ah yes, that's a good one.

N64 better thsn ps1? Wii U better than xbox 360? What is this, backwards world?

No way Wii U out preforms XB360.

I'm 100% serious. Reality has been twisted by this cliché criticism for so long that even Nintendo fans repeat it. The PSone is not even close in performance to the N64, but most people never knew. I don't think there has been as big a gulf in performance between mainstream consoles of the same generation in history.

Take the "blurry textures" of the N64." They were actually an advanced feature that only became an issue due to limited cartridge size. Cartridge size has no bearing on the performance of the system but the cost of larger ROMs severely limits what developers can do with that system anyway. That's why we didn't get games with significant amounts of FMV until the end when costs came down (Resident Evil 2, Pokemon Puzzle League, etc). If we had a 64MB disk from the start or a CD-ROM things would have been a lot different.

Back to blurry textures being an advanced feature: It's called texture filtering. Filtered textures pretty much always look better than unfiltered textures. It blends the source pixels to make a smooth texture map that effectively increases the effective resolution since they were intended to be viewed from multiple perspectives. You would never catch a 3dfx Voodoo user of the era turning off texture filtering in Monster Truck Madness or Final Fantasy VII on their 3D accelerated gaming PC, and that's precisely the huge leap that the N64 brought to mainstream game consoles (3D acceleration with texture filtering and anti-aliasing). 

So, how did the price of larger cartridges affect texture quality on the N64? It meant devs had to be extremely conservative with the use of textures which meant fewer and lower-resolution source textures. Decent resolution 2D assets and pre-recorded audio were significantly more storage-intensive than 3D models and generated music of the era so FMV, textures, and audio are first place to compromise when trying to fit more into a cartridge. FMV/recorded audio usually weren't even considered for a cartridge and textures were the next place to make cuts. Under pressure to conserve, they use smaller textures and repeat them, blow up smaller (lower resolution) textures to cover more area, use solid-colored/shaded polygons with a smattering of tiny textures (Mario's eyes and M in Mario 64, for example), etc.

Where a PSone game might just texture the grass on the ground, an N64 game would use green polygons with a smattering of small, repeated textures that are randomly placed to simulate uneven grass and maybe a flower or two. The N64 was capable of more, it just cost too much for the storage format they chose. Compare textures on Super Mario 64 and Super Mario 64 DS, where ROM sizes allowed for increased use of textures even with less powerful hardware.

The DS was more in line with PSone though most people incorrectly peg it as being "between N64 and Dreamcast." A lot of that perception also comes from the increase cartridge capacity, not system performance. Heck, compare Neo-Geo to the 16 bit consoles of the day. The Neo didn't even have scrolling backgrounds (faked it with sprites) but the huge ROM sizes -and corresponding prices- allowed them to brute-force their way to out-class even many PSone fighting games! How? Well, all sound effects and animation frames for a match have to fit in memory, which the PSone just doesn't have without significant cuts. ROM carts actually expand memory with their ROM (already in the memory map; no need to copy uncompressed ROM data to RAM). Cartridge size/cost MATTERS and during the N64's life it just couldn't compete on that level even though the rest of the system was way beyond in performance/capabilities.

Filtering allowed N64 devs to get away with going EVEN lower res, which they definitely took full advantage of. As a result, they were criticized as "blurry textures" instead of sparse and low resolution textures. Sure, the N64 had some other texture limitations that were eventually overcome but that would have been the norm from early on if the N64 had a CD-ROM or larger software storage format.

The Wii U is absolutely more powerful than an XBOX 360. I shouldn't even have to explain this one. It's another case of the market perception being different from reality, just like GC vs. PS2. Both times, market perception was based on repeated hyperbole from haters. Nintendo didn't escape it with the Wii U and they somehow did escape it with the Switch even though half the "XBONE/PS4 class" Switch games look no better than their Wii U counterparts.

Remember: XBOX 360 launched without HDMI and routinely upscaled sub-HD resolutions through it's lifetime. The PS3 was severely hampered by not having unified GDDR3 memory like the XBOX 360 but was still technically superior. They were both PowerPC, just like the Wii U. The Wii U's PowerPC implementation left something to be desired due to the backwards compatibility with the Wii but CPU performance is almost never the bottleneck when it comes to overall system capabilities (refer back to the Sega MD/Gen vs. SNES).

The Wii U fit somewhere between PS3 and XBONE, and that's exactly where it launched (after PS3; before XBONE). Just like sloppy multiplatform ports for GC did not fare well against the PS2, sloppy Wii U ports from XBONE/PS4 do not do help the Wii U compare favorably. That is the same Chicken and Egg scenario the GCN faced. Potential users perceived it as performing worse, so they unwittingly buy the worse-performing console and further skew marketshare, ensuring that the superior-performing system gets even less developer attention. They couldn't break out of that corner without rebooting, which is what the Wii And the Switch really are.

That said, the Wii, Wii U, and Switch (so far) are my least-liked Nintendo consoles. I'm not clarifying this because I like them and want to defend them. I just think it's down-right laughable to blame the Wii/Switch strategy for Nintendo's market position over the last 22 years when the Wii/Switch strategy is what demonstrably worked. Throughout the Wii U's life, the same people would repeatedly say that Nintendo would do better, and they would buy one, if Nintendo just made a performance-competitive console. Clearly, the Wii U didn't even get recognized by these delusional people who can't even see the reality in front of their face.
...and you're basing this on what? Just repeating something you heard?
 

You make some good points, but the N64 argument is a little bit of a challenge, because regardless of its capabilities, what ended up being the final product here was a cartridge-based console that had some limitations. I'm not going to argue about the technical 'power' or specifications of the various consoles because I don't really know all of that nor do I care that much. I just enjoy good games. But I think it's hard to argue that the cartridge limitation put some significant boundaries on what they were able to do, and for that and perhaps other reasons, it suffered.

For whatever reason, be it power, third-party support, or a host of other issues, the N64 under-performed BADLY compared to PS1 (I'm not talking technical power here, I'm talking in the market). Really, the N64, Gamecube, and Wii U all really under-performed and lagged far behind in the market.

I don't really hear that many people talking about the technical capabilities between them. You could be correct about everything you stated above, but it still wouldn't change the fact that all 3 consoles did really poorly. I don't think this was just due to consumer ignorance about technical specs (not that you said that).

It's interesting, because while some of their consoles clearly 'won' the generation or an argument could be made, I think of the first 6 of their main consoles prior to switch, 3 of them were nowhere near on top. I'm just talking about public reception and sales here. I enjoy all the consoles because I enjoy games on every console so I'm not trying to crap on their stuff or anything, but it is definitely interesting looking at their success, as I think most would acknowledge they really struggled with these 3.

higher sells is not equal to higher performance. sony won the war with ps1 and ps2, but both are shit consoles compared to the nintendo competitors. the ps1 falls so far behind its arguable that it isnt even in the same gen as the n64.

sony won for a myriad of reasons (none of which were technical specs) but imo its because ps1 was a "high tec futuristic disc based console" and gaining all 3rd party support due to the disc based format. and the ps2 won because it had a built in dvd player. try to revisit either of these systems today and the load screens make them both unplayable.

"ps1 has fmv the n64 couldnt dream of" the 3d0 and sega cd have fmv too and they are shite aswell.

Right, the format choice had some limitations, but even then it wasn't an inherent limitation of cartridges. It was a limitation caused by the *cost* of larger capacity cartridges. In other words, a limit in what we were willing to pay for games in light of much cheaper games on CD. The market couldn't support that cost so the games were compromised. There's a reason Neo Geo games were hundreds of dollars even before then!

The things the PlayStation could do that the N64 seemingly could not were completely unrelated to technical superiority in any system performance aspect. Even as a teenager I knew that FMV and CD audio were enabled more from the capacity of the storage format than the power of the playback device, so it failed to impress me. Perhaps it was because I saw what adding a CD-ROM did to the crappiest of PCs and realized that it did nothing for the games themselves.   Heck, there were Genesis and SNES games with FMV on the cartridge (Bruce Lee, Sonic 3D Blast, etc).

Yeah, those three consoles definitely underperformed in sales. I'm not challenging that to claim that they "won." I'm challenging the completely incorrect idea that their sales failure was caused by Nintendo also failing to compete on performance. Considering that their highest sales performance was achieved with their first and only system that had underperforming hardware at launch and that they are repeating history again with the Switch, you'd expect these morons to shut up... but they balk at the idea that Nintendo has ever had decently performing hardware and stick to their confirmation biased conclusion.

You say that you don't see many people judging them as failures for their imagined performance shortfalls, but it's EVERYWHERE. Even Nintendo fans say it constantly.
"Nintendo has never really competed on specs."
"Not since arguably the SNES has Nintendo even tried to compete on specs."
"Nintendo has always taken a different route, choosing cheaper, lower-performing hardware to keep costs down."
Unable to compete on a hardware performance level, Nintendo has always focused on delivering an affordable and fun gaming experience."
"Damn! LOL! When will Nintendo learn?! I used to be a fan but they're always gonna be last if they don't make another system with a normal controller and better hardware than the PlayStation/XBOX! If they did that without stupid gimmicks, maybe I'd actually buy one."

It's just accepted fact everywhere even though it's demonstrably BS. That's why I nominated it as one of the most cliché gaming "facts." The people spouting it actually seem to think that the Wii was a failure just because they didn't buy one and it wasn't relevant in 2013 (XBONE/PS4 launch). The Wii wasn't my cup of tea but I won't deny it was a bigger success just because I was on the PS3 bandwagon.

I don't deny that the N64, GC, and Wii U "lost." I refute the blatantly wrong reasons why they lost. This has nothing to do with blindly thinking Nintendo is the greatest and they always have been and everything to do with being a realist: Market perception is a b*tch. It matters more than any of the other imagined reasons. It matters so much that it deluded others into making up those reasons to justify their choices.

I didn't read any of your post although im sure its well written. I assume you are giving me all the technical reasons why nintendo consoles are better.

Regardless of specs and technical jargon, I have just played a shit ton of video games through out my life.  Hours and Hours and hours, on all these systems.  N64, PS1, Xbox 360 and (no where near as much ) Wii U.  Thats what I am basing my opinion off of, and while I am sure all of your technical points make sense, I would wager the majority of people who just care about games, not gddr3 memory and texture resolution would agree with me.

I made up my mind years ago that the ps1 is better than the n64, and xbox 360 is infinitely better than the wii U (even though its kind of weird those are being compared).  I get that the wii U is more powerful, but the xbox 360 made far more of an impact on video gaming in general.  From games, to things like UI, to things like what formats will NOT last LOL  

The thing is, these people are not talking about which is subjectively better based on games. They are VERY particularly claiming that Nintendo's hardware was technically inferior based on specs, that the company has never tried to compete with horsepower/performance, and that their market position directly suffered as a result. These people are decidedly, demonstrably, and embarrassingly wrong. Ignoring that the Wii sold gangbusters to go on claiming that Nintendo could win by simply competing on specs is facepalm-worthy, especially during the Wii U's early life when it was the highest-performing mainstream game system on the market (before XBONE/PS4 launched).

Sure, you only said "better than," but it was in reply to me and, thus, it was in the context of hardware performance. It doesn't seem that you intended it that way but the others I'm talking about definitely do... and they have the same "no way!" reaction.

This isn't to argue with you or your comments which could very well be accurate, but I personally never made my decisions much based on technical specs. So even if it was common knowledge that certain Nintendo consoles were up to snuff technically, for me things like exclusive content, third party support, etc played a lot more weight in my decisions. While I enjoyed the N64, the PS1 just had sooooo much more in terms of content and games I enjoyed, that it isn't even close.

So maybe it's unfair or untrue if people underestimate their technical power, but I don't know how much inpact that really had on ultimate retail success. I'm sure it had an impact, but for people like me it wouldn't have mattered much.

I see your points and don't necessarily disagree with most of them. I just find it interesting because even if be PS1 and PS2 are not the 'superior' consoles of their respective generations, they are still my favorites and when I think of them as 'better' I mean from personal enjoyment and game catalog reasons.

Anyway, we're getting off track sorry haha.  You were just trying to share a common misunderstanding about these consoles that apparently is more widespread than I thought.  I didn't mean to derail us into a why console A is better than B type of discussion hah  

yes.

Mario's first game is actually Donkey Kong.

Some recurring lines from the misinformed trivia bin:
ET and Pac-man caused the videogame crash.
VCS Donkey Kong was sabotaged to make the Colecovision look better.

More cliche trivia

Did you know
Zelda appeared on the 3DO?
Yar's Revenge is named after Atari CEO: Ray Kassar?
Space Invaders caused a yen shortage in Japan?
Donkey Kong was created to replace an unsuccessful game called Radar Scope?
Nintendo was founded in the 1800s as a Hanafuda card company?
Howard and Nester are both based on Howard Phillips?
You can get 99 lives by jumping just repeatedly on the the second turtle coming down the stairs on 3-1?
If you glitch through the wall into the warp zone on 1-2, you can take the warp pipe to minus world!?

The grater fun is debunking all the cliche trivia.  

I've always like the "Link never talks in any of his games" even though that's an outright lie. "Well, the CDi games don't count". 

Who's counting those? You want proof that Link said something in an official Nintendo game?

For a moment there you had me believing that Zelda might be on the 3DO. I had to google to find out.

I'm sure it was a typo. But hey, that's not to say the most cliched trivia is always correct!  
 

It's easy to get the 3DO mixed up with the CDI.


 

"Blowing did not affect the immediate success rate for booting NES games and is an example of Confirmation Bias."

Testably and demonstrably FALSE! It's a more recent cliché (and incorrect) "fact" that started from a Mental Floss piece. The author ignored all the contributors to support his pre-formed conclusion (entirely unscientific). Since then I've seen this "fact" everywhere from Facebook quizzes to PBS videos about Confirmation Bias. Might wanna try a bit of that Scientific Method yourself before using it as an example of Confirmation Bias, boys!





I've repeated this test many times on many different consoles. Not once have the results concluded the opposite. When the coin always flips one way and the result are reinforced as the sample size grows and all testing supports what was common-knowledge before some dumb-a*s article baselessly claimed otherwise, I think it's pretty safe to draw a conclusion. Right, but they blame the lack of 3rd party support on the lack of sales and routinely explain that as resulting from "inferior" performing hardware. IOW, lower performance than the competition caused all their ills.​
  Clearly the kind I like to focus on.   Setting the record straight is a bit more productive.
 

He's not talking.  He found a mirror and a note that said "I found a mirror under the table".   

Also, holy fuck that table is huge.   And the seats come up to his waist.  If he sat there, the table would be eye level or above. 

 

Yea, I mixed them up.. 3DO is the one had the Tia Carrere sci-fi game.
 

That's true. Another argument could be that he's thinking it. So technically, he still hasn't said anything which also tears down my argument. lol

Also, yeah that table's big...

 

I shit the bed when I found out Metroid wasn't a bloke.

I think its a violin