Peh said:
Cartridges. But the N64 is the best example on how it was done wrong. |
In what way? I just remember the N64 being great because of the cartridges. You'd slap in a cartridge, turn it on and within moments you could be playing the game and the game saves were also on the cartridge. No additional downloads etc and all that crap you get nowadays. The one thing I would say they did do wrong was the packaging being in crappy weak cardboard sleeves. Mine are looking very tatty now but other stuff from the era in CD's still look immaculate like my Saturn and PS1 games.
I used to have a preference for cartridges but nowadays many of the advantages of them are lost. Still ideal for portable systems but I think for home consoles I'd rather have optical just because of the cost savings. The ps3 often had high quality fmv and very high quality 7.1 soundtracks thanks to the generous space provided by its bluray disc. The 360 in comparison was always struggling a bit for storage, had inferior multi-channel sound and often used the game engine to show movie sequences. Many of the Switch games seem a bit cutdown and make heavy use of compression. If you like the big epic games that make heavy use of a dual layer bluray disc you aren't going to get them on Switch. The scope of Switch games will be compromised by cartridges I think. The same was true with the N64 vs PS1 and Saturn where the CDROM gave more scope to have more content which benefitted some games not all. Some ps1 games had brilliant soundtracks where as the N64 was more basic tunes, more snes, adlib style midi tunes. Some game experiences I think benefit can benefit from either storage medium, a large epic game probably needs optical. A smaller more gameplay focused title beit puzzle, platformer, 2D sh/up may benefit from cartridge especially if its a game that is more pick up and play for a short session. Slap it in start playing immediately and 10 mins later your finished surely benefits a cartridge. The amount of times on many systems I've been prevented from playing a game because it wants to download an update file. I've bought many a game and naively went to play it only to discover that there was a 30 minute wait before the game would be ready to play.
