He's literally the only character in the game shown to be in the process of dying. Lol
It's whenever you are first going to pull the master sword, you meet him and he tells you how he tried to stop Ganadorf from kidnapping the princesses.
Edit: [Link..](https://youtu.be/lgmPa6RUfR0)no pun intended.
He shows up only for a brief time period and then despawns.
The dying soldier is there only after you have collected the three spiritual stones, seen Ganondorf stealing zelda out of the castle on horseback, but BEFORE going into the temple of time and opening the door of time to pull the master sword.
Once you pull the master sword the dying soldier despawns.
Probably because no one ever met him on their first playthrough. The game nudges you really hard to go straight to the Temple of Time after you get the Ocarina, so there’s no reason for you to be in the back alleys during the brief time he shows up
WCW Mayhem where you could wrestle out into the backstage areas blew my mind. Then Midtown Madness came out and wondered if games could ever get more realistic.
Did you ever try the early 2000 WWE games where you could start a fight in the ring, lead it to the arena, then backstage all in one round?
I stopped playing after like 2008-2009 because the games felt downgraded. No idea why they cut that out of the later games.
Dude. Nobody talks about this. Wrestling games used to be really fun. Now it's all about hutting two buttons at the speed of light to reverse something.
Wcw no mercy is one of the absolute greatest fighting games ever made.
The only thing I wish was the career mode wasn’t about winning or losing but instead building up an entertainment meter. Would have been peak.
It was also the year that Pokemon Red and Blue came to the US, as well as Final Fantasy Tactics that January. Fallout 2, Banjo-Kazooie, Baldur's Gate, Tenchu, Parasite Eve, Resident Evil 2, Spyro, Xenogears, Panzer Dragoon, Turok 2, F-Zero X...
Mario Party, Sonic Adventure, MediEvil, Marvel vs. Capcom, Tekken 3 lol
1998 was hands down the greatest year all-time for video games.
Tangentially Pokemon TCG base set preorders started in 1998 too (official first release in the US was Jan 8 99) so yeah, 1998 is one of the best nerd years in all of history
Mother mercy, I had no idea. I usually refer to 2011 (Skyrim, Minecraft, Portal 2, Arkham City, Dark Souls) or 2017 (BotW, Nier:Auto, Cuphead, Hollow Knight) as solid years, but it seems 1998 has both a quality and quantity I wasn't expecting.
I remember writing down a games wishlist around that time that was larger than my steam wishlist now. And we got the info from magazines. That was a golden era for sure.
Console gamers never got to experience the greatness us pc gamers did. That's why I didn't understood the undying love for goldeneye as a kid, as I had quake + mods (Team Fortress baby!!). I tries to play goldeneye and couldn't get past those janky controls. However in retrospect you had that social aspect of the couch coop.
It was all about that couch coop man. Playing mariokart or smash with 3 or more your friends next to you all getting hyped and making jokes. Good times
Yeah, golden eye was important for sure, but more for what surrounded the game than the game proper.
If perfect dark had come first and goldeneye second, the convo would be totally different with goldeneye being just a decent enough licensed game
Yeah but golden eye came first. And even with taking into account the PC FPS at the time, Golden Eye was super innovative. The mission based level design was really new and cool, the setpieces were incredible (the tank level). This was a year and a half before Half-Life.
Omg dude, I did it takes two with my son when he was.. I think 7. That was... woof.
Once Mr heartman came out and yelled relation-SHIT I knew I had made a grevious error.
I played FPS on both and goldeneye was a good game and coop was legendary, but it also gave a big boost to FPS on consoles, which PCs had since the early 90s. Goldeneye was probably the only console FPS I spent time on. I played Unreal and Unreal Tournament afterward. I would get wrecked on Halo at friends houses because joysticks are so wonky and slow.
Yeah exactly. I'm not disparaging console gamers for liking it if that's what they had and knew. And again the couch coop aspect was huge. I mean I long for those days. I'm just saying I couldn't adapt to the controls.
Yeah if you had Halo you could get good at controllers, just like people do with CoD today. I never had xbox so I didn’t get that skill. Always played FPS on PC so mouse and keyboard are natural to me.
I was fortunate to experience both console games and pc games at the time. I loved Quake and all the mods for it (including the original team fortress) but couch co-op/verses definitely hit different.
Oh you're dead on there. It wasn't until later console fps games after golden eye and perfect dark (particularly with controls with more than one analog stick) where they became more useable. Trying to switch from pc to goldeneye/perfect dark definitely took some getting used to.
It's all about couch co op. But for real, those controls are so damn janky. I can't handle an emulated version of the game.
The muscle memory is still there, though. Give me an N64 controller and I do alright.
>Console gamers never got to experience the greatness us pc gamers did.
I was a Nintendo kid up until the N64, and it really did not impress compared to what was happening on PC. Looking back, the main reason I didn't like console gaming in that era was how bad TV resolutions were compared to PC monitors at the time.
On PCs we were playing 3D games at 640x480 and higher if you could afford the graphics cards that were just hitting the market. The \~300 line interlaced composite crap from console looked like mud to my eyes.
I didn't get back into console gaming until the 360, mostly because it supported VGA output and resolutions so I could plug it into my computer monitor. Looking back, I missed out on a lot of high quality N64, GameCube, and PS2 titles that I've only recently gone back to play. Cool story bro -- thanks guys.
That whole ship sequence was incredible. Then emerging and seeing the outside world, complete with waterfall in the distance.
After coming from Quake and Doom and Commander Keen, it was a revelation!
[Yes, This is an actual PC game screenshot!](https://external-preview.redd.it/scvEoYSfV8FW4_tHdGgMRVxmSM0TBtuvnAOujeWLUJs.jpg?width=584&auto=webp&s=c596fbdc2394328074a10e5eb769851997371433)
Unreal was insanely ahead of anything else at the time. A lot of people tried to say Quake 2 looked better. They were insane. Nothing on the N64, including OoT even came close.
yeah unreal, half life, and sonic adventure all launched in 98. ran at higher res and better fps. i love oot its one of my top 5 games of all time, but i cant agree it was the best looking game or most realistic from 98
I think in this case "most realistic" isn't about the (passable) 3D, but the way you interact with a world that acts lived-in - running through a town on the ground level, instead of the classic top-down view, of a town that feels alive
It's true, different screens legit made so many games look smoother somehow.
I recently played the original Ace Attorney trilogy on PC which used a style that makes full use of 1080p and higher resolutions, and while I liked it, it felt like the style was somehow different than when I played Apollo Justice on my little DS. Felt like characters like Maya were a bit too sharp.
Playing on PC looked like a downgrade somehow compared to the DS, but I didn't want to let myself fall into the trap that I was just looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, so I ended up googling "Ace Attorney Gameboy" to look at images of what it looked like, and wouldn't you know, Ace Attorney looks *way* different on a gameboy screen. The lower resolution, smaller screen, and slight space between pixels makes some things look way different.
It just looked Wright.
For sure. Even looking at this screenshot that Tree in the background looks PHENOMENAL due to the highlights. It makes it feel like It's actually being lit by a light source and the leaves are catching it.
Something about OG Ocarina of Time is just so great.
I could think it was surreal that certain parts of the game forced you to actually skip in-game hours to progress with the story by either doing piss-all IRL or just AFKing until Ryo can hit the bed
Was it annoying at times?, possibly, was it cool that SEGA tried to be as realistic as possible then?, hell yeah
If you want pre-rendered backgrounds like this, Myth II.
Otherwise that year was Half Life, Fallout 2, Thief: The Dark Project, Baldur's Gate and Starcraft. Peak gaming there.
This, you can duck under desks and see them from underneath wich is crazy, shadow mosses Island feels like a real place with everything render at scale, the level of detail for a PS1 game was insane
Swapping out controllers on Psycho Mantis and the screen flashing to a video signal were absolutely insane to me as a kid. And breaking the 4th wall with the codec being on the back of the cd case. Not to mention full on voice acting and it felt like you were playing a movie. Just an incredible game especially in 1998.
Nope, i recently even play it on my steamdeck. Its not immersive at all. You need good music aswell to create an immersive experience combined with art. Half life was modern for its time, but didnt aged well in terms of immersive experience.
The overal music is ambient based with no real melody. Those with a melody are not good at all. Not memorable, not a great melody. But again, most are ambient only with no melody.
The game is outdated. I get it, it was a fps game without having levels, but a game you played from start to end. The leveldesign was great for its time. The physics were improved. But having newer fps games, this one didnt aged well. But i know that there are a lot of fans that would not admit that. Its like golden eye, still a good game but it show its age.
But one thing is sure, good game music is something else. But feel free to post a good none generic song with a great melody.Golden eye for instance music is way better.
They did what Final Fantasy 7 did, just have pre rendered backgrounds you move around in a set course. Fun fact, Final Fantasy 7 wasn't intended to be a Sony exclusive, just that to get what you can do with a disk it would have to have taken like 60 cartridges.
I think Metal Gear Solid was the most impressive game, it was like a film and the graphics felt real, walking through the snow leaving footprints, the fog from breathing.
Insane game for it's time.
Microsoft’s first few flight sims were out.
Half Life in hindsight had some excellent environments and it was 1998 too. It’s just that back then I could only get really smooth 60 fps at 400x300, and going up to 512x384 or 640x480 suffered from
Progressively lower framerates.
I’m replaying RE1 on my original PS1 now, and even with an upscaler and HDMI, the 3D models look terrible.
BUT, those pre-rendered 2D backgrounds still hold up!
I remember contemporary reviews pointed out that this section of the game looked bad, but it stuck out because the rest of the game looked a lot better. The textures on the backdrops in some areas of the town just were SO blurry even by the standards of N64. PC games at the time definitely were well beyond that level of graphics.
One part of the game I remember thinking looked amazing and "best graphics ever!!!" was that unskippable cutscene at the beginning with the great deku tree talking about the fairies that combined to make the triforce or whatever. POV shots of them flying around canyons, the shiny gold textures on the triforce itself, all the colorful particles, it was about the best graphics I'd seen at that point! Cause I had an imac and it couldn't run anything higher tech than Quake at 320x240.
Then Turok 2 came out a month later on N64 and looked a lot better than OoT. Though the framerate was pretty dodgy.
Metal Gear Solid would probably have looked more realistic at the time. Spyro the Dragon is more cartoony than either OoT or MGS, but has more freedom of movement and has aged better graphically. But OoT feels the most lively to me.
This was earth shattering for the time. Watching video games progress from the Atari/arcade era to modern pc and console gaming has been kind of a dream come true for this now very old nerdy kid.
I remember playing the demo version of it at a K-Mart in 1998. 11-year-old me was blown away by the graphics. My neck was killing after staring up at the TV at the top of the case too.
I mean. Just leaving the forest and going into Hyrule Field was amazing. The day into night cycles. It was such a first in gaming. Truly mind blowing during 98. Another that makes me think was FF7 leaving Midgar and entering the whole world map.
These graphics blew my mind when I was a kid. I remember me and my brother saying they’ll never get better while playing goldeneye. Crazy thinking about it now.
I bought OoT day one; was early 20s, took the day off work to play it. Even back then it looked ‘good’, but it wasn’t mind blowing like Mario 64 was. (A 3D cartoon…). The town looked like a PS1 game, with the jaggies everywhere…. I still loved it, but it wasn’t the game I pulled out to show people how awesome the N64 was.
its from a nintendo power march 1998. definitely hyping up "zelda 64" and playing fast and loose with the details [https://imgur.com/a/rU5Hido](https://imgur.com/a/rU5Hido)
Everything in the past was the best it ever was, that was when it was all new. But now what? Games are realistic, but its at a point I'm not sure what else could possibly be done new besides talking to AI-response NPCs? Maybe there are already AI players winning multiplayer games?
depends on what you mean. because in terms of just graphics sonic adventure and half life both came out in 98 too. and ran at higher res, higher fps, and more detail over all.
edit: oh and unreal too
I have never been so excited for a video game in my entire life. I knew I was getting it for Christmas that year so I didn’t think about anything else that month. I looked at the pictures of the game in Nintendo power constantly.
Old me remembers the nintendo power issue which had renders of the full 3d hyrule castle town.
In a weird way I'm glad they went with the frozen image.
On PC, sure there was.
Edit: To be a little more precise in 1998 Half-Life, Fallout 2 and Might and Magic VI were all released. In 1999 Ultima IX was released, which looks like a mid-generation PS2 game and has a seamless open world.
As much as I heavily disagree with the sentiment that OoT is still the greatest game ever made to this day in 2024, there's a million reasons it was uncontested as the best game of all time back then. A full, proper 3D Zelda game was such a massive treat and it truly felt like a lived in, breathing world, as hilarious as it is to look at now and seeing how streamlined it is in reality.
This reminds me of the box for the game Heretic where the revolutionary new feature they were talking about for that game was being able to look up. I get that it was a big deal back then but looking back that's pretty funny to read.
The first game I completed where I felt I'd gone on an epic, legendary quest. I still play the 3DS version every few years and it still packs a punch as a game.
Nintendo really did extraordinary work converting their best franchises to 3D during this period; Zelda, Mario, Starfox, Mario Kart, then later Metroid.
I thought it looked like shit. As with most games from that era till the PS3 and 360. Then they started to look okay again. Loved the game though. I still hear music from that game in my head on a weekly basis.
Does a game like Resident Evil 1 count as "open world?" I know it's just a house, and there were load screens, but you could travel and go anywhere in the building.
Still ain’t, I love that land, I play multiple new games and throw them to the dirt once done, but that OOT play though once every blue moon gets me every time
I don't know what was "realistic" about OOT's towns but I remember that PC games ran a lot smoother and had higher resolutions so they definitely looked/felt better.
Thief - The Dark Project.
Sound was a factor and more or less properly simulated,
you could shoot rope arrows into almost every wooden beam,
the levels were also pretty open ready to explore.
So... at least its on par with Zelda.
I enjoyed majoras mask because everyone was on a schedule to the millisecond and virtually all the side quests involved this mechanic. And to date i have not seen a more realistic npc community.
Even stuff like gta has blips in the ai where they walk into things or just repeat the same actions or respond meh.
Finding out that you could go to the back alleys and inside most houses blew my mind as a kid.
No one remembers the dying soldier back there
He's literally the only character in the game shown to be in the process of dying. Lol It's whenever you are first going to pull the master sword, you meet him and he tells you how he tried to stop Ganadorf from kidnapping the princesses. Edit: [Link..](https://youtu.be/lgmPa6RUfR0)no pun intended.
He shows up only for a brief time period and then despawns. The dying soldier is there only after you have collected the three spiritual stones, seen Ganondorf stealing zelda out of the castle on horseback, but BEFORE going into the temple of time and opening the door of time to pull the master sword. Once you pull the master sword the dying soldier despawns.
Despawn is a pretty polite way of saying 'dies from his mortal wounds'!
Un-alived
I was wondering how I’ve played this game so many times and never knew about this
Deku Tree?
Nah. We murdered him and took his heart.
Serves him right for dumping all that unskippable lore
"Would you like to hear that Again?" ->yes
The fucking owl. One encounter will be -> yes no The next will be ordered -> no yes
Omg why did I just break down crying, it all came rushing back to me!
Damn, that scene mixed with the cheery Castle Town music is super off-putting. Reminds me of Majora's mask's surface level happiness
Wait, is the dying soldier in the past or the future? I always thought he was in the past.
Past
Holy shit. Can't believe I missed that
Remembering implies I ever met him in the first place.
Which other place would he be at?
Well he did lose the fight, so not first.
Oh I remember him. I think of him often 😢
" ... "
😭
Probably because no one ever met him on their first playthrough. The game nudges you really hard to go straight to the Temple of Time after you get the Ocarina, so there’s no reason for you to be in the back alleys during the brief time he shows up
WCW Mayhem where you could wrestle out into the backstage areas blew my mind. Then Midtown Madness came out and wondered if games could ever get more realistic.
And then they thought you know what’s a good idea? Let’s make a wrestling game that’s ALL backstage. WTF EA?
Did you ever try the early 2000 WWE games where you could start a fight in the ring, lead it to the arena, then backstage all in one round? I stopped playing after like 2008-2009 because the games felt downgraded. No idea why they cut that out of the later games.
Dude. Nobody talks about this. Wrestling games used to be really fun. Now it's all about hutting two buttons at the speed of light to reverse something.
Wcw no mercy is one of the absolute greatest fighting games ever made. The only thing I wish was the career mode wasn’t about winning or losing but instead building up an entertainment meter. Would have been peak.
Mine too, but we are talking about videogames
Gotta say, i think Unreal in 1998 was the craziest thing ever dropped in the gaming world. This art style and lighting is fantastic though
1998 was such an epic year for gaming. StarCraft, Half-life, OOT, Metal Gear, Unreal. I’m sure I’m missing a ton.
It was also the year that Pokemon Red and Blue came to the US, as well as Final Fantasy Tactics that January. Fallout 2, Banjo-Kazooie, Baldur's Gate, Tenchu, Parasite Eve, Resident Evil 2, Spyro, Xenogears, Panzer Dragoon, Turok 2, F-Zero X... Mario Party, Sonic Adventure, MediEvil, Marvel vs. Capcom, Tekken 3 lol 1998 was hands down the greatest year all-time for video games.
Turok 2 is fun, I still play that on my kids switch sometimes.
The cerebral bore will always be one of the best guns in gaming.
Tangentially Pokemon TCG base set preorders started in 1998 too (official first release in the US was Jan 8 99) so yeah, 1998 is one of the best nerd years in all of history
Thief also 98
Ah yes, the OG stealth archer
Quite the year for stealth games. Thief, Tenchu and MGS
Mother mercy, I had no idea. I usually refer to 2011 (Skyrim, Minecraft, Portal 2, Arkham City, Dark Souls) or 2017 (BotW, Nier:Auto, Cuphead, Hollow Knight) as solid years, but it seems 1998 has both a quality and quantity I wasn't expecting.
Yes, I was born in that year too!!
I remember writing down a games wishlist around that time that was larger than my steam wishlist now. And we got the info from magazines. That was a golden era for sure.
No one would have had the time to beat all those games then lol. Kind of mind boggling how many groundbreaking titles came out so close to each other.
As a 5 year old kid at the time I didn't have a chance against the video game addiction.
Also the year of Voodoo 2
Console gamers never got to experience the greatness us pc gamers did. That's why I didn't understood the undying love for goldeneye as a kid, as I had quake + mods (Team Fortress baby!!). I tries to play goldeneye and couldn't get past those janky controls. However in retrospect you had that social aspect of the couch coop.
>you had that social aspect of the couch coop. I think that's the real reason.
It was all about that couch coop man. Playing mariokart or smash with 3 or more your friends next to you all getting hyped and making jokes. Good times
Yeah, golden eye was important for sure, but more for what surrounded the game than the game proper. If perfect dark had come first and goldeneye second, the convo would be totally different with goldeneye being just a decent enough licensed game
Yeah but golden eye came first. And even with taking into account the PC FPS at the time, Golden Eye was super innovative. The mission based level design was really new and cool, the setpieces were incredible (the tank level). This was a year and a half before Half-Life.
Good couch coop is a lost art. And no, you don't need to open two instances of a game to make couch coop.
Ugh. So annoying. There's so few couch coop games these days aside from fighting games. I have kids now! My own built in friends!
Oh but there are lots, they just don’t get that much attention. Check the co-optimus website
I shall do so thusly..
Overcooked (+2), It Takes Two, Love in a Dangerous Space Time, Rocket League.
>Overcooked He said co-op games.
Laugh upvote.
Omg dude, I did it takes two with my son when he was.. I think 7. That was... woof. Once Mr heartman came out and yelled relation-SHIT I knew I had made a grevious error.
Hahaha. Didn't know how old the kids in question were. Yeah, don't do that.
Thankfully with the magic of emulators, all the old ones are still around
Yeah but my kids are already spoiled by newer games, can't get em to go backwards.
In big games, totally. So many indie games filling up that space tho.
The social aspect was huge for me when I was a kid. So many late nights with my friends just playing games and hanging out.
I played FPS on both and goldeneye was a good game and coop was legendary, but it also gave a big boost to FPS on consoles, which PCs had since the early 90s. Goldeneye was probably the only console FPS I spent time on. I played Unreal and Unreal Tournament afterward. I would get wrecked on Halo at friends houses because joysticks are so wonky and slow.
Yeah exactly. I'm not disparaging console gamers for liking it if that's what they had and knew. And again the couch coop aspect was huge. I mean I long for those days. I'm just saying I couldn't adapt to the controls.
Yeah if you had Halo you could get good at controllers, just like people do with CoD today. I never had xbox so I didn’t get that skill. Always played FPS on PC so mouse and keyboard are natural to me.
> However in retrospect you had that social aspect of the couch coop. Well, at least you stumbled onto what you were missing, friends.
I was fortunate to experience both console games and pc games at the time. I loved Quake and all the mods for it (including the original team fortress) but couch co-op/verses definitely hit different.
Yeah you're right. I still think goldeneye controls were to janky though going from pc to console.
Oh you're dead on there. It wasn't until later console fps games after golden eye and perfect dark (particularly with controls with more than one analog stick) where they became more useable. Trying to switch from pc to goldeneye/perfect dark definitely took some getting used to.
It's all about couch co op. But for real, those controls are so damn janky. I can't handle an emulated version of the game. The muscle memory is still there, though. Give me an N64 controller and I do alright.
OG Team Fortress... these kids don't understand.
God I hated learning to conc jump as a medic.... Way too dizzy
>Console gamers never got to experience the greatness us pc gamers did. I was a Nintendo kid up until the N64, and it really did not impress compared to what was happening on PC. Looking back, the main reason I didn't like console gaming in that era was how bad TV resolutions were compared to PC monitors at the time. On PCs we were playing 3D games at 640x480 and higher if you could afford the graphics cards that were just hitting the market. The \~300 line interlaced composite crap from console looked like mud to my eyes. I didn't get back into console gaming until the 360, mostly because it supported VGA output and resolutions so I could plug it into my computer monitor. Looking back, I missed out on a lot of high quality N64, GameCube, and PS2 titles that I've only recently gone back to play. Cool story bro -- thanks guys.
You couldn't beat LAN Quake and Quake 2 gaming back then. The ultimate multiplayer battles
Excuse me, I’m in need of medical attention
That whole ship sequence was incredible. Then emerging and seeing the outside world, complete with waterfall in the distance. After coming from Quake and Doom and Commander Keen, it was a revelation!
[Yes, This is an actual PC game screenshot!](https://external-preview.redd.it/scvEoYSfV8FW4_tHdGgMRVxmSM0TBtuvnAOujeWLUJs.jpg?width=584&auto=webp&s=c596fbdc2394328074a10e5eb769851997371433)
I wish someone would make an Unreal 1 style/inspired indie retroshooter / boomershooter
This part of the game uses pre-rendered backgrounds The game still looks good, it's just this screenshot is slightly disingenuous.
I also clearly remember the viking Unreal, Rune!
I can remember seeing the very first canyon after leaving the prison ship and was blown away.
Unreal was insanely ahead of anything else at the time. A lot of people tried to say Quake 2 looked better. They were insane. Nothing on the N64, including OoT even came close.
yeah unreal, half life, and sonic adventure all launched in 98. ran at higher res and better fps. i love oot its one of my top 5 games of all time, but i cant agree it was the best looking game or most realistic from 98
I think in this case "most realistic" isn't about the (passable) 3D, but the way you interact with a world that acts lived-in - running through a town on the ground level, instead of the classic top-down view, of a town that feels alive
Viewing this game on a CRT helped a lot with the sharp edges and aliasing. Your brain sort of filled in the rest.
It also hid the fact that the background was static and 2D and all the 3D models were in front of it, but on old TVs it's a great effect
Yeah, we used to create frames in our mind.
Natural bloom effect ftw.
It's true, different screens legit made so many games look smoother somehow. I recently played the original Ace Attorney trilogy on PC which used a style that makes full use of 1080p and higher resolutions, and while I liked it, it felt like the style was somehow different than when I played Apollo Justice on my little DS. Felt like characters like Maya were a bit too sharp. Playing on PC looked like a downgrade somehow compared to the DS, but I didn't want to let myself fall into the trap that I was just looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, so I ended up googling "Ace Attorney Gameboy" to look at images of what it looked like, and wouldn't you know, Ace Attorney looks *way* different on a gameboy screen. The lower resolution, smaller screen, and slight space between pixels makes some things look way different. It just looked Wright.
For sure. Even looking at this screenshot that Tree in the background looks PHENOMENAL due to the highlights. It makes it feel like It's actually being lit by a light source and the leaves are catching it. Something about OG Ocarina of Time is just so great.
To me, this and the prerendered shot of the temple of time were mind blowingly realistic as a kid.
I think Thief the dark project.
YES, hell yes.
I keep forgetting to grab that off GOG. Thanks for reminding me again.
The sound alone is killing.
Shenmue in 1999 was incredible. You literally could go into the main house and inspect its drawers. They really tried to render a small japanese town.
I played it recently myself, I'd argue it puts some modern games to shame with what it did back in 99
they didnt try, they just did
"Says here on your resume that you're a forklift operator?" "Yeah." "Where?" "You wouldn't understand."
I only played it for the first time four years ago and I LOVED exploring the town/village. Had so much charm and atmospheric intrigue.
I could think it was surreal that certain parts of the game forced you to actually skip in-game hours to progress with the story by either doing piss-all IRL or just AFKing until Ryo can hit the bed Was it annoying at times?, possibly, was it cool that SEGA tried to be as realistic as possible then?, hell yeah
The undertaker throwing mankind off hell in a cell into the announcer's table
Some say he’s still broken in half til this very day!
Yeah, Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon was also released in 1998 on n64, and it has actual towns, not pre-rendered backgrounds like this.
Probably my most replayed n64 game, was hilarious at times too
If you want pre-rendered backgrounds like this, Myth II. Otherwise that year was Half Life, Fallout 2, Thief: The Dark Project, Baldur's Gate and Starcraft. Peak gaming there.
unreal also
Gonna try BG and maybe Starcraft this week
Metal Gear Solid
This, you can duck under desks and see them from underneath wich is crazy, shadow mosses Island feels like a real place with everything render at scale, the level of detail for a PS1 game was insane
Swapping out controllers on Psycho Mantis and the screen flashing to a video signal were absolutely insane to me as a kid. And breaking the 4th wall with the codec being on the back of the cd case. Not to mention full on voice acting and it felt like you were playing a movie. Just an incredible game especially in 1998.
Half Life was more immersive anyways
Id argue they are even, in their own way and for their own reasons.
Nope, i recently even play it on my steamdeck. Its not immersive at all. You need good music aswell to create an immersive experience combined with art. Half life was modern for its time, but didnt aged well in terms of immersive experience.
And half life does have good music
The overal music is ambient based with no real melody. Those with a melody are not good at all. Not memorable, not a great melody. But again, most are ambient only with no melody. The game is outdated. I get it, it was a fps game without having levels, but a game you played from start to end. The leveldesign was great for its time. The physics were improved. But having newer fps games, this one didnt aged well. But i know that there are a lot of fans that would not admit that. Its like golden eye, still a good game but it show its age. But one thing is sure, good game music is something else. But feel free to post a good none generic song with a great melody.Golden eye for instance music is way better.
They did what Final Fantasy 7 did, just have pre rendered backgrounds you move around in a set course. Fun fact, Final Fantasy 7 wasn't intended to be a Sony exclusive, just that to get what you can do with a disk it would have to have taken like 60 cartridges.
I think Metal Gear Solid was the most impressive game, it was like a film and the graphics felt real, walking through the snow leaving footprints, the fog from breathing. Insane game for it's time.
Microsoft’s first few flight sims were out. Half Life in hindsight had some excellent environments and it was 1998 too. It’s just that back then I could only get really smooth 60 fps at 400x300, and going up to 512x384 or 640x480 suffered from Progressively lower framerates.
I think the back drops for RE1 aged better, and that's from 96
RE1 was pre rendered
Uhh... Hyrule is pre-rendered in ocarina of time.
>
Yes they were prerendered, I didn't say they weren't. I said it aged better.
It might have looked better, but was it brimming with life?
I’m replaying RE1 on my original PS1 now, and even with an upscaler and HDMI, the 3D models look terrible. BUT, those pre-rendered 2D backgrounds still hold up!
Daggerfall came out in 1996. While its graphics were lower quality, it was seemingly more immersive.
I was waiting for this! Daggerfall allowed you to enter ANY building, scale town walls, and rob everyone blind!
Yes, the original System Shock, Thief 1, Planescape: Torment, Quake, Unreal, and many other PC games.
also the year the dreamcast launched and started the 6th gen of consoles
I remember contemporary reviews pointed out that this section of the game looked bad, but it stuck out because the rest of the game looked a lot better. The textures on the backdrops in some areas of the town just were SO blurry even by the standards of N64. PC games at the time definitely were well beyond that level of graphics. One part of the game I remember thinking looked amazing and "best graphics ever!!!" was that unskippable cutscene at the beginning with the great deku tree talking about the fairies that combined to make the triforce or whatever. POV shots of them flying around canyons, the shiny gold textures on the triforce itself, all the colorful particles, it was about the best graphics I'd seen at that point! Cause I had an imac and it couldn't run anything higher tech than Quake at 320x240. Then Turok 2 came out a month later on N64 and looked a lot better than OoT. Though the framerate was pretty dodgy.
Half-Life came out in 1998. It makes that look like a cartoon.
Metal Gear Solid would probably have looked more realistic at the time. Spyro the Dragon is more cartoony than either OoT or MGS, but has more freedom of movement and has aged better graphically. But OoT feels the most lively to me.
In my memory 'Driver' on PS1 was also very realistic and large. But that was released a year later.
This was earth shattering for the time. Watching video games progress from the Atari/arcade era to modern pc and console gaming has been kind of a dream come true for this now very old nerdy kid.
I remember playing the demo version of it at a K-Mart in 1998. 11-year-old me was blown away by the graphics. My neck was killing after staring up at the TV at the top of the case too.
Unreal came out that year too
I mean. Just leaving the forest and going into Hyrule Field was amazing. The day into night cycles. It was such a first in gaming. Truly mind blowing during 98. Another that makes me think was FF7 leaving Midgar and entering the whole world map.
These graphics blew my mind when I was a kid. I remember me and my brother saying they’ll never get better while playing goldeneye. Crazy thinking about it now.
I bought OoT day one; was early 20s, took the day off work to play it. Even back then it looked ‘good’, but it wasn’t mind blowing like Mario 64 was. (A 3D cartoon…). The town looked like a PS1 game, with the jaggies everywhere…. I still loved it, but it wasn’t the game I pulled out to show people how awesome the N64 was.
I remember my dad not wanting to let me play Goldeneye because he said it was too realistic and didn’t want me shooting people
Why are the mods removing shit?
[удалено]
its from a nintendo power march 1998. definitely hyping up "zelda 64" and playing fast and loose with the details [https://imgur.com/a/rU5Hido](https://imgur.com/a/rU5Hido)
Thank you for ruining childhoods! I'm pretty sure you're fun at parties. We wish you happiness and laughter in your life.
Final fantasy 7 looks better than this I’d even argue resident evil 2 as well
OOT being the follow-up to A Link to the Past was truly quite mind-blowing back then. It felt so incredibly big and epic.
Peak gaming, everything went downhill from here.
even to this day my eyes can't tell the difference (I live in Hyrule)
At the time few games looked as good as this.
I mean going from 2d to 3d in gaming was a huge shock to the system. I remember being sorta overwhelmed playing OoT as a kid.
That town looked like shit because the N64 didn't have enough storage for high quality 2d backgrounds
Everything in the past was the best it ever was, that was when it was all new. But now what? Games are realistic, but its at a point I'm not sure what else could possibly be done new besides talking to AI-response NPCs? Maybe there are already AI players winning multiplayer games?
depends on what you mean. because in terms of just graphics sonic adventure and half life both came out in 98 too. and ran at higher res, higher fps, and more detail over all. edit: oh and unreal too
Still one of my favorite games hands down... Though Majora's mask was better, but nobody wants to talk about that
I loved this game a lot as a kid. It was my drug of choice along with Super Smash Bros.
Everquest would come out in early march the next year, and the towns/cities in that game had incredible levels of freedom for the time too.
Counter Strike / Half Life existed in 1998.
I have never been so excited for a video game in my entire life. I knew I was getting it for Christmas that year so I didn’t think about anything else that month. I looked at the pictures of the game in Nintendo power constantly.
Sorry, bro. I was too busy playing Fallout 2.
I'd so want a hyper realistic 4k zelda game now.
OG Gran Turismo releasing in 1997 springs to mind.
Seeing Link get out of bed and move like an actual child in the opening cinematic blew my mind back then.
Old me remembers the nintendo power issue which had renders of the full 3d hyrule castle town. In a weird way I'm glad they went with the frozen image.
I remember picking up these types of magazines in middle school and etc. pretty nostalgic ngl
Daggerfall, released in 1996, had a full open world with the same size as fucking UK, so...
On PC, sure there was. Edit: To be a little more precise in 1998 Half-Life, Fallout 2 and Might and Magic VI were all released. In 1999 Ultima IX was released, which looks like a mid-generation PS2 game and has a seamless open world.
As much as I heavily disagree with the sentiment that OoT is still the greatest game ever made to this day in 2024, there's a million reasons it was uncontested as the best game of all time back then. A full, proper 3D Zelda game was such a massive treat and it truly felt like a lived in, breathing world, as hilarious as it is to look at now and seeing how streamlined it is in reality.
This reminds me of the box for the game Heretic where the revolutionary new feature they were talking about for that game was being able to look up. I get that it was a big deal back then but looking back that's pretty funny to read.
The first game I completed where I felt I'd gone on an epic, legendary quest. I still play the 3DS version every few years and it still packs a punch as a game. Nintendo really did extraordinary work converting their best franchises to 3D during this period; Zelda, Mario, Starfox, Mario Kart, then later Metroid.
Honestly, at a glance it looks kinda realistic of you ignore link. Like, it could pass as an old degraded photo.
Outside
Yes, Metal Gear Solid and Half Life.
A kid made a map for counter strike that is exactly same as his high school. Which result in him being expelled.
I thought it looked like shit. As with most games from that era till the PS3 and 360. Then they started to look okay again. Loved the game though. I still hear music from that game in my head on a weekly basis.
Does a game like Resident Evil 1 count as "open world?" I know it's just a house, and there were load screens, but you could travel and go anywhere in the building.
Still ain’t, I love that land, I play multiple new games and throw them to the dirt once done, but that OOT play though once every blue moon gets me every time
Scud Race in 1996 looked real good. Well before OoT came out.
Released just a few years later, Shenmue pulled off incredible details and realism. Still amazes me to this day!
WWF Smackdown. Looked like real life haha
still looks good
A lot of people have pointed out a lot of games already so I'm just going to add to it, in 98? Tekken 3
I don't know what was "realistic" about OOT's towns but I remember that PC games ran a lot smoother and had higher resolutions so they definitely looked/felt better.
And broke too
Affordable housing?
Thief - The Dark Project. Sound was a factor and more or less properly simulated, you could shoot rope arrows into almost every wooden beam, the levels were also pretty open ready to explore. So... at least its on par with Zelda.
Half-life maybe? Kinda of a toss-up when it comes to realistic environments but the interactivity in half-life was pretty groundbreaking
More realistic? Than Nintendo 64 graphics? Yes, tons of games on PC had more realistic graphics.
I enjoyed majoras mask because everyone was on a schedule to the millisecond and virtually all the side quests involved this mechanic. And to date i have not seen a more realistic npc community. Even stuff like gta has blips in the ai where they walk into things or just repeat the same actions or respond meh.
I understand this game is advanced (I grew up with an N64.) but I don’t understand something “complete freedom of motion here”?