I used to spend hours just flying around in Pilotwings 64 in wonder. It doesn't look how I remember it now. It was still an amazing console and very playable, My PS1 friends used to come round just to play Mario 64.
I literally found the fog unsettling back in the '90s. I smoked a lot of pot back then, but still. I was less spooked playing RE3 on PS1 than playing Ocarina of Time on the N64.
I never worked on the N64 but if what I've read is true, and it certainly feels accurate, its maximum texture size was 64*64 pixels. That necessitates tiling to keep texel density up, which is why when you look at a game ike Mario 64, which is built around heavily tiled textures it looks so much better. Meanwhile on the PSX, a system I did work on extensively, it could handle textures of 256*256 pixels, although of course not many at that size as they would burn through memory pretty quickly. So with racing games like this which need bespoke textures to represent entire floors of buildings that 64*64 size limit is really going to be limiting, and when you throw in texture filtering you get the N64 blur we're all familiar with. As was so often the case with that generation, the games which were designed around the hardware looked the best far, so things like Vagrant Story or Ridge Racer R4 on PSX, Radiant Silvergun or Panzer Dragoon Zwei on Saturn, or Mario 64 on N64. Try to work outside of each system's strengths and disappointment awaited.
But why did the N64 get tri linear mipmaps when we hang on the finest map all the time? Unlike geometry, these maps don’t pop, which Iooks ugly. Many textures in this game could easily be compressed on cartridge.
There are so many parts of the N64 that were held back by Nintendo's decisions. Namely their TRC meant forced texture filtering, forced Anti -aliasing and combined with limited cartridge space due to cost. They all combined to give than N64 look and performance issues. Many times there where titles that could actually look and run much better but it would go against Nintendo's technical requirements or the published didn't want to pay for the larger cart size and textures where the most data heavy thing while being the easiest to cut down to hit size targets. Without the AA enabled, it was astounding how much you could get out of the thing it was because memory bandwidth was heavily limited by SGI's insistence on RAMBUS. If only the development analysis tools available today were around back then, could have really helped diagnose a lot of memory bottlenecks.
You could stream texture data from the cart and get effectively higher rez looking textures out of it. Some games like majora’s mask for example have some really nice texture work. But yeah, games that don’t have carefully designed textures for the hardware tends to look like mush. This game is honestly not the worst I’ve seen.
@@AaronPaden RamBus is not at fault here. Even without expansion pack, 4 MB >> 4 kB TMEM. The idea in a racing game is to have a large viewing distance. Objects scale by a factor of 10 to give the impression of speed. Since Segas original Arcade Superscalars this relies heavily on scaling textures. Scaling in an efficient way. You tell me why no game seems to use the command which prompts the RSP to fill a polygon with a grid of quads? I guess that it is horribly slow and useless in an arcade racer. Maybe better microcode is needed? I tried to do the maths and it looks like it should be quite fast to use 16x16 quads on the AtariJaguar. Just need to sort by texture after splitting. Like you have a list of all polygons using this texture at this mip level. Then you go round robin drawing the sections.
It was wild when Dreamcast was announced and to realize they were going to put their latest arcade board in a home console. And it delivered on everything they claimed. Shame it never got a port of this title.
@@alvallac2171 maybe he is not an english native speaker, like me, so is very difficult to express an idea with the right words. Also english is not a very well structured language like for example spanish language, in which every word has a root that you can trace of a meaning and vowels all have an unique sound that doesnt change unlike english...
Nintendo themselves and magazines Everybody lied about how the arcade game running on a N64 They stated that. There was no reason to doubt their honesty. I was admittedly a bit skeptical, but I would back then not have put a wager on it; the game not running on a N64 The developers really choked the fun out of the arcae game. And why even change the colors to be ugly? I hope one day color patches can be applied to games like this to at least have the same colors. It will be a little bit of an improvement at the very least!
Hype was everywhere in the gaming press back then. The term 'arcade-perfect' was abused. I remember a magazine claiming Megadrive Strider was basically the arcade game in your living room. The same with Ghouls 'N Ghosts.
Hey, if you hit 50K subs, will you please do some sort of "shop tour" or something to showcase where you play all your games, and more importantly, where you store all your PCBs, console hardware, displays, etc. You seem to have a never-ending stream of real hardware on hand and time to tinker with it all...
Yes I’m working on it. In progress of rebuilding my setup
3 วันที่ผ่านมา +2
Yeah but you have to remember it's all about optimizing your game. If I recall correctly, this is an Atari game, and Atari did other clearly non-optimized games on the n64. When properly handled, the n64 could pump out much better arcade ports like Hydro Thunder and San Francisco 2049. Just because 1 game looks a mess, it doesn't mean it's the console's fault.
Yes it’s not a super effort port that’s for sure. But also it’s showing where the N64 weaknesses lie. A bad port still amplifies where hardware can fall down
I had to check this mid-video 🤣. I think your n64 footage is maybe 'overly sad.' I checked my stock n64 (svideo into both a pro-line and a pvm via the passthrough) and it's appropriately saturated on both. Maybe that's a setting-thing on my end, but I don't generally blast the brightness/contrast/saturation. is that mister? mister n64 (at least hdmi) looks dim to me--the midway logos and text at the start aren't as bright or as white as they should be, etc. Really looking forward to playing all these on the analogue 3d--getting things looking as we remember is something analogue's really good at.
I used to play this at my local walmart--back when they had arcade games. 😢IIRC you can go over your natural top speed, if you let the cars behind bump you forward--abusing the rubber banding or passing mechanics.
The Video Game Trap House said they remember Nintendo false advertising the N64, so they're working to put out a FPGA version of the ULTRA 64. Word got back to Nintendo, but they're not scared of the lawyers.
I remember the first time playing this game, a pizza restaurant in Georgia with a sports related name just opened a game corner with the grid and this on freeplay, and I got to play it. The pizza there was delicious... I want pizza now
I wish there could've been a Midway Arcade Treasures 4 featuring California Speed on Playstation 2. California Speed would've been perfect for Midway Arcade Treasures 3, which featured racing games. I assume it was left out because MAT3 already had four semi-modern (by 2005 standards) arcade racing games (or at least re-ports of the Dreamcast ports for Hydro Thunder and San Francisco Rush 2049) and a DVD-ROM can only hold so much.
The Quantum 3D 3DFX card came with home versions of NFL Blitz and SF Rush 2049. Both were done by Midway and arcade perfect. If they had done a California Speed port it would have been arcade perfect too.
Wrong Gamma correction? If the textures were drawn on a PC monitor, perhaps some genius thought to un-gamma correct the color curve due to misunderstanding the terse SDK documentation?
Yep, a lot of arcade titles ported to the Nintendo 64 were dumbed down and nowhere close to their original arcade counterparts. Not just California Speed, but look at the Cruis'n series, the N64 ports were downright awful. Although, the older Cruis'n games do run in MAME, except for Exotica, that one hasn't been properly emulated as of yet. I loved the N64 too, but these disastrous arcades ports left a lot to be desired.
Amazingly I've never played or seen either version of this game, that being said, this conversion looks rather par for the course in all honesty. While the speed doesn't match the feel of the coin-op, it looks rather fast for a home racing game, and for the low FPS the N64 was, this for sure looks more than adequate. I'm from an era where a good conversion was just knowing what game it was supposed to be when you saw it, because with certain games, that wasn't always so clear to see. If I was a fan of the arcade, this home port while far from perfect, looks more than decent to have the arcades namesake.
6:10 Indeed I recall both SF Rush and this one being kinda interchangeable within arcades I used to go to. Later in life I came to work on three of those, could play however much I wanted for free after work hours, but by that time games like The House of the Dead 4, SEGA Super GT (Scud Race), Daytona 2 and F355 Challenge were already in those stores, even the three screened version of the latter on one of those places. Meaning I always ended up playing some of the other games. Not to mention Daytona 1 *always* was set up in 8 cabinets across every single arcade I went and worked at, but there would only be at most 2 cabinets for the former two. So as fun as SF Rush and Cal Speed were, it just wasn't comparable to the other choices I had at hand. Sega just did arcade racers better IMO, not to get into meaningless Sega vs Nintendo arguments given those two were on the N64. Regardless, thanks a lot for sharing. I'm always down to play an arcade racer. I was actually thinking on replaying Carmageddon yesterday since NFS Unbound was kinda underwhelming to me compared to NFS Heat on top of giving me issues with the EA app, but maybe Cal Drive will quench that thirst.
@@VideoGameEsoterica yeah, agreed. It felt too... heavy, I wanna say. Specially compared to Carma 2 I played for YEARS haha then found out about C2 mods and played it for a good couple more years. Just messing with just txt files in C2's data folder leads to a bunch of fun stuff you can do to the cars/engine. But aside that, even driving wise there were so many cool things you could do in C2 with its more advanced physics engine (compared to 1, obviously). Like I dunno, pulling a 270°, open up the car's doors and getting a splatter bonus. That sort of adrenaline you get while running from a dozen cops in Most Wanted 2005, going into speedbreaker and slipping below a truck trailer. Good times ❤ Not that I'm as good at those games as I'm seemingly making myself out to be, I just played those two for a *LOOOONG* time. So you get creative... Hell, two of those arcades had PCs too as cybercafes on the side, so I'd install Most Wanted and POP Warrior Within for people *(and myself)* to play among the usual GTA3, Vice City, Counter Strike and whatever people played. It's just I don't recall ever playing Carma 1 to completion, whereas I finished C2 again about a year or so ago, so might as well try and correct that with C1 25 years later =P
I disagree some of your statement. -California Speed is simply poor port. Via running on lower resolution than Arcade, if it would had 256Mbit & Expansion Pack supported, it could at least featured all trackside details, -as most of them (like trees) are 2D anyway. There are Arcade -quality visuals on N64. -Just take a look of Top Gear Overdrive, World Driver Championship, or Stunt Racer 64, for instance. Hydro Thunder (333Mhz on Arcade) and RUSH 2049 (300Mhz, 32MB RAM & Voodoo 3 on Arcade) had proper N64 -versions, with no cuts. -Unlike this 150Mhz, 8MB RAM Arcade -version of California Speed, where N64 -port runs on basic Rush -engine for some reason, not to even mention cencorship. N64 even had decent ports from this level of Arcade Boards, like Mace The Dark Age. But apparently they just did not care about California Speed.
These are the kinds of games that should have been ported to the Nintendo Switch. There's no good way for normies to play them other than the smeary, dark mess on the N64. I don't expect them to know how to run MAME. There should be options.
@@teevee23 My uncle lives near San Francisco and he told me its disgusting over there with the addicts casually shooting syringes in broad daylight and people with mental problems causing trouble. The news aint lying.
It kinda reminds me of arcade to Atari 2600 ports back in the day. If you were lucky the gameplay was still there but it was just so much less impressive.
Well, all the Midway racing games (arcade or N64) weren’t the best looking with the exception of RUSH 2049 which the N64 port was pretty good given it used the expansion pak. I’d love to see these get a re release on all modern platforms. But like always I’m sure licensing is a pain in the 🫏
I restored a California Speed Cab for my friend's arcade and feel in love whit the game after I deliver it, came across a n64 cartridge so I buy it. And man yes the game took a big hit on track quality but also sound and music, a part of the expected graphical downgrade. It is not as polished as the Cruising series. Still kind of enjoy it...
N64's small catalog (compared to PSX) & the graphics (despite being 64 bit) are the reason I go back to it the least of any console in that generation. I understand the technical side now as noted in the comments, but the a lot of these N64 games can get as ugly as a Master P sneaker. Great video as always.
I legitimately miss when racing games had tits in them. Cruising USA, Ridge Racer... I miss those days. INB4 "Hurr durr touch grass" No. Stop being puritans or gay. We need a hot women renaissance and I'm sick of seeing everything being so ugly and sterile these days.
I played n64 version a lot and still enjoy it, even if it is visually inferior to arcade version. Now when arcade version is playable at mame with reasonable speed I could enjoy it too. Only issue I have is that arcade machine use steering wheel and in mame I use keyboard so controls are not as precise as they should be.
Yeah Cruisin USA and California speed were never really my cup of tea, I much preferred the rush series, they had 3 awesome titles on N64 that ran really good and had awesome graphics for the time, they were very excellent ports of very popular arcade games, much more than the Cruisin series.
i never understood why the N64 port of this game was so bad. undoubtedly people in the comments will say it’s because of the N64 but obviously that isn’t the truth here. MANY racing games on the N64 - including other games from atari / midway themselves such as rush 2 and rush 2049 - looked every bit as good as or at least *much* closer to the arcade version of california speed. this port could have and should have been much better and the only reason i can see to why it wasn’t is down to whoever actually did the porting. clearly midway must have had their b-team on this game or something cause there’s no excuse for it to look this bad on a console that could clearly do way better. play this and then play something like top gear overdrive or world driver championship. california speed could have easily looked more like the arcade version. the port just feels rushed and crappy for no good reason.
It’s mostly because it was a) done quickly and b) many assets were most likely not redone to work well within the texture cache specs. A lot of times the textures were just moved to the hardware with no more care than “does it display”
@@oldnewpixel It was released in arcades in 1998. After Daytona USA and Sega Rally, after Scud Race and Sega Rally 2. For the standards these games set in the arcades this one (and most other Atari/midway racers) looked and performed really bad.
Good video ! We can’t expect an arcade prefect port on the N64 !! Not possible!! This is why we need MAME !! N64 was really marketed for pre-teens and teens !! They did this because Sony and Sega had the adult market sewn up !! I know this because I just watched a great documentary on the history of video games !!! So Nintendo did not care if their games did not have arcade perfect ports !! This particular game should have been on the Dreamcast !! Dreamcast was way way more powerful than N64 !!
Apparently Nintendo didn't actually tell anybody how to really use the thing and just provided a library of prewritten microcodes. Which seems to me like maybe not the best strategy considering what devs who did write their own microcode accomplished. But what do I know. 😅
N64 games were never that jaggy. Anti Aliasing and other post-processing looks like it's been turned off. Jaggies look shit and it's a kind of revisionism to represent gameplay on the N64 like that. It's a bit dishonest really. N64 was the first console to have texture smoothing and filtering and all subsequent machines followed with those features. Turning them off is a bit ignorant on a piece referring to how "ugly" a game can look. Jaggies and sharp pixels are UGLY !
Ok arcade and n64 are like night and day... But the game itself is not that good to be honest. That your all time favourite?! 🤦🏿♂️🤦🏼🤦🏽🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏽🤦🏼🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️🤦🏼🤦🏽🤦🏽 LOLz
Theres a special place in my heart for the N64, but takin off the nostalgia glasses for a min, some games were ugly as sin.
Haha I love N64 but yes some ports are just not attractive games
I used to spend hours just flying around in Pilotwings 64 in wonder. It doesn't look how I remember it now. It was still an amazing console and very playable, My PS1 friends used to come round just to play Mario 64.
The fog and the blurry textures on the N64 version kinda give me a haunted vibe, like an army of redeads from OOT are going to pop out.
Haha accidental horror
honestly i really like the look of the n64 version...yes, is ugly, but i feel a weird nostalgia even when i have never played before!
That’s totally fair. It is a nostalgia filled look
@@razorblade413Yes, N64 Graphics still look "High-tech" to me.
I literally found the fog unsettling back in the '90s. I smoked a lot of pot back then, but still. I was less spooked playing RE3 on PS1 than playing Ocarina of Time on the N64.
I never worked on the N64 but if what I've read is true, and it certainly feels accurate, its maximum texture size was 64*64 pixels. That necessitates tiling to keep texel density up, which is why when you look at a game ike Mario 64, which is built around heavily tiled textures it looks so much better. Meanwhile on the PSX, a system I did work on extensively, it could handle textures of 256*256 pixels, although of course not many at that size as they would burn through memory pretty quickly.
So with racing games like this which need bespoke textures to represent entire floors of buildings that 64*64 size limit is really going to be limiting, and when you throw in texture filtering you get the N64 blur we're all familiar with.
As was so often the case with that generation, the games which were designed around the hardware looked the best far, so things like Vagrant Story or Ridge Racer R4 on PSX, Radiant Silvergun or Panzer Dragoon Zwei on Saturn, or Mario 64 on N64. Try to work outside of each system's strengths and disappointment awaited.
Yes and we see that in ports where the textures were just tossed in and not bespoke for the hardware. Just does not work well
But why did the N64 get tri linear mipmaps when we hang on the finest map all the time? Unlike geometry, these maps don’t pop, which Iooks ugly. Many textures in this game could easily be compressed on cartridge.
There are so many parts of the N64 that were held back by Nintendo's decisions. Namely their TRC meant forced texture filtering, forced Anti -aliasing and combined with limited cartridge space due to cost.
They all combined to give than N64 look and performance issues. Many times there where titles that could actually look and run much better but it would go against Nintendo's technical requirements or the published didn't want to pay for the larger cart size and textures where the most data heavy thing while being the easiest to cut down to hit size targets. Without the AA enabled, it was astounding how much you could get out of the thing it was because memory bandwidth was heavily limited by SGI's insistence on RAMBUS. If only the development analysis tools available today were around back then, could have really helped diagnose a lot of memory bottlenecks.
You could stream texture data from the cart and get effectively higher rez looking textures out of it. Some games like majora’s mask for example have some really nice texture work. But yeah, games that don’t have carefully designed textures for the hardware tends to look like mush. This game is honestly not the worst I’ve seen.
@@AaronPaden RamBus is not at fault here. Even without expansion pack, 4 MB >> 4 kB TMEM. The idea in a racing game is to have a large viewing distance. Objects scale by a factor of 10 to give the impression of speed. Since Segas original Arcade Superscalars this relies heavily on scaling textures. Scaling in an efficient way. You tell me why no game seems to use the command which prompts the RSP to fill a polygon with a grid of quads? I guess that it is horribly slow and useless in an arcade racer. Maybe better microcode is needed? I tried to do the maths and it looks like it should be quite fast to use 16x16 quads on the AtariJaguar. Just need to sort by texture after splitting. Like you have a list of all polygons using this texture at this mip level. Then you go round robin drawing the sections.
The fact has the dreamcast its the first console to equalize even beat the arcades , like soul calibur and all naomi games
Yes Dreamcast was when we finally started seeing “at par” arcade ports
Midway, snk and capcom arcade boards.
*The fact is the
*Dreamcast was the
*equalize or even
*arcades, like with Soul Calbur
*Naomi
*games.
It was wild when Dreamcast was announced and to realize they were going to put their latest arcade board in a home console. And it delivered on everything they claimed.
Shame it never got a port of this title.
@@alvallac2171 maybe he is not an english native speaker, like me, so is very difficult to express an idea with the right words. Also english is not a very well structured language like for example spanish language, in which every word has a root that you can trace of a meaning and vowels all have an unique sound that doesnt change unlike english...
0:49 very realistic collision
Happens every day
Nintendo themselves and magazines
Everybody lied about how the arcade game running on a N64
They stated that. There was no reason to doubt their honesty.
I was admittedly a bit skeptical, but I would back then not have put a wager on it; the game not running on a N64
The developers really choked the fun out of the arcae game. And why even change the colors to be ugly? I hope one day color patches can be applied to games like this to at least have the same colors. It will be a little bit of an improvement at the very least!
Haha yes the Ultra 64 fallacy
Hype was everywhere in the gaming press back then. The term 'arcade-perfect' was abused. I remember a magazine claiming Megadrive Strider was basically the arcade game in your living room. The same with Ghouls 'N Ghosts.
The only arcade perfect games of that generation were Neo Geo games and we all know it!
@@VideoGameEsoterica
I think the writers, who were also hardcore gamers, got excited and lost their objectivity.
@@VideoGameEsoterica they were the arcade. not ports
What software are you using to run the arcade version here?
MAME .272
@@VideoGameEsoterica Ah wow, just standard MAME? I did think it might be Teknoparrot or Supermodel (is supermodel still a thing?)
Supermodel still gets updated. This is still just MAME though for this series of boards
Hey, if you hit 50K subs, will you please do some sort of "shop tour" or something to showcase where you play all your games, and more importantly, where you store all your PCBs, console hardware, displays, etc. You seem to have a never-ending stream of real hardware on hand and time to tinker with it all...
Yes I’m working on it. In progress of rebuilding my setup
Yeah but you have to remember it's all about optimizing your game. If I recall correctly, this is an Atari game, and Atari did other clearly non-optimized games on the n64. When properly handled, the n64 could pump out much better arcade ports like Hydro Thunder and San Francisco 2049. Just because 1 game looks a mess, it doesn't mean it's the console's fault.
Yes it’s not a super effort port that’s for sure. But also it’s showing where the N64 weaknesses lie. A bad port still amplifies where hardware can fall down
This should have came out on the Dreamcast back in the days.
I’d def have enjoyed a port to DC. At least we got Rush 2049
@VideoGameEsoterica That is also true.
I had to check this mid-video 🤣. I think your n64 footage is maybe 'overly sad.' I checked my stock n64 (svideo into both a pro-line and a pvm via the passthrough) and it's appropriately saturated on both. Maybe that's a setting-thing on my end, but I don't generally blast the brightness/contrast/saturation. is that mister? mister n64 (at least hdmi) looks dim to me--the midway logos and text at the start aren't as bright or as white as they should be, etc. Really looking forward to playing all these on the analogue 3d--getting things looking as we remember is something analogue's really good at.
It’s MiSTer HDMI. Remember N64 needs that CRT to look its best haha
it's not a good representation. Too Jaggy and no filtering.
Well blame that on N64. It’s just coming out via HDMI with nothing changed
I used to play this at my local walmart--back when they had arcade games. 😢IIRC you can go over your natural top speed, if you let the cars behind bump you forward--abusing the rubber banding or passing mechanics.
I hear that Walmart mention a lot about arcade cabinets
The Video Game Trap House said they remember Nintendo false advertising the N64, so they're working to put out a FPGA version of the ULTRA 64. Word got back to Nintendo, but they're not scared of the lawyers.
🤣 don’t give them any ideas
I remember the first time playing this game, a pizza restaurant in Georgia with a sports related name just opened a game corner with the grid and this on freeplay, and I got to play it.
The pizza there was delicious... I want pizza now
Also I regret not playing the grid much, if at all
Back then the possibilities seemed endless and full of wonder.
It was a more exciting time than current gen where the differences across hardware are basically just the exclusives and not the hardware
I wish there could've been a Midway Arcade Treasures 4 featuring California Speed on Playstation 2.
California Speed would've been perfect for Midway Arcade Treasures 3, which featured racing games. I assume it was left out because MAT3 already had four semi-modern (by 2005 standards) arcade racing games (or at least re-ports of the Dreamcast ports for Hydro Thunder and San Francisco Rush 2049) and a DVD-ROM can only hold so much.
Really my only question is how have we not gotten a true Rush 3? I’d have expected someone to revive the series by now
California Speed and the Cruisin' Trilogy should have got ports on the Gamecube so they could have been arcade accurate.
It would have been a fun compilation
The Hollywood sign is pretty far away from San Francisco. You must have been driving for hours! 😅
Haha I love bad geography in video games
@VideoGameEsoterica They're about as close as Chicago is to St. Louis or Detroit.
Close enough to drive there in a day 🤣 not a minute
Your car is just that fast!
🤣
The Quantum 3D 3DFX card came with home versions of NFL Blitz and SF Rush 2049. Both were done by Midway and arcade perfect. If they had done a California Speed port it would have been arcade perfect too.
I’m surprised they didn’t o
Wrong Gamma correction? If the textures were drawn on a PC monitor, perhaps some genius thought to un-gamma correct the color curve due to misunderstanding the terse SDK documentation?
On arcade? N64?
They ported only for the N64 because Atary and Midway used the same PCB, the Atari/Midway Seatlle and Midway did the port for the console.
Yes it’s the same hardware basically in arcades
Yep, a lot of arcade titles ported to the Nintendo 64 were dumbed down and nowhere close to their original arcade counterparts. Not just California Speed, but look at the Cruis'n series, the N64 ports were downright awful. Although, the older Cruis'n games do run in MAME, except for Exotica, that one hasn't been properly emulated as of yet. I loved the N64 too, but these disastrous arcades ports left a lot to be desired.
Yes sadly exotica isn’t working correctly. Hopefully one of these days
I love the N64 game. Even if it's uglier. Always loved the weird menu music, which went unused in the arcade version. (it's in the files)
Oh it’s totally fun. Just a bit ugly
Its a damn shame we don't have arcade perfect ports of this, the Rush series and the Cruis'n series. Damn shame...
At least they all emulate well. Minus Exotica
Amazingly I've never played or seen either version of this game, that being said, this conversion looks rather par for the course in all honesty. While the speed doesn't match the feel of the coin-op, it looks rather fast for a home racing game, and for the low FPS the N64 was, this for sure looks more than adequate. I'm from an era where a good conversion was just knowing what game it was supposed to be when you saw it, because with certain games, that wasn't always so clear to see. If I was a fan of the arcade, this home port while far from perfect, looks more than decent to have the arcades namesake.
Well now you’ve gotta play. Absolute classic
The N64 version should've been called 'Pennsylvania Speed'
🤣 nice
6:10 Indeed I recall both SF Rush and this one being kinda interchangeable within arcades I used to go to.
Later in life I came to work on three of those, could play however much I wanted for free after work hours, but by that time games like The House of the Dead 4, SEGA Super GT (Scud Race), Daytona 2 and F355 Challenge were already in those stores, even the three screened version of the latter on one of those places.
Meaning I always ended up playing some of the other games. Not to mention Daytona 1 *always* was set up in 8 cabinets across every single arcade I went and worked at, but there would only be at most 2 cabinets for the former two. So as fun as SF Rush and Cal Speed were, it just wasn't comparable to the other choices I had at hand. Sega just did arcade racers better IMO, not to get into meaningless Sega vs Nintendo arguments given those two were on the N64.
Regardless, thanks a lot for sharing. I'm always down to play an arcade racer. I was actually thinking on replaying Carmageddon yesterday since NFS Unbound was kinda underwhelming to me compared to NFS Heat on top of giving me issues with the EA app, but maybe Cal Drive will quench that thirst.
I loved Carmageddon back in the day. It hasn’t aged the BEST but I still play it every few years and it still always entertains me
@@VideoGameEsoterica yeah, agreed. It felt too... heavy, I wanna say. Specially compared to Carma 2 I played for YEARS haha then found out about C2 mods and played it for a good couple more years.
Just messing with just txt files in C2's data folder leads to a bunch of fun stuff you can do to the cars/engine.
But aside that, even driving wise there were so many cool things you could do in C2 with its more advanced physics engine (compared to 1, obviously). Like I dunno, pulling a 270°, open up the car's doors and getting a splatter bonus. That sort of adrenaline you get while running from a dozen cops in Most Wanted 2005, going into speedbreaker and slipping below a truck trailer. Good times ❤
Not that I'm as good at those games as I'm seemingly making myself out to be, I just played those two for a *LOOOONG* time. So you get creative... Hell, two of those arcades had PCs too as cybercafes on the side, so I'd install Most Wanted and POP Warrior Within for people *(and myself)* to play among the usual GTA3, Vice City, Counter Strike and whatever people played.
It's just I don't recall ever playing Carma 1 to completion, whereas I finished C2 again about a year or so ago, so might as well try and correct that with C1 25 years later =P
I disagree some of your statement.
-California Speed is simply poor port.
Via running on lower resolution than Arcade, if it would had 256Mbit & Expansion Pack supported, it could at least featured all trackside details, -as most of them (like trees) are 2D anyway.
There are Arcade -quality visuals on N64. -Just take a look of Top Gear Overdrive, World Driver Championship, or Stunt Racer 64, for instance.
Hydro Thunder (333Mhz on Arcade) and RUSH 2049 (300Mhz, 32MB RAM & Voodoo 3 on Arcade) had proper N64 -versions, with no cuts.
-Unlike this 150Mhz, 8MB RAM Arcade -version of California Speed, where N64 -port runs on basic Rush -engine for some reason, not to even mention cencorship.
N64 even had decent ports from this level of Arcade Boards, like Mace The Dark Age.
But apparently they just did not care about California Speed.
These are the kinds of games that should have been ported to the Nintendo Switch. There's no good way for normies to play them other than the smeary, dark mess on the N64. I don't expect them to know how to run MAME. There should be options.
MAME really isn’t that hard but yes modern ports would be great
Nah arcade perfect port for PC
Ah yes, a game from a more civilized age.
3:21 that billboard couldn't be done today. :D
Haha no it could not
🤣🤣🤣
never played that. thanks for showing it off. it looks really fun.
Tons of fun. Def play it. It’s a legit top tier arcade racing game
The ironic thing is the game itself still looks better than modern day California in real life 🤣
Haha haven’t been in some years
The state is still nice. Don't let yourself be fooled by tv programming and social media algorithms.
As long as it still has palm trees I’m fine with it
@@teevee23 My uncle lives near San Francisco and he told me its disgusting over there with the addicts casually shooting syringes in broad daylight and people with mental problems causing trouble. The news aint lying.
@@VideoGameEsoterica Theres palm trees smeared with homeless fecal matter. Lovely for sure.
It kinda reminds me of arcade to Atari 2600 ports back in the day. If you were lucky the gameplay was still there but it was just so much less impressive.
And sometimes even the gameplay didn’t show up
Well, all the Midway racing games (arcade or N64) weren’t the best looking with the exception of RUSH 2049 which the N64 port was pretty good given it used the expansion pak.
I’d love to see these get a re release on all modern platforms. But like always I’m sure licensing is a pain in the 🫏
They were such pretty arcade games which all got uglier ports minus 2049. Almost like that vid may show up soon 😉
I restored a California Speed Cab for my friend's arcade and feel in love whit the game after I deliver it, came across a n64 cartridge so I buy it. And man yes the game took a big hit on track quality but also sound and music, a part of the expected graphical downgrade. It is not as polished as the Cruising series. Still kind of enjoy it...
It’s still def a fun time but compared to the source material it never had a chance
N64's small catalog (compared to PSX) & the graphics (despite being 64 bit) are the reason I go back to it the least of any console in that generation. I understand the technical side now as noted in the comments, but the a lot of these N64 games can get as ugly as a Master P sneaker. Great video as always.
I’ve been playing a lot more now with the MiSTer core
I legitimately miss when racing games had tits in them.
Cruising USA, Ridge Racer... I miss those days.
INB4 "Hurr durr touch grass"
No. Stop being puritans or gay. We need a hot women renaissance and I'm sick of seeing everything being so ugly and sterile these days.
Lmao
Haha it was a trend for sure. I just played a “modern” racing game with that in it. Made by Raw Thrills. So no surprise it was there
I mean it was a trend for a long time in arcade games.
Gamers nowadays just seem to be a bunch of incels that get mad when they don't see hentai in their video game. Holy shit.
Reiko Nagase 4ever
hey love the channel, and love how you always talk about shty games. Keep it up!
Plenty more coming
@@VideoGameEsoterica love the M2 also. Great obscure device.
My favorite. Obviously haha
I almost got that port. But I saved myself some trouble and purchased the PS2 version of Burnout Revenge.
A classic if there ever was one
I played n64 version a lot and still enjoy it, even if it is visually inferior to arcade version. Now when arcade version is playable at mame with reasonable speed I could enjoy it too. Only issue I have is that arcade machine use steering wheel and in mame I use keyboard so controls are not as precise as they should be.
It’s def a fun game on N64. Just not pretty
@VideoGameEsoterica I wonder did arcade version got every shortcuts that was on N64 version?
I believe so yes
Yeah Cruisin USA and California speed were never really my cup of tea, I much preferred the rush series, they had 3 awesome titles on N64 that ran really good and had awesome graphics for the time, they were very excellent ports of very popular arcade games, much more than the Cruisin series.
California speed felt like Rush light which meant I still loved it
Cruisin Exotica was fun.
You can see they tried good effort but obviously the arcade board wins in this one
The fun still translates
Man, Dreamcast needed this
Could have been arcade perfect on Dreamcast
The only racing game I played a bunch of on N64 was Automobili Lamborghini. I remember it looking considerably better than this game.
Def a better looking game
i never understood why the N64 port of this game was so bad. undoubtedly people in the comments will say it’s because of the N64 but obviously that isn’t the truth here. MANY racing games on the N64 - including other games from atari / midway themselves such as rush 2 and rush 2049 - looked every bit as good as or at least *much* closer to the arcade version of california speed. this port could have and should have been much better and the only reason i can see to why it wasn’t is down to whoever actually did the porting. clearly midway must have had their b-team on this game or something cause there’s no excuse for it to look this bad on a console that could clearly do way better. play this and then play something like top gear overdrive or world driver championship. california speed could have easily looked more like the arcade version. the port just feels rushed and crappy for no good reason.
It’s mostly because it was a) done quickly and b) many assets were most likely not redone to work well within the texture cache specs. A lot of times the textures were just moved to the hardware with no more care than “does it display”
The arcade version is already ugly enough, there was no hope for the N64 port to look decent.
Ugly? Bite your tongue
Ugly? It looks gorgeous for that time
@@oldnewpixel It was released in arcades in 1998. After Daytona USA and Sega Rally, after Scud Race and Sega Rally 2. For the standards these games set in the arcades this one (and most other Atari/midway racers) looked and performed really bad.
It was Voodoo based, what did you expect? Only on DC could be done.
N64 is Psx-Saturn generation whatever tries it did to prove the opposite.
I still expect more from N64
Quite a stark difference.
Night and day for sure
Good video ! We can’t expect an arcade prefect port on the N64 !! Not possible!! This is why we need MAME !! N64 was really marketed for pre-teens and teens !! They did this because Sony and Sega had the adult market sewn up !! I know this because I just watched a great documentary on the history of video games !!! So Nintendo did not care if their games did not have arcade perfect ports !! This particular game should have been on the Dreamcast !! Dreamcast was way way more powerful than N64 !!
Dreamcast would have been a better home for it
Thanks for your response and your thoughts. Of course, you are correct !!
Apparently Nintendo didn't actually tell anybody how to really use the thing and just provided a library of prewritten microcodes. Which seems to me like maybe not the best strategy considering what devs who did write their own microcode accomplished. But what do I know. 😅
Yes the entire sdk was lacking for the hardware
Nintendo offered two microcodes: quality vs speed . I never saw a comparison. What quality?
Lol
Vge midway series when? :D
One of these days. I have so many ideas to make
Great video. I love California speed
Glad you enjoyed. Def one of my fav racing games
We can clearly see that the arcade hardware is way better than the N64 hardware.
That being said the N64 version could have looked better
@@VideoGameEsoterica Or probably a poorly designed port.
Well, yes, of course, at least you didn´t have to pay $3000 for the N64 version.
@@jsr734 true. But in nowadays we can play on a emulator.
Yeah, most N64 graphics looked worse than PS1 graphics, to be honest.
Just depends on the vibe you want
Deffo not worse and way smoother. It’s a fact
3dfx? I would have loved a PC port back then.
How come the footage looks so pixellated? Is that a capture issue?
Yep 3DFX based. The pixelation is lack of filtration in MAME. I turn it off
@@VideoGameEsoterica Oh! gotcha
Yeah it’s way too heavy handed
Dat classic N64 blurrrr!
Little too much blur this time.
But, it´s antialiasing, everybody likes antialiasing, right? 😆
N64 games were never that jaggy. Anti Aliasing and other post-processing looks like it's been turned off. Jaggies look shit and it's a kind of revisionism to represent gameplay on the N64 like that. It's a bit dishonest really. N64 was the first console to have texture smoothing and filtering and all subsequent machines followed with those features. Turning them off is a bit ignorant on a piece referring to how "ugly" a game can look. Jaggies and sharp pixels are UGLY !
That’s N64 via hdmi. Nothing changed
California Peed
lol
FIRST gear!
🤣 tailor made comment
Ok arcade and n64 are like night and day... But the game itself is not that good to be honest. That your all time favourite?!
🤦🏿♂️🤦🏼🤦🏽🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏽🤦🏼🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️🤦🏼🤦🏽🤦🏽 LOLz
Not that good? Whaaaat? lol
Terrible port.
One of the less good ones that’s for sure