Is there any retro consoles that you never lived up to their potential? where the games fell short of the hardware?.
Personally I feel that the NDS was under-utilized, as it was a fully 3d capable console, that was used mostly for 2d pixel art games, and platformers. When it was able to support full 3d platformers and even a fan remake of portal.
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GoldenEye on the N64 was the only game I’m aware of to have a control layout where you could use the left and centre prongs to get a proto-dual-stick experience
The WiiU’s second screen is great for asymmetric multiplayer or an auxiliary screen for things like inventories, most games just duplicated what was on the main screen
Perfect Dark (spiritual successor to GoldenEye) iterated on that. You can use two N64 controllers, one in each hand, to get a true dual stick experience
As far as hardware gimmicks go, I agree that the WiiU’s gamepad could’ve done so much more, I can think of so many different unique ways a game could’ve made use of it, like having two different perspectives or mini games like in GTA Chinatown wars.
I remember reading this comic back in the day, don’t remember playing anything like it other than Nintendo Land
The one notable time I can think of a game trying the dual perspective thing with the gamepad was Star Fox Zero at the end of its life cycle, and it was not received well at all because it made the control and aiming way too complicated since it was too much of a challenge to try to look at both screens at the same time. Can’t think of another game that tried something like that, but I did see a good number of games that used the gamepad for inventory, like the Zelda games and Monster Hunter.
Nintendo really had their thinking-caps on tight when they decided that a third of the N64 controller was always inaccessible
I think the PlayStation 3 is old enough now that some people consider it to be “retro” (ugh 😩). But the PS3 was notoriously difficult to develop game for, thanks to it’s unique architecture. This meant that games that were on multiple platforms looked worse and ran terribly on the PS3 since the devs didn’t have the time or resources to optimize their games on the system. Even first party devs took nearly the entire consoles life span to properly utilize the hardware with Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, and maybe Guerilla Games’ Killzone 3. Overall, it’s really disappointing that Sony made such a powerful console that was such a pain in the ass to dev for that no one really took advantage of all that power
The Sega Mega CD and the 32x were genuinely great pieces of hardware…but nearly all the games were awful. I love the Mega CD in particular, and I say that as a Nintendo kid.
Lunar 1&2 were originally released on the Sega CD, as was shining force CD.
There were a few decent games on it, but agreed, not many.
Ha! I was a Mega Drive fan as a teen, and I got really angered by this… until I realized that you were speaking about the Mega CD and 32x specifically. Yep, there really weren’t many good games for either of them.
The Atari Lynx had the graphics to blow the Game Boy out of the water. Unfortunately most of the games sucked so it died quickly.
Also, the battery life was hideously short. It would suck down a set of 6 AAs in less than 3 hours. I suspect that the CCFL backlight on the LCD screen was the culprit. And the console was huge. I have the official belt pouch and as a teen it reached most of the way down to my knee. The redesign was a bit smaller, but not much.
A lot of the games sucked, but there were some pretty good ones too. Just not enough games overall, I think.
I often wonder if mobile gaming wouldn’t be in the current freemium hellscape if the N-Gage had a better launch library. We knew even back then that everyone was going to have a phone, so it was a natural evolution. Unfortunately, the games weren’t very good, and they also weren’t again when Square Enix tried up-front pricing a little while later with Final Fantasy Dimensions and The After Years, for example.
Now I don’t know if single-price games are ever going to have a chance in the mobile market.
To be fair to the DS, playing 3D platformers with a d-pad isn’t great lol so I can see why developers mostly stuck to 2D games
The PSVita but I’m a GenZ so I haven’t used any hardware before the PS2
The Vita’s first-party though are remarkable compared to other stuff releasing, it kinda felt like everyone wanted to port PS3 games and forgot to make games targeting the handheld itself, the community is making a great job though, you can run CUPHEAD AND HOLLOW KNIGHT on that tiny beast
I am old and agree with you. The touch backplate was a little gimmicky but over all an amazing handheld
Ouya
Commodore CD32
Metroid Prime Hunters is a fully fledged 3d, fps and platformer type game on the nintendo DS.
Metroid Prime Hunters and Moon are both great examples of what the DS is capable of, but they both struggle to be fun as videogames because of the stylish camera controls, what I mean by under-utilized is that a significant portion of the DS library Is 2d pixel art graphics, in games that would have benefited a lot from 3d, even within the same franchise. like super princess peach having essentially GBA graphics when New Super Mario Bros had fancy rendering and 3d assets for many aspects of the game.
The Nintendo64 has so much power in the hardware that goes more or less wasted in every game that ever officially released for the console. I mean, they could never have known back then the programming techniques we know now, so it’s not really their fault.
The Nintendo 64 had no 64-bit games.
They probably would have taken more flash and RAM with no advantage in performance.
