You SEGA or Nintendo, or worst still SONY lo l;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mega Drive Bowlsey
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You SEGA or Nintendo, or worst still SONY lo l;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Mega Drive Bowlsey
You're wrong about the SNES sound samples eating up ROM space. The SNES sound was space efficient because of how it worked. Voice samples on the Genesis ate a lot of cartridge space, and that is why they sounded garbled compared to a SNES game using the same size cart. You could get great voice samples from the Genesis, but it took a lot of cart space to make it happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
The CD add-on for the PC-Engine and Genesis was somewhat expensive, and it segregated the audience for those consoles. I never got a CD-ROM drive for my TG-16, because it was really expensive. I got the CD-ROM drive for the Genesis, but I've always felt that it didn't live up to the hype, and the games that did do it right are now very expensive, because they didn't sell enough units to justify the development costs. Nintendo was raking in cash with titles like Star Fox and Donkey Kong Country, because they'd sold a ton of units. They made the right choice.Quote:
It was a neat novelty when SNES games did their version of orchestral, but again, CD music had been standard for years already. Nintendo wasn't smart to offer the only two consoles to date from the PC Engine onward without disc based games. Selling processing power within individual games purchases on top of already being the most expensive games in the market was only good for their own profits. It sucked for both developers and game fans like myself who had to pay much more for domestics SNES RPGs than RPGs imported from Japan.
Nintendo didn't make the right choice at all, if Nintendo had their way we also would had a SNES CD drive, only becasue they fell out with SONY is the reason we also didn't get a expensive CD Rome add-on for the SNES. I also find it rather silly to use the high cost of some Mega CD games now as any sort of vindication, when at the time of their release most Mega CD games were cheaper than MD carts and much cheaper than Snes carts where almost all SNES games were at least £5 to £10 more than MD carts (true the world over) and its not like Nintendo didn't have its own High Cost Add On flops like with the N64 DD or how much more expensive N64 games were compared to the Saturn and PS games.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
I do agree with you that SEGA underused the Mega CD though.
I think the one trick they missed with the Mega CD was not adding additional colours. If the grainy video had more colour it might have made the whole FMV a bit more high tech looking, and the unit a bit more appealing.
We'd also then be looking at much more vibrant games to compete with the SNES with the additional benefit of CD drive space.
Marketing wise they might have done better to sell the units with a MD console as a bundle (they might have done this, correct me if I'm wrong) pricing the latter at a lower price.
I don't know why people keep on with the FMV think about the Mega CD, it was never meant to be a FMV system, the dos PC CD-Rom was far more of a FMV system at that time and most of its FMV games didn't look too great running in 256 colours (and I had loads back inthe day) and its not like the extra colour really helped the 32X or the 32X Mega CD games.
What people really wanted on the Mega CD was games that weren't possible on a standard Mega Drive or Snes and far more use should have been made of the ASIC chip. SEGA Japan really should have ported Outrun, Powerdrift, AB II, Space Harrier, GF II, Super Hang-On all making full use of the ASIC chip, The Mega CD should have been awash with SEGA srite scailing games, the best version of Sonic, Phantasy Star IV with the 30 mins of cartoon quality cut scenes, epic music score and the ASIC 3D dungons and SOJ should have made Mega CD enhased ports of Strider and Ghost N Ghouls using the Final Fight CD engine and team, so the Mega CD versions had extra animation, CD music and all the Arcade speech along with Arcade perfect sound effects, why port SOR to the Mega CD, and not SOR II but now with CD-DA music (for what was an already epic music score) and better sound effects and speeck thanks to the extra sample channels
Such a shame the Mega CD had such potential and was so underused, not least by SOJ
Great post and could not agree more. As much as I love the Mega CD there were so many more things Sega could have done with it. It's almost like there was a lack of interest from Sega right from the off. Oh sure, they supported the Mega CD much more than they did the 32X, but it still feels like SOJ were just biding their time until the Saturn was launched. If that was the case then why bother with any add-on at all for the Mega Drive? Just support it until it dies a natural death and work on the Saturn at the same time. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that Sega made the Mega CD but it's almost like they did so while only being half committed to it. If you're going to do something then commit to it fully or don't bother. It was this indecisiveness and perceived arrogance from Sega that hurt their image hugely with consumers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
SOJ was pretty indifferent to the Mega CD. It got better support from SOA and Western third parties than SOJ and Japanese third parties.
As many have said in the past, many of those Arcade Scaling games would still be too much for the ASIC in the Sega CD. The thing wasn't magic and it's actually pretty bottlenecked. Some might still be doable well like Space Harrier, Outrun, and Super Hang-On, but that's more because of a faster 68000 in it than the actual ASIC chip.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
While I agree the ASIC was underutilized by Sega of Japan, I also agree that the lack of additional colors was another big issue with it. If it had an expanded color palette and the ability to display 256 or more colors, the thing could have become a very viable platform for many DOS adventure games of the day as well as possibly enticing some of the big JRPG companies making games on the SNES to take a look.
As said in the past, Any SEGA Arcade port in those days was too much for SEGA console Hardware, even the DC couldn't handle perfect ports of Model 3 games . The Mega CD was far better able to handle ports of SEGA scaling coin ups than the base MD and that's whats we should have had. A Mega CD version of Super Hnag On with full ASIC support arcade perfect CD-DA music and arcade perfect sound effects would have been a step aove the MD versionQuote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
Mega CD SEGA Arcade ports could have put Snes mode 7 and base MD hardware to shame. 256 colours wasn't really an issue as little Snes games made use of that mode, the colour pallet was the MD main issue, and it was too much of an issue for the Mega CD to fix. The Mega CD was perfect for many Dos games even with the limited pallet, Wing Commander and Rise of the Dragon are fantastic on the platform and Lunar II is better than any SNES RPG imo.
The system should have been used more and SEGA Japan should have made far better use of the ASIC chip.
ASIC support probably wouldn't help Super Hang-On that much. Just taking the Genesis port and running it on the faster 68000 in the Sega CD would probably end up running better than even the ASIC could do. The ASIC is nice for some things, but it's not magical and it's by no means capable of delivering high performance ports of Super Scaler games. Best case scenario you'd get 20fps out of it, most likely scenario you'd be lucky to get lower than that.
This is the thing you keep failing to grasp in this concept. The ASIC wouldn't really be all that helpful in porting some of those games. You'd be lucky to get similar or slightly better performance to the Genesis ports. You'd be better off in most cases just porting the Genesis port to the Sega CD and running it on the faster 68000. And games like Galaxy Force and Power Drift would be completely out of the question for the ASIC. Soul Star is nice, but it's no Galaxy Force. There's no full screen rotation and it's definitely a slower game. Best case you could hope for on the Sega CD I'd imagine would be a port that looks like the Genesis port but runs faster, or a port that runs on par with or worse than the Genesis port with some actual detail filled into things that were solid colors on the Genesis.
And for the color, the issue isn't being able to use all 256 colors at once. It's simply having more palette flexibility which the SNES did have and did use pretty much all the time.
A heap of enhanced ports wouldn't really help the Sega CD anyway, it would've needed exclusive titles. The FMV titles may not have been much, but they were exclusive, mostly (the ones with alternate ports were on even more expensive systems).
And blaming FMV games is youtube e-celeb crap. Back in the 90s, it was a jaw dropping multimedia feature. Significant enough for Sony to put a hardware video decoder into the Playstation.
I don't have the numbers but as far as I know there were quite a bunch of Japanese titles, so I don't think this is true.Quote:
Originally Posted by j_factor
edit: and SOJ was indifferent to anything Megadrive related since none of it was the Nintendo killer they sought to be. It's part of why they killed everything immediately once the Saturn sold a million units in three months - they finally had a killer platform.
Around the time the time the SNES launched at $200, the Turbo-CD was $150 and the TG-16 was $75.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
The problem with talking about 16-bit sound samples is that most people never actually listen to them. People tend to compare the voice samples between SFII ports as though they're equal andas though that tells the whole story of sound in general.
The Genesis, PC Engine and arcade all used resl sound clips. The SNES ports, like most SNES games, cut out most of the voice and sound effect samples, then sped up what remained. Pitch shifting the end result only distorted them further. It's like comparing a low quality mp3 of a pro singer to a recording of a drunk kaoroke singer, recorded by a camera that keeps cutting out and the footage is played back at the wrong speed... and then complaining that the original recording sounds scratchy.
SNES games also need to store samples for all the instruments. That's why devs worked so hard to gut and stretch out voice and sound effects and background instruments. From what I've heard about SSFII for Genesis, it's the only 16-bit SFII port with uncompresded backgrounds. Plus it added some exclusive cinematic artwork. SFIISCE added the arcade intro, animated portraits, extra background elements, etc. Nevermind how obvious it is that the Genesis versions weren't developed by people who knew the hardware as well as the SNES teams did their target hardware and the difference in overall polish.
Not all games are directly comparable and the difference between ports of the same game doesn't prove anything, let alone everything.
Nope.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Garbled sample playback on the Mega Drive is caused by software-dependent timing, bus concurrency issues and lack of buffer implementation in most audio drivers.
If anything, Stef's audio improvement hack for SFII SCE is the final proof that even low quality samples played with software multiplexing on top of them could sound rather decent IF the audio driver was carefully designed.
In general, SNES games ended up eating a lot more space with sound data thanks to all music and sfx being sample-based. MD's PSG and FM-based sound effects and music are inexpensive in terms of ROM space.
TA is always super delusional when talking about the Sega CD's ASIC.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
This.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
Sound samples still took up more space on the Genesis. The audio chip for the SNES could de-compress compressed files. SFII SCE was 24Mb, compared to the 20Mb cart for SFII Turbo on the SNES.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barone
http://segabits.com/blog/2012/09/12/...rtridge-space/
The SNES used small samples and then created sounds from them.Quote:
In general, SNES games ended up eating a lot more space with sound data thanks to all music and sfx being sample-based. MD's PSG and FM-based sound effects and music are inexpensive in terms of ROM space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5PxnN0ntsc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5PxnN0ntsc
You just seem to want to argue for the sake of it. If one looks at the few games that used the ASIC chip you see a much better effect. Play the 3D parts of Batman Returns and Cliffhanger to see lovely smooth scaling that puts to shame any Sega Sprite Scaler port on the Mega Drive, given that the likes of Super Hang-On or Outrun hardly run at 60 fps on the MD, then going down to 20 fps is hardly a deal breaker (going below sub 20 fps didn't bother MD fans for Virtua Racing port) and then you would also have Arcade perfect CD-DA music and Arcade perfect sound effects thanks to the PCM chip inside the Mega CD.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118
I just know you argue otherwise (because its me) but just compare Outrun on the Mega Drive to Batman Returns on the Mega CD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnhNnG-2iIQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVxtl3jI39g&t=64s
or GF II on the MD to Soul Star on the Mega CD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB8Bc1BhudE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQu2LrZPoxs
I'll take ASIC smooth scailing over jerky MD updates any day of the week even in a window and at 20 fps.
And also no doubt in other thread you'll aruge with with me that MD pallet was enough, when I start singing the praises of the Snes and its better colours on screen and far better colour pallet :daze: