The power of Square once upon a time may have been truly legendary, but who knows for sure?
I couldn’t tell you a single game on the PS5. I don’t know about other countries, but it’s like they’re not even trying in Japan
Even today it is hard to buy a PS5. So, no wonder they aren't pushing it that hard.
It made me much less willing to take a chance on a games I might not like. These days with Steam I can at least see if I hate the game immediately and return it, so much better from that perspective. Of course I can resell when I'm done, which is less good.
Cartridges were not only an anti piracy move, it saved on cost of console manufacturing (the N64 was still sold at a loss).
As you point out N64 games were originally a lot more expensive than playstation games.
Also Nintendo were really restrictive with who could develop for the N64, remember the whole "dream team" thing? Mean playstation had way more favourable licensing and you didn't need silicon graphics workstations (I think I'm correct in N64 dev requiring them?)
1. This was the first console controller with any analog stick at all.
2. Goldeneye, though it controls differently to modern shooters, was an excellent use of the single stick at the time. You could also use dual sticks by using two controllers at once - groundbreaking!
3. The Z-button was the first trigger-style button on console controllers.
4. The rumble pack was one of (if not) the first force feedback options for console controllers.
So obviously very many of the concepts in the N64 controller laid the groundwork for what became the standard controller design later, with dual triggers, dual sticks, and built-in force feedback.
Personally I think the N64 controller was less weird than:
1. Gamecube controller
2. Wiimote
3. Dual Screen handheld with touchscreen and stylus
4. Probably whatever the Wii-U had.
The Gamecube controller may have looked a bit funny, but it's at least recognizable by modern standards. I recall it being quite comfortable to use at the time. If you gave both it and the original N64 controller to a young person today who had no idea about Nintendo's history, I daresay she'd call the Gamecube controller the less weird of the two.
Also, it wasn't Nintendo, but I'd call the Dreamcast controller a bit weird. Gigantic, weirdly shaped, a dinky LCD smack dab in the center ...
Wait, what!!? Can you really play dual-stick Goldeneye on original N64 hardware this way?
Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDQ_ri2ZbY4
Amazing!
Atari 5200 beat them there.
On the other hand discs allowed much larger games. There was a crazy amount of variety on the PS1, though as a result also a lot of crap to sort through. I was a Nintendo-first fanboy at the time, but when the PS1 dropped in price to about $100 I picked one up, trading in N64 games I no longer played to help fund the purchase. I think it was around the time FFVII came out because I remember reserving it for day-1 release.
Ahh simpler times, working manual labor while in school. Sometimes I'm nostalgic for those days of unskilled (relatively) non knowledge-based work. It was much less stressful, even if the pay was crap.