I am once again asking unfiction creators to consult with some retrotech people.
Please, just ask “hey could you do this on an N64?” and more importantly “would you do this on an N64?”.
“Do CRTs look like this?” “How do VHS tapes work?” there’s so many simple questions that’d make your work so much more authentic and we’d be happy to tell you all about how you can do that.
look I am entirely willing to believe that your lost N64 game has the ghosts of murdered children in it or whatever, but I’m not willing to believe that the original developers put FMV video with that high a framerate in it.
Could the N64 do that? Sure!
Would any developer do it? NO! The N64 has limited cartridge space. That would take up many megabytes, and that’s megabytes you need for THE REST OF THE GAME.
While “game does something clearly outside its technical capacity” can make for an effective scare factor, it needs to be applied consciously and carefully. It needs to be intentional, otherwise it’s at best ineffective and at worst confusing or sloppy-looking.
In other words, for your lost N64 game with the ghosts of murdered children in it, make sure the weirdly-high-quality FMVs are squarely part of the “ghosts of murdered children” part and not the “N64 game” part.
exactly. You can break the rules if that’s part of the horror/fantasy element! But you need to know what those rules ARE so that the non-magical part of the game is reasonable