So SNES is Pin compatable with NES and the CPU disabled legacy mode for NES?! WTF

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Originally Posted by turboxray

The cost of a z80 + ram has got to be more expensive than a 6-ish channel 8bit PCM chip with DMA from rom.

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Yeah, and it didn't need to be 6 channel either, why not 2 channel? It seems like such an easy cost cutting measure. It's not like Nintendo revolutionized audio chips with the design of the Direct Sounds channels in the GBA, they're about as basic as it gets. I think it's as you say, they just didn't care about the audio :S.

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Originally Posted by zyrobs

Before the Megadrive, they had home computer hardware, it would make sense that they built the Megadrive to be able to do that optionally. I think they prototyped enough accessories to turn the machine into a full computer, but they went for the bigger option and teamed up with IBM to do the Teradrive instead.

Also, the Saturn had a HDD expansion planned.

If you mean for the Megadrive, they planned on doing 8 palettes and include native sprite scaling. But the scaling made the chip too big and they had to axe it. The extra palette was turned into something that could be hooked up externally, but they never did that except for one arcade hardware I think. System C2? Not sure if any game actually took advantage of it.

I keep thinking that when they made the Megadrive 2, they should've put some of the new features in there, in a backwards compatible way. It would've made it an incremental upgrade, but give the console so much more power.

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Yes except with the Teradrive it still has VGA out so you could use it with a computer monitor. Without that the options are more limited. If you have a Genesis, floppy drive, keyboard and printer hooked up to the TV in your living room, what will you do with it? That would be an odd place for a spreadsheet or word processing.

I agree the MD2 should have had some upgrades, even just doubling the number of palettes would have been easy to do and the games just need to keep two lists of palettes depending on the hardware.

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Originally Posted by Sik

On that note, I wonder if that's part of the reason why SNES was delayed. The original SNES specs were 8KB RAM (just like PC Engine), and most of the hardware seemed to be ready judging by the tech demos (especially mode 7), yet they had to delay it and quickly pointed out that they were going to be bumping up the RAM. I wonder if seeing the Mega Drive with way more RAM made Nintendo panic at last minute, and they were forced to wait it out because RAM had gotten too expensive due to the shortage (indeed, the Super Famicom came out the same year RAM prices were plummeting).

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That's exactly what I was thinking. Maybe a combination of factors, they see the new competition coming out and there's a chip shortage so they take it as an opportunity to delay a bit and bump up the specs.

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Originally Posted by axel

Yes except with the Teradrive it still has VGA out so you could use it with a computer monitor. Without that the options are more limited. If you have a Genesis, floppy drive, keyboard and printer hooked up to the TV in your living room, what will you do with it? That would be an odd place for a spreadsheet or word processing.

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But the MSX was a success in Japan and its output was usually composite or RF. Sega's SC-3000 computer's output was also composite and RF. I don't know anything about it but didn't the Commodore 64 also have composite output? These could be used on a desk hooked up to a TV. It didn't have to be a living room setup. They were all super cheap home computers that could be used for simple tasks and supported BASIC.

By the time the MD was released, though, I think the market for these types of budget computers was drying up and was shifting to desktop PCs.

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Originally Posted by axel

Yes except with the Teradrive it still has VGA out so you could use it with a computer monitor. Without that the options are more limited. If you have a Genesis, floppy drive, keyboard and printer hooked up to the TV in your living room, what will you do with it? That would be an odd place for a spreadsheet or word processing.

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I think it was just scope creep (they didn't even know what to do with the keyboard). Although it may have been cheaper than a full blown computer from the era.

That said, they did have plans for the floppy drive (as mentioned in that article): they wanted to let you download games through the modem into disk to avoid having to wait in line at the store (does any of this sound familiar?). That, er… yeah, that probably wasn't going to work back then. But I wouldn't be surprised if this is how Game Toshokan was originally supposed to work — having to wait several minutes for a game to download makes much more sense if you're doing it only once instead of every time you're going to play.

For the record, the printer actually happened (Mega Anser supports it).

Just insane 8/16 bit machines had the concept of online and downloading content. In fact, in a way, it's fucking hilarious. Nintendo was so forward-thinking in that way. (both were) Nintendo essentially had DLC and online on every home console they have ever made but starting with GCN they have been behind everyone else to this day with NSO.

Not really. Mattel had looked to use the phone in 1980 with the play cable. Like with almost anything to do with console gaming. The Americans did it 1st