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[Mownoc]

I already established that.

You - "N64 wouldn't even need a main RAM"

Me - "All consoles need main ram."

You - "I already established that."



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

Of course it's arguable and the low capacity and high price is the entire reason it's arguable.

 

[tkscz]

It really feels like a lot of you either didn't watch the video or ignored it's point.

Kaze was saying why it was good for the N64 that it had carts instead of disc. That the games made for the N64 took advantage of that instead loading and some devs couldn't get the games working right using CDs due to having to preload data into RAM and not having enough RAM to do that. Data streaming was better off cart, but storage space was a big weakness.

I'd listen to Kaze when it comes to the N64, he's the guy who pretty much figured out the issue with the N64 wasn't slow RAM, but how that RAM was being over taxed with bad coding and order. He got Mario 64 running at 40fps on the N64 itself when games tend to run at 20fps because he removed junk code, repeating code, and fixed the order of operation of the code.

 

[nkarafo]

You - "N64 wouldn't even need a main RAM"

Me - "All consoles need main ram."

You - "I already established that."

I said Cart based consoles only needed RAM for basic functions, which is different than having a large pool of main RAM for random data.

It's not that hard.

Of course it's arguable and the low capacity and high price is the entire reason it's arguable.

The capacity depends on the dev's choice. Nothing stops them from using more or bigger ROMs to fit whatever game they needed. That's why Neo-Geo roms were so big and so expensive. That's why Arcades used ROMs and only tried different mediums like cassettes or GD roms and HDDs for cost cutting reasons.

Solid state, instant access to every byte ROM is the best technology for games. Obviously its going to cost you more if you use a ton of it instead of a slower CD or HDD but again, you get what you pay for.

 

[Sooner]

Yeah, it worked out great for them. Besides losing their basically second-party relationship with publishers like Squaresoft, Konami, Enix, Capcom and Activision to the unknown Sony PlayStation due to using cartridges.

That and also, being outsold heavily by PS1 games because those cartridges costs made N64 games nearly twice as expensive as PS1 games.

And of course losing their entire strangle hold on the console market, not only for that generation, but allowing Sony to take the market leader for that generation and nearly knocking Nintendo out entirely the following generation.

But, other than that, it was a great decision to go with the expensive and limited cartridges.

 

[RoboFu]

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.

yeah the clock and some sram variants but thats it.. but no... rom does not make up for extra ram in the n64s case. even the memory pack was more of a ram storage that fed the main memory.
They just did not design the n64 with special carts in mind like they did the nes and snes. the console bus was closed off because of how complicated the flow was.
They should have configured carts with a memory bus lane that could hold more textures for actual drawing. That would have been a huge plus to help with the n64's big blurry textures problem, but also at the time we had $80 $90 games so it would have increased the price above that.

 

[simpatico]

"deceptive low up-front pricing to stretch the cost over the life of the console"

Today they do it with xbox live and psn+, but in the N64 era, they did it with cartridges.

Outside of NEOGEO, it feels like we never got a real high-performance cartridge machine. I always liked the idea of devs being able to outfit the cartridge with unique chips based on need. It just didn't happen that often.

 

[nkarafo]

Outside of NEOGEO, it feels like we never got a real high-performance cartridge machine.

Unless you count the arcades.

 

[Mownoc]

The capacity depends on the dev's choice. Nothing stops them from using more or bigger ROMs to fir whatever game they needed. That's why Neo-Geo roms were so big and so expensive. That's why Arcades used ROMs and only tried different mediums like cassettes or HDDs for cost cutting reasons.

Solid state, instant access to every byte ROM is the best technology for games. Obviously its going to cost you more if you use a ton of it to replace a slower CD or HDD but again, you get what you pay for.

The thing that stops them using bigger roms is economics. N64 games already went as high as $80 when the largest size was 64mb carts. The higher they went the more expensive it would be and the less viable a medium it was.

Is the access speed and latency of cartridges better than cd? Of course. But that doesn't make cartridges the automatic better choice. You can't ignore the price and capacity aspects.

It's all well and good saying they could just have bigger cartridges but n64 would have lost to the PS1 by even more if the game price difference rose even further.

 

[nkarafo]

The thing that stops them using bigger roms is economics. N64 games already went as high as $80 when the largest size was 64mb carts. The higher they went the more expensive it would be and the less viable a medium it was.

Is the access speed and latency of cartridges better than cd? Of course. But that doesn't make cartridges the automatic better choice. You can't ignore the price and capacity aspects.

It's all well and good saying they could just have bigger cartridges but n64 would have lost to the PS1 by even more if the game price difference rose even further.

I agree with all that, i'm just saying the technology is superior and better suited for videogames compared to floppies and CDs.

 

[kevboard]

It really feels like a lot of you either didn't watch the video or ignored it's point.

Kaze was saying why it was good for the N64 that it had carts instead of disc. That the games made for the N64 took advantage of that instead loading and some devs couldn't get the games working right using CDs due to having to preload data into RAM and not having enough RAM to do that. Data streaming was better off cart, but storage space was a big weakness.

I'd listen to Kaze when it comes to the N64, he's the guy who pretty much figured out the issue with the N64 wasn't slow RAM, but how that RAM was being over taxed with bad coding and order. He got Mario 64 running at 40fps on the N64 itself when games tend to run at 20fps because he removed junk code, repeating code, and fixed the order of operation of the code.

well actually with his engine Mario 64 would run at 60fps easily, his own game targets 30fps, but unlocked can get up to 60 in many spots although it is not designed to. he uses about 3x~4x the amount of polygons Mario 64 used and has a better draw distance, while performing better than the original game.

 

[tamago84]

That was the one thing i hated about ff in psx. Disgustingly bad load scenes compared to snes days

 

[K' Dash]

But none of that is to do with cartridge Vs cd, that's the ps1's lack of hardware accelerated 3D... So you're completely offtopic. Lol

 

[nkarafo]

well actually with his engine Mario 64 would run at 60fps easily, his own game targets 30fps, but unlocked can get up to 60 in many spots although it is not designed to. he uses about 3x~4x the amount of polygons Mario 64 used and has a better draw distance, while performing better than the original game.

Also, his 3D models look so much better than Nintendo's own while also using fewer polygons because of more efficient usage.

 

[Radical_3d]

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.

Seems oddly familiar…

 

[ReyBrujo]

for certain genres of games.

EA and Squaresoft abandoned Nintendo, that's why it lacked certain genres.

I think they should have gone CD, in fact they were going CD. Yes, loading times were awful, and I mean really awful (have you people ever seen Shang Tsung transformations in Mortal Kombat for Sega CD? The game literally froze 3 seconds every time he switched) but all of the consoles were having the same issue so players would have got used to that since every console did the same.

My guess is that Mario 64 was slow as shit between worlds and they decided to scrap it all.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

The N64's storage medium was to be a combination of cartridges and floppy disks.
Not everyone knows this only qualified historians.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

SM64 with CD loading times would have been a much worse experience.
Let's just say that Nintendo made a very good choice for the kind of games they wanted to make - as they kinda always have done. Unfortunately they didn't consider that most of the industry, and most gamers, wanted something very different. And CD-based consoles could not only give them that, but at a much lower price and better conditions for both developers and customers.

I can kinda imagine that the concept Nintendo had of video games was completely at odds with what you could achieve with the amount of memory a CD could offer. It's possible that they didn't imagine that Square would make such a leap from FF6 to FF7.

That, or it's just that Yamauchi was a greedy dictator who thought that devs would still be lining up to lick his boots and accept his conditions or die a miserable death without Nintendo's support.

 

[cireza]

Reject illusions.

This means that you have to reject yourself.

 

[MisterXDTV]

People rewriting history here

The cartridge fumble was the reason why Sony killed Nintendo for home consoles and they never recovered

 

[cireza]

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.

Let's be careful for a second here. Cartridge based consoles have RAM and VRAM. Both have different purpose.

Consoles like the Neo Geo address directly the graphics data in ROM, as if the ROM itself was the VRAM. This helps not having use for VRAM, outside of selecting palettes and position stuff on screen. But this is the exception. This is why most common consoles need quite a bit of VRAM, because even if you can stream from the ROM, and most cartridge games did this, there is still a limit about the speed at which you can do it, and any way, display is based on VRAM and not ROM. So you need the VRAM, even though you are using the cartridge.

And independently, all consoles need RAM to handle their logic and this is separate from VRAM.

In CD based consoles, the RAM is much higher and should be seen as a replacement for the ROM. You allocate whatever you feel comfortable with, maybe 4 MB on Neo Geo CD, and load all the graphics data that you know you will have to use. And then the programs becomes exactly the same as on cartridge, except that you read from RAM instead of ROM. This explains why CD based consoles have a lot of RAM. So in a sense, Neo Geo and Neo Geo CD have the same amount of RAM, and the added RAM on the CD is to replace the ROM.

I don't see how we conclude that cartridges were better though. They were different. Each has its advantages and shortcomings.

 

[nkarafo]

In CD based consoles, the RAM is much higher and should be seen as a replacement for the ROM. You allocate whatever you feel comfortable with, maybe 4 MB on Neo Geo CD, and load all the graphics data that you know you will have to use. And then the programs becomes exactly the same as on cartridge, except that you read from RAM instead of ROM. This explains why CD based consoles have a lot of RAM. So in a sense, Neo Geo and Neo Geo CD have the same amount of RAM, and the added RAM on the CD is to replace the ROM.

But the RAM isn't enough to replace the whole ROM. A Neo-Geo game can be more than 100MBs, the Neo-Geo CD had 7MB of RAM and that was considered a massive amount for the time (PS1 and Saturn had 2, the N64 had 4).

Having a large ROM where you can instantly access every byte is far better than having a CD with a lot of RAM. Even if you had enough RAM to transfer the whole game inside, you would still need a few whole minutes to load it with the 1x or 2x CD drives at the time.

I don't see how we conclude that cartridges were better though. They were different. Each has its advantages and shortcomings.

Because the only disadvantage ROMs had was economical.

If money isn't an issue, then technology/functionally wise, they are better in every way. It's solid state storage with zero latency and instant access.

Consoles like the Neo Geo address directly the graphics data in ROM...

Not sure what the Neo-Geo did differently like you say but otherwise all cartridge based consoles had direct access to the ROM.

 

[cartman414]

DS seemed like the N64 that didn't go horribly wrong in many ways. Easier to develop for, carts that could hang with or exceed GD-ROMS in storage...

Of course the games also had (mild) loading times.

 

[nkarafo]

DS seemed like the N64 that didn't go horribly wrong in many ways. Easier to develop for, carts that could hang with or exceed GD-ROMS in storage...

Of course the games also had (mild) loading times.

DS carts were different technology, flash based i think. And there wasn't instant access to the full data. Same with the 3DS and Switch. Again, for economical reasons i assume.

 

[6502]

But at the time why gamble on expensive drives and fmv? Sega CD had largely failed, 3do failed, cdi failed, pc engine cd was niche plus Nintendo tried with Sony and Phillips and couldn't get a machine out the door.

Playstation was also rife with piracy, Saturn cd didn't save it. And post cartridge Gamecube did get better 3rd party with disc but it couldn't save it from performing worse than the competition or its predecessor.

Catridge was a selling point to me at the time and it differentiated (and made more affordable) the console.

Nintendo were never going to touch Playstation that generation. Better textures, sound or less of a gap in library would not have been a bigger draw than revolutionary large environments for singleplayer nor help it dominate 4 player social multiplayer.

It was a great generation and I am glad the hardware drove vastly different types of games across each platform.

 

[cireza]

Not sure what the Neo-Geo did differently like you say but otherwise all cartridge based consoles had direct access to the ROM.

The Neo Geo use the data in the cartridge directly as the VRAM. The hardware is built so that you do not have to load the visuals in a dedicated VRAM somewhere, it directly points inside the cartridge. The graphics chip sees the ROM directly, but this is not the case of CPU, it cannot access the visuals. This is also the reason why on Neo Geo you cannot do all these visuals transformations and effects you see on MegaDrive. You just can't load and manipulate the visuals. All you can do is stream from the ROM.

If money isn't an issue

Of course, in this case you make ROMs of unlimited sizes. But what's the point of discussing this ? It cannot happen. That's why both CD and cartridge exist.

 

[nkarafo]

Of course, in this case you make ROMs of unlimited sizes. But what's the point of discussing this ? It cannot happen. That's why both CD and cartridge exist.

My point is that ROM technology is better as a gaming medium and the only one that drives games without any technical compromises such as loading times, latency, slow streaming, noise, moving parts and low durability.

I understand why tapes, floppies, CDs, DVDs, etc exist. But they are all a compromise. And if you are going to compromise for money then i guess i can see the value of a slow CD over a small ROM that can't fit enough data.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

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.

Ironically, sounds a lot like what SIE have ended up doing with PlayStation disc games (well, aside things like controlling S&H, dunno if they fully centralized that).

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.

Also ironically, a potential lesson that seems to be what SIE needs to learn now. Not just for forcibly ending disc manufacturing but the tons of other longer-standing shortcomings with PlayStation that have yet to be addressed.

It just took the news last week for a bunch of other people (including typical console warriors in the gaming press) to join the bandwagon. And NGL, a lot are only doing it because it's trendy ATM. Give it another month and they'll get tired & stop, it always happens.

Unfortunately.

 

[Bonkerzzz]

I think the primary reason for cartridge-based media was to thwart piracy, which was rampant on the PS1. They did the same thing with mini-discs on the GameCube.

 

[cartman414]

I think the primary reason for cartridge-based media was to thwart piracy, which was rampant on the PS1. They did the same thing with mini-discs on the GameCube.

Gamecube's constant angular velocity mini-disc format was also an answer of sorts to load times.

 

[Killer8]

Amazing technology, absolutely no loading in Final Fantasy VII. Some say people are still waiting.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Final Fantasy VII (FF7) is a cartridge-killing game, featuring 200 MB of pre-rendered graphics and over 1 GB of CGI.
The question we'll never know is: did it become this way after Sony joined the project, or was it already in the developer's mind before ?




Let's look at some points.


FF7's development began on the SNES in (1994) where it was intended to be a detective game set in a modified, futuristic New York.

In August (1995)
Square showed the tech demo of FF6 running on a workstation similar to the N64.

early 1996 or December 1995
FF7 was moved to the PS1, because of the large number of employees working on it, the game was produced quickly, It was released in Japan in January 1997 in just 13 months of development, at best.


Final Fantasy 7 uses pre-rendering and CGI because of the PS1, or would it have pre-rendering and CGI but the N64 used cartridges ?

I'll just tell you one thing
Square programmed a demo using Silicon Graphics technology, and since 1994 people knew that the N64 would use cartridges...

 

[p_xavier]

Like 64DD wasn't a thing..

 

[ReBurn]

Like 64DD wasn't a thing..

It mostly wasn't. 10 whole titles and still didn't have any more capacity than the largest ROM cart.

 

[p_xavier]

It mostly wasn't. 10 whole titles and still didn't have any more capacity than the largest ROM cart.

Hey, I had a Zip drive.

 

[ReBurn]

Hey, I had a Zip drive.

Me, too. The 100 MB and 250 MB storage in my drives was awesome. 64DD didn't go beyond 64 MB, though.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Nintendo didn't fail because of cartridges; it failed due to two factors.

The insane popularity of FF7 a phenomenon that surprised everyone, including Sony itself, PS1 sold over 5 million consoles in Japan in 1997 because of that game. This meant the Japanese market was captured, leaving Sega and Nintendo with nowhere to place their consoles; nobody cared about the shovelware on the Saturn. However, Nintendo managed to survive thanks to the N64's undeniable graphical quality and the popularity of its own IPs.

the second reason is more important than the first, because if the first was due to chance and the alignment of the stars, the second was due to errors involving the production of the 64DD. In the timeline where the 64DD came out in September 1997, the N64 would have beaten the PS1 because Nintendo would have kept all the companies under its umbrella.

 

[ReBurn]

Nintendo didn't fail because of cartridges; it failed due to two factors.

The insane popularity of FF7 a phenomenon that surprised everyone, including Sony itself, PS1 sold over 5 million consoles in Japan in 1997 because of that game. This meant the Japanese market was captured, leaving Sega and Nintendo with nowhere to place their consoles; nobody cared about the shovelware on the Saturn. However, Nintendo managed to survive thanks to the N64's undeniable graphical quality and the popularity of its own IPs.

the second reason is more important than the first, because if the first was due to chance and the alignment of the stars, the second was due to errors involving the production of the 64DD. In the timeline where the 64DD came out in September 1997, the N64 would have beaten the PS1 because Nintendo would have kept all the companies under its umbrella.

The 64DD wouldn't have really moved the needle, though. What they delivered didn't provide any more storage than the ROM carts did. Nowhere near the capacity needed for a FF VII.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

You can simply use multiple disks or have them rewritten at Nintendo-authorized kiosks. Criticizing the 64DD disks isn't the right approach.

in 1997, 32 MB cartridges didn't even exist, and only two games in the entire N64 library used 64 MB cartridges, and yet, here I am in 2026, reading claims that a low-cost option wouldn't make a difference.

 

[ReBurn]

You can simply use multiple disks or have them rewritten at Nintendo-authorized kiosks. Criticizing the 64DD disks isn't the right approach.

in 1997, 32 MB cartridges didn't even exist, and only two games in the entire N64 library used 64 MB cartridges, and yet, here I am in 2026, reading claims that a low-cost option wouldn't make a difference.

I didn't say it wouldn't make a difference. But it wouldn't have been enough to keep all the third party support. A game that took one CD could be 10 or more 64DD disks. There's no way that would be less expensive for publishers at the same fidelity FMV that PS1 games had.

 

[EverydayBeast]

N64 vs PS1 matchup definitly shows the strengths and weaknesses of CD, and cartridges. It's hard to imagine games like Ocarina of Time, or Majora's Mask on PS1, those games played extremely well considering the lack of RAM. Loading screens on just hyrule field for PS1 because the PS1's 2 MB RAM limit and slower 2x CD-ROM drive would end up being a drawback for many.