Saturday, March 24, 2007

Nintendo 64 Tech Demos

The Nintendo 64 was the most powerful game console ever with the most potential when it was released. Popular franchises such as Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda wowed people with the amazing graphics made only possible with the power of the Nintendo 64, other tech demos and crazy propaganda also did their part.





When everyone thought Final Fantasy was still a Nintendo exclusive the tech demo got them all drooling with anticipation,



Of course The Legend of Zelda was generating far more hype. Even if the following is a rather primitive display of what the game turned out to be it should be noted the metallic sheen was not in real time,



Earthbound 64 (Mother 3) looked like it would be one hell of a graphical power house... if only it was released.



Those were the good old days, pity it was when Nintendo finally fell from grace, the Nintendo 64 was an awesome console but the reliance on cartridges was an Achilles heel. It lost Final Fantasy as a direct result from the lack of an optical drive and as such pretty much blew away all of Nintendo's chances at regaining top spot, conceding it to Sony.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

All hail the Ultra 64!!

Anonymous said...

Wow! Do I ever wish I could see another Eaerthbond game in my lifetime.

Anonymous said...

very nice, when can we expect the Nintendo Ultra 64 to be released!? ^_^

Unknown said...

These demos were run from a SGI ONYX with a Reality Engine 2 graphics board (sigraph 95), this were part of the development pack that nintendo sold for US$500.000 for nintendo 64 development...

Unknown said...

"the Nintendo 64 was the first ever game console with a 64 bit CPU."

WRONG. The Atari Jaguar was the first 64-bit console.

Do some research before you post.

Anonymous said...

"teh" you are wrong

the atari jaguar was not actually 64bit at all...

Do some research yourself idiot!!

Ahmed said...

teh, the Atari Jaguar's 64 bit claim isn't set in stone, from wikipedia:

"Technically-minded gamers debated the merits of Atari's claim: some felt the Jaguar's principal "64-bit coprocessors" were essentially nothing more than graphics accelerators (with limited programmability), requiring external control from the Jaguar's primary processors; the primary GPU executed a 32-bit instruction-set, while the remaining CPU (68000) was already established to be a 16-bit unit. Others countered that the mere presence of 64-bit ALUs for graphics, was sufficient to validate Atari's claim."

The Nintendo 64 was the first console with a 64 bit CPU, not like the jaguar that seemed to simply have it squeezed in, it was hardly 64 bit.