would that even be possible?Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
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would that even be possible?Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Yeah like I said simple sells, look at the freaken ipod, you couldn't get any more simplified than that little thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chilly Willy
With the technology back then......no.Quote:
Originally Posted by AlecRob
If the Saturn was built with it in mind and had the stuff inside i think it would have played Genesis games, not sure about Sega CD. The Genesis plays SMS with a simple add on, and the SMS was built into the Genesis, so why would it not work on the Saturn when that's newer then the Genesis?Quote:
Originally Posted by Drakon
Backward compatibility was popularized by the PS2 having a PS1 built in, so we all started theorizing that all consoles needed to have backward compatibility as part of a mainstream feature set. Then Sony removed PS2 compatibility from the PS3, permanently, and PS3 hardware and software sales only increased. I don't even know what this does to the resale value of the PS2 library, do Sony households own multiple Playstations so they can play their entire library, or do they just throw away their previous generation games after a while?Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Either way, the precedent was set by the first mainstream console to be a major feature of its successor in the PS2. So the Wii was backward compatible with the Gamecube, until Nintendo removed that too. I suppose the Wii U must be compatible with Wii games. But the removal of this feature in the PS3 and then the Wii also proves that consumers don't really care about the feature and having it built in hurts current generation software sales.
It's a split market, you know, just like Sega did "wrong" with the Genesis Add-Ons. What would have been much simpler and better for the revenue stream would have been to make a budget line of Saturn titles that were, like Sonic 3D Blast, suped up Genesis, 32X and Sega CD games. Two versions of each 32X game, one 32X CD that would also play on Saturn, and one cartridge would also have been great fan service and market diversity. Since an entire PC or PS1 game could be ported to the Saturn by one coder, I don't see a significant cost to making these different versions.
Hmm, to add Genesis compatibility to the Saturn would have complicated the system design more. It'd then have to deal with SH2's, 68000, and a Z80 onboard, all on the same board. This would have made design costs more. You know SEGA was not going to do that.
They only did it for the Genesis because it's the tried and true System 16 method.
I believe an add-on that could run Megadrive carts would have been possible. The cartridge slot had a ridiculous amount of access into the system, so adding the Megadrive hardware into a cart would have been possible. It would've functioned like the SMS converter for the MD, except that it would've also housed the entire hardware inside instead of just providing pinout conversions.
Since the Nomad came out around the time, we know that it would've been technically possible to fit the entire MD hardware into such a low size.
There would be a few problems, though:
- whether the cart slot could electrically drive an addon that housed an entire MD2,
- 256px wide Megadrive games, as the Saturn can't do that resolution - either stretch out the signal (ugly) or leave it bordered,
- the inevitable bitching about segacd/32x compatibility ("but the saturn also uses sh2s and has a cd drive!!!"),
- Sega internally prohibiting developers to run code from the cartridge, and forcing them only data access, possibly as a security measure.
- the Saturn cart slot being crap and losing contacts all the time.
This is not even going into cost effectiveness and market dividing.
Yeah I think ports / emulation of games on other platforms is better. The gba is a great piece of hardware, backward compatibility, ports of so many classic games. My gba mostly lives off of ported libraries from the nes / snes.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
Why not? The Genesis was already consolidated down to one chip at that point. Put that chip on a daughter card to goes in through the MPEG card slot and you have the Genesis hardware in your Saturn, you just need an adapter to plug in your cartridges. Heck you might even be able to put the Genesis Chip on that cartridge slot adapter then put the Sega CD hardware on the Daughter Card.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drakon
It wouldn't have had to be that hard or change the Saturn design.
It still needs access to the bus, and I don't see that happening.
The MPEG card slot and Cartridge slot handles all of that already. I don't see how it would be much different from something like the Retro-Gen adapter.
I don't think that Morgan card slot is connected to the cartridge slot. So how would the genesis board access the cartridges?
From the Saturn developers manual:
http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...urnDiagram.png
The MPEG card slot has direct access to the Video subsystem and the Audio subsystem and is on Bus A, the same bus as the Cartridge slot.
Hmm ok, so it's at least somewhat possible. Speed is different though.
THISQuote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Just reuse the cart slot from the Megadrive. Minor alterations to the internal hardware.
Megadrive + Mega CD in an ASIC, jam it on an expansion card. Milk consumer for money = Profit.