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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • takeheart@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldThe N64
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    26 days ago

    My family still has one but the image quality is terrible on modern big screen TVs because

    1. It’s stretched out and native resolution of N64 is already tiny by today’s standards.
    2. Unnatural aspect ratio unless you can set black bars somehow.
    3. Modern displays have sharper pixel separation and colors don’t ‘bleed’ into each other as much which kinda helped the rough polygons of that era.

    The result is a picture that is both sharp and blurry at the same time and gives me head aches after an hour or so.


  • takeheart@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldThe N64
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    26 days ago

    Ok, now that you mention it: I think the difference is that (at least in my region) the PlayStation was sold with a memory card included. Standalone memory cards for it were cheap. N64 came without a memory pack and they were more expensive.

    IIRC PS also had a more granular slot size (eg gran turismo takes up 1 slot while final fantasy takes up 3 slots) while on the N64 it was large and fixed (each game takes up one large slot even if that slot doesn’t use up all the data).

    In hindsight that has me wondering why they didn’t go for dynamic slot size 🤔. Maybe because a save file could grow over time and they wanted to ensure that you could always overwrite/update?




  • takeheart@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldThe N64
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    27 days ago

    It surely has its technical flaws but that’s not what mattered to most buyers. Most people bought it to experience fun games and on that end it delivered. remember that at the time gaming was still breaking into main stream society and 3D games were on the frontier both technically and design wise.

    Games like Ocarina of Time and Mario 64 really contributed to the design patterns of how 3d games could look like. Back in the day you simply didn’t have as many choices when it came to hardware. What really hurt its game catalog was that apparently it was hard to program for. Who knows what other games we might have seen if the barrier had been lower.

    Speaking of the controller: yes, it wasn’t so good and the center joystick tended to wear out too quickly. Rumble pak was a fun gadget and really added to the immersion. What was terrible on the other hand was that the console lacked internal storage and many games would require you to purchase an additional memory pack (which slotted into the controller). That wasn’t just a technical deficiency but felt very anti consumer.







  • i see a keyboard , but no track pads. track pads are really versatile and a key feature of the deck. this keyboard doesn’t look to comfortable to use either. Maybe it’s ok ish if you put down the device on flat ground and are seated, but typing on this thing while holding it in your hands is going to require some amazing thumb agility.

    I have a small Bluetooth keyboard paired with my steam deck that I use whenever I need to input longer stretches of text. it works out just fine.



  • You bring up a pretty good point. Whenever I have a personal document that could go into multiple categories (eg a travel insurance certificate can go into travel, insurance, or finance folder) I place it in all 3 at once with hard links. What’s more is that if I intuitively first search for a document in place A but it’s actually in place B I simply place a link in A for the next time.

    Before I learned a bit about file systems I didn’t even conceive of such a thing being possible; precisely because the folder metaphor had imprinted upon me the physical world constraint that things can only be in a single place at once.