The article explains why PlayStation games often had more impressive explosion and special effects than Nintendo 64 games, attributing it to differences in how the two consoles handled additive blending. While the PSX had a straightforward implementation with automatic color clamping, the N64's more flexible but unclamped blending system made additive effects practically unusable without careful manual management to prevent color overflow.
Background
Additive blending is a graphics technique that combines colors by adding their RGB values, commonly used for creating bright visual effects like explosions and energy fields. The Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation, both released in the mid-1990s, had different approaches to implementing this technique in their hardware.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- May 8, 2026 at 06:31 AM
- Score
- 6.0 / 10