"SMB2 = Doki Doki Panic" The most cliche retro-game trivia ever?
Last weekend while I was walking around the vendor booths of RWX, I overheard two seperate people educating their friends on how "Mario 2 was originally a game called Doki Doki Panic". That got me thinking how tired and over-used this trivia has become.
Comments
But how many knew he was BALD?!?!?
Jumpman is probably a good one too
But how many knew he was BALD?!?!?
^this is what I was coming in here with. Agreed.
Pac-Man is a pizza and is Puck-Man.
Gradius is the first game with the Konami code.
Pong isn't the first game, some other BS is. Tennis for Two, OXO, Spacewar, Computer Space, whatever.
Donkey Kong is stubborn gorilla, not King Kong.
ET was buried in the desert
TLOZ is based on Miyamoto's childhood wandering
We could write a blog post with all these obscure bits of trivia guys.
Zelda Williams is named after the Legend of Zelda is named after Zelda Fitzgerald
Sonic wasn't the original pack-in for the Genesis
There's a system called the Turbografx-16
Originally posted by: LutherDestroysTheGond
There's a system called the Turbografx-16
if that's a real trivia thing people say, then i am thoroughly depressed
Nintendo's biggest competitor at the launch of the NES was undoubtedly Atari, and we all know how the NES stacks up against the 2600/5200/7800/XL/XE. Heck, you could even toss in Atari's biggest competitors, like Commodore 64, ColecoVision, and Intellivision. The NES PPU just put it way out ahead.
Their biggest competitor at the launch of the SNES was definitely the Sega Genesis/Megadrive. Rather than compare the minutia of specs and clock speeds and the like, I'll just sum it up:
There was almost nothing the Gen/MD could do that the SNES couldn't and plenty the SNES could do that the Gen/MD simply couldn't. Just like today, it wasn't all about clock speed. I guess the PC Engine/Turbo-Grafx 16 was their biggest competitor at the time in Japan but the SNES outclassed it even further.
Next up: Nintendo 64. Their biggest competitor at launch turned out to be the Sony PlayStation, but at the time most gamers thought it could just as easily be the Sega Saturn. This one is a bit like comparing apples to oranges since the N64 did not have high-capacity storage media outside of Japan and the 64DD was too little, too late even there. That one difference makes it *seem* like there's a lot the others can do that the N64 can't, but we are really focusing on what the hardware itself is capable of to determine if Nintendo was underpowered for that generation. If Nintendo had equipped the N64 with a CD-ROM it could have done all the FMV and sound of the others and proceeded to blow them out of the water with the rest of it's on-tap potential. It was the first mainstream console with full 3D acceleration and it shows! Anti-aliasing, texture filtering, and boatloads of untapped CPU performance. It was on a whole other level from the perspective of hardware performance, even if their choice of storage format hamstrung it. The N64 had problems but being "underpowered" certainly was not one of them. If anything, it was significantly overpowered, especially for the format choice.
GameCube was easily more powerful than the Sony PlayStation 2. Sure, the XBOX was a closer match, but their biggest competitor at-launch was still the PS2. The proof is in the pudding: Any GCN port to PS2 had to be watered down significantly. Heck, Resident Evil 4 even resorted to replacing the real-time cut scenes with FMV of the GCN game! The only ports on GCN that suffered similarly did so not because the GCN was underpowered, but because the GCN market wasn't important enough to bother with a proper port that takes advantage of the increased performance. The PS2 had some technical advantages, like digital audio output and the ability to output 1080i in a rare game or two, but that doesn't change the fact that it just couldn't handle the lighting, effects, LOD, and textures that the GCN was capable of. Oh: And the GC hardware was capable of digital audio. They just never released the cables to utilize it and they weren't going to pay for Dolby Digital license anyway. Heck, they developed a way around the Dolby Surround license with Factor 5 but then they got a sweetheart deal from Dolby Labs so that Dolby could maintain precedent with other potential licensees without having to win a lawsuit.
Wii was the first time Nintendo launched with a console that was technically inferior to their most significant competition: Microsoft XBOX 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. Did they suffer for it like the haters claim? Heck no! Nintendo beat the pants off them and proved it was the smartest thing they ever did. *sigh* Doesn't stop idiots from claiming the EXACT opposite in the face of reality though. You can't play half the Nintendo DS games on a Sony Playstation Portable no matter how much more powerful the PSP is simply because it did not have suitable controls. By rehashing the GCN hardware with accessories that changed the way you played, they showed that the same concept can apply to consoles. Pointing games, motion games, traditional games, games where you got audio messages through your Wii Remote, ... there was no PS3 or 360 game you couldn't make on the Wii in watered-down form but there were plenty of Wii games that just wouldn't translate to PS3/360.
For once, Nintendo launched before the other next-gen consoles with the Wii U so their closest competition at launch was actually the same consoles they faced in 2006 with the Wii. Contrary to popular belief, the Wii U did not perform "worse than 360." That comes purely from assumption and bias. It outclassed the 360 and PS3 in pretty much every way it possibly could. Of course the console that came out a year later performed better, but expecting it to outperform future consoles is like expecting the 2012 Wii U to outperform the 2016 PS4 Pro and 2017 XBOX ONE X. Ridiculous. The important thing is that Nintendo was not the bottom of the performance rung at launch. Once again, they were at the VERY TOP. Launching early with lower specs certainly didn't hurt the PS2, and launch late with better specs didn't help the GC or N64, so, if anything, Nintendo would have been stupid to keep trying what wasn't working.
Blame the Wii U performance and early launch for its failure if you want, but the Switch should shut those haters up real quick. It's the second "underpowered at-launch" console Nintendo has ever launched, yet it feels silly to even consider it when we haven't been considering handhelds before. If anything, considering handhelds further proves the point that trying to compete on hardware never works for Nintendo even when they are more powerful than the competition. Capability-wise, the Switch is really just a less complicated Wii U with a similar level of performance, supports fewer controller types, is unencumbered by backwards compatibility/Power PC, and is as portable as many people assumed the Wii U was. Is that really what is making it such a success?! It really just comes down to good timing for better reception/perception. Sharing a CPU architecture with their competitors (Power PC) was actually seen as an advantage when the Wii U launched and a huge issue when the rest of the industry moved to X86, but the Switch deliberately eschewed the industry's choice and has flourished without that OR backwards compatibility. Amazing! The same people who called the Switch "underpowered" and "worse than 360 graphics" are now looking at the Wii U and saying "ZOMG! It's like having something almost XBOX One-class IN YOUR HANDS!" I personally know one who can't stop gushing about the visuals in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and how great the Switch is in particular. He keeps saying this like having graphics on this level is something new for Nintendo and I need to keep reminding him that Mario Kart 8 on the 2012 Wii U looked almost equally amazing!
So, there we have it: The Wii and Switch are on-track to be Nintendo's two most successful home consoles of all time and yet those are also the only two that were "under-powered" compared to their closest competition at-launch. If anyone tries to tell you that "the problem" that keeps Nintendo behind is them being perpetually under-powered, please laugh in their face. They deserve ridicule for being so clueless in the face of reality. It's especially funny when they claim that they would buy a Nintendo console "if Nintendo would catch up with the times" or some nonsense. "Really? Well, why didn't you buy a GameCube? Why didn't you buy a Wii U?"
Are you kidding me? I'm not reading that.
No one is forcing you to. It's only there if you plan to challenge the premise... for some reason.
Originally posted by: CZroe
The most cliche "gaming fact" I hear day-to-day is the one that claims that Nintendo consoles have "always" been under-powered to their biggest competitor at-launch and that it is the reason why they keep failing to capture the lead. Until now, they've only been under-powered to their biggest rival at launch ONCE and yet that was the time they managed to recapture the lead! History is slapping these morons in the face and they still argue.
Nintendo's biggest competitor at the launch of the NES was undoubtedly Atari, and we all know how the NES stacks up against the 2600/5200/7800/XL/XE. Heck, you could even toss in Atari's biggest competitors, like Commodore 64, ColecoVision, and Intellivision. The NES PPU just put it way out ahead.
Their biggest competitor at the launch of the SNES was definitely the Sega Genesis/Megadrive. Rather than compare the minutia of specs and clock speeds and the like, I'll just sum it up:
There was almost nothing the Gen/MD could do that the SNES couldn't and plenty the SNES could do that the Gen/MD simply couldn't. Just like today, it wasn't all about clock speed. I guess the PC Engine/Turbo-Grafx 16 was their biggest competitor at the time in Japan but the SNES outclassed it even further.
Next up: Nintendo 64. Their biggest competitor at launch turned out to be the Sony PlayStation, but at the time most gamers thought it could just as easily be the Sega Saturn. This one is a bit like comparing apples to oranges since the N64 did not have high-capacity storage media outside of Japan and the 64DD was too little, too late even there. That one difference makes it *seem* like there's a lot the others can do that the N64 can't, but we are really focusing on what the hardware itself is capable of to determine if Nintendo was underpowered for that generation. If Nintendo had equipped the N64 with a CD-ROM it could have done all the FMV and sound of the others and proceeded to blow them out of the water with the rest of it's on-tap potential. It was the first mainstream console with full 3D acceleration and it shows! Anti-aliasing, texture filtering, and boatloads of untapped CPU performance. It was on a whole other level from the perspective of hardware performance, even if their choice of storage format hamstrung it. The N64 had problems but being "underpowered" certainly was not one of them. If anything, it was significantly overpowered, especially for the format choice.
GameCube was easily more powerful than the Sony PlayStation 2. Sure, the XBOX was a closer match, but their biggest competitor at-launch was still the PS2. The proof is in the pudding: Any GCN port to PS2 had to be watered down significantly. Heck, Resident Evil 4 even resorted to replacing the real-time cut scenes with FMV of the GCN game! The only ports on GCN that suffered similarly did so not because the GCN was underpowered, but because the GCN market wasn't important enough to bother with a proper port that takes advantage of the increased performance. The PS2 had some technical advantages, like digital audio output and the ability to output 1080i in a rare game or two, but that doesn't change the fact that it just couldn't handle the lighting, effects, LOD, and textures that the GCN was capable of. Oh: And the GC hardware was capable of digital audio. They just never released the cables to utilize it and they weren't going to pay for Dolby Digital license anyway. Heck, they developed a way around the Dolby Surround license with Factor 5 but then they got a sweetheart deal from Dolby Labs so that Dolby could maintain precedent with other potential licensees without having to win a lawsuit.
Wii was the first time Nintendo launched with a console that was technically inferior to their most significant competition: Microsoft XBOX 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. Did they suffer for it like the haters claim? Heck no! Nintendo beat the pants off them and proved it was the smartest thing they ever did. *sigh* Doesn't stop idiots from claiming the EXACT opposite in the face of reality though. You can't play half the Nintendo DS games on a Sony Playstation Portable no matter how much more powerful the PSP is simply because it did not have suitable controls. By rehashing the GCN hardware with accessories that changed the way you played, they showed that the same concept can apply to consoles. Pointing games, motion games, traditional games, games where you got audio messages through your Wii Remote, ... there was no PS3 or 360 game you couldn't make on the Wii in watered-down form but there were plenty of Wii games that just wouldn't translate to PS3/360.
For once, Nintendo launched before the other next-gen consoles with the Wii U so their closest competition at launch was actually the same consoles they faced in 2006 with the Wii. Contrary to popular belief, the Wii U did not perform "worse than 360." That comes purely from assumption and bias. It outclassed the 360 and PS3 in pretty much every way it possibly could. Of course the console that came out a year later performed better, but expecting it to outperform future consoles is like expecting the 2012 Wii U to outperform the 2016 PS4 Pro and 2017 XBOX ONE X. Ridiculous. The important thing is that Nintendo was not the bottom of the performance rung at launch. Once again, they were at the VERY TOP. Launching early with lower specs certainly didn't hurt the PS2, and launch late with better specs didn't help the GC or N64, so, if anything, Nintendo would have been stupid to keep trying what wasn't working.
Blame the Wii U performance and early launch for its failure if you want, but the Switch should shut those haters up real quick. It's the second "underpowered at-launch" console Nintendo has ever launched, yet it feels silly to even consider it when we haven't been considering handhelds before. If anything, considering handhelds further proves the point that trying to compete on hardware never works for Nintendo even when they are more powerful than the competition. Capability-wise, the Switch is really just a less complicated Wii U with a similar level of performance, supports fewer controller types, is unencumbered by backwards compatibility/Power PC, and is as portable as many people assumed the Wii U was. Is that really what is making it such a success?! It really just comes down to good timing for better reception/perception. Sharing a CPU architecture with their competitors (Power PC) was actually seen as an advantage when the Wii U launched and a huge issue when the rest of the industry moved to X86, but the Switch deliberately eschewed the industry's choice and has flourished without that OR backwards compatibility. Amazing! The same people who called the Switch "underpowered" and "worse than 360 graphics" are now looking at the Wii U and saying "ZOMG! It's like having something almost XBOX One-class IN YOUR HANDS!" I personally know one who can't stop gushing about the visuals in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and how great the Switch is in particular. He keeps saying this like having graphics on this level is something new for Nintendo and I need to keep reminding him that Mario Kart 8 on the 2012 Wii U looked almost equally amazing!
So, there we have it: The Wii and Switch are on-track to be Nintendo's two most successful home consoles of all time and yet those are also the only two that were "under-powered" compared to their closest competition at-launch. If anyone tries to tell you that "the problem" that keeps Nintendo behind is them being perpetually under-powered, please laugh in their face. They deserve ridicule for being so clueless in the face of reality. It's especially funny when they claim that they would buy a Nintendo console "if Nintendo would catch up with the times" or some nonsense. "Really? Well, why didn't you buy a GameCube? Why didn't you buy a Wii U?"
tl;dr you're a nintendo fanboy
Are you kidding me? I'm not reading that.
Then why are you in a text-based forums if you can't read said text? This isn't gamefaqs.
tl;dr you're a nintendo fanboy
Umm... you do know...
Nevermind. Won't say it....
Originally posted by: DefaultGen
TLOZ is based on Miyamoto's childhood wandering
We could write a blog post with all these obscure bits of trivia guys.
The only one I didn't hear of. Most people who don't look for it aren't going to know this stuff though. My brothers and I grew up playing NES and I doubt they know SMB2 was originally Doki Doki Panic. He still games sometimes, but not near as much as we do on NA. Just like I might know my car is a 4-cylinder, but others would know it has 200 horse power or whatever. To them the HP is a common fact, for me, even though I use it daily it's not a common fact.
I thought the whole Final Fantasy III is actually FF 6 was the most cliche trivia.
ah yes, that's a good one.
N64 better thsn ps1? Wii U better than xbox 360? What is this, backwards world?
I'm 100% serious. Reality has been twisted by this cliché criticism for so long that even Nintendo fans repeat it. The PSone is not even close in performance to the N64, but most people never knew. I don't think there has been as big a gulf in performance between mainstream consoles of the same generation in history.
Take the "blurry textures" of the N64." They were actually an advanced feature that only became an issue due to limited cartridge size. Cartridge size has no bearing on the performance of the system but the cost of larger ROMs severely limits what developers can do with that system anyway. That's why we didn't get games with significant amounts of FMV until the end when costs came down (Resident Evil 2, Pokemon Puzzle League, etc). If we had a 64MB disk from the start or a CD-ROM things would have been a lot different.
Back to blurry textures being an advanced feature: It's called texture filtering. Filtered textures pretty much always look better than unfiltered textures. It blends the source pixels to make a smooth texture map that effectively increases the effective resolution since they were intended to be viewed from multiple perspectives. You would never catch a 3dfx Voodoo user of the era turning off texture filtering in Monster Truck Madness or Final Fantasy VII on their 3D accelerated gaming PC, and that's precisely the huge leap that the N64 brought to mainstream game consoles (3D acceleration with texture filtering and anti-aliasing).
So, how did the price of larger cartridges affect texture quality on the N64? It meant devs had to be extremely conservative with the use of textures which meant fewer and lower-resolution source textures. Decent resolution 2D assets and pre-recorded audio were significantly more storage-intensive than 3D models and generated music of the era so FMV, textures, and audio are first place to compromise when trying to fit more into a cartridge. FMV/recorded audio usually weren't even considered for a cartridge and textures were the next place to make cuts. Under pressure to conserve, they use smaller textures and repeat them, blow up smaller (lower resolution) textures to cover more area, use solid-colored/shaded polygons with a smattering of tiny textures (Mario's eyes and M in Mario 64, for example), etc.
Where a PSone game might just texture the grass on the ground, an N64 game would use green polygons with a smattering of small, repeated textures that are randomly placed to simulate uneven grass and maybe a flower or two. The N64 was capable of more, it just cost too much for the storage format they chose. Compare textures on Super Mario 64 and Super Mario 64 DS, where ROM sizes allowed for increased use of textures even with less powerful hardware.
The DS was more in line with PSone though most people incorrectly peg it as being "between N64 and Dreamcast." A lot of that perception also comes from the increase cartridge capacity, not system performance. Heck, compare Neo-Geo to the 16 bit consoles of the day. The Neo didn't even have scrolling backgrounds (faked it with sprites) but the huge ROM sizes -and corresponding prices- allowed them to brute-force their way to out-class even many PSone fighting games! How? Well, all sound effects and animation frames for a match have to fit in memory, which the PSone just doesn't have without significant cuts. ROM carts actually expand memory with their ROM (already in the memory map; no need to copy uncompressed ROM data to RAM). Cartridge size/cost MATTERS and during the N64's life it just couldn't compete on that level even though the rest of the system was way beyond in performance/capabilities.
Filtering allowed N64 devs to get away with going EVEN lower res, which they definitely took full advantage of. As a result, they were criticized as "blurry textures" instead of sparse and low resolution textures. Sure, the N64 had some other texture limitations that were eventually overcome but that would have been the norm from early on if the N64 had a CD-ROM or larger software storage format.
The Wii U is absolutely more powerful than an XBOX 360. I shouldn't even have to explain this one. It's another case of the market perception being different from reality, just like GC vs. PS2. Both times, market perception was based on repeated hyperbole from haters. Nintendo didn't escape it with the Wii U and they somehow did escape it with the Switch even though half the "XBONE/PS4 class" Switch games look no better than their Wii U counterparts.
Remember: XBOX 360 launched without HDMI and routinely upscaled sub-HD resolutions through it's lifetime. The PS3 was severely hampered by not having unified GDDR3 memory like the XBOX 360 but was still technically superior. They were both PowerPC, just like the Wii U. The Wii U's PowerPC implementation left something to be desired due to the backwards compatibility with the Wii but CPU performance is almost never the bottleneck when it comes to overall system capabilities (refer back to the Sega MD/Gen vs. SNES).
The Wii U fit somewhere between PS3 and XBONE, and that's exactly where it launched (after PS3; before XBONE). Just like sloppy multiplatform ports for GC did not fare well against the PS2, sloppy Wii U ports from XBONE/PS4 do not do help the Wii U compare favorably. That is the same Chicken and Egg scenario the GCN faced. Potential users perceived it as performing worse, so they unwittingly buy the worse-performing console and further skew marketshare, ensuring that the superior-performing system gets even less developer attention. They couldn't break out of that corner without rebooting, which is what the Wii And the Switch really are.
That said, the Wii, Wii U, and Switch (so far) are my least-liked Nintendo consoles. I'm not clarifying this because I like them and want to defend them. I just think it's down-right laughable to blame the Wii/Switch strategy for Nintendo's market position over the last 22 years when the Wii/Switch strategy is what demonstrably worked. Throughout the Wii U's life, the same people would repeatedly say that Nintendo would do better, and they would buy one, if Nintendo just made a performance-competitive console. Clearly, the Wii U didn't even get recognized by these delusional people who can't even see the reality in front of their face.
No way Wii U out preforms XB360.
...and you're basing this on what? Just repeating something you heard?
For whatever reason, be it power, third-party support, or a host of other issues, the N64 under-performed BADLY compared to PS1 (I'm not talking technical power here, I'm talking in the market). Really, the N64, Gamecube, and Wii U all really under-performed and lagged far behind in the market.
I don't really hear that many people talking about the technical capabilities between them. You could be correct about everything you stated above, but it still wouldn't change the fact that all 3 consoles did really poorly. I don't think this was just due to consumer ignorance about technical specs (not that you said that).
It's interesting, because while some of their consoles clearly 'won' the generation or an argument could be made, I think of the first 6 of their main consoles prior to switch, 3 of them were nowhere near on top. I'm just talking about public reception and sales here. I enjoy all the consoles because I enjoy games on every console so I'm not trying to crap on their stuff or anything, but it is definitely interesting looking at their success, as I think most would acknowledge they really struggled with these 3.
For whatever reason, be it power, third-party support, or a host of other issues, the N64 under-performed BADLY compared to PS1 (I'm not talking technical power here, I'm talking in the market). Really, the N64, Gamecube, and Wii U all really under-performed and lagged far behind in the market.
I don't really hear that many people talking about the technical capabilities between them. You could be correct about everything you stated above, but it still wouldn't change the fact that all 3 consoles did really poorly. I don't think this was just due to consumer ignorance about technical specs (not that you said that).
higher sells is not equal to higher performance. sony won the war with ps1 and ps2, but both are shit consoles compared to the nintendo competitors. the ps1 falls so far behind its arguable that it isnt even in the same gen as the n64.
sony won for a myriad of reasons (none of which were technical specs) but imo its because ps1 was a "high tec futuristic disc based console" and gaining all 3rd party support due to the disc based format. and the ps2 won because it had a built in dvd player. try to revisit either of these systems today and the load screens make them both unplayable.
"ps1 has fmv the n64 couldnt dream of" the 3d0 and sega cd have fmv too and they are shite aswell.