Phil Spencer Says Rare is Making Progress on Everwild - News

KI Gold had 12MB cart (96Mbit). KI 2 in arcades had 256MB in a Hard Disk streaming the graphics, the cinematics, the voices... in real time.

KI and KI 2 arcade games were totally (or almost, maybe? can't remember if the backgrounds had some 3D in KI2) 2D sprite gaming. This needs a LOT of storage memory, unlike the big fighting games already pushing hard in 1996: Virtua Fighter series, Tekken series, Sould Edge... all of them from the same era, were already in polygonal 3D. Those arcade games DID NOT NEED huge memory storage capacities, "only" powerful 3D CPUs to move them fluidly. Those arcade games, by itself, were just few Megs (Yes, many PSX conversions of arcade games are much heavier in its ISOS... but that's just because they got new FMV to fill the CD capacity, that was not the real game. Sometimes, they also could use the extra CD space to also put new CD music tracks, but that is another topic).

Killer Instinct was not a 3D game, was a very convoluted old school 2D game.
So, KI1 and KI2 needed a LOT of storage for an arcade game by then, and that storage had to be fast enough to stream the game with no "loadings". That's the reason they used a Hard Disk in their arcade boards. A CD would have been too slow for an arcade game. It was expensive, but not that important in an Arcade cabinet (expensive by itself).

I also remember 2D fighting games, by 1996, were considered old by the young public. Only Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2/SNK series fanatics continued to play them. But even those series had 3D games already by 1997: MK4, Street Fighter EX and Hyper Neo Geo 64 games by SNK, all appeared by 1997.

So, what happens with KI is this: the first KI was planned as a future game for "Project Reality" in 1993. By then, the Machine caracteristics were not finally decided, nobody knew if that console will use CD or cart or if it would be totally 3D focussed. And commercial N64 was, indeed, totally 3D focussed when was released in mid 1996 in Japan an late 1996 in US.

In 1993 many people in the industry (including SEGA, who was pushing HARD for 3D games in the arcades) still expected 3D games would replace 2D games during a very extended period of time in the home systems (maybe even 7-10 years). Truth is, it was A LOT SHORTER than many expected in 1993. By 1996, the public demanded 3D polygon games everywhere: in racing games, fighting games, platformer games, adventure games, sport games... everything had to be 3D to be a real hit, or it was almost instantly dismissed. Because 3D was so fresh and impressive, and VERY smooth compared to many 2D games. Also, 3D technology was developing so fast... that 3D real time rendering started to got very low prices. It was a huge push everywhere, by everyone, to make 3D the new norm.

KIller Instinct instead, was a 2D sprite game. It appeared in arcades in 1994 announcing "a home version for Ultra 64 in 1995" in its own intro. N64 was then delayed several times, so Rare, well informed about that, decided to port that game to SNES for 1995 using its Donkey Kong Country prerrendering knowledge and their Silicon Graphics stations already buyed, and, at the same time, they did a sequel for the arcades by early 1996. That last game was the base for KI Gold.

Problem was... the storage.

Nintendo decided to use carts for N64, for various reasons (one of them? NO massive piracy to suffer: Being a huge developer for its own machines, unlike Sony was not in 1994-1996, Nintendo did not want any piracy in N64, cause it could damage a lot the company and its studios). That capped the maximum storage for N64 to 64MB. It was a considerable amount of memory for a game, by then... if you decided not to use FMVs or CD quality music,
But in 1996 a 64MB cart was so expensive to produce, no one could launch a cart game with 64 MB in 1996 expecting to make any money instead of a lot of losses. (Yes, Neo Geo AES had carts with giant ROM games with ridiculous prices during the 90s, but Neo Geo AES was a niche product only for rich people. N64 market was the massive public).

So, KI was launched with a 12MB cart, being one of the biggest an expensive N64 cart to manufacture by then. To have an idea, Super Mario 64 had only 8MB cart, cause it was a pure polygonal game, only using low res textures: That was the idea Nintendo had "as the future" for its new machine when they decided the specs of N64: impressive new 3D worlds, with low res textures, inside "small" capacity (but fast) carts. Not a heavy 2D sprite games like KI 1 and 2 were.

Killer Instinct idea was a game... for a different N64 future, in 1993. A future very focussed on the new CD media (the "Sega CD prime days": lot of new amazing stuff cause massive storage... but many of that new "stuff" barely playable).

If N64 had had a CD reader, YES a port of Killer Instict 2 to home consoles would have been perfect. But Super Mario 64 would have been VERY diferent and with lots of "Loading times". An not only SM64: all the big 3D games in that console would have been very very diferent. Some may think better... but not me. Many of the massive FMVs of that era were incredible dumb or embarrassing to see only few years later, CD music was fine... but it could not have dynamic music changed or modified on the fly like good Nintendo or Rare N64 games did, and obviously, you would get a lot of Loading screens in N64, everywhere. Also, using carts make you able to stream new code wherever you want, almost instantly during actual gameplay, almost as fast as using the RAM. Don't try it in a CD based game at 2X speed.

So... KI Gold had to cut FMV cinematics, some voices, and even some frames of the characters, But not because the CPU not being able to handle that (N64 CPU almost doubled the arcade board speed from the same CPU family), but because the limited storage it had to store big 2D games. Even then, the game was a very decent 2D fighting game, but replaced some background with 3D structures to make more space in the cart (ironically, that was the contrary Sega Saturn had to do with Virtua Fighter 2 excellent port: replacing 3D backgroudn to 2D ones, because Saturn was not powerful enough to compete with the Model 2 arcade board and its 3D capabilities, without some help).


"One of my favorite games on the N64 was Ogre Battle 64. Great game, but the sprite-based graphics were grainy and smeary as hell."

Ogre Battlle 64 (originally named Ogree Battle 3, because IT IS a game from the main timeline of the series) had a massive cart of 40MB (320Mbit). It was substantially bigger than Ocarina of Time itself. Because OB64 game had lots of sprites and 2D backgrounds: It's a "classic" JRPG turn based game.

Apart from that problem, N64 as already was sayed, was 3D dedicated, so its hardware developers put a smaller buffer memory for 2D to be used for the textures. Smaller than the PSX had. The N64 hardware will then process textures to not be ultra pixelated like PSX 3D games suffered. Basically... making them "nicely blurried" if you got very near.
Reason is: in tube TV with low-res of that era, developers thought it was enough, because textures would be blurry anyways. Also, almost everyone would use the composite cable you will got with the console, wich had low fidelity by itself, because, well... it was composite. Better than the classic RF antena cable for 8 and 16 bit consoles, though.

So... if you did a huge 2D game for N64 (yeah, OB64 have 3D parts, but battles and backgrounds are 2D) you will have to use a lot of storage, and low res images being processed fast, and it will be blurry. In 1999 it will be someking of acceptable in your TV, but man, if you play it now... with emulators or huge HD TVs, you will just get pure digital low res sprites in all its glory, streamed directly to your HUGE HD resolution screen, and you are fucked XD.

It happens also with Ocarina when you are inside a home or a shop, or inside Hyrule Town: Those blury prerrendered backgrounds are seen MUCH BETTER in a tiny tube TV from the 90s. By far, Enhancing 2D in those games is way harder and needs a huge effort, or now a well AI work, than just upscalling the resolution of the 3D models in any emulator.

Btw, FFVII and FFVIII versions for PC, in the late 90s, suffered the same thing: Their praised prerrendered backgrounds were fucking crap there, cause PC monitors had much better resolutions than tube TVs by then. I saw them. It was crap. And Square did not upscaled those backgrounds for those ports. FFIX did not even appear in PC.