Why did the PS1 have such a problem with porting 2D arcade games?

I believe the saturn was on-par with this, actually.

That is, of course, unless you had the RAM cartridge. Then you got all of the frames for your fighting games.

>Muh RAM

Metal Slug never ran well in the first place

>>3794094
PSX had too little memory to do 2d games, and had no specific 2d tilemapper to make porting easy (most 2d games used tilemapping hardware, which allowed them to make bigger levels with way less memory, and to do a lot of scanline-based special effects - mode 7 being the most popular example).

>>3794107
Saturn Metal Slug had twice as much animation and no level loading, thanks partially to it using the 1mb RAM cart, and mostly because it had a dedicated tilemapper background chip which offloaded a shit ton of processing from the sprite processor.

what is the best way of playing metal gear on a home console?

>>3794152
that's bullshit. PSX was the best hardware for its time, N64 was released 2 years later. And with PS2, again, Xbox/GC were released later.

If anything I would argue that it's nintendo the one with overrated hardware. NES was inferior to MS, SNES was released 2 friggin years later than the MD and people still discusses which was the better console graphically, N64 again released 2 years later and had a fair share of problems (muddy textures, horrible framerate in 80% of games), GC released alongside the Xbox but much inferior to it, and we all know what happened with Wii onwards. Same shit for their portables really.

>>3794152
>Playstations always had the worst hardware of every gen up until the PS3, but then the PS3 was too advanced for its own good and nobody knew how to dev for it.

uh no. PS1 and PS2 was only "worst" because other competitors came out 2-3 years later. But anything on the market at the time of the Playstations release was destroyed by them.

Then you have the PS3, which came a full YEAR after the X360 and despite that it was much weaker - the CPU was only slightly better in extremely specialized tasks (worse in general processing), while the GPU was something like 2/3 as strong at best.

>>3794168
good excuse but people weren't "needing" a psx until 96-97 when crash bandicoot and final fantasy were out

>>3794160

The gamecube was actually the front runner spec wise, it's just nintendo used a retarded format for games. In terms of pure specs it blows PS2 outta the water. Even Xbox is better but no one in Japan liked the stupid behemoth

>>3794181
>let me move the goalposts since I lost the argument

>>3794160
Not quite, the GameCube had more potential and only people like Capcom really used it

>>3794094
1MB system Ram 1MB of Video. Some arcade games like some of the later CPS games had up to 4MB of ram.

>>3794160
>implying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkKX-nU9fX4

>>3794216
That is super unfair because the rumor was that the people at capcom that did the ps2 did something intentionally in spite.

>>3794220
Oh sorry.

Check out Tales of Symphonia then.

>>3794206
>2MB system Ram 1MB of Video

Fixed that for you.

>>3794094
Metal Slug X which had a (sadly censored because fucking SNK) surprisingly good American Port on the PS1. Metal Slug 1 and 2 ran like shit natively on the Neo Geo, X was the first one that ran well.

For the majority of other 2-d arcade games though, PS1 sucked at them because it was made for 3-D polygon games. I grew up with the system and bought it in 1996 when I was 13. I had played the shit out of NES, SNES, and Genesis and if I wanted to play a 2-D game I'd just buy a clearance title for them. The gaming public as a whole wanted more Resident Evils, Wipeouts, Tekkens, etc.

PSX only had 1MB of video RAM. Saturn had 1.5 by default, and even more with the RAM cart.
That's why, on the Versus games (Marvel vs CAPCOM, vs Street Fighter), you can't swap characters normally, but you can if they're the same as your opponent's (switched around).

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>>3794168
>N64 again released 2 years later and had a fair share of problems (muddy textures, horrible framerate in 80% of games
Nintendo had a habit of cutting corners even when they were still trying to make competitive hardware within the hardware race.

Super NES: Slow-ass CPU and limited RAM compared to Genesis.

Nintendo 64: Pic related

GameCube: Better GPU than PS2, but not enough RAM.

With the Wii they just gave up any pretense of being competitive with PS and Xbox.

>>3794168
I"d argue that the Gamecube was the only great console Nintendo made (considering just the hardware) and that helped them recycling it into the Wii later on, which printed money. None of their retro hardware was ground breaking, especially when factoring in outsourced work for significant designs (eg, the N64 cpu being basically reworked by Sega for free before it was rejected by the Saturn team).

>>3794168
In like-to-like situations, the N64 easily beats the PS1. Sony fans just have an awful habit of comparing the framerate of JRPGs with pre-rendered backgrounds against N64 games with full 3D world simulations.

>>3794183
In terms of pure specs, the PS2 is actually considerably more powerful than GameCube. The reason GameCube games looked better is because the specs were more well-rounded and balanced and the system was far easier to program.

>>3794480
It was the N64 GPU, not CPU (the N64's CPU is not a custom made part). And no, Sega didn't rework it for free. That dowsn't even make sense. Sega, the company who designed the worst 3D chipset of all time in the Saturn lecturing SGI the world leader in 3D technology? Give me a break.

Even Sony has records of paying SGI big bucks in consultancy fees to help them design the PS1's GPU (which, again, was far better than Saturn's).

>>3794227
*grumbles and walks away*

>>3794592
>Even Sony has records of paying SGI big bucks in consultancy fees to help them design the PS1's GPU (which, again, was far better than Saturn's).

Nah, Saturn hardware beats PSX when it comes to sprite-based games. Show me a 2D game on PSX that's more impressive than what you can find on the Saturn.

As for 3D, PSX might be better, but who gives a shit? 3D was miserable during the fifth gen.

>>3794094
RAM. Strictly RAM. Saturn does better in terms of RAM for graphics out of the box, and then it has RAM expansion cartridges, widening the gap even further.

>>3794592
the VDP1 is a weird piece of shit
but it's not the worst

>>3794592
N64 games have a terrible tendency to drop frames heavily, way more heavily than PS1 games.
also, PS1 games generally have higher resolution textures simply because the N64's dumb-as-shit design encourages developers to use small textures and stretch them out over wide surfaces/tile them mercilessly

the N64 is just a retardedly designed machine
which is appalling since the components in it are like twice or even thrice as good as anything in the PS1, but we're seeing graphics that are only somewhat better rather than massively better, at least not until fairly late in the N64's life (like the rather good looking Rush 2049 port, which takes a minor texture cut and is a bit choppy, but appears to have had zero geometry changes from arcade, and the textures are still quite nice -- you wouldn't see anything like it on PS1, the draw distance and/or framerate would be miserable if they didn't cut model complexity, all the lighting is there on the N64 and that sure as hell wasn't happening on PS1, etc)

pretty much everything on the machine should have looked that good or better

>>3794592
GC's biggest advantage is having a not retarded video architecture. In terms of graphics, the GC will pretty much consistently win just because of that. You need to put in too much damn work to get the PS2 to even keep pace.

otherwise, the PS2 really can crunch more numbers (which is why Criterion couldn't bring Burnout 3 to the GC) -- shit, in terms of CPU, the GC only really beats out the DC in that generation

>>3796734
saturn version of sotn sucks

Not enough memory.

>>3794175
>Then you have the PS3, which came a full YEAR after the X360 and despite that it was much weaker - the CPU was only slightly better in extremely specialized tasks (worse in general processing), while the GPU was something like 2/3 as strong at best.

This was mostly due to the GPU architecture not coming through. Nvidia was the fall back plan, and the PS3 suffered. I think the original GPU was going to be by PowerVR, but by the time it came around to getting the hardware finalized, they were still in planning stages and it wasn't panning out. Had everything worked out, the PS3 would have had a clear lead from the start in terms of performance, rather than years down the line and only after a lot of research.

>>3796767
the port wasn't given the necessary amount of resources to reconfigure a 2D game made on a 3D system to a 2D game on a 2D system. It was a botched port that turned out as poorly as it did solely for time reasons.

>>3796969
The poor GPU made the cell somewhat more useful since devs could use the SPUs to process stuff.

>>3796980
the proper GPU would have made it a much more competent system. The Nvidia GPU was the weakest link in the system.

>>3794150
Mame, your preferred modern consoles online shop, ps2 collection, or fork out for a neo geo.

>>3796761
>N64 games have a terrible tendency to drop frames heavily, way more heavily than PS1 games.
You're still proving my point here. There are way more 2D / pre-rendered / technically undemanding games on PS1 so obviously you're less likely to encounter games with low framerates. Like-for-like situations (including developer skill), the N64 blows the PS1 out graphically, including framerate. Granted, there aren't too many examples, since the N64 was usually producing visuals out of the PS1's league, like the Rush 2049 example you provided.

>PS1 games generally have higher resolution textures
This is generally true, but ironically considering what you said (and less storage space in cartridges), PS1 games seem to have less texture variety. I've noticed that even most graphically advanced PS1 games tile a couple of high resolution textures and call it a day. While on N64, you see a far greater use of multitexturing and diverse texture-set which makes scenes look more organic (even if texture res is lower). Some later games in the console's life, like Conker, match the texture resolution of the best PS1 games, but still retains the variety/multitexturing advantage.

>the N64's dumb-as-shit design
>the N64 is just a retardedly designed machine
But that's wrong. N64's hardware was designed by SGI, the world leaders in 3D hardware at the time. The same SGI engineers who designed the N64's hardware later left to form ArtX who designed Gamecube's hardware before being purchased by ATi, and were the team responsible for creating the Radeon 9700 Pro, one of the greatest PC GPUs of all time.

The N64 was the best hardware they could design at the very low manufacturing price point set for them by Nintendo. So low, they could only integrate a single channel of RAM. Implementing 4 KB texture cache (the largest texture cache ever put into a GPU at the time) was a band-aid solution to off-set memory bus contention.

>>3797027
(cont)
The manufacturing budget was so low they also couldn't afford to put a sound-chip into the console. They found it was more price efficient to get the GPU's vector unit to handle sound processing as well.

Unfortunately, all of this necessary minimalism made the N64 very difficult to program.

On PS1, most of the work is done for you. You've got clear, separate memory pools for different processors (CPU, GPU, sound) which can never suffer bus contention because of their separateness. There's a dedicated sound chip on the console with built-in functionality good to go. The PS1's vector unit co-processor already has fixed functions built into it, and it never has to do audio or other operations (nor is it capable of doing so).

On N64 programmers have to carefully thread memory consumption between CPU, graphics processing and audio processing. If they didn't do so, for instance, the CPU would sit there doing nothing until it waits for the GPU to relinquish memory wasting precious cycles (can be partially offset by using CPU cache well). The GPU's vector unit needed both graphics and audio microcode to be written (extremely difficult task if done from scratch), and they would both be processed on the same unit, so programmers would need to ensure that audio would never fail to complete its processing (otherwise horrible popping noises and such).

The single channel of RAM had high random-access latency, so programmers would have to ensure memory would be read linearly (i.e. not random) as much as possible (by constantly defragmenting RAM on the fly like one does a hard drive) to maximize performance. This is why the texture cache was necessary (and had to be mandatory), because texture filtering requires non-linear memory reads and trying to do texture filtering from a shared single-channel of RDRAM would produce a BUTTFUCK full of latency. So the texture cache saved the day there.

>>3797037
(cont)
Textures of course had to be limited to the size of the cache because it was mandatory. Larger textures could be created by compositing smaller textures. This actually created an even bigger headaches for artists than programmers, and that's why many N64 games have small textures stretched over large surfaces cause the developers said "fuck it" to the effort of doing so. But of course it was perfectly possible.

Also, limited cartridge space meant that developers would have to spend time writing decompression routines that would never be necessary on CD-based platforms like PS1.

tl;dr that's why the N64 was hard to program, and why more games don't look like the excellent Rush 2049 port. You also have to remember that the original arcade version ran on a Voodoo 3.

Blame Nintendo for their greedy cost-cutting, it's never been worse than the N64. Cartridges themselves are proof of that.

>>3796761
>GC's biggest advantage is having a not retarded video architecture
GameCube has an equal number of hardware 'flaws', also due to Nintendo's cost-cutting (lower color framebuffer/more framebuffer dithering than the competition, a CPU that can't into SIMD, an extremely inflexible vector unit, a split memory pool where one half is moderately fast and the other half is even slower than PS1's RAM) but the one area that it most definitely improved was developer ease-of-use.

Nintendo were actually very lucky that the PS2 was so hard to program and had so many genuine hardware flaws (broken-on-silicon mipmapping and anti-aliasing), otherwise the Gamecube would have look very dated on release.

Without the cost cutting, N64 would have displayed better graphics than PCs until ~1998. Had Sega (who don't cost-cut as hard as Nintendo) actually used SGI's chip, that might have been the Saturn right there.

>>3797042
>>3797037
>>3797027
I was telling my friend about (the gens) and he thought n64 was on the same lvl as PS2

>>3794150
The NES version is not bad, but I have not tried the MSX original.

UM WOAH. I own this game and beat it co-op and single player just recently. THIS IS A VERY GOOD PORT OF THE GAME. It runs phenomenally on a CRT.

>>3794168
>NES was inferior to MS
Yeah and took Sega 2 years and 2 failed consoles to barely compete with it. And even still the NES had a better sound chip
>hurrr overrated

>>3796761
>Rush 2049 N64
>zero geometry changes from arcade
I have to question your knowledge when you lie about something as basic as this. The home versions of 2049 weren't ports of the arcade version. they were remade from the ground up. They might have similar tracks, but look and play completely different.

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>>3798107
ms ym2413 > any music on nes with or without custom chips

>>3794094
PS1 had no floats. It took an actual rocket scientist to come up with a work around solution, that's why the Crash games all look great

>>3800309
Working around PS1's floats has almost nothing to do with Crash's technical accomplishments.

The only reason the game looks good is because the levels and camera path are linear and all the visibility/depth calculations have been baked onto the CD-ROM.

>>3794094
>Darkstalkers 3
Did you mean Vampire Savior?

>>3794185
"let me le greentext strawman cause i'm 12"

>>3796969
>think the original GPU was going to be by PowerVR, but by the time it came around to getting the hardware finalized, they were still in planning stages and it wasn't panning out

PS3 was meant to use a second Cell as the gpu.

They realized how fucking stupid that was and switched to a NVidia chip in the final moments.

>>3797027
>But that's wrong. N64's hardware was designed by SGI, the world leaders in 3D hardware at the time

That does not mean that they can't make a fucked up design, which the N64 was.

>>3800157
>fart music for 16 games for only $199 imported from japan!

>>3794168
I find it funny how you're strongly biased against Nintendo, mentioning that N64 was released 2 years later than the PS, but omitting that Master System was also released after 2 years later than the NES. Talk about cherry picking, heh.

Anyway, you guys do this shit ironically, right? Nobody here is really into console/system wars, right?

>>3800895
But it wasn't. What you say is literally a meme.

SGI's design met its objective of delivering the highest raw power at the lowest price point possible.

>>3800959
fart music > bleeps and bloops