if genesis/mega drive was still popular (tech question)

Not been posting here too long but I thought i'd ask this as quite a few of you seem to be quite technologically minded where im more of just a play and enjoy em kind of guy.

Just wondering with compression rates today with cartridges being alot better than they were in the mega drive day (Resident evil 2 on the 64 a good example). Do you think if sega still had the mega drive out now would a it be able to do video or have actual soundtracks on them if cart size wasn't an issue or is it just not possible with the hardware?

I suppose they could chuck in more digital samples, and even longer cutscenes like the one featured in Red Zone, but there's definitely an upper limit to the memory address range that the Megadrive's RAM could access which makes it futile anyway. Others will surely provide better technical answers.

An FMV by Fonzie.....

So it is possible, but I guess it has too many drawbacks with the MD being too slow to access the date when you did a real game with so much memory it contains FMV and super-sound.

http://www.genny4ever.net/g4e_module...?file=eqx_md_6

The scenes are from Doom 3, played as movie on the Mega Drive.

They could probably find a way to do it with a modded or upgraded genesis console.


On the question though if it would be still popular

It would work if they could market it to young people and for a very cheap price. I think during times of economic woes it would be a perfect system for a family on a fixed income.

In all the Malls near me they have a booth that sells knock off NES games. Its a system that has 100 games in one system. All bootlegs from china I think. If Sega came out with a booth that sold authentic systems like that, they may do pretty good. Also parent would love it because its so much cheaper then the systems out today.

I think Sega would have a difficult time obtaining the license rights for a lot of their hits of the Genesis (excluding their own titles).

It's a decent idea (system with 100 games), but it wouldn't be a huge money maker. I can see the appeal for parents if the system was like $30 and came a ton of games, but there would probably be an age bracket where the system would sell most. There's a point in age where a kid wants what all his/her friends have - be it the newest generation of systems or one generation behind. Less pressure for kids are at a younger age to conform to what everyone else is using/playing. You'd have to find that age point.

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Originally Posted by TheEdge

They could probably find a way to do it with a modded or upgraded genesis console.


On the question though if it would be still popular

It would work if they could market it to young people and for a very cheap price. I think during times of economic woes it would be a perfect system for a family on a fixed income.

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It's working out quite handily for me. I've only bought one PS3 game since I moved to school in August (Fallout 3, not counting downloadable titles like Mega Man 9), but I've bought around 12 Genesis games. It's quite economical indeed!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheEdge

They could probably find a way to do it with a modded or upgraded genesis console.


On the question though if it would be still popular

It would work if they could market it to young people and for a very cheap price. I think during times of economic woes it would be a perfect system for a family on a fixed income.

In all the Malls near me they have a booth that sells knock off NES games. Its a system that has 100 games in one system. All bootlegs from china I think. If Sega came out with a booth that sold authentic systems like that, they may do pretty good. Also parent would love it because its so much cheaper then the systems out today.

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God I wish they'd sell stuff like that in the UK, I've been searching for a US NES to import recently but Ebay is killing me, I bet people who live in the US can constantly find NES systems down flea markets for next to nothing whilst i'm stuck here :( maybe i'll have to save up and go on holiday one day, though it would cost be a bomb in travelling expenses anyway I'd imagine :)

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Originally Posted by jesus.arnold

God I wish they'd sell stuff like that in the UK, I've been searching for a US NES to import recently but Ebay is killing me, I bet people who live in the US can constantly find NES systems down flea markets for next to nothing whilst i'm stuck here :( maybe i'll have to save up and go on holiday one day, though it would cost be a bomb in travelling expenses anyway I'd imagine :)

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They're not cheap. A number of years back you could find them for $5US no sweat. Now they are going for like $40-50US and not many of them around (not like they used to be). Plenty of games though in the $5 range. Back in '03 I picked up a ton of carts for $1 each.

Anyway, I'm sure you could buy an NES system from someone on one of the retro forums (or this one).

Hello, the Radica TV plug n play anyone?

but about the FMV, for those that remember, Sonic 3D blast had an FMV intro. See, the problem lies in the base architecture of the system. If Genesis games were to come out today in their original form (that could play on a real Genesis), they would still cost about $40-$70 because they would have to be made the same (inefficient) way in order to work. If you want to play 2D games nowadays, GBA/DS is the way to go. I think if someone was going to make a budget 2D system, it would probably be similar to the technology used in cell phones for basic games.

Like I said, that is not correct. You could use flash memory of hundreds of Megabytes size and play it on HW, but it would be pointless because it brings too many drawbacks. We did at one point even consider doing that with PS, but it seemed pointless, with the drawbacks being greater than the benefits.