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N64 doesn't use CDs and THAT IS GOOD

IbizaPocholo

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


Summary


  • (00:05–01:38) The creator argues that the Nintendo 64 was better off using cartridges instead of CDs, despite their much smaller storage capacity (8–64 MB vs. 700 MB) and significantly higher manufacturing cost. Cartridges also helped keep the console's launch price lower by avoiding an expensive CD drive.
  • (01:38–04:16) The biggest technical advantage of cartridges was their extremely fast read speed—roughly 100× faster than CDs. This enabled developers to stream assets continuously during gameplay, allowing seamless room transitions, dynamic music, animations, and game mechanics that would have been impractical on CD-based hardware.
  • (03:02–04:34) CD-based consoles like the PlayStation excelled at storing FMVs, voice acting, pre-rendered backgrounds, and CD-quality music, while the N64's stronger CPU but limited storage encouraged real-time rendering instead. Games such as Ocarina of Time used compressed pre-rendered assets sparingly because they consumed a large portion of the cartridge.
  • (06:20–08:25) The video argues that the N64's biggest weakness wasn't cartridges themselves, but launching after developers had already embraced CD-based game design. Many PlayStation games depended on large storage capacities, making ports to the N64 difficult or impossible.
  • (08:25–10:51) Examples like a fan-made PlayStation port of Super Mario 64 and comments from developers at Factor 5 and Rare illustrate the compromises required on CD hardware, including reduced texture quality, compressed animations, pre-rendered music, and increased RAM requirements to preload data.
  • (10:51–12:58) The creator demonstrates how the N64 achieved near-instant area transitions, whereas even the later N64 Disk Drive exhibited noticeably longer loading times. Games with seamless worlds, such as Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, benefited greatly from cartridge streaming.
  • (12:58–14:21) While developers could work around CD limitations through preloading, compression, and level design tricks, these were described as workarounds rather than ideal solutions. Likewise, the PlayStation's hardware was well matched to CDs, whereas the N64's architecture was designed around fast cartridge access.
  • (14:21–15:46) The conclusion emphasizes that neither cartridges nor CDs were universally superior. Cartridges enabled certain types of games that would have been difficult on CDs, while CDs made larger, more cinematic games feasible. The perception that cartridges were a mistake largely stems from comparing the N64 against competitors built around a different set of hardware trade-offs. The creator also notes that cartridges were likely more resistant to piracy and briefly discusses how their own Super Mario 64 mod still relies heavily on the cartridge's fast streaming despite nearly exhausting the 64 MB ROM limit.
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N64 games were much more expensive because the cartridges cost more than a CD.

CDs were by far the better option. I'll take the loading times for better music, textures, voice acting, FMVs and cheaper games.
 
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The instant loading was cool, but it didn't make up for the absurd price of the cartridges, the lack of real music, voice acting and FMV on most games (or with crappy quality), and above all, textures that would make the baby jesus cry.
 
It was a cartridge system when gaming had already entered the multimedia age. It's still a good system but it's library is very weak for certain genres of games.
 
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Well, in the end Nintendo still abandoned them. Way too expensive for a limited storage space.

Game developers or publishers had to pay upfront for the these expensive cartridges and if the game failed they were in a lot of trouble.
 
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nush said:
It was a cartridge system when gaming had already entered the multimedia age. It's still a good system but it's library is very weak for certain genres of games.
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True but on the other side it had by far the strongest library in other genres.

Jump'n'Run
First Person Shooters
Sports Games
Wrestling Games
Star Wars

It was also the got to Multiplayer system.
 
The almost instant loading times, were a cool factor for cartridge based consoles.
But the cons were significant. Game prices were much higher. Cartridge capacity was extremely limited. Sound quality was compromised. FMVs had to be sacrificed.
And for companies making games, it was a significant risk, as it was required to make a much bigger investment upfront, buying cartridges, while with CDs it was much cheaper per unit.
This meant that if a game didn't sell enough copies, with cartridges ir would mean millions of dollars wasted.
 
winjer said:
And for companies making games, it was a significant risk, as it was required to make a much bigger investment upfront, buying cartridges, while with CDs it was much cheaper per unit.
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I used to manage manufacture of N64 and GBC carts for a publisher back in the day. It was worse than that. You had to order weeks in advance, there was no two week turn around like for CD games. You had to get your boxes and manuals printed by Nintendos approved printer (That they owned), you had to ship the carts from Japan using Nintendos approved shipping company (That they owned).

There were obviously cheaper printers and cheaper shipping companies. But fuck you publishers, we're going to nickel and dime you at every step of the way.
 
In fact, Nintendo choose a magnetic disk prior to the N64's launch, but the drive wasn't ready in time that is the true story.
Reject illusions.
 
You can tell this mf wasn't around when this POS hit the market in 1996. Downplaying the downsides and overestimating the upsides. I know this is a very popular system among the States gamers (kids, mainly) but Christ, this almost made me quit gaming.
 
Just from a preservation, longevity perspective - cartridge systems will always win out over CD consoles.
All the moving parts, and lasers - just will eventually fail without some serious upkeep over time.
Cartridge consoles - all you really need to worry about are the capacitors.

My Gamecube laser died - just out of the blue. Super disappointing and annoying.
However my N64, and NES for that matter, are seemingly indestructible - and will last forever.
 
Cartridge based system resulted in lack of games on N64. And most things beyond platformers and perhaps doom style shooters kind of sucked.

The library was very small with only a handful of good games.
 
nush said:
I used to manage manufacture of N64 and GBC carts for a publisher back in the day. It was worse than that. You had to order weeks in advance, there was no two week turn around like for CD games. You had to get your boxes and manuals printed by Nintendos approved printer (That they owned), you had to ship the carts from Japan using Nintendos approved shipping company (That they owned).

There were obviously cheaper printers and cheaper shipping companies. But fuck you publishers, we're going to nickel and dime you at every step of the way.
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If true, the N64 was such a humility lesson for Nintendo. They arrogantly thought they were the gaming industry and basically told everyone my way or the highway and did nothing to make things easier for their partners.

I love the N64 but Nintendo needed the flop to be reminded that they're serving the customers, not the other way around.
 
Even Nintendo would have not said it was good by the end of the generation.

Although they would have not accepted the level of piracy Sony was OK with anyway.

Not even sure the 64dd would have helped
 
Another disadvantage of the N64 was the lack of CDs packed with demos. Because CDs were so cheap to print, magazines could pack them every month.
Every month I would check the oficial PSX magazine to see what cool demos they had.
There were even games that had demos for upcoming games. That is how I played the Metal Gear Solid demo.
 
Seriously I love what Kaze does, pushing the N64 far more than what even Rare or Factor 5 did but this take stinks someone who's been too much technical into one system.

Developper have been struggling for storage space since the 8 bit gen and on 16 bit, a lot of ambitions had to be cut because of cartridge space. Maybe some stuff where not doable on CDs. But Cartridge generally need bigger compromises that weren't there anymore on PSX and Saturn since 94 and even on Mega CD since 91 when devs weren't making retarded FMV games.

Cartridge based N64 was and will always be a commercial suicide in my opinion. If tve reason for this was royalties and not wanting to give money to sony, they should've at least opted for the N64DD disks directly on the bas console which was a nice compromise between relatively fast loadings and a hell of a lot more storage space than the ridiculous 8 MB of the first games of that console.
 
the problem with n64 carts were there wasn't anything special in them. no co processor versions. no extra ram... etc. they basically just expensive rom carts and Adding anything extra meant neogeo like pricing would be needed.
 
The reality is that Nintendo only kept the cartridges in order to monopolize all cartridge production and thereby charge developers more.
With CDs, developers could skip many steps and reduce costs.
 
Guys, it's not just the loading times. It's also the streaming speed.

Cartridges could read from the cart instantly while playing, minimizing the need for RAM. This is pointed out in the video.


Dirk Benedict said:
What Textures? everything looked like a fuzzy mess!
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That was because of the VI filters, not the cache or the cart.
 
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I love cartridges and always have and of course everyone does they are so much better but they are too expensive to make them for modern games unfortunately. Basically they would need to be 100gb thumb drives and that drives up cost of the game.
 
RoboFu said:
the problem with n64 carts were there wasn't anything special in them. no co processor versions. no extra ram... etc. they basically just expensive rom carts and Adding anything extra meant neogeo like pricing would be needed.
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I think Animal Crossing had a time keeping circuit of some sort in the cart.

And no need for extra RAM when the files can be streamed in real time from the ROM.
 
nkarafo said:
Guys, it's not just the loading times. It's also the streaming speed.

Cartridges could read from the cart instantly while playing, minimizing the need for RAM. This is pointed out in the video.
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Yet they still released an expansion pack, because yes it can help but no substitute for actual ram.
 
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I agree it was good for gamers. Loved them then and now, still working to this day. So many great games, outside Dreamcast the best version of Rayman 2. A lot of CD games were full of bloated fmv. Don't get me wrong. I loved ps too and final fantasy.
 
To me the reason N64 was better was the four controller slots and local MP games.

Also the first Playstation had a dogshit build quality, possibly the worst I have ever encountered with the 360.
 
Mownoc said:
Yet they still released an expansion pack, because yes it can help but no substitute for actual ram.
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RAM on the N64 was mostly used to store decompressed data. Many games had their data compressed in the carts to fit more stuff and that's why you even see some loading times in a few cases. That's the files decompressing.

If the carts were big enough to not need compression (like the Neo-Geo ones for instance) the N64 wouldn't even need a main RAM, just like previous cart based consoles like the SNES, Genesis, Neo-Geo etc. Ever wondered why these consoles had very little RAM for basic functions while home computers like the Amiga or Atari ST had much more? It's because home computers used crappy tapes or floppies, so you needed the RAM to store some files for instant access to work with. And that's why CD-based consoles also needed the RAM as well. Every time you play a PS1 game, what you see on screen and interact with can't be more than 2MB at any given time, unless you want pauses during play.

Also see how much RAM the Neo-Geo AES has and how much the Neo-Geo CD and you will understand why ROM carts were the better gaming medium.
 
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nkarafo said:
If the carts were big enough (like the Neo-Geo ones for instance) the N64 wouldn't even need a main RAM, just like previous cart based consoles like the SNES, Genesis, Neo-Geo etc. Ever wondered why these consoles had very little RAM for basic functions while home computers like the Amiga or Atari ST had much more?
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This is just so very wrong. Every console needs a main ram.

Cartridge-based consoles could get away with less RAM for asset caching but all consoles need ram for the CPU for game state, rendering, audio, and program execution.

The SNES had 64x more working ram than the NES, cartridges didn't mean it didn't need a "main ram".


Regardless "if the carts were big enough". They weren't. And even at their small size they still caused some N64 games to cost up to $80 while PS1 games capped out at $50.
 
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Mownoc said:
N64 games were much more expensive because the cartridges cost more than a CD.

CDs were by far the better option. I'll take the loading times for better music, textures, voice acting, FMVs and cheaper games.
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warping textures, no Z buffer, no real 3D, yeah fuck that.
 
Mownoc said:
This is just so very wrong. Every console needs a main ram.
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I already established that.

Don't compare the NES to the SNES. Compare the NES to something like the Commodore 64 or the SNES/Genesis to the Amiga. Look how little RAM the cart based consoles have compared to the computer equivalents. The main difference here is the medium. Consoles had carts where you needed only a tiny bit of RAM to swap data in real time while computers needed RAM to store the whole data you are playing with before a loading session, plus a little room for the OS.

Same thing with CD based consoles. The CDs are the evolution of floppies, not carts. Slow and difficult to stream data fast enough in real time so you need RAM to store everything you want to work with. The Neo-Geo CD had 7MB of RAM compared to a few KBs the AES and MVS had, to compensate for the lack of ROMs.

This isn't even arguable, ROMs are the better gaming medium. Are they expensive? Sure. They are expensive because they are better.
 
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