inb4 “Mortal Kombat and Smash” MK4 was terrible, and Smash started out on the N64
&
inb4 “this thread again.”
For the longest time, I have always wondered why the N64 lacked any Capcom fighters, or SNK titles too. With Sony claiming Tekken, and Sega claiming VF, the N64 had no console-exclusive fighter (anything that was good to be exact).
The most obvious reason on why the N64 lacked any good fighters were due to publishing costs for the console. Cartridges, especially one on a graphical powerhouse (for the time), was insanely expensive.
So I can see why Capcom never bothered porting any of the Alpha games or SF3 to the 64; but that still doesn’t explain why they never released an exclusive FG, or EX port to the console. And if memory serves me right, SNK’s first 3D-based arcade board was somewhat similar to the N64. I don’t know why SNK didn’t bother porting FF:Wild Amibition to the 64, but then again I never compared & contrast the specs of the Hyper Neo Geo 64 to the N64, so what do I know.
they had other obscure fighters, some that made it to the states like Flying dragon, and some that didn’t like Rakuga Kids. they were pretty much about themselves at the time as well
I actually think the controller was really playable. I played almost all the fighter the N64 had and had no issues. (of course i dotn think the analog was good)
while take them for what their worth their was
BioFreak, Killier intsinct Gold, Dark rift, Clay fighter 631/3 and the sculptor cut., Dark Mace, Deadly arts. Fighter destiny 1/2. Beast wars Transmetal. MK troligy & 4.
lol, Rakuga Kids. I think it has to do with demographics, as well. If Capcom, or SNK saw an audience, they might have deemed it worth the investment, but apparently they didn’t.
I planed to do this soon. If the pad is anything like the snes pad then it should be wonders. I remeber the time when I had one it felt good. It was good enough for inetnsive 2d platforming like Mishcife maker and
Bangai-O. You laso had tight controll game slike tony hawk, 1080 series. So Im pretty confident its managable.
It was for two reasons: Memory limits on cartridge and RIDICULOUS low amount of VRAM, i just can’t imagine how horrible a game like, for example, Alpha 2 looks with scaled sprites on N64.
Anyway Fighter’s Destiny was a true gem of that era.
^ This. Once the likes of Capcom got a taste of the freedom that the disc format presented them, there really was no going back. It also helped that printing CDs was much cheaper on the publisher than a proprietary cartridge format.
If the PSOne with its 2D weaknesses could still pump out quite a few decent/good fighter ports, then i see no reason why the N64 couldn’t. Especially after its ram cart upgrade.
N64 was Lacking so much more than fighting games. Only focusing on them is kind of an insult to all the other great non-FG titles at the time that never saw the light of day on the console.
Deeper issues with its library than just fighters. Just sayin’…
I don’t think the lack of fighters in the 64 is detrimental to the library, I’m just wondering why there weren’t any big name fighters for it. The N65, w/o decent fighters, is still a great console because of all the other amazing games.
bad library? damn, Im sure there are more than 60 great titles for the n64, with probably more than half of that being best sellers. the Arcade was hot back then too
But you’re making a thread pointing out a weakness in its library, and i’m just saying that lack of big name fighters was only the tip of the iceberg on that subject.
It was the weakest console (specswise) of the generation by far, was hell to code for, and there’s an ongoing problem where developers and nintendo think the demos don’t match for Fighters. Also, nintendo is a real bitch to deal with as a developer, and was way worse back then.
Think of how few there were in general post SNES…
Soulcalibur 2 (cube) and TvC, that’s basically it.
There were a lot of interesting work arounds for the N64’s lack of VRAM. The cartridge limit could be bypassed but the game ended up being more expensive as a result. Anyway, there are three reasons. The controller simply was not suited for the genre. The pad is no where near as nice as the SNES was (I have a mint N64 controller sitting next to me for reference) and you basically had to get used to the analog stick before you could call it comfortable. The pad gets the job done but it’s still pretty meh. Then you have the fact that - to get games like they were putting out on the PSX - you had to come up with an in house solution for the VRAM problem 90% of the time and lose profits by paying up for the additional cartridge space. Finally, this one kinda eroded after a while, but Nintendo wasn’t very…accommodating…put it that way, for a while to fighting game developers at the time. Or any third party developer, really.
Random note, the N64 was actually pretty powerful spec wise, but Nintendo fucked everyone up by limiting the things that mattered…so you had a bunch of new techniques developed just to compensate which definitely hurt it early on. And as mentioned, it was really hard to program for no apparent reason…