The Evolution of Video Gaming (Part 6)

Video gaming had taking a new turn when Sony's PlayStation started to use CD-Rom instead of the traditional cartridge that the previous gaming systems used. But there was one company that insisted on staying with the cartridge based gaming system one more time. Nintendo's Super NES had fallen behind when the Sony PlayStation was released and Nintendo was looking for a come back product.

Just one year after the release of the Sony PlayStation in 1995, Nintendo released the Nintendo 64. It was named the Nintendo 64 because of its 64 bit GPU. And like I said, they decided to stay with the old cartridge system instead of switching to CD-Roms. This made it the last mass-market system to use cartridges. One advantage to the cartridges was that the games could load faster than on CD-Roms, thus lacking the "loading" screen that PlayStation and other CD-Rom gaming systems have. Another advantage to the cartridge system was that there was no need for a memory card. Your game progress and other information was saved straight onto the cartridge. Although these cartridges were more expensive to produce, Nintendo was banking on having huge sale records that would easily make up for the expense. The Nintendo 64 also allowed anywhere from 1 to 4 players to play at a time for most games unlike the PlayStation which only allowed 1-2 players at a time. However, one thing the Nintendo 64 lacked was a large variety of game. Unlike the PlayStation, the N64 (as I like to call it) did not have as many games. It did however have a few big hit games such as Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and my personal favorite, GoldenEye 007. Another game that made the N64 just as good as the PlayStation, if no better, was the hit video game Tony Hawk Pro Skater. I briefly mentioned this game in "Part 5" when talking about the Sony PlayStation. The release of the game on N64 did not help PlayStation's cause at all.

So the release of the Sony PlayStation in 1995 and the release of the Nintendo 64 in 1996 started a never ending battle of video gaming between Sony and Nintendo. So you decide which is better, the Sony PlayStation or the Nintendo 64? I myself never had a N64 and just a PlayStation so I only got to play the N64 at friends house's, therefore my vote would be for the Sony PlayStation. But you tell me what you think.