So many YouTube videos on gaming history still repeat the old conventional wisdom that Nintendo’s refusal to jump to CDs right away was one of the greatest blunders of all time. And I’m tired of it.
No one denies that Nintendo 64 Games like Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time were the key groundbreaking developments of true fully 3D Gaming. The original PlayStation and Sega Saturn never made a fully 3D game like those. And what is more well known to non industry insiders now than it used to be is that if Nintendo had jumped to CDs that console Generation they would not have been able to make those games for it. So many 3rd Parties wanted the CDs because they wanted FMVs and less limited audio options, but there was a trade off for that which fans and journalists didn’t understand at the time. Nintendo then like now prioritized actual innovation in how Games are played over flashy cosmetic things that look cool in a trailer.
And the thing about Final Fantasy VII is that the FMVs are exactly the part of the game that visually hasn’t aged well. Most of the time I find these failed attempts at “cinematic” animation ugly and would much rather have watched those scenes play out with the charming 32 bit models. The only one that works is the opening Cinematic, but it’s so minimalist compared to the others that when I look at CutScenes in N64 Games like Jet Force Gemini and Majora’s Mask I see no reason the same scene couldn’t have been done on it.
And another thing, the Sony PlayStation launched in 1994, it was on North American store shelves in September of 95. Yet the great Iconic PlayStation games didn't start coming out till 1997. It took seeing Nintendo break 3D ground in the spring of 96 for them to even start tapping their own inferior console’s full potential.
Yet still so many of those 97 PlayStation do nothing in the actual game play that couldn’t be done on the N64, in fact I see few that couldn’t be done on the SNES.
And it’s not like only Nintendo themselves could make great games for the N64. Rare had a slew of Classics. And then look at what Star Wars did on the Console, Shadows of The Empire and Pod Racer. George Lucas had a similar innovation over superficiality spirit to Nintendo so it makes sense his IPs were among the few licensed games on the N64.
The FFVII we got was a great game, but it could have been so much better on the N64.
By the next gen things had advanced enough so using CDs wouldn't hold Nintendo back mechanically anymore.
Interesting, read.
ReplyDeleteIts made me think about the cartridge's thing. And, i think you are right.
This needed to be said.
Because i think what happened here now is that the lie has been so far repeated,(A lie i now i have a suspicion, started in the fith gen or somewhere there, with the Console wars,"that CD's are better than cartridge's") that i think people genuinely started beliving it.
That CD, is better than cartridge.
I didn't even realize it was wrong until you explained, that while nintendo didn't use CD's, that their grateness came from the cartridge's, their beloved games, came from the use of the cartridge's.
So thank you for explaining that, because i think now after thinking about it, i think it needed to be said.
Hopefully it will reach those people that do the Videogame and Console Retrospectives, and they stop doing, or saying this.
Since its a kind of historical rewriting, a lie in favor of the real reson of why nintendo used cartridge's until the GameCube. And the actual power of Nintendo using cartridge's since it produced sm64 and OoT while Sony didn't get it to to that until some years later with ff7, (Which like you said, even that would have been better in the N64,with cartridge's)