this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
285 points (87.6% liked)
Technology
59197 readers
2702 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The GameCube had one key flaw and that is that nobody actually used it to it's fullest potential.
Look at something like the Resident Evil Remake:
https://youtu.be/x72pByrt9kI
Just a great looking game, head and shoulders above what was happening on the PS2.
But most GameCube games, even the good ones, looked like garbage.
https://youtu.be/MJLnDq6f2eM
The key flaw was it using mini disks. Not only did this kneecap storage capacity for developers, but it also made it difficult to pirate games, which is ironically a big part of its failure.
Eternal Darkness is an overrated game that looks pretty bad, I agree. It's also early.
But no, what the hell are you talking about? Luigi's Mansion, Mario Sunshine, Metroid Prime, Killer 7, RE4... so many GC games specifically still hold up today, especially when played on a CRT. Most multiplatform releases looked closer to the Xbox versions and better than the PS2, and GC exclusives were hands down some of the best looking games of the generation.
Like someone else said, the issue was them insisting on proprietary formats with low capacity, which led to some low-effort compromised ports sometimes. But otherwise it was easily the most comparatively performant and consistently visually impressive Nintendo console since what? The SNES? I guess it depends on whether you thought the vaseline-smear look of the N64 sucked, which I did.
The reason Eternal Darkness looked bad was because it was developed as an N64 game. Dev time took soooo long, it released on the GameCube instead.
The vast, vast majority of GC games looked like ass because nobody seriously threw dev cycles at it. They didn't have to because they knew kids would just buy any branded property and eat it up.
https://youtu.be/QNjqwueSvBY
That is demonstrably false. The vast majority of GC games did absolutely NOT look like ass. At most, multiplatform ports didn't look as good as they could have because both OG Xbox and GC were less of a priority and people led development on PS2, so multiplatform ports tended to be slightly elevated PS2 fare, rather than fully exploit the smaller two platforms. But also, both GC and Xbox had very nice looking first party releases, and like always with Nintendo, their aboslute army of first party developers was putting out visual bangers from day one. If anything the asset quality of many GC games has become more obvious over time, as the platform lives on through upscaled emulation.
At the time I played a bunch of multiplatform stuff on GC first when a port was available despite having a PS2 right there. My experience of being a multiplatform owner at the time was less that Cube ports were compromised, although some were, but that it was disappointing how many ports it just didn't get at all, particularly as games started getting really asset-rich on the other platforms and fully max out a single layer DVD-5 or even ship on dual layer DVD-9s. Some people would do double disc GC releases, but nobody wanted to jam four whole discs in a box.