32/64 bit era: PS, Saturn or N64?

[16bitter]

Outside that first season for the N64 (Mario 64>>>>everything, for at least a month there), I always thought the PS was the best system. I got into the Saturn in late 98 and I really love the thing -- I've probably played it more than my PS since then, but at the same time I felt I had far more to catch up on and find at that/this late date. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the fact that it's more of a 2D machine makes it more bearable today than the PS -- which is a bit of a reversal of positions from what things were like during their era.

Overall, my vote goes to the PS -- in its heyday, it was the best thing going for gaming so far as consistency and variety in the mid to late 90s. It'll be interesting to see if ANYBODY is pro-N64 over the other two.

[Demonic Weasel]

The Saturn. It's a great system and when a game was made well for that system it truly was excellent. When a game wasn't it was avaerage, off of the top of my head I can't think of a game that was actually bad.

I never gave much love to the PS, so I can't say much about it.

And the N64 was good... but It didn't have anything on the Saturn.

[Joe Redifer]

For me this is extremely simple. Saturn. Granted the PS had waaaay more games, but I modded my Saturn to play imports, and once I did that man oh man did the good games flow. The thing was just so damn fun. I loved the controller (Japanese one whch later came to the US). I hated (and still do) the Playstation controller. The Saturn just seemed sleeker. The 3D capabilities of both systems sucked ass, so that wasn't a deciding factor for me. I didn't like how the PS's 3D textures were all skewed (they couldn't draw a straight line to save their lives). As for the N64, I loved Super Mario 64, Waverace 64, and a few other games. The N64's foggy graphics actually made me go diahrrea, so I didn't play it that often. The Saturn looked incredible in S-video.

Yeah. Saturn.

[David J.]

The Saturn is my least favorite Sega console, it's a great system too, but don't get me wrong I love it more than the PSX, and the N64!

My only problems with the saturn are, most of the good games in the domestic library are pricy and hard to find. And the cost and availbity of games.

And for the record, I've gotten some good deals on rare or expensive saturn games, complete and in mint condition. Only 20 odd games to go!

[16bitter]

For me this is extremely simple. Saturn. Granted the PS had waaaay more games, but I modded my Saturn to play imports, and once I did that man oh man did the good games flow.

That's what was so disappointing about Sega of America's strategy -- the Saturn release schedule was too mainstream, never showing the system's true potential. And, of course, like all Sega systems it was killed prematurely in our market by that same corporate structure.

Meh.

The 3D capabilities of both systems sucked ass,

Tell me about it. The Dreamcast was such a godsend for console 3D. The PS was dead to me the minute the DC hit.

[16bitter]

BTW, how did the N64 get two votes? I'm really curious about that reasoning.

[Chris Marsh]

BTW, how did the N64 get two votes? I'm really curious about that reasoning.

One of those votes is because there are some great games for the N64 that are not of the lame RPG or the stealth genre. Goldeneye is the greatest FPS game of all time. That game alone is worth the price of admission for the system. Super Mario, a way better SF Rush than the PS1 version, and no long PS1 load times are the makings of a great system. The Saturn is underpowered when it comes to making a 3D game (The system has good 2D titles). The PS1 is still a good system, but the 3D titles have not aged well and the ones that have are RPG's or Metal Gear Solid (Not a bad game).

[j_factor]

Saturn. I had one in its heydey, kept track of its games to an OCD extent, bought dozens of games for it at the time, including many imports, and yet, I still occasionally discover an interesting game that I missed. There is just so much good stuff for it. Also, owning a Saturn in 1996 was quite possibly the most exciting system-year in the history of videogames, in terms of the potential and volume of everything that was coming out. That was the only time I have ever sold stuff to buy new games.

Close second would be Playstation. Lots of great games, lots of great times. A good friend of mine had one at launch, and I'd go over and play it a lot.. he was always getting new games too, both good and not-so-good ones. Which was great, it was really fun playing the whole spectrum of quality; sometimes I think I shield myself from bad games too much nowadays, as playing bad games can be pretty enriching. Anyway, Playstation became my own system of choice in October '98 when I got rid of my entire Saturn collection to get one... I remember looking at a bunch of Dreamcast media like Virtua Fighter 3tb, Sega Rally 2, PenPen, etc. and thinking, "they're killing Saturn for that? they're leaving me in the cold and they expect me to buy this new thing?" I promptly killed Sega from my personal collection and bought a Playstation, Sega's ever-increasing hubris having gotten unbearable. I eventually did get a Dreamcast, but not until the system was dying.

N64? I had one briefly, but only because it was given to me, and I got rid of it pretty quickly (in fact, I got it in September of '98 and traded it in towards the PSX the next month). N64 had such a paltry game selection, I couldn't stand it... I'd rate it down by Jaguar and 3DO in terms of overall library.

[16bitter]

BTW, how did the N64 get two votes? I'm really curious about that reasoning.

One of those votes is because there are some great games for the N64 that are not of the lame RPG or the stealth genre.

Irony of that statement is that Nintendo losing Square quite possibly was what destroyed their hold over Japan. Imagine if Sony hadn't come in -- Sega might have found themselves owning the Japanese market.

Goldeneye is the greatest FPS game of all time. That game alone is worth the price of admission for the system. Super Mario, a way better SF Rush than the PS1 version, and no long PS1 load times are the makings of a great system. The Saturn is underpowered when it comes to making a 3D game (The system has good 2D titles). The PS1 is still a good system, but the 3D titles have not aged well and the ones that have are RPG's or Metal Gear Solid (Not a bad game).

I preferred carts for the lack of loading, but I also think that they crippled this system from the get-go.

Is it unfairly bashed? Maybe. There certainly weren't enough games, and the ratio within that of great to crap was not high enough in the former's favor, yet it still had some of the best experiences of its generation.

Goldeneye was the first great console-only FPS. Deathmatch on that provided many hours of fun -- a stellar variety of setups -- and the missions stood out for their intricacy. I had a much better time with this than I did the first Halo.

Blast Corps is still a pretty unique experience, and it has aged quite decently. It's literally one of the pure boy fantasies come to life -- destructive joy from an overhead position that recalls the type of godhood that all kids, consciously or subconsciously, create when playing out such scenarios with a Lego/Lincoln Log town or the like.

Doom 64 made for a wonderful update on the old game's engine, and I think stands as one of the great versions of Doom put to any screen.

Star Fox 64 remains one of the greatest rail shooters ever released. And it still looks decent enough that I enjoy playing it today -- of course, all of the same goes for Panzer Dragoon Zwei. 'Cept for the rumble feature and the amazing heft of the Slipmeister's personality.

Diddy Kong Racing, so far as I've played, is the last great cart racer -- I've not come in contact with an impressive alternative, including the many lame Mario Kart followups (the one and only exception to that being MK on GBA, which stuck to the original's design philosophy and required skill). Introducing planes and boats brought a freshness to the gameplay, and within that same gameplay there's a true sense of this requiring racing acumen not called upon in the horrendous Mario Kart 64. To top it off it was one of the best looking games of the era, and goes in the category of games that look reasonably good today from that period.

Waverace 64 was tremendous as far as graphics and gameplay -- along with Mario 64, it created the feeling out of the box that the N64 truly was what it was hyped up to be. After all, with first generation software that was this great imagine how amazing the system would be in a couple years! Unfortunately, the answer became rarely as good, never better and often far below what was done here. Remains one of the N64's very best, but that's almost an indictment. Granted, it is also one of the best games of that generation, as I feel all the games I've listed in this post are.

F-Zero X. An amazing experience of speed and mayhem. It's been topped by GX, but nothing could match this game's purity so far as what it was tapping until Amusement Vision gave us the sequel. F-Zero is legendary as a series -- the first was one of the great 16-bit racers and one of my earliest SNES games, and the two console followups by generation have done nothing but blow me away. Yet to have a bad game, though if we take it to the handheld realm I admit that I was underwhelmed by the first GBA game. I can't wait to see what limits this series will be pushed to and surpass on the Rev.

And then we have Zelda and Mario. Not much needs to be said there. Two of the greatest of any era were and are 64 and Ocarina.

But what of the lack of games overall and all the disappointments? What about genres totally ignored -- was there ever a great, even decent, fighter or RPG on the system? What about the obvious constraint an otherwise very powerful piece of hardware was placed under by its connective media format?

I can name as many games that sickened as I can that amazed, which is anything but okay considering the number released. As will always be the case, even some of the widely praised games did nothing for me -- the previously mentioned MK, SF Rush, Turok (I hate this game, so I guess it did do something for or to me), etc. -- and with the lack of variety in any sense on the N64 this only helped to underline the system's failings, and Nintendo's idiocy in clinging to the cartridge.

Was N64 a great system? I think if we look at purely its pros, then yes -- what would things be like without some of the games it introduced? The answer becomes a but more ambivalent when I consider what it did wrong, as well as how much better it could have been with a different format to store its games in.

With CD or some other high density media, Nintendo would have slaughtered with this tech. Make no mistakes. A better run company than Sega by far, but its hubris was almost as destructive as Sega's in-fighting, unfocused stupidity.

It also died rather quickly. After Zelda, what was left? That's basically two years of the machine at any type of zenith.

[Obviously]

Although I love the Saturn and it was a better piece of hardware than the Playstation in my eyes, I'm not going to try to fool myself. At the end of the day Playstation had the software support and even if it was quantity over quality they still had more gems packed onto that thing at the end of its life span than any other system unless you combine the Genesis and the SNES games into the same category.

The N64, while being the graphics whore of that generation and boasting some of the best games of all time that shouldn't be missed for any reason, it just didn't have enough of them to hold the interest of the crowd for very long. Lack of CD's also meant limitted speech and worse music than the Playstation. Not that I have anything against MIDI style videogame music. The Saturn could've been a contender but most people were too busy feeling scorned about investing in Sega CDs and 32Xs and Nomads to give the Saturn the chance it deserved. Honestly, Sega dug its own grave and would have to sit out until the next generation where it would create the fantastic Dreamcast only to suffer a new mess of marketting blunders and drop out of the console market once more.

As Sony started scooping up 3rd party developers and everyone's favorite franchises left and right the other consoles were left in the dust. Playstation was the clear winner and the fanbase that skipped the Dreamcast to wait for the PS2 is a testament to that. Playstation also definatively proved that games were more important than graphics. It was also the first system (pre-NES systems not included) to be successful without a mascot character (Crash not included... nice try Sony but no dice).

My biggest gripe with Sony's PS1 is early on they were rejecting 2D games since they wanted to differentiate themselves from the 16 bit era and be an entirely 3D system and let's face it, the Sony isn't the most 3D capable machine in the world but it can pump out some gorgeous two-dimensional graphics and luckily classics such as Castlevania: SotN managed to weasel their way onto the system so it's not so much of a gripe as it is a disagreement with Sony's view on what constitutes a good video game. As has been mentioned a lot of Sony's 3D games have not aged well and this is understandable since full 3D was still in the pioneering stages and at the time few people knew how to make a good game with it (Though Sega and Nintendo seemed to get a pretty good grasp on it early on).

In the end Sony got its payback by crippling Nintendo's stranglehold on the market since Nintendo kicked them to the curb after rejecting the original Playstation SNES add on. It's just unfortunate that Sega and its Saturn was caught in the fray. They showed the Big N not to mess with them and it may be a different and even better world today if Sony and Nintendo were still on the same team. I wasn't too pleased with the PS2 and Sony's become what most people like to call an evil empire now-a-days, no longer the underdog that came out of nowhere and rose to glory.

[GeckoYamori]

I think the PC market started peaking over the console counterparts during that era :P

[16bitter]

Close second would be Playstation. Lots of great games, lots of great times. A good friend of mine had one at launch, and I'd go over and play it a lot.. he was always getting new games too, both good and not-so-good ones. Which was great, it was really fun playing the whole spectrum of quality; sometimes I think I shield myself from bad games too much nowadays, as playing bad games can be pretty enriching. Anyway, Playstation became my own system of choice in October '98 when I got rid of my entire Saturn collection to get one... I remember looking at a bunch of Dreamcast media like Virtua Fighter 3tb, Sega Rally 2, PenPen, etc. and thinking, "they're killing Saturn for that? they're leaving me in the cold and they expect me to buy this new thing?" I promptly killed Sega from my personal collection and bought a Playstation, Sega's ever-increasing hubris having gotten unbearable. I eventually did get a Dreamcast, but not until the system was dying.

We really are opposites on the Saturn/DC issue. I thought Dreamcast was the first Sega product since Genesis to really get things right from the corporate structure as well as being a piece of prime hardware at its release -- the Saturn I thought was sunk by the former and heavily flawed in the case of the latter (though with all these machines the former and later conflate at concept and base tech stage).

I still believe that Sega's wounds were self-inflicted across the board with the Saturn, whereas the Dreamcast was both victim of unwarranted Sony zeitgeist and of past mistakes made with the Saturn and other hardware. Its death had little to do with the machine's failings, which I think were few to none, much unlike the Saturn.

N64? I had one briefly, but only because it was given to me, and I got rid of it pretty quickly (in fact, I got it in September of '98 and traded it in towards the PSX the next month). N64 had such a paltry game selection, I couldn't stand it... I'd rate it down by Jaguar and 3DO in terms of overall library.

I don't know how you could do that. The N64's overall library was hurting next to Saturn and Playstation's, but it blows away the Jag and 3DO.

If we're talking by genre, the N64 had some deep holes. But on number of quality pieces there's no comparison whatsoever.

Saying the N64's software is on the same level as those two is far too hyperbolic.

[16bitter]

My biggest gripe with Sony's PS1 is early on they were rejecting 2D games since they wanted to differentiate themselves from the 16 bit era and be an entirely 3D system and let's face it, the Sony isn't the most 3D capable machine in the world

Back then it was, actually. Which makes Sony's stance defensible early on. After all, why release too many 2D games that will play right into the Saturn's strengths?

But today it makes no sense when they reject a game like Metal Slug 3, I agree.

but it can pump out some gorgeous two-dimensional graphics and luckily classics such as Castlevania: SotN managed to weasel their way onto the system so it's not so much of a gripe as it is a disagreement with Sony's view on what constitutes a good video game.

As far as it technically goes, the PS was a far better 3D machine for its time than it was a 2D machine on the basis of relative comparison. Right now? Yeah, its limited 2D software is more bearable than its "striking" 3D software. Though some of those Capcom arcade translations aren't (SF Alpha was one prime exception, but it was all downhill from there).

[Obviously]

We really are opposites on the Saturn/DC issue. I thought Dreamcast was the first Sega product since Genesis to really get things right from the corporate structure as well as being a piece of prime hardware at its release -- the Saturn I thought was sunk by the former and heavily flawed in the case of the latter (though with all these machines the former and later conflate at concept and base tech stage).

I agree with you on the Dreamcast. The Saturn was so-so in my opinion. I don't have that many great memories of it when compared to other systems at the time but the Dreamcast blew me away. It was the highest point in Sega history next to the Genesis and nothing was wrong with it. I'm just a delusional person who was with the Dreamcast from the beginning until it's death though so I might be a little jaded. Marketting blunders ended up killing it in the end though although it was nice to see Sega pumping out original games again, at least for a short time.

[16bitter]

We really are opposites on the Saturn/DC issue. I thought Dreamcast was the first Sega product since Genesis to really get things right from the corporate structure as well as being a piece of prime hardware at its release -- the Saturn I thought was sunk by the former and heavily flawed in the case of the latter (though with all these machines the former and later conflate at concept and base tech stage).

I agree with you on the Dreamcast. The Saturn was so-so in my opinion. I don't have that many great memories of it when compared to other systems at the time but the Dreamcast blew me away. It was the highest point in Sega history next to the Genesis and nothing was wrong with it. I'm just a delusional person who was with the Dreamcast from the beginning until it's death though so I might be a little jaded.

I don't think so. But then, we may just be deluded together.

It had an awesome launch and never lost its momentum from that...until the scythe came down so prematurely in January 01. Tragic.

Great hardware, and software that was wonderful across the board. The PS2 took a long time to get up to par with the DC's lineup -- in fact, the DC and PS2 felt like role reversal as far as hardware. The Dreamcast had tons of great games out of the gate and was easy to develop for, whereas the Playstation 2 was a mess inside.

Marketting blunders ended up killing it in the end though although it was nice to see Sega pumping out original games again, at least for a short time.

I didn't think it was marketing that killed it (though it was in no way as cutting edge as Sega in their prime), but rather Sega's past mistakes with the Saturn being inescapable financially. In the end, the DC was the victim of the Saturn era as well -- its downfall was of no fault of the system itself or even the Sega of that period.

The DC is, as a concept, what the Saturn should have been in relative terms. It even had sports and a next-gen Sonic covered out of the gate.

Sonic Adventure
Powerstone
VF3TB
Blue Stinger (never got around to playing it, but it looked damned nice and decently interesting)
Soul Calibur (makes the arcade version its bitch)
NBA2K (I remember I was so damned impressed with the little details, like Stockton having short short shorts, certain players having distinctive FT stances/rituals and the arenas finally being distinctive)
NFL2K
Toy Commander
Sega Rally 2
Marvel Vs Capcom
Street Fighter Alpha 3 (it truthfully was a somewhat lacking port of a lacking iteration of SF, but it was a decent name to have in the lineup; Saturn version is the best, ironically, but it of course was left in Japa like so much else for that system)
House of the Dead 2

Great launch window. And it must be remembered that the games all looked spectacular for the most part -- such a leap over anything else on the market -- which is what new systems need. An abundance of quality software from the opening bell that also were wonderful tech demos.

I love this system so much. It felt like, yeah, this is the Sega I remember -- the Genesis era company that seemed to constantly amaze. The MIA company of the 32-bit era.