect Dark

I don't get all this AI hype when we've had Perfect Dark bots for decades

I would have considered voting for Perfect Dark if they didn't drop the Game Boy Camera support.

F-Zero X

I do wanna give an honorable mention to the Resident Evil 2 port even being possible though.

Conker's Bad Fur Day

The game had extensive voice acting and animation far beyond anything else on the system.

Donkey Kong 64

It was a mess because it was absurdly ambitious for its time, it even had autosave. We all seem to agree that Rare were doing some very impressive stuff on the system.

You know what? Change my vote to Conker

MarkS2222222222 posted...

Perfect Dark

I don't get all this AI hype when we've had Perfect Dark bots for decades

My vote and reason as well. It was new and plentiful with how they presented so many different behaviors for multiplayer bots. Its framerate really suffered sometimes and Rare's FPSs don't hold up perfectly well after a quarter-century, but it earned its need for an expansion pack and at its time was my favorite game so I'll favor it here.

Shout-outs to Conker and F-Zero X as well. Donkey Kong 64...yeah, probably worthy of consideration, in the same way Banjo-Tooie though -- they just have a lot.

I don't have enough stock behind 'em to defend DK64 and Banjo-Tooie, but I do find their technical optimization absolutely hilarious. The fact that they compensate for the N64's native lag so greatly that they balance the games around it is pretty outstanding. For instance, there's the race in Fungi Forest with the rabbit in DK64 - in order to make it actually close, the rabbit is sped up to be nearly impossible to defeat natively, but when played on N64, is a relatively fair challenge. However, when it was ported forward to Wii U without that native lag, the rabbit reverted to regular levels and became nearly impossible unless you cancel the race while in mid-race, then restart the race whilst already inside of Lanky Kong's speed-up barrel, thus eliminating a several-second animation.

Tooie also had a similar issue where the intro is perfectly synced up to its music on N64, but due to the speedup of the Xbox 360 version, the intro cutscene is terribly desynced with its music and just gets progressively worse. I think that's worthy of SOME level of technical commendation... just not quite at the level of PD and Conker actually pulling off a lot of what they're going for.

UF8 posted...

buuut after thinking about it a bit i think i have to just give it to the original Animal Crossing, or Doubutsu no Mori

oh shit, doubutsu no mori is a great choice. never did it occur to me as a kid that the gcn ac game was basically a n64 game? more or less, i can't remember all the version differences

Bump

It's not my vote compared to some of the other options here, but I want to give an honorable mention to Pokemon Snap for something that it did really well which never gets enough credit. All of its loading zones are cleverly hidden behind stage geometry and around corners so you (almost) never see new stuff loading into the stage. It always makes it looks like everything is already there by the time you arrive. They course layouts were carefully designed to accommodate this, and the end result is an increase in immersion because it makes them feel even bigger.

Put my actual vote to F-Zero X.

Would it be appropriate to divide this topic into games benefitting from the Expansion Pak and games that did not?

HaRRicH posted...

Would it be appropriate to divide this topic into games benefitting from the Expansion Pak and games that did not?

No, that would be a terrible idea and get no votes, just like with splitting the GB and GBC.

Watching gameplay footage of Animal Crossing on the N64 is surreal, like... it still doesn't register for me that this series started on the N64 for real

HaRRicH posted...

Would it be appropriate to divide this topic into games benefitting from the Expansion Pak and games that did not?

I already allowed all GB-compatible games and SNES games with later technology, so I cant do it for the N64.

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