Being better than the PC Engine CD that is.
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Being better than the PC Engine CD that is.
No. I might slightly prefer the Sega CD's best games but that's because they were more aimied towards the American market. The Sega CD never got the 3rd party support or top end first party support and always played 2nd fiddle to the Genesis in terms of game development.Quote:
Originally Posted by RvR
The Sega CD should have been more like the PC-Engine CD, with better support for arcade games and RPGs that took advantage of the added storage space.
Not even remotely. PCE-CD had a much better library as a whole. Tho I am biased because of Ys and the best version of Ys 1 ever.
Yes, but both systems had merits . Though Mega CD did have better hardware and while not many games used the hardware, it was noticeable.Quote:
Originally Posted by RvR
The Lunars and Batman's Returns were simply incredible. It's just a shame SEGA couldn't handle supporting both the MD and Mega CD. But that was a prelude of things to come
That was achieved from HW point of view. From software point of view absolutely not in terms of number of games (PC Engine CD library is more tha 3 times Sega CD one) but, like it or not, FMV games, Myst-like stuff was a core part of CD revolution and these were present mostly on Sega CD due to the approach of Sega of America.
In terms of timeline of course not, SegaCD arrived few days after CD-I and both arrived almost three years later after NEC's CD-Rom2.
In terms of market penetration probably yes. NEC didn't succeed much outisde Japan and is Spring '91, few months before Mega-CD was released, it had only 500K add ons sold worldwide. CD-I died with LTD sales of barely 1 million.
SegaCD ended his four years of life witha total that is estimated around 2.5 millions ww.
So it was probably the most successful of all the three and deserves a highly regarded place in history.
Pity wasn't pushed enough internally by SEGA but, the overall impact, was absolutely solid for what in the end was an addon and that lasted 4 years with over 200 games. Some of them super solid even today like the two Lunars, Snatcher, Popful Mail, and allowed us to experiment the first usage of multimedia like Sewer Shark, Night Trap, etc... (ridiculus today but seminary back then), we had the chance to play Wing Commander (in the best version after PC), have titles like that masterpiece of Monkey Island, experiment with an adventure like House of Hidden Souls that allowed us to taste a gameplay that was usually provided only by the first CD Rom games on PC that were costing a fortune.
Sega-CD to me was a fantastic add-on, ruined by the rush of SEGA to jump on Saturn and all the wrong decisions of that fucking 1994 (32x, rushed Saturn, anticipated death of the Genesis/SegaCD).
If half of the unreleased titles for SEGA CD would have been released like Ultima underworld, Myst, Return to Zork, Power Drift, Chakan CD, Battletech, Darkseed, Ys IV, Phantasy Star IV CD, etc... the system would have been legendary.
The strategy of the PC Engine CD was to eventually replace the carts with CDs as the primary format. I think they did a very good job with that. I wish Sega did the same thing. With that said, I think the Sega CD had more games that benefited from the format. Say what you want about FMV, but games like Night Trap gave you something that you couldn't have with carts.
The greatest achievement of the Sega CD was boosting Sega's image (and in turn boosting Genesis sales).
From Wired, 1993:
In 1992, the concept of the Sega CD was awesome to consumers, even if the reality didn't quite meet expectations.Quote:
Sega seized the initiative and brought its player to market in early 1992. Although the player has sold a modest 250,000 units, slow sales have been more than offset by the cachet the unit has brought to Sega's image.
"We looked at Sega's CD product and we said 'this is not very good,'" said George Harrison, director of marketing and corporate communications for Nintendo. "But when we talked to kids - who didn't know anything about it - they thought it was the world's greatest thing. It gave Sega a real halo."
The problem with the Sega-CD is that competing with the PC Engine wasn't its primary purpose. If it was on par with the PC Engine CD-ROM and only added an extra sound channel with compression it could have sold for less and better yet, had a single large or expandable unit of memory to run content from.
The extra hardware was a knee jerk reaction to the Super Famicom and did nothing to make the Sega/Mega-CD more appealing to the average consumer.
If it was cheaper, easy to develop for and had even just 8 megs of unified ram to run games from, a CD version of Street Fighter II could have been made with no noticeable cuts and some very noticeable additions.
Mortal Kombat games and Neo Geo fighters would only he held back by color restrictions, as far as the end user could tell.
The Mega-CD could have also launched much sooner if it was a bare bones CD-ROM. This would have got software out early enough for it to catch on before Sega started talking about 32-bit offerings.
It makes definitely sense.
But I like to laugh at their "this is not very good" comment because, looking at the specs of the SNES Playstation, at least from the only prototype existing, it was pure shit in terms of addon comparison. Really just an added "CDRom" not even with a clear offload of the main processor to drive it.
It wasn't like the CD Rom2 or the PC Duo was that much cheaper than the Mega CD or the Mega Drive 2 and Mega CD 2 combinationQuote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
I think the big issues was all the hype was of Super Famicom scailing and rotation style effects along with Super Famicom style sound . Trouble was so many games never used either and unlike NEC/Hudson SEGA Japan did little to support the format or actually make games that used the extra Hardware inside the system.
All that said , I loved the system and it played host to some of the best games I player in that era . I just wished the Arcade side of SEGA Japan actually used the system and brought their Sprite scalers and more games like Monkey Island came to the system , like what was planned.
It was originally worse. From Yoichi Miyaji of Game Arts in Mega Drive Taizen:Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoichi Miyaji
I have no idea if the Mega CD was supposed to compete with the PC Engine or not, but to me it was, and still is, a wonderful compliment to the Mega Drive, has a fantastically diverse library of games and was instrumental in making me fall in love with Sega as a boy. As a kid I remember being just blown away playing the likes of Lethal Enforcers and Tomcat Alley at my friend's house. :)
I have no idea in the USA or other parts of Europe. But in the UK the 1st CD system I ever saw was the CDTV and that cost a fortune and was little more than an Amiga with a CD drive and fancy wireless remote as standard (a true 1st)Quote:
Originally Posted by McValdemar
That wasn't quite the case. The system came out in 1991 and even then SEGA Japan couldn't be bothered to make a launch game for the system and put most of its efforts into developing Mega Drive software. No SEGA coin up ports, no Mega CD versions of Streets of Rage II, III and dropping PS IV infavor of the Mega Drive It was clear where SEGA's Japan focus was and they were the powerhouse of SEGA's development.Quote:
Sega-CD to me was a fantastic add-on, ruined by the rush of SEGA to jump on Saturn and all the wrong decisions of that fucking 1994
I never Chakan, but was so gutted to see Fate Of Atlantis, Flying Nightmares, PS IV, Desert Strike collection, World Rally, Kings Quest V, Power Drift and tons more. It had so much more potential, but SEGA Japan need to take the blame for most of it.Quote:
If half of the unreleased titles for SEGA CD would have been released like Ultima underworld, Myst, Return to Zork, Power Drift, Chakan CD, Battletech, Darkseed, Ys IV, Phantasy Star IV CD,
Super Hang-On, OutRun, AB II, GF II, Space Harrier, Line of Fire, AP Cop are should have been on the system and using the Hardware.
All that said I loved it and its the 2nd best system I've owned.
From a brand prestige standpoint, I agree it definitely raised Sega's profile as a pioneer in the industry who's on the forefront of new technology. It was one of the hardware items many like to look at while store browsing and dream of owning, like the high end TV section at Best Buy. Back then addons and the like were not purchased on a whim the way limited editions/collector's editions are purchased for 200-300 dollars today.
But then why keep it so much secret and then release with 2 crappy ports followed just by Horror Funky Band.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Why put so much guts in the machine and then forget about them.
I don't understand these choices.
Aspects that lead to think that was important to them and then, as you correctly say, on other aspects they almost didn't care.
It was hardly a secret to GameArts, WolfTeam and parts of SEGA Japan even before launch. The worst part was after the system shipped in Japan, SEGA Japan still hardly did anything on it of note and didn't look to actually make many games that showed off the extra hadrware and didn't look to bring any of its scailer coin-ups to the system using the ASIC chip. Money wise it no doubt made sense to support the Mega Drive more, but you weren't going to drive sales of the Mega CD thinking like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by McValdemar
SEGA Japan was pretty pathetic on the Mega-CD, thank GOD for Games Arts, SEGA America and Core Design
Well one thing is that AFAIK every feature of the Sega CD was actually used by at least some games, like its hardware scaling was certainly used in a few, plus its polygon / 3D mapping or whatever it's properly called. etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by McValdemar
So maybe at some point, SEGA might have considered the Sega CD to have been maxed out, when all its features had seen at least a handful of titles.
Also maybe they were waiting to see how other companies sales were, before they invested in more games. And it wasn't long before the Genesis and add-ons was soon killed altogether, in favor of the Saturn. The SCD had a relatively short lifespan of what, 2 years, I think?
IDK, there are a lot of potential reasons out there, lol. :daze:
As has been stated, I don't think Sega created the SCD for the sole purpose of competing with the PCE-CD. That was a byproduct in the Japanese market, sure, but at that time Sega was all about pushing the envelope and trying to crush Nintendo in the Western market which was much larger. I think it's more likely that the SCD was created to make a schiitload of money and make Nintendo look like dinosaurs. And while it didn't sell a ton of consoles, it did sell a couple million.
From what I understand, SoA had little to no input in the console design, but according to Kalinske, they budgeted 1/3 of their r&d and advertising budgets to the machine, and this is likely a key reason why there were so many more games released in NA than other parts of the world. And if you were around in the early 90s, you'll recall the deluge of SCD tv commercials and magazine ads. Regardless if you bought one or not, the SCD was considered cool. I can recall being in the 5th/6th grade, and at that time, Sega was considered a hip company with games for teenagers while Nintendo was considered the company with games for little kids. Now obviously the actual reality wasn't that simple, but largely due to the marketing campaign and existence of the SCD, that was the case. In 93-94, throughout that campaign, the Genesis was enjoying massive console sales. And I'd think that the existence of the SCD at least played a role in that. Whether you had one or not, there was the idea that by owning a Genesis, you could possibly get an SCD for it at some point.
So, based on all of that, I think the SCD served its purpose, at least in North America, and that's regardless of whether that was the primary purpose of the creation of the machine in the first place.
The Mega-CD came out in 1991, it was hardly killed off early and Add-On's were hardly killed off soon for the Saturn, that was part of the trouble, even in 94 and 95 we had SEGA pushing for multiple systems. SEGA tried to keep pushing the 32X in 96 when we all knew it was dead and even in 1995 SEGA was still trying to push that FMV fad on us with, Wirehead, Fahrenheit and the like. Still we did get the english Lunar II in 95, so it wasn't all badQuote:
Originally Posted by Ecco
That's the trouble it was only some games and so little from SEGA Japan theirself's. In 1992 and 93 the Mega CD should have been playing host to ports of OutRun, Space Harrier, GF II,Super Hang-On all from SEGA Japan. Instead, all we got was a terrible port of AB III outsourced to CRI to screw up.Quote:
Well one thing is that AFAIK every feature of the Sega CD was actually used by at least some games,
Also to those who say the PC Eng CD Rom was better, I say differently like the PC Eng could handle these
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQu2...&index=79&t=0s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsKyZkYU5oY&list=PLLXc9lTSYQhlc2FEPjhPJ4aG HxPoIL7xG&index=88
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8IBXiDwR9k&list=PLLXc9lTSYQhlc2FEPjhPJ4aG HxPoIL7xG&index=85
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQBaU3eCoe8&list=PLLXc9lTSYQhlc2FEPjhPJ4aG HxPoIL7xG&index=87
Wait.. you honestly believe the PCECD can't handle those last two??? If anything, the PCE CD would handle the last two with more color.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Even if you're unfamiliar with the capabilities as well as the existing library of the PC Engine, I'm still curious about what you think is special about Rise of the Dragon and Eternal Blue?Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Those are two games that the PC Engine already has outperformed with similar games and they're both games that could gain a massive improvement in graphic quality, as they have poor color useage by Mega Drive standards.
It's also silly to ignore the quality of a library a try to dick measure by asking 'couldit handle this', when you don't even need to get into the whole number of subpalettes thing. The Mega Drive doesn't even have balanced 9-bit color and literally can't reproduce the visuals of any PC Engine game.
I don't think that means it "wins", it just demonstrates how silly it is to cherry pick technicalities like that.
Scaling/Rotation hardware is particularly a bad example for a thread like this as it reminds us how butchered those games are from being bottlenecked by the CD format. If the Sega-CD hardware had shipped without a disc drive and software came on carts, you would have seen what it could really do. Which brings us back to how a CD-ROM with unified and increased memory would have been so much better than low framerate pixelization.
Too right. The other 2 games made full use of the memory and PCM of the Mega-CD. Unless one wants to bring in the Arcade card of courseQuote:
Originally Posted by turboxray
Unlike so many PC Eng games who intros are poorly animated. Lunar II Stream FMV is so much better and Game Arts made full use of the Mega-CD memory and sound chip. I can't think of any PC Eng RPG that looks better than Lunar II on the 'standard' PC Eng2 Rom. Rise is so much better than Snacther too. Other than the Arcade card games, I really can't think of any PC Eng CD Rom game, that the Mega CD couldn't do and handle better (when used)Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
Colours was hardly a strong point of either the PC Eng or Mega Drive/CD, that was more for the Snes
If you really are familiar with the library, then why don't you actually name some of the comparable PC Engine games instead of name dropping "Snatcher" like you just read a generic top ten list?Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Realtime Mega-CD cinematics are also "poorly animated".
Again, your color comment makes it sound like you haven't even watched videos of many PCE games. These two games you keep championing for specific things have those things done in PCE games which surpass 100 colors onscreen.
I owned a PC Engine CD Rom2 back in the day, that I bought for Strider (yes I was late) . Most of the PC Eng Engine CD Rom2 games that I played all had that terrible intro's where the whole intro was loaded into Ram and the sound was played straight off CD (like Wolf Team Mega-CD games, launch games ) .Amazing at the time, but when you saw Lunar II, not quiteQuote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
Colour was never a good point of either the Mega Drive or PCEng . The SNES was so much better in that regard
I think it is not a matter if it was capable or not (all the heavily scaling of course not, the 2D games definitely yes) but is simply the fact that, no matter the hundreds of titles, some STYLES never appeared over PCEngine.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Take the example of FMV games.
For NEC the CD was mostly just a different media for games + audio.
For SEGA, especially N/A, it was also bringing home the FMV/CD-rom unique experiences.
FMV games never been amazing and, today, are just ridicolous but back then were something people wanted and SegaCD was offering.
I think this is "natural" as the NEC was strong in Japan but not relevant outside and SegaCD catalogue has really different weights on the styles of games if you look at the regions.
All in all this is the reason why, to me as kid, when I was looking in a shop of imported consoles, was more attractive the SEGA CD then the PC Engine + CDRom.
It's one thing to say that it doesn't have that level of quality, but it's quite another to say that it can't have that level of quality.. and beyond.Quote:
Originally Posted by Team Andromeda
Your color comment:
Megadrive has 4 subpalettes: What does the mean? a subpalette has 15 colors. A sprite or tile can choose one of those four to draw colors from.
Megadrive effectively has 61 colors on screen as standard capability.
PCE has 32 subpalettes. 16 are for tiles, and the other 16 are for sprites. 32.
PCE effectively has 481 colors on screen as standard capability.
Saying it's not a strength, is pretty much bullshit.
Second: The cinemas in Lunar 2 are not FMV. Sorry. But the PCE can do FMV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl36gtB57Os . Before you say that's an arcade card game.. it's not. It's a SuperCD game that can take advantage if the ACD is detected, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the FMV. A lot of those frames have over 100 colors in them. Lunar is doing streaming animation, which the PCE can do as well (and with more colors). Lunar has a lot of parts in the cinema where they're using 4 colors and 8 colors - the pce can compress that as planes without a performance loss.
I could code that intro on the PCE SuperCD as is, without the arcade card. It does have other methods besides FMV to stream animation. Just because game devs didn't fully utilize the system, doesn't mean it can't. I mean worse case you can just pull graphic data in from the audio's subchannel data to constantly stream new graphic data. But there are more advance methods the PCE can do.
Colors aren't its strength? Here's a old WIP of LunarSS background that I did with Arm.
http://turboxray.com/pics/lunar1_vbg_pce.png
It's at 72 colors and 10 subpalettes. That leaves 6 free for the BG (90 more unique possible colors, though realistically another 20+).. and still leaves 16 free subpalettes just for sprites. Just because some PCE games don't flex their muscle, doesn't mean the system can't. Educate yourself haha.
EDIT: Here's the rom to the title screen along with some realtime scaling (nothing impressive mind you): http://turboxray.com/pics/main.pce
I know the PC Eng CD Rom can do FMV, one of the 1st games I ever saw on CD was Sherlock Homes on it. I've seen no standard PC Eng CD Rom game stream in an intro or do FMV anywhere near as good as the Mega-CD.Quote:
Originally Posted by turboxray
They're usually all loaded into Ram and just play when the CD plays the CD-DA audio track, like with Lunar on the Mega CD or most of Wolfteam games Mega CD games
I never cared for the colour pallet of either the PC Eng or Mega Drive. In the end, I just got used to the limited pallet and really didn't care if Final Fight CD looked washed out, It was just such an amazing port, I couldn't careless
And here's a couple more Mega-CD games that showed off the system better than the PC Eng CD Rom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_ZzMrh_hSE&list=PLLXc9lTSYQhlc2FEPjhPJ4aG HxPoIL7xG&index=100
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dwuyrpsq6Uo&list=PLLXc9lTSYQhlc2FEPjhPJ4aG HxPoIL7xG&index=86
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1grAD_4MS7M&list=PLLXc9lTSYQhlc2FEPjhPJ4aG HxPoIL7xG&index=103
Even Johnny Turbo knows that Sherlock Holmes was on Turbo-CD before the Sega-CD even existed. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by McValdemar
Off the top of my head I can think of 8 PC Engine games with fmv, but even within a year of the Sega-CD launch fmv heavy titles had become a joke and remain so among "retro" game fans.
If that's what you're into it's cool that you were able to import the kind of games you wanted. They just seem very set apart from everything that we love about 16-bit games nowadays.
Is there a reason for such washed out palette and poor color? There are weakness of MD not of PCE.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Washed out devs hahah
The Western developer used an automated single palette. Even the "pixelart" segments look very poor and unprofessional.Quote:
Originally Posted by McValdemar
Here is a low quality video of some high quality PCE fmv:
https://youtu.be/YSUZZa96oGI
That was the 1st time I ever saw FMV running on a system, it was quite increabile to see a real human in motion on a video system back then (no matter how silly its sounds now). It should also be noted mind that the FM Town Mary played host to a lot of the FMV games, but some for reason never gets labelled with the FMV heavy titles like the Mega CD. The system for FMV games really was MS-Dos, I lost count of the nunmber of heavy FMV games back on DOS.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
Also I disagree with you a little . Some of the games that use FMV are very good. Dracula Unleashed is brilliant, so is Jurassic Park and used FMV very well to drive the story. Night Trap was quite original and very good for it's time, Road Adv is utterly brilliant, Slipheed is ace fun . The trouble was SEGA just went far too much into FMV and got caught into the FMV fad and spent far too much time and money in just that one sector.
I don't care what most people say. I very much enjoyed the games on MS Dos and Mega CD that were FMV heavy back then and now.
Well the topic was mostly if SEGA-CD succeded in his purpose, so is not a matter of evaluating today.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
To me the fact that I was capable of juping from a very japanese Rpg to a Sewer Shark to a Wing Commander to a Mansion of Hidden Souls was fantastic.
I loved SouldStar and Battlecorps to the point that I bought a 3DO to play Total Eclipse that looked like the next step of such shooters.
And when I was able to play Monkey Island without buying a new PC? Or Shadow of the Beast 2 in a version better than the Amiga?
Disapoointed? Only once: Ernest Evans. really a pile of smoking crap.
So, yes, to me was a successful add-on as I remember 4 years of titles where I could really pick many interesting ones that were offering things not possible on a cartridge. And, actually, it lasted a bit more than that as I couldn't buy everything on day one.
So, for an add-on, was possibly between the best add-ons I experienced.
Maybe SEGA would have been more smart to make just a CD player like NEC? Possibly, but for what was my experience, I am glad the system came with all the features they gave to it.
(Contrary for instance to 32X)
I loved the Sega-CD and 32X while they were current. Like all libraries they both have disappointing games.
Monkey Island is just a 2D game like Loom and Beyond Shadowgate. Doom for 32X was the real "without buying a new PC for" game and singel handedly justified the hardware. But titles like Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter really justify the extra processing power. From a technical standpoint, the 32X provides much more of 'not-possible-on-Mega Drive' bang for the buck than the Sega/Mega-CD.
People here are more interested in the business side though and if something doesn't top workdwide sales then it "bombed".
You seem to be suggesting that the 32X made more sense from a consumer point of view, with regard both add-on's games library. I have to disagree. There was a point to the Mega CD. It enhanced the 16-bit market for Sega by adding enhancements to existing games, and producing entirely exclusive games, in a way that was unique to that platform. The 32X, by comparison, was a poorly thought out, and poorly supported, attempt to provide a cut-price entry to 32-bit gaming. With the Saturn literally just around the corner all the 32X succeeded in doing was confusing and alienating existing consumers. In short, the Mega CD had a purpose, the 32X did not.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
How did the Mega-CD enhance existing games?