Question about the Genesis Launch

[Black_Tiger]

Albeit, if there'd been no lag between Japanese and US game releases that would've helped hugely, but still IMO early PC-Engine software supported the idea that it wasn't a true next generation console, why the heck didn't PC-Engine games look superior to Genesis games ffs?! the system had a years development lead on Mega Drive, it had much better colour capabilities, it had very respectable CPU power, and yet we have stuff like Keith Courage competing with Ghouls N Ghosts! Altered Beast with tiny characters and low colour counts etc

lol, by "tiny" you mean 90% Mega Drive size? Altered Beast does look superior, it's the Mega Drive version which has the terribly low color counts. Many of the Mega Drive version's main sprites look similar to the SMS version for color and detail, while the PC Engine version looks similar to the arcade version-






Let alone all the animation and special effects that the PC Engine version retains that the Mega Drive version is missing.



<------------PC Engine HuCard-------------------------Mega Drive------------->




















And the PC Engine version wasn't programmed by Sega.

[Thenewguy]

Outside of being smaller, the main player sprite looks like he's made out of wood on the PC-Engine.

Other than that the PC-Engine version's backgrounds look really crappy

No grass, no statues, crappy brickwork, squat buildings, orange ground.



Level 2 might look slightly better on PC-Engine (seems comparable), Level 3 looks better on Mega Drive, level 4 looks like crap on PC-Engine, level 5 looks like crap on both.

Dragon, and wolf sprites definitely look much better, and some of the characters seem to have more animation on PC-Engine, I don't like the colouring of the zombie carrying his head, that just looks bad IMO. I don't really have the experience to go more in-depth than that.

[kool kitty89]

Outside of being smaller, the main player sprite looks like he's made out of wood on the PC-Engine.

Are you sure that isn't more like the arcade sprites? (and it doesn't look so much like wood, as tanned skin . . . and the overall color is lower contrast -more subtle/smoother shading in the PCE version, which seems closer to the arcade)

Other than that the PC-Engine version's backgrounds look really crappy

No grass, no statues, crappy brickwork, squat buildings, orange ground.

Level 2 might look slightly better on PC-Engine (seems comparable), Level 3 looks better on Mega Drive, level 4 looks like crap on PC-Engine, level 5 looks like crap on both.

Yes, the BG detail is inconsistent . . . especially unfortunate on the 1st stage (gives a bad 1st impression).

Dragon, and wolf sprites definitely look much better, and some of the characters seem to have more animation on PC-Engine, I don't like the colouring of the zombie carrying his head, that just looks bad IMO. I don't really have the experience to go more in-depth than that.

There definitely seems to be a greater emphasis on arcade-accuracy of the sprites . . . the Zombie carrying its head is palette swapped on the MD version while the PCE version has similar colors to the arcade.

Though as has been said before, beating the Mega Drive in the early stage isn't really getting them closer to winning the war, albeit its still a start, and could've led things to going very differently (EA maybe jumping onto TG-16 instead of Genesis, more money for investment allowing them to find their own "Sonic the Hedgehog"), something to build on etc.

The thing is, having more revenue from the console game division itself shouldn't have been the limiting factor for NEC. They were (and still are) a massive corporation with substantial in-house resources and the necessary PR to secure favorable investment loans on top of that (similar to Sony). -Albeit, in the long-run, profitability of the console division would obviously be important.

They should have had very similar monetary, PR, and manufacturing advantages as Sony had when launching the PS1, the only difference appears to be management. (in terms of overall resources allocated to support the console division -and I mean personnel/management resources as well as monetary and including things like market research and collaboration with regional software, advertising, and distribution companies to better associate itself with foreign markets)
Not to mention the massive potential for offering a flexible/attractive licensing model with aggressive efforts to attract 3rd party developers away from Nintendo (and, in particular, avoid the things that publishers hated about Nintendo)

Aggressive pricing is also something they could have taken advantage of. (hardware was simpler/cheaper than the competition, had an initial volume production advantage, and had vertical integration on top of that) Imagine if the TG16 had been $150 when the Genesis launched, or $100 when the Genesis dropped to $150 and the SNES was launched at $200. (not to mention the potential of pricing the CD system more aggressively too, though I think they did eventually end up doing that too -I seem to remember seeing some old magazine ads from around 1991 with $150 Turbo CDs -and, of course, the Duo was priced to match the Sega CD)

With a release in 1989 I really think they needed to invest more money into software to show off the system, and put to rest all the "its not really next gen" naysayers, as you said, investing in ports of western games, and maybe bigger more impressive arcade games would've also been important.

Yes, there are hardware limits too, but the main problem was just software (in terms of technical game quality and performance) as well as the various aspects of management and marketing. (good software isn't much good without marketing and associated market perception to back that up -especially in the US- )

I wouldn't imagine the kind of games we're talking about for the late 80s (menu based adventure games, datings sims etc, with anime stills or digitised photos) would've cost much to make, the later adventure games with the FMV, sure.

Using non-synthesized arranged soundtracks could be a significant cost in some cases, and the programming overhead for many CD games could be a major issue too. (albeit not too much different than programming for disk based computer games with similar memory limitations -though the primitive CD-ROM interface was also a pain to program for iirc, more so than the MCD)

But overall yeah, many of those games were probably not very costly to produce, especially if they were ports of existing computer games.

Well, according to Famitsu there were 4 million core systems sold in Japan (3 million white, 1 million grey), and 2 million DUO's, leading to a total of 6 million consoles in the country, Famitsu states that half of these sales were prior to the SNES being released. other sources state a high estimate at 7 million total.

According to Nintendo they sold 17 million Super Famicom's in Japan, and according to this article they'd sold 1.6 million in Japan in the 1st 5 months -

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id...%20japan&hl=en

Being that PC-Engine had a 3 million head start, I guess its possible that it took a while for SNES to reach 66% total marketshare, but that still being in effect as late as 94' seems unlikely.

OK, maybe I misinterpreted some things (like software sales vs hardware market share, and total share vs annual share).

Half the PC-Engine's sales were prior to the release, that leaves the PC-Engine selling like 3 million systems in the amount of time it took Nintendo to sell 17 million, that doesn't seem like its doing well to me.

With that in mind, it makes you wonder why NEC didn't push more for a full new system to compete with earlier on . . . granted they'd already (poorly) attempted an upgrade with the SGX and the Super CD and Duo upgrades were fairly successful (though not massive sellers compared to the SFC), but it certainly seems a bit odd that they did have the PC-FX hardware production ready around 1993 but decided to shelve it (and not for reasons of upgrade/followon design either).
Then again, the bigger factor seemed to be mainstream software support (and possibly market perception) rather than hardware limitations. (had NEC attracted many of the heavy-hitters Sony later managed to do, it probably would have been a very different story for the PCE -upgrades or not)

And success in the US and Europe would tend to bolster Japan (both in terms of JP publisher interest and perhaps consumer interest associated with some western games), and vice versa. (successes in the various markets building on eachother)

According to the source I posted in the Euro Market thread a couple of days ago, the MD was selling 500,000 odd a year in Japan around 93-94, and around 25% of Japanese MD owners had a Mega-CD.

Dude, no way! Ghouls N Ghosts is all over the US magazines in 1989, it was everywhere, I'm sure it got game of the month in EGM in November 1989 (I would check, but the scans were hosted on Megaupload -_-')

OK, that makes more sense . . . I'm not sure what happened with Apolloboy's comment.

[Thenewguy]

and it doesn't look so much like wood, as tanned skin . . .

It doesn't look like tanned skin to me (especially the face), the colour and tone is very lifeless, and very un-humanlike, similar to a bronze statue, or carved wood, the arcade versions colour is a little lighter.

There definitely seems to be a greater emphasis on arcade-accuracy of the sprites . . . the Zombie carrying its head is palette swapped on the MD version while the PCE version has similar colors to the arcade.

Yep, from the ones I just checked through it seems the PC-Engine version's sprites are straight conversions of the arcade game's, whilst the Mega Drive sprites seem to have been specifically redrawn for this version (the sprite seems to have been made to look more muscular)

And yeah, the headless zombie seems to look just as bad in the arcade version as in the PC-Engine version

On another note, I just spent some time looking at the animation and Black_Tiger's sprites are not representative of the full picture, the Mega Drive version has one more frame than PC-Engine with the human punch, and it has 1 more frame of animation in the Wolf's walk (I did also notice that the wolf's jump has 1 more frame on the PC-Engine, as the jump and the dash attack re-use a frame on Mega Drive)

I've only checked the first stage (and that took long enough) but it seems to indicate that frame numbers have different actions winning out in either version.

the overall color is lower contrast -more subtle/smoother shading in the PCE version, which seems closer to the arcade

The ground colour is neither suble, nor is it close to the arcade (MD's is waay closer in this area), the sprite shading is certainly more suble, but is also lacking in variety in some areas (I don't like the human's much, dragons are much better on PC-Engine though, as are the wolves IMO), the monument colour is definitely closer to the arcade version.

[kool kitty89]

It doesn't look like tanned skin to me (especially the face), the colour and tone is very lifeless, and very un-humanlike, similar to a bronze statue, or carved wood, the arcade versions colour is a little lighter.

They may have tried to get as close as possible to the arcade colors within the limits of the 9-bit RGB master palette of the PCE. (which seems to be the case for most of the sprites)

Then again, real-world color of the actual displayed graphics will depend a lot on the monitor/TV used too, along with the video encoder -for composite/s-video.

The ground colour is neither suble, nor is it close to the arcade (MD's is waay closer in this area), the sprite shading is certainly more suble, but is also lacking in variety in some areas (I don't like the human's much, dragons are much better on PC-Engine though, as are the wolves IMO), the monument colour is definitely closer to the arcade version.

Yes, the BG color (and overall graphics/detail) is very inconsistent on the PCE game. (and much closer to the arcade on the MD) I was speaking specifically about the sprites with the color comment.

Is the PCE version 512kB or just 256 kB?
In any case, it's certainly not like Afterburner II on the MD and PCE. (and it's also obviously much better than golden axe on the PCE )

[Thenewguy]

Both versions seem to be 512k

[ApolloBoy]

Finally, I don't believe Ghouls n' Ghosts was actually among the 1989 releases either, and possibly not even 1990 (Apolloboy mentioned it was released in 1991 in another thread), so some of these software comparisons are still problematic. (rfgeneration isn't flawless either as some of the dates seem to be primarily based on the copyright date rather than an official release date)

I was actually talking about the SMS version, the Genesis version was released in 1989 although it wasn't a launch title.

[Black_Tiger]

It doesn't look like tanned skin to me (especially the face), the colour and tone is very lifeless, and very un-humanlike, similar to a bronze statue, or carved wood, the arcade versions colour is a little lighter.

Are you looking at Magic Engine screen shots? Under real hardware, the colors are more balanced.

On another note, I just spent some time looking at the animation and Black_Tiger's sprites are not representative of the full picture, the Mega Drive version has one more frame than PC-Engine with the human punch, and it has 1 more frame of animation in the Wolf's walk (I did also notice that the wolf's jump has 1 more frame on the PC-Engine, as the jump and the dash attack re-use a frame on Mega Drive)

Those sprite sheets were made by awack. I believe that they were supposed to be from the HuCard version. Separate from player frames, there's the boss growing, special effects, smoke cloud, etc that are little to no animation and very little detail in the Genesis version.

I've only checked the first stage (and that took long enough) but it seems to indicate that frame numbers have different actions winning out in either version.

The ground colour is neither suble, nor is it close to the arcade (MD's is waay closer in this area), the sprite shading is certainly more suble, but is also lacking in variety in some areas (I don't like the human's much, dragons are much better on PC-Engine though, as are the wolves IMO), the monument colour is definitely closer to the arcade version.

Did you play through both versions? The CD and HuCard versions are different.

Are you also trying to judge the entire game based on the first stage alone? The first stage is the weakest in the PCE versions. The rest look much better in general, but especially compared to other versions. The PCE versions also have the destructible obstacles missing from the Genesis version.

Separate from preference in overall colors being used for specific elements, the PC Engine version is fully shaded (the Genesis version has NES quality shaded in most places). But outside of the first stage background, I think most people would find the PCE versions' color better overall anyway.

[sheath]

I didn't even realize that the HuCard and CD versions were different when I picked up the CD a few years ago. I didn't even notice after using Magic Engine to make a comparison movie that included the HuCard, CD, Genesis and both versions on the Sega Classics Collection. Now I want the HuCard because I am convinced it is better than the buggy CD version, but dang is it expensive!

[Black_Tiger]

I didn't even realize that the HuCard and CD versions were different when I picked up the CD a few years ago. I didn't even notice after using Magic Engine to make a comparison movie that included the HuCard, CD, Genesis and both versions on the Sega Classics Collection. Now I want the HuCard because I am convinced it is better than the buggy CD version, but dang is it expensive!

It's pretty cheap, there must only be overpriced copies up at the moment where you're looking. I bought it new(!)/sealed(!) a couple years ago for <$30 and even a RARE(!) complete bootleg was pretty cheap. I think that the HuCard version is better overall other than the missing sound samples. But it's hard to keep track of which version looks better in different ways, since one isn't consistently better than the other.

[sheath]

I was even willing to overlook the frequent mid-level loading of the CD version for the better animation of the CD version. But for some reason I think the Level 3 Cave boss, I call it a snail lizard, is impossible to even hit in that version. If anybody could help me out with that I would greatly appreciate it.

The HuCards I have seen on ebay are anywhere from $20 card only to $50 complete. I know, I thought it was less expensive too.

[kool kitty89]

Are you looking at Magic Engine screen shots? Under real hardware, the colors are more balanced.

Would that be for composite or RGB? (it would be rather odd if an emulator got the color wrong for raw RGB . . . it IS a plain 9-bit RGB palette after all, so not prone to emulation errors/limitations in the manner that proprietary chroma/luma or YUV based palettes are -like Atari VCS, A8/5200, 7800, VIC, C64, NES, TMS9918, etc)

[sheath]

Magic Engine messes up the colors sometimes. All of the sprites seem to be smoothed some how. I thought all PCE/Turbos needed to be modded to use RGB.

[Kamahl]

Am I the only one that things the Master System dragon looks the best? That hard shading is badass.

[sheath]

I really like the Master System game, even with the choppy animation and slowdown I just like the game, but I played it long before I ever saw Altered Beast in the Arcades or on the Genesis.