By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

In terms of pure processing power the N64 is on a completely different level than the other 2. Its CPU and GPU were 2-3 times more powerful, and that kind of difference meant something back then. It had state-of-the-art features like anti-aliasing and mip-mapping the competition didn't have. On paper N64 games should have looked night and day better than PSX games. But Nintendo shot themselves in the foot by deliberately designing it in a way that made it difficult to develop for, and it was up to other companies like Factor 5 to make the tools to get around these issues when Nintendo should have done so in the first place. It's a similar mistake to what Sony did with the PS3 a decade later, and this is when Nintendo started to learn that raw power isn't everything.

Just how much more expensive would the N64 had been if it had shipped without all of its design flaws and was easy to use to its full potential? Would it have really cost so much more if the system had a larger texture cache, for instance?