SegaCD = Greatest CD add on?

[tomaitheous]

ad2101 can probably testify to this, but it's hard to find anything good at the local used retro store for SegaCD here. There's always a bunch of crap. Maybe someone's sniping all the good stuff for themselves

I always check through the Segacd games, no matter what. Saturn seems to be the same way too.

Side note: I saw virtual racing cart complete for $5 yesterday. But I passed on it.

[TheEdge]

FMV IS STILL THE FUTURE!!!!

Mad Dog McCree Gunslinger Pack

http://www.gamespot.com/wii/action/m...ack/index.html

[Chilly Willy]

I look at the question this way: which CD add-on changed the base the most, adding the most to its ability to deliver fun? The answer is clear - the SEGA CD. It added the ability to make games larger than 4 MB total size; it added Red Book audio; it added 8 channel stereo PCM sound; it added a graphics coprocessor for better scaling and rotation; and it added a processor which was more than 50% faster than the main processor.

[Guyjin]

Well that's considering you can find Turbo CD games, I've never seen one in the wild.

yeah, that's the sucky thing about turbo collecting. Everything Turbo I own was aquired via the internets.

Hmm, I've never had that problem. Usually if the back of the box has a bunch of FMV pictures on it you can tell,

To be honest, I hardly look at the backs of boxes anyway. Even the worst game manages to sound like a blast on the back of it's box.

It's like the one time I wanted to get Castlevania for my Genesis but only bothered to remember the "Castle" part of the name and came home with Dark Castle instead. NO GOOD

ad2101 can probably testify to this, but it's hard to find anything good at the local used retro store for SegaCD here. There's always a bunch of crap. Maybe someone's sniping all the good stuff for themselves

yeah, that seems to be the case. On the rare occasion that I drag home a SegaCD, it's always just one - everything else was dookie.

Saturn seems to be the same way too.

not quite as much, though.

[sasuke]

I chose Sega CD.

Despite 90% of its games being FMV, it has some classics like Sonic CD, Lunar, and one of the best versions of Earthworm Jim.

TurboCD is pretty good, too (Dracula X, shooters). But, most of the good games are exclusive to Japan, while Sega CD games can still be bought in other countries for cheap.

JaguarCD I never played. Had no interest in Jaguar.

[kool kitty89]

I chose Sega CD.

Despite 90% of its games being FMV, it has some classics like Sonic CD, Lunar, and one of the best versions of Earthworm Jim.

JaguarCD I never played. Had no interest in Jaguar.

The FMV thing on the SCD is pretty blown out of proportion, significantly dewer than 1/2 were the interactive movie type games (consisting of almost nothing but cotscenes, like Dragons Lair, or other games with some traditional gameplay like a point and click adventure, but still excessive used of video scenes -such that they still took up the majority of gameplay time and involved some "interactive" scenes as well). Still, there were a significant number of more conventional games, maybe adding a couple cutscenes and/or using CD audio, but not excessively. (granted many of these included ports of games already on the genesis, but some of these were significantly different and often with interesting potions added in addition to music and the odd video -granted there were some cases where they could be considdered inferior to the Genny versions)


Chilly willy, I see what you mean, and I agree to an extent, at least outside Japan for the TG-16. Though it could have had more of an impact had the TG-16 been a big success. The Tech added to the SCD was certianly a difference and a technological advancement and offered games significantly different from the cart based console (granted in some cases this could be considdered a bad thing).
One difference from a tech standpoint was the PCE CD offered up to 2 MB of additional RAM (through the card slot), somthing the SCD was limited in. (only 512 kB of program RAM available) Other than that though, it didn't add much more than a CD drive to the existing hardware.

Then again, this is part of what made the Sega CD so expensive (granted the drive itsself would be, at least initially -later on 1x speed drives shouldn't be too bad), and also meant that in some ways the system was nearly a complete stand-alone console. (just some added video hardware -a full VDP- along with controller interface hardware and it would pretty much be done -granted you wouldn't have some of the ability of the current console to use the Genesis audio hardware or simpler ports of games running almost completely off the Genesis side -but you'd have advantages too, like using some of the abandoned features like the 256 color mode, but I digress...)


Anyway the Jag CD was kind of the same as the PCE one, except there wasn't a RAM expansion (there was a memory cart for game saves). There's the considderation that the Jag should have been CD based to begin with (cost wise though a slow 1x speed drive would have been the only practical solution at the time -of course they could upgrade on later revisions) This would be in addition to other issues with that console, both hardware and management related. (some of which were either or, better dev tools compensating for some bugs and flaws, or some of these could be corrected; the overall quickest/simples change would be replacing the 68000 with a 68EC020)
I'm digressing again, still interesting to compare the 3 though.

I think overall (comparing all regions) the SCD was the most successful and most revolutionary overall, but had some shartcomings and some unfortunate marketing decisions. (they really should have had a failsafe for the FMV stuff and not pushed quite so hard, someone must have considdered the similar laserdisc fad in the '80s)

As for sheer sales, expansive library, and longevity, it would have to go to NEC's system, it was supported mainly by Japan, but it became a true successor to the original card based console and lasted long time. (not sure of the actual numbers but it may have sold better than the card based version and the SCD, given the larger disc library and some other previous statements)

[Chilly Willy]

The Tech added to the SCD was certianly a difference and a technological advancement and offered games significantly different from the cart based console (granted in some cases this could be considdered a bad thing).
One difference from a tech standpoint was the PCE CD offered up to 2 MB of additional RAM (through the card slot), somthing the SCD was limited in. (only 512 kB of program RAM available) Other than that though, it didn't add much more than a CD drive to the existing hardware.

Actually, looking at the CD Backup RAM cart that was made for use with the CD, it COULD be used as normal memory seeing as the cart uses regular RAM with a battery to make it hold its contents. So if you don't mind not having save states (or maybe limiting the amount of save space), you COULD use it as (up to) an extra 128 KB of RAM. What I'd do is use the backup code in the BIOS to make a BIG save file, then use that space directly as RAM rather than as a save file.

[tomaitheous]

Pffft! Just get yourself an Arcade card Pro and a TG cart slot (sacrifice a cheap "barney" converter) and build yourself an adapter. Instant 2megabytes of ram for you SegaCD Best of all, it's port based with a bunch of registers (WORD write port compatible too) for each of the four ports and 16bit signed autoincrement address regs. No need to use the cpu's address regs There's even an address range on the card that maps ports in repeated sequential layout. Four banks of 8k (1x8k per port reg). Perfect for VDP local DMA

[Black_Tiger]

I look at the question this way: which CD add-on changed the base the most, adding the most to its ability to deliver fun? The answer is clear - the SEGA CD. It added the ability to make games larger than 4 MB total size; it added Red Book audio; it added 8 channel stereo PCM sound; it added a graphics coprocessor for better scaling and rotation; and it added a processor which was more than 50% faster than the main processor.

Specs and potential are one thing, but if you compare the difference between each console's released CD games versus its cart games, the PCE CD had much more of an impact/delivered more fun in the end.

If the Mega-CD was released early on and was such a hit that buyers and developers switched to favoring CDs, then it would've been the same deal.

[kool kitty89]

Specs and potential are one thing, but if you compare the difference between each console's released CD games versus its cart games, the PCE CD had much more of an impact/delivered more fun in the end.

If the Mega-CD was released early on and was such a hit that buyers and developers switched to favoring CDs, then it would've been the same deal.

True, but then again NES was pretty big in Japan (2nd to Nintendo) while Sega was pretty far down comparatively, otoh the TG-16 did rather poorly and I beleive the Turbo-CD/Duo even more so in the US/Europe. (other than imports I don't beleive the CD labrary was very impressive at all)

[Chilly Willy]

Specs and potential are one thing, but if you compare the difference between each console's released CD games versus its cart games, the PCE CD had much more of an impact/delivered more fun in the end.

Not the same thing. The PCE CD only changed the way the games were delivered. PCE carts were nasty pieces of crap, so naturally devs switched when they had an alternative. The games then proceeded along a natural evolution as devs got better at making PCE games. The CD had nothing to do with it beyond giving devs a better delivery medium.

[crazyteknohed]

Not the same thing. The PCE CD only changed the way the games were delivered. PCE carts were nasty pieces of crap, so naturally devs switched when they had an alternative. The games then proceeded along a natural evolution as devs got better at making PCE games. The CD had nothing to do with it beyond giving devs a better delivery medium.

I kind of made the same point on page two. Cue Thomaitheous refuting all that you've said...

[tomaitheous]

I kind of made the same point on page two. Cue Thomaitheous refuting all that you've said...

What? Are you still butt-hurt about that? Get over it.

[Chilly Willy]

Yes, I noticed that...

And the main reason why most hucards aren't larger than 4megs, aside from a few exceptions, is because the PCE adopted the CD addon very early on. I mean, the CD addon came out in '88. By '90, more than half of the games coming out were CD for the system and only increased.

Which is just my point - the CD was a better delivery medium, and that's it. There was nothing beyond a cheaper medium to the PCE CD. It didn't improve games beyond making it cheaper to make bigger games.

The SEGA CD had that as well (cheaper to make bigger games), but it wasn't the ONLY selling point. So it was the better of the two add-ons.

[tomaitheous]

The SEGA CD had that as well (cheaper to make bigger games), but it wasn't the ONLY selling point. So it was the better of the two add-ons.

Yeah, it wasn't the only selling point for the MegaCD, but it couldn't have been either. Sega was fighting an uphill battle in Japan. Being "on par" with the competitor with just CD storage and CDDA capability wasn't going to cut it. And in the US, getting Sega customers/fans to shell out $300 without being directly comparable to the SNES in certain video capabilities would have been pretty risky. And I'm sure they didn't want to be seen as copying the competitor. I wonder how much it would have cut cost is they did.

And after all those capabilities... the best games (in my opinion) on the SegaCD/MegaCD are the ones that don't take advantage of the ASIC(scaling/rotation) or FMV (the extra processor).

Putting B_T's comments back into context. If the MegaCD were released *early* on like the PCE CD. Released in '88 like the PCE CD. CDDA audio was miles ahead of cart music and the fact games could have voice overlays was incredible back then. And then there's still the huge storage benefit. It would have been a significant upgrade.

PCE carts were nasty pieces of crap

Are you referring to rom size or looks?

If you're referring to size, hell even FC carts started out as 32k PRG-rom's and 8k CHR-rom. By the end of the FC's life, mappers supported 1megabyte rom for PRG and CHR. If the CD was not released and/or early on, logic dictates that Hucards would take the very same evolution as FC and even MD. And actually, they still did. There were 2,3,4,6,8, and 20megabit hucard sizes. After all, NEC had been manufacturing processors, ic's, and ram/rom long before the PC-Engine even came out and continued to do so afterwards. So there's even of less reason why the hucard sizes wouldn't increase.

Which is just my point - the CD was a better delivery medium, and that's it. There was nothing beyond a cheaper medium to the PCE CD. It didn't improve games beyond making it cheaper to make bigger games.

Well.. CDDA for music and speech, and ADPCM chip with it's own 64k of ram. I'd say those were a step up from the cartridge based development. Storage space wasn't overly utilized, but contents/space of CD games were more than the current cart sizes out at the time (PCE or MD). I'd say those three things improved games.