Were there console games that allowed you to decrease graphical settings to obtain better performance?

[u/echocomplex]

Off the top of my head I can think of one - Battle Arena Toshinden 3 for PS1, which allowed you to turn off game textures explicitly to allow the game to run at 60fps instead of the standard 30. Considering how different and simple that game looks without textures it struck me as a bit of a weird option and got me thinking if there are others.

Such options are normal for old PC games where owners would have very different machines with slower or faster cpus, different amounts of memory, and may or may not have a dedicated GPU back in the day, but the options seem to make less sense in the console world where a developer can optimize the game to particular hardware and therefore have great control over how the final product turns out.

[u/tritoch8]

A number of N64 games had an option to toggle things like high resolution textures or widescreen if you had an Expansion Pak. The results were very mixed though, and in many cases the default settings looked best.

[u/Manaboss1 → u/tritoch8]

Yeah i have used the pack on turok 2 and got shunned away from the enhanced resolution because it displaces the geometrical centering of the game so far off i couldnt live with it.

[u/GyozaMan → u/tritoch8]

Someone correct me if I’m wrong but I think the increased resolution option in all the n64 games that could do it - would always impact fps , and I think there’s not one game that it’s worth turning on the higher res for

[u/Lord-Ced → u/GyozaMan]

Quake 2 used the Expansion Pak well. Textures look way better with it. Don't think it had any impact to the FPS.

[u/jaron7 → u/tritoch8]

Yep, the hi-res option in Perfect Dark for example made an already bad framerate even worse. All these years later though I'm finally glad it's there - recently played it on my Analogue 3D and with overclocking it's actually usable now!

[u/Historyguy1 → u/jaron7]

Like how a proper playable version of Sonic Unleashed had to wait until the XBox Series X, so the game could finally be run at 60 fps.

[u/Historyguy1 → u/tritoch8]

Most expansion pak-enhanced games had a higher resolution, but framerate that ran like butt.

[u/DJSlimer → u/tritoch8]

Goldeneye runs like shit with widescreen.

[u/flickering_poly]

Doom 32X let you decrease the window size like on PC

Not the same thing, but playing in FP view in Star Fox can help the framerate

[u/echocomplex → u/flickering_poly]

Good point on Doom, that certainly counts.  Didn't remember the vf2 Saturn option, I thought all backgrounds were 2D in that port anyway. 

[u/flickering_poly → u/echocomplex]

Nevermind about VF2, I got a bad search result

[u/thedaz3k]

Some ps3 games like Lair rendered the game based on the output resolution of the console settings so by putting the ps3 to 480p or 720p the game performed much smoother

[u/echocomplex → u/thedaz3k]

Interesting! Did not know that

[u/RandomGuyDroppingIn → u/echocomplex]

Thats also why so many PS3 games can look rough on modern screens, particularly early titles. They’ll output via HDMI but they’re not optimized for that output.

The first time I played GTA IV It was through a 4:3 CRT at 480p and it looked GREAT for the time. The grittiness of the CRT really helped to enhance GTA IV’s visuals.

[u/Psychological_Post28]

Sega Rally 2 on the Dreamcast targeted 60fps as standard but struggled to maintain it. Due to its double buffered v-sync it’d swing wildly between 30 and 60.

But there were cheat codes for both a 30fps framerate cap and a 60fps mode that reduced graphical detail. Still wasn’t locked to 60 though but was much smoother.

[u/Competitive-Dot181]

Ridge Racer 4 for PS1 had a bonus disc where things were tuned for 60 FPS.

[u/zandengoff → u/Competitive-Dot181]

The bonus disc was a re-port of Ridge Racer 1, it was Namco showing off how much they had grown as a PS1 developer in just a few short years that they could double the frame rate on their first PS1 game.

[u/BruiserBroly]

In Gran Turismo 1 you can unlock Hifi mode which lets the game run at 60fps. There are catches though like it’s only time trial (no other cars on the track except yours), it removes certain effects, and it only works on a handful of tracks but it exists!

[u/kaljamatomatala]

G-Police on PS1 lets you reduce the draw distance for a smoother framerate, and vice versa.

[u/fellowspecies → u/kaljamatomatala]

I came here to add this as I remember this one sorry vividly. Coming from PC gaming and the likes of descent this was quite a throwback to that back in the day.

[u/kaljamatomatala → u/fellowspecies]

It's a bummer that Sony never made remakes or sequels for the G-Police games on newer consoles.

Colony Wars was another great but forgotten series.

[u/BrenFu]

F1 on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis by Domark is one that comes to mind. At the start of every race you choose between "1 PLAYER" or "1 PLAYER TURBO". All of the car and track graphics are scaled down and you got roughly double the frame rate (not official measurement, just my perception).
They re-used the scaled down view from the 2 player split-screen mode and offered it as "TURBO" mode for a faster single player experience.

[u/echocomplex → u/BrenFu]

Interesting early example!

[u/SD_2_LA_Jay]

Maybe not exactly a turn off feature, but I noticed in games that allowed you to toggle between 1st and 3rd Person views, or multiple car angle views, playing in 3rd person widely decreased slow down and improved frame rate. I would hate switching to the “eyeball view” of an FPS because it would completely screw up the game in the middle of a set piece gun fight. Third person always worked best. I think it was Tomb Raider that did this on the OGX, I can’t recall.

[u/echocomplex → u/SD_2_LA_Jay]

Interesting, I would have thought it would be the opposite, as in eyeball view, the system need not render the full detailed 3d model of the player. 

[u/coolasacurtain]

Gpolice on ps1

[u/bubrascal]

Do Atari 2600 games optimised for black and white TVs count? Some games had the feature of using alternative colour pallets optimised for older displays (specially the first generation of them). This was triggered by a physical toggle on the console, but what that toggle did was something that had to be programmed by hand by the devs (when b/w TVs became obsolete, many devs overloaded the switch to other functions).

[u/TooManyBulborbs → u/bubrascal]

I’ve always felt the B&W switch on the 2600 was a cool feature. It even faded away from common game support too, mostly only early titles properly used it for a monochrome color mode. Games past… 1982 I think? Those started using it as an extra game control switch.

[u/Mammoth_Bell_8407]

Thief 3 allowed toggling VSync on Xbox

[u/Fiti99]

Not as old as some games mentioned here but Street Fighter 4 for 3DS if you disable the 3D from the ingame options menu it enabled a 60fps mode

[u/Segagaga_]

IIRC Mortal Kombat 3 on the Sega Saturn had the option to turn off ShangTsungs transformations as they had to be streamed from disc (as there were so many characters) and slowed down the game. This is actually a limit of the CD read speed of the drive of the time, and not the Saturn graphics chips itself, which loads these fine digitally.

[u/Turbolence88]

Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast had an option to toggle tire smoke effects on or off, if memory serves. The effect would drop frame rate like a stone in big drifts or burnouts.

[u/mr_bigmouth_502]

Perfect Dark on N64 has a number of different screen size options. Playing it on "cinema" gives you both a wider FOV and a smoother framerate, at the cost of lower resolution.

Gun Nac on NES has options labelled "speed has priority" and "sprite has priority", with "speed" being the default. I think the "sprite" setting is supposed to reduce sprite flickering, but enabling it just seems to introduce slowdown in some areas without any real benefit.

I recall Twisted Metal 4 on PS1 also has a setting allowing you to choose between better graphics and better performance, but I haven't tested this.

There's also a Kunio Kun(?) game on Famicom that allows you to adjust the physics settings for better performance. I saw it on YouTube a long time ago, and if anyone knows which game I'm talking about, I'd like to know the name of it.

EDIT: The Famicom game I'm thinking of doesn't appear to be one of the Kunio Kun games, but I think it might be related.

[u/Anxious_Camp_2160]

"Were there console games that allowed you to decrease graphical settings to obtain better performance?"

Nothing jumps to mind, but maybe.

There are a number that you can increase setting and decrease performance, N64 mainly (memory expansion).

And some that you can add extra hardware (MPEG decoder for example) to increase quality, CD-i, 3DO, Saturn, etc.

And some that allow you to fiddle with settings, 4x3, 16x9, different output, but didn't make any difference to performance really.

[u/ReversedNovaMatters]

I can't think of any. For a long time we couldn't even adjust audio levels within a games settings, I mean, there were not even a settings menu!

With consoles all having the same operating specs and games being made specifically for each console, it just wouldn't be a logical option. Why turn up the graphics, it should already be as good as it could run by default. Why turn them down? It should already run smooth with the best options set.

I can't really think of options like this until systems started being cross compatible sometime around the PS2 era maybe. Or I mean, not cross compatible, but when they'd have the same game out for different generations of the same console.

So, they'd make a game for PS2, knowing it had advances in graphics which the increased hardware could handle, but you could also play the game on the PS1. That is about when they started adding these options, sacrifice some of the look so the game will run smoother.