How did you feel about 5th gen's frame rate?

[WooHyun]

I use emulators to play retro games, and when I do, the hardest games for me to get used to the graphics are mostly from 5th gen. Like most people say, 5th gen games have aged horribly compared to others, often not only because of blocky polygon graphics but also low frame rates. Back in those days, 60fps were something only a few fast-paced games used, 30fps were common, some games like OoT ran in 20fps! And in 4th generation, pretty much every game ran in 60fps. And I think most games suddenly running in half frame rate should have been a shock.

I was born in the same year with Dreamcast, and I really want to know how people felt about frame rate suddenly got lower on 5th gen. Did they not notice it, since arguing with frame rate didn't exist back then? Did they notice it, but simply accepted it?

 

[Deleted User]

I grew up with the N64 and the Framerate was acceptable. I was blown away by Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. I only knew the gameboy at the time so no wonder.

 

[WooHyun]

I guess the you grew up really determines everything. I grew up with NDS and Wii, and probably that's why I don't mind low resolution and polygons but 60fps...

 

[migles]

I guess the you grew up really determines everything. I grew up with NDS and Wii, and probably that's why I don't mind low resolution and polygons but 60fps...

i do believe the nds runs at 30 fps?

the wii doesn't have that much great framerates either in my experinece.. i remember skyward sword being a bit laggy, but maybe it's just the delay from my tv

 

[Kurausukun]

Consoles don't run at framerates. That doesn't make any sense. The games decide the framerates. TONS of DS games were 60fps. Mario Kart DS, New Super Mario Bros., Kirby Super Start Ultra, the list goes on. Pokemon Gen IV ran at 30fps always, which kind of sucks since Gen III ran at 60fps always, but they used polygons for the buildings and such instead of sprites, so it's sort of understandable. In Gen V, though, the overworld runs at 30fps, but the battles run in 60fps, so move animations look really smooth. The Pokemon sprites themselves might not make it look like it's running at 60fps, but that's just because they didn't give all of them enough frames of animation. Some do though--Scizor's wings flap at 60fps for example. Anyway, battles ran great except a few moves which caused a bit of temporary lag, but in general I was very pleased with it compared to Gen IV.

The Wii also had tons of titles that ran at 60fps so I have no idea what you're talking about. Both Galaxy games, for example, impressively ran at an insanely consistent 60fps, SSBB ran at 60fps, Mario Kart Wii ran at 60fps, and, again, many others.

 

[WooHyun]

I thought most Nintendo-made NDS games ran at 60fps, at least action-oriented ones... Though, of course, many 3rd parties just used 30fps, or even lower, like KH Days running 30fps on single player and lower than that in multiplayer. But you know, when you "grow up" with Nintendo devices, it usually means you grow up with Mario. I was especially crazy at Mario Kart, both NDS and Wii. I never remember seeing them drop below 60fps. It was a huge shock for me when I grew up, played non-Nintendo games and saw how choppy 30fps games were. Nintendo gave me a bad habit of getting too used to 60fps.

Maybe it would have been a bit different if I played Zelda as young, but Zelda is relatively unpopular in Korea compared to Mario. (Which I wonder why?)

 

[DinohScene]

I really don't care about framerate.
I just want to play the game.

Grew up in the SNES and N64 era so I was happy I could game.

 

[johnbus]

I think it's worth noting the 5th Gen was around when the CRT was still the standard. Looking at a game running 24 FPS in SD on an old CRT TV seems like a far more pleasant experience than trying to display the same game on a giant HD flatscreen. They aren't designed with critical features like anti-aliasing in mind. The pixels and frames seemed to blend far better on original hardware. It might have looked blocky and felt sluggish, but that was considered as an acceptable trade-off for fully 3D worlds at the time.

Still, I can see how they might have suffered in the sense they won't translate well to kids who didn't grow up with them. Few things in life are exempt from such a fate, though.

 

[The Catboy]

I honestly don't care about framerates unless the game is unplayable. Which in most cases where the FPS drops to an unplayable level, then chances are the game was bad to begin with despite the FPS. I grew up on the NES and SNES and FPS was never really a thing back then.

 

[johnbus]

I grew up on the NES and SNES and FPS was never really a thing back then.

I grew up with the SNES, and I remember Jurassic Park having a garbage framerate, although I didn't have the vocabulary to explain such a thing at the time. Once you go inside a building, the game turned into a bad Wolfenstein 3D knock-off with what seemed like single digit frames a second.

I still loved the game since it was the only game where I could blow up dinosaurs, but it was poorly optimized even back then.

 

[Lucifer666]

I'm finding OoT and Majora's Mask really hard to replay on the N64 because of the 20 fps problem. Amazing how I was immune to it back in the day.

I really don't care about graphics that much but animation smoothness is important to feel like I'm actually playing the game and not watching a shitty recording

 

[Kioku]

Going from NES all the way up until now? I can tell you it's not something people particularly noticed or cared about back then. Going from 60FPS Super Mario World to a sub 24fps Super Mario 64? All I can say I cared for were the graphics and gameplay.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Honestly it never bothered me as a kid. I only had a limited number of M64 games though, like the Zeldas, Banjo Kazooie and Mario Kart, so I probably didn't experience the worst framerates of the generation.

I'm finding OoT and Majora's Mask really hard to replay on the N64 because of the 20 fps problem. Amazing how I was immune to it back in the day.

I really don't care about graphics that much but animation smoothness is important to feel like I'm actually playing the game and not watching a shitty recording

There might be a 60fps hack for them that you can use on emulators. They exist for a bunch of games, including Banjo Toole. I never found the framerates in the Zelda games to be too bad, but in Banjo Tooie it's really noticeable in some locations, I think the FPS is locked to 10 or 15 FPS in some locations. The 60FPS hack made it run so much smoother, it almost feels unnaturally smooth. I never played it on a real N64 as a kid, or it probably wouldn't have bothered me as much.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

I miss when street fighter had turbo mode.

 

[Subtle Demise]

It was still a time where developers had to use every hack they knew to push every bit of performance out of limited hardware. Look at Perfect Dark. Even with the extra memory of the Expansion Pak, there was a lot of slowdown. A heated 4-player match could bog the game to seconds per frame territory.
Professional reviewers did notice these things, but most of us during that time were just kids so we didn't care that much. Playing on small CRT TV's also seemed to make these issues less noticeable. Hard to notice frame drops on a blurry 19" CRT.

 

[WooHyun]

Thanks for many replies. So it's basically the same as I didn't notice any aliasing nor pixellation on NDS's LCD screen as young.