Can we use games made back in the day , not decades later on huge carts and made when all the systems development know-how is avaiable at a touch of a button. Back in the day the MD main advantage of CPU speed didn't really factor in to RPG's
No I'm just remember back to RPG's made back inthe day and with turn based battle systems and mostly simple 2D towns and maps having a huge CPU advantage didn't really make much difference and back in the day many RPG's were hugly limited to cart sizes and limits and many RPG's on the MD or Snes didn't knock people out graphically . That started to change with games like Landstalker, but even then most people would look to action or platform games as system gfx highlights rather than a RPG.
Even PS 4 wasn't that hot in graphics dept really
Are some of you guys actually buying this BS story by Vic? The same guy that said he would NEVER work with Sega as long as Bernie Stolar was still employed there. Bernie got fired and Vic was asked about that and he said that he wouldn't go back due to the low DC sales. :p:p:p:p This is the same guy that wouldn't do cart games because of the risks involved with manufacturing. Something he has said for years up until the GBA so all of the sudden he had interest in publishing PSIV? ROFLMAO YTF is he still talking about SoA anyways like he's butthurt or something. Anyone knows what Tom Kalinske or Bernie Stolar is doing these days?
Just do a google about developing for the Mega Drive and see tons of pages and huge knowledge base that simply wasn't there in 1990, 1991 Ect , most teams didn't even have email back then. Looking over the state of the development environment back in those days . I'm sure Core Mega Drive development set up was an Amiga running deluxe Paint II for Art and graphics and Atari ST for coding to the Mega Drive and Factor's 5 high end set up was a 386 PC for its Snes development . We've come a long way and like the ex Prope Sound staff told Retro .. You can download a compression programme in less than 3 secs that will do a better job to what 3 weeks of solid coding for MD sound compression you achieve back in the day.
Far be it for me to stick up for VIC, But DC sales were rubbish for the most part, most 3rd parties didn't go near SEGA and it wasn't like the DC had that many great RPG's for WD to translate . Its not just Vic too, I'm sure Dave Perry said he'll never work for SEGA again as long as Bernie was there, only to totally drop SEGA too. I dislike Vic holding a gruge and he and his company lost out BIG time but thinking it could appeal to the SONY casuals rather than the Hardcore lot that bought the Saturn and to a point the DC , but it's not like many 3rd parties belived in the DC (bar say for Ubisoft)
Sounds like TomK : In one Edge interview he's talking up the 32X and saying it be the best selling mass market gaming system of 1995 and 1996, only to slag off Carts and the high risks of them when having a pop at the N64 . Nice one TomQuote:
This is the same guy that wouldn't do cart games because of the risks involved with manufacturing
Today maybe, but when development on Pier Solar began 12 years ago, all tools were made from scratch and there was nearly no documentation about the system at hand at all. That's one of the reasons development began on the Mega-CD - there was no audio engine or documentation about it until TmEE made one himself.
But sales for the Sega CD and TGCD weren't exactly breaking new records. It could be that once Vic started doing PSx and PS2 games big sales numbers actually meant something to him. What exactly did Dave Perry say about Bernie as I an unaware of any issues he had with him. Other than bein in the bed with Sony. IIRC Wild 9's was supposed to be better on the Saturn than PSx.
The Mega CD version I'm willing to bet was dropped due that still today so little documentation of the system and any sort of meaningful knowledge base or development know-how and there lies the big difference between the systems . Pier Solar even used the internet for very start of the project - Thanks to Mega Drive fans pages forum groups: members of the team talked about and set about making the project possible - even that wasn't there for wannabe Mega Drive developers back in the 1990, 1991 There was no world wide web at all . So even on that basic priciable of talking and about making a game, having people for different aera's of the globe work on diffrent parts of the game. It was totally different mind set and way of working back then.
True that, TA. But you're forgetting the same applies to the SNES back then and the SNES was harder to program for. So the Genesis still had advantages in back then dev environment.
Also the knowledge you can find today is... not that much better than what they had back then. Somebody the other day asked me where to look for and I just directed him to the official documentation. People overestimate the quality of unofficial documentation, I tend to find it as erroneous if not even more than the official docs, they just happen to be wrong at different places.
The one thing that improved was the tools. I mean getting tools to even run back in the day was a piece of shit, DOS didn't really get decent until the version that shipped with Windows 95 =O)
There might be easily accessible documentation (namely - it's easier to produce something unlicenced nowadays than it was back then), but there isn't exactly the tech support nowadays you can get by being a licenced SEGA dev, and ringing up for help if something that really should be working doesn't.
It's really really easy to underestimate the power of tech support when it comes to game dev.
I'm amazed that you still don't understand marketing at all. Are you mad at Howard Lincoln for criticizing the violence of Mortal Kombat AT A US SENATE HEARING only to release the sequel mere months later with all the blood and gore intact, or Nintendo constantly criticizing optical media during the 32-bit era only to embrace it the next? Protip: CEOs say whatever is best for their product on the market at the time, regardless of whether it's actually true or not. All companies do it.
I don't know why PS4 was so expensive, and I doubt it had anything to do with ROM size. I always got the impression that SOA didn't really care that much about the series, and I always took the big "THE EXPLOSIVE FINALE!" starburst on the cover to be its way of saying "here, are you happy? This is going to be the last one, so stop bothering us."
That being said, the argument that SOA decided to localize and distribute a game in a niche genre JUST to spite Vic Ireland seems far-fetched. As Retrospiel said, it was making money in other genres that were much more popular in the US at the time. Why divert resources to a game in a genre that wasn't a priority? And why would SOA want to piss off the producer of two of the best-selling Sega CD games? Why was Working Designs made a Saturn licensee then? I think there's a lot of revisionist history in Vic's story.
I always assumed that had more to do with the fact PSIII was a trainwreck in respect with the series (heck, it probably wasn't even a Phantasy Star game originally). PSIV goes to some serious extents to avoid calling itself as the fourth entry in the series, the only part where IV is ever mentioned at all is at the very end of the staff roll ("PSIV TEAM"), so it really looks like they were trying to make it become the real PSIII, and also ensured that the ending wouldn't allow room for any sequels to avoid another disaster (which is also why PSO has to start anew).
So yeah, that may have been actually Sonic Team not wanting the series to be messed with again.
Stop being so insulting... I'm well used to and well aware of the tactics used by sales people and the PR dept and there's nobody better at that than TOM K (even worse than Phil Harrison) . Forget Vic Toms lies and spin make Phil Harrison look like a saint
That it isn't, why did a 24 Meg game cost so much , it doesn't make any sense .Quote:
I don't know why PS4 was so expensive, and I doubt it had anything to do with ROM size.
SONY was given a Saturn license, SEGA number one rival at the time . Some times parties just get a license to hedge their betsQuote:
Why was Working Designs made a Saturn licensee then? I think there's a lot of revisionist history in Vic's story.
Huh ? I've always said the Snes was a harder systems to develop on , the N64 was a hard too . So I never used that and alway get wound up when I see people use it againt the Saturn. But too many do not take into account what it was like for developers back in the day and the tools and development set up theyhad to use . Looking over all that Pier Solar is really don't nothing more than what Square was doing back in 1993 on the Snes when all is said and done.
In fact I'm sure it was CORE that said that back inthe 1990 SEGA didn't even supply developers with tools and libraries for any Mega Drive devloper you had to make them all yourself . All you got was a badly translated Hardware documentation sheet
The thing about the Saturn is it seems developers never actually did work out how to develop for it. It's library is just full of hot messes of badly performing games.
Plenty of developers worked out how to use the system and used it to the max , but they were the ones who didn't use rubbish excuses about the system being hard to develop on, rather than say the real reason was poor market share and the fact that most of the time the Saturn port was given low priority and low resources .
I think Gogo means library in terms of number of games, rather that development libraries. I don't think SEGA supplied 3rd party tools and libraries in the Mega Drive days . Looking over that there was a great deal of games running and performing well on the Saturn. Sadly only games which performance worse and look worse get highlighted, rather than the games that either run well or sometimes look and run better than their PS counter parts
So, the actual reason why a ton of multi-plat titles look better on PS1 is that the PS1 is better than the Saturn?
I mean I love my Saturn... for 2D games anyway, but even Deep Fear in 1998 looks like an early PS1 title at best, and even the 3D killer app imo Burning Rangers is a hot mess of glitchy, ugly graphics. There are legit a handful of 3D titles on Saturn that don't look absolutely horrible, Wipeout being a nice exception to the rule where the Saturn version is actually superior but by 1997, 1998? Yeah.
I do yeah.
Go play it, it makes PSI and PSII look bad in comparison =P
To be fair, they were making a few games before the PS1 (hello Cliffhanger!). And then there was Psygnosis.
"disenable DMA" (whatever that means)
I think Nintendo wasn't any better though, I recall reading about Japanese developers having to make their own development tools for NES and SNES too (it didn't help matters that it seemed like everybody had a different expensive computer model - NEC seemed to profit a lot from this too for that matter, I swear they provided most of those computers). Looks like the only premade tools anybody used were sound engines (which is why the same engine seems to come up in games from unrelated companies).
So yeah, at least in Japan the SDK situation seemed to be a trainwreck, and probably only stopped in the 5th generation because programming to the bare metal wasn't a very feasible option anymore. The West seemed to have had better luck with it (at least we know of some tools that were being passed around, not to mention sample code that could have been easily repurposed).
Yeah, well Square's Final Fantasy Tactics on PS1 does not compare to Shining Force 3 on Saturn in any category. I'm also surprised many don't praise SF3 Scenario 2 & 3 more on Saturn for pushing the console graphically (transparency, lighting, high quality textures that never seems to pixelate, no warping polygons, great use of VDP2) now that it's had a translation for quite some time. And all this with basically no load times.
Also, plenty of multi plat titles that look better on Saturn too. But... lets get back to PSIV.
You only seem to have such negativity for Kalinske though. It's like he smashed your puppy's head in with a 32X or something.
True, but WD actually made games for the Saturn. If Vic was so indignant at SOA's snubbing him, he sure didn't show it during that entire generation.Quote:
SONY was given a Saturn license, SEGA number one rival at the time . Some times parties just get a license to hedge their bets
Psygnosis had their own licences SONY's was separate.
Yes that's true, It wasn't untill Atari and the Lynx that developers were given tools and libraries along with full documentation .Quote:
I think Nintendo wasn't any better though, I recall reading about Japanese developers having to make their own development tools for NES and SNES too (
Because it was the lead platform and had the bulk of developers backing ?. The Amstard CPC was a much more capable machine that the ZX spectrum, but thanks to ZX being the lead platform and the platform that sold by far the most, many ports to the Amstrad were simply ZX code and not using the system at all. Many 360 ports to the PS3 suffered untill corps made the PS3 the lead platform rather than the 360 .
And you know there's a ton of N64 games with rubbish graphics, sub 30 fps and super low res loads on the PS2 that look like cr8p , but you carry on with the Saturn and btw no the Saturn version of Wipeout isn't superior at all don't know where you got that from
ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC shared some parts of hardware, such as CPU, which made those kind of"downports" easier. Same for Atari ST and Amiga. Absolutely not the case for PS and Saturn.
The truth is elsewhere !
The general rule of thumb with "is this strategy RPG as good as Shining Force?" the answer is no. Fire Emblem is still very good, but no.
Also PSIV is great.
I've played both, the Saturn version you don't immediately lose all speed when you crash into a barrier so... superior version to me. Misses NegCon support but all that does is make an already difficult game even more difficult. Also please don't accuse me of defending the N64, i've never once said anything good about the N64 in my life.
PS3 leading in multi ports? Since when? X-Box 360 always came out on top over the PS3 in every multi port I've played and most of the time when reading about other ports. But one thing I noticed when reading about other ports falling behind on PS3, websites like Eurogamers Face Off always seriously soften the blow to PS3 way too often. Which makes sense since they're a major publication and still have to deal with Sony and worrying about upsetting Sony fanboys too much. Thus are forced to act more professionally. But make no mistake, plenty of times where 360 crushes the PS3.
Since when did I make out that PS3 ports were superior? Take the time to read, wipe the SONY hate drool away and see that I said the issues of bad PS3 ports started to die down when the PS3 became the lead platform for 3rd party games like Vanquish and Paradise City.
TRIGGERED.
I made an observation. No one said anything about Kalinske "getting away" with anything. The only thing that's childish is how you go off on a tangent every time the man's name is even mentioned. I do believe most people here have called out both sides.