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by nebula8804 814 days ago
>There was simply no way anything like Final Fantasy 7 could have ever been done on the N64.

Yes but I don't see how a game like Ocarina of time with its streaming data in at high speed would have been possible without a cartridge. Each format enabled unique gaming experiences that the other typically couldn't replicate exactly.
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favorited 814 days ago
Naughty Dog found a solution - constantly streaming data from the disk, without regard for the hardware's endurance rating:

> Andy had given Kelly a rough idea of how we were getting so much detail through the system: spooling. Kelly asked Andy if he understood correctly that any move forward or backward in a level entailed loading in new data, a CD “hit.” Andy proudly stated that indeed it did. Kelly asked how many of these CD hits Andy thought a gamer that finished Crash would have. Andy did some thinking and off the top of his head said “Roughly 120,000.” Kelly became very silent for a moment and then quietly mumbled “the PlayStation CD drive is ‘rated’ for 70,000.”

> Kelly thought some more and said “let’s not mention that to anyone” and went back to get Sony on board with Crash.

https://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/06/making-crash-ba...

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nebula8804 814 days ago
Crash Bandicoot is a VERY different game from Ocarina Of Time. They are not comparable at all. They literally had to limit the field of view in order to get anything close to what they were targeting. Have you played the two games? The point still stands, Zelda with its vast open worlds is not feasible on a CD based console that has a max transfer rate of 300KB/s and the latency of an iceberg.
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VelesDude 814 days ago
What ND did with Crash Bandicoot was really cool to see in action (page in/out data in 64KB chunks based on location) but you are right - this relied on a very strict control of visuals. OoT didn't have this limitation.
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