Any one ever feel that the power of some consoles where never truly exploited?

[Amag0k1]

Looking back, i cannot help but wonder what could have been for some consoles, think jaguar, 3DO, Saturn,etc..

Was the true power of the console exploited by it's software within there respected catalogue?

If you think so, which console and what game truly showed the power of the system?

 

[Gorse]

When the Wii U was first announced, there was this golf game they showed in the reveal trailer that blew my mind. You'd see the course on your TV, set your gamepad on the floor to show a ball on a tee, then swing your Wii remote like a golf club perpendicular to the gamepad to hit the ball "into" the TV. I nearly went insane – think of the possibilities! It was like a holodeck, and it could theoretically depict any environment for you to interact with!

When the console finally came out, of course, they ditched all interactivity between the Wii remote and the gamepad entirely, and all the games were just poor minigame collections. I'm still sour about that. ?

 

[DunkeyKong]

Metal Gear Solid games for example, push the limits for almost every consoles like the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PSP (basically PlayStations hardware). There's also N-gage version of MGS which I think looks incredible even for such a small device

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

Jaguar’s case was really tragic to say the least it little to no 3rd party support and wasn’t able to use it’s 64bit power to the fullest.

 

[Amag0k1]

Metal Gear Solid games for example, push the limits for almost every consoles like the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PSP (basically PlayStations hardware). There's also N-gage version of MGS which I think looks incredible even for such a small device
View attachment 9727

The skill of the koji pro team was amazing. And you just had to look at there games to see it. They inspired allot of others in the industry to do better, and if anything showed others what was possible. Thier innovation continues to be felt to this day, and it is a shame that most companies go for the easy win far too often, which results in underutilized hardware and lack of sales, imo.

Post automatically merged: Jan 9, 2025

Jaguar’s case was really tragic to say the least it little to no 3rd party support and wasn’t able to use it’s 64bit power to the fullest.

Definitely true for lack of software support, but re:64 bit power, i believe i read somewhere that it was a scam and it was only 32 bit? I could be wrong.

Edit, here we go: https://www.ncesc.com/gaming-pedia/is-the-atari-jaguar-really-64-bit/

32 bit chips set with a 64bit memory bus.

 

[Zerpina]

The Dreamcast for sure.
It just got a Full port of Doom 64, with abunch of other Stuff.

 

[Amag0k1]

The Dreamcast for sure.
It just got a Full port of Doom 64, with abunch of other Stuff.

Absolutely and what a port! And if the gta port is anything to go buy, there was allot of power left on the table.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I feel that the Jaguar never had a "showcase" game to really make it shine.

And I believe that the vast majority of the N64's catalog failed to become a selling point as well due to even the best-looking games on the system suffering from slowdown.

As to for games that helped those systems impress: I'd say Doom on Jaguar and Banjo-Kazooie on Nintendo 64.

 

[DunkeyKong]

The skill of the koji pro team was amazing. And you just had to look at there games to see it. They inspired allot of others in the industry to do better, and if anything showed others what was possible. Thier innovation continues to be felt to this day, and it is a shame that most companies go for the easy win far too often, which results in underutilized hardware and lack of sales, imo.

That's right! When Konami and Kojima production are still going strong, their attention to details even on the small things are admirable

 

[Zerpina]

Absolutely and what a port! And if the gta port is anything to go buy, there was allot of power left on the table.

I think, with the power home pc's and such have now. and as Easy as the DC is to Code <because of being Very well Documented and understood> and Port to. We may see in the next few years a Slew of Games, Fan-made, and Fan-Retail made. Like Intrepid Izzy for the DC.

Intrepid Izzy is a Fantastic game, fun Controls well ect. think it was 30 bucks for a Physical copy. i bought a Digital one, due to it being a Limited run Physical copy <they where Sold out sadly>

But yeah, i think In the right Hands the DC could become a Great new old Console.
And will Probably bring a Whole new Generation to It. Not saying it will Spark SEGA to make the DC Mini, or Dreamcast 2, but one can Dream

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Metal Gear Solid games for example, push the limits for almost every consoles like the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PSP (basically PlayStations hardware). There's also N-gage version of MGS which I think looks incredible even for such a small device
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You know... I feel that if, say, Nintendo released the N-Gage as it was, without changing anything, I'd have been hailed as one of the greatest, most innovative devises of its time. The fact that it came from a manufacturer with nearly zero experience AND as a competitor to a Nintendo dynasty killed it, not its lack of merit -- it was actually really amazing for what it was!

 

[brighter]

The Dreamcast was definitely getting fully worked in its time. Remember, they had Shenmue 2 on that thing! Soul Calibur! Extreme Sports!

Jaguar's the big missed opportunity though, for sure.

 

[DunkeyKong]

You know... I feel that if, say, Nintendo released the N-Gage as it was, without changing anything, I'd have been hailed as one of the greatest, most innovative devises of its time. The fact that it came from a manufacturer with nearly zero experience AND as a competitor to a Nintendo dynasty killed it, not its lack of merit -- it was actually really amazing for what it was!

True, I guess you could that it was…solid

 

[Somnia]

The easy answer is always the Dreamcast since it had such a short lifespan and a slew of cancelled games like Half-Life and GTA3. While there is no doubt that it never would have competed with even the PS2 due to its paltry RAM count and inferior controller, it is undeniable that it definitely had more room to show off what it could really do. Shenmue 2 and Dead Or Alive 2 did show what is probably nearing that system's peak though. That alpha build of GTA3 is mighty impressive though and I'm curious just how functional and fully featured it can be if the developers go all the way with it.

I see people say Jaguar a lot when this topic comes up but I also always hear conflicting reports on what the hell the hardware was even capable of in terms of the Tom and Jerry architecture. Considering the homebrew scene that exists has failed to really do a ton of impressive things I'm more inclined to believe that it always was a middling mess of a machine. Battlesphere and the Doom port show that it wasn't a totally hopeless machine though.

3DO is another system that I do think was pushed about as far as it could have gone, but I still would have liked to see what a potential Need for Speed sequel or a Doom port that had actual time to get finished would have been like.

When the Wii U was first announced, there was this golf game they showed in the reveal trailer that blew my mind. You'd see the course on your TV, set your gamepad on the floor to show a ball on a tee, then swing your Wii remote like a golf club perpendicular to the gamepad to hit the ball "into" the TV. I nearly went insane – think of the possibilities! It was like a holodeck, and it could theoretically depict any environment for you to interact with!

God, even ports of some other games to the WiiU got such cool odds and ends that it made me wonder how much further certain concepts could be pushed with a second screen. A lot of it was nothing that we hadn't already seen on the DS, but having stuff like hacking minigames in Deus Ex: Human Revolution appear on a second touchscreen was novel. Even ZombiU's inventory being real-time and having the motion/feel of rummaging through a backpack was adorable and it even had that asymmetrical multiplayer mode where the gamepad player played a zombie RTS while trying to thwart a controller player who just played FPS.

Nintendoland is still one of the most enjoyable party games of all time and it only scratched the surface of what you could do with multiplayer on that kind of system. Mario Party 10 really felt like it did so little to take advantage of the gamepad for minigames, though it has been a while and I didn't see every minigame so maybe that's me being harsh. They just messed up the core board game too much for anyone to care about the minigames.

 

[Cu-Neo]

The Ps Vita: Can run a lot of PS4 games and even some PS2 games like god of war, Metal gear 2, 3 and the two first God Of war. Sadly we will never know what was the full potential.

 

[RageBurner]

The Saturn, most of all.
Most of its power remained untapped; those that could were few, and I feel even they didn't make the most out of the machine.

 

[χKai]

I know this thread has mainly been about higher-end consoles, but can we talk about the NES for just a moment when I say

We look at the patches and fixes, translations and improvements made by the fan community throughout the years, and some of us think to question:

If these bugs or graphical errors can be solved by fans out of their own time and effort without pay, how come the same issues couldn't be addressed back when these games were more relevant? I'm talking about issues such as Batman being purple instead of black, graphical overlay issues or just other general programming flaws that people have long-since fixed with patches.

Most of the time, I realize that nowadays we just have better programming options for games, better mappers and other hardware capabilities that had not been implemented yet back in the 80s and early 90s, that are a thing now give us a lot more option to work with ROMs.

But it still doesn't explain to me why these were issues at all back then, when they had companies funding the programming professionals working on the games. The only justification I can identify is that they just didn't care enough to fix all these minor flaws in games, even so much as to do a simple palette swap so that Batman isn't purple.

 

[RashFaustinho]

I'm feeling this mostly with the current generation of consoles.
So Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X

I never felt this way for systems I owned / played in the past.
Maybe, among the consoles I never owned, you can make a case for some niche systems / commercial failures, like the Dreamcast, especially in light of the new GTA 3 port.

 

[lagunareturns]

I agree for Dreamcast and the only limitation was it came out too early and was rushed. It also needed more storage, it would have benefited more from a dvd drive because it was capable doing hd textures and high quality video, something it does better than PS2 and was pushing 60 fps or at least stable 30fps. Hence original XBox is just a Dreamcast with more common and a bit better hardware plus the HDD and DVD drive what the Dreamcast would have benefited from.

Shame Sega rushed Dreamcast after Saturn failure, if it waited after the competition like the PS2 and XBox, it would been have the HDD, the DVD drive and use of HD displays as it had that feature somewhat with the VGA support.

Saturn I would have to disagree, it was way too limited with the 3D capabilities, as for 2D it was crazy. Still it lagged in terms of the next gen.

I reckon there is a market for console or handheld with new arcade like games and doesn't need state of the art graphics just stable 60 fps, return of super scaler games and such. I mean the new Power Rangers game was great, tiny but quick fun and had super scaling style levels. Just bring back arcade games, light gun support and gun games to support it. I mean how many are using arcade 1up machines, raspberry pis for their arcade fix, and with ligtht guns that with lcd now that light gun games is getting a resurgance... It just need to be standardised platformthat is cheap to get into.

 

[Karnik]

I don't know if it has already been mentioned before, since I don't have time to read, but surely DSi has never been exploited adequately, speaking of official games.

Compared to DS Phat/Lite, it has a more powerful processor, more available ram, but its specific titles (dsiware) are much simpler and more rudimentary (mostly puzzle games) than DS titles, and this is absurd. Its features have never been officially exploited properly, except by the brilliant creators of homebrews, who instead managed to port there Doom64, Hexen, Heretic, DN3D, Quake, Descent and other dos FPS games with dedication and mastery, to the delight of all DSi owners. ?

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Nothing on the ps3 looks as good as god of war 3; its not 60 fps granted but Damn the colors and lighting are great on top of having huge detailed enviroments and tons of enemies on screen. Also it doesnt go for photorealism thank zeus

I can say the same for Mario Kart 8 og looking better than most games of its time and even if you released it today it would be seen as tecnically impressive, no wonder nintendo just kept adding stuff to it instead of making a new one I wouldnt let all that work go to waste!

 

[Leifang]

Dreamcast had keyboard and mouse support and internet, it could basically run stuff better than most PCs at the time, but was quickly ditched in favor of PS2, which was more limited in many ways... it's the one console that I'm sad was shelved too soon...

But ALL consoles released during PS1 and PS2 era never had any chance, SONY completely dominated the market, neither Microsoft or Nintendo had much success with GC or first XBox too, they just survived until PS3 generation and then we got equilibrium between the three companies.

My vote for most under-exploited is actually Philips CD-i, I know it's a joke of a console now, but they totally could have focused on visual novels and adventure games, something PCs had aplenty and consoles heavily lagged behind, instead they decided to be a crappy console.

 

[Lee__Kanker]

I will add to what I said: The nintendo 64 if if didnt have those stupid cartridges, Im still mind blown by portal 64

 

[Zemus]

When the Wii U was first announced, there was this golf game they showed in the reveal trailer that blew my mind. You'd see the course on your TV, set your gamepad on the floor to show a ball on a tee, then swing your Wii remote like a golf club perpendicular to the gamepad to hit the ball "into" the TV. I nearly went insane – think of the possibilities! It was like a holodeck, and it could theoretically depict any environment for you to interact with!

When the console finally came out, of course, they ditched all interactivity between the Wii remote and the gamepad entirely, and all the games were just poor minigame collections. I'm still sour about that. ?

The Wiimote's motion functionality seemed like a big deal at the time, but a lot like the DS's touch screen it became a forgotten gimmick that was annoying at best. Nobody's complaining about it in the No More Heroes Switch remake because it's no longer there.

On your point about environments, you should check out the running mode on Wii Fit. Since I was allowed to play that outside my room I would spend hours traversing the area, but in the end I'd want to play something more enjoyable and eventually I would use my free hand to slowly play handheld games while taking a few steps a minute on Wii Fit. Could the two be combined into a single, cohesive gaming experience? I honestly don't think they could, but my experience and bias are both clear.

Apparently the remote went in your pocket for that, not one hand, but this is how I remember it anyway.

 

[Gorse]

a lot like the DS's touch screen it became a forgotten gimmick that was annoying at best

Speaking of, I really liked those games where you held the DS horizontally like a book, like Professor Layton or Rhythm Heaven. Nanashi no Game does this very interestingly, too — that’s a good contender for this thread.