Most disappointing console according to Brad. Is it true?

Of the consoles that mattered, it may be. I mean stuff like the 3DO and Jaguar are worse consoles, but those really shouldn't even be in the same category. Nobody knew what the hell those were going to be, so they really didn't "disappoint" anyone other than people completely convinced by marketing hype.

Going from the SNES, which is at least arguably the best ever, to the under-powered, under-supported N64 is a pretty massive decline. I'd say the Gamecube is a more disappointing system than the N64 overall, but there wasn't nearly as large of a drop as there was from SNES to 64.

Genesis to Saturn is also pretty bad, although I don't think expectations for the Saturn were all that high to begin with. 360 to XBone was bad as well, although they've course-corrected enough at this point to pretty much erase their bad first 6 months.

Yeah. The N64 sucked. Mario 64 and Ocarina were the only games that mattered on that thing. Also that controller was god awful. I owned like 50+ Playstation games compared to like barely 10 on the N64.

I can't speak for everybody, of course, but the more I look back, the more I'm glad that I got an N64 instead of the Playstation. I wasn't disappointed at all. The games on the N64 just appealed to me more. Even today, knowing what I know about all the games that came out for the playstation, if I could go back, I wouldn't trade my N64 in for a Playstation for a second. I honestly never thought people found the N64 to be disappointing until I read this thread. I always thought there was a general consensus that it was a good console. Maybe it was just because I liked it so much.

The N64 is similar to a lot of Nintendo consoles in that it's a shitty console with a few god tier games that almost make it worthwhile. Even then, I could never get into Mario 64, I never cared much for Zelda, most Rare platformers were pretty lame and no-one likes to admit it, and my favourite game on the system never came out here.

Disappointing to go back to, yes. I grew up with the SNES and N64, and most N64 games have really not held up over time.

The N64 was great by virtue of the fact that it had around a dozen or so great games, but yes, based on the track record of its predecessors it is certainly in the running for most disappointing console. I think the Saturn may edge it out by a nose though. Same scenario with respect to amazing predecessor console, however the highs certainly weren't as high as they were with the N64 and the lows were just as low.

I think it all depends on your age. If you were between the ages of eight through sixteen, during that consoles lifespan, your view on the system is probably warped from nostalgia.

As I get closer to being forty, I have noticed that everyone my age seems to hold this weird reverence for anything that happened in their formative years. "The generation of SNL from my youth is, for sure, the best generation and all the others suck," or, "why is todays music so terrible," or, "this generation of games was the best," is all I hear. It's like people are mistaking their personal experiences and history be the sole arbiter of quality; they only remember the good stuff, while forgetting the shit.

Its either that or the Gamecube, or the Wii, or the WiiU... Well shit Nintendo :(

The Ultra 64 had MASSIVE hype going for it. 3d games were in their infancy and were playthings of extremely powerful PCs at the time. When it was announced, there was no Voodoo card. Just software ass 3d rendering on the PC.

Then remember that Jurassic Park came out prior to the Ultra 64 marketing that made SGI a huge name. The Ultra 64 was going to have graphics by SGI? The guys who did the visuals in Jurassic Park? Holy shit!

And a 64 bit version of a Nintendo console? Holy cow!

And a 100MB disk drive so we can create out own tracks in ExciteBike? YES!

By the time the N64 actually came out, the Playstation was out for a while.

What it lacked in 3d gameplay, the PSX made up for with redbook audio, a controller that didn't look like a bird of pray, ports of Tekken and Soul Caliber that were just as good as the arcade, if not better, and Squaresoft. Oh yeah, and cutscenes. Cutscenes amazed the crap out of people. The commercials for Final Fantasy 7 were nothing but cutscenes, and I remembered people being wow'ed as hell by them. Titles like Resident Evil looked better - the backgrounds weren't compressed to hell and the N64 did a real poor job with the cutscenes.

The N64DD? Never came out.

Not only was the Playstation library larger than the N64's, it was cheaper. I remember most N64 titles being in the 60-80 USD range, while most Playstation titles were $40 with big multi-disk games being $50.

The only real saving grace of the N64 outside of Mario and Zelda, was that it brought first person shooters to the home console space. But, as someone who had a nice PC in the late 90's, Golden Eye and Perfect Dark did nothing for me.

@casepb: But I liked the Gamecube with its tiny discs and lunchbox aesthetic. I also liked Starfox Adventures.

It was the beginning of what nintendo is today, a technological step behind relying on nostalgia and brand loyalty. They decided not to take the leap to cd which did give them a slight edge in graphics but cost more and held a lot less information(i believe). Then gamecube, it was on par with everybody else but chose mini disks to be different but since they abandoned third parties there was hardly anything worth buying it for. Then the wii came out, last gen graphics with a novelty motion controller that sold like crazy but tinkered off due to lack of third party support and gamer interest. Now the Wii-U, again last gen graphics with a novelty controller.

I often feel like nintendo should abandon console and focus on handheld, then you could get current gen zelda on ps4 or something.

The N64 problem in my humble opinion, is there were like 2 must buy games - Mario 64 & Zelda Ocarina of time. I'm 41, and was earning decent money so was ok with the £100 outlay just for 2 games

The Dreamcast was my most disapointing. It was here and gone in no time. Wasn't a fan of the games released either. As for the N64, I played a lot of games on that machine and loved them. I was 31 when the N64 was released.

No way. I think the Giant Bomb guys have an unusually low opinion of the 64 compared to the general public. Especially among people in my age group (I'm 26) the 64 is extremely well thought of. I know like 4-5 people that still have 64's hooked up and played them. And we're talking people who don't game much at all.

Personally I would certainly chose the PS1 over it but there are a lot of people that love the 64. I think it had multiplayer games that clicked with them and they spent a ton of time playing the games with their friends.

Given some of the other consoles that have come out I don't see how 64 can be there.

Nintendo 64 had many great games. The hardware itself I guess sucked as everyone was blowing on the cartridges all the time, but on the positive side of things there were no load times. At the end of its life there was a RAM pack which allowed for games like Conker. The split screen multiplayer was fantastic, even when people had to work out how to use the awkward controllers and what the Z button was.

Man, this is a rough thread. As far as I'm concerned, the N64 was the best console ever made.

The controller can only be compared to its contemporaries, and the original Playstation controller was terrible: it launched without analog sticks, and they never added any depth to the handles when when they released the DS, so it remained unpleasant. It's a bit odd playing shooters with Turok controls on a N64 controller now (though Goldeneye with default controls remains the only multiplayer FPS you could play one-handed, which is awesome), but otherwise I don't understand what everyone's problem is with it.

I still think cartridges were correct, to this day. Most Playstation games took five goddamn minutes to load a level, whereas N64 games loaded instantaneously. The space constraint encouraged N64 developers to make in-engine cutscenes, which make so much more sense than the long-arse FMV reels that lifted you out of Playstation games. When people talk about CDs being more "economical", I can't help but remember that every one of my Playstation-owning friends had tons of pirated games -- which, yeah, for sure that's more economical for us as consumers. But if you weren't pirating, I don't think the difference in price was as substantial as people like to make it out to be.

As for the games, I get that people love their JRPGs, I've even been to that dark place before so I get the appeal. But look: JRPGs are bad videogames. Morrowind was the best RPG of that generation, and it wasn't on any console. (Oops, Morrowind was a little late -- see below.) I guess the N64 didn't have a good track record with fighting games, either, but that's because the hype for 3D fighting games (together with the over-saturation of 2D fighting games in the last generation) killed 2D fighting games, and it turns out that 3D fighting games are mostly garbage.

Other than that, the N64 basically dominated every other genre. It had the best platformers, the best action-adventure games, the best first-person shooters (on a console -- but Goldeneye is probably the most innovative shooter ever, period), the best flight games, the only cover shooter, it eventually got the best skate game and the best survival horror game...

The Playstation had sheer volume and a lot of great games, but nowhere near as much watershed value.

But whatever. I'm not really trying to change anyone's mind here. Brad and everyone else here can think what they like. I just felt that this post needed to be written.

This is more a function of Brad and the bomb squad's mad love for the NES and SNES then any real deficiency of the N64. Speaking as someone who loved the N64 I found the Gamecube to be a bit more disappointing.

I disagree with almost everything you say, but this is just factually wrong. Morrowind released after the end of the generation (every system of the next gen was already released) AND it was released for Xbox a month after it was released for PC. You might not like the port, but Greg Kasavin gave it an 8.5 so...

Also CDs are more economical even if you're not a pirate. Just look at PS1s greatest hits line which was $19.99 MSRP and many games dropped even lower. Cartridge games never went below $40. The price of the cartridges themselves meant they couldn't drop like CDs could. The original MSRPs might have been similar between the systems but the discounts were worlds apart.

I don't consider the N64 one of the greats like most people do, But I was really into PC gaming around the time of that and the PS1 so I probably have inflated opinions about a lot of PC games from that era.

Going back to a lot of N64 games later though there are actually a few really good ones. Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time are still fucking great games, Blast Corps is really fun and I actually like Perfect Dark quite a bit. GoldenEye isn't that great by today's standards but a lot of my friends who grew up playing it insist on playing a few rounds when we hang out and it's as fun as any game is when you have a bunch of people in the same room. It's kind of unfortunate that I don't like 3D platformers too much because the N64 era Banjo-Kazooie games seems genuinely great. (for some reason the Mario game have always been an exception to this rule for me. Galaxy is probably one of the best games of the last generation and I really like Mario 64).

The big issue with the N64 is it's third-party support. I'd consider the N64 the beginning of the end for third party support on Nintendo platforms and what happened there is the basis for what NIntendo is today in a lot of cases. Fact is that Sony ate Nintendo's lunch that generation with things like Metal Gear Solid, Ridge Racer, Tekken, the superior versions of Tony Hawk etc. and I think that starts with he fact that Sony was the first to use the CD as successfully as a primary game delivery format. Cartridges have their benefits for sure, like fast loading times, but they cost more to produce and couldn't be discounted in the same way as PlayStation CDs. CDs also offered better audio quality and, to be honest, it was fucking incredible to see games like Tekken running on a console at the time, especially looking back on other CD based systems like the CD-i and the 3DO, so there was a little bit of revolutionary awe surrounding the PlayStation that raised it above the N64.

@bigsocrates: bluh, at some point I must've mixed Morrowind in with the wrong generation. And also forgot about that Xbox release, which I'm less concerned about because I couldn't imagine playing an Elder Scrolls game on a console. I'll edit to indicate my mistake. But I still think JRPGs are bad.

I've already indicated that I don't care about the cost overhead difference between legitimately purchased games on cartridges and CDs, so I don't know why you're talking at me about that. Cartridge technology was superior in every aspect that I really cared about (I didn't list on-board saves and durability, too), and that's such a subjective thing that we have no choice but to agree to disagree.

I guess I want to add something: some posts brought up the whole "N64 was kiddy fisher price crap" line. It reminded me of what soured me on Playstation: the dude-bro marketing. Do you remember that ad where the dude gets lead out of a cinema by Lara Croft, and locks his girlfriend outside the house because he has Lara and Playstation to keep him company? Playstation is when dude-bro culture came into fruition. The guys who had Playstations turned into rough assholes and started calling Nintendo stuff "kiddy". Sure there would've been fanboys and console wars regardless, but I remember being part of a Nintendo fansite for a while that had a member base that was close to half female, whereas when I joined a site that covered all platforms it was comically stereotypical in how male-dominated it was.
I'm sort-of glad that the whole "kiddy" thing has been brought up in this modern context, because it's made me wake up to the kind of toxic place that garbage came from.

@fnrslvr: you might not care about cost but a lot of people did. Also arguably more important than price was the ability to have good audio. Jeff talked about this being why the PSX aged better during an Unprofessional Fridays. Playstation games had amazing soundtracks. N64 games not so much. IMO the sound alone balances out having to buy more memory cards (the N64 definitely had cards with no on-cart save.)

My memory of Playstation ads were more that they were weird than dude-broish, but I'm sure there was some of that. N64 wasn't immune from it at all though.

I present Get 'N or Get Out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dibbc_7KMGU

Because I was still in elementary / middle school for most of the N64's run, I didn't have a big enough budget to discover how rough most of its catalog was. Nintendo Power had its hooks in me and the classics kept on rolling, plus at the time it just hit my sensibilities more with weird stuff like Conker and Space Station Silicon Valley later in its life. I loved my Playstation when I got it but it was mainly an RPG and sports machine.

I probably feel about the Gamecube the way Brad feels about the N64, though. I bought that system specifically for Mario, Zelda and Resident Evil 4, only to find the Mario was somewhat ok but not mind blowing (I did think it was gorgeous though) and Resident Evil was removed from exclusivity before it even released. After I beat Wind Waker I tried to justify the system, but I didn't like the new controller for Smash Bros. at all and felt one Metroid Prime was enough, so I took a look at the horizon and sold my Gamecube for PS2 game money.

I haven't felt the urge to own a Nintendo console since. So the Gamecube is triply stained in my memory, both as an utter disappointment, a total waste of money and the end of my life with Nintendo (this new Zelda is the first time in forever I've felt any jealousy, I haven't even felt that twinge with the Mario Galaxy games honestly).

@bigsocrates: I'm not so concerned about the content of the games advertised. Yeah, stereotypically you're going for male gamers when you advertise games with guns and shit blowing up, but girls like to blow shit up too. There seem to by women among the "gamers" in that ad, also.

What I'm picking on is this ad.

wrt audio: I'm not convinced that the Playstation really had an edge there. Goldeneye's soundtrack sure holds up. Same with Perfect Dark, Turok 2, Zelda, etc. You've just reminded me of Shadow Man's soundtrack, which was incredible. (That game got a terrible Playstation port, iirc.) This topic is probably grounds to bring up KI Gold, even if you're going to tell me that game was garbage. I mean, I never thought to compare the platforms on the basis of audio, and I'm not going to bother comparing them in retrospect, but I think it's a really weird metric to even appeal to, especially when Playstation games don't hold up on so many other areas.

i had a N64 for a few years as a 10-12 year old. Honestly i really did not enjoy the system at all. Looking back on it, i think it almost completely stopped me from playing games because i just wasn't into the Nintendo stuff. I must be one of the few people who played a ton of Starcraft 64 and it was pretty much my favorite game on the system. Was never into zelda or mario, and perfect dark and goldeneye were cool but i dont have a lot of nostalgia for anything on that system. Where as my PlayStation.... holy shit i got piles and piles of nostalgia about Gran Turismo, Final Fantasies, Diablo, just a ton of games. So my personal experience the N64 was by far my least favorite console i ever owned and its catalog of games is depressing to look at when i think about games i love personally.

Id argue that every nintendo console that came out later was worse. Maybe the wii and wii u were less dissapointing because post gamecube i just expected less feom them.... but i dunno.

It's definitely not the most disappointing. It had the software going for it.

However, I would say it is arguably the worst aging console of all-time. Everything looks blurry and the sound is muffled. Even the PSX has aged better.

The N64 is one of the few mainstream consoles that I never owned. By the time it came out I was already entrenched in what Sony was doing with the Playstation, or at least that's what my hazy memory of the mid-90's is telling me. I think more than anything, the N64 just didn't align with my gaming tastes at the time which were mainly focused on fighting games and JRPG's, which the Playstation had in spades and the N64 really did not. Looking back, the N64 like all Nintendo consoles, can hold its own with any of its contemporaries when comparing its top 2 or 3 games, but it doesn't have the depth of a library to stack up in the long view. I could see the N64 being a huge disappointment coming off of the SNES for sure.

Won't some of this be based on where in the world you're from also? I know the original question is about Jeff and Brad talking shit about the N64 but I've not known anyone who had an N64 who wasn't from the US (that's not to say nobody outside of the US bought one obviously). So I just assumed this was one of those instances where in one region this console was better received than others.

From an outside perspective the console always sounded like a disappointment because whenever I've seen someone talk fondly about it they mention Mario, Banjo Kazooie and maybe one of the WCW or WWE games. Given the console was around for a few years I'd have thought there would be more to recommend than a handful of games.

@fnrslvr:I don't know about the Lara Croft playstation advert, but wasn't there a Shenmue advert for Dreamcast that had a couple in the middle of having sex?

@goldone said:

I'm from Australia. That said, Playstation was more popular here too. Australia has always seemed to have a slight Sony bias even when Microsoft took over in the US.

Not having seen it, I'm not sure what your point is. That just seems weird, like apparently every videogame ad at the time.

It's 100% an age thing, the Saturn had some amazing games but as a kid I didn't want to play radiant silvergun, I wanted to play Mario and zelda.

I didn't have a for playing games, so goldeneye the was pretty much my first fps experience experience, and four player split screen goldeneye with all your friends was great, setting up an LAN for doom or quake or what not was not the experience for me and my friends as children.

If you were 16+ then obviously the ps1 was a more satisfying console as it was aimed and marketed directly to you.

I'm quite surprised at people saying n64 games don't hold up so well, I've played Mario 64 recently and the low detail cartoony style holds up well, whereas this things like MGS on the ps1 or toom raider which attempted 3D realism look terrible in retrospect.

For me the truly disappointing console was the Saturn, it had good games but having been a mega drive owner, in Europe Nintendo hadn't been as dominant as Nintendo was in the states and most kids I knew owned a mega drive (genesis) only a few had a SNES.

looking back on the Saturn, it had some good games, perhaps even one or two great ones, but aside from the am2 arcade ports and 2d fighters (which were a bit hardcore for me, still are) I don't think it had much going for it.

If I had been 21 in 1995 I would totally have been playing 10 player bomber man and fighters mega mix though. Disappointing relies on expectations, so we will never totally agree, or likely even get a consensus.

I tend to agree. N64 was the first Nintendo console I didn't buy. It can't compare to its direct predecessor: the SNES which is easily a contender for best console ever. The PS1 had a way more varied and interesting library of games. The N64 had Mario, Goldeneye and Zelda. And Goldeneye wasn't exactly impressive if you had access to any number of superior PC multiplayer FPSes.

The advert is Here, I suppose my poorly point was this seems a lot more dude-bro to me than Playstation. I know here in the UK the Playstation adverts always seemed a lot more weird and abstract than going after this specific group but this is probably another or the regional differences.

Of the consoles considered "successful" yes, I agree.

There's a lot of utter trash that's worse though.

Remember guys, disappointing and worst are two different things so what Brad said is factually correct. There are far worst platforms than the N64 but nothing has had the incredible legacy leading up to such a fall. The GC/Wii/Wii U arguments fail miserably because the thing before wasn't considered that great (aside from the sales of the Wii) . The Saturn had zero build up because of the dumb ass release date also being the unveiling and while I love the Genesis the Master System was no NES. DC could be seen as a massive disappointment but again the build up and excitement as a whole was far less because of how bad the Saturn ended up getting rocked.

Now don't get me wrong as individuals we all have different excitement and build up for different things so we can all have favorites but as a whole on the big picture front is where the N64 was the most disappointing. The PS3 had the potential to beat it but it pulled out of the spiral and while not on the level of the previous two consoles ended up being a good platform. For all the younger folks who started on N64 they didn't know the magic that was the previous two gens so they fell in love because they didn't know any better. :p

Darn tootin!

It was much better. ;-D

I think you put it next to the PS1 which is one of the best consoles of all time, it's an unflattering look.

I've always considered the SNES to be the most disappointing console (I've ever played). The best game came with the console(Super Mario World). Nothing else I bought for that thing was as good as the pack-in.

@liquiddragon: Most disappointing was the Dreamcast. It's life was cut way too short after just 2 years. That's like the ps4 and xboxone being ready to die in 2016.

I agree that it's the most dissapointing Nintendo console. It was the start of third party support going away and Nintendo consoles mostly being about playing Nintendo games, it had a terrible controller and not going with CD's meant a lot less space to work with for developers, resulting in the N64 version of multiplatform games having things cut or (more often) lower quality audio than on PS1 and Saturn versions.

I agree, disappointment arises out of expectation in the first place. That being said the N64 is the biggest one I can think of. Coming out of 2 console generations as dominant force, the N64 was the first major scratch in Nintendo's success story.

The N64 had some really awesome games, but I'll never stop wondering what could have come from a Sony/Nintendo partnership instead of the competition that we got instead.

What, Brad being hyperbolic again!? No way!

In all seriousness, there are far more disappointing consoles. The GameCube as others have mentioned was a bummer at times, and the 3D0 being $700 dollars for example, and though I love the Wii-U, it's a bigger disappointment.

For me it definitely was. Not only did it have a really bad controller, but the games were crazy expensive because of Nintendo's unwillingness to leave carts behind. I never bought more than a handful of N64 games and only a third of them were actually any good. The clear blue console does look pretty nice though.

It's an expectations vs. reality thing. It's ludicrous to say (and Brad wouldn't) that the Nintendo 64 is the worst console of all time or even a bad one. But given how amazing the NES and SNES was, the fact that the 64 was so mediocre (both then and now) makes it profoundly disappointing. I'm with Brad on this one.

The 3DO was interesting and was disappointing, but it's not like Panasonic had made the two greatest game consoles of all time and this was their sequel. And the GameCube (IMHO) was less disappointing simply because it followed the 64. Certainly my expectations had been lowered significantly, at the time I was all in on PlayStation. Sony was the hot new game in town, who cared what crusty old Nintendo did?

That's such a crazy thing to say that I can almost respect it :)

It was a great system but compared to the previous Nintendo consoles it was quite a disappointment. I think the PS3 may be overall more of a disappointing system.

I think people are getting hung up on the word and what it means. Saying something is a disappointment does not mean it's the worst, it means that it does not meet expectations, and therefore you feel sad that it didn't reach that threshold. Many good or even great things can be considered disappointing, when viewed in this way. I find this a lot with movies. There are great movies or television shows that, because of my own expectations, instead leave me feeling like they could have been better. For instance, compared with the first two seasons of Arrow, the third season was disappointing to me. It was still good, had some nice characters moments, even introduced one of my favorite characters, but it wasn't as good as what came before. I think people that grew up with NES or SNES had a certain expectation that the N64 would be great, and be better than the competition. It wasn't. It had some awesome exclusives, but it didn't have the depth and the breadth of the PSX. For a lot of people, instead of exceeding expectations, it didn't even reach them.

Now, nostalgia is a powerful thing. I have many fond memories of C64 games. That was the family console for me until I was about 7-8 years old, so when I look back I think it was a great system with a ton of great games. I think a bit more on it and realize that I only really played a handful of great games (GI Joe was super fun, Winter Games, Deceptor, etc) and that there were downsides, such as long loading times. People looking back today who didn't have the same experiences that I had may look at these games and wonder just what the heck I'm thinking when I say that they're great. This is the problem with memory. It can accentuate the positives and diminish the negatives. I think the older you are, the more you may look at N64 and say that it was disappointing. Or, if you're like me, I didn't have the money to buy a console after the SNES and my brother ended up letting my play his PSX. When I visited my cousins, not too long after, they were all into their N64, but I just didn't get it. The controller was garbage (imo) and the graphics were not as good. It seemed like a no-brainer, to me at the time, to play PSX instead.

In the end, I don't think it was bad. It had some of the arguably best games of that era, perhaps of all time with something like Ocarina. That doesn't take away the fact that it had issues and that people may be fond of it because of nostalgia and not because of it's actual merits.There were also many people that were expecting something as seismic in change as SNES, and the N64 just wasn't that console to those people.

Agreed. Gamecube was the last moment where Nintendo could have stood toe to toe with Sony. They didn't a lot wrong with its design, but their worst mistake was the business model they have followed ever since GC.

When compared to what the SNES and NES were I'd say it was disappointing. Also I didn't care about the Playstation and the other consoles as I was playing games on the PC by that time.

Depends. If Brad is saying that purely because the SNES was awesome and the N64/PS1 generation sucked, maybe. Nobody expected anything from the PS1 when it came out, and they expected the world from the N64. If he's saying the N64 is somehow significantly worse than the PS1, fuck that. They both suck ass in entirely different ways. The PS1 has a stronger library, but not by any ridiculous margin, and I'd rather look at most N64 games today than most PS1 games with their swimmy, nauseating vertices.

I think the most disappointing console is the Wii. Sure, the N64 and Gamecube had some technical limitations compared to their competitors, but they were minor. I could play a third party game on PS2 or Gamecube and get 95% the same experience. On the Wii, that third party game doesn't even exist. It was the first time Nintendo totally fucked over their third-party partners, and it was the first time gamers didn't get to see a new Mario or Zelda that blew them away, graphically.