I’m playing Tomb Raider I, II, and III remastered, and you can toggle the graphics between original and remastered, the pixelation in the original is outrageous.
I honestly think the PlayStation has the better graphics, especially considering it’s older and weaker than the N64. At glorious 240p, I think anti-aliasing is honestly a downside–the CRT mostly does that work already. While the N64 might have better polygons, the PlayStation, in my opinion, renders a better image, with better textures. That’s not even to mention game sizes being several times larger on PlayStation, thanks to CDs.
There is no game on the N64 that looks as good as Final Fantasy IX. Not a single one. IX might not be fully 3D, but the game does respect the hardware it’s on. After all, nobody ever said the SNES had bad graphics for lacking proper 3D. The 2D style could just go so much further on PlayStation. Combine that with FMVs, and I’d struggle to find a game that looks as consistently good as some of the PlayStation’s biggest hits.
The N64 still pushes great graphics, though. I enjoyed my time in Zelda. The games look and play quite well. The impressively 60FPS F-ZERO X has physics that still work great. I still can’t help but feel like it’s just a worse version of modern graphics, while the PlayStation feels like its own aesthetic, and own world. I grew up with modern consoles, and I still enjoy the charm of pre-rendered backgrounds and FMVs compared to what’s being put out now.
I think the Saturn has pretty good graphics. Being just a little earlier than the PlayStation, it holds up quite well.
It’s clear in Wipeout gameplay that the PlayStation pulls ahead significantly. Much smoother FMVs, better framerates, better textures, cleaner image. Perhaps slightly slower load times, but with that many wins, it’s hard to complain. On top of that, the PlayStation simply sold far better, and saw higher budget titles which fully took advantage of the hardware.
I like how PS1 did 3D differently than pretty much any other system ever, which is why if you look long enough at a model, you will see it warp and contort weirdly as vertexes jump between points because it didn’t have floating point numbers or something like that (can’t really remember the technical details).
It’s super unique and faking this effect in modern engines is pretty neat. It’s also weird playing on some PS1 emulators that don’t have this effect, because it’s better than original hardware.
I played around with upscaling PS1 games in retroarch last night and I was pleasantly surprised. There are some YouTube videos that talk through the process m.youtube.com/watch?v=6yDWYeuQ2pI
It can breathe new life into some dated looking games. Highly recommend giving it a try
IMO, that’s the wrong direction. The right direction is to apply some good CRT shaders. Those games were designed for CRT and low resolutions and they can never look great when rendered at higher res. Upscaling works much better for PS2 generation and up.
I didn’t think to experiment with the shaders much, so I’ll give that a shot. I briefly tried the cell shading shader, but that looked way too unnatural for me – but it is neat.
(As an aside, I have my original PlayStation 1 and I really want to snag a real CRT at some point for some true nostalgia.)
I have two real CRTs (a 4" JVC radio TV and a 27" Sylvania), and while none of the existing shaders perfectly capture it, a guy who calls himself “Retro Crisis” on YouTube and Github has some modified CRT shaders that come really, really close.
My only gripe is that he has different shaders per system, rather than a single “this is your CRT so all games will correctly render through this one” shader.
Yes, but the N64 still had more or less “better” looking games. Even though the PSX had higher resolution textures, it was no match for the N64’s feature of perspective correct geometry and texture mapping. The PSX’s affine texture mapping and vertex snapping due to imprecise floating point math could not be hidden on a CRT, unless the 3D was really, really tiny. This is why so many PSX games opted to use pre-rendered backgrounds instead of rendering in full 3D, whereas this was a rarely used method in N64 games. It was basically a cheat, because the CRT masked (sometimes more convincingly than other times) the fact that the background was just a JPEG. Fully 3D games on the PSX just look 100% worse when compared to their N64 or PC counterparts, and its almost purely because of these quirks of the PSX.
For example, ignoring the minor texture improvements, comparing Metal Gear Solid on PSX vs MGS Integral on PC, all things like for like (same resolution, same display, point texture filtering, etc), MGS Integral looks a million times better because it has perspective correct geometry and texture mapping. Now personally, I always prefer MGS on the PSX because I like that weird quirk and consider it part of the “true experience,” but ultimately this is a graphical weakness of the PSX, and one that even CRTs could not do much to hide.
Played the original Gran Turismo on a modern TV with my family last Christmas and it was honestly really distracting seeing geometry jump an actual appreciable distance on the bigger screen.
Popping the CD I had of GT 2 into my old 2010 MacBook was so bad lol. I remember seeing review quotes when it started up that said “life-like graphics” and then looked at the trees that were just two perpendicular 2D images and thinking “yea, whatever you say”.
Yeah but Coco had round booba whereas Lara and Tawna had triangles so…… check mate liberal. Don’t look at Aya from Parasite 1 and 2 those are exceptions.
I know two couples who met in WoW. One of them is still married and just had a child. The other had a child almost immediately and aren’t together anymore.
I seriously don’t think this game gets enough credit. It basically invented the combat system used in a bunch of AAA titles today. Like the Batman games. Sure they have been refined and improved it, but it was revolutionary at the time.
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