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NEC PC-Engine/SuperGrafx => PC Engine/SuperGrafx Discussion => Topic started by: Dicer on May 07, 2014, 05:40:55 AM
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Just wondering and can't seem to find much info....
Thanks in advance.
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Just wondering and can't seem to find much info....
Because there isn't much of any. :)
Lots of people toss around the 11 million figure for Japan, but it's unclear whether that includes all the various models.
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Japanese wikipedia sez:
GamePro.com reported sales of 2.5 million for the US and 7.5 million for all other regions (which are composed almost entirely of Japan) for a total of 10 million worldwide.
However, the Asahi Newspaper (Japan's biggest newspaper) reported in an article from 2001 that the PC Engine sold 5.8 million worldwide.
And Famitsu (Japan's biggest gaming magazine) reported domestic Japanese sales of 3.92 million HuCard systems and 1.92 million CD systems including all variants.
I would bet that the Asahi Newspaper and Famitsu are both right, meaning that there were a little under 2 million systems sold in the US, and PCE Duo sales were added to both figures in Famitsu's report. The GamePro numbers reek of being estimated on the spot, and 7.5 million sounds high to me just based on how much PCE stuff seems to be floating around the market in Japan compared to other systems.
NEC has also been directly quoted as saying that the PC-FX sold 1/50th as much as the PC Engine, and PC-FX sales are said to be around 100k, so that adds up. Although the 100k figure might be derived from the assumption of 5 million PCE sales plus that 1/50th figure.
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How times have changed.
The Wii U is a "failure" with over 6 million lifetime sale and counting.
The PCE was one of the biggest success stories in Japan in its day and worldwide sales were approximately 7 million.
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Seems low...but I'll take it interest was sparked by the Nintendo financial report which has numbers and I know the PCE was competition for Fami/mega drive just wanted to see where it sat over there.
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Japanese wikipedia sez:
GamePro.com reported sales of 2.5 million for the US and 7.5 million for all other regions (which are composed almost entirely of Japan) for a total of 10 million worldwide.
However, the Asahi Newspaper (Japan's biggest newspaper) reported in an article from 2001 that the PC Engine sold 5.8 million worldwide.
And Famitsu (Japan's biggest gaming magazine) reported domestic Japanese sales of 3.92 million HuCard systems and 1.92 million CD systems including all variants.
I would bet that the Asahi Newspaper and Famitsu are both right, meaning that there were a little under 2 million systems sold in the US, and PCE Duo sales were added to both figures in Famitsu's report. The GamePro numbers reek of being estimated on the spot, and 7.5 million sounds high to me just based on how much PCE stuff seems to be floating around the market in Japan compared to other systems.
NEC has also been directly quoted as saying that the PC-FX sold 1/50th as much as the PC Engine, and PC-FX sales are said to be around 100k, so that adds up. Although the 100k figure might be derived from the assumption of 5 million PCE sales plus that 1/50th figure.
Those are some pretty good estimates for Japanese sales, but "a little under 2 million" US sales sounds extremely optimistic to me. I've heard a 900k number mentioned before, for US TG16 sales, plus 30-50k each for the CD and Duo (though some think the Duo sold more than that). Even if those estimates for CD and Duo sales are a bit low, there's no question that in the US they only sold a fraction as much as the TG16, which didn't sell very well itself. I can't see 2 million as a possible total number.
And if those two reports you mention are accurate, it probably didn't. I mean, 5.8 million worldwide, for all models? That does sound a bit low, but if US sales are a million total for all models, and Japanese sales are 3.9 million + some fraction of 1.9 million, it adds up. The big question is, what's the breakdown of that 1.9 million number, how much of it is overlap... but there's no answer to that I'm sure.
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I agree that a million TOTAL for TG-16 + TG-CD + TurboDUO is much more likely than 1.5-2 million figure that floats around.
Don't forget that companies are always playing around with numbers, and don't always report units actually sold to paying customers, but instead report number of units shipped to retail stores.
Anyway, I'm very conservative when it comes to estimating TG-16/DUO sales.
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I agree that a million TOTAL for TG-16 + TG-CD + TurboDUO is much more likely than 1.5-2 million figure that floats around.
Don't forget that companies are always playing around with numbers, and don't always report units actually sold to paying customers, but instead report number of units shipped to retail stores.
Anyway, I'm very conservative when it comes to estimating TG-16/DUO sales.
Don't forget that NEC especially, and later TTi, both manufactured way more than the market demanded initially and that it continued to be sold off officially through 2001. How many of those "official" figures do you think were calculated after 2001?
We've never had anything near solid evidence that TE/GT, LT, LaserActive, etc were included either. Judging by how common TE/GTs in particular are, their numbers alone must be high.
Don't forget that most rough figures have been shown to have been taken out of context, especially the "I think I heard once" type stuff. Like how a comment by Vic Ireland was not so long ago used as definitive proof for a very accurate sales figure of Turbo-CD units... unless you actually think it through for a second (most didn't). :P
The fact of the matter is that because of the time the 16-bit gen took place, we'll never have accurate sales numbers for Genesis and SNES. There wasn't any kind of definitive system in place to track this kind of stuff and the Turbo/PCE is all the more mysterious.
Console War enthusiasts are the ones who obsess over uncertain figures and like to spin them to favor the console they've affiliated themselves to.
How times have changed.
The Wii U is a "failure" with over 6 million lifetime sale and counting.
The PCE was one of the biggest success stories in Japan in its day and worldwide sales were approximately 7 million.
The problem is that media and business enthusiasts are more interested in commercial dominance than video game systems' video game playing ability.
I don't consider the Sega Master System or Turbo libraries to be failures. They may not have dominated the mass appeal market, which as you pointed out has radically changed in size over time, but they were very successful as video game experiences. Both consoles went the distance and saw game releases spanning a console generation length of time and both libraries are much larger than necessary. How many games did the average person own? More than 100? How many great games justifies a console? Very few for me, but both the SMS and Turbo are loaded with them and they remain memorable and entertaining to this day.
I'm not very familiar with the Wii U, but the way I understand it, more games are accurately playable than the disastrous motion-only Wii library and there seems to already be more than enough games normies consider great. So by modern game standards, the Wii U could be discontinued immediately and still eternally be a success.
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Working Designs said there were only about 20,000 Turbo CD units in the U.S.
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Working Designs said there were only about 20,000 Turbo CD units in the U.S.
Exactly. :wink:
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it's probable that the pc engine units sold in japan was between 6-8 million on the basis that megadrive had installed user base of 3.5million ( distant third) in japan and based on accounts, pc engine was very popular and second to super famicom which had 17 million user installed base in japan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles_(Japan)
but by references over the years, megadrive was a distant third in their home market, nowadays, even buying both consoles and games for megadrive from Asian countries and japan are not that common unlike pc engine and super famicom from online auctions and physical stores.
you also got to consider Taiwan, Hong Kong and unofficially china as well as licensed ver of pc engine in korea contributing a million here and there, as well as few tens of thousands unofficially imported to European countries
so, 9-10 million is possible when you take this account
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I agree that a million TOTAL for TG-16 + TG-CD + TurboDUO is much more likely than 1.5-2 million figure that floats around.
Don't forget that companies are always playing around with numbers, and don't always report units actually sold to paying customers, but instead report number of units shipped to retail stores.
Anyway, I'm very conservative when it comes to estimating TG-16/DUO sales.
Don't forget that NEC especially, and later TTi, both manufactured way more than the market demanded initially and that it continued to be sold off officially through 2001. How many of those "official" figures do you think were calculated after 2001?
We've never had anything near solid evidence that TE/GT, LT, LaserActive, etc were included either. Judging by how common TE/GTs in particular are, their numbers alone must be high.
Don't forget that most rough figures have been shown to have been taken out of context, especially the "I think I heard once" type stuff. Like how a comment by Vic Ireland was not so long ago used as definitive proof for a very accurate sales figure of Turbo-CD units... unless you actually think it through for a second (most didn't). :P
The fact of the matter is that because of the time the 16-bit gen took place, we'll never have accurate sales numbers for Genesis and SNES. There wasn't any kind of definitive system in place to track this kind of stuff and the Turbo/PCE is all the more mysterious.
Console War enthusiasts are the ones who obsess over uncertain figures and like to spin them to favor the console they've affiliated themselves to.
I don't think TTi, and later TZD, sold too many DUO's.
An already niche market was now completely reduced to a handful of crazy bastards. Us. The TurboList. But most of us had the hardware already.
LaserActive? I'm not silly to suggest that a mere handful were ever sold. Period.
LT? Negligible, as well (in Japan).
TE? I'm afraid it wouldn't be a significant amount. Not significant to radically change any estimates, anyway. I feel that TE was certainly more popular than LA...but that's not saying much.
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I still think Asahi Newspaper's 5.8 million global sales quote is probably accurate, or at least very close.
I checked again, and it appears that Famitsu's domestic Japanese numbers, 3.92 million HuCard systems and 1.92 million CD systems, puts Duos exclusively in the CD systems group. Searching for info about Duo sales in particular, I found this webpage (http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/tetuya/FXHP/pcengine/hard/duo.html) which says that the Duo systems sold about one million (and that the CD-ROM ad-ons sold about one million, which fits the 1.92 figure well). That seems reasonable to me.
So that would mean that Japan has just under five million independently playable systems, just under two million of which can play CD-ROM games. Put that together with Asahi's figure and the US has somewhere around 1 million. That sounds reasonable to me.
it's probable that the pc engine units sold in japan was between 6-8 million on the basis that megadrive had installed user base of 3.5million ( distant third) in japan and based on accounts, pc engine was very popular and second to super famicom which had 17 million user installed base in japan but by references over the years, megadrive was a distant third in their home market, nowadays, even buying both consoles and games for megadrive from Asian countries and japan are not that common unlike pc engine and super famicom from online auctions and physical stores.
It's a fallacy to assume that the sales of the 2nd place contender lies right in the middle of the 1st and the 3rd. Nintendo walloped everybody back then in sales, both with the Famicom and the Super Famicom. This is obvious when looking in used game stores and Goodwill-style recycle stores. Nintendo stuff is everywhere.
Also, I think that in 89, 90 and 91, the PC Engine was much stronger, but the Mega Drive crept up on it in the later years. 3.5 million Megadrives, 3.9 million PC Engines and another million Duos seems very believable to me based on availability in Japan.
You also can't really say much by comparing import demand for the systems, except that the Genesis was more popular in the US than Japan, and the PCE was more popular in Japan than the US. Not to mention, many Mega Drive games are region locked in a way that can't be defeated with a simple cart-port mod or a converter.
You also got to consider Taiwan, Hong Kong and unofficially china as well as licensed ver of pc engine in korea contributing a million here and there, as well as few tens of thousands unofficially imported to European countries
I would be shocked if sales in all regions other than the US/Canada and Japan exceeded even half a million. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even 100k. The Korean system is incredibly hard to come by. I mean, systems that sold in the 50-100k region (PC-FX, Supergrafx, Playdia) are far, far easier to locate.
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Dragon Quest had such an impact in Japan that it kicked off the RPG craze and inspired the launch day rule/law. It was the ultimate killer app for the time. The Famicom is supposed to have sold 19.3 million units and the Super Famicom 17.2 million units in Japan. Here's the reported sales of the most popular series* for the most popular consoles:
FC Dragon Quest: 1.5 million in Japan
FC Dragon Quest II: 2.4 million in Japan
FC Dragon Quest III: 3.8 million in Japan
FC Dragon Quest IV: 3.1 million in Japan
SFC Dragon Quest V: 2.8 million in Japan
SFC Dragon Quest VI: 3.2 million in Japan
*for reference, Super Mario 3 is reported to have sold 4 million copies after 5 years. I don't know if that includes the All Stars version.
lukester says that Tengai Makyou II sold 1 million copies. Considering how common it is, that is believable. But how is that possible if only 1.92 million CD-ROM units were sold? And if TMII only sold 1 million copies and less than 2 million people ever had the ability to potentially play it, then how did it manage to be ranked 12th by readers in Famitsu's all-time favorite game poll? How impressive could the 2003 budget remakes have been after disc based tech was old news? Is this definitive proof that Famitsu is a niche mag which caters to the small hardcore crowd?
I'm not saying that any of this proves anything, only that speculating is just that and is inconsistent.
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Regardless of the tastes of their readership, if there is any media source in Japan that was in a good position to get an accurate number from Hudson/NEC, it was famitsu. I can't find which issue it was, but apparently the figure comes from an issue published during the mid 90s.
Where did lukester get the figure for 1 million copies of TMII? I'm searching in Japanese and found an interesting summary:
Game-sales ranking website m-create.com says 158,620.
The game's director himself said 200,000.
Hudson said 300,000.
Hudson also announced later that the total sales of all Tengai series games combined is 2.2 million.
By the way, the number 5 game in that famitsu reader poll is an interactive novel called Machi. You know how many that apparently sold? 120,000.
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Working Designs said there were only about 20,000 Turbo CD units in the U.S.
Exactly. :wink:
What? Why is Vic's estimate of ~20k each for the Turbo CD and Duo not a plausible estimate? Sure, I think it might have been slightly higher, but I would not believe numbers over 50k for the Turbo CD for sure, and I just don't think that the Duo did better. They put some effort into trying to sell Duos, but it bombed HARD. If you think it did much better than Vic's estimates, I don't think there is any evidence to support it. Sorry, but that "one million TOTAL for US TG16+CD+Duo sales" number is something I find the most likely estimate of US sales, with the TG16 being at least 90% of that total. Do you have any actual facts behind your opinion that you think the Turbo CD and/or Duo sold significantly better than Vic thought?
As for the TurboExpress, though, yeah, that one is an unknown... is that included in TG16 sales, or not? I have no idea. Haven't seen any sales estimates for it before, either. I doubt it sold huge though, not at its price; probably not beyond the tens of thousands.
I agree that a million TOTAL for TG-16 + TG-CD + TurboDUO is much more likely than 1.5-2 million figure that floats around.
Don't forget that companies are always playing around with numbers, and don't always report units actually sold to paying customers, but instead report number of units shipped to retail stores.
Anyway, I'm very conservative when it comes to estimating TG-16/DUO sales.
Don't forget that NEC especially, and later TTi, both manufactured way more than the market demanded initially and that it continued to be sold off officially through 2001. How many of those "official" figures do you think were calculated after 2001?
We've never had anything near solid evidence that TE/GT, LT, LaserActive, etc were included either. Judging by how common TE/GTs in particular are, their numbers alone must be high.
Don't forget that most rough figures have been shown to have been taken out of context, especially the "I think I heard once" type stuff. Like how a comment by Vic Ireland was not so long ago used as definitive proof for a very accurate sales figure of Turbo-CD units... unless you actually think it through for a second (most didn't). :P
The fact of the matter is that because of the time the 16-bit gen took place, we'll never have accurate sales numbers for Genesis and SNES. There wasn't any kind of definitive system in place to track this kind of stuff and the Turbo/PCE is all the more mysterious.
Console War enthusiasts are the ones who obsess over uncertain figures and like to spin them to favor the console they've affiliated themselves to.
I don't think TTi, and later TZD, sold too many DUO's.
An already niche market was now completely reduced to a handful of crazy bastards. Us. The TurboList. But most of us had the hardware already.
LaserActive? I'm not silly to suggest that a mere handful were ever sold. Period.
LT? Negligible, as well (in Japan).
TE? I'm afraid it wouldn't be a significant amount. Not significant to radically change any estimates, anyway. I feel that TE was certainly more popular than LA...but that's not saying much.
Agreed on all points, unfortunately, esteban. The LaserActive sold nothing, the TurboExpress okay-ish but not great, and the LT wasn't released here and in Japan sold nothing either.
And yeah, I know TTI/TZD sold lots of over-produced games, but systems? If you say that they didn't have many Duos, I believe you.
I still think Asahi Newspaper's 5.8 million global sales quote is probably accurate, or at least very close.
I checked again, and it appears that Famitsu's domestic Japanese numbers, 3.92 million HuCard systems and 1.92 million CD systems, puts Duos exclusively in the CD systems group. Searching for info about Duo sales in particular, I found this webpage (http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/tetuya/FXHP/pcengine/hard/duo.html) which says that the Duo systems sold about one million (and that the CD-ROM ad-ons sold about one million, which fits the 1.92 figure well). That seems reasonable to me.
So that would mean that Japan has just under five million independently playable systems, just under two million of which can play CD-ROM games. Put that together with Asahi's figure and the US has somewhere around 1 million. That sounds reasonable to me.
Yeah, these numbers add up perfectly! That 900k number for US TG16 sales and under 100k for the TCD and Duo combined -- maybe 40k combined if we believe Vic, maybe a bit more if he was off by some, but certainly terrible.
it's probable that the pc engine units sold in japan was between 6-8 million on the basis that megadrive had installed user base of 3.5million ( distant third) in japan and based on accounts, pc engine was very popular and second to super famicom which had 17 million user installed base in japan but by references over the years, megadrive was a distant third in their home market, nowadays, even buying both consoles and games for megadrive from Asian countries and japan are not that common unlike pc engine and super famicom from online auctions and physical stores.
It's a fallacy to assume that the sales of the 2nd place contender lies right in the middle of the 1st and the 3rd. Nintendo walloped everybody back then in sales, both with the Famicom and the Super Famicom. This is obvious when looking in used game stores and Goodwill-style recycle stores. Nintendo stuff is everywhere.
Also, I think that in 89, 90 and 91, the PC Engine was much stronger, but the Mega Drive crept up on it in the later years. 3.5 million Megadrives, 3.9 million PC Engines and another million Duos seems very believable to me based on availability in Japan.
Also, remember that if your numbers are right, it's 3.5 million Genesises versus ~4.8 million Turbos, if 50% of that 1.9 million CD systems were Duo/R/RX models, as you say. That's a fair gap. What about the Sega CD and 32X, though? Are they included in that number, and how did they sell?
It is a little surprising that it apparently was that close, though. I also have always heard of how the Genesis finished far behind the Turbo in Japan, and 3.5 (maybe + CD and 32X) vs. ~5 million isn't as much of a gap as I would have thought. I mean, the PCE was the leading-selling system for a few years in the late '80s... but I guess the market was smaller then. And sure, it'd make sense that the Genesis would start selling better in the '90s as its game library improved, while the Turbo seems to have done best there in the late '80s.
Still though, I'm surprised that it's that close. Maybe NEC's switchover to CDs really did hurt them? I mean, with 4.8 million HuCard systems vs. 1.9 million CD systems, there were a lot more card systems out there... but the HuCard releases died out in 1993, for the most part. I know gameplay-wise there were good reasons to go over to CD, but it obviously limited the audience somewhat, though it really is a no-win situation -- do you help the original cartridge system more at the cost of the addon, or do you help that addon and hurt the original system? That generation Sega ended up doing more of the former, and NEC the latter. That probably caused issues for both of them, as Sega hurt its addons while NEC hurt its original system. Maybe Sega was hurt more, since the 32X debacle really hurt them badly while NEC's biggest problems in Japan were probably more about the PC-FX than the PCE/CD/SuperGrafx... but that's probably debatable.
The lesson really is that both Sega and NEC released too much hardware that generation. Keep things simpler, like Nintendo did, and it pays off... you split your market less!
You also can't really say much by comparing import demand for the systems, except that the Genesis was more popular in the US than Japan, and the PCE was more popular in Japan than the US. Not to mention, many Mega Drive games are region locked in a way that can't be defeated with a simple cart-port mod or a converter.
True.
You also got to consider Taiwan, Hong Kong and unofficially china as well as licensed ver of pc engine in korea contributing a million here and there, as well as few tens of thousands unofficially imported to European countries
I would be shocked if sales in all regions other than the US/Canada and Japan exceeded even half a million. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even 100k. The Korean system is incredibly hard to come by. I mean, systems that sold in the 50-100k region (PC-FX, Supergrafx, Playdia) are far, far easier to locate.
Yeah, those 'other' regions were very small sales-wise. They didn't add up to much at all for any platform.
Regardless of the tastes of their readership, if there is any media source in Japan that was in a good position to get an accurate number from Hudson/NEC, it was famitsu. I can't find which issue it was, but apparently the figure comes from an issue published during the mid 90s.
Where did lukester get the figure for 1 million copies of TMII? I'm searching in Japanese and found an interesting summary:
Game-sales ranking website m-create.com says 158,620.
The game's director himself said 200,000.
Hudson said 300,000.
Hudson also announced later that the total sales of all Tengai series games combined is 2.2 million.
By the way, the number 5 game in that famitsu reader poll is an interactive novel called Machi. You know how many that apparently sold? 120,000.
This sounds like the answer there to me, TMII didn't sell nearly a million copies.
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dp
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The Japanese magazine MEGA published 380,000 Mega CD units sold. I suspect that this is not part of the 3.5 million Mega Drives figure, though I don't have proof. Considering that the vast majority of Mega CD systems sold were add-ons, though, it would be brazenly disingenuous of Sega to add it to the number of Mega Drives without telling anybody.
The 32X barely sold at all in Japan. It was actually released two weeks after the Saturn, and on the same day as the Playstation. I can't find any figures for it, but it probably only sold in the low ten thousands, if that.
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I saw that someone posted 200k units for MegaCD (Japan). I don't remember the source.
Given the switch over from hueys to CDs, that number of total CD units doesn't seem to jive. I'd say 2mil for all CD addons (original, bundled original, Super CDROM). I'd say the Duo numbers aren't figured into that, especially considering they did another redesign (Duo-R/RX). Not to mention the release of the Arcade Cards (both version). I mean, cost of Heuys went down and if it WAS a larger consumer base - why didn't the hucard format expand over CD games from there? Size wasn't a limitation, and costs of roms came down. Plus, other form factors were possible (extended bumps and such, upgraded hardware on hucard, etc). Nintendo did this with the famicom. Was the sole fact that they could produce a higher profit margin with CD games, be enough to negate hucard consumer base? I mean, it's not like the Duo and CD consumers didn't have hucard support on their setups.
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Given the switch over from hueys to CDs, that number of total CD units doesn't seem to jive. I'd say 2mil for all CD addons (original, bundled original, Super CDROM). I'd say the Duo numbers aren't figured into that, especially considering they did another redesign (Duo-R/RX). Not to mention the release of the Arcade Cards (both version). I mean, cost of Heuys went down and if it WAS a larger consumer base - why didn't the hucard format expand over CD games from there? Size wasn't a limitation, and costs of roms came down. Plus, other form factors were possible (extended bumps and such, upgraded hardware on hucard, etc). Nintendo did this with the famicom. Was the sole fact that they could produce a higher profit margin with CD games, be enough to negate hucard consumer base? I mean, it's not like the Duo and CD consumers didn't have hucard support on their setups.
The 8kB Work RAM limitation on HuCARD games was getting very limiting in the PC Engine's later years. It was possible to include more RAM on the HuCARD(Populous is, as far as I know, the only game that did this) but that would have driven up manufacturing costs significantly for something most consumers still playing PC Engine after 1993 could already use without any additional hardware upgrades.
Street Fighter II' with it's 20Mb HuCARD retailed for ¥9800, which was ¥3000 more than a normal HuCARD game and ¥2000 more than a SCD game like Tengai Makyou II or Dracula X. SFII could do this because it was an extremely popular game, but lesser known games would have priced themselves out of the market. They would likely be able to lower this to ¥7800 but that would also make the profit margin significantly lower and the larger audience would not be enough to compensate at that time.
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Yeah, that sounds like the Sega CD numbers I've heard... and like a sadly plausible 32X estimate too. The thing sold okay in the US for a while, but doesn't seem to have done as well elsewhere. Of course, that ended up hurting Sega far more than it helped it, once they betrayed all those 32X buyers by ditching the system so early, but that's how it went.
On the note of numbers though, accurate worldwide Sega CD sales numbers are another thing that seem to remain somewhat elusive...
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I saw that someone posted 200k units for MegaCD (Japan). I don't remember the source.
Given the switch over from hueys to CDs, that number of total CD units doesn't seem to jive. I'd say 2mil for all CD addons (original, bundled original, Super CDROM). I'd say the Duo numbers aren't figured into that, especially considering they did another redesign (Duo-R/RX). Not to mention the release of the Arcade Cards (both version). I mean, cost of Heuys went down and if it WAS a larger consumer base - why didn't the hucard format expand over CD games from there? Size wasn't a limitation, and costs of roms came down. Plus, other form factors were possible (extended bumps and such, upgraded hardware on hucard, etc). Nintendo did this with the famicom. Was the sole fact that they could produce a higher profit margin with CD games, be enough to negate hucard consumer base? I mean, it's not like the Duo and CD consumers didn't have hucard support on their setups.
For what it's worth, I've found two places quoting that famitsu figure of 1.92 million units, and they both state clearly "Duo systems included". At the least, that means that the famitsu report itself probably had that information.
This might not win me much affection around here, but I suspect that the story goes something like this: in the 80s, the base PCE did well because the system came ahead of the others, right when the Famicom was starting to look like old hat in Japan, and because it had high-quality arcade ports and action games. But by 1992, the Super Famicom and the Mega Drive were both starting to build strong libraries, and the base PCE had a hard time distinguishing itself against them. It had no real killer app (sorry Bonk) and the hardware alone didn't have the juice to make the games stand out.
It's the CD system that set the PCE apart and gave it its identity in those later years. I think it's likely that NEC and third parties alike realized that the hucard market was going to dry up no matter what, but the CD system could hang on for a few more years. Thankfully, it did well in that time; in fact, it basically cornered the early 90s CD-console market in Japan. The Mega CD, founded on a small Mega Drive user-base, late to the game, and even later to get good software, was no threat.
If you want to talk about Sega finishing far behind NEC in Japan, the Mega CD vs. the PCE-CD is where the story is.
But don't forget that the PCE-CD expansion was expensive as hell in Japan, too. The Duo was 59,800 yen when it came out in September 1991. Yes, that's about $600. The Duo-R was about $400 in March 1993. The RX was $300, but that was in June 1994, when the next generation was right around the corner. So even if the PCE-CD thrived, its market was small because there weren't that many people who could afford it.
tl;dr - The abundance of CD software is due to HuCards essentially being given up on and the PCE-CD dominating the CD-console market at the time, even if it wasn't as big as the cartridge console market.
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I personally don't care about numbers, in relation to winning or popularity or whatever, I just find it really strange that the consumer base for hucards was potentially twice that of CDs, yet they pretty much dropped the format. If you took the 2 million number and said half that was to for all Duo units, then that leaves 1million for addon units. That's roughly 1/4 of the Core base purchased the CD unit. What about the other 3/4? Did they just abandoned the system? Or did NEC just abandon them?
The 8kB Work RAM limitation on HuCARD games was getting very limiting in the PC Engine's later years.
The cost of ram was cheap. We're talking about a small amount of kilobytes, not megabytes. Even NES/Famicom carts added 8k of ram. NEC had bigger purchasing power than Nintendo, and even manufactured ram. The cost of adding 8k or 16k more ram, into the hucard, wouldn't have been anymore expensive than Nintendo doing it (and probably less so). Surface mount ram from back then, easily fits right into the hucard format (even without a bump). Nintendo also did complex mapper chips and audio upgrades. Both are just as feasible on the hucard format.
Street Fighter II' with it's 20Mb HuCARD retailed for ¥9800, which was ¥3000 more than a normal HuCARD game and ¥2000 more than a SCD game like Tengai Makyou II or Dracula X.
SF2 was a special case scenario. The hucard format was pretty much dead by then; it was released and marketed as a special item (just looking at the special case, gives the first indication) and attached to a very popular license. But on the tech side, the mapper is simple and cheap (probably simpler than any mapper on the NES) and a couple of roms (nothing special there). If the hucard format hadn't been replaced by CD, both the cost and the sale price wouldn't be that high for large or upgraded hucards.
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Perhaps a worthwhile thing to look into would be sales of Japanese hucards over time.
If I'm right about NEC/Hudson giving up on the base PCE and hucards as a viable format (which of course I'm just speculating), then a sharp downturn in Hucard sales in late 90/91 would be the kind of thing that would have led them to that decision.
The thing about mappers and extra RAM is that they just make hucards moderately more competitive. The CD-ROM, though, was something that Sega and Nintendo couldn't mimic at all with their base hardware and would have a hard time accomplishing with their own expansions.
EDIT: Hucard sales figures aren't going to be easy to find, and who knows how accurate they'll be. But one interesting thing I was able to put together is the number of Hucard titles sold in Japan in each year:
87: 5
88: 19
89: 61
90: 91
91: 61
92: 29
93: 9
94: 2
Also of interest:
PCE launch: October 87
Mega Drive launch: October 88
PCE CD launch: December 88
Super Famicom launch: November 1990
Mega CD launch: December 1991
Based on these figures alone, it would seem that the Super Famicom killed the hucard. But there may be more to it than that.
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Yeah, looking at those numbers, it definitely looks like the SNES killed the PCE HuCard system. NEC's response was the Super CD and a new focus on CDs, and as you say, it worked... but only somewhat; only a quarter of HuCard system owners upgraded, apparently, and the CD userbase was only 1.92 million versus 4.9 million for the HuCard (if 1 million of that 1.9 million was Duo systems). Some of those Duo buyers probably were HuCard system owners too, of course, but there's no way to know how many.
But overall, I'd guess that HuCards died both because of the SNES doing so well, and also at the same time because NEC's response to that was to phase out HuCard support in favor of CDs.
SF2 was a special case scenario. The hucard format was pretty much dead by then; it was released and marketed as a special item (just looking at the special case, gives the first indication) and attached to a very popular license. But on the tech side, the mapper is simple and cheap (probably simpler than any mapper on the NES) and a couple of roms (nothing special there). If the hucard format hadn't been replaced by CD, both the cost and the sale price wouldn't be that high for large or upgraded hucards.
What special case? Do you just mean that it uses a dual-jewel case? That's true, but plenty of CD games use dual-jewel cases even though they have only one disc; SFII is in that same category, a game which didn't really need a dual-jewel, but they decided to add extra paper stuff (the second book) in the case in order to justify a larger case. The case itself, of course, is a standard case (with the jewelcase with HuCard plastic insert), of the type they started using sometime in '91 and stuck with until they stopped releasing HuCards.
I personally don't care about numbers, in relation to winning or popularity or whatever, I just find it really strange that the consumer base for hucards was potentially twice that of CDs, yet they pretty much dropped the format. If you took the 2 million number and said half that was to for all Duo units, then that leaves 1million for addon units. That's roughly 1/4 of the Core base purchased the CD unit. What about the other 3/4? Did they just abandoned the system? Or did NEC just abandon them?
This is a good question, but I'd say NEC abandoned them. Look at NEC's release list on the system, NEC pretty much went almost exclusively over to CDs in Japan in 1991. Between 1991 and 1994, NEC only released four HuCard games -- Genji Tsuushin Agedama and Morita Shogi PC in '91, SFII in '93, and 21 Emon in '94. That's it. NEC wanted people to buy CD systems, because that's what they were more interested in at the time, or because they thought it'd be more clearly different and compete better as SamIAm says, as the SNES took off.
Hudson had better HuCard support during that period (they released 11 + 2 SuperGrafx HuCard games in '91, 9 HuCard games in '92, and 5 in '93), but they too gradually increased their number of CD games versus HuCards, and dropped the HuCard system at the end of '93. And instead of going all-PCECD, what Hudson did was start supporting the SNES in '92, and they moved the kind of stuff they'd had on HuCard over to the SNES, instead of the Turbo CD. That says something.
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What? Why is Vic's estimate of ~20k each for the Turbo CD and Duo not a plausible estimate?
You can't take anything he says too seriously and have to interpret it all with an understanding of his personality. As it is relayed by people, it was a casual comment about a memory of a casual comment decades ago. Taking it as people post it, it is hard to take as accurate just because it fits perfectly into Vic Ireland's perpetual "nothing is my fault/I did everything right/the rest of the world failed me" mentality. Even taking his word, as people put it, as accurate, when would this conversation have taken place? After the Turbo line was handed over to TZD? After it was finally officially discontinued altogether? As it is reported by people, it sounds like a conversation that occurred while the Turbo line was still current, which was before Turbo-CDs had finished selling and likely before it was $150 at the same time the Tg-16 was <$100.
But I've never found that quote the way people retell it. Even if he did tell it that way somewhere else, 1up's description adds interpretation to the actual quote they use and isn't as clear a portrayal as people interpret it to be. But between Vic's reputation, the fact that he may be telling varying versions of this story, that people are interpreting a possible interpretation of fourth hand facts by 1up... along with the fact of how unlikely it is that he had this conversation after the Turbo-CD had finished being sold... plus the obvious (to those not jumping to wild conclusions from select musings) fact that we never saw a surplus of MIB NOS Turbo-CDs floating around the internet or anywhere else...
-all we know for a certainty is that we cannot know and how likely it is that we will never be able to piece together accurate figures.
Sure, I think it might have been slightly higher, but I would not believe numbers over 50k for the Turbo CD for sure, and I just don't think that the Duo did better. They put some effort into trying to sell Duos, but it bombed HARD. If you think it did much better than Vic's estimates, I don't think there is any evidence to support it. Sorry, but that "one million TOTAL for US TG16+CD+Duo sales" number is something I find the most likely estimate of US sales, with the TG16 being at least 90% of that total.
Even if it's not "over 50k" and is simply just 50k, the margin of error between 20 and 50 is 150%.
Do you have any actual facts behind your opinion that you think the Turbo CD and/or Duo sold significantly better than Vic thought?
Why are you asking me for facts to counter wild speculation?
I was there when the Turbo-CD launched and have closely followed the Turbo and PCE line till this day. I've monitored Turbo sales and chatted with Turbo fans about everything Turbo since your first video game system launched. Going by everything I've seen and heard, it does seem like sales of the Turbo-CD must be higher, but for all I know there may only be 2000 in existence. Just as an inside source has "proven" that there are only around 150 copies of Magical Chase in existence. But I'm open to collecting actual evidence and understand that any proof of sales is only proof of a minimum number.
As for the TurboExpress, though, yeah, that one is an unknown... is that included in TG16 sales, or not? I have no idea. Haven't seen any sales estimates for it before, either. I doubt it sold huge though, not at its price; probably not beyond the tens of thousands.
Again, you seem to be learning history from wiki articles and putting together your (Turbo) knowledge by glossing over dubious stats without thinking them through. The TurboExpress, like the Turbo-CD (and so many other systems), may have been pricey at launch for early adopters like myself, but they soon dropped in price (and continued to) and a TG-16 + Turbo-CD retailed in the U.S. for what the SNES retailed in my area around the same time.
The lesson really is that both Sega and NEC released too much hardware that generation. Keep things simpler, like Nintendo did, and it pays off... you split your market less!
This seems to tie-in more with your usual perspective which has nothing to do with the subjects you're talking about and is all about <Nintendo. But this last statement of yours is still contradicted by the Nintendo 64 bombing so hard immediately after. :wink:
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You can't take anything he says too seriously and have to interpret it all with an understanding of his personality. As it is relayed by people, it was a casual comment about a memory of a casual comment decades ago.
Sure, as I remember it he was talking about how his Turbo CD releases sold very well for the tiny userbase of the US Turbo CD.
Yeah, I'm sure I've linked this before, but here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=17589981&postcount=190 (a reply to me, 4 1/2 years ago, in fact! :p) It's true that it's just his recollection, not a statement of proven fact. But he is one of the few people outside of NEC USA who might actually know something about how the system sold!
Taking it as people post it, it is hard to take as accurate just because it fits perfectly into Vic Ireland's perpetual "nothing is my fault/I did everything right/the rest of the world failed me" mentality. Even taking his word, as people put it, as accurate, when would this conversation have taken place? After the Turbo line was handed over to TZD? After it was finally officially discontinued altogether? As it is reported by people, it sounds like a conversation that occurred while the Turbo line was still current, which was before Turbo-CDs had finished selling and likely before it was $150 at the same time the Tg-16 was <$100.
But I've never found that quote the way people retell it. Even if he did tell it that way somewhere else, 1up's description adds interpretation to the actual quote they use and isn't as clear a portrayal as people interpret it to be. But between Vic's reputation, the fact that he may be telling varying versions of this story, that people are interpreting a possible interpretation of fourth hand facts by 1up... along with the fact of how unlikely it is that he had this conversation after the Turbo-CD had finished being sold... plus the obvious (to those not jumping to wild conclusions from select musings) fact that we never saw a surplus of MIB NOS Turbo-CDs floating around the internet or anywhere else...
-all we know for a certainty is that we cannot know and how likely it is that we will never be able to piece together accurate figures.
Hmm, an old conversation? Has he said this multiple times, beyond that post there? If so that'd be interesting, to see if he was consistent.
Even if it's not "over 50k" and is simply just 50k, the margin of error between 20 and 50 is 150%.
That's true, but both of those are still pretty small numbers. I said that to account for the possibility that his estimates were low. Maybe he remembers right though, I don't know. SamIAm's 5.9 million worldwide, ~1 million of that probably in the US, number doesn't allow for much beyond 100k MAX for the Duo+Turbo CD, so I said that as an upper bound, but it was probably less than that.
Why are you asking me for facts to counter wild speculation?
Wild speculation? Vic Ireland was in a position where he should have had some knowledge about how well the Turbo CD and Turbo Duo were selling, though. He had fairly close contacts to NEC for a while. If anyone outside of NEC or Hudson would know something, it'd be him.
I was there when the Turbo-CD launched and have closely followed the Turbo and PCE line till this day. I've monitored Turbo sales and chatted with Turbo fans about everything Turbo since your first video game system launched. Going by everything I've seen and heard, it does seem like sales of the Turbo-CD must be higher, but for all I know there may only be 2000 in existence. Just as an inside source has "proven" that there are only around 150 copies of Magical Chase in existence. But I'm open to collecting actual evidence and understand that any proof of sales is only proof of a minimum number.
As they say though, personal experience doesn't mean all that much... and if the Turbo CD or Duo really had sold much better than they did, they wouldn't be so rare today! I know the system has diehard fans, but so does the Jaguar CD. That hasn't changed the probable fact that there were probably only 20,000 Jag CDs ever made --a number which is only half or less of Vic's Turbo CD + Duo estimate, by the way, since he said ~20k each.
Again, you seem to be learning history from wiki articles and putting together your (Turbo) knowledge by glossing over dubious stats without thinking them through. The TurboExpress, like the Turbo-CD (and so many other systems), may have been pricey at launch for early adopters like myself, but they soon dropped in price (and continued to) and a TG-16 + Turbo-CD retailed in the U.S. for what the SNES retailed in my area around the same time.
Wikipedia articles are useless for NEC sales numbers. SamIAm's numbers are the ones I believe.
On that note though, someone should change the English TG16 article to reflect the more accurate sales numbers he's pointed out, like was done with the Genesis several years back...
As for prices though, in large parts of the US, finding TG16 stuff in the first place was a major challenge. Around here, Toys R Us was pretty much the only place that carried anything TG16, and evidently few people bought it since I almost never see TG16-related stuff locally -- and from what we know about NEC, this kind of issue was clearly common. So even if the prices declined, that wouldn't have helped sales much if few stores were carrying the system by that point anyway...
This seems to tie-in more with your usual perspective which has nothing to do with the subjects you're talking about and is all about <Nintendo. But this last statement of yours is still contradicted by the Nintendo 64 bombing so hard immediately after. :wink:
Contradicted? How so? But my point there was about dividing your market. That gen, neither Sony nor Nintendo did that, so that was clearly not a factor in why Sony won -- though that Sony did do that, while Sega did not, was obviously a factor in why Sony was in the position to win the generation in the first place!
But yes, in the 4th generation, ultimately I think Nintendo did the right thing in not releasing the SNES CD. And Sega shouldn't have released the 32X, and NEC... I don't know about NEC, they made such a mess of things with so much hardware it's hard to decide what was reasonable and what wasn't. :p
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But yes, in the 4th generation, ultimately I think Nintendo did the right thing in not releasing the SNES CD. And Sega shouldn't have released the 32X, and NEC... I don't know about NEC, they made such a mess of things with so much hardware it's hard to decide what was reasonable and what wasn't. :p
In NEC's case, they pretty much designed the PC Engine with CD expansion in mind. I'd say it was worth it, not only for the great library it eventually got but also for treading new grounds with the CD medium. All the different CD expansions, accesories and Duo systems also meant everyone with any of the PC Engine models could access the CD library.(except for the unfortunate Shuttle, which was just badly designed and deserves no excuse)
The Supergrafx was admittedly a bad idea, but 4 out of 5 of the SGX library are great games, and it was backwards compatible with HuCARDs and supported the CD add-ons in one way or another.
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But yes, in the 4th generation, ultimately I think Nintendo did the right thing in not releasing the SNES CD. And Sega shouldn't have released the 32X, and NEC... I don't know about NEC, they made such a mess of things with so much hardware it's hard to decide what was reasonable and what wasn't. :p
In NEC's case, they pretty much designed the PC Engine with CD expansion in mind. I'd say it was worth it, not only for the great library it eventually got but also for treading new grounds with the CD medium. All the different CD expansions, accesories and Duo systems also meant everyone with any of the PC Engine models could access the CD library.(except for the unfortunate Shuttle, which was just badly designed and deserves no excuse)
The Supergrafx was admittedly a bad idea, but 4 out of 5 of the SGX library are great games, and it was backwards compatible with HuCARDs and supported the CD add-ons in one way or another.
Yeah, the Turbo CD is defensible. So is the Sega CD, I think. I'm not opposed to all addons, just unnecessary ones or too many addons... there is something of a slippery slope there, and NEC and Sega both ended up going down it.
However, even though the TG16 was designed to have a CD addon, going by the numbers we have, only a quarter of PCE owners bought CD addons; the rest either stuck with the HuCard system until it died, or, in some cases, got Duos eventually. They released this confusing mountain of hardware, and it's nice to have because it's great to have any PCE/TG16 system be able to run all the games (SuperGrafx excepted), but most users didn't buy most of it, and I'm sure it confused people.
But what was clearly unnecessary? Well, yeah, the SuperGrafx is a good place to start. NEC either needed to move to the SGX as their main system -- this means SuperGrafx Duo, instead of PC Engine Duo, as the next system, and lots of SGX software -- or never have released it in the first place. Never releasing it in the first place would probably be better. Sure, I agree with you that the SGX has a few great games, but.;.. it has only five games (plus two that have less flicker with it)! That's ridiculous, there's no way to really justify such a thinly supported system.
Second is the Arcade Card. Sure, the idea was good, and Arcade Card-required games have very impressive graphics that the Super System Card could not have handled. However, it's addon-only -- even the Duo-RX, which probably should have had a built-in Arcade Card given that it comes with a 6-button controller, doesn't -- and didn't do nearly as well as Hudson hoped. Better would have been to have a bit more RAM in the Super System Card and stick with that until the end of the generation. I mean, the Super System Card was only 256KB, while the Sega CD, which released just three months later in Japan, has 768KB of RAM in it... and that was enough for the generation. NEC couldn't have gotten closer to that? They probably did need more RAM, but should have had more the first time, I think. They have to have known something, releasing so close. The Arcade Card was NEC/Hudson's last attempt to get more attention to their system by releasing yet more hardware, but as with the SuperGrafx, it was too much and wasn't supported enough, and it failed.
I don't think that any one addon of NEC's was a clear company-hurting debacle on the level of the 32X, but having too many models and too many addons can't have helped; it divides your market. Sure, I can understand why NEC mostly abandoned HuCards in favor of CDs -- it's been said -- but the result was to basically abandon at least 60% of their sales base, those who didn't get CD drives. And SFII shows how much you can do on a HuCard.
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This dumb argument again, eh? What kind of dullard really found it to be a 'confusing mountain' of hardware?
1) The Shuttle was nothing but an attempt to sell to people on price. It was never pushed as an upgrade path.
2) Unlike the 32x, the Arcade Card was never intended to be (or marketed as) a way to make the PCE competitive with next gen systems; nobody bought it thinking there'd be 100+ games made for it. Of the games that came out after its release, about one third of 'em used it in one way or another, which hardly makes it an unsupported failure.
3) The SGX was admittedly a bit of a blunder, but who gives a shit? The writing was on the wall almost immediately after launch, so the only people that could feel burned were those that bought it during those few short months. By the time the Super CD / Duo came out, there was no question which system was the future.
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What special case?
Uhm.. my post already explains why it's a special case scenario? And yes, the case was special too; only hucard to have it AFAIK, and didn't need it. Obviously created for special item appeal. A regular hucard case would have worked just as well. The bump also wasn't needed either. There's nothing under the bump. Another decoration to show that it was 'special'. They could have easily consolidated the mapper and rom into a single regular hucard PCB.
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Two years earlier, Populous also got the "special" treatment with double case, hump, and spine card.
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What special case?
Uhm.. my post already explains why it's a special case scenario? And yes, the case was special too; only hucard to have it AFAIK, and didn't need it. Obviously created for special item appeal. A regular hucard case would have worked just as well. The bump also wasn't needed either. There's nothing under the bump. Another decoration to show that it was 'special'. They could have easily consolidated the mapper and rom into a single regular hucard PCB.
Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. SFII is just a standard dual-jewel case with two standard 1991+ HuCard-holding plastic trays inside, just like all the other Japanese games from 1991 on use. There's nothing special about it other than that they used a dual-jewel in order to get more shelf space for the game.
And what bump are you talking about? Are you talking about the case insides, or the outside? Outside, it's a completely normal PCE dual-jewel case. Inside, it's got two normal 1991-on HuCard holders. It's not special, apart from using a dual-jewel -- which as Necromancer points out, they also used in Populous. I don't have that game, but I do have several other games with that same kind of HuCard tray in a single jewelcase, such as Spiral Wave, Druaga, and Bomberman '93. I'm sure anything from late 1991 on uses it. SFII uses regular HuCard holders in a regular dual-jewel case.
This dumb argument again, eh? What kind of dullard really found it to be a 'confusing mountain' of hardware?
1) The Shuttle was nothing but an attempt to sell to people on price. It was never pushed as an upgrade path.
Sure, but given that they also had the CoreGrafx and CoreGrafx II it seems quite pointless.
o2) Unlike the 32x, the Arcade Card was never intended to be (or marketed as) a way to make the PCE competitive with next gen systems; nobody bought it thinking there'd be 100+ games made for it. Of the games that came out after its release, about one third of 'em used it in one way or another, which hardly makes it an unsupported failure.
Oh, the Arcade Card wasn't supposed to sell? Yeah, sure. Then why was it apparently easy to get whole cases of sealed copies of the first Arcade Card game, Fatal Fury 2, for years? There's only one reason why that could be, and it's that they significantly overprinted copies of the game, surely under-estimating how well the Arcade Card would do. You can also see the Arcade Card's failure when you look at its games released and games supported list -- most of the games that require the Arcade Card are from 1994, while there are only two from '95 and just one from '96. Even just Arcade Card-enhanced games thinned out badly in 1995 versus 1994, and there were no more after 1995 -- all 1996, 1997, and 1999 releases, except for that one 1996 game which requires it, are regular Super CD titles. Clearly the Arcade Card failed to take off like Hudson must have hoped, when you look at how many copies of Fatal Fury 2 they made. It was one addon too many, and the market didn't bite; they'd released too much stuff, and there wasn't enough to convince people to buy, not with the next generation coming up.
3) The SGX was admittedly a bit of a blunder, but who gives a shit? The writing was on the wall almost immediately after launch, so the only people that could feel burned were those that bought it during those few short months. By the time the Super CD / Duo came out, there was no question which system was the future.
Sure, but you don't think that it hurt NEC at all to have this system release and bomb? I mean, someone could say that about the 32X, that it only sold well for a few months so it's not that important, but that's obviously not the case at all. As I said I"m sure the SuperGrafx didn't hurt NEC like the 32X did Sega, but it has to have done some damage to their image, and people who did buy the things, probably harder-core fans, can't have been happy!
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are you sure about the raised/bump hucards with nothing but empty space, I believe it's really an extended super thin pcb folded within the raised/bump area, there is reference to it, for special games such as populous, there is a battery as well
http://nfggames.com/games/pce/
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are you sure about the raised/bump hucards with nothing but empty space, I believe it's really an extended super thin pcb folded within the raised/bump area, there is reference to it, for special games such as populous, there is a battery as well
http://nfggames.com/games/pce/
There is no battery in Populous. It just has extra ram on the card.
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are you sure about the raised/bump hucards with nothing but empty space, I believe it's really an extended super thin pcb folded within the raised/bump area, there is reference to it, for special games such as populous, there is a battery as well
http://nfggames.com/games/pce/
There is no battery in Populous. It just has extra ram on the card.
according to this site there is a internal battery inside popolus
http://nfggames.com/games/pce/
http://www.videogameden.com/article.htm?hu
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according to this site there is a internal battery inside popolus
http://nfggames.com/games/pce/
http://www.videogameden.com/article.htm?hu
It's a common misconception due to the HuCARD being called a "ROMRAM" HuCARD like the Tennokoe Bank card. It just has more RAM and the bump was used for labeling reasons rather than protecting a battery.(SFII', Super System Card and the Arcade Card Pro were like this as well, although the Arcade Card Duo used a stick-on label instead.)
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And what bump are you talking about?
The hump on the hucard. Duh.
It's not special....
It's special simply because it's Street Fighter II. Its higher MSRP wasn't to cover manufacturing costs, it was because the license was surely expensive and because they could pad profits. Again, duh.
Sure, but given that they also had the CoreGrafx and CoreGrafx II it seems quite pointless.
The CGII isn't relevant, seeing as the CGI and Shuttle were no longer being manufactured by the time it came out. As for the Shuttle and CGI, the Shuttle was cheaper (19,800 yen vs. 24,800); obviously the point was to snag a few more sales from people that wanted a cheaper entry point. The Shuttle's low sales show that that market was small, but they also show that it didn't hurt the CGI's sales. It's a non-issue.
Oh, the Arcade Card wasn't supposed to sell? Yeah, sure.
That's not what I said. Not even close.
Then why was it apparently easy to get whole cases of sealed copies of the first Arcade Card game, Fatal Fury 2, for years? There's only one reason why that could be, and it's that they significantly overprinted copies of the game, surely under-estimating how well the Arcade Card would do.
Yeah, I'm sure Fatal Fury Special had nothing to do with its lackluster sales. For your argument to hold water, there'd have to be an equal number of sealed Arcade Cards available.
You can also see the Arcade Card's failure when you look at its games released and games supported list -- most of the games that require the Arcade Card are from 1994, while there are only two from '95 and just one from '96.
Wrong. Four are from '95, so 42% of the AC games came out after '94; hardly the immediately abandoned failure you want it to be.
Even just Arcade Card-enhanced games thinned out badly in 1995 versus 1994...
Wrong again. 7 of the 19 came out in '95, meaning 37% came out the second year; and PCE releases in general followed a similar decline, with 84 in '94 and only 39 in '95.
... and there were no more after 1995 -- all 1996, 1997, and 1999 releases, except for that one 1996 game which requires it, are regular Super CD titles.
Still, that's 10%. It's not like new games were being developed like crazy after '95; and of the whopping ten titles you're whining about, at least two of 'em were developed years earlier (before the AC existed).
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Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about. SFII is just a standard dual-jewel case with two standard 1991+ HuCard-holding plastic trays inside, just like all the other Japanese games from 1991 on use. There's nothing special about it other than that they used a dual-jewel in order to get more shelf space for the game.
Just a standard dual-jewel case? As if that was standard for hucards. That's the whole point; the jewel case sets it apart from other 'average' hucard games. SF2 is presented as a special item/released.
My point being, they could have used a standard jewel case and a normal sized hucard format (no bump). I'm not sure how I can make this simpler to understand. It was marketed as something special/different/etc. The price they charged, does not realistically reflect the prices hucards would have become as they expanded in size.
Just because the hucard and PCB form factor are small, doesn't mean that roms were costly to manufacture. The size of an actual rom, in a large DIP package, is actually tiny. NEC chose glop-top method, but shallow surface mount packages were also an option (which the arcade card did use). SF2 uses three roms (4+8+8), but they could have easily used one single rom. Hell, they could have even consolidated the rom and mapper chip in one. Anyway, the point being that size of SF2 hucard (rom space) is not an accurate reflection of what the cost would have been to keep the hucard format progressing and expanding to a larger storage need.
And what bump are you talking about? Are you talking about the case insides, or the outside? Outside, it's a completely normal PCE dual-jewel case. Inside, it's got two normal 1991-on HuCard holders. It's not special, apart from using a dual-jewel -- which as Necromancer points out, they also used in Populous. I don't have that game, but I do have several other games with that same kind of HuCard tray in a single jewelcase, such as Spiral Wave, Druaga, and Bomberman '93. I'm sure anything from late 1991 on uses it. SFII uses regular HuCard holders in a regular dual-jewel case.
How could you not understand what I meant by 'bump', especially in relation to SF2, and be part of the PCE community? :shock: Hucard bumps are famous. People have been curious for years, what was under those bumps.
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Sure, but given that they also had the CoreGrafx and CoreGrafx II it seems quite pointless.
Then this must seem completely ridiculous to you:
(http://members.shaw.ca/justin_cheer/n64c1.jpg)
(http://members.shaw.ca/justin_cheer/n64c2.png)
(http://members.shaw.ca/justin_cheer/n64c3.jpg)
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Even though I can't really contribute anything useful for this topic, I'd like to thank you all for your thoughts, opinions and insights. They make this thread very enjoyable to read.
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I have yet to find a single reliable-looking number for sales of any particular Japanese hucard, which pretty much brings my data-based analysis to a close. I'll chime in real quick on all the hubbub about add-ons and the Arcade Card, though.
On one hand, I think that the PCE-CD expansion and the Super System Card 3.0 are both examples of add-ons that actually worked, and undoubtedly improved the fate of the system(s) they became part of. The 3.0 Card in particular seems like quite a gamble when you think about it, but everyone pulled completely on the same rope, and it all worked out. Interestingly, if you check a release list, you can see how within about 1 year of the 3.0 system coming out, a significant majority of PCE releases were SCD games.
On the other hand, the Arcade Card was probably not the best idea in the world. It's just that it wound up not mattering much anyway.
See, if NEC had had their act together, they would have released a system with a fighting chance against the Saturn and the Playstation. What they actually released - the PC-FX - was so terrible that it didn't sell as much in three years as the competition sold in literally a few days. But imagine a scenario where NEC had a viable all-around strategy. Part of that has to consist of rallying their fan-base around their next generation console. And of course, one of the most important parts of getting your fans to make that transition is gracefully winding down the previous generation system.
For both consumers and developers, the Arcade Card would have been a distraction, and it would have diverted resources away from the PC-FX and the Super CD system just like the 32X did with the Saturn and the Genesis. That's why however much they are embraced in the PCE library, most of the Arcade Card games...like Fatal Fury2, Art of Fighting, Sapphire...these should have been PC-FX games. And they should have been running on a much better PC-FX.
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Even if the Arcade Card had never been released, those games likely wouldn't have been a part of the PC-FX library anyway. They would've been on Super CD or not exist, as that's not the types of games NEC wanted for the FX.
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That's also kind of the problem.
I mean, there are a few ways that NEC could have approached the PC-FX. Maybe they could have made the anime-heavy digital-comic-book/pseudo-RPG thing work if they made the hardware cheap, courted developers and put no limits on the content. But if they were going to use a conventional approach, they probably should have not only revised the hardware, but the software, too. The PCE was the first system with Street Fighter II, right? Why shouldn't its successor cash in on that fighting game heritage?
EDIT: By the way, if anyone wants to see a bunch of Japanese nerds talking about this same crap, here you go. Just beware, it ain't pretty:
http://anago.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/ghard/1397208601/
http://anago.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/ghard/1399556230/
The second thread is currently active.
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Lol, this went off the rails....still a good discussion though :)
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On the other hand, the Arcade Card was probably not the best idea in the world. It's just that it wound up not mattering much anyway.
From what I've heard, the Arcade Cards were originally scheduled to be released in December 1993, but due to a fire in a resin plant in Taiwan and subsequent severe shortage of RAM chips worldwide it's release was delayed to March 1994 along with Fatal Fury 2.
If it was released a little earlier, it might have done better, although 4 months probably doesn't matter much. Tengai Makyou III was also originally planned for the ACD format, but that got shifted to the PC-FX.(which got cancelled later)
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IIRC, the arcade card was in working prototype sometime in 1992. Art of Fighting was in development in early 1993 (you can find this info in the source code of Art of Fighting for the ACD) and if I read the docs right, was finished fall of 1993.
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That's pretty interesting. I still think that the Arcade Card would have threatened to damage a better thought-out PC-FX, but this is all so hypothetical anyway that it doesn't really matter.
By the way, one of the more enjoyable links I've found, again in Japanese, is a list of people talking about their five favorite PCE games, regrouped according to game:
http://www.openspc2.org/~bgm/CON/PCTL.html
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The PC-FX isn't a direct successor to the PC Engine the same way that Sega and Nintendo consoles that followed one another. The PC-FX seems like it was strictly an NEC console, even though it contained PCE hardware. Hudson treated the Saturn as more of a successor to their PCE early on with game release anouncements. Their ACD games would not have been planned for PC-FX and the Neo Geo ports in particular were a tribute to their own hardware.
People like to think of the PCE as NEC's brand/console because they're used to things being simple and too often that Nintendo leads the way and everyone does things the same way. It's much easier to fuel console wars when the sides are narrow targets.
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Hudson designed most of the Ironman, all of the PC-FX, and apparently all of the software development tools. They were the ones who decided to put the emphasis on streaming FMV instead of 3D rendering. Want more Japanese links? I've got one by an executive director from Hudson talking all about it.
Hudson was always in bed with other systems. I think that if their vision of the PC-FX came to fuller fruition on the sales side, they would have supported it much more. Two of the three launch titles were by Hudson.
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By the way, one of the more enjoyable links I've found, again in Japanese, is a list of people talking about their five favorite PCE games, regrouped according to game:
http://www.openspc2.org/~bgm/CON/PCTL.html
I'm surprised to see Fuun Kabuki Den only get 1 vote! Tengai Makyou II crushes the competition as usual though.
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How times have changed.
The Wii U is a "failure" with over 6 million lifetime sale and counting.
The PCE was one of the biggest success stories in Japan in its day and worldwide sales were approximately 7 million.
times changed, back in the 90's, video game manufacturers were not on same scale, probably half of what Hollywood makes, now, video game industry is worth double of film industry, ie, success means a few millions units in 90's, now it's tens of millions
also , you have to consider that there were a lot more video game manufacturers, than Nintendo, sega and nec, ie, apple pippin, fm towns, uk obscure failures such as cd32, Amstrad gx, which only sold tens of thousands of units, this is due the level of investment was far less than nowadays billion dollar industry
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/19/as-video-game-sales-climb-year-over-year-violent-crime-continues-to-fall/
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How times have changed.
The Wii U is a "failure" with over 6 million lifetime sale and counting.
The PCE was one of the biggest success stories in Japan in its day and worldwide sales were approximately 7 million.
times changed, back in the 90's, video game manufacturers were not on same scale, probably half of what Hollywood makes, now, video game industry is worth double of film industry, ie, success means a few millions units in 90's, now it's tens of millions
also , you have to consider that there were a lot more video game manufacturers, than Nintendo, sega and nec, ie, apple pippin, fm towns, uk obscure failures such as cd32, Amstrad gx, which only sold tens of thousands of units, this is due the level of investment was far less than nowadays billion dollar industry
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/04/19/as-video-game-sales-climb-year-over-year-violent-crime-continues-to-fall/
Right. Nintendo is hemorrhaging money due to poor Wii U sales. It costs more to make it then it did, I presume, the entirety of the PCE over its life.
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Maybe I should move this to the PC-FX forum, but whatever.
I sat down and read all of this, and it was really interesting. If you can read Japanese and want to know more about what management at Hudson and NEC were thinking in 1994 (when all of this was written), this will tell you.
http://www.geocities.jp/bgrtype/gsl/words/pc-fx/pcfx.html
You've got the executive director and the technical director from Hudson, two software developers from NEC and a couple others talking about the next generation of video games. It's quite the snapshot.
By the way, wouldn't you know it, one of them mentions that the user base for the PCE-CD system at the time is 1.8 million.
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Maybe I should move this to the PC-FX forum, but whatever.
I sat down and read all of this, and it was really interesting. If you can read Japanese and want to know more about what management at Hudson and NEC were thinking in 1994 (when all of this was written), this will tell you.
http://www.geocities.jp/bgrtype/gsl/words/pc-fx/pcfx.html
You've got the executive director and the technical director from Hudson, two software developers from NEC and a couple others talking about the next generation of video games. It's quite the snapshot.
By the way, wouldn't you know it, one of them mentions that the user base for the PCE-CD system at the time is 1.8 million.
Google Translate butchers that site, but judging from what the context appears to be and what you've posted previously from Japanese sources, it sounds like he was talking about the number of copies that successful PC Engine games sell around.
Similar to that quote from bitd from somebody at Enix saying how it wasn't worthwhile for them to make a new Dragon Quest game unless they were confident that it would sell 3 million copies. I believe that they were explaining why they were wasn't a Super Famicom DQ game right away and they basically said that Nintendo had to sell more consoles first.
It looked like that 1.8 million comment was putting in perspective why it was hard to get developers to take a risk with the PC-FX when a CD-ROM game could instead be developed for the still-going-strong PC Engine.
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Sorry, but that's a completely inaccurate translation.
The line with the number is this: 問屋さんが最近、ＰＣエンジンのソフトが売れないとか言ってますけど、ハードの数は180万は出ていますから眠ってるだけだと思うんです。
"Mr. Toiya has been saying recently that PC Engine software won't sell, but there are 1.8 million units of the hardware out there, which is why I think that it's just sleeping."
In the surrounding text, he talks about his intentions to continue to develop for the PCE. He will make games for the next generation, but he also wants to "wake up the sleeping child". After all, the hardware has finally gotten cheaper.
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1.8 million in 1994, 1.9 million overall? Wow, the system must have collapsed really badly in 1995 if that's accurate...
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The 32-bit generation started in '93, so two years later would be a 16 bitters best year evah? No doubt sales of the Genesis took a similar nose dive, and the SNES too albeit a year or so later since they didn't yet have a new system to support.
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Well, the 3DO came out in Japan in March '94, but that's still basically true. Though the Genesis still had some decent sales in '95, the Mega Drive in Japan pretty much fell off the radar as soon as the Saturn came out. Many Mega Drive games made in '95 tend to have been manufactured in such low quantities that they are really expensive today (ie Ristar).
One thing to note is that there is no reference to when in '94 those pieces were written. There's a big difference between early and late '94, mostly because of the cheaper RX system that came out in the summer. 120,000 systems sold in very late '94 and '95 would not be so bad in light of the total being 1.92 million, and the triumvirate of 32-bit systems that came out at the end of the '94.
This is totally unsubstantiated, but one thing that I read on a Japanese forum is that NEC didn't really get any royalties from PCE game sales. Apparently, it all went to Hudson. That makes me wonder if NEC had to price all of their systems to make a decent profit. Sure, the Duo was cheap in America, but that's maybe because they were so desperate to get a stake in the market. In Japan, it was $600, then $400, then finally $300 in '94.
I suspect that they might have sold through a lot more RX systems in '95 if they dropped the price to $200 or lower.
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Sure, but given that they also had the CoreGrafx and CoreGrafx II it seems quite pointless.
Then this must seem completely ridiculous to you:
(http://members.shaw.ca/justin_cheer/n64c1.jpg)
(http://members.shaw.ca/justin_cheer/n64c2.png)
(http://members.shaw.ca/justin_cheer/n64c3.jpg)
First, I wasn't the one to first mention the Shuttle, I just agreed that it didn't make much sense.
Second, and more importantly, most of those are just recolors, and even the Pikachu N64 is fully compatible with all N64 accessories. This is, of course, not true with the PCE Shuttle, and it's got to be its biggest weakness. A TG16 that can't attach to a CD drive and that also needs its own custom save backup unit because it's incompatible with the usual backup boosters, too? Oh come on, that's just silly. And counter-intuitive, when NEC's main focus shortly afterwards became selling CD units and Duos!
I have yet to find a single reliable-looking number for sales of any particular Japanese hucard, which pretty much brings my data-based analysis to a close. I'll chime in real quick on all the hubbub about add-ons and the Arcade Card, though.
On one hand, I think that the PCE-CD expansion and the Super System Card 3.0 are both examples of add-ons that actually worked, and undoubtedly improved the fate of the system(s) they became part of. The 3.0 Card in particular seems like quite a gamble when you think about it, but everyone pulled completely on the same rope, and it all worked out. Interestingly, if you check a release list, you can see how within about 1 year of the 3.0 system coming out, a significant majority of PCE releases were SCD games.
On the other hand, the Arcade Card was probably not the best idea in the world. It's just that it wound up not mattering much anyway.
See, if NEC had had their act together, they would have released a system with a fighting chance against the Saturn and the Playstation. What they actually released - the PC-FX - was so terrible that it didn't sell as much in three years as the competition sold in literally a few days. But imagine a scenario where NEC had a viable all-around strategy. Part of that has to consist of rallying their fan-base around their next generation console. And of course, one of the most important parts of getting your fans to make that transition is gracefully winding down the previous generation system.
For both consumers and developers, the Arcade Card would have been a distraction, and it would have diverted resources away from the PC-FX and the Super CD system just like the 32X did with the Saturn and the Genesis. That's why however much they are embraced in the PCE library, most of the Arcade Card games...like Fatal Fury2, Art of Fighting, Sapphire...these should have been PC-FX games. And they should have been running on a much better PC-FX.
Yeah, I agree with just about everything you say here. I do think that there is merit to solid game support late in a system's life, though; the SNES had great years from 1994 to 1996, and later in Japan. Of course that system released years later, though, but still, it's in the same generation... still though, you don't want to distract people with new addons too close to the next generation, that is true. Not wanting to distract things from the real next-gen platform is the reason why Star Fox 2 was never released, of course, even though it was finished; Nintendo decided that 3d games would be for the N64, not the SNES.
Sega of course messed up everything for themselves with their stupid decisions, but their worst decisions were in the West, not in Japan. It's easy enough to see that Sega faded in the mid '90s because of terrible strategy mistakes surrounding the 32X and Saturn in the West. For NEC, though, I'm not as sure; they just didn't seem to have any momentum. I suspect that messing up their next-gen strategy so badly really hurt them -- once the PC-FX was released and clearly no one cared, I would guess that it helped drag down the Duo as well. I mean, even though I'm sure 4th gen sales declined for everyone, and even if that 1.8 number is from very late 1994, selling only 120,000 systems in 1995-1997 is pretty bad, considering that they'd sold almost 1.8 million from 1988 to whatever point in 1994 that article was published in. I don't think that you can explain that whole decline just with that the next generation had started. For sales from 1996 on, sure, that'd explain it there... but 1995? There were still many major 4th gen titles released on all platforms in 1995 in both the US and Japan. So yeah, my guess is that the PC-FX strategy debacle may have hurt them. Perhaps losing the Western market hurt them as well; even small Western sales of TG16/CD games were better than nothing? Maybe those weren't enough to matter past the first years of the TG16, though. That's sadly likely, I guess. And need I even mention how incredibly stupid never releasing anything officially in Europe was...
As for the Arcade Card, there I'm less sure. The Arcade Card wasn't as expensive, bulky, or annoying (three power bricks!) as the 32X, and Japan was clearly much more accepting of limited-support addons than the West was, so I'm sure the Arcade Card didn't hurt NEC like the 32X did Sega in the US. Of course, the 32X didn't hurt Sega there as much either, though that was probably more because the Saturn was already out and people just ignored it; the Genesis hadn't sold that great after all. Still, the Arcade Card did split the market again, and late in the generation, a time when they surely needed sales. That's rarely a good thing unless there's a very good reason for it. The Super System Card, yes, that was handled perfectly. The Arcade Card? Not so much.
However, 4th gen consoles did need plenty of major releases in 1994 and 1995. Even in Japan, I don't think that 5th gen hardware sales REALLY got hot until 1996-1997... by late '95 it was starting, but at least through that year there was a definite place for major 5th gen releases. And on the SNES, there was a place for major releases all the way until 1999! Of course the SNES crushed all other platforms in sales in Japan, so it makes sense that it'd get several more years of software support than the competition (and indeed it did), but still, NEC has to have been able to do better. They had some good games, but some of them were Arcade Card only and thus could only sell to the limited audience that had actually bought the things, and many of Hudson's top mass-market titles in 1994-1995 were on SNES and Saturn, not TCD or PCFX -- an obvious sign of lack of confidence in their consoles. A better next-gen strategy and platform, no Arcade Card, maybe a bit more later HuCard support (abandoning 60% of your market... even if CDs are better, I just don't know if that was the best move...)... I don't know. But with NEC (and Hudson it seems) really attached to the idea of FMV as the basis for their next console, NEC was doomed. There's no way to save them with the PC-FX existing, and as I said, I expect that its failure helped take down the PC Engine itself sooner too. Maybe not (the SNES probably eventually faded in Japan simply because of its age, not because the N64 had failed so badly there...), but it's definitely possible, anyway.
But yeah, as I said, best would be a Super System Card with more RAM on it, and no Arcade Card. Trying to get people to upgrade again in 1994 was just too late in the generation...
That's also kind of the problem.
I mean, there are a few ways that NEC could have approached the PC-FX. Maybe they could have made the anime-heavy digital-comic-book/pseudo-RPG thing work if they made the hardware cheap, courted developers and put no limits on the content. But if they were going to use a conventional approach, they probably should have not only revised the hardware, but the software, too. The PCE was the first system with Street Fighter II, right? Why shouldn't its successor cash in on that fighting game heritage?
EDIT: By the way, if anyone wants to see a bunch of Japanese nerds talking about this same crap, here you go. Just beware, it ain't pretty:
http://anago.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/ghard/1397208601/
http://anago.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/ghard/1399556230/
The second thread is currently active.
Yeah, there's so much wrong with the PC-FX that it could only be "saved" by killing it and starting over with something better, really. If they'd gotten it out even earlier MAYBE they could have competed with the 3DO and Sega CD in the FMV-heavy-game category, but those were never as popular in Japan as they were here, so I doubt very much that that would have done much good, and they'd have died once the PS1 got popular anyway. And even the 3DO can do some polygons. No, they needed better, more up-to-date hardware, and a strategy to match; NEC's "we'll focus on anime otaku stuff" strategy wasn't a good one, obviously, as they learned once it failed.
How could you not understand what I meant by 'bump', especially in relation to SF2, and be part of the PCE community? :shock: Hucard bumps are famous. People have been curious for years, what was under those bumps.
Oh yeah. Of course. :p I guess I was thinking that since we now do know what's under them, it's not such a big deal... and anyway, the Super System Card and Populous used the 'bump' card before SFII, so it wasn't something made just for that game.
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To me, the PC-FX is a fascinating mistake. It's like the Star Wars prequels - it's almost incredible how much they screwed up.
I don't want to spend all day translating or writing out all the points made in those Japanese essays I posted, but maybe the most common underlying assumption coming from those NEC/Hudson guys was that the next generation of hardware and software was going to form a dichotomy: one subdivision would be centered around realtime polygon graphics, and the other would be centered around streamed FMV. The terminology they used was "creation-type" and "storage-type".
Ordinary 2D action games, they said, could be done on the Arcade Card.
The baffling thing is, they kept talking about how the PC-FX was going to rule the "storage-type" side because it had the best FMV streaming technology. It's hard to say whether they were in denial or simply didn't do their homework, but it should have been apparent that the Playstation had a competitive enough MPEG processor, and the Saturn enough raw CPU power, to erase any kind of technological gap. AFAIK, there is literally no game concept that could be done on the PC-FX but not the Playstation or Saturn.
It would be one thing if the PC-FX actually did have much better FMV capabilities, but given that it didn't (and it actually had worse resolution), you have to wonder what they were thinking.
I mean, even though I'm sure 4th gen sales declined for everyone, and even if that 1.8 number is from very late 1994, selling only 120,000 systems in 1995-1997 is pretty bad, considering that they'd sold almost 1.8 million from 1988 to whatever point in 1994 that article was published in. I don't think that you can explain that whole decline just with that the next generation had started. For sales from 1996 on, sure, that'd explain it there... but 1995? There were still many major 4th gen titles released on all platforms in 1995 in both the US and Japan. So yeah, my guess is that the PC-FX strategy debacle may have hurt them.
According to the SegaBase article about the Saturn, by June of 1995, the Saturn had sold 1.3 million units and the PSX had sold 1.2 million units in Japan. Up until those two systems came out, I think the PCE-CD was the CD-ROM system. As soon as they did come out, though, consumers seemed to abandon the PCE quickly.
One thing that I remember happening around that time was that the Genesis and the SNES became so cheap that people who only owned one system up until that point could finally start to afford both, and the userbase swelled. People getting the systems for the first time were interested in new software, so games kept being made in significant quantities, and it was all-around a very "healthy" situation. By contrast, a Duo-RX was not a whole lot cheaper than one of the next-gen systems, and its user-base was small to begin with, so there wasn't the same potential for growth.
Between all that and the PC-FX going down in flames (I speculate that by June 1995, it had probably sold 50-70k systems), yes, the Duo probably didn't look particularly attractive at the time.
so I'm sure the Arcade Card didn't hurt NEC like the 32X did Sega in the US.
Oh, I definitely agree. I only think that if the PC-FX had been better, there would have been potential for the Arcade Card to damage its strength in a similar kind of way, even if to a lesser degree.
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The baffling thing is, they kept talking about how the PC-FX was going to rule the "storage-type" side because it had the best FMV streaming technology. It's hard to say whether they were in denial or simply didn't do their homework, but it should have been apparent that the Playstation had a competitive enough MPEG processor, and the Saturn enough raw CPU power, to erase any kind of technological gap. AFAIK, there is literally no game concept that could be done on the PC-FX but not the Playstation or Saturn.
The Saturn also eventually got the Movie Card expansion in Japan which could play MPEG-1 VCDs, plus some very impressive FMVs in certain games,(i.e. Lunar SSS MPEG-ban) which definitely outclasses the PC-FX in FMV quality. VCD never caught on though, and neither did the Movie Card.
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The baffling thing is, they kept talking about how the PC-FX was going to rule the "storage-type" side because it had the best FMV streaming technology. It's hard to say whether they were in denial or simply didn't do their homework, but it should have been apparent that the Playstation had a competitive enough MPEG processor, and the Saturn enough raw CPU power, to erase any kind of technological gap. AFAIK, there is literally no game concept that could be done on the PC-FX but not the Playstation or Saturn.
If you'd done your homework, you'd know that the Playstation doesn't have an MPEG decoder. :wink:
It would be one thing if the PC-FX actually did have much better FMV capabilities, but given that it didn't (and it actually had worse resolution), you have to wonder what they were thinking.
Another good example of how you can't judge consoles based on tech spec lists. PC-FX video typically looks better than the average VCD and only the Saturn running the MPEG card is comparable.
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If you'd done your homework, you'd know that the Playstation doesn't have an MPEG decoder. :wink:
Excuse me. MJPEG/H.261 decoder.
Point still stands.
Another good example of how you can't judge consoles based on tech spec lists. PC-FX video typically looks better than the average VCD and only the Saturn running the MPEG card is comparable.
Bullshit. :wink:
Tell me that when you've spent a dozen hours picking apart a PC-FX video frame by frame, recoding it, and comparing the level of macroblocking.
See for yourself. http://pc-fx.moemoe.gr.jp/colume04.html (NSFW)
PC-FX on the left, Saturn on the right.
These images were not captured by analog, but by decoding software. They are virtually RGB perfect, although the PC-FX ones must have been stretched.
EDIT: Here's a screen I just took via Mednafen of the same game. There is no added lossyness, and I've enlarged it to twice the original size (which was 256x232, as opposed to images you see in the link above that are stretched to 320x224 .
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/TokimekiCardParadise-0000b_zps38dc1755.png)
PSX (EDIT: Oops, I meant PS1) videos are generally higher resolution and higher framerate than PC-FX games. PC-FX cannot do video greater than 256x240 and there's not a single game that maintains a constant framerate above 12. Not to my knowledge, anyway, and I personally tested a good bunch of them.
Everything Square did, just as an example, is at or just shy of 320x240, and it's all a constant 15fps.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/ccross_zps77e9fbc0.png)
Lunar 2's video on the Saturn is 320x224 and 30fps.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/lunar2_zps45c1ac3c.png)
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PC-FX video is lower resolution and lower quality? Looks like a pretty clear result there to me. And those screenshots reflect it. How about PC-FX versus 3DO or CD-i, though? I mean, I'd think that the CD-i with MPEG cartridge could beat it; that system can do MPEG after all. It may not have released in Japan though of course. The 3DO is worse than that, but how about 3DO vs. PC-FX? I don't know which one has the advantage there.
Also, 1.3 million PS1s and 1.2 million Saturns sold by June? No, that can't be right... and SegaBase isn't the most reliable source either, for sure. Here's what I can find from Sony: http://web.archive.org/web/20110722094946/http://scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps_e.html
This shows 1 million PS1s shipped (shipped, not sold) to Japan by the end of May 1995, 2 million by the end of December. So you're right that 1995 PS1/Saturn sales in Japan were good, if shipments were like that, but the year also had plenty of major SNES releases too (and Turbo CD, Genesis, 32X, 3DO, and PC-FX, though those surely sold less), and shipments don't usually equal sales of course.
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You can't judge the quality of fmv of this level by select aspects and without real hardware. Not all video is the same quality in each game on each console for a variety of reasons. If you find good examples for each console, they still need to be the same type of original source, ie: film based hand drawn/painted animation, digitally painted and compiled animation, purely live action, etc. You can also tell if you're looking at a section of source material that contained artifacts from mixing clips, such as many game intros do.
That PC-FX screenshot looks to have been cherry picked to make the console look bad. Those other screenshots are jpegs. It doesn't make sense that Lunar EB would waste 30fps on 12fps animation. If that's true, then it could have been completely fullscreen, with no visible imperfections and animated slightly better at 12fps.
I no longer have a PC-FX, but going in thinking that it must be overrated, I was blown away by the quality of video in many games, but I might have only tried two or three dozen. I compared the best fmv I could find on PSX and Saturn and it was the overall balance in good PC-FX video that stood apart.
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PC-FX video is lower resolution and lower quality? Looks like a pretty clear result there to me. And those screenshots reflect it. How about PC-FX versus 3DO or CD-i, though? I mean, I'd think that the CD-i with MPEG cartridge could beat it; that system can do MPEG after all. It may not have released in Japan though of course. The 3DO is worse than that, but how about 3DO vs. PC-FX? I don't know which one has the advantage there.
That's going to be hard to compare without taking the time to research similar games between the systems, hunting up ISOs and configuring emulators to take clean screenshots. It could be a fun project, but I'll have to pass.
Although there is actually a 3DO port of that game being compared in the link, and whose PC-FX screenshot I grabbed (Tokimeki Mahjong Paradise). I'll see if I can't get it to run in an emulator easily.
Also, 1.3 million PS1s and 1.2 million Saturns sold by June? No, that can't be right... and SegaBase isn't the most reliable source either, for sure. Here's what I can find from Sony: http://web.archive.org/web/20110722094946/http://scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdataps_e.html
This shows 1 million PS1s shipped (shipped, not sold) to Japan by the end of May 1995, 2 million by the end of December. So you're right that 1995 PS1/Saturn sales in Japan were good, if shipments were like that, but the year also had plenty of major SNES releases too (and Turbo CD, Genesis, 32X, 3DO, and PC-FX, though those surely sold less), and shipments don't usually equal sales of course.
Yeah, I've often come across things in the SegaBase articles that I know aren't correct. But, on the other hand, the price of both the Saturn and the PS1 dropped $100 in June 1995 (I double-checked this fact elsewhere), so there may have been a rush of buying.
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You can't judge the quality of fmv of this level by select aspects and without real hardware. Not all video is the same quality in each game on each console for a variety of reasons. If you find good examples for each console, they still need to be the same type of original source, ie: film based hand drawn/painted animation, digitally painted and compiled animation, purely live action, etc. You can also tell if you're looking at a section of source material that contained artifacts from mixing clips, such as many game intros do.
If you're saying we can't settle this without a thorough analysis of several types of identical high quality video sources fed through the best video encoders for each system and displayed on both real hardware and emulators, I guess you've got me.
But I do own real hardware, and I spent hours comparing videos when Esperknight and I put subtitles in Zeroigar's FMV. I still think that the resolution and the general level of macroblocking on PC-FX is poor enough that it does not stand out as superior, particularly against the Playstation.
A lot of 1995 Saturn games had crappy FMV, it's true. But that game used in the comparison in the link above came out in October 1995, and the PC-FX version in January 1996. I really don't see any reason to think that they would have used a lower-quality source for the PC-FX version.
That PC-FX screenshot looks to have been cherry picked to make the console look bad.
I downloaded the same game used in the comparison in the link above (which, by the way, came from a PC-FX fansite) and took a screenshot of the very first scene.
Those other screenshots are jpegs. It doesn't make sense that Lunar EB would waste 30fps on 12fps animation. If that's true, then it could have been completely fullscreen, with no visible imperfections and animated slightly better at 12fps.
Yes, they are JPEGs. But they are also quality JPEGs. I don't think you're going to see much difference in a PNG screenshot. Actually, they might look even better.
As for Lunar 2, all of the 3D rendered stuff, like the hallway leading to Lucia floating in her crystal in the intro FMV, moves at 30 FPS. Also, I think all the panning was 30 FPS. If you look at the "making-of" video, you'll see how Lunar 2's cells were animated on a computer.
I no longer have a PC-FX, but going in thinking that it must be overrated, I was blown away by the quality of video in many games, but I might have only tried two or three dozen. I compared the best fmv I could find on PSX and Saturn and it was the overall balance in good PC-FX video that stood apart.
Here's a screenshot from the fourth, and arguably highest production value, Anime Freak FX game.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/AnimeFreakFXVol4-0000b_zpse212bbd5.png)
It's much more flattering, to be sure. The color gradients are smooth and the lines are clear. But the resolution is still 256x232, it's still 12 fps, and there is still JPEG fuzziness.
Interestingly, the live-action footage on the same disc is a constant 30FPS, which is the first I've found on the system. It's windowed to 192x160, though.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/AnimeFreakFXVol4-0002b_zpsb0a5cf44.png)
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I need to get going, but here's a screenshot of the 3DO version of the same game. The original resolution is 320x240, and again this is just doubled.
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/20140519_113624b_zps6d8aba93.png)
Here's the PC-FX shot again. (256x232)
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/TokimekiCardParadise-0000b_zps38dc1755.png)
...and the Saturn (320x224)
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/Saturn1_zps1e37eec8.png)
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In the interest of fairness, I'll say this.
In motion, the Saturn port of that Tokimeki game seems to display more artifacts when there is lots of motion on the screen. I think this is because the Saturn is using a software MPEG codec rather than something JPEG based, so the more motion, the more quality loss.
Also, to my surprise, it seems that all of these ports update the screen at 30 fps when playing FMV. This is a bit ridiculous, because the anime itself doesn't call for that at all. It's fair to say that this company didn't take the greatest care in making the videos, and I would say that that PC-FX screenshot is indeed worse than the average PC-FX FMV.
Now, one more comparison: Der Langrisser
Unlike the Tokimeki game, Der Langrisser was made for the PC-FX first, then ported to the Saturn and Playstation later. In the Tokimeki game, you can see how the image was cropped and squished. Well, now you can see how the Saturn version is stretched.
These are straight from emulators, 2x enlarged, no added lossiness.
PC-FX (256x232)
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/DerLangrisserFX-0016_zpsb31d4f37.png)
PS1 (256x240)
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/PS1lang_zps306fafd2.png)
Saturn (320x224)
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/Saturnlang1_zps9eed7bc8.png)
PC-FX
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/DerLangrisserFX-0030_zps87ea08b5.png)
PS1
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/PS1lang2_zps7f42c926.png)
Saturn
(http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u305/sirsinnes/Saturnlang2_zps8c3284a5.png)
Yeah, the Saturn one looks pretty bad. Overall, though, the PS1 version looks just fine.
The whole point of all this is that the PC-FX did not have an FMV decoder that stood out in any way, and I think the screenshots of these games ported across the different systems show that. The 256 pixel horizontal resolution limit alone is pretty harsh. If it had had something actually higher than 320x240, and/or if if the compression was squeaky clean, THEN it would have stood out.
Of course, it's all a moot point anyway, because FMV in the 32-bit era was the garnish, not the meat and potatoes.
EDIT: I went ahead and got real emulator screenshots for Chrono Cross and Lunar 2. See above. Lunar 2 has some graininess, but Chrono Chross looks exactly like the JPEG from before.
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Just because a console is outputting a particular resolution while fmv is streaming, it doesn't mean that the fmv is the same resolution. Tengai Makyou The Apocalypse IV features some of the highest quality fmv on the Saturn, but if you rip the video off the disc, the raw video it isn't nearly the same resolution as the Saturn is outputting. The screenshots posted so far were likely stretched by each console's hardware/emulation and who knows what else happens to the overall image before being displayed on real consoles. That's why still screenshots and emulator stats are misleading.
This 256 x 224 video is not actually 256 x 224 pixels:
(http://superpcenginegrafx.net/img/maddensc.gif)
Chrono Cross is a huge budget release using state of the art technology from the future and was released at the very end of 1999. A shot with very minimal movement in a clip using material which blends together artifacts is going to look best. But that game does have high quality fmv for that generation, as it should, all things considered. Lunar EB for Saturn was also released after the PC-FX had been discontinued and also likely had a much higher budget than any PC-FX game.
It's true that the PC-FX didn't have something magical like dvd quality video to stand a generation apart from other consoles around the same time, but the overall quality of the fmv did stand out at the time and is why people commented as much at a time when everything that wasn't Playstation was blindly trashed.
Battle Heat was released during the launch of both the Saturn and Playstation. Aside from the overall quality of the fmv, it also shows how well the PC-FX could handle shuffling around video clips in real-time gameplay. Blue Seed 9's battles on Saturn were still very impressive for the time, but Battle Heat does seem like it's in a league of its own by comparison.
Here's a dvd quality comparison I did before selling my PC-FX:
PC-FX fmv (http://superpcenginegrafx.net/misc/pcfx_fmv1.mpg)
Saturn fmv (http://superpcenginegrafx.net/misc/saturn_fmv1.mpg)
Side by Side (http://superpcenginegrafx.net/misc/pc-fx_saturn_fmv1.wmv)
*Something to take into consideration, is that the advertise trailer for TM:TAIV appears to suffer from the degradation of the edited original video. The un-subtilted versionsof the clips which appear in the trailer look better in-game. But this was the best footage I could put together to compare two similarly themed games with.
Kakutoden's footage looks as though the source material was blurrier and it might have been shot on film while TM:TAIV might have shot straight to video or have been rendered on a computer first.
Both games were recorded to dvd video from real hardware running authentic copies using S-Video.
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What do you mean "rip the video off the disc"? Did you copy off the video files and play them with a custom video player?
Because if that's what you did, then the answer is probably that the video player used a different (but somewhat compatible) codec. When you are dealing with software codecs like the Saturn had, these things can happen. But an emulator is always using the same codec as real hardware, because it's getting the codec from the same place. So what exactly is the difference supposed to be between real hardware and emulation? What are you assuming isn't - and can't be - emulated?
Any conversion to a TV signal isn't going to change much, other than maybe to blur artifacts. And what else is there? This isn't like other areas of emulation where sprite priorities and raster effects can get screwed up. There are only plain images, entirely pre-drawn, and this is simply a matter of how much detail there is in each one.
PC-FX FMV can only have 256 pixels of width, period. You could take the original Chrono Cross FMV - I mean the original lossless output from whatever workstations they were using, before it was encoded for the Playstation - encode it for the PC-FX using the best codec possible, and it would still not look as good because (320-256=) 64 of the pixels on each horizontal line would have to be eliminated, and the evidence I've shown indicates that the image would otherwise have about the same level of JPEG artifacts.
Your comparison videos are nice, but unless the source material is the same, you don't necessarily prove anything other than that more work was put into one than the other. Now, if you applied the same real-hardware recording method to Der Langrisser and compared the same frames like I did, that would carry some weight. But I'll be damned if doing so makes the PC-FX version look any better than the PS1's.
EDIT: I assume the mystery not-actually-256x224 GIF you added can be located on the disc, opened with some other program, and it will display at less than 256x224. Again, it's a matter of your other program using a different codec.
Or am I not getting what you were trying to say with that GIF?
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I do think that there is merit to solid game support late in a system's life, though; the SNES had great years from 1994 to 1996, and later in Japan. Of course that system released years later, though, but still, it's in the same generation...
Similarly, the Super Famicom was poorly supported for the first three years of its life (late '87 to late '90). :roll:
If you look at each console's life span, the length of time they were heavily supported is remarkably similar, with the PCE actually being supported for longer (90% of its library over six years vs. five years for the SF).
And on the SNES, there was a place for major releases all the way until 1999!
An unfulfilled place? If you look at what was released after '96, there's a couple goodies in '97 but nothing great in '98 or '99.
But yeah, as I said, best would be a Super System Card with more RAM on it, and no Arcade Card. Trying to get people to upgrade again in 1994 was just too late in the generation...
The original system should've been a Duo-RX with built-in Arcade Card, built-in tap, SGX hardware, and cost $1000. Woulda been a sure winner!
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What do you mean "rip the video off the disc"? Did you copy off the video files and play them with a custom video player?
Because if that's what you did, then the answer is probably that the video player used a different (but somewhat compatible) codec. When you are dealing with software codecs like the Saturn had, these things can happen. But an emulator is always using the same codec as real hardware, because it's getting the codec from the same place. So what exactly is the difference supposed to be between real hardware and emulation? What are you assuming isn't - and can't be - emulated?
Any conversion to a TV signal isn't going to change much, other than maybe to blur artifacts. And what else is there? This isn't like other areas of emulation where sprite priorities and raster effects can get screwed up. There are only plain images, entirely pre-drawn, and this is simply a matter of how much detail there is in each one.
PC-FX FMV can only have 256 pixels of width, period. You could take the original Chrono Cross FMV - I mean the original lossless output from whatever workstations they were using, before it was encoded for the Playstation - encode it for the PC-FX using the best codec possible, and it would still not look as good because (320-256=) 64 of the pixels on each horizontal line would have to be eliminated, and the evidence I've shown indicates that the image would otherwise have about the same level of JPEG artifacts.
Your comparison videos are nice, but unless the source material is the same, you don't necessarily prove anything other than that more work was put into one than the other. Now, if you applied the same real-hardware recording method to Der Langrisser and compared the same frames like I did, that would carry some weight. But I'll be damned if doing so makes the PC-FX version look any better than the PS1's.
EDIT: I assume the mystery not-actually-256x224 GIF you added can be located on the disc, opened with some other program, and it will display at less than 256x224. Again, it's a matter of your other program using a different codec.
Or am I not getting what you were trying to say with that GIF?
The PC Engine doesn't do 256 x 224 pixel fmv. The actual video is a lower resolution and is doubled one way or another. Some Sega-CD games do the same thing. Otherwise all 16-bit fmv games would be full screen.
At least one Sega Saturn video codec was available online years ago which let you remove and play raw fmv segments off of games which used it. I ripped the videos of at least TM: The Apocalypse IV, Lunar SSS and Saturn Bomberman.
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Based on those screenshots it sure looks to me like the idea that PC-FX video is in any way better than PS1 video has been disproven, and that includes games released on both PC-FX and PS1.
Similarly, the Super Famicom was poorly supported for the first three years of its life (late '87 to late '90). :roll:
There's a difference between a time when a system is actually available, and a time before its release, you know... :p
If you look at each console's life span, the length of time they were heavily supported is remarkably similar, with the PCE actually being supported for longer (90% of its library over six years vs. five years for the SF).
That is somewhat true, but if you separate teh console and the addon, it goes like this:
Japan support lengths only.
SNES - 10 years (12/1990 - 12/2000)
SNES breakdown: Last normal cartridge release 1/2000; last NP release 12/2000
SNES Satellaview - 5 years (4/1995 - 6/2000, but new broadcasts only ran until 3/1999; after that it was only reruns)
Genesis - 7 1/4 years (7 years first party) (10/1988 - 12/1995 (1st) / 3/1996 (3rd, unless I'm missing something which I could be)
Sega CD - 4 1/6 years (4 years first party) (12/1991 - 12/1995 (1st) / 2/1996 (3rd))
32X - 10 months (12/1994 - 10/1995)
TG16 - 7 years (12/1987 - 12/1994, but only two releases in '94)
TCD - 8 years 4 months, plus one more game 2 years 2 months later (12/1988 to 4/1997, plus one more game in 6/1999)
TCD breakdown: regular CD games released between 12/1988 - 5/1993 (unless there's something later I'm not seeing) so 4 years 5 months
Super CD support: 10/1991 - 4/1997 (& 6/1999) so 6 years 6 months plus one more game 2 years 2 months later
Arcade CD support: 3/1994 - 12/1996 (with the 12/1996 game being the only 1996 release that supported the Arcade Card) so 1 year 9 months of regular support with 1 more game a year later
The SNES was supported for the longest amount of time. Turbo CD is second (or technically first including Dead of the Brain, but that's got a big asterisk of "over two years after the previous release"), and the Genesis third.
An unfulfilled place? If you look at what was released after '96, there's a couple goodies in '97 but nothing great in '98 or '99.
Sure, there were fewer in '97 to '00 than before, but the system was getting old by that point and newer systems were out, so you expect it. Nintendo kept supporting the system anyway, though, maybe because of how the N64 wasn't doing well in Japan. Of course though, continuing to release major SNES games can't have helped convince people to get N64s...
As for games, many of the major SNES games from '96 to '98 are on the Satellaview, and in the later '90s many were on Nintendo Power service cartridges as well -- that is, the rewritable carts people could buy and get games written on in store kiosks. Pretty cool idea; it's too bad that they didn't continue it with the N64 and bring them out in the US as well, I think it could have been interesting. By releasing stuff on Satellaview of NP they saved a lot in production costs, much like digital-download-only games. Some games released on Satellaview or NP in '97 to '00 include Sutte Hakkun, the eight volumes of Picross NP, the BS Zelda games, Shubibinman Zero (BS), the eight Picross NP volumes, Metal Slader Glory: Director's Cut, Wrecking Crew '98, Power Lode Runner, and Fire Emblem: Thracia 776. Some also had normal cartridge releases later, including FE: Thracia 776, Wrecking Crew '98, and Sutte Hakkun, but others didn't. There were also a couple of normal cart-only releases in '97 and '98, such as Kirby's Dream Land 3 and Kirby no Kirakira Kids (Kirby's Star Stacker SNES version)... those are mostly quality titles, regardless of what their budgets were. Thracia 776 was the last major release from Nintendo (NP service in '99, cartridge release in '00), but after that they had some more Picross NP volumes and, last, Metal Slader Glory: Director's Cut (released preloaded on an NP cartridge), a remake of a Famicom adventure game.
Third parties had some games too, particularly in '96 through '98; after that it mostly dries up, yes. But in '97 and '98 you do have a few third-party titles worth mentioning, such as Shubibinman Zero (Satellaview only release), Rockman & Forte, Super Bomberman 5, and some more. I guess your response is that the SNES released later, so it makes sense that it was supported longer; really though, it's because it won, not because it released later. I mean, the Xbox and Gamecube released well after the PS2, but they obviously weren't supportd as long!
The original system should've been a Duo-RX with built-in Arcade Card, built-in tap, SGX hardware, and cost $1000. Woulda been a sure winner!
Have you already forgotten that the Sega CD, which released only three months after the Super System Card, has three times more RAM than the Super System Card does? Get closer to Sega in RAM in '91 and they'd have had plenty for the generation.
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There's a difference between a time when a system is actually available, and a time before its release, you know... :p
That was my point, genius. Since the SF/N64 came out years after the PCE/PC-FX, it's no surprise that it was supported later.
That is somewhat true, but if you separate teh console and the addon.... The SNES was supported for the longest amount of time.
Learn to read. I was clearly talking about the time periods when the two systems were heavily supported; years where a comparative handful of games dribbled out don't matter, and separating games by formats is just plain foolish.
| Year | | PC Engine | % of Library | | Super Famicom | % of Library |
| 1987 | | 5 | .7% | | NA | NA |
| 1988 | | 23 | 3.3% | | NA | NA |
| 1989 | | 79 | 11.2% | | NA | NA |
| 1990 | | 132 | 18.7% | | 9 | .7% |
| 1991 | | 116 | 16.4% | | 44 | 3.4% |
| 1992 | | 126 | 17.8% | | 161 | 12.4% |
| 1993 | | 91 | 12.9% | | 229 | 17.7% |
| 1994 | | 84 | 11.9% | | 324 | 25% |
| 1995 | | 39 | 5.5% | | 322 | 24.9% |
| 1996 | | 8 | 1.1% | | 143 | 11% |
| 1997 | | 2 | .28% | | 28 | 2.2% |
| 1998 | | 0 | 0% | | 15 | 1.2% |
| 1999 | | 1 | .14% | | 16 | 1.2% |
| 2000 | | NA | NA | | 4 | .3% |
(numbers taken from pcedaisakusen, omitting unofficial games which have no posted release date, and from 'super chrontendo' (http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=57039&page=1&pid=927340#p927340) database)
I repeat: the PCE had the bulk of its support parceled out over a longer period of time. Only 7% of its library came out after the PC-FX was released; similarly, only about 7% of the SF's library came out after the N64 was released.
Sure, there were fewer in '97 to '00 than before, but the system was getting old by that point and newer systems were out, so you expect it.
But we can't expect it of the PCE, eh? Are you intentionally being obtuse?
I mean, the Xbox and Gamecube released well after the PS2, but they obviously weren't supported as long!
They received the bulk of their support up 'til the point that their replacements were released, same as the PCE and SNES. No surprise, really.
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The PC Engine doesn't do 256 x 224 pixel fmv. The actual video is a lower resolution and is doubled one way or another. Some Sega-CD games do the same thing. Otherwise all 16-bit fmv games would be full screen.
That sounds to me like either the VDP has some sort of automatic doubling function, or there's a kind of software graphics decompression algorithm (essentially like a codec) that's telling the CPU to double everything when it copies graphics into the VRAM. Both of these things are quite emulate-able.
The PC-FX FMV decoder literally cannot output more than 256 pixels per line, and that's coming directly from the author of mednafen. There's no room for trickery there.
Have you already forgotten that the Sega CD, which released only three months after the Super System Card, has three times more RAM than the Super System Card does? Get closer to Sega in RAM in '91 and they'd have had plenty for the generation.
I seem to remember Bonknuts, the master of all things PCE hardware related, saying that the type of RAM used in the Super System Card was a more expensive kind, and that it was used out of some kind of necessity. I could be wrong, though.
and separating games by formats is just plain foolish.
That's at least a little subjective. Are Sega CD and 32X games part of the Genesis library? A lot of people would say no.
There's a case to be made both ways. I'd be curious to see another table with the formats separated.
And don't get me wrong, you could make the exact same argument about the Satellaview. In the end, it's a complex situation, and I don't think there is really one single answer to what "is" the PC Engine.
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The PC Engine doesn't do 256 x 224 pixel fmv. The actual video is a lower resolution and is doubled one way or another. Some Sega-CD games do the same thing. Otherwise all 16-bit fmv games would be full screen.
That sounds to me like either the VDP has some sort of automatic doubling function, or there's a kind of software graphics decompression algorithm (essentially like a codec) that's telling the CPU to double everything when it copies graphics into the VRAM. Both of these things are quite emulate-able.
The PC-FX FMV decoder literally cannot output more than 256 pixels per line, and that's coming directly from the author of mednafen. There's no room for trickery there.
The PC-FX clearly was a system designed during the FMV boom of the early '90s, but it released too late; release that in 1993 sometime and they'd have had a chance for a 3DO-like period of limited success, though not having 3d power even on the 3DO's level would have hurt it even there... but by late 1994, times were changing. 3D was the new thing, and FMV was on its way out. And as you've shown, the PS1 could match or beat the PC-FX in FMV from the beginning.
I seem to remember Bonknuts, the master of all things PCE hardware related, saying that the type of RAM used in the Super System Card was a more expensive kind, and that it was used out of some kind of necessity. I could be wrong, though.
Huh. Still, it probably should have had more RAM on that card, might have avoided the perceived need for a second card...
and separating games by formats is just plain foolish.
That's at least a little subjective. Are Sega CD and 32X games part of the Genesis library? A lot of people would say no.
There's a case to be made both ways. I'd be curious to see another table with the formats separated.
And don't get me wrong, you could make the exact same argument about the Satellaview. In the end, it's a complex situation, and I don't think there is really one single answer to what "is" the PC Engine.
The Satellaview is a bit complex, yes, but any game which ran over the service and used live voice streaming I'd absolutely say is on a separate platform, the Satellaview. It's trickier for the games which are just SNES games you could download to the Satellaview and didn't use any of the voice-streaming features, but if those games were not released on SNES cartridges or on the NP service, they really are on a separate platform. I know that listing sites like GameFAQs do not list the Satellaview separately from the SNES, but it really is a separate system and should be separate.
Of course, those sites also almost always merge the Nintendo DS and DSiWare games (they are absolutely separate consoles!), and never separate out dual-mode GB/GBC from GBC-only games in the GBC library, so they do that for multiple platforms. The TG16 and Turbo CD are separated there, but it is somewhat common online to see the TG16 and TCD mixed together, as if they're all the same platform... but you almost never see that with the Sega CD or 32X, those games are separated from the Genesis library. Why the double standard there? They're either all one platform or they're not! Addons like the TCD, SCD, 32X, or Satellaview are kind of their own platforms, and kind of part of their main system, so I can see why there's disagreement about this, but I absolutely think that addons are not exactly the same thing as the main platform. Since they require the main platform listing something showing all releases for a system plus its addons is reasonable, but the addons also should be separated out because they are NOT the same thing as the main system. They are each their own sub-system.
Unlike the Satellaview NP-exclusive releases clearly ARE a part of the SNES's library, but even there I think it's worth mentioning that those games were download service-only and did not release on standard cartridges; even now download-only and physical-release games are often distinguished between on modern consoles, after all, though all are of course games for those systems.
There's a difference between a time when a system is actually available, and a time before its release, you know... :p
That was my point, genius. Since the SF/N64 came out years after the PCE/PC-FX, it's no surprise that it was supported later.
That is somewhat true, but if you separate teh console and the addon.... The SNES was supported for the longest amount of time.
Learn to read. I was clearly talking about the time periods when the two systems were heavily supported; years where a comparative handful of games dribbled out don't matter, and separating games by formats is just plain foolish.
| Year | | PC Engine | % of Library | | Super Famicom | % of Library |
| 1987 | | 5 | .7% | | NA | NA |
| 1988 | | 23 | 3.3% | | NA | NA |
| 1989 | | 79 | 11.2% | | NA | NA |
| 1990 | | 132 | 18.7% | | 9 | .7% |
| 1991 | | 116 | 16.4% | | 44 | 3.4% |
| 1992 | | 126 | 17.8% | | 161 | 12.4% |
| 1993 | | 91 | 12.9% | | 229 | 17.7% |
| 1994 | | 84 | 11.9% | | 324 | 25% |
| 1995 | | 39 | 5.5% | | 322 | 24.9% |
| 1996 | | 8 | 1.1% | | 143 | 11% |
| 1997 | | 2 | .28% | | 28 | 2.2% |
| 1998 | | 0 | 0% | | 15 | 1.2% |
| 1999 | | 1 | .14% | | 16 | 1.2% |
| 2000 | | NA | NA | | 4 | .3% |
(numbers taken from pcedaisakusen, omitting unofficial games which have no posted release date, and from 'super chrontendo' (http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=57039&page=1&pid=927340#p927340) database)
I repeat: the PCE had the bulk of its support parceled out over a longer period of time. Only 7% of its library came out after the PC-FX was released; similarly, only about 7% of the SF's library came out after the N64 was released.
Interesting chart, but as I say above, I definitely disagree about addons! No, addons are NOT the same thing as the console they are an addon to. 0% of the TG16/PCE library released after the PC-FX released; the system's last game released that month, and that was only the second game released for the system that year. The Turbo CD did have games that year, plenty of them, but that's not quite the same thing as the main system. But I get into this issue above, so just read that.
But we can't expect it of the PCE, eh? Are you intentionally being obtuse?
There's a difference between 1995 and 1997, though. In 1995, the first full year after the PC-FX, Saturn, and PS1 releases, there was still a large market for new 4th gen games. By 1997 though, the first full year after the N64's release, there was not nearly as much of that. The two situations are different because of Nintendo's later release date. You see this on the chart you posted -- 322 SNES games in 1995, 28 in 1997. This is mostly not because of the release of the not-too-successful-in-Japan N64, but simply because the 5th gen had taken over almost completely by that point. That wasn't yet true in 1995. I know that numbers like '1.2/1.3 million Saturns and PS1s sold by mid 1995' shows that in Japan the 5th gen got going a bit sooner than it did in the US -- it really wasn't until later 1996 and 1997 that the 5th gen got really hot in North America -- but still, the sheer number of new SNES games in Japan in '95 shows how important the 4th gen still was there.
I mean, the Xbox and Gamecube released well after the PS2, but they obviously weren't supported as long!
They received the bulk of their support up 'til the point that their replacements were released, same as the PCE and SNES. No surprise, really.
That ignores my point that the PS2 had FAR more releases in its later years than those systems, even though it released a year to 1 1/2 years earlier.
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It's been forever, but I remember the Saturn having issues with quality FMV. This was a point of contention back in the day of PS vs Saturn. The Saturn FMV had some terrible looking artifacts in motion. At what point did they fix this?
Even if the Saturn did use native 320 horizontal resolution for video, the advantage isn't as great 25% increase leads you to believe. For one, SDTVs played a factor and the output of the 320 resolution blurred enough on the Saturn to even make mesh transparency trick seem solid. That, and video is a tricky thing. Assuming high color images with nice gradients; vertical resolution makes much more so than horizontal resolution. Always has, always will (for video). There was a trick to re-encode DVD video from 704/720x480 res into 352x480 res (common for CVCDs/KVCDs at the time, also a legal format for DVD), and although the difference was half - the perceivable difference was much-much less than that. Some people couldn't even tell.
Interesting chart, but as I say above, I definitely disagree about addons! No, addons are NOT the same thing as the console they are an addon to. 0% of the TG16/PCE library released after the PC-FX released; the system's last game released that month, and that was only the second game released for the system that year. The Turbo CD did have games that year, plenty of them, but that's not quite the same thing as the main system. But I get into this issue above, so just read that.
That's your problem; you're trying to fit the PCE system into other system standards. When in fact, the PCE set its own standard of what's an addon and what's part of the console. The Duo over took the main system; it replaced it for the rest of the life of the system. The CD system, added very little; you can't compare it to the SegaCD which has so much hardware added on that it's almost its own system (add a video chip and it would be). Same can be said for the 32x; even more so because you could rig the 32X as a standalone system (has ram, video, audio, and processors - it's only missing gamepad inputs).
What is the main purpose of the CD unit for the PCE? It adds a new storage medium. That's the main purpose of it. It didn't upgrade the graphical capabilities or the processing capabilities. Didn't add 3D. Yeah ok, it upgraded the sound (which would have happened anyway via hucard). The SNES did this with addon chips directly in the carts (as well as the NES), and they even added processors and other specialty chips. Those are mini-self contained addons. If the Duo is no part of the main system, then neither are carts on the SNES that employ such chips (especially the late gen ones).
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Black Falcon views everything around the perspective of Nintendo inventing all standards for games and every innovation, no matter what may have been done before. If someone else does things different than Nintendo, then it is not normal and doesn't count.
Turbo/PCE CD games don't count as real Turbo/PCE games, even if you ignore the CD music and adpcm, but all the NES and SNES games with add-on hardware in carts, Zapper/Super Scope/Power Pad/ROB Robot/Piano/etc games and ram pak N64 games are real because they are Nintendo and Turbo/PCE is not.
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Black Falcon views everything around the perspective of Nintendo inventing all standards for games and every innovation, no matter what may have been done before. If someone else does things different than Nintendo, then it is not normal and doesn't count.
100% false and lies. Sure I like Nintendo, but I'd never think that only Nintendo invented standards or anything silly like that.
Turbo/PCE CD games don't count as real Turbo/PCE games, even if you ignore the CD music and adpcm, but all the NES and SNES games with add-on hardware in carts, Zapper/Super Scope/Power Pad/ROB Robot/Piano/etc games and ram pak N64 games are real because they are Nintendo and Turbo/PCE is not.
If you can't understand the difference between an external addon system which you have to buy separately, and a chip the company puts inside a cartridge, there's really nothing I can say. It should be blatantly self-evident that those two things are different.
Also why are you conflating games which use special controllers with games which use a hardware addon? That's nonsense. Go look on, well, any site on the internet pretty much. They sort game by platform. Not by what controllers the game supports. Come on, that's obviously not how it works. And as for the Nintendo thing, have you forgotten that it's not only the N64 that has a RAM expansion which counts as a part of the main system, but also the Turbo CD and Saturn? All three work the exact same way, as far as classification: They are not separate platforms. The 64DD, which requires the N64 RAM expansion, is, though. That's a full hardware addon.
That's your problem; you're trying to fit the PCE system into other system standards. When in fact, the PCE set its own standard of what's an addon and what's part of the console. The Duo over took the main system; it replaced it for the rest of the life of the system. The CD system, added very little; you can't compare it to the SegaCD which has so much hardware added on that it's almost its own system (add a video chip and it would be). Same can be said for the 32x; even more so because you could rig the 32X as a standalone system (has ram, video, audio, and processors - it's only missing gamepad inputs).
What is the main purpose of the CD unit for the PCE? It adds a new storage medium. That's the main purpose of it. It didn't upgrade the graphical capabilities or the processing capabilities. Didn't add 3D. Yeah ok, it upgraded the sound (which would have happened anyway via hucard). The SNES did this with addon chips directly in the carts (as well as the NES), and they even added processors and other specialty chips. Those are mini-self contained addons. If the Duo is no part of the main system, then neither are carts on the SNES that employ such chips (especially the late gen ones).
I'm sorry, but this doesn't matter. The Jaguar CD, Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, Famicom Disk System, SFC Satellaview... outside of storage (or streaming fo rthe Satellaview), those addons all add either nothing or very little (FDS adds a sound channel or two, nothing else). They are still addons. They are still things which should be listed separately from the main system. The Turbo CD works the same way.
Sure though, yeah, you do have to draw a line somewhere. So the Turbo CD is a separate platform, but not really the Super or Arcade CD system cards, those I'd count as part of the Turbo CD library. The same goes for Saturn or N64 games that support those systems' RAM expansions. Or for the NES and SNES it doesn't matter what extra chips games use, they're all for those systems. And no, requiring some special controller does not make a game something for a separate platform. Those differences all matter, and should be noted somehow, but they're not quite enough to make the game something for an entirely separate platform -- the media format and what you're actually putting the game in matters a lot for that kind of distinction.
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It's been forever, but I remember the Saturn having issues with quality FMV. This was a point of contention back in the day of PS vs Saturn. The Saturn FMV had some terrible looking artifacts in motion. At what point did they fix this?
Even if the Saturn did use native 320 horizontal resolution for video, the advantage isn't as great 25% increase leads you to believe. For one, SDTVs played a factor and the output of the 320 resolution blurred enough on the Saturn to even make mesh transparency trick seem solid. That, and video is a tricky thing. Assuming high color images with nice gradients; vertical resolution makes much more so than horizontal resolution. Always has, always will (for video). There was a trick to re-encode DVD video from 704/720x480 res into 352x480 res (common for CVCDs/KVCDs at the time, also a legal format for DVD), and although the difference was half - the perceivable difference was much-much less than that. Some people couldn't even tell.
As for the Saturn, its FMV is all done via software codecs, so there's a great degree of variability in FMV quality throughout the library due to different codecs being used, as well as some versions being improved upon over time.
The most common codecs are variants of Cinepak and Trumotion, but there are a few more. The game Vatlva apparently uses a software MPEG codec that was compatible with VCD MPEG, but renders the image at a smaller resolution, in a box. I think it's called SOFDEC.
1995 Saturn games almost all have windowed, artifact-heavy FMV, but 1997 games on average look much better.
Over at the SegaXtreme forums, where the western Saturn emulator coders used to hang out, one person managed to rig a Saturn emulator in such a way as to be able to estimate how much idling the CPUs were doing over any given period of time. For the Saturn, a dual CPU system, this was really interesting because you could see which games were very well optimized to use both CPUs fully, which ones weren't, and which ones only used one CPU.
One surprising find was that a great deal of the games in the Saturn library use only one CPU for FMV decoding, but some (very nice looking) games used two. I'll see if I can't hunt up the thread.
And again, I have to say, the whole point was not that the PC-FX has awful FMV. It was that NEC/Hudson bet the farm on having the best FMV in town, and they didn't. The PSX could consistently produce slightly better FMV right from the start (64 more horizontal pixels may or may not be a big deal, but they'll sure break a tie), and the Saturn was not far behind in the beginning and caught up just fine in the later years.
By the way, though, I just have to say, the Saturn's mesh-transparency trick really doesn't work, and in S-Video, the meshing is clear as day
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I'm sorry, but this doesn't matter. The Jaguar CD, Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, Famicom Disk System, SFC Satellaview... outside of storage (or streaming fo rthe Satellaview), those addons all add either nothing or very little (FDS adds a sound channel or two, nothing else). They are still addons. They are still things which should be listed separately from the main system. The Turbo CD works the same way.
Except, the difference between all of those and the TG/PCE, is that they remained as addons. The CD unit became the main system, for the PCE. There is nothing else like that in history of gaming consoles. The Duo came out in 1991, less than half its life span. The Duo WAS the new system.
Sure though, yeah, you do have to draw a line somewhere. So the Turbo CD is a separate platform, but not really the Super or Arcade CD system cards, those I'd count as part of the Turbo CD library.
Why? If the CD games are a separate platform, then why not CD, SuperCD, and Arcade CD? Those cards are addons, with extra hardware in them, and are required to play those formats. Your logic doesn't make any sense; you're willing to dismiss the hardware requirements for each CD format and lump them together, but you're unwilling do to so for the hucard format.
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By the way, though, I just have to say, the Saturn's mesh-transparency trick really doesn't work, and in S-Video, the meshing is clear as day
Work as in doesn't appear solid? Every instance of Saturn hooked up with composite on a sdtv BITD, looked solid on those meshes that I saw. But the point, even if the mesh was slight noticeable on some of the better SDTV sets under composite, is that resolution difference didn't have any advantage when the details were filtered out by the encoder chip via composite/rf. The higher resolution played more to an anti-aliasing effect for 3D rendering and the like. Given the limited bandwidth of the CD transfer (2x for all systems), I'd say it would have been a waste to go any higher res than 256. You're just throwing away bandwidth that could go back into the frame rate or better optimization for artifacts.
Sherlock Holmes on the PCECD uses 512 res for the video (although the video frame isn't that wide). IMO, its a waste of bandwidth and frame rate. Just look at the SegaCD version which uses a lower res and looks fine.
S-Video is a world of difference over composite (especially considering what most SDTVs did with the composite signal back then). It's the same on PS as well. PS has a global dither across the screen, which you couldn't really see unless you had S-Video cables, which I did buy and immediate was disgusted by it and went back to composite. Not many people bothered with s-video cables BITD. The dominate connection type for gamers was rf and composite (in NA, anyway). Hell, even in the PS2 era - composite was still heavily dominate.
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I meant that it doesn't "work" as in it doesn't produce a convincing transparency. Even with a crappy old TV using composite (which is a situation I was stuck in several years ago), it's not too hard to make out each individual opaque pixel in the mesh, as long as it's not moving too quickly. Maybe RF on an ancient crappy 80s TV is different, I don't know.
EDIT: One extra thing to note, since we are talking in part about a Japan exclusive system here, is that TV technology in the average Japanese consumer's home has always been a little better than in the west. S-Video was probably much more widely used in Japan in the mid 90s.
You have a fair point about bandwidth possibly going to waste on the extra 64 pixels during FMV playback. For normal graphics, though, I think the difference is significant enough in any situation that 320 is preferable, even if you wind up needing more VRAM.
I think it would be interesting to survey the PS1 library and see how many games used the 256 pixel width mode for FMV compared to how many used 320. If the majority went with 320, then there's an argument to be made that the extra pixels really did make things look better.
And this still doesn't affect my opinion that the PC-FX did not have the best FMV playback of its generation, despite all the emphasis they gave it. Take another look at the screenshots of Der Langrisser, and compare the PS1 and PC-FX. They're both 256 pixels across, and they both have essentially the same quality. The option to go with 320 on the PS1 gives it the tie-breaking advantage.
As an aside, you may be interested to know that CD drive read-speed does not seem to be the primary limiting factor in FMV quality for the 32-bit systems. It's just as much a matter of space on the CD and processing bandwidth. A lot of games, including PC-FX games, have a data rate that is well below 300kBps, even though the drive is capable of streaming more. During the Zeroigar FMV subtitling project, we found that the average transfer rate of the original video was around 227kBps, but the drive on a real system could handle 300 just fine. This did a lot to help us keep the quality high even though we were working with a lossy source.
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As an aside, you may be interested to know that CD drive read-speed does not seem to be the primary limiting factor in FMV quality for the 32-bit systems. It's just as much a matter of space on the CD and processing bandwidth. A lot of games, including PC-FX games, have a data rate that is well below 300kBps, even though the drive is capable of streaming more. During the Zeroigar FMV subtitling project, we found that the average transfer rate of the original video was around 227kBps, but the drive on a real system could handle 300 just fine. This did a lot to help us keep the quality high even though we were working with a lossy source.
I wonder if it's a hardware limitation, or related limitation. On the PCE, the original system card library for reading in DATA is about 90k a second. The drive is spec'd at 150k (obviously, for red book audio to be compliant). Late gen PCE games use custom libs to access the CD hardware directly, and bump up the data reading rate from 90k to about ~122k (huvideo uses this custom lib too). Still not the max 150k. Everyone assumes the PCE CD units handle 150k data transfer rate, but even with the update libs (which I ripped and used for my own stuffs), still didn't hit that peak rate. I never tried using the ADPCM CD data dma mode to reach max transfer rate (assuming you can even read from ADPCM ram while it's being filled on the CD side).
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Well, the thing is, when we hard subbed the video rips and re-encoded them using a PC-FXGA development tool, we set the max data rate at 300k and came out with files that were much bigger than the originals. And yet, they worked fine on real hardware, with no modifications made to the game itself other than the offsets for the video locations.
Another interesting case is the remake of Lunar 2. The PS1 version is two CDs, while the Saturn version is three, and there is no difference in content. It can only follow that the PS1 version streams FMV data at lower rate. This isn't surprising, because again, Lunar 2 has maybe the best looking FMV on the Saturn.
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Agreed the PC-Engine is a completely separate beast than any other add-on in the history of gaming.
Did the CDX take over as the primary Sega system? Was the "Jag Duo" ever released? The only time in the history of the medium where there was a mainstream shift and adoption of a system from one thing (Core) to another (Duo) was the PC-Engine.
For that reason, CD games must be included as standard games for the system, whereas you cannot do the same for the Sega CD or similar "add-ons.". The CD component of the PC-E was no longer an add-on for the second half of the system's life, it WAS the system.
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I'm sorry, but this doesn't matter. The Jaguar CD, Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, Famicom Disk System, SFC Satellaview... outside of storage (or streaming fo rthe Satellaview), those addons all add either nothing or very little (FDS adds a sound channel or two, nothing else). They are still addons. They are still things which should be listed separately from the main system. The Turbo CD works the same way.
Except, the difference between all of those and the TG/PCE, is that they remained as addons. The CD unit became the main system, for the PCE. There is nothing else like that in history of gaming consoles. The Duo came out in 1991, less than half its life span. The Duo WAS the new system.
Well, there are other combo systems out there of course -- the Sega CDX has been mentioned, but there's also the Sharp Twin Famicom, with both a Famicom and Disk System built into one unit. There are some other examples of combo systems.
As for using success as a separator -- that is, saying that because the Turbo CD was more successful than other addons it deserves to be counted separately than other addons and isn't really an addon -- that is something I strongly disagree with. For example, one big issue I have with listings of console generations is that the new consoles of 1982 are (wrongly) listed on all the big sites as being "2nd generation" platforms. That's ridiculous of course; the Atari 5200, Colecovision, and Vectrex are in no way 2nd-gen. They are early 3rd gen systems, which released less than a year before the NES (looking at first-release-anywhere, not just the US). And yet most people dump those systems in with systems released five or six years earlier, simply because the systems of 1982 all crashed and burned in the crash, while the NES released in the West several years later and brought back the market. I don't think that that should matter -- what matters is when it was first released and the systems' hardware power, and by those standards, there is absolutely no question that the 5200 and Colecovision are much closer to the NES than stuff like the 2600 or Odyssey 2.
So, that the Turbo CD was much more successful than other addons is irrelevant when considering whether it's an addon or not. However, there is one "addon" that we need to consider, that I think you're not thinking of -- the Xbox 360 Kinect. The Kinect was hugely successful -- it sold tens of millions of units. 24 million Kinects sold as of early 2013, meaning that a solid third or so of X360 owners have a Kinect. The Kinect was also bundled in with the system at all higher-priced system tiers after its release. Of course, on the other hand, maybe the Kinect should be considered to be just an accessory, like a light gun or PS2 camera, and not a full addon? After all, as I said, that some games require the NES Zapper don't make those games for a separate platform, just a subset of the main platform that requires a specific accessory. The Kinect is kind of like that... except it DOES have hardware in it beyond just a camera. It is true that the processor on the Kinect 1 was removed for cost reasons, so it relies on using the X360's CPU, but still, it's more than just a camera. The Kinect is right there on the boundary between accessory and addon.
Why? If the CD games are a separate platform, then why not CD, SuperCD, and Arcade CD? Those cards are addons, with extra hardware in them, and are required to play those formats. Your logic doesn't make any sense; you're willing to dismiss the hardware requirements for each CD format and lump them together, but you're unwilling do to so for the hucard format.
It's generally agreed on that just adding more RAM doesn't make something a new platform. Of course it's an enhancement, but it doesn't fundamentally change the platform as much as something like a disc drive does. It's just not the same.
Agreed the PC-Engine is a completely separate beast than any other add-on in the history of gaming.
Did the CDX take over as the primary Sega system? Was the "Jag Duo" ever released? The only time in the history of the medium where there was a mainstream shift and adoption of a system from one thing (Core) to another (Duo) was the PC-Engine.
For that reason, CD games must be included as standard games for the system, whereas you cannot do the same for the Sega CD or similar "add-ons.". The CD component of the PC-E was no longer an add-on for the second half of the system's life, it WAS the system.
How successful a platform is really should not affect how it is classified. Those are two completely separate issues.
Also, this "most successful addon ever", the Turbo CD/Duo, only managed to sell to ~40%, at the absolute most (that is, if you wrongly presume that most Duo buyers had previously owned HuCard systems; there's no way to know that, so the truth is somewhere between 20% and 40%), of the PCE/TG16 HuCard system owning userbase. The most successful addon ever wasn't owned by a majority of people who owned the system. And even if we count Kinect 1 as an "addon", it wasn't either; as I said, 1/3rd at best, depending on where X360 sales are now. I don't think any addon ever has been, if there's something I'm not thinking of.
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I think the point you're missing (intentionally?) that is being raised is that the Duo became the PC Engine system from 1991 onwards. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo so it ceased to be an add on any longer, it was the system. This did not happen for the Mega CD, Jaguar CD, 64DD, Famicom Disk System etc.
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I think the point you're missing (intentionally?) that is being raised is that the Duo became the PC Engine system from 1991 onwards. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo so it ceased to be an add on any longer, it was the system. This did not happen for the Mega CD, Jaguar CD, 64DD, Famicom Disk System etc.
(http://www.gametrog.com/GAMETROG/SEGA_CDX_Information_Specs_files/CDX.jpg)
O:) :-"
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But the MultiMega/CDX didn't evolve naturally into the Megadrive from the point it was released, they ran concurrently. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo, partly because of the limitation of the Hucard format. I'm sure I read somewhere the PCE was supposed to be a CD based system from the outset but cost and availability stopped them from doing it? Can anybody confirm this (in other words, did I just dream this to try and fit my argument :D) ?
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I think the point you're missing (intentionally?) that is being raised is that the Duo became the PC Engine system from 1991 onwards. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo so it ceased to be an add on any longer, it was the system. This did not happen for the Mega CD, Jaguar CD, 64DD, Famicom Disk System etc.
I think that the point you're missing is that since Nintendo failed time and time again at something, anyone else succeeding at the same thing can't be acknowledged as legitimate. Doing so would admit to Nintendo being fallible.
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If I recall correctly, this whole tangent started over whether it was valid to compare the number of SNES games released every year to the number of HuCard and CD releases combined.
If the PCE and the CD expansion are some super-special case that needs its own special classification, then at least you have to admit that you can't really compare it head-on with the SNES or the Genesis in certain aspects. Apples and oranges, right?
Although I posted way back that I don't think we'll ever agree to what the PCE really "is", I personally think it's dubious and even lazy to just say that the PCE and the CD expansion are the same thing by just calling them one console. If the CD expansion goes beyond being an add-on, then to me it looks more like it's a new console entirely that grew out of the PCE. It sure as hell was priced like one.
I'd love to expand on this viewpoint, but I have to get to work. Ta ta!
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I think the point you're missing (intentionally?) that is being raised is that the Duo became the PC Engine system from 1991 onwards. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo so it ceased to be an add on any longer, it was the system. This did not happen for the Mega CD, Jaguar CD, 64DD, Famicom Disk System etc.
I think "(intentionally)" is the key point of your paragraph. I don't think Black Falcon trolling for the purpose of trolling, as I honestly believe he believes the things he is saying. However, the fact remains that there is no other system that was ever replaced by a new variation of the system as its primary SKU. The Twin Famicom is another good example where a niche item was introduced (this one by a third party), but there was clearly no intention for this new product to take over as the main SKU. That is why the PC-Engine is different, the Duo was clearly INTENDED TO REPLACE THE ORIGINAL SKU, whereas the other systems mentioned were introduced as niche alternatives with no intention of replacing the primary SKU.
If the CDX was truly intended to replace the Genesis, then Sega would've moved all its AAA titles to the Sega CD format. This did not happen, as it had happened with the PC-E.
As for using success as a separator -- that is, saying that because the Turbo CD was more successful than other addons it deserves to be counted separately than other addons and isn't really an addon -- that is something I strongly disagree with. For example, one big issue I have with listings of console generations is that the new consoles of 1982 are (wrongly) listed on all the big sites as being "2nd generation" platforms. That's ridiculous of course; the Atari 5200, Colecovision, and Vectrex are in no way 2nd-gen. They are early 3rd gen systems, which released less than a year before the NES (looking at first-release-anywhere, not just the US). And yet most people dump those systems in with systems released five or six years earlier, simply because the systems of 1982 all crashed and burned in the crash, while the NES released in the West several years later and brought back the market. I don't think that that should matter -- what matters is when it was first released and the systems' hardware power, and by those standards, there is absolutely no question that the 5200 and Colecovision are much closer to the NES than stuff like the 2600 or Odyssey 2.
This is another odd viewpoint you hold. I don't think that "generations" were ever defined by a year, but rather an event. The Famicom/NES was an absolute game changer to the industry, which is why it ushered in the new "generation" on its own. I tend to argue that the "generation" thing is foolish in general, why do these systems need to be grouped in some manner? But, if you are going to do it logically, then you need to take into account key events and not just dates.
Think about other entertainment, such as music. When Elvis or the Beatles hit the scene, everything changed. When Babe Ruth stepped on the baseball field, the entire game changed. When Nintendo's Famicom hit stores, gaming changed and everything on the shelf even months prior didn't matter anymore.
When historians talk about real history, there are various "ages." These ages are all triggered by key events, which is the sane way of looking at history. If your timelines only looks are the start and end of each year and clumps all that middle stuff on the line together because it is the same year so it must be similar, then you are not plotting things appropriately.
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This is another odd viewpoint you hold. I don't think that "generations" were ever defined by a year, but rather an event. The Famicom/NES was an absolute game changer to the industry, which is why it ushered in the new "generation" on its own. I tend to argue that the "generation" thing is foolish in general, why do these systems need to be grouped in some manner? But, if you are going to do it logically, then you need to take into account key events and not just dates.
Think about other entertainment, such as music. When Elvis or the Beatles hit the scene, everything changed. When Babe Ruth stepped on the baseball field, the entire game changed. When Nintendo's Famicom hit stores, gaming changed and everything on the shelf even months prior didn't matter anymore.
When historians talk about real history, there are various "ages." These ages are all triggered by key events, which is the sane way of looking at history. If your timelines only looks are the start and end of each year and clumps all that middle stuff on the line together because it is the same year so it must be similar, then you are not plotting things appropriately.
Interesting, and a fair viewpoint.
I take it you don't consider the 3DO and the Jaguar to be part of the 32-bit generation?
I'm not being sarcastic; I actually think there's a fair case to be made that they aren't.
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I would argue there's often a weird, transitional generation. 3DO, at least, falls into that category. Some would argue the PC Engine does. The PC Engine may have heralded the 16-bit generation, but in so many ways it was rooted very solidly in the 8-bit generation of the NES. The reason I think the PC Engine fits better in the 16-bit generation is because it was popular and hung in there and was ultimately able to be competitive. The 3DO, however, didn't last long into the 32-bit generation and so it really wasn't a part of it. It fizzled out before the 32-bit generation hit its stride.
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I think the point you're missing (intentionally?) that is being raised is that the Duo became the PC Engine system from 1991 onwards. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo so it ceased to be an add on any longer, it was the system. This did not happen for the Mega CD, Jaguar CD, 64DD, Famicom Disk System etc.
I don't understand why you think this matters. Systems are what they are, they don't change classification midlife.
I think that the point you're missing is that since Nintendo failed time and time again at something, anyone else succeeding at the same thing can't be acknowledged as legitimate. Doing so would admit to Nintendo being fallible.
The Famicom Disk System and Satellaview weren't big failures, though. They weren't as successful as Nintendo might have wanted, sure, but they weren't big failures. Of Nintendo's addons only the 64DD was a big failure. So as usual your Nintendo-bashing attack is off base.
I think the point you're missing (intentionally?) that is being raised is that the Duo became the PC Engine system from 1991 onwards. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo so it ceased to be an add on any longer, it was the system. This did not happen for the Mega CD, Jaguar CD, 64DD, Famicom Disk System etc.
(http://www.gametrog.com/GAMETROG/SEGA_CDX_Information_Specs_files/CDX.jpg)
O:) :-"
As I said in my last post that's irrelevant. How successful an addon is doesn't matter, what it is matters.
I can't think of even one reason why the fact that the Duo replaced the PCE/TG16, while the Twin Famicom did not replace the Famicom and the CDX did not replace the Genesis, is at all relevant when classifying them. All that matters for classification is that they are addons, with combo systems that released later.
I think "(intentionally)" is the key point of your paragraph. I don't think Black Falcon trolling for the purpose of trolling, as I honestly believe he believes the things he is saying. However, the fact remains that there is no other system that was ever replaced by a new variation of the system as its primary SKU. The Twin Famicom is another good example where a niche item was introduced (this one by a third party), but there was clearly no intention for this new product to take over as the main SKU. That is why the PC-Engine is different, the Duo was clearly INTENDED TO REPLACE THE ORIGINAL SKU, whereas the other systems mentioned were introduced as niche alternatives with no intention of replacing the primary SKU.
Seriously, your argument has no basis!
First, is there any basis for thinking that the Turbo CD was ACTUALLY originally "intended to replace" the PCE HuCard system? It was intended as a supplement, but as a replacement? Hudson's continued support for HuCards up until the end of '93 suggests otherwise, considering that they invented the thing. It was meant as a supplement which, as SamIAm said and I completely agree with, after the SNES released became the main focus as a way of differentiating the TG16/CD from the SNES. But that probably wasn't the original intent. It's something which NEC decided on later, and a majority of their audience did not follow them on that route, given the under-40%-adoption-rate-by-HuCard-system-owners fact.
As for the Duo, the Duo isn't a new system, just a TG16+CD combo system. The Turbo CD predates it by years, and its place in classification had already been permanently set as an addon. You can't go back and change that years after the fact, that's just silly! The Duo is not a new system. It's a combo system.
As far as classification goes it doesn't matter, just like the Twin Famicom and CDX don't matter. I can't understand why you'd say that somehow the TG16 and CD are the same system. I think it's fairly obvious to anyone who's played both of them that they are not, just like the NES and Famicom Disk System are not, and the Genesis and Sega CD are not. That the Turbo CD became the only addon to outlast its base system is a very interesting and cool historical fact, but for classification purposes it's irrelevant. And again, the HuCard system sold better! Remember the sales SamIAm has shown. ~6 million systems with HuCard vs. ~2 million CD systems, 1 million of those the Duo systems which count towards both. The Turbo CD outlasted its originator, the only time an addon has ever done that, but it didn't outperform it. Addons never do that.
If the CDX was truly intended to replace the Genesis, then Sega would've moved all its AAA titles to the Sega CD format. This did not happen, as it had happened with the PC-E.
This is completely irrelevant when it comes to classification, as I said.
As for using success as a separator -- that is, saying that because the Turbo CD was more successful than other addons it deserves to be counted separately than other addons and isn't really an addon -- that is something I strongly disagree with. For example, one big issue I have with listings of console generations is that the new consoles of 1982 are (wrongly) listed on all the big sites as being "2nd generation" platforms. That's ridiculous of course; the Atari 5200, Colecovision, and Vectrex are in no way 2nd-gen. They are early 3rd gen systems, which released less than a year before the NES (looking at first-release-anywhere, not just the US). And yet most people dump those systems in with systems released five or six years earlier, simply because the systems of 1982 all crashed and burned in the crash, while the NES released in the West several years later and brought back the market. I don't think that that should matter -- what matters is when it was first released and the systems' hardware power, and by those standards, there is absolutely no question that the 5200 and Colecovision are much closer to the NES than stuff like the 2600 or Odyssey 2.
This is another odd viewpoint you hold. I don't think that "generations" were ever defined by a year, but rather an event. The Famicom/NES was an absolute game changer to the industry, which is why it ushered in the new "generation" on its own. I tend to argue that the "generation" thing is foolish in general, why do these systems need to be grouped in some manner? But, if you are going to do it logically, then you need to take into account key events and not just dates.
Think about other entertainment, such as music. When Elvis or the Beatles hit the scene, everything changed. When Babe Ruth stepped on the baseball field, the entire game changed. When Nintendo's Famicom hit stores, gaming changed and everything on the shelf even months prior didn't matter anymore.
That's an America-centric viewpoint which is irrelevant nonsense from a technological point of view, or an international point of view. When Nintendo's Famicom hit stores in July 1983, everything did not change. All other platforms were instantly dated, as it was the most powerful console yet by a good margin, but the Colecovision, 5200, or Sega's Colecovision-based SG-1000, which, remember, launched in Japan the same week that the Famicom did -- were competitive. Early Famicom games, which didn't use any mapper chips, have better graphics than anything on those other systems -- compare NES to Colecovision Donkey Kong to see that -- but they're clearly in the same generation of systems. Again, look at the Colecovision homebrew game Ghostblaster, it looks about as good as a mid '80s NES game. It took a few years until, thanks to better mapper chips, NES games really crushed the competition, and even then Ghostblaster shows that the Colecovision hardware wasn't completely hopelessly dated when really pushed. Conveniently, this happened at about the same time that the system released in the West, so here we had Super Mario Bros. at launch in fall 1985, shortly after the game released in Japan. But look at the kinds of games available on the Famicom over the two years before SMB's release. In terms of both graphics and gameplay, they're nowhere near its level. The release list was thin, too -- in 1983 and most of 1984 Nintendo was pretty much the only publisher on the Famicom, and they had a slow release schedule. It's only once third-party games started appearing in '84-'85 that the library expanded. And pretending that the NES is a 1985 console and its first two years don't exist and don't matter simply because they only happened in Japan is absolutely wrong! They matter just as much as any other part of its history.
So should we say that 1983-1985 Famicom stuff is "2nd gen" but 1985-1994 Famicom/NES stuff is "3rd gen" because the NES mapper chips were a generational leap? I guess you COULD, but I would strongly disagree. No, it's all 3rd gen. People knew it at the time when the Colecovision released that it was ushering in a new console generation, and it was. It and the 5200 are in the same place as the Turbografx in the 4th generation, the Jaguar or 3DO for the 5th generation, or the Dreamcast for the 6th generation. For another game example, in addition to Ghostblaster, look at Wonder Boy on the SG-1000. It's clearly a lot worse looking than the NES version, Adventure Island, but it's also clearly not a full generation behind.
When historians talk about real history, there are various "ages." These ages are all triggered by key events, which is the sane way of looking at history. If your timelines only looks are the start and end of each year and clumps all that middle stuff on the line together because it is the same year so it must be similar, then you are not plotting things appropriately.
Wha... no, of course generations are tied to years! For instance, the Wii is a 7th gen console, not 6th. Everyone not crazily trolling it knows this. This is true despite its "last-gen" power. The same is true for the Wii U this gen. When a system releases is absolutely key. System power does not determine which generation a system is in. When it released does. Video game console generations are not like historical periods; they are more like, well, human generations. What separates them is time, not specific events. There's a reason the word "generations" is used for them, after all! The way that specific events matter is that when a new, more powerful system releases, after enough time has passed since the last-gen systems to make a generational gap (in gaming, a couple of years), it's a new console generation.
Now, there are some weird things which are hard to classify -- handhelds in the late' 90s and early '00s are probably the best example of this, or for a console case what about the Neo-Geo CD -- but they are the exceptions.
I would argue there's often a weird, transitional generation. 3DO, at least, falls into that category. Some would argue the PC Engine does. The PC Engine may have heralded the 16-bit generation, but in so many ways it was rooted very solidly in the 8-bit generation of the NES. The reason I think the PC Engine fits better in the 16-bit generation is because it was popular and hung in there and was ultimately able to be competitive. The 3DO, however, didn't last long into the 32-bit generation and so it really wasn't a part of it. It fizzled out before the 32-bit generation hit its stride.
You really need to play games like Gex, Blade Force, Star Fighter, and The Need for Speed. The 3DO is a 5th gen console, absolutely no question.
If I recall correctly, this whole tangent started over whether it was valid to compare the number of SNES games released every year to the number of HuCard and CD releases combined.
You're right, it did.
If the PCE and the CD expansion are some super-special case that needs its own special classification, then at least you have to admit that you can't really compare it head-on with the SNES or the Genesis in certain aspects. Apples and oranges, right?
If you're going to combine TG16 and CD (inc. Super/Arcade Cards), then of course you must compare it to the Genesis + Sega CD + 32X, and SNES + Satellaview. Anything else would be an obviously biased double standard. Either a console and its addons are one system, or they aren't. I know that online listing sites have to draw a line somewhere for what is a "system", and they list the Sega CD and 32X and 64DD as "systems" but not, say, the Turbo Super or Arcade CD or N64 Expansion Pak Required titles, and I agree with those classifications, but once you've chosen where to draw your line at what is an addon and what isn't, you have to be consistent. The things some people said here about how the 32X or Sega CD don't really count because they have more processors in them while the Turbo CD doesn't, or whatever... come on, that's just being biased. Either count addons or don't! Splitting hairs like that purely to get the better outcome for NEC isn't right (and something similar wouldn't be right in favor of any other console manufacturer either, of course).
So yes, you're right if you're saying that consistency is better.
Although I posted way back that I don't think we'll ever agree to what the PCE really "is", I personally think it's dubious and even lazy to just say that the PCE and the CD expansion are the same thing by just calling them one console. If the CD expansion goes beyond being an add-on, then to me it looks more like it's a new console entirely that grew out of the PCE. It sure as hell was priced like one.
I agree, except on the 'it's a completely new system' point; sure it was priced like one, but it really isn't one. But otherwise, yeah, you're right. :)
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Although I posted way back that I don't think we'll ever agree to what the PCE really "is", I personally think it's dubious and even lazy to just say that the PCE and the CD expansion are the same thing by just calling them one console. If the CD expansion goes beyond being an add-on, then to me it looks more like it's a new console entirely that grew out of the PCE. It sure as hell was priced like one.
I agree, except on the 'it's a completely new system' point; sure it was priced like one, but it really isn't one. But otherwise, yeah, you're right. :)
Yeah, that was just a hypothetical statement. I don't really think think of the PCE-CD as a new system. I think of it as an add-on just like the Sega CD.
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I think the point you're missing (intentionally?) that is being raised is that the Duo became the PC Engine system from 1991 onwards. The PC Engine evolved into the Duo so it ceased to be an add on any longer, it was the system. This did not happen for the Mega CD, Jaguar CD, 64DD, Famicom Disk System etc.
(http://www.gametrog.com/GAMETROG/SEGA_CDX_Information_Specs_files/CDX.jpg)
O:) :-"
How many Super CD and hucard games released after the Duo was released ? Compare with the same figures for MD and Mega CD games and you'll understand why your comparison is pointless.
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As far as the CDX goes, a thing to remember is the JVC Genesis + Sega CD combo systems, the Wondermega and Wondermega 2/X'Eye. They weren't first-party and sold poorly, maybe even worse than the CDX? But the Wondermega 1 did release in Japan in April 1992, only a few months after the system's late 1991 release there, so a combo system was indeed available there from early on, if people wanted one. Considering its poor sales, most didn't. The X'Eye/Wondermega 2 (the one with the mechanical drive lid and lights removed) was released in '94, the same year as the CDX, but the Japan-only Wondermega 1 was earlier. No models sold much though. Still, a combo system existed from early on... but it is a definite difference that it was third party and not first.
Anyway though, the Genesis/Sega CD/32X thing didn't go like the TG16/TCD thing because Sega tried to keep all of their systems going up until 1995, when Sega of Japan abandoned them all (except for the Game Gear, which they supported into '96). Sega of America did release a few final 32X games in late '95 and early '96, but otherwise decided to focus their late releases on the platform that the most people had, the Genesis. But as for NEC, surely some of those 4 million people who had bought TG16/PCE systems but hadn't bought a CD drive bought some of the ~1 million Duo-line systems sold, but as for the rest, maybe they were gone for good (probably to the SNES), but was it a good decision or not to phase out HuCard releases as they did? Maybe it was -- the CD thing certainly differentiated NEC from Nintendo in a way HuCards did not -- but I do have some questions about whether it's good to leave behind that much of your userbase. And of course, even most of that Turbo CD userbase did not follow NEC's next move to the PC-FX. Maybe they were just doomed and did what they could, but if what's the revisionist-history fun in that? :)
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Do emotica mean nothing anymore? Surely you could tell I was posting that in jest? :oops:
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Do emotica mean nothing anymore? Surely you could tell I was posting that in jest? :oops:
Your emoticons...they mean nothing :P
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It's very hard to tell if people are joking or not on the internet, that's definitely true...
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Semantics aside, just growing up with the 8 and 16bit generation - Turbo CDs (2.0, 3.0, ACD) were ~always~ comparable with Genesis and SNES. None of my gaming friends thought any differently, either. There wasn't any of this ambiguous or confusing view of what the system was. It had some deficiencies, that was clear, but it also had its strengths as well.
From a programming stand point (my experience with ASM), coding for a CD game is no different than coding a Hucard game. Yes, you have slow far storage you need to fetch - but the core is still the same. I still have all the same graphical and processing limitations, directions, optimizations, etc. I'm not somehow free of these limitations, like I would be with on cart processors (snes), or graphics scaling/rotating chips and extra processors (SegaCD).
I don't understand this need to separate the two formats. The media is different, but the core is the same. FDS and famicom carts are the exact same thing to me. I don't say, hey - let's not count FDS games because the medium is different and requires a new interface for that medium.
I think that, some people think the CD unit for the PCE gives it some sort of unfair advantage over the Genesis and SNES (people have posted this). That's absurd. Or that the Arcade card games shouldn't be counted, because the incredible amount of ram it can hold. That's also absurd. Carts were getting larger and larger, and were putting out more animation; the arcade card was just a direct response to this - to play catch up. Carts have an distinct advantage over CD games, and when that medium starts to get bigger (carts), then the gap starts to widen as well.
For the record, the 3DO and Jag do not fit the 16bit generation processor and gpu designs; they are completely different and much more closer to that of the PS/Saturn. They just aren't as powerful. So yes, they belong to that generation regardless if they could complete toe to toe, or not. If anything, the PCFX would be closer to the 16bit generation of systems, than the 3DO or Jag. Ignore the fact that the cpu is 32bit, and you pretty much have a 16bit system.
The PCE is no different than the 3DO or Jag. What makes up the bulk difference between the 8bit systems and the 16bit system, the PCE employes almost all of that. It's the first system out of that era, so yeah it has the weakest overall capabilities - but not in all areas. The PCE is actually superior to the Genesis and SNES is a few areas.
I feel like this is all getting a bit redundant..
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I can't think of even one reason why the fact that the Duo replaced the PCE/TG16, while the Twin Famicom did not replace the Famicom and the CDX did not replace the Genesis, is at all relevant when classifying them.
The best reason is because of how the manufacturers marketed them. NEC treated the CD add-on as an integral piece of the pie from DAY ONE, whereas other things were marketed as non-essential add-ons or as next gen (32x). Good luck finding an NEC employee that believes they "abandoned" the PCE in '94 ('92 really).
First, is there any basis for thinking that the Turbo CD was ACTUALLY originally "intended to replace" the PCE HuCard system? It was intended as a supplement, but as a replacement? Hudson's continued support for HuCards up until the end of '93 suggests otherwise, considering that they invented the thing. It was meant as a supplement....
It can't be a supplement and a completely different system. Make up your mind.
the Atari 5200, Colecovision, and Vectrex are in no way 2nd-gen. They are early 3rd gen systems......
It and the 5200 are in the same place as the Turbografx in the 4th generation......
Makes total sense. In truth it spans three console generations! DO THE MATH!!!!!
.... you have to be consistent. The things some people said here about how the 32X or Sega CD don't really count because they have more processors in them while the Turbo CD doesn't, or whatever... come on, that's just being biased.
It's not biased to consistently separate based on whether or not the add-on is just a storage medium (TG-CD, Famicom disk, etc.) or add additional hardware capabilities beyond just storage (32x, Sega CD, etc.). It's not at all hard to see the difference. By the way, the SF numbers I posted included Satteleview, as did the Sega numbers I compiled but didn't bother to post.
But I digress. Any time someone starts arguing about the Kinect being relevant to anything, they clearly aren't capable of intelligent discussions.
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The best reason is because of how the manufacturers marketed them. NEC treated the CD add-on as an integral piece of the pie from DAY ONE, whereas other things were marketed as non-essential add-ons or as next gen (32x). Good luck finding an NEC employee that believes they "abandoned" the PCE in '94 ('92 really).
Once again, did they really? "Integral piece of the pie" from day one in December 1988? But NEC didn't even release a Turbo CD game until September 1989! That's not "from day one". :) It wasn't uintil 1991 that NEC decided to focus on the Turbo CD as their main platform. Look at their 1989-1990 CD release libraries if you want to see that. Their only CD releases in '89 -- again, the first one coming in September -- were Altered Beast CD, the first three volumes of Rom Rom Karaoke, and Sidearms Special. In 1990 all they had on CD was Super Darius and two more volumes of Rom Rom Karaoke. That's a thin lineup of three games previously or also available on HuCard and five volumes of karaoke. Finally in 1991 NEC got serious on CDs and released a lot more stuff for it: Quiz Avenue, Hellfire S, Download 2, Splash Lake, and Quiz Avenue 2, and on from there in '92 to '97. (Their first Super CD game was in March '92.)
It can't be a supplement and a completely different system. Make up your mind.
Addons kind of are a weird middle-ground between supplements and completely different systems, though. They kind of go in both categories...
Makes total sense. In truth it spans three console generations! DO THE MATH!!!!!
The "4th" part is obviously a mistake, I meant 3rd gen of course. Everything from the Colecovision to the Master System is 3rd-gen. And yes, this means Atari and Sega each had two 3rd gen consoles. Nintendo improved the NES via mapper chips, while Atari and Sega instead released entirely new systems. They weren't far enoughaway from their predecessors in time or power to be full next-gen machines, though -- compare any of them to the TG16 to see that. The 7800 is MUCH closer to the 5200 than it is the TG16, for instance.
It's not biased to consistently separate based on whether or not the add-on is just a storage medium (TG-CD, Famicom disk, etc.) or add additional hardware capabilities beyond just storage (32x, Sega CD, etc.). It's not at all hard to see the difference.
Adding a CD storage medium radically alters what you can do in games in certain important ways -- videos, voice acting, CD audio, etc. Even just on its own it's a huge change for the time. Sure, the TCD doesn't have scaling and rotation chips like the Sega CD does, but it's not less of an addon because of that.
By the way, the SF numbers I posted included Satteleview, as did the Sega numbers I compiled but didn't bother to post.
The Satellaview didn't have stand-alone games, so it couldn't have "included the Satellaview"; as far as I know, as long as you were paying for the service and had the addon you could download anything for free during its transmission times.
But as for Sega numbers, mixing together the Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X should not be done, just like how the TG16 and TCD should not be mixed. Or at least, list both the separated AND mixed totals; that would be okay too.
But I digress. Any time someone starts arguing about the Kinect being relevant to anything, they clearly aren't capable of intelligent discussions.
So 24 million sales are irrelevant just because you say so and dislike it? Uh, that's not right. I've never used the Kinect myself and doubt it works well for most games, but that's completely besides the point.
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Once again, did they really? "Integral piece of the pie" from day one in December 1988? But NEC didn't even release a Turbo CD game until September 1989! That's not "from day one". :) It wasn't uintil 1991 that NEC decided to focus on the Turbo CD as their main platform. Look at their 1989-1990 CD release libraries if you want to see that. Their only CD releases in '89 -- again, the first one coming in September -- were Altered Beast CD, the first three volumes of Rom Rom Karaoke, and Sidearms Special. In 1990 all they had on CD was Super Darius and two more volumes of Rom Rom Karaoke. That's a thin lineup of three games previously or also available on HuCard and five volumes of karaoke. Finally in 1991 NEC got serious on CDs and released a lot more stuff for it: Quiz Avenue, Hellfire S, Download 2, Splash Lake, and Quiz Avenue 2, and on from there in '92 to '97. (Their first Super CD game was in March '92.)
Once again, if you refuse to take everyone's word for it, research it yourself and ignore your current source of bogus info. NEC agreed to partner with Hudson on the condition that they push the CD format. Hudson's hardware, which they first offered to Nintendo, was strictly HuCard based. You are correct that it wasn't "from day one", as it was actually from before day one. Before anything was launched, they were showing off the CD-ROM.
The hardware and software actually originated in Japan and NEC and Hudson Soft are Japanese companies. The North American Turbo line was released after the original Japanese version, called the "PC Engine". The first CD games were released in 1988 and the PC Engine CD format is as old as the Sega "Mega Drive" (which is actually the original form of the Sega Genesis)! Two of those 1988 games took advantage of the CD format and provide an experience that both the "Famicom" (NES) and "Super Famicom" (SNES) never did. Two years before the SFC even launched. NO RI KO in particular was the ultimate killer app.
All along, Hudson showed off stuff like the long delayed Tengai Makyou, until games were ready to be published. The only reason that CD software trickled out at first and wasn't ready at launch, is because developing CD games at the time was a huge undertaking, as they learned through trial and error.
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NO RI KO in particular was the ultimate killer app.
wait what
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Once again, did they really? "Integral piece of the pie" from day one in December 1988? But NEC didn't even release a Turbo CD game until September 1989! That's not "from day one". :) It wasn't uintil 1991 that NEC decided to focus on the Turbo CD as their main platform. Look at their 1989-1990 CD release libraries if you want to see that. Their only CD releases in '89 -- again, the first one coming in September -- were Altered Beast CD, the first three volumes of Rom Rom Karaoke, and Sidearms Special. In 1990 all they had on CD was Super Darius and two more volumes of Rom Rom Karaoke. That's a thin lineup of three games previously or also available on HuCard and five volumes of karaoke. Finally in 1991 NEC got serious on CDs and released a lot more stuff for it: Quiz Avenue, Hellfire S, Download 2, Splash Lake, and Quiz Avenue 2, and on from there in '92 to '97. (Their first Super CD game was in March '92.)
Once again, if you refuse to take everyone's word for it, research it yourself and ignore your current source of bogus info. NEC agreed to partner with Hudson on the condition that they push the CD format. Hudson's hardware, which they first offered to Nintendo, was strictly HuCard based. You are correct that it wasn't "from day one", as it was actually from before day one. Before anything was launched, they were showing off the CD-ROM.
First, NEC's actual release library is not "bogus info". It's reality. It took NEC over two years before they started actually caring about releasing original games for the Turbo CD. If you know everything about the system, you surely know that NEC didn't actually start giving serious support to the Turbo CD until 1991, several years into its life!
Also, everything I've read has always said that the idea for the Turbo CD came originally from Hudson itself. Not NEC. And this makes sense, when you look at the release list and see how Hudson supported the Turbo CD from the beginning, while it took NEC longer to start giving it good support. If NEC really did demand that the Turbo CD must happen for them to release the TG16, they sure did take their time before giving it good software support. They kind of made up for that later, but for the first few years Hudson's output for the system was more and better -- Hudson had things other than HuCard ports and Karaoke discs in the first two years! NEC did not.
I mean, sure, I would believe it if a Hudson pitch to Nintendo was initially HuCard only, but I'm also sure Hudson wanted to do a CD drive too.
The hardware and software actually originated in Japan and NEC and Hudson Soft are Japanese companies. The North American Turbo line was released after the original Japanese version, called the "PC Engine". The first CD games were released in 1988 and the PC Engine CD format is as old as the Sega "Mega Drive" (which is actually the original form of the Sega Genesis)! Two of those 1988 games took advantage of the CD format and provide an experience that both the "Famicom" (NES) and "Super Famicom" (SNES) never did. Two years before the SFC even launched.
Did you even read anything I posted before writing up this insultingly basic and completely irrelevant paragraph that totally misses the point? Go back and read my quote up there again. Two hints:
1) I'm talking about NEC's Japanese releases. Not their American ones.
2) I'm talking about NEC. Not Hudson. The two are not the same company. If you're claiming that NEC was so focused on CDs from the beginning then I'd think that they'd have supported the CD system better early on! NEC certainly got focused on CDs eventually, but as far as game releases go, their support built quite slowly.
NO RI KO in particular was the ultimate killer app.
:lol: :lol:
And that's not even an NEC game, that's Hudson!
All along, Hudson showed off stuff like the long delayed Tengai Makyou, until games were ready to be published. The only reason that CD software trickled out at first and wasn't ready at launch, is because developing CD games at the time was a huge undertaking, as they learned through trial and error.
Yeah, I know that. Releasing a CD system in 1988 was pretty crazy forward-thinking, and you definitely do see that when you look at the early library. But... Tengai Makyou Ziria released in June 1989. That's a major, and good, Turbo CD exclusive, long before NEC had anything other than Karaoke and HuCard ports. I know Hudson was a more established developer than NEC, so it makes some sense that at that point Hudson was making more and better games for the system than NEC (as they were), but even in '91 all NEC had on CD were those five games I listed earlier. That same year Hudson released CD games like Ys III, Dragon Slayer, and Cobra II (and also Populous, Monbit, and Pomping World) -- clearly a better overall library, though the two shmups from NEC are nice.
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A Black Falcon>sorry to tell you that but it's not because NEC Avenue released their first CD games in 1989 that CD games were not released before that, mainly by Hudson Soft, the company that actually designed the PC Engine.
If you want to debate on something, make sure you're documented.
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A Black Falcon>sorry to tell you that but it's not because NEC Avenue released their first CD games in 1989 that CD games were not released before that, mainly by Hudson Soft, the company that actually designed the PC Engine.
If you want to debate on something, make sure you're documented.
You're not saying anything I didn't know a long time ago, so obviously it has no impact on my point.
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NO RI KO in particular was the ultimate killer app.
wait what
http://www.videogameden.com/cdrom.htm?nor
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NO RI KO in particular was the ultimate killer app.
wait what
http://www.videogameden.com/cdrom.htm?nor
Just because it's the first CD game doesn't mean that it's actually a killer app...
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A Black Falcon>sorry to tell you that but it's not because NEC Avenue released their first CD games in 1989 that CD games were not released before that, mainly by Hudson Soft, the company that actually designed the PC Engine.
If you want to debate on something, make sure you're documented.
You're not saying anything I didn't know a long time ago, so obviously it has no impact on my point.
Ok, so why do you make as if you didn't know the differences between NEC HE and NEC Avenue and the true role of Hudson and NEC in the PC Engine's design ?
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I do remember seeing pics of the PCE CD prototype before the PCE console was released, so obviously it wasn't an after thought. Funny, internally the PCE was referred to as the 'Core' system and then later on the name was changed to that. Another interesting note; the PCE is the mother of all addon interfaces. What's available on the back plane - it just incredible. No other game console in history had that type of addon support. It was built for addons. It's a shame they didn't do more with it.
Hudson might have licensed the hardware setup to NEC, but they partnered together. Hudson has always been a software house and has written internal dev tools for Famicom, Sharp X68k, etc. Hudson was NEC's software side, until NEC started creating its own branch. And even then..
It's funny, the NEC had a close tie with x86 arch as well as making its own clone x86 processors. The official dev softs for the CD unit, refers to internal Zeropage reserved registers (65x thing) with x86 register names; AX(AL/AH), BX(BL/BH), CX(CL/CH), DX(DL/DH), SI, DI, etc. The MCU in the CD unit, is a NEC z80 based processor (this is the chip that manages the port interfacing and requesting status info as well as writing SCSI commands). NEC also released the CD unit for its PC line, which is compatible and fits the original docking bay of the PCE. NEC tasked Hudson with designing the CD unit (it was in some interview). I think it's pretty hard to separate NEC and Hudson, when talking about the PCE. Hudson might have developed the original specs for the PCE, but who knows how much that changed when they partnered with NEC (the GPU can be put into 2bit color tile/cell mode for both sprites/BG).
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I do remember seeing pics of the PCE CD prototype before the PCE console was released, so obviously it wasn't an after thought. Funny, internally the PCE was referred to as the 'Core' system and then later on the name was changed to that. Another interesting note; the PCE is the mother of all addon interfaces. What's available on the back plane - it just incredible. No other game console in history had that type of addon support. It was built for addons. It's a shame they didn't do more with it.
It may be true that there is more available through the back connection than most any other addon port, but many systems certainly are designed for addons, and lots of them have gotten addons. I mean, sure, it holds back the Sega CD a bit that the port bandwidth is a bit too limited for animation equal to that on carts, but it gets by... and it was designed for an addon like that, they just didn't quite give it enough bandwidth. But that doesn't mean it wasn't designed for addons from the start, it was! The same goes for all the other systems with addon ports and the like.
But sure, yeah, the system clearly was designed for addons from the beginning. We know that Hudson got interested in CDs early on, and NEC was a good partner since they were too...
Hudson might have licensed the hardware setup to NEC, but they partnered together. Hudson has always been a software house and has written internal dev tools for Famicom, Sharp X68k, etc. Hudson was NEC's software side, until NEC started creating its own branch. And even then..
Well, yeah, at first only Hudson did software, but NEC Avenue started publishing its own games by fall '88, and NEC Avenue and Hudson were different companies. It's definitely a somewhat weird situation, with multiple first-party companies, but that's how it was. Just about the only other somewhat similar case I can think of is the 3DO, where at first there was no first party studio. 3DO set up one after a little while though, and Panasonic published many games for the system though they didn't develop them in-house (Goldstar/LG and Sanyo published a couple of games each as well). But another case with multiple different first-party studios with in-house development teams? Are there any others other than the TG16?
I'm sure NEC and Hudson cooperated, they were working together on the console after all, but they weren't the same exact company.
It's funny, the NEC had a close tie with x86 arch as well as making its own clone x86 processors. The official dev softs for the CD unit, refers to internal Zeropage reserved registers (65x thing) with x86 register names; AX(AL/AH), BX(BL/BH), CX(CL/CH), DX(DL/DH), SI, DI, etc. The MCU in the CD unit, is a NEC z80 based processor (this is the chip that manages the port interfacing and requesting status info as well as writing SCSI commands). NEC also released the CD unit for its PC line, which is compatible and fits the original docking bay of the PCE. NEC tasked Hudson with designing the CD unit (it was in some interview). I think it's pretty hard to separate NEC and Hudson, when talking about the PCE. Hudson might have developed the original specs for the PCE, but who knows how much that changed when they partnered with NEC (the GPU can be put into 2bit color tile/cell mode for both sprites/BG).
Interesting, so NEC actually did have some influence on the hardware? I thought Hudson had pretty much done the hardware in-house... interesting. I have heard of the computer you could attach a TCD drive to, though. They were going to release something similar in the US too of course, but cancelled it...
Anyway though, it may be hard to separate NEFC and Hudson, but they're not the same. They started at different times ((Hudson ~10 months ahead of NEC on both HuCards and CDs), they ended at different times (NEC continued to publish TCD games regularly for ~16 months after Hudson abandoned the system, while Hudson released many more HuCard games in '92-'93 than NEC, who had almost entirely abandoned HuCards in favor of CDs), etc. Hudson also continued to support other, mostly Nintendo platforms throughout the TG16/CD/PCFX's lives of course, at first just the NES and SNES but also the SNES starting from late '92, and the Saturn starting in '96 as well. Except for that last part NEC did not do that; they were Turbo-line exclusive until mid '96, when they admitted that the PC-FX was failing and started supporting the Saturn too. That both went to the Saturn first after the PC-FX in the 5th generation is similar, and interesting considering how few Genesis and Sega CD games Hudson had made (and were any of them even released in Japan? As far as I know they were all US/EU only -- Mega Bomberman, SCD Dungeon Explorer, SCD Lords of Thunder, SCD Cobra 2...), but that was during the Saturn's peak of popularity in Japan, so it's understandable either way.
Anyway, yes, I'm sure that Hudson and NEC worked together a lot, cooridinated, etc. But they were never exactly the same company, and each did their own things. Their libraries on the TG16/CD have some definite differences, for example... Hudson's games often have a strong unique style which you don't see from NEC.
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NEC Ave isn't NEC either. It's just one of their five developing/publishing branches which put out games for Turbo/PCE.
Even Nintendo didn't make all of their own games, like most publishers they just take all the credit.
I've never heard of Hudson being interested in CD technology before NEC. All the stories about their collaboration say that before they did anything, NEC told Hudson that they wanted to make CD games (using theur own computer CD-ROM) a priority. I think that you're just making guesses about history based on game release dates. NEC absolutely ruled the home computer market and the PCE was used to establish disc baded medium as the new standard to this day.
But yeah, Hudson and NEC were separate companies and the PCE was a unique situation. That's what we've been saying all along.
Since NEC insisted on integrating their computer CD-ROM with Hudson's hardware design, they obviously were involved in the process. I think that if any changes were made to Hudson's original cart based hardware, it would have just heen scaling back the audio, since the CD-ROM was going to make it overkill.
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I think that if any changes were made to Hudson's original cart based hardware, it would have just heen scaling back the audio, since the CD-ROM was going to make it overkill.
I've always had that impression as well. Same with the Genesis/Megadrive. They have onboard stereo inputs on the Genesis cart port, but never upgraded the audio (not even a simple self feeding DAC like the NES has). I mean, considering the Genesis got a LOT of flack for this BITD. That would detract from the SegaCD/MegaCD upgrade. Same with the PCE. There's actually one small thing that's missing from the PCE audio, that would greatly enhance the sound output (timbre control). The audio engineer had to have known this. Simply being able to read back the waveform pointer position, means that it could have emulated all kinds of synths sounds (FM, etc).
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NEC Ave isn't NEC either. It's just one of their five developing/publishing branches which put out games for Turbo/PCE.
Oh come on. NEC Avenue was a division of NEC, just like, say, EAD or NST are divisions of Nintendo, or Sonic Team and SegaSoft are or were divisions of Sega. NEC Avenue is NEC.
Even Nintendo didn't make all of their own games, like most publishers they just take all the credit.
Sure, that's true, and I'm sure NEC did that too. But company divisions like NEC Avenue are not that; games that NEC, or NEC Avenue, or whatever published which secretly were developed by some other team would fit that category. Nintendo and Sega did both do that sometimes, and I'm sure NEC did as well.
I've never heard of Hudson being interested in CD technology before NEC. All the stories about their collaboration say that before they did anything, NEC told Hudson that they wanted to make CD games (using theur own computer CD-ROM) a priority.
Really? I thought I remember reading about how Hudson was very interested in the CD thing too, and not only because of NEC. Are you sure of this?
I think that you're just making guesses about history based on game release dates.
No, I didn't say that based on game release dates. That's entirely separate.
NEC absolutely ruled the home computer market and the PCE was used to establish disc baded medium as the new standard to this day.
But yeah, Hudson and NEC were separate companies and the PCE was a unique situation. That's what we've been saying all along.
Huh? No, someone said that Hudson and NEC were so close that they can't be separated, to explain away the differences between their release histories. But that's not true, the two are different companies with different strategies, and that's the explanation for it.
Since NEC insisted on integrating their computer CD-ROM with Hudson's hardware design, they obviously were involved in the process. I think that if any changes were made to Hudson's original cart based hardware, it would have just heen scaling back the audio, since the CD-ROM was going to make it overkill.
Yeah, that could be. Entirely possible.
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Here's a common sense approach using reasonably solid/fact-based figures and proportional estimates that most people would agree upon.
The PC Engine was only released outside of Japan in a significant way in North America, where it may have done alright as a niche console, but wasn't anywhere near as substantial as the mainstream consoles, nor the PC Engine in Japan. As such, it didn't draw the kind of third party support that worldwide-massively successful consoles did and unlike the Genesis, it couldn't get companies like Capcom to break Nintendo's grip on them to support it. Pretty much the only game development for PCE/TG-16 outside of Japan was a handful of games published by the North American first party entities. There's no point getting into why or how it didn't get the kind of European game support that the successful consoles did, all that matters is that it didn't. We can all agree that the PCE was in the worst position of the 16-bit consoles for receiving third or even first party support, since games developed for it didn't have the potential to be successful in other markets.
Now Sega Genesis was insanely popular worldwide, but especially in North America. Although we'll never get solid figures, 40+ million worldwide and 20+ million in North American hardware sales gets tossed around a lot. Obviously the Genesis benefited development-wise from being huge in Europe, while still garnering massive support from Japanese publishers, even if the Mega Drive wasn't as popular in Japan. So it's logical that the Genesis was in a position to receive a much higher rate of published games proportionate to consoles-sold, than the stuck-in-Japan PC Engine. Obviously, the SNES also benefited in what should be a much higher games-published to hardware-sold ratio. It just makes sense.
So taking this non-radical point of view, how is this possible:
Genesis: 20 million consoles sold in NA / 40 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for NA
SNES: 23 million consoles sold in NA / 50 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for NA
PC Engine: >6 million consoles sold in JP / >7 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for JP
Super Famicom: 17 million consoles sold in JP / 50 million worldwide / 1440 published cart games + 232 Satellaview games for JP
So even though the PC Engine should have a much lower number of available games proportionate to consoles sold, the extra low hardware figures being pushed in this thread would have us believe that PC Engine games sold so well, that it garnered a hugely disproportionate amount of development, while still being snubbed by so many publishers because of the whole Nintendo honor/blackmail/bs? And yet we're still supposed to believe that the best selling PC Engine game only moved 200,000 units?
None of this makes any sense unless you're blindly trying to make the PC Engine seem unsuccessful from multiple contradicting points of view.
It just doesn't add up.
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I found this article from NFG on the PC Engine magazine to be very enjoyable to read. It also gives a point of view on the numerous hardware variations, add-ons and accessories of the PC Engine:
http://nfgworld.com/?p=1508 (NSFW content)
Black Tiger & A Black Falcon, please keep both your posts coming, I think you've got both many valid points.
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Genesis: 20 million consoles sold in NA / 40 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for NA
SNES: 23 million consoles sold in NA / 50 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for NA
PC Engine: >6 million consoles sold in JP / >7 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for JP
Super Famicom: 17 million consoles sold in JP / 50 million worldwide / 1440 published cart games + 232 Satellaview games for JP
So even though the PC Engine should have a much lower number of available games proportionate to consoles sold, the extra low hardware figures being pushed in this thread would have us believe that PC Engine games sold so well, that it garnered a hugely disproportionate amount of development, while still being snubbed by so many publishers because of the whole Nintendo honor/blackmail/bs? And yet we're still supposed to believe that the best selling PC Engine game only moved 200,000 units?
First of all, I'm assuming that you're referencing the sales stat I got for Tengai Makyo II. If that's correct, then what is your source for your claim that it was the best-selling PCE game? I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if it was, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't, either.
Second of all, you're saying that because the PCE with the CD expansion had a total of about 700 games released for it, it must have had a level of market presence closer to the Super Nintendo and the Genesis because they, too, each had about 700 games released for them (albeit in North America only).
In other words, you're saying that the Asahi newspaper figure of 5.8 million PCE system sales worldwide, and Famitsu's figures of 3.92 million Hucard systems and 1.92 million CD systems including Duos in Japan only, must be wrong because of the number of games made. Isn't this right?
By the way, nice shoehorning of another million into the PCE sales quotes in your post.
What you're doing is speculating based on a single limited correlation. There are lots of reasons why the PCE could have gotten 700 games with only 5 million units sold in Japan. How did the 3DO get over 300 games made for it when it only ever sold 2 million units worldwide? It's because it had its own niche, and it had certain developers that focused on it. The PCE had these things going for it and more.
For example, when the PCE was rising in popularity in 1988 thanks to hits like R-Type, the actual number of Hucard games available in Japan was still small. Developers could count on less competition and get good sales even if the PCE user base wasn't as big as the Famicom's, and this probably contributed to the flourishing of Hucard games in 1989 and 1990. However, you could say that something similar happened with CD system, too, given the number of CD games available in 1990 and the boom over the next couple of years. And again for the 3.0 system and the number of games in 1992.
So sheer newness, as well as promise from early popularity, was enough to be an influence on developers each time a new format came out. I hate to bring it up again, but this is another reason why treating the PCE and its CD expansion as one system and comparing it directly to the Mega Drive and the Super Famicom often makes for an apples/oranges comparison. The PCE with the CD expansion arguably got this effect three times, while the others got it just once.
And again, that's all just one possible reason why there were 700 games on a system with 5 million sales.
None of this makes any sense unless you're blindly trying to make the PC Engine seem unsuccessful from multiple contradicting points of view.
It just doesn't add up.
Look, dude, Famitsu and the Asashi newspaper are credible sources, and their two independent figures complement each other very well. And there's that guy from NEC saying that they had sold 1.8 million CD systems in 1994, too, which makes three separate corroborating sources straight from Japan. Do you have even one source that is as credible as a single one of these three?
Because it sounds to me like your only source is your gut.
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I found this article from NFG on the PC Engine magazine to be very enjoyable to read. It also gives a point of view on the numerous hardware variations, add-ons and accessories of the PC Engine:
http://nfgworld.com/?p=1508
I’ve been going through a massive archive of PC Engine magazines recently. Complete runs of every PCE mag ever printed, basically, 43 gigabytes of scans that brought me on a roller coaster of PC Engine history.
I wonder where he got the PC Engine magazine scans from?
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Here's a Japanese dude quoting a different Famitsu figure saying that HuCard-only systems had sold 3.72 million in Japan by September 1992. In the same sentence, he compares this to the same 3.92 million Famitsu quote that I talked about. (http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/tetuya/FXHP/pcengine/hard/siropc.html)
(scroll down, it's near the bottom)
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Once again, did they really? "Integral piece of the pie" from day one in December 1988? But NEC didn't even release a Turbo CD game until September 1989! That's not "from day one".
You're one dumb cookie. The design of the hardware (and the prototypes shown before the PCE was released) makes it painfully obvious that the PCE and CD were designed side by side. The CD is clearly not an afterthought, and the number and timing of game releases by a separate branch of the parent company is wholly irrelevant.
It wasn't until 1991 that NEC decided to focus on the Turbo CD as their main platform. Look at their 1989-1990 CD release libraries if you want to see that.
I didn't say they considered the CD the main platform. Learn to read.
Besides, it's downright retarded to look at their released games as an indicator of what they wanted from the system as a whole (from all developers). Do you also believe they only wanted arcade ports and karaoke discs?
Their only CD releases in '89 -- again, the first one coming in September -- were Altered Beast CD, the first three volumes of Rom Rom Karaoke, and Sidearms Special. In 1990 all they had on CD was Super Darius and two more volumes of Rom Rom Karaoke. That's a thin lineup of three games previously or also available on HuCard and five volumes of karaoke.
You talk as if they released a ton of HuCard games in that time frame. There's only 21 titles from them in '89 and '90, making CDs 38% of the mix, which is hardly the tiny minority you make it out to be.
Addons kind of are a weird middle-ground between supplements and completely different systems, though. They kind of go in both categories...
But the games for those add-ons are unequivocally separate from the main library? Try to be consistent with your inanity.
Adding a CD storage medium radically alters what you can do in games in certain important ways -- videos, voice acting, CD audio, etc.
And adding an FX chip (or other helper chips) radically alters what can be done in games too. Why do you ignore that distinction?
So 24 million sales are irrelevant just because you say so and dislike it? Uh, that's not right. I've never used the Kinect myself and doubt it works well for most games, but that's completely besides the point.
It's irrelevant because it in no way, shape, or form can be considered a console; it's a controller, pure and simple. Bringing it up in this discussion made no sense whatsoever.
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You're one dumb cookie. The design of the hardware (and the prototypes shown before the PCE was released) makes it painfully obvious that the PCE and CD were designed side by side.
You should try to follow my actual argument and not make stuff up I didn't say...
Get the argument straight. Black Tiger there said that he thinks that the PCE and CD weren't designed at the same time, and that the PCE came first and the CD later, from NEC and not Hudson. I said that I doubt this and think that Hudson came up with the CD idea on its own, which obviously suggests that even if the PCE maybe came first, they came up with the CD addon idea early on, almost certainly before the PCE released. I'm not the one you should be insulting here.
The CD is clearly not an afterthought, and the number and timing of game releases by a separate branch of the parent company is wholly irrelevant.
Well, this first depends on whether the CD system was indeed originally intended as the primary format or not. Being so forward-thinking as to expect, in 1987, that CDs would be the format that this platform you're releasing now would mostly use... maybe, that could be, but I'm skeptical. It seems more likely that it was intended at first as what the Turbo CD was for the first three years of its life: an add-on, for the kinds of games that need CD audio or cutscene data. The 'CD as the main platform' idea dates to the creation of the Duo in 1991.
As for game releases, that it was indeed intended to be 'just an addon' at first explains both NEC and Hudson's relatively thin CD release libraries in '88 to '90. Both companies were mostly focused on HuCard games, clearly.
I didn't say they considered the CD the main platform. Learn to read.
Besides, it's downright retarded to look at their released games as an indicator of what they wanted from the system as a whole (from all developers). Do you also believe they only wanted arcade ports and karaoke discs?
Well, when you look at the kind of stuff releasing on the Turbo CD early on, I think they didn't really know WHAT they wanted. And this makes sense -- the CD was brand new as a videogame medium, and this massive amount of space was hard to deal with. What do you put on the disc to take up all that space? Nobody was really sure that generation about how to make the best use of the space. And so you end up with cartridge games with CD audio, information discs which aren't really games, FMV-heavy games (on Sega CD particularly), music/karaoke 'games', and such. Actual game data at the time did not need anywhere near a CD's worth of space, after all, so you couldn't fill a disc with just a game!
You talk as if they released a ton of HuCard games in that time frame. There's only 21 titles from them in '89 and '90, making CDs 38% of the mix, which is hardly the tiny minority you make it out to be.
38%? But of the 8 CD games, three are games also available on HuCards, and the other five are karaoke discs. With the HuCard games, though, all of them are full, individual games. It's not comparable.
But the games for those add-ons are unequivocally separate from the main library? Try to be consistent with your inanity.
What you need to be is be consistent in each comparison! Either include all addons, or don't. None of this middle ground some people in this thread want where some addons count but others don't. Go with the standard definition of an addon -- that is, some significant piece of hardware you have to buy separately from the main system that's more than just a RAM expansion -- and either include them all, so compare Genesis+Sega CD+32X to SNES+Satellaview to TG16+TCD, or compare all of them separately. Both ways are valid, really. What isn't valid is merging the TCD and TG16 and calling them one platform but not doing so with Sega and claiming that that's a fair comparison, as was done in this thread.
And adding an FX chip (or other helper chips) radically alters what can be done in games too. Why do you ignore that distinction?
FX chips are built into the carts, they aren't something sold separately as an addon. This is the difference between the SVP chip in Genesis Virtua Racing and 32X Virtua Racing Deluxe, for instance. Expansion chips in carts do matter, and in a certain way of looking at it sort of are "self-contained addons", but they are definitely not consoles, since a console is something with multiple, interchangeable games. And because they are in the carts, and not separate, people count them as part of the main library.
It's irrelevant because it in no way, shape, or form can be considered a console; it's a controller, pure and simple. Bringing it up in this discussion made no sense whatsoever.
So you're putting it in the same category as, say, light guns? That might be fair, but special controllers like light guns or the Kinect could, from a certain point of view, count as "addons" too you know. You're already trying to expand the definition of addon by including special chips in cartridges as "addons", so what's so odd about expanding it to include addon controllers as well?
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Here's a common sense approach using reasonably solid/fact-based figures and proportional estimates that most people would agree upon.
The PC Engine was only released outside of Japan in a significant way in North America, where it may have done alright as a niche console, but wasn't anywhere near as substantial as the mainstream consoles, nor the PC Engine in Japan. As such, it didn't draw the kind of third party support that worldwide-massively successful consoles did and unlike the Genesis, it couldn't get companies like Capcom to break Nintendo's grip on them to support it. Pretty much the only game development for PCE/TG-16 outside of Japan was a handful of games published by the North American first party entities. There's no point getting into why or how it didn't get the kind of European game support that the successful consoles did, all that matters is that it didn't. We can all agree that the PCE was in the worst position of the 16-bit consoles for receiving third or even first party support, since games developed for it didn't have the potential to be successful in other markets.
Now Sega Genesis was insanely popular worldwide, but especially in North America. Although we'll never get solid figures, 40+ million worldwide and 20+ million in North American hardware sales gets tossed around a lot. Obviously the Genesis benefited development-wise from being huge in Europe, while still garnering massive support from Japanese publishers, even if the Mega Drive wasn't as popular in Japan. So it's logical that the Genesis was in a position to receive a much higher rate of published games proportionate to consoles-sold, than the stuck-in-Japan PC Engine. Obviously, the SNES also benefited in what should be a much higher games-published to hardware-sold ratio. It just makes sense.
So taking this non-radical point of view, how is this possible:
Genesis: 20 million consoles sold in NA / 40 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for NA
SNES: 23 million consoles sold in NA / 50 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for NA
PC Engine: >6 million consoles sold in JP / >7 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for JP
Super Famicom: 17 million consoles sold in JP / 50 million worldwide / 1440 published cart games + 232 Satellaview games for JP
So even though the PC Engine should have a much lower number of available games proportionate to consoles sold, the extra low hardware figures being pushed in this thread would have us believe that PC Engine games sold so well, that it garnered a hugely disproportionate amount of development, while still being snubbed by so many publishers because of the whole Nintendo honor/blackmail/bs? And yet we're still supposed to believe that the best selling PC Engine game only moved 200,000 units?
None of this makes any sense unless you're blindly trying to make the PC Engine seem unsuccessful from multiple contradicting points of view.
It just doesn't add up.
SamIAm already covered a lot of the reasons why your argument here makes no sense, but I can add a little more as well.
First, as he said, it's 5.8 million total, not 7 million.
But more importantly, you seem to not understand that in Japan, many more console games release than release in the West. This is true with every successful platform! Saturn, Playstation, PS2, NES, SNES, what have you, consoles get FAR more games in Japan than we do here. It's easy to release lots of games for a system in Japan, because of the country's relatively small size and dense population. Releasing a game physically in the West requires a lot more distribution costs for sure, and doesn't happen anywhere near as often. Look at those SNES numbers you posted, for example -- the SNES sold better in the US than it did in Japan, but had twice as many game releases in Japan as it did in the US. With the PS1 or PS2, there is an even bigger discrepancy.
So basically, the main point of your argument, that somehow because the SNES and Genesis in the US got as many game releases as the TG16+CD did in Japan it did as well there as those did here, is based on absolutely nothing. In fact, in Japan you expect consoles to get more game releases than they get in the West. It happens all the time. Cheap distribution costs, easy access to the market, low budgets for games that match the expected sales... that's how the industry worked, and still often works, there.
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If the number of games in a library were strictly a function of the number of systems sold, let's say to a minimum ratio of 100 games per 1 million consoles sold, then the PC-FX should have had about 11 games. It had 62.
If you're interested, the figure of 110,000 PC-FX systems sold comes from another Asahi newspaper interview with an NEC executive. By the way, and I mentioned this once before, there is actually yet another quote about PC-FX sales from a different interview with an NEC person: he said that it sold 1/50th as many as the PC Engine. That's not exactly precise if 110,000 and 5.8 million are the real sales numbers, but it's pretty close. Close enough to call it a fourth corroborating source for PCE sales, if you ask me.
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I updated the above referenced NFGworld post with a sales chart from the November 1993 PC Engine Fan magazine.
http://nfgworld.com/?p=1508#comment-21492
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I updated the above referenced NFGworld post with a sales chart from the November 1993 PC Engine Fan magazine.
http://nfgworld.com/?p=1508#comment-21492
Thank you for sharing this.
This chart confirms everything that I've been saying and the sources I've been quoting. In 1992, we see Hucard system sales peaking at <4 million, and still some room to grow for the CD system with sales at 1.5 million. We also see Hucard sales taking a dive when the Super Famicom came out, fueling the transition to the CD system.
NFG, do you read Japanese? I'm a fast reader (used to be a professional translator), and if there is something related to this that you would like me to look at and give everyone the gist of, I would be happy to do so.
I'm really curious about the sales of specific games, especially Hucards. I've scoured the internet in Japanese, but I can't find a single reliable source for a sales quote on specific Hucard games.
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One interesting thing about that chart, aren't those hardware totals by '92 very close to the numbers you were saying were the final numbers? So did the system sell much worse in '93-'99, or something?
Also, you really, really should get together your source citations and fix the English TG16 Wikipedia article's sales numbers... those Gamepro numbers they cite are WRONG. The Sega Genesis article used to be just as bad, but now it's full of sources for the most specific sales information that could be found. The TG16 needs something similar.
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One interesting thing about that chart, aren't those hardware totals by '92 very close to the numbers you were saying were the final numbers? So did the system sell much worse in '93-'99, or something?
It wouldn't be too surprising. According to that one fan-site, roughly half of the 1.92 million CD systems are the non-Duo, attachment type. Of the remaining million, maybe 500k are original Duos, 300k are Duo-R systems, and 200k are RX systems. That's just a guess, of course, but the Duo-R came out in March 1993, and the RX was in 1994. It seems to line up. It also helps explain why the R and RX are more expensive nowadays, though there are other factors.
Also, you really, really should get together your source citations and fix the English TG16 Wikipedia article's sales numbers... those Gamepro numbers they cite are WRONG. The Sega Genesis article used to be just as bad, but now it's full of sources for the most specific sales information that could be found. The TG16 needs something similar.
That might be a good idea. I'll see what I can do. It would be nice to get the specific issue numbers for the Famitsu quotes, but I haven't found any yet. The Asahi newspaper quotes are specific, though, and so is that PC Engine Fan issue.
I'm actually thinking of putting together some kind of essay/retrospective on the PC-FX. I dare say that after reading so many Japanese magazine articles, fan sites and forums, and after getting my hands dirty translating one of the games, I've come to have a perspective on the system that nobody else in the English speaking world has ever had. The PC-FX makes for a good story, because you really have to understand the context of the PCE-CD system to understand the decision making process behind the PC-FX.
Here's one interesting quote from the scenario-writer of such definitive PCE-CD games as the Tengai Makyo series and Linda3: "A PCE game has to have beautiful women in it, or it won't sell."
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Here's one interesting quote from the scenario-writer of such definitive PCE-CD games as the Tengai Makyo series and Linda3: "A PCE game has to have beautiful women in it, or it won't sell."
I'm sure he felt that way, but can we think of a few exceptions?
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I'm sure he felt that way, but can we think of a few exceptions?
Do you mean developers who didn't feel that way, or games that contradicted that? I don't have any other developer quotes on hand. As for successful CD games that didn't have beautiful women in them...that's a good question. Especially if you're talking about games after 1992.
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I updated the above referenced NFGworld post with a sales chart from the November 1993 PC Engine Fan magazine.
http://nfgworld.com/?p=1508#comment-21492
Good to see you here and thanks for updating and sharing your article. :) Can't wait to get my hands on your upcoming videogame sprite book.
Cheers
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You should try to follow my actual argument and not make stuff up I didn't say...
Get the argument straight. Black Tiger there said that he thinks that the PCE and CD weren't designed at the same time, and that the PCE came first and the CD later, from NEC and not Hudson. I said that I doubt this and think that Hudson came up with the CD idea on its own, which obviously suggests that even if the PCE maybe came first, they came up with the CD addon idea early on, almost certainly before the PCE released. I'm not the one you should be insulting here.
Those comments came after the discussion to which I was responding and don't really conflict with what I was saying anyway, seeing as the concept shown to Nintendo was surely not identical to the final design.
Well, this first depends on whether the CD system was indeed originally intended as the primary format or not.
No it doesn't. You're under the false assumption that they intended either format to heavily dominate, when it's pretty obvious that they saw room for both. Blow whatever smoke you want, but there's no denying that NEC and Hudson treated the CD as an important piece of the puzzle before the system even launched.
Well, when you look at the kind of stuff releasing on the Turbo CD early on, I think they didn't really know WHAT they wanted. And this makes sense -- the CD was brand new as a videogame medium, and this massive amount of space was hard to deal with. What do you put on the disc to take up all that space? Nobody was really sure that generation about how to make the best use of the space. And so you end up with cartridge games with CD audio, information discs which aren't really games, FMV-heavy games (on Sega CD particularly), music/karaoke 'games', and such. Actual game data at the time did not need anywhere near a CD's worth of space, after all, so you couldn't fill a disc with just a game!
So music, cutscenes, and voicework aren't parts of a game? Clearly NEC and Hudson disagreed, as does anyone with an IQ over 60.
38%?
It's simple math. 8 divided by 21 equals 0.38.
But of the 8 CD games, three are games also available on HuCards, and the other five are karaoke discs. With the HuCard games, though, all of them are full, individual games. It's not comparable.
Wrong again. Darius Alpha is not a full game and wasn't even commercially available, Artist Tool isn't a game at all, and Altered Beast came out after the CD version. Also, you can't ignore karaoke discs (or digicomics, FMV stuff, etc.) just because you don't like 'em; they may seem insignificant, but they made what they could sell.
Also, why are you ignoring the games put out by Hudson? You can't draw conclusions of what they (NEC and Hudson) wanted from the system based solely on what NEC produced early on. Look up the word "partnership" if necessary.
What you need to be is be consistent in each comparison!
I've already stated how I separate systems: if it's mostly just a storage medium, it's included in the main library, but if it also substantially increases the system's original capabilities, it's a separate system. You don't have to agree with my reasoning, but I most certainly am being consistent and there is a certain logic to it.
Either include all addons, or don't. None of this middle ground some people in this thread want where some addons count but others don't. Go with the standard definition of an addon -- that is, some significant piece of hardware you have to buy separately from the main system that's more than just a RAM expansion [and isn't packaged with the game itself].
So only you are qualified to decide what constitutes a "significant piece of hardware" and thus deserves segregation from the rest of the library? :roll:
FX chips are built into the carts, they aren't something sold separately as an addon.
Sure, that's one way you can do it, but don't kid yourself into thinking it's the only or even the most logical way. I'd rather look at function than something as simple and easy to change as packaging.
So you're putting it in the same category as, say, light guns? That might be fair, but special controllers like light guns or the Kinect could, from a certain point of view, count as "addons" too you know. You're already trying to expand the definition of addon by including special chips in cartridges as "addons", so what's so odd about expanding it to include addon controllers as well?
The discussion has never been about the definition of "add-on", so I don't know what point you're failing to make, nor do I really care.
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I'm sure he felt that way, but can we think of a few exceptions?
Do you mean developers who didn't feel that way, or games that contradicted that? I don't have any other developer quotes on hand. As for successful CD games that didn't have beautiful women in them...that's a good question. Especially if you're talking about games after 1992.
Sorry, I should clarified: I meant examples of games.
I have been looking at the trend in games (as presented in these old PCE mags) and concur with NFGman...things quickly became "scantily clad women"-centric
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Those comments came after the discussion to which I was responding and don't really conflict with what I was saying anyway, seeing as the concept shown to Nintendo was surely not identical to the final design.
Uh, they don't? But he said that he thought NEC came up with the CD system after Hudson made the base system, and you're saying you think the CD and HuCard systems are intrinsically linked... how are those compatible? I'd think it has to be one or the other.
No it doesn't. You're under the false assumption that they intended either format to heavily dominate, when it's pretty obvious that they saw room for both. Blow whatever smoke you want, but there's no denying that NEC and Hudson treated the CD as an important piece of the puzzle before the system even launched.
That's possible, but by no means definite. I'm sure they hoped the CD system would eventually be important, but their focus on HuCard games for the system's early years shows that they didn't think it was an immediate thing, for sure. At first they put most of their efforts into HuCard games, and lesser attention on CDs.
Then came the SNES and their focus changed to the CD system first, because that was something Nintendo did not have. NEC gradually lost that fight, as the sales numbers that have been found in this thread show -- I mean, ~1.5 million CD systems sold by 1992 out of ~1.9 million total sold is pretty clear, the SNES won. But if they'd stuck with HuCards first as before, maybe the system would have faded out even sooner? Or at least, that's what NEC seems to have thought would happen. Maybe they're right, maybe not, it's hard to say.
But going back, I'm sure that Hudson and NEC found the CD system very interesting, and hoped that it'd take off, but saying that from the beginning they were intending on it being equal in importance to the HuCard system is saying something that we have no evidence for, simply because you want it to be true.
So music, cutscenes, and voicework aren't parts of a game? Clearly NEC and Hudson disagreed, as does anyone with an IQ over 60.
They're not gameplay. Everyone know that. Unless it's an FMV game, or a digital encyclopedia which has nothing BUT that kind of thing, that stuff isn't gameplay! Everyone knows that actual game programming does not include things like music, graphics, and cutscenes, and it doesn't take up a CDs worth of data for sure either. And nor did ingame graphics, for most games of the era. Cutscene and voice work is what filled discs. Those things can add to a game, but again, unless it's an FMV game, they're not gameplay -- and the Turbo CD, unlike the Sega CD, isn't loaded with FMV games, though stuff like digital comics is pretty close to that kind of thing, for sure.
It's simple math. 8 divided by 21 equals 0.38.
Why 21? I count 25 releases by NEC Avenue in '88-'90 (17 HuCard, 8 CD)... maybe that's off, but that difference isn't important. It would be nice to get it precise, but the point is the contrast between that and how different it is from even just the next year -- in '91 in Japan NEC published 6 CD games and 2 HuCards, and that is the last time they published more than one HuCard game in a year. In the US things were different, but NEC US's HuCard titles weren't released in Japan, of course.
Wrong again. Darius Alpha is not a full game and wasn't even commercially available, Artist Tool isn't a game at all, and Altered Beast came out after the CD version.
Such a minor quibble... come on. Anyway, yeah, Altered Beast and Darius Plus released later on HuCard than CD, that is true, but I'm sure they planned from the start to release those games on both formats. I know the two versions are somewhat different, but they are variants of the same basic game. Oh, and I wasn't counting Artist Tool above, but I guess it probably should count as a release, sure.
Also, you can't ignore karaoke discs (or digicomics, FMV stuff, etc.) just because you don't like 'em; they may seem insignificant, but they made what they could sell.
I'm sure they do, and they do count as games, but five volumes of karaoke? That's like the four Make My Video volumes on Sega CD... no new ideas between them, just different videos and stuff. It makes sense that they'd exist, though, and that's fine,... but even a Make My Video thing is more of a game than karaoke! Do those even have a scoring system, or are they just basically a CD+G burned to a TCD disc?
Also, why are you ignoring the games put out by Hudson? You can't draw conclusions of what they (NEC and Hudson) wanted from the system based solely on what NEC produced early on. Look up the word "partnership" if necessary.
Remember the whole thing about how Hudson and NEC were so similar that they couldn't be separated, etc? Well, I showed how they could be separated, and focused on NEC because they're the one actually making the systems, and because their early library probably doesn't get as much attention as Hudson's does. People probably mostly know what Hudson made.
I've already stated how I separate systems: if it's mostly just a storage medium, it's included in the main library, but if it also substantially increases the system's original capabilities, it's a separate system. You don't have to agree with my reasoning, but I most certainly am being consistent and there is a certain logic to it.
There really isn't, though. I mean, yes, the Sega CD has scaling and rotation hardware in it for instance, but many games make no use of that stuff and basically don't do anything more than a Turbo CD game would, except with more RAM than anything but the Arcade Card of course. Do those count differently to you than games that make use of the hardware? There's essentially no way to actually be completely consistent with your system, I think. The normal one makes more sense.
And come on, the idea that a different storage medium isn't a major and very significant change is nonsense.
So only you are qualified to decide what constitutes a "significant piece of hardware" and thus deserves segregation from the rest of the library? :roll:
You're being ridiculous! I am merely agreeing with the standard definition of what an addon is. You know, the same definition that every website on the internet that separates games by platform uses to determine whether a game is for a console or its addon? The same one used by game companies themselves, when they put different markings on their games depending on whether they are for the main system or one of its addons?
I hope at least you can admit that you're rewriting the definition of addon here and replacing the normal one with one of your own. And as such, you're the one who has to prove your case for why the standard system is wrong; this quote here where you somehow try to claim that I'm the one who came up with it is really absurd, you know that that's not the case.
Sure, that's one way you can do it, but don't kid yourself into thinking it's the only or even the most logical way. I'd rather look at function than something as simple and easy to change as packaging.
As I said above, then you're rewriting the definition of what an addon is, disagreeing with every authoritative source, and basically just making up a system which conveniently is biased in favor of NEC. Hmm.
I like the Turbo CD for sure, but it's an addon, not the same thing as a TG16!
The discussion has never been about the definition of "add-on", so I don't know what point you're failing to make, nor do I really care.
I have no idea what you're talking about here, because the entire argument is about what the definition of an addon is.
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Uh, they don't? But he said that he thought NEC came up with the CD system after Hudson made the base system, and you're saying you think the CD and HuCard systems are intrinsically linked... how are those compatible? I'd think it has to be one or the other.
Can't you read?!?
As I said, it doesn't conflict because the cart based system Hudson proposed to Nintendo wasn't the final design of the PCE; it's not a coincidence that the PCE uses NEC parts, that the expansion connector is loaded to the gills, or that its size and appearance matches the CD drive - all three are evidence of NEC's hand in its design. Also, we're talking about what the NEC / Hudson partnership wanted from the system, so it doesn't matter one iota what Hudson themselves wanted before the partnership even formed.
That's possible, but by no means definite. I'm sure they hoped the CD system would eventually be important, but their focus on HuCard games for the system's early years shows that they didn't think it was an immediate thing, for sure. At first they put most of their efforts into HuCard games, and lesser attention on CDs...... But going back, I'm sure that Hudson and NEC found the CD system very interesting, and hoped that it'd take off, but saying that from the beginning they were intending on it being equal in importance to the HuCard system is saying something that we have no evidence for, simply because you want it to be true.
I didn't say equal in importance, I said it was important period; and just because the CD didn't get 50% of the game releases early on doesn't mean it was unimportant. Try to reign in your stupid.
They're not gameplay. Everyone know that. Unless it's an FMV game, or a digital encyclopedia which has nothing BUT that kind of thing, that stuff isn't gameplay!
You said game data not game play. Trying to change your argument after the fact won't make you look less retarded.
In any case, cutscenes, music, and voicework most definitely are part of a game. Look at Ys Book I and II and try to say with a straight face that it wouldn't be any less of a game without 'em.
Why 21? I count 25 releases by NEC Avenue in '88-'90 (17 HuCard, 8 CD).
Because you specifically said to look at the '89 and '90 releases, I didn't include games from '88. I also left off GnG, but I guess in your little world the SGX isn't a separate system.
Such a minor quibble... come on.
Indeed, but the only way to refute your minor quibble reasons for saying those CD titles don't count is with more minor quibbles.
I'm sure they do, and they do count as games, but five volumes of karaoke? That's like the four Make My Video volumes on Sega CD... no new ideas between them, just different videos and stuff. It makes sense that they'd exist, though, and that's fine,... but even a Make My Video thing is more of a game than karaoke! Do those even have a scoring system, or are they just basically a CD+G burned to a TCD disc?
Who gives a shit? The point is that the CD wasn't ignored and in fact it received a significant portion of the releases early on (during your revised '88-'90 timeline, they're still 1/3 of NEC's releases). Not that it matters. Even if NEC never releases a single CD title, it wouldn't prove they didn't care about the format.
Remember the whole thing about how Hudson and NEC were so similar that they couldn't be separated, etc? Well, I showed how they could be separated, and focused on NEC because they're the one actually making the systems, and because their early library probably doesn't get as much attention as Hudson's does. People probably mostly know what Hudson made.
Color me unsurprised that you didn't bother to look up partnership. Anything to "prove" your point, eh?
There really isn't, though. I mean, yes, the Sega CD has scaling and rotation hardware in it for instance, but many games make no use of that stuff and basically don't do anything more than a Turbo CD game would, except with more RAM than anything but the Arcade Card of course. Do those count differently to you than games that make use of the hardware? There's essentially no way to actually be completely consistent with your system, I think. The normal one makes more sense.
True, some games might not use all the capabilities available, but I'm differentiating based on hardware capabilities not what each specific game did or didn't do. Outside of redbook tunes, every single game in the PCE library could be done on HuCard (ignoring the exorbitant cost of such large carts); the same can be said of games on FDS, 64DD, etc., but it is untrue for the Sega CD, 32x, etc.
You're being ridiculous! I am merely agreeing with the standard definition of what an addon is.
But you're not. Stuff like the Arcade Card is unequivocally an add-on, yet you don't count it as one.
I hope at least you can admit that you're rewriting the definition of addon here and replacing the normal one with one of your own.
Not once have I claimed the PCE-CD was not an add-on, nor am I redefining the word. The only thing I'd argue that goes against many people's idea of an add-on is that stuff like the FX chip qualifies. Not that wikipedia is infallible, but here's their definition of add-on:
Add-ons, also known as peripherals, are devices generally sold separately from the console, but which connect to the main unit to add significant new functionality. This may include devices which upgrade the hardware of a console to allow it to play more resource-intensive games, devices which allow consoles to play games on a different media format, or devices which fully change the function of a console from a game playing device to something else.
The FX chip was sold separate from the system, connected to the console, and provided substantially more processing power, so how does it not qualify as an add-on? I see no disclaimer in the definition that says "unless the device can only be used by the game it is contained within".
As I said above, then you're rewriting the definition of what an addon is, disagreeing with every authoritative source, and basically just making up a system which conveniently is biased in favor of NEC. Hmm.
You mean my game library separations are biased. Fear not, I'm similarly biased towards the FDS, 64DD, Satellaview, MSX cassette thingys, etc.
I have no idea what you're talking about here, because the entire argument is about what the definition of an addon is.
You're confused. The discussion is about whether or not the CDs and HuCards should be kept separate.
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You'll never convince A Black Falcon that hucards and CD games should be counted as a single library of games for the PC-Engine. Ever. All this arguing, over this one little fact. He concedes to nothing (I've seen his arguments across different forums). But anyway, I ~think~ it forms from the simple fact that he grew up with the SNES. Anyone who has grown up with the PCE/TG and CD unit, counts all those games as belonging PC-Engine/TG library. It's no different than having games on cassette, floppy, and cart for small home computers. CoCo, Commodore, Atari, MSX, etc. The CD unit is a storage/medium addon. It is not a SegaCD. It is not a 32x. Hell, even PC games - they had requirements such as newer processors and newer graphics modes, that older PCs couldn't handle without those upgrades.. and yet they're all still called 'PC games' and all part of that same category/library. You had older DOS games, and you had newer DOS games... but you called, labeled, and lumped them together as DOS games. The same could even be said for Amiga games (the required ram upgrades and wouldn't run on stock systems).
Those that didn't grow up with the PCE/TG and CD unit, have a hard time grouping them. Even on the Sega forums, because the mentality is that the SegaCD is capable of soo much more and attached to the CD format (this is the key) - that somehow the PCECD is the exact same way (because it's also CD). Quite a few people thought the Duo had extra hardware (even processors!), that made CD games impossible on the hucard format. I remember having quite a few arguments over this. Even Arcade Card games. E-s-p-e-c-i-a-l-l-y Arcade Card games. Sega-16 is a pretty big place, and draws people from other gaming circles. People have a hard time dealing with the fact that the CD unit, and even Arcade Card, really don't extended anything to the core system processing wise or graphics wise. That there's no way a hucard could ever do what a ACD game, let alone a CD game, can do. That it couldn't just be as a simple as the evolution of games on the system, and/or the limits of storage earlier hucard games, and hucards never got the chance to reach such heights.
The idea that FX, SA-1 (that's a whole new god damn 16bit processor), and other chips in the carts - are somehow less of an upgrade than the CD system.. is ridiculous. Those SNES games can not run with those processor resource upgrades (and graphics too). Because they are included in the cart, it somehow makes them irrelevant? So if I shoe horned a PS1 into a snes cart, it's still just a snes game? Right.
Anyway, this is ridiculous that we even have to have this argument of whether it's correct or not, to include hucards and CD games into a single PCE library. Dammit people, add some grey into your world; nothing everything needs to be strictly black and white. While you're at it, add some color too.
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I regard software, for that I would have to get a hardware add-on, separate from the rest of the system's native software.
Watering down that border in favour of the Duo and similar combo systems (E.g. Multimega, Twin Famicom): If we would go that way, then we would have to count in backwards compatible consoles like the GBA, DS, PS2 and several others as well. That makes no sense.
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I regard software, for that I would have to get a hardware add-on, separate from the rest of the system's native software.
So if you had a C64, but then later purchased a disk drive, then you wouldn't count the c64 disk games and tape cassette games, and cart games.. as simply c64 games?
Watering down that border in favour of the Duo and similar combo systems (E.g. Multimega, Twin Famicom): If we would go that way, then we would have to count in backwards compatible consoles like the GBA, DS, PS2 and several others as well. That makes no sense.
In what relation does the Duo have, to backwards compatibility of the GBA, DS, PS2, etc??? The GBA is a completely new system architecture, with the ability to play previous system's capability. That, is not what the Duo is.
The Duo is not a whole new system, and the hucards some old previous system. It's not even a half new system. It's EVEN a quarter new system, for whatever that means. The SuperGrafx, is a new system - with backwards compatibility (although that would be a 'quarter system' or eighth system, or whatever stupid terminology). The Duo is a PC-Engine, through and through.
If you're old enough to have used small home computers back in the day, then whole cassette and floppy drive thing/analogy should make perfect sense. Or better yet, when you upgraded your PC with a CD drive.
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You'll never convince A Black Falcon that hucards and CD games should be counted as a single library of games for the PC-Engine. Ever. All this arguing, over this one little fact. He concedes to nothing (I've seen his arguments across different forums). But anyway, I ~think~ it forms from the simple fact that he grew up with the SNES. Anyone who has grown up with the PCE/TG and CD unit, counts all those games as belonging PC-Engine/TG library. It's no different than having games on cassette, floppy, and cart for small home computers. CoCo, Commodore, Atari, MSX, etc. The CD unit is a storage/medium addon. It is not a SegaCD. It is not a 32x. Hell, even PC games - they had requirements such as newer processors and newer graphics modes, that older PCs couldn't handle without those upgrades.. and yet they're all still called 'PC games' and all part of that same category/library. You had older DOS games, and you had newer DOS games... but you called, labeled, and lumped them together as DOS games. The same could even be said for Amiga games (the required ram upgrades and wouldn't run on stock systems).
Those that didn't grow up with the PCE/TG and CD unit, have a hard time grouping them. Even on the Sega forums, because the mentality is that the SegaCD is capable of soo much more and attached to the CD format (this is the key) - that somehow the PCECD is the exact same way (because it's also CD). Quite a few people thought the Duo had extra hardware (even processors!), that made CD games impossible on the hucard format. I remember having quite a few arguments over this. Even Arcade Card games. E-s-p-e-c-i-a-l-l-y Arcade Card games. Sega-16 is a pretty big place, and draws people from other gaming circles. People have a hard time dealing with the fact that the CD unit, and even Arcade Card, really don't extended anything to the core system processing wise or graphics wise. That there's no way a hucard could ever do what a ACD game, let alone a CD game, can do. That it couldn't just be as a simple as the evolution of games on the system, and/or the limits of storage earlier hucard games, and hucards never got the chance to reach such heights.
Actually I grew up as a PC gamer. The only consoles I owned before 1999 were the Game Boy and Game Boy Color; PC gaming is what I mostly did in the '90s. Yeah, I liked Nintendo the most, but I didn't actually have their system... actually I knew more people with the Genesis back then, so I played that more than I did the SNES. But I mostly played PC and GB/GBC games that decade, until I finally got myself an N64 in fall '99. My classic game collection is more recent; I started buying older systems when I got a SNES in '05, and now have lots and lots of stuff. (For the other 4th gen systems, I got a Genesis and Sega CD in '06, a TG16 in '09, 32X in '10, and Turbo CD... well, I got the drive later in '09, but didn't actually get it repaired and working until last year, so '13 really I guess; before that I played TCD games emulated on my PC (I did a lot of this). But I've used the base unit for saving and A/V output since getting it, even though the CD drive didn't work.) But yeah, you're right that in the computer world you do not categorize things like you do on consoles. I'd say that that just shows how different computers and consoles are, though... consoles are a different kind of thing from PCs, much more focused on one specific thing, so they get categorized differently.
So yes, consoles and computers are different things. Computers are ever-changing, so people don't use the term "addon" with a computer because they're never the same, they're always being "added on to". With consoles, though, each system stays mostly static, so when you DO have a major change, people notice and marketing and packaging differences make it clear that it's a different system. You know, you know it's a different (addon) system because it says "32X" on the case instead of "Genesis". Stuff with the addon built in to the game, like a Super FX game, are not marked differently and don't count the same way. They are enhancements yes, but not addon consoles; more below.
With every single other console ever (other than the TG16/CD), it's accepted by everyone that addons and consoles are different. You may want to count the system plus addons combined too, but you'd never count them all just as one library, at least not without mentioning which were designed for each. Dual-mode games are an issue here, but I'll get into that one below; the rest of the time though, this is consistently followed.
The idea that the TG16 is different just doesn't hold up at all; it isn't different. Seriously, this idea that just because the Turbo CD has less addon hardware with the drive it doesn't count is completely silly. The Turbo CD has additional RAM, save backup memory, controller chips for the CD drive, and most importantly that CD drive itself, which allows for things impossible otherwise. It's a far larger change from the base system than, say, the Famicom Disk System is from the NES; all the FDS really adds is an audio channel, onboard save memory, and load times. NES/FC carts can hold more space, can have onboard batteries for saving, and FC games can have addon chips to make up the audio difference too. There's nothing a FDS game can do that a NES game can't apart from maybe the amount of save memory, but that's a minor difference. Or how about the Satellaview? It's just downloadable SNES games with a cable-line voice audio stream. Or the Jaguar CD? Just a CD drive on the Jaguar. Satellaview games are often wrongly included in with the SNES library, for some odd reason, but otherwise they are all properly separated out. I'm sorry, but no, this argument that somehow the hardware in the drive determines whether it's a "true" addon or not is not one I can accept. It makes absolutely no sense, as I've explained; the CD drive alone is a huge, huge change overall! Yes, so is the Super FX, but the Super FX could never be described as a console like full addons can be (more on this below).
Getting back to dual-mode games, though, yeah, the SuperGrafx is of course separate from the TG16; I should have reduced that 1988-1990 NEC number by one to account for that. It is a little tricky because there are those SGX-enhanced PCE games (Darius Plus and Alpha), and whenever you have dual-mode titles you have a tendency for people to merge the systems into one -- you see this with the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, for example, and also with the Neo-Geo Pocket and Neo-Geo Pocket Color and the Nintendo DS and Nintendo DSi as well. In all three cases I think that the systems should be counted separately and NOT be combined as they often are, but because of stuff like dual-mode games that work in the older system but are enhanced in the newer one, corporate marketing that didn't always entirely separate the new system from the older one (such as how Nintendo always reported GB+GBC sales numbers combined, and never separated out as they should be), and such, people wrongly combine them. The same goes for the SuperGrafx. This is an issue I often find quite frustrating; myself I break GB and GBC games into three categories for example, one for GB games, one for dual-mode titles, and one for GBC-only games.
The idea that FX, SA-1 (that's a whole new god damn 16bit processor), and other chips in the carts - are somehow less of an upgrade than the CD system.. is ridiculous. Those SNES games can not run with those processor resource upgrades (and graphics too). Because they are included in the cart, it somehow makes them irrelevant? So if I shoe horned a PS1 into a snes cart, it's still just a snes game? Right.
Seriously you people. It's not hard: The standard definition that the world uses for console addons is that it's a full console addon if it uses separate media of some kind. If you still use the original system's disc drive or cartridge slot, it's not a full addon, just an enhancement of some kind, such as the Super FX chip.
And this does make sense! Remember, a console is not just a thing which plays games. It is a piece of hardware with multiple, interchangeable games that it can play. A standalone system which can only play games that are built in to the system and not anything else is not, strictly speaking, a video game console. So, when looking at which console expansions count as potential consoles of their own, naturally it is only the addons which change the format that are counted. If the games still connect to the original systems' media port, then people don't count them as games for a full addon since they're still playing on the base system. As a result of this go to any site which lists games online -- GameFAQs, Wikipedia, IGN, whatever -- and you'll see that addons sold as full systems, like a Sega CD or Turbo CD, count as addons, while RAM expansions and the like do not. The one plays on different media, while the other doesn't, so it's not a fully separate thing, just an enhancement to the main system. Those are both kinds of "addons", but they are DIFFERENT kinds of addons, and for classification purposes only the former are called true addons. This all should be fairly obvious though...
Anyway, this is ridiculous that we even have to have this argument of whether it's correct or not, to include hucards and CD games into a single PCE library. Dammit people, add some grey into your world; nothing everything needs to be strictly black and white. While you're at it, add some color too.
Getting classifications correct is important though! It's definitely something I care about. Obviously. :p
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You'll never convince A Black Falcon that hucards and CD games should be counted as a single library of games for the PC-Engine. Ever. All this arguing, over this one little fact. He concedes to nothing (I've seen his arguments across different forums). But anyway, I ~think~ it forms from the simple fact that he grew up with the SNES. Anyone who has grown up with the PCE/TG and CD unit, counts all those games as belonging PC-Engine/TG library. It's no different than having games on cassette, floppy, and cart for small home computers. CoCo, Commodore, Atari, MSX, etc. The CD unit is a storage/medium addon. It is not a SegaCD. It is not a 32x. Hell, even PC games - they had requirements such as newer processors and newer graphics modes, that older PCs couldn't handle without those upgrades.. and yet they're all still called 'PC games' and all part of that same category/library. You had older DOS games, and you had newer DOS games... but you called, labeled, and lumped them together as DOS games. The same could even be said for Amiga games (the required ram upgrades and wouldn't run on stock systems).
Those that didn't grow up with the PCE/TG and CD unit, have a hard time grouping them. Even on the Sega forums, because the mentality is that the SegaCD is capable of soo much more and attached to the CD format (this is the key) - that somehow the PCECD is the exact same way (because it's also CD). Quite a few people thought the Duo had extra hardware (even processors!), that made CD games impossible on the hucard format. I remember having quite a few arguments over this. Even Arcade Card games. E-s-p-e-c-i-a-l-l-y Arcade Card games. Sega-16 is a pretty big place, and draws people from other gaming circles. People have a hard time dealing with the fact that the CD unit, and even Arcade Card, really don't extended anything to the core system processing wise or graphics wise. That there's no way a hucard could ever do what a ACD game, let alone a CD game, can do. That it couldn't just be as a simple as the evolution of games on the system, and/or the limits of storage earlier hucard games, and hucards never got the chance to reach such heights.
The idea that FX, SA-1 (that's a whole new god damn 16bit processor), and other chips in the carts - are somehow less of an upgrade than the CD system.. is ridiculous. Those SNES games can not run with those processor resource upgrades (and graphics too). Because they are included in the cart, it somehow makes them irrelevant? So if I shoe horned a PS1 into a snes cart, it's still just a snes game? Right.
Anyway, this is ridiculous that we even have to have this argument of whether it's correct or not, to include hucards and CD games into a single PCE library. Dammit people, add some grey into your world; nothing everything needs to be strictly black and white. While you're at it, add some color too.
He has said a few times in the past that the N64 was his first console (of course CD games don't count!).
He's rewriting the rules for consoles that are as old as he is.
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You'll never convince A Black Falcon that hucards and CD games should be counted as a single library of games for the PC-Engine. Ever. All this arguing, over this one little fact. He concedes to nothing (I've seen his arguments across different forums). But anyway, I ~think~ it forms from the simple fact that he grew up with the SNES. Anyone who has grown up with the PCE/TG and CD unit, counts all those games as belonging PC-Engine/TG library. It's no different than having games on cassette, floppy, and cart for small home computers. CoCo, Commodore, Atari, MSX, etc. The CD unit is a storage/medium addon. It is not a SegaCD. It is not a 32x. Hell, even PC games - they had requirements such as newer processors and newer graphics modes, that older PCs couldn't handle without those upgrades.. and yet they're all still called 'PC games' and all part of that same category/library. You had older DOS games, and you had newer DOS games... but you called, labeled, and lumped them together as DOS games. The same could even be said for Amiga games (the required ram upgrades and wouldn't run on stock systems).
Those that didn't grow up with the PCE/TG and CD unit, have a hard time grouping them. Even on the Sega forums, because the mentality is that the SegaCD is capable of soo much more and attached to the CD format (this is the key) - that somehow the PCECD is the exact same way (because it's also CD). Quite a few people thought the Duo had extra hardware (even processors!), that made CD games impossible on the hucard format. I remember having quite a few arguments over this. Even Arcade Card games. E-s-p-e-c-i-a-l-l-y Arcade Card games. Sega-16 is a pretty big place, and draws people from other gaming circles. People have a hard time dealing with the fact that the CD unit, and even Arcade Card, really don't extended anything to the core system processing wise or graphics wise. That there's no way a hucard could ever do what a ACD game, let alone a CD game, can do. That it couldn't just be as a simple as the evolution of games on the system, and/or the limits of storage earlier hucard games, and hucards never got the chance to reach such heights.
The idea that FX, SA-1 (that's a whole new god damn 16bit processor), and other chips in the carts - are somehow less of an upgrade than the CD system.. is ridiculous. Those SNES games can not run with those processor resource upgrades (and graphics too). Because they are included in the cart, it somehow makes them irrelevant? So if I shoe horned a PS1 into a snes cart, it's still just a snes game? Right.
Anyway, this is ridiculous that we even have to have this argument of whether it's correct or not, to include hucards and CD games into a single PCE library. Dammit people, add some grey into your world; nothing everything needs to be strictly black and white. While you're at it, add some color too.
He has said a few times in the past that the N64 was his first console (of course CD games don't count!).
Read my post above maybe? The original Game Boy was my first console, and the PC my first gaming platform. I had both of those many years before I bought an N64. It's not my fault my parents refused to ever buy me a TV console!
He's rewriting the rules for consoles that are as old as he is.
... Consoles as old as I am? Hmm... well, that'd be the Colecovision then. Launched in August '82, same month I was born. And I guess I do redefine the rules for the Colecovision, given that I believe the standard definition that "the consoles of 1982 are 2nd gen, just like the 2600 and other systems released five years earlier" is ridiculous and actually those systems (Colecovision, 5200, etc.) are actually early 3rd gen, systems, in the same gen as the Famicom/NES and not the O2 and 2600... so you're right, though entirely unintentionally I am sure!
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This thread is shameful.
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Disclaimer: I have not read up enough on video game console hardware to call myself an expert by any means.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
I understand that ALL of the PC Engine CD games, Super CD games, and Acade card games COULD have been made as HuCARDs and played on the base Core Grafx if the HuCARD chips had simply been large enough. Is this correct? (Yes, I know that the theoretical HuCARDS would have been much bulkier, maybe even sticking out from the sytem, and would have needed RAM chips (like many SNES games) to be able to play most Super CD games and all Arcade cards games.) The difference between the HuCARD format and the CD format (not counting the extra RAM for Super CD/Arcade, which COULD have been put into the HuCARDS) is simple the way that the data is stored. As was referenced above in regards to computer games, I can remember a time when computer games could be purchase in multiple different formats - 5" floppy disk, 3 1/2" disk, CD, etc... Even many games today can still be purchased as physical media or as digital download media. Now, I do understand that computers are continually changing, but it seems to me that all of the PC Engine games are actually PC Engine games :-" , just with 2 different storage mediums. I mean, if a video game console today has 2 different storage mediums, say for example, physical disks, or digital downloads (like the Wii virtual store, are they all considered Wii games? Or if Playstation had regular-sized CD disc games, small-sized disc games (like Gamecube or PSP), and/or DVD disc games, would they all be considered Playstation games? :-k :-k :-k
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Getting classifications correct is important though! It's definitely something I care about. Obviously.
And there in lies your problem. Again, you're conforming the PC-Engine into definition that doesn't accurately describe it, and its library. It's ok to make an exception to the rule; exceptions exist for a reason. Not everything in life can be neatly categorized and factored to a difference. And the PC-Engine and its CD software, have some unique exceptions to add to such a scenario. I and a few others have already listed as to why.
But you play this semantics game, and when one person corrects or counters you, you side step and bring that point back around to something else to make the point or analogy look invalid. Sometimes, I think you don't even understand the point you're dismissing/deflecting. You're just in automatic dismiss mode. You do make some valid points, but you don't concede or recognize ANY one else's valid points. And I don't mean just here on these forums, either. You're too rigid man. Too rigid.
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CONSENSUS: I'm glad we finally agreed that CD and HuCARD media belong in the same core PCE library.
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CONSENSUS: I'm glad we finally agreed that CD and HuCARD media belong in the same core PCE library.
I do have to say that when I only had a TG-16, and more recently, when I only had a Core, the CD library certainly didn't FEEL like it was the same library... And when I got the TG-CD add-on, and more recently, when I upgraded to a Duo, suddenly it DID feel like it was all the same library of games.
I don't think there's a straight answer to this. Your library of games is what you can play. Anything you can't play isn't in the core library... your core. This all seems so much like a combination tag-battle over semantics and differing perspectives, and not some ultimate truth. Cause you won't find any of the latter on this forum anywhere (not even under the sofa).
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Getting classifications correct is important though! It's definitely something I care about. Obviously.
And there in lies your problem. Again, you're conforming the PC-Engine into definition that doesn't accurately describe it, and its library. It's ok to make an exception to the rule; exceptions exist for a reason. Not everything in life can be neatly categorized and factored to a difference. And the PC-Engine and its CD software, have some unique exceptions to add to such a scenario. I and a few others have already listed as to why.
But you play this semantics game, and when one person corrects or counters you, you side step and bring that point back around to something else to make the point or analogy look invalid. Sometimes, I think you don't even understand the point you're dismissing/deflecting. You're just in automatic dismiss mode. You do make some valid points, but you don't concede or recognize ANY one else's valid points. And I don't mean just here on these forums, either. You're too rigid man. Too rigid.
The idea that the Turbografx is such a special case that the rules that apply to every other console -- consoles and their addons are different, and their libraries should be looked at individually -- don't apply here is nonsense. Just because NEC switched over to CDs as the main format and released the Duo mid-life it doesn't mean that CDs are the original system! They're still an addon, just like how the Sega CD portion of the CDX (or X'eye) is an addon to the Genesis even though that's a combo system.
And on that note...
Can't you read?!?
As I said, it doesn't conflict because the cart based system Hudson proposed to Nintendo wasn't the final design of the PCE; it's not a coincidence that the PCE uses NEC parts, that the expansion connector is loaded to the gills, or that its size and appearance matches the CD drive - all three are evidence of NEC's hand in its design. Also, we're talking about what the NEC / Hudson partnership wanted from the system, so it doesn't matter one iota what Hudson themselves wanted before the partnership even formed.
Basically defeating your own argument here! So the PCE may really have predated its CD drive, and it started out as a cart/card concept first? Seems to me that that completely undermines the entire 'well the CD drive was there from minute one and always was intended to be equally important to the HuCard system' line you people are defending...
I didn't say equal in importance, I said it was important period; and just because the CD didn't get 50% of the game releases early on doesn't mean it was unimportant. Try to reign in your stupid.
Looking at the changing level of support the systems got over time shows how what NEC and Hudson thought the best role for each system (HuCard and CD) was changed over time.
The FX chip was sold separate from the system, connected to the console, and provided substantially more processing power, so how does it not qualify as an add-on? I see no disclaimer in the definition that says "unless the device can only be used by the game it is contained within".
But that disclaimer is built in to the definition of addon. If you look at the list of things that all (apart from you people) agree are full console addons, all of them, as I said in my last post, involve some alternate input, either a disc addon, passthrough like the 32X, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_accessory#Add-ons.2FPeripherals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral
Something like the Super FX is an enhancement chip, not an add-on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_fx
True, some games might not use all the capabilities available, but I'm differentiating based on hardware capabilities not what each specific game did or didn't do. Outside of redbook tunes, every single game in the PCE library could be done on HuCard (ignoring the exorbitant cost of such large carts); the same can be said of games on FDS, 64DD, etc., but it is untrue for the Sega CD, 32x, etc.
How so? The 32X basically IS a giant cartridge turned into an addon! It's the SVP (Genesis Virtua Racing) taken to another level. And as for the Sega CD, put some scaling and rotation chips in the cart and a giant cart and you could do that on a cartridge too.
Seriously, by your definition most addons aren't addons, while many things which aren't addons are. It's kind of odd, and there's a reason no internet classification anythings agree with it. I can understand your logic, but that just isn't the way it works.
CONSENSUS: I'm glad we finally agreed that CD and HuCARD media belong in the same core PCE library.
Of course they're not in the core library. They do belong in the broader category of TG16/PCE games, though, in the same way that Sega CD and 32X games belong in the broader category of Sega Genesis titles, since those games for the add-ons require the base system to run and thus are certainly a part of its library -- just a separate part. When adding up games for a system, I think it's reasonable to look at both the total including games for addons, and the totals for each platform separately... or rather, say the total, and then say which portion of that total is for each platform within the greater whole. Of course, I'd use the standard definition for what an add-on is.
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This whole argument is too big for me to keep up with, but just to toss in one thing about cart-coprocessors and mappers or whatever: The reason why these don't seem to me to be add-ons is because they're basically transparent to the user, and to me, the user's perspective is paramount. Aside from a fractional increase in price in some cases, there is no difference between buying and playing an "enhanced" cartridge and buying and playing an ordinary one.
I bet somewhere out there is an SNES fan who doesn't even realize that his Star Fox cart has a chip in it. I bet there are LOTS of people who don't realize that Mario Kart has a DSP chip in it. A few people on these forums probably don't even realize that SFII on the PCE has a mapper in it.
Obviously the PCE's CD system is different, and personally, I just can't think of it as anything but an add-on. I don't know, but I'd bet that that's how Japanese people looked at it when it came out in December 1988. I mean, the thing cost freaking $600. And sure, it hardly gave the PCE more than additional storage, but given the size of a typical Hucard, it gave it additional storage a few thousand times over. There's nothing minor about that.
I get that if you had the CD system back in the day, you might have felt like it was all one thing after Hucards disappeared. But in 89, 90 and 91, how many people really looked at the high-priced CD unit and thought "there's the other half of my PC Engine"? Like I said before, if we can't call it an add-on like the Sega CD, then I actually lean further toward calling the PCE-CD an entirely separate console than I do toward saying that the singular "PCE" includes both the base and the CD system.
But this does mostly boil down to a semantics argument anyway. Truth be told, I often type PCE in any case just because I can't be bothered to add the "-CD" bit.
CONSENSUS: I'm glad we finally agreed that CD and HuCARD media belong in the same core PCE library.
I do have to say that when I only had a TG-16, and more recently, when I only had a Core, the CD library certainly didn't FEEL like it was the same library... And when I got the TG-CD add-on, and more recently, when I upgraded to a Duo, suddenly it DID feel like it was all the same library of games.
I don't think there's a straight answer to this. Your library of games is what you can play. Anything you can't play isn't in the core library... your core. This all seems so much like a combination tag-battle over semantics and differing perspectives, and not some ultimate truth. Cause you won't find any of the latter on this forum anywhere (not even under the sofa).
Well said. I feel the same.
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Basically defeating your own argument here! So the PCE may really have predated its CD drive, and it started out as a cart/card concept first? Seems to me that that completely undermines the entire 'well the CD drive was there from minute one and always was intended to be equally important to the HuCard system' line you people are defending...
Wow. You're a real piece of work. Are you trolling or just mentally challenged?
The PCE was the product of a partnership between NEC and Hudson, and NEC demanded that it include a CD drive at the beginning of that partnership (a.k.a. - day one). Period. End of story.
Looking at the changing level of support the systems got over time shows how what NEC and Hudson thought the best role for each system (HuCard and CD) was changed over time.
Which is relevant to nothing.
But that disclaimer is built in to the definition of addon.
No it isn't. Read the definition to which you linked.
I'm not using your made up "full console add-on" definition to purposely limit the definition of add-on to prove a point.
How so? The 32X basically IS a giant cartridge turned into an addon! It's the SVP (Genesis Virtua Racing) taken to another level. And as for the Sega CD, put some scaling and rotation chips in the cart and a giant cart and you could do that on a cartridge too.
I obviously meant that PCE CD games could be done on HuCards without the need of additional ram or processors. Duh.
Seriously, by your definition most addons aren't addons....
Not once have I said the PCE CD was not an add-on. Quit making shit up.
Of course they're not in the core library. They do belong in the broader category of TG16/PCE games, though...
Which is a 180 degree turn the beginning of this train wreck, when you claimed that there were zero PCE games released after '94. :roll:
I look forward to your response, where you comprehend nothing of what I've said.
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This whole argument is too big for me to keep up with, but just to toss in one thing about cart-coprocessors and mappers or whatever: The reason why these don't seem to me to be add-ons is because they're basically transparent to the user, and to me, the user's perspective is paramount. Aside from a fractional increase in price in some cases, there is no difference between buying and playing an "enhanced" cartridge and buying and playing an ordinary one.
This is what he does. The origin of the point of bringing up the special chips in the SNES carts, was completely lost because he brings the argument down to semantics, to the point where the original meaning is lost, and he can easily counter argue. It's like trying to hold a slippery fish. A Black Falcon is infamous for doing this on Sega-16, to the point where no one will take him seriously on anything he posts. We're talking pages upon pages of this kind of stuff.
I'm up for a good argument/debate and I'll probably agree on multiple points of view, even if I'm arguing just one of them. A lot of the time, these arguments are opinion and perspective based anyway. When arguing for credibility towards an opinion or perspective, getting into the nitty gritty of semantics always muddies the waters.
The point of the argument is this; should the PC-Engine library include both hucard and CD games. The argument against it, is that the CD unit is an addon and therefore shouldn't be included. The reason for this perspective, is that the SegaCD and 32x (the most predominant addons in console history of successful systems, around that era). And the main reason why gamers separate these addons as different game library, is that the addon hardware enhances the games to the point that they aren't representative of the original system's capability. This mostly comes from comparing one system to the other (it isn't a fair comparison). In the case of the PCE, this doesn't apply. PC-Engine CD games, are PCE games; there are no additional graphic processors, co-processors, or straight up new processors. The interface to the medium is different, the core game logic/code is the same. Another reason addons are considered to be a separate library, is that the addon always remained an addon. The addon is a branch of the system, therefore it's a branch of the library. It never replaced the core system; ever. In the perspective of 1988, the CD was an addon. In the perspective of 1992, the CD unit was the system. And if you look at the system from a perspective of 1996, hucards become the subset of the library - but they are still part of the PC-Engine library. Matter of fact, in 1992 when the Duo came out in the US (and I got one on release day), my perspective of hucards immediately changed to that - they became a subset of what was now CD games for the library. The Duo made it apparent; CD games were now the current format.
There's also this perspective that an addon was never intended to be part of the main system, or vision. That addons are always afterthoughts. And therefore it gives the addon even less credibility. That's not actually an unreasonable point of view. But the PCE system and CD unit were designed together. The CD unit was not some after thought down the road. And I'm sure the Famicom disk drive 'addon' probably had some sort of an influence to this.
By strict definition, by all means describe the CD unit as an addon. But when it comes categorizing the software for the PC-Engine, characteristics of the CD unit make it different than any other addon in console history. It's VERY hard to talk about PC-Engine games, without talking about hucards and CD games. If all you ever owned, was the hucard only system - then I can see why you wouldn't have this perspective. It's a different perspective for people that own(ed) the Duo, and gamers that grew up with both formats during that era. And for those of us that stuck through it till the end (imported).
I consider Famicom disk games, to be Famicom games and part of its library. I also consider Majora's Mask part of the N64 library, even though you're forced to purchase an addon pack (ram expansion pack) to play the game.
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It wouldn't be a big deal whether or not someone wants to make distinctions about PCE Hu and CD games if retroactively-enthused "retro" game enthusiasts could exercise common sense when diving into 16-bit gen discussions. But forums are full of Genesis or SNES fanboys blindly insisting that the PCE can't do anything it has actually done.
HuCard games were obviously small because the CD format took off quickly. But people desperate to discount the PCE say it's because the hardware can't handle much. Point out any example from a CD game and it doesn't count because "the CD-ROM runs the game, not the PC Engine!" and HuCards show the limit of any potential the hardware had.
They will disqualify it as being part of the same generation as SNES and Genesis, ignoring on-par games top quality software, saying that the lack of hardware parallax proves(!) that the wimpy cpu can't do it because it really is just 8-bit gen hardware. Point out that the exact same cpu is in the SuperGrafx and it can do hardware multi-layer parallax and way more sprites than either Genesis or SNES and it "doesn't count" because it's a completely different console which has no generation class.
People like Black Falcon love to say that 4 meg CD games with CD music aren't fair to compare to SNES games, because they had the potential to have instead been 4000 meg games. But SNES/SFC games which are 100 - 200 megs uncompressed count, even with in-cart add-ons, because "Nintendo".
Simply point out that PCE CD games were what we were actually experiencing during the heyday of SNES/Genesis and you get more convenient cop-outs, like "it was more expensive than Neo Geo!" Point out that the TG-16 + Turbo-CD retailed for $220 at the same time that the SNES retailed for $200 and you'll either get a rehash of an unrelated excuse like "it's an 8-bit bios upgrade!" or Black Falcon rolls yet another side of his random-rule-changing die.
It's cool when young people get into things before their time in a positive way. But history rewriteres like Black Falcon are learning everything from youtube videos and wikis and their impressions blur huge periods of time and disconnected facts together and then they use that mess to tell people that were there that they're wrong. All just to prop up a console by a company they idolize because of they got into another system that company made generations later.
And it's not even limited to jumping blindly into comparison discissions in 16-bit related forums. These people scour general retro discussions and youtube comments to drop fact bombs like "it's actually really only an 8-bit system on par with "Ness" and shouldn't be included in this video/discussion". The fact that two of the PC Engine's greatest strengths are the SNES's greatest weaknesses, combined with the 'cool factor' of the 16-bit gen and how the PCE is a mysterious lost in Japan library which is stocked with the hardcore and even more cool aura of SHUMPs (which the SNES lacks), among other unique factors are polarizing for Nintendo revisionists in particular, when they aren't minimalizing the Genesis.
In the end HuCards, CDs and the PC Engine in general all get disqualified from "counting" one way or another. Turbo/PCE CD games weren't a luxury product (like Neo Geo) for North Americans bitd. Importing CD games was cheaper than buying many cart games, especially SNES RPGs. It may not be "fair" that Nintendo kept NES and SNES games from featuring CD music or the kind of variety many PCE and Sega-CD games have. It's not fair that Nintendo used immoral and illegal tactics and that SNES carts often cost so much. Loading extra hardware into carts may be "cheating" as well, but should we really say that SNES hdon't "count"?
Why not just appreciate all 16-bit gen games and take any unique factors into consideration when discussing or comparing them? Comparisons don't have to be a competition with a defineable "winner".
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Bonknuts, thank you for that eloquent, well-reasoned post. I feel you did justice to both sides of the debate.
I can't add anything that hasn't already been said.
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And I just read B_T's post...I feel like you (and others) know more about Falcon's modus operandi than me. It helps me see his posts in a new context.
STATUS: TIME FOR EVERYONE TO PLAY PCE. Everyone.
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I consider Famicom disk games, to be Famicom games and part of its library. I also consider Majora's Mask part of the N64 library, even though you're forced to purchase an addon pack (ram expansion pack) to play the game.
I've already covered the FDS, but the subject of RAM expansions and the like is one I should expand on, because it's an interesting, somewhat hard-to-categorize case.
Okay, this is an important question. As SamIAm said and I have also explained with different words, this is the main reason why addons are different from the main systems' their libraries are a part of:
The reason why these don't seem to me to be add-ons is because they're basically transparent to the user, and to me, the user's perspective is paramount. Aside from a fractional increase in price in some cases, there is no difference between buying and playing an "enhanced" cartridge and buying and playing an ordinary one.
I bet somewhere out there is an SNES fan who doesn't even realize that his Star Fox cart has a chip in it. I bet there are LOTS of people who don't realize that Mario Kart has a DSP chip in it. A few people on these forums probably don't even realize that SFII on the PCE has a mapper in it.
Yes, indeed, this is absolutely correct. Perception is key. This explains almost all cases, why some things are addons and others are not.
However, what this leaves out is what that first quote above mentions -- things like RAM expansions and, also, video enhancement addons. The main examples of these I can think of are the Turbo CD Super and Arcade cards, the N64 RAM pack, the Saturn 1MB and 4MB RAM packs, the Saturn Video CD Card, and the CD-i Digital Video Cartridge.
All of those things I just listed are hardware objects which add something to the hardware of the console. They are also sold separately from the console they connect to; some may be built-in in some models, but never all, and if some require it as an addon that's all that is needed to put it in the addon category. They have games which require them. These things seem to be addons.
However, they are much cheaper than traditional addons (like a Turbo CD, Sega CD, etc.) they do NOT change the media format, and you do not put games into them -- instead, you just put the game in the system like normal. As a result, these things do not usually get counted as addons. Should they be anyway? Hmm... generally I would say no, because that's how things are classified. It was decided by game companies and game listing sites that those things are expansions, not full addons, so they aren't classified that way. Things only get called true 'add-ons' if they don't just plug in to a system, but they actually change where you put the games, apparently. Should they be anyway? Well... maybe, but it IS true that no game company has divided their systems' library that way -- the Saturn, CD-i, N64, and TCD all clearly include all of the games as a part of the system's library, with no breakdown like you see between Genesis and 32X games and the like. The closest to having such a delineation is the TCD, since it uses different end-label logos for the regular, Super, and Arcade cards, but that's essentially just the same thing as an N64 game having the 'Expansion Pak Required' logo on the front, really. It's not being sold as something for a completely different console. This kind of categorization based on how the original manufacturer sold the game is common -- this is also why dual-mode Game Boy/GB Color games, that work in both consoles, are always called 'GBC games' in places that list them under just one platform, since the GBC is the system which Nintendo emphasized in the games' packaging and marketing.
So yes, there is a potential point to be made for these things being usually-unrecognized true add-ons. Going by price, what the first-party companies said, and whether they use different game input mechanisms they are not, but by the key checks of 'is it sold separately' and 'does it enhance the system in some way', they are. Generally I've gone with the standard definition for these and included them in the library, albeit with a note perhaps that the game supports or requires the expansion in question.
This whole argument is too big for me to keep up with, but just to toss in one thing about cart-coprocessors and mappers or whatever: The reason why these don't seem to me to be add-ons is because they're basically transparent to the user, and to me, the user's perspective is paramount. Aside from a fractional increase in price in some cases, there is no difference between buying and playing an "enhanced" cartridge and buying and playing an ordinary one.
This is what he does. The origin of the point of bringing up the special chips in the SNES carts, was completely lost because he brings the argument down to semantics, to the point where the original meaning is lost, and he can easily counter argue. It's like trying to hold a slippery fish. A Black Falcon is infamous for doing this on Sega-16, to the point where no one will take him seriously on anything he posts. We're talking pages upon pages of this kind of stuff.
Oh come on, that's an insane generalization, and it's not true at all. Also, insults instead of making actual points? That sounds indeed like something some Sega-16 people do... and it's always quite unfortunate.
I'm up for a good argument/debate and I'll probably agree on multiple points of view, even if I'm arguing just one of them. A lot of the time, these arguments are opinion and perspective based anyway. When arguing for credibility towards an opinion or perspective, getting into the nitty gritty of semantics always muddies the waters.
I like debate a lot, but the personal attacks often make me want to just ignore entire posts because of their presence...
I will say, though, that semantics DO matter. Sure, sometimes they don't really, but often they do. The way you classify something IS important. I would not argue semantics for no reason; I would do so because it matters.
The point of the argument is this; should the PC-Engine library include both hucard and CD games. The argument against it, is that the CD unit is an addon and therefore shouldn't be included. The reason for this perspective, is that the SegaCD and 32x (the most predominant addons in console history of successful systems, around that era).
No, it's because all addons have always been separated out of their base systems' libraries. That is not the reason.
And the main reason why gamers separate these addons as different game library, is that the addon hardware enhances the games to the point that they aren't representative of the original system's capability.
Nope, it's because they are separate pieces of hardware sold separately which play games via a separate mechanism from the main system and were sold and marketed as a different platform, as all addons always are (yes, including the Turbo CD).
This mostly comes from comparing one system to the other (it isn't a fair comparison). In the case of the PCE, this doesn't apply.
Of course it applies. The Turbo CD is an addon. That definition of Add-on from Wikipedia I linked? The Turbo CD fits in it perfectly. Your obsessive focus on addon chips has NOTHING TO DO with whether a thing is an addon or not! I get it that you two care about this, but it's immaterial to the point that that is not an essential part of the definition of add-on as is accepted by everyone other than you people.
PC-Engine CD games, are PCE games; there are no additional graphic processors, co-processors, or straight up new processors.
Doesn't matter.
The interface to the medium is different, the core game logic/code is the same. Another reason addons are considered to be a separate library, is that the addon always remained an addon.
Not really, no. The CDX, Laseractive + Mega LD, and X'eye/Wondermega did not turn the Sega CD into part of the Genesis. The Twin Famicom did not turn the FDS into part of the Famicom. Etc. If the games are a separate library anywhere on the system's ecosystem, they are a separate library! Period.
The addon is a branch of the system, therefore it's a branch of the library. It never replaced the core system; ever. In the perspective of 1988, the CD was an addon. In the perspective of 1992, the CD unit was the system. And if you look at the system from a perspective of 1996, hucards become the subset of the library - but they are still part of the PC-Engine library. Matter of fact, in 1992 when the Duo came out in the US (and I got one on release day), my perspective of hucards immediately changed to that - they became a subset of what was now CD games for the library. The Duo made it apparent; CD games were now the current format.
I've said this before, but the idea that you can change the definition of what is an addon mid-generation is wrong; you can't. Something is what it was from the beginning.
There's also this perspective that an addon was never intended to be part of the main system, or vision. That addons are always afterthoughts. And therefore it gives the addon even less credibility. That's not actually an unreasonable point of view. But the PCE system and CD unit were designed together. The CD unit was not some after thought down the road. And I'm sure the Famicom disk drive 'addon' probably had some sort of an influence to this.
But Hudson seems to have started working on the PCE hardware BEFORE they and/or NEC came up with the CD drive idea, so they were not designed starting at the same time. Sure, as far as addons go the Turbo CD has to be the most integrated one ever, and sure, it was worked on before the PCE released I am sure, but it doesn't seem to have actually existed as long as the PCE did, conceptually, and that does matter too.
By strict definition, by all means describe the CD unit as an addon. But when it comes categorizing the software for the PC-Engine, characteristics of the CD unit make it different than any other addon in console history. It's VERY hard to talk about PC-Engine games, without talking about hucards and CD games. If all you ever owned, was the hucard only system - then I can see why you wouldn't have this perspective. It's a different perspective for people that own(ed) the Duo, and gamers that grew up with both formats during that era. And for those of us that stuck through it till the end (imported).
The Turbo CD is the most successful game addon ever as far as adoption rates go. There is little question that that is true; the only way to challenge that, probably is, ironically enough, to count the Super System Card as an addon, as I discuss at the top of this post -- that surely had very high adoption rates in Japan. But as for the TCD itself, it started out as an addon, so it is an addon. You can't redefine things midstream, it does not work that way! Things are what they are.
For example, the existence of many Xbox 360 systems packed in with Kinects does not make the thing any less an optional accessory. Your definition-shifting mid-generation thing is something I really, really have a problem with.
What I am NOT doing is somehow slighting the Turbo CD library! Of course it's important, and large. The Turbo CD matters a lot, and sure, no discussion of the TG16 is complete without it. But, it IS an addon. Not everyone with a TG16 bought the CD drive, either in the US or Japan -- look at the numbers again, 3.92 million HuCard systems sold, 1.92 million CD systems, about a million of those Duo-line systems and the rest addon CD drives. And in the US, something like 900k TG16s sold, and maybe 100k at best CD units and Duos combined -- and it was probably below that (Vic Ireland said he thought 40k total CD+Duo, after all). In the US few people bought CD units, and even in Japan a large majority of HuCard system owners never bought a CD unit or Duo. An addon is something not included in the base system, that not everyone has. Only 33% of PC Engine owners had a CD drive, unless some people with PCEs bought Duos instead of CD addon drives. I'm sure many did, but not all. Any percentage there would be a made-up number, though, and I don't know what one to use.
But regardless, if my math is correct, somewhere between 33% and ~40% of PCE owners had CD drives, depending on how many HuCard system owners bought Duos but not CD units. That is a large percentage by addon terms, but it is NOT something universally owned by all PCE/TG16 owners. 30 or 40 percent is not everyone.
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Falcon, I am curious...
HERE WE GO: if God gave us HuCARD-only-PCE in 1987, and then, DUO in 1992, how would you classify things?
ASIDE: Did you see what I did there?
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And I just read B_T's post...I feel like you (and others) know more about Falcon's modus operandi than me. It helps me see his posts in a new context.
STATUS: TIME FOR EVERYONE TO PLAY PCE. Everyone.
Actually he thoroughly misrepresents me at every point in that post, constantly blaming me for the actions of others and claiming that I agree with the kind of people which I completely disagree with. Almost nothing in that post has anything to do with any position I actually hold.
It wouldn't be a big deal whether or not someone wants to make distinctions about PCE Hu and CD games if retroactively-enthused "retro" game enthusiasts could exercise common sense when diving into 16-bit gen discussions. But forums are full of Genesis or SNES fanboys blindly insisting that the PCE can't do anything it has actually done.
You might want to try actually reading my posts before making things up I did not say, mean, or think and claiming that I said or think those things. This post is interesting because it makes it pretty clear why you're arguing this way, but it's also completely and totally off-base when it comes to the false, invented claims you ascribe to me. If other people think those things, that's got nothing to do with my statements.
They will disqualify it as being part of the same generation as SNES and Genesis, ignoring on-par games top quality software, saying that the lack of hardware parallax proves(!) that the wimpy cpu can't do it because it really is just 8-bit gen hardware. Point out that the exact same cpu is in the SuperGrafx and it can do hardware multi-layer parallax and way more sprites than either Genesis or SNES and it "doesn't count" because it's a completely different console which has no generation class.
Anyone saying something stupid like that should be corrected, these things are false of course. Parallax is great, but the TG16 not having it doesn't make the thing 3rd gen, that'd be silly. The CPU may be 8-bit, but it's a powerful and fast 8-bit CPU. And the SuperGrafx is, I would say, 4th gen; it's just not of an upgrade enough to call it truly a next-gen console, so a second 4th gen system it is. And there is precedent for that -- Sega had two third-gen consoles in the SG-1000 and Sega Master System, for example. Atari had three! (5200, 7800, XEGS)
People like Black Falcon love to say that 4 meg CD games with CD music aren't fair to compare to SNES games, because they had the potential to have instead been 4000 meg games. But SNES/SFC games which are 100 - 200 megs uncompressed count, even with in-cart add-ons, because "Nintendo".
No, I don't think this and didn't say it. In fact, I essentially said the opposite -- I said that the actual game data -- that is, the programming that makes up the core of the game, leaving out stuff like graphics, sound, and cutscenes -- on CD games usually isn't any larger than that of cartridge games. Sure, CD games have the potential of massive megabit counts, but in the 4th gen, as I said, audio and cutscenes aside they almost never did it! As I said earlier in the thread, it took quite some time to figure out good uses for CDs, apart from adding audio or, later, video cutscene data.
As far as 'fairness' goes, generally for the 4th generation systems CD games should have better cutscenes than cartridge/card games, because CD audio lets you do much more than chiptunes + text, but in-game play can be compared of course, and depending on genre may be better on SNES than the CD consoles (for stuff that makes good use of the SNES's hardware effects and doesn't have slowdown), or may be better on one of the other systems (for shmups for example). Overall, of course it's fair to compare games of the same generation to each other. You need to take the different hardware capabilities of the different systems into account, of course -- so like, criticizing a Jaguar game for not looking as good as an N64 game would be kind of silly -- but they ARE the same generation, and so of course they can be compared.
And it's not even limited to jumping blindly into comparison discissions in 16-bit related forums. These people scour general retro discussions and youtube comments to drop fact bombs like "it's actually really only an 8-bit system on par with "Ness" and shouldn't be included in this video/discussion". The fact that two of the PC Engine's greatest strengths are the SNES's greatest weaknesses, combined with the 'cool factor' of the 16-bit gen and how the PCE is a mysterious lost in Japan library which is stocked with the hardcore and even more cool aura of SHUMPs (which the SNES lacks), among other unique factors are polarizing for Nintendo revisionists in particular, when they aren't minimalizing the Genesis.
Stop blaming me for others' arguments. I'm not those people. I disagree with those peoples' arguments just as much as anyone here. Yes, I love the SNES, but I equally love the Genesis + Sega CD + 32X, and the TG16 + CD is almost as great. Given how popular the NES is among retro gamers in the West now, I think that TG16/PCE games would actually be really popular if they were more affordable and accessible -- a lot of them are exactly the kind of things that NES-lovers would love, particularly the HuCard stuff! It's too bad the system did so badly back then, because otherwise I think it'd be quite popular now, and rightly so.
It's cool when young people get into things before their time in a positive way. But history rewriteres like Black Falcon are learning everything from youtube videos and wikis and their impressions blur huge periods of time and disconnected facts together and then they use that mess to tell people that were there that they're wrong. All just to prop up a console by a company they idolize because of they got into another system that company made generations later.
Doesn't apply at all. I've been playing video games since the '80s. I have a masters' degree in history and am quite good at remembering historical facts and periods. This "if you weren't there you can't say anything about the period" is an absolutely ludicrous idea -- if that was true there would be no study of history, but there is and I really love it -- but regardless, I WAS there in the 4th generation. Sure, I didn't have most of the systems myself, but like anyone I played what I could, of course.
As for learning from Youtube and wikis, they might be decent supplementary materials, but I wouldn't recommend that as a primary source, no. Youtube videos particularly rarely will be too helpful for much of anything beyond just gameplay footage. As for wikis, they can be good, but gaming wikis for earlier systems are spotty at best... never rely on all of that information being accurate, it won't be. You need to go beyond that and do more research. Game history writing definitely needs to get better and get more attention, but works like the new book on Sega are fantastic steps forward. I hope we see more like that in the future, it's needed! Things like Sega-16's interview series with people who worked on Genesis games are also really pretty fantastic.
Why not just appreciate all 16-bit gen games and take any unique factors into consideration when discussing or comparing them? Comparisons don't have to be a competition with a defineable "winner".
Why not like all of the systems -- and I like the SNES, Genesis/Sega CD/32X, and TG16/CD all quite a lot -- AND also try to decide which one you like the most? I have no problem with rankings, even if they are mostly subjective.
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Falcon, I am curious...
HERE WE GO: if God gave us HuCARD-only-PCE in 1987, and then, DUO in 1992, how would you classify things?
ASIDE: Did you see what I did there?
Presuming that the internal hardware was the same, then it'd be in the same place as the SuperGrafx, Sega Master System, Atari 7800, or Atari XE -- a second console in the same generation as their previous one, and compatible with the previous system, much like the SuperGrafx, or how the Japanese Master System/Mark III is backwards compatible with Sega's first 3rd gen system, the SG-1000.
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Things only get called true 'add-ons' if they don't just plug in to a system, but they actually change where you put the games, apparently.... So yes, there is a potential point to be made for these things being usually-unrecognized true add-ons. Going by price, what the first-party companies said, and whether they use different game input mechanisms they are not, but by the key checks of 'is it sold separately' and 'does it enhance the system in some way', they are.
As opposed to them being fake add-ons? You're dumber than a sack of hair.
I like debate a lot, but the personal attacks often make me want to just ignore entire posts because of their presence...
Good. That means less ignorant ramblings for us to read.
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That means less ignorant ramblings for us to read.
You can wish for that all you want...
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As opposed to them being fake add-ons?
As has been thoroughly explained, things like expansion chips in cartridges are not addons. That's what I meant there -- only counting addons which fully fit the definition, not things you people claim are addons but aren't.
Also see https://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=16829.msg351935#msg351935 , where I discuss the one major issue that leaves -- the question of enhancement units you plug into a system but which do not change the media format.
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FIRST (CLEARING THE AIR): Falcon, I will only judge you by how you post here (since that is the extent of my direct knowledge). So far, I am enjoying this discussion and I can see both sides of the debate. I agree that personal attacks only clutter up an argument.
(http://junk.tg-16.com/images/pcgs.png)
HONEST QUESTION TO EVERYONE: how would you classify LaserActive and LD-ROM and PCE?
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As has been thoroughly explained, things like expansion chips in cartridges are not addons. That's what I meant there -- only counting addons which fully fit the definition, not things you people claim are addons but aren't.
Those quotes were about memory upgrades, not helper chips. Learn to read!
I just think it's cute how you continue to act like memory upgrades are something other than an add-on, even though one of 'em (the N64 Expansion Pak) is listed in your wikipedia 'proof' of what constitutes an add-on.
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Falcon, I am curious...
HERE WE GO: if God gave us HuCARD-only-PCE in 1987, and then, DUO in 1992, how would you classify things?
ASIDE: Did you see what I did there?
Presuming that the internal hardware was the same, then it'd be in the same place as the SuperGrafx, Sega Master System, Atari 7800, or Atari XE -- a second console in the same generation as their previous one, and compatible with the previous system, much like the SuperGrafx, or how the Japanese Master System/Mark III is backwards compatible with Sega's first 3rd gen system, the SG-1000.
I know you are being pulled in 100 different directions (sorry! I'm making this thread even more convoluted), but I don't agree with your reasoning above...
...given the premise of my "alternate universe", the DUO is not a new platform or console. I understand your desire to categorize it that way, and I know you are frustrated because PCE/DUO does not neatly fit into the sterile, simplistic classification systems we have constructed...but PCE/DUO truly is a unique beast.
In fact, our thread is very instructive on how misunderstood the PCE is. And, even more importantly, it reveals how our classification/labeling systems may appear reasonable, but horribly fail to represent the essential truth of the very thing we are trying to understand (in this case, video game consoles).
TO EVERYONE: For the sake of everyone's sanity, you are required to play an hour of PCE (that includes CD-ROM games, but not LD-ROM games, in case you were wondering) BEFORE POSTING in this thread.
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Is the Laseractive an add-on of both the PC-Engine and the Mega Drive?
Or are the PC-Engine and Mega Drive PACs add-ons of the Laseractive?
If the PACs are add-ons, then I believe that makes the PC-Engine and Mega Drive both add-ons and consoles. How trippy is that?
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Totally trippy.... (http://junk.tg-16.com/images/pcgs.png)
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The N64 ram pak upgrades the base hardware.
Most SNES on-cart addons are cpu upgrades.
The PCE CD-ROM, when not part of a single Duo unit, is an alternate delivery method. Another software format, like Sega My Cards, Satellaview games, Famicom Disk games, 64DD games, etc. None of these upgrade the base console hardware. Some are capable of running additional audio along side the console hardware, but the software is no different than the regular console's cart-based software, aside from any additional audio that might play on the side. This why you saw the same games running on both software formats.
The System 3.0 and Arcade Card only upgrade the delivery method of the software format. It is really more of a handicap reducer though, as CD format games were bottlenecked in the "short term" (small bits at a time) as much as carts were in the long term (everything at once, but smaller overall). It again, did not affect the base hardware, unlike SNES accelerator chips.
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I understand why the PCE/CD system is all one system and one library from a software developer's perspective, from a hardware designer's perspective, and even from a certain historian's perspective. But from a user's perspective, no way. Can you play a CD game on a base system? No? Then it's a different library. It's really that simple for me, especially when the required expansion hardware is so expensive.
I think of the Famicom Disk System as an add-on with a separate library as well, but the line blurs (without disappearing) just because it became so redundant - its initial advantages in storage were overcome by cartridges, and some FDS games were re-released on cartridges with zero changes. That would NEVER happen with a PCE-CD game. At the very least, the audio would have to be downgraded, and as a practical matter it's very likely that HuCard-ized versions of many games would have had actual game data trimmed.
That is one thing I have to say I'm a little surprised at you guys for claiming. I thought Redbook audio was supposed to be a big deal when this thing came out? Be honest - would Ys Book 1&2 have been as magical without the redbook? If we're still talking 1989, you can kiss the intro and other cutscenes goodbye, too.
Without any extra processors, the PCE-CD may not be a perfect analogue of the Sega CD, but it's still pretty close. The massive storage, by itself, is a really big deal.
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I understand why it's all one system and one library from a software developer's perspective, from a hardware designer's perspective, and even from a certain historian's perspective. But from a user's perspective, no way. Can you play a CD game on a base system? No? Then it's a different library. It's really that simple for me. Especially when the required hardware is so expensive.
And those that had a Duo, that could play both CD and hucard games. It's one library to them. And there is lies the problem. It's not like the Duo came out at the end of the systems life (unless you follow the opinion that the release of the Duo, is the end of the PC-Engine's life - because the Duo is a completely new system), it came out before half way. Again, it's all a matter of perspective.
That is one thing I have to say I'm a little surprised at you guys for claiming. I thought Redbook audio was supposed to be a big deal when this thing came out? Be honest - would Ys Book 1&2 have been as magical without the redbook?
Claiming..? The CD format was for storage first and foremost, Red book is a base free upgrade for it. If anything, it's the streaming ADPCM that's the upgrade. The mass storage makes it perfect for packing in lots of compressed audio streams (one of the reason for mass storage; speech). Some early CD games used chiptunes instead of Red Book. Some later CD games used chiptunes for the cinemas too. And even some late gen games used chiptunes instead of Red Book. But yeah, Red Book is great. It creates a better atmosphere. Ys is better for it. But Xanadu I and II are just as awesome with chiptunes IMO.
If the CD unit never came out, as I've already said, there would have been audio upgrades in the hucards themselves. Or optional audio addon, like the mark III or MSX stuffs.
Also, insults instead of making actual points?
Huh???
A Black Falcon: Yes, a definition can change. Or rather, a description of what constitutes something. And since when it anything set in stone!?!? "The CD format is an addon, because it started as an addon - and nothing will every change that. Not even the Duo". Seriously???
1988, the CD unit is an addon. 1992 - there is only the Duo (technically 1991 in Japan). The Duo doesn't add or connect to anything. The Duo runs the same CD games as the CD addon does. The Duo is not a 'new' system, because it doesn't play any 'new' games, etc. It plays the same CD and hucard games. Duo =/= SGX, in ANY way, shape, form, etc. You know what? f*ck it. f*ck this merry-go-round with you.
Me: PCE consists of CD and hucard games:
@loop
ABF: No. CD was an addon and you can't count that.
Me: But CD unit became the new format
ABF: The cd unit upgrades the hardware
Me: No really. And special chips in snes games, do much more that CD unit as far as upgrading
ABF: Doesn't matter, because the gamer doesn't have to buy an addon to play them
Me: Ok, so it's about purchasing an addon then, the Duo replaced all addons and is the main system.
ABF: The Duo doesn't count because it's a new system, like the SGX.
:insert some other random crap, then branch to :loop
If you're gonna break the PCE library because of the CD format, DON'T BE HALF ASS ABOUT. Go all the way with it, buddy. If CD and hucards are not the same library, then CD 1.0, CD 2.0, CD 3.0 and ACD are NOT the same library. You cannot play any of those CD game WITHOUT purchasing an upgrade card. Period. If you're gonna argue and stick with semantics, be thorough about it.
Reply to this if you want, I won't. See ya.
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And those that had a Duo, that could play both CD and hucard games. It's one library to them. And there is lies the problem. It's not like the Duo came out at the end of the systems life (unless you follow the opinion that the release of the Duo, is the end of the PC-Engine's life - because the Duo is a completely new system), it came out before half way. Again, it's all a matter of perspective.
Ehhh, maybe my perspective is off because I had a JVC X'EYE first, but the Duo to me is a combo system just like that. It's two systems together. A base and an expansion as one for the sake of convenience and economics. It's really hard for me to think of it as an all-out re-birth of the PCE.
The Duo makes up half of the CD system owner base. On one hand, that's a lot, but on the other, it clearly didn't start a revolution. Of the 5.8 million worldwide sales, only about 1 million are Duos. The bulk of the sales happened before the Duo ever appeared, too.
Claiming..? The CD format was for storage first and foremost, Red book is a base free upgrade for it. If anything, it's the streaming ADPCM that's the upgrade. The mass storage makes it perfect for packing in lots of compressed audio streams (one of the reason for mass storage; speech). Some early CD games used chiptunes instead of Red Book. Some later CD games used chiptunes for the cinemas too. And even some late gen games used chiptunes instead of Red Book. But yeah, Red Book is great. It creates a better atmosphere. Ys is better for it. But Xanadu I and II are just as awesome with chiptunes IMO.
If the CD unit never came out, as I've already said, there would have been audio upgrades in the hucards themselves. Or optional audio addon, like the mark III or MSX stuffs.
That's all fine and good, but what I'm trying to say is that the difference in storage alone is so huge, and so expensive, that it doesn't matter if there aren't any extra processors in the PCE-CD. The difference to the user is still enormous.
There were 5.8 million PCE/TG-16 owners, and about 2 million CD system owners among them. Ask the 3.8 million people who only ever had the Hucard systems whether they thought the CD library was their Hucard library's long-lost Siamese twin. They may or may not have understood what's under the hood of these systems, but I guarantee that Hucard-only owners back in the day saw the CD library as a separate, if related, family.
EDIT: You posted this a while back:
And the main reason why gamers separate these addons as different game library, is that the addon hardware enhances the games to the point that they aren't representative of the original system's capability.
This might be at the heart of our disagreement, because I don't see things this way at all. I think it's a separate library because you had to shell out hundreds of dollars for a separate doohickey to play the games. Even if Sonic CD didn't have those special stages with a mode-7-y floor, it would still seem to me to be a non-Genesis game because I can't play it on my Genesis. Put the game on a cartridge, stick in a chip that makes that effect, and charge roughly the same amount as any other cart game, though, and it will sure look like a Genesis game to me.
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In the end, I think the PCE and the CD system and the system cards are all pretty unique, and we all have our own perspective. In another universe, where the TG-16 was more popular than the Genesis, maybe there would be Sega CD fans arguing that the Sega CD library deserves not to be lumped in the with Genesis. In our universe, though, I think that a PCE fan's perspective in 2014, after 20 years of owning the base and the add-on, is biased simply because the two libraries just look so much better together.
I feel like what I really learned from this discussion is that the PCE and its CD system are so different from the Mega Drive and the SFC that it's not possible to directly compare them in some ways.
By the way, let's finish Spriggan Mark 2 already. :P Does that stage four text insert properly on your end?
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And those that had a Duo, that could play both CD and hucard games. It's one library to them. And there is lies the problem. It's not like the Duo came out at the end of the systems life (unless you follow the opinion that the release of the Duo, is the end of the PC-Engine's life - because the Duo is a completely new system), it came out before half way. Again, it's all a matter of perspective.
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A Black Falcon: Yes, a definition can change. Or rather, a description of what constitutes something. And since when it anything set in stone!?!? "The CD format is an addon, because it started as an addon - and nothing will every change that. Not even the Duo". Seriously???
Yes. You cannot redefine what type of system a console is mid-generation. How it is is set from the start. Period. I think I've mentioned the X'eye, CDX, and Twin Famicom enough times that maybe this point should be getting across by now.
1988, the CD unit is an addon. 1992 - there is only the Duo (technically 1991 in Japan). The Duo doesn't add or connect to anything. The Duo runs the same CD games as the CD addon does. The Duo is not a 'new' system, because it doesn't play any 'new' games, etc. It plays the same CD and hucard games. Duo =/= SGX, in ANY way, shape, form, etc.
I said that the Duo would be like the Supergrafx if there had been no stand-alone CD drive released! Of course WITH a standalone CD drive, as exists, it's not like the Supergrafx. But if the Duo had been the only way to play CD games, then it would be.
Claiming..? The CD format was for storage first and foremost, Red book is a base free upgrade for it. If anything, it's the streaming ADPCM that's the upgrade. The mass storage makes it perfect for packing in lots of compressed audio streams (one of the reason for mass storage; speech). Some early CD games used chiptunes instead of Red Book. Some later CD games used chiptunes for the cinemas too. And even some late gen games used chiptunes instead of Red Book. But yeah, Red Book is great. It creates a better atmosphere. Ys is better for it. But Xanadu I and II are just as awesome with chiptunes IMO.
If the CD unit never came out, as I've already said, there would have been audio upgrades in the hucards themselves. Or optional audio addon, like the mark III or MSX stuffs.
Maybe so, but are there pins in the HuCards for audio enhancements? And anyway, that's purely speculation, and enhanced cart/card audio won't get you lots of voice acting, for sure. I like chiptunes a lot, games don't need CD audio, and cartridge games are just as good as CD games, for sure. However, the interesting types of music you find in Turbo CD and Sega CD is pretty cool and I like it a lot. As for voice-acted cutscenes, well, it helps with understanding games that are in Japanese for sure, versus just text... :p
That's all fine and good, but what I'm trying to say is that the difference in storage alone is so huge, and so expensive, that it doesn't matter if there aren't any extra processors in the PCE-CD.
There are 5.8 million PCE/TG-16 owners, and about 2 million CD system owners among them. Ask the 3.8 million people who only ever had the Hucard systems whether they think the CD library is their Hucard library's long-lost Siamese twin. They may or may not understand what's under the hood of these systems, but I guarantee that Hucard-only owners see the CD library as a separate, if related, family
I've tried to make this point several times now, only to be completely ignored. I guess only the 1 million Duo owners count as true Turbografx/PC Engine owners, and the rest are irrelevant or something...
I know you are being pulled in 100 different directions (sorry! I'm making this thread even more convoluted), but I don't agree with your reasoning above...
...given the premise of my "alternate universe", the DUO is not a new platform or console. I understand your desire to categorize it that way, and I know you are frustrated because PCE/DUO does not neatly fit into the sterile, simplistic classification systems we have constructed...but PCE/DUO truly is a unique beast.
I don't know what you are talking about... If there was no standalone CD drive, but instead the Duo was the only way to get a CD drive, it'd be a new system. Where the Supergrafx made a new system with another processor and the like, the Duo would with a CD drive and more RAM.
In fact, our thread is very instructive on how misunderstood the PCE is. And, even more importantly, it reveals how our classification/labeling systems may appear reasonable, but horribly fail to represent the essential truth of the very thing we are trying to understand (in this case, video game consoles)
Not really. I agree that it's more about some people here wanting to redefine things in order to make the TG16 look better, since clearly you need to include the CD library to keep the system competitive in comparison to the other systems of the generation. Of course it is true that the TCD is more successful than other addons, and that half of CD systems sold are combo systems is DEFINITELY unique, but having a higher rate of combo system adaptation doesn't change that it is an addon at its core. If a majority of Sega CDs sold had been CDXes and X'eyes and the like, the system would still be an addon too. The ratio of addons to expansions doesn't change the systems' classification.
The N64 ram pak upgrades the base hardware.
Most SNES on-cart addons are cpu upgrades.
The PCE CD-ROM, when not part of a single Duo unit, is an alternate delivery method. Another software format, like Sega My Cards, Satellaview games, Famicom Disk games, 64DD games, etc. None of these upgrade the base console hardware. Some are capable of running additional audio along side the console hardware, but the software is no different than the regular console's cart-based software, aside from any additional audio that might play on the side. This why you saw the same games running on both software formats.
The System 3.0 and Arcade Card only upgrade the delivery method of the software format. It is really more of a handicap reducer though, as CD format games were bottlenecked in the "short term" (small bits at a time) as much as carts were in the long term (everything at once, but smaller overall). It again, did not affect the base hardware, unlike SNES accelerator chips.
This idea you have that somehow space enhancement systems don't really count as addons, while chips that increase processing power do, isn't backed up by anything other than your opinion, you know. That's not how addons vs. enhancement chips are classified. How invisible is it to the user? Does the game go in the original system or the addon? What did the company sell the device as? These questions matter. Whether it's a storage space enhancement or a system power/memory enhancement, though, doesn't as much, except in that most people, and companies, don't really count pure system memory/video enhancements as addons even though they kind of are -- as I was saying a while ago about the RAM packs, etc. That point is a question worth discussing, I think. The rest are correctly classified by standard definitions. Your focus on "does it increase system power" first is not the primary factor used to determine what an addon is.
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I think the PC Engine and add-ons is unique in the console world, but not totally unique. I think it actually follows the home computer model. You create a base system. Later you add a CD-ROM drive that adds redbook audio and ups the storage space. Later in the system's life it got RAM upgrades via the Super System and Arcade cards.
I actually do think that the CD-ROM attachment is a lot like the FDS unit for the Famicom, which also took inspiration from the home computer market. The FDS changed the storage medium which provided the advantage of easy save capabilities, and Nintendo bundled in a couple FM audio channels as well. Only in the Nintendo example the FDS was dropped before the base system's life cycle was complete.
Yes, the HuCard slot does include a mono audio channel, I believe.
Say, does anyone know when manufacturing and distribution of the various PCE Core systems ended? Was it before the Duo was finished?
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Bonknuts, don't waste your time debating with this Black Idiot. ;)
Your time deserves being spent on dev ;)
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Didn't read much of the last posts, especially when it comes to cases where two or more people just insult each other.
Guys, be proud of what the PCE can do. You don't need to prove that to the world constantly, and you don't have to fear comparisons with rivaling systems of back in the day, since these days are long gone anyway.
As far as I can remember, the whole addon argument started with comparing sales figures to the SNES/Satellaview and Mega Drive/MegaCD/32X* library.
I think pretty much everything what can be said about that has been said yet. Apart from some interesting posts inbetween, the last pages of this discussion consists of boring repeats and trolling for the lulz.
*please excuse me for being European, lol.
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Black Falcon: I confused myself in my prior post. Ha! I started conflating the real-world with my silly premise. Sorry. I don't even know what to think anymore.
STATUS: I think that SamIAm has clearly stated the most persuasive argument—the ***user's*** perspective cannot be ignored. Since the TG-16/PCE was HuCARD-only, I can't help but agree that these folks would be justified in calling CD-ROM an add-on. There is a very real SPLIT in games available.
Of course, folks with a DUO are justified in seeing one inclusive library.
The PCE+IFU+CD-ROM helped blur the lines about what the true PCE experience (was/is)...
THAT SAID, it doesn't mean that we ignore the developer/hardware/technical "under-the-hood" perspective entirely.
Somehow, we might be able to balance the two perspectives. Or, at the very least, we should identify each perspective when we discuss things...
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Black Falcon: I confused myself in my prior post. Ha! I started conflating the real-world with my silly premise. Sorry. I don't even know what to think anymore.
STATUS: I think that SamIAm has clearly stated the most persuasive argument—the ***user's*** perspective cannot be ignored. Since the TG-16/PCE was HuCARD-only, I can't help but agree that these folks would be justified in calling CD-ROM an add-on. There is a very real SPLIT in games available.
Of course, folks with a DUO are justified in seeing one inclusive library.
The PCE+IFU+CD-ROM helped blur the lines about what the true PCE experience (was/is)...
THAT SAID, it doesn't mean that we ignore the developer/hardware/technical "under-the-hood" perspective entirely.
Somehow, we might be able to balance the two perspectives. Or, at the very least, we should identify each perspective when we discuss things...
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I agree that it's more about some people here wanting to redefine things in order to make the TG16 look better, since clearly you need to include the CD library to keep the system competitive in comparison to the other systems of the generation.
And there's your ENTIRE problem.
"It's not fair to compare the PCE CDs to my beloved SNES! CDs are cheating!!!!"
How invisible is it to the user? Does the game go in the original system or the addon? What did the company sell the device as? These questions matter.
If those were determinants of what constitutes an add-on, they'd be part of the definition to which you linked. They are not, and therefor you're making up your own definition to suit your argument.
HONEST QUESTION TO EVERYONE: how would you classify LaserActive and LD-ROM and PCE?
That's a good question. It doesn't play games on its own, so the LA can't properly be called a console; if it's not a console, then the pacs can't be console add-ons; and the pacs themselves probably can't be called consoles because they don't work on their own or output to a TV.
I'd say the pacs are 'non-console' add-ons, akin to the 3DO Blaster and PC-FX GA thingys.
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And there's your ENTIRE problem.
"It's not fair to compare the PCE CDs to my beloved SNES! CDs are cheating!!!!"
No, that's YOUR entire problem. For some bizarre reason you think that things like success, whether you like a platform or not, how well it sold, or anything else of the sort is is some way relevant. It isn't. It isn't at all.
I know I've said this before, but once again, the way a system is categorized has ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING TO DO with any of that subjective stuff. Nothing whatsoever. Stop projecting and making things up about what you wrongly think I like. The only thing that matters for this discussion is what a system is, not any of the things you are complaining about here.
Also, this doesn't matter, but it's quite weird that you're claiming that the SNES is "my beloved" system, somehow, when of course I've always made it clear that I think the Genesis+Sega CD+32X is every bit as great as the SNES, and it's the N64, not the SNES, that is my favorite console. And why do you think I don't like the TG16+CD a lot too? There's a reason I'm here, it's because it's a great console! The fact that the TCD is an addon and Duos are combo systems, not a new model which makes the CD not an addon, is a point that has nothing whatsoever to do with any of that opinion stuff. You're the ones wrongly making it into something other than that, not me. You are entirely, completely wrong here, 100%.
It's even weirder, of course, given that if you'd read all of my posts in this thread, you might have noticed that I said that it's entirely fair to compare the SNES to the Turbo CD... so even your attempt at an insult can't get its facts straight!
If those were determinants of what constitutes an add-on, they'd be part of the definition to which you linked. They are not, and therefor you're making up your own definition to suit your argument.
Oh come on.
Add-ons, also known as peripherals, are devices generally sold separately from the console, but which connect to the main unit to add significant new functionality. This may include devices which upgrade the hardware of a console to allow it to play more resource-intensive games, devices which allow consoles to play games on a different media format, or devices which fully change the function of a console from a game playing device to something else. A hardware add-on differs from an accessory in that an accessory either adds functionality which is beneficial but nonessential for gameplay (like a Game Link Cable or Rumble Pak), or in some cases may only add aesthetic value (like a case mod or faceplate). Generally, a game designed for use with an accessory can still be played on a console without the compatible accessory, whereas a game designed for use with a peripheral can not be played on a console without the appropriate peripheral.
Please note that the term "device" is a term which really can't include enhancement chips in game carts -- then they'd say "games", not "devices". That's why I also linked the Super FX article, to show that it clearly calls it something else and not an add-on, which it isn't -- it's an enhancement chip in a game cartridge.
Otherwise, the quote covers the three major categories of addon -- new media formats, entirely new thing connecting to the system (such as a 32X), and hardware improvements in some way.
HONEST QUESTION TO EVERYONE: how would you classify LaserActive and LD-ROM and PCE?
That's a good question. It doesn't play games on its own, so the LA can't properly be called a console; if it's not a console, then the pacs can't be console add-ons; and the pacs themselves probably can't be called consoles because they don't work on their own or output to a TV.
I'd say the pacs are 'non-console' add-ons, akin to the 3DO Blaster and PC-FX GA thingys.
[/QUOTE]Yeah, it's definitely a weird case. The LaserActive alone isn't really a console, because it can't play games on its own -- it needs a Sega or NEC PAC for that. So maybe the LaserActive ITSELF is the addon, and the Sega or NEC PACs are the "consoles"? Because it's basically like a Sega/Turbo CD but with laserdiscs. But as you say, those 'consoles' don't work on their own, which is a definite problem for that. But they really aren't exactly add-ons either since the LA isn't a console on its own. So... yeah, it's tricky.
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Blah, blah, blah, more foolish rambling....... The fact that the TCD is an addon and Duos are combo systems, not a new model which makes the CD not an addon, is a point that has nothing whatsoever to do with any of that opinion stuff. You're the ones wrongly making it into something other than that, not me. You are entirely, completely wrong here, 100%.
Again, I've yet to say the CD was anything but an add-on. If I say this enough times, will it eventually get through your thick skull?
It's even weirder, of course, given that if you'd read all of my posts in this thread, you might have noticed that I said that it's entirely fair to compare the SNES to the Turbo CD... so even your attempt at an insult can't get its facts straight!
This all started when you whined that it was unfair to include CD games when comparing the time periods that the two systems were supported ("no pce releases after '94!"), so why don't YOU get your facts straight?!?
Oh come on.
<<< insert wikipedia definition that Black Falcon can't comprehend here >>>
Only the first sentence of that paragraph is the definition of 'add-on', with the rest being examples of add-on capabilities and how an add-on differs from an accessory. Again, it does not say that a media format change is required or that an add-on must be a stand-alone device un-coupled from a game.
Please note that the term "device" is a term which really can't include enhancement chips in game carts -- then they'd say "games", not "devices". That's why I also linked the Super FX article, to show that it clearly calls it something else and not an add-on, which it isn't -- it's an enhancement chip in a game cartridge.
Making up your own definition for 'device', eh? Here's the dictionary definition:
de·vice (noun) - a thing made for a particular purpose; an invention or contrivance, especially a mechanical or electrical one.
See anything in there saying that a 'device' must be physically separate and distinct from any other function? Nope, that's your addition.
It's a moot point anyway, as with or without helper chips they're all still Super Famicom games to me. If you and Sam (among others) want to use "customer ignorance" and cost as deciding factors in what constitutes an add-on, I don't really care; just don't try to claim that it's a textbook definition.
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Blah, blah, blah, more foolish rambling....... The fact that the TCD is an addon and Duos are combo systems, not a new model which makes the CD not an addon, is a point that has nothing whatsoever to do with any of that opinion stuff. You're the ones wrongly making it into something other than that, not me. You are entirely, completely wrong here, 100%.
Again, I've yet to say the CD was anything but an add-on. If I say this enough times, will it eventually get through your thick skull?
Yeah, for you people somehow it's both an addon AND part of the library, because it shifts definition mid-generation. As I've said, you can't do that. What something is at the start is what it is.
This all started when you whined that it was unfair to include CD games when comparing the time periods that the two systems were supported ("no pce releases after '94!"), so why don't YOU get your facts straight?!?
There weren't any PC Engine games after 1994, though. You can compare the SNES to the TG16, and you can compare the SNES to the Turbo CD. Making both of those comparisons is just fine. I don't know why you think that because I separate platforms by what system they're for I'm somehow saying that you can't compare the SNES to the Turbo CD, but that's complete nonsense. As I've said all along, of course it is entirely fair to compare platforms in the same generation.
Also, once again, in a list like https://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=16829.msg348682#msg348682 , if you had also done Sega also would you have merged the Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X all onto one list, or would you have kept them separate? Those two lists there are TG16+TCD and SNES+Satellaview, so of course a Sega list should include all addons as well... but you people keep trying to split hairs in order to exclude Sega's addons, which is absurd if you're including Nintendo and NEC's. No, the idea that addons must increase system power is NOT valid -- remember the Wikipedia definition saying that adding a new media format is also an addon! If you would have included all Genesis addons then it'd be a fair all-formats comparison, but I'd still rather see a list that separates systems out from their addons as well -- the main consoles and their addons are not the same thing, and what is on what format is quite important. It'd be fair to have both a merged list AND a separated list, but merged only I don't like.
Only the first sentence of that paragraph is the definition of 'add-on', with the rest being examples of add-on capabilities and how an add-on differs from an accessory. Again, it does not say that a media format change is required or that an add-on must be a stand-alone device un-coupled from a game.
The use of the term "device" makes it clear that they are NOT including things inside game cartridges. If you look up any enhancement chip article (NES mapper chips, Super FX, , you will see that none of them call them add-ons. They are enhancement chips in games, not addons. Wikipedia is clear and consistent on this point. Only you people don't admit that that's how addon classification works.
Please note that the term "device" is a term which really can't include enhancement chips in game carts -- then they'd say "games", not "devices". That's why I also linked the Super FX article, to show that it clearly calls it something else and not an add-on, which it isn't -- it's an enhancement chip in a game cartridge.
Making up your own definition for 'device', eh? Here's the dictionary definition:
de·vice (noun) - a thing made for a particular purpose; an invention or contrivance, especially a mechanical or electrical one.
See anything in there saying that a 'device' must be physically separate and distinct from any other function? Nope, that's your addition.[/quote]
Nope. No one would ever call a game a "device". Read the quote! Actually read it. It is VERY clear that the add-on article is referring to expansion devices which are NOT games. And once again no enhancement chip article calls the things addons. If you think enhancement chips are addons that's your opinion, but it goes against all authoritative sources, and you need to recognize that.
It's a moot point anyway, as with or without helper chips they're all still Super Famicom games to me. If you and Sam (among others) want to use "customer ignorance" and cost as deciding factors in what constitutes an add-on, I don't really care; just don't try to claim that it's a textbook definition.
It is, though. It absolutely 100% is. If you were right, sites like Wikipedia, IGN, GameFAQs, Gamestop, or any other game listing site would list things like the Super FX or NES mapper chips as addons, like they do the 32X or Turbo CD. There's a reason why they don't: they are not addons. They are enhancement chips built in to game cartridges. They are categorized differently.
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Also, this doesn't matter, but it's quite weird that you're claiming that the SNES is "my beloved" system, somehow, when of course I've always made it clear that I think the Genesis+Sega CD+32X is every bit as great as the SNES, and it's the N64, not the SNES, that is my favorite console.
You don't need to be an SNES fanboy to realize that it does have the best hardware, you just need to look at its capabilities.
What? , that's just insane... the NES, SNES, N64, and GC were all advanced-tech machines that all pushed the industry in many ways. The Wii is their only exception, and then after that some people went back and retroactively changed history to pretend that Nintendo hardware was always behind, when it'd always been the precise opposite of that. It's too bad that you seem to have joined into that, but it's not true. The NES, N64, and GC were all the best hardware available for several years after their release (remember, NES was 1983 in Japan, SMS was 1985), and the SNES was too, apart from that Neo-Geo of course.
Which soundchip sounds "better" to each one is more a matter of taste than anything. FM-based and sample-based soundchip have their pros and cons...
Of course, of course, it's "better", but it's actually worse because you say so and you claim it's "not being used fully" and such. Your excuses are so ridiculous... the SNES DOES have better audio, that is a fact, but you sort of admit that, but then spend most of your time attacking SNES sound anyway. I don't know what you mean about the SNES sound chip not being used fully enough -- there are a lot of really impressive compositions on the thing for sure -- but audio is just as much of an advantage for the SNES as graphics are, certainly.
Heck, it's only with adding in the Sega CD ones that I'd put the Genesis above the SNES, in shmups(!)
Gradius III (best shmup of the generation and an all-time classic!)
And why do you think I don't like the TG16+CD a lot too? There's a reason I'm here, it's because it's a great console!
Unless you're talking about shmups, no way does the Duo have better games than the SNES. I like the system a lot, but it's no SNES apart from that one genre.
As has been thoroughly explained, things like expansion chips in cartridges are not addons. That's what I meant there -- only counting addons which fully fit the definition, not things you people claim are addons but aren't.
If we're actually judging the hardware, then the Genesis is by far the king of polygonal games. Some of its games being mentioned in comparison to Star Fox might not push as many polygons at once, but for them to be even comparable is amazing for games only using the Genesis hardware itself. The SNES is the add-on king, forcing players to buy hardware every time instead of a single purchase. Star Fox and other chipped games are add-on games and don't run on the base SNES hardware. Games that use in-cart add-on hardware for a single effect, massive storage or really as copy protection are only thing. Games with chips that beef up processing power are completely different.
That sounds like the argument Sega used when they released the 32X. It didn't work out too well for them, you know... :)
I mean, yes, you're right -- Nintendo forced you to buy addons each time. But Sega's solution to that, the 32X, turned out to be the worse solution to the problem.
As for polygonal games, maybe the Genesis has more. I've never cared about the polygonal games on the Genesis, and don't own any, but yeah, it does have some. SNES games are probably more likely to use Mode 7, I guess... though the SNES can do an alright job of it, too, if you look at stuff like Race Drivin'.
Oh, and what about first person shooters? Stuff like Wolfenstein 3D, Spectre, or Faceball on SNES, versus Blood Shot, Zero Tolerance, etc. SNES does well there, even without Doom, which of course uses the SNES's best addon chip.
Bullshit.
It was just a dick move by Nintendo.
No, along with the failed attempt at NES backwards compatibility, that's Nintendo's other stated reason -- the system was designed for addon chips, so it didn't need as fast a CPU. It's certainly true that the system was designed for addon chips on the carts; those side banks of pins exist for a reason. Was Nintendo being cheap, particularly when they didn't boost the CPU after NES BC was abandoned? Perhaps. But they did have a plan, and followed through with it by using addon chips in a decent number of SNES games.
As far as the SNES being better for addon chips or what not, a good way to look at it is this:
What's the SNES' biggest problem? The slow processor. Addon chips that do extra processing are very easy to add. It's just an extra processor which can be very simple and limited to certain kinds of calculations (like a DSP, used a lot in mode-7 games).
Indeed. This is a good point, and does explain some of the difference. I do think that the point that Nintendo did use addon chips in a substantial number of games increases the validity of their case, too -- Nintendo said that they'd designed the system for addon chips, and then followed through by, well, putting addon chips in lots of games. There is complete consistency :dance: there between the design and the execution.
Aside from the hypocrisy of selectively choosing when to count SNES addons as addons, you said that Nintendo designed the SNES for addons and by releasing games with addons, it proves "complete consistency there between the design and the execution". But NEC/Hudson designing the PC Engine around NEC's CD-ROM and showing it off before it was released and then following through with releasing and supporting it, that doesn't count and is instead a tacked-on stop-gap years later?
PC Engine: >6 million consoles sold in JP / >7 million worldwide / 700'ish published games for JP
Super Famicom: 17 million consoles sold in JP / 50 million worldwide / 1440 published cart games + 232 Satellaview games for JP
So basically, the main point of your argument, that somehow because the SNES and Genesis in the US got as many game releases as the TG16+CD did in Japan it did as well there as those did here, is based on absolutely nothing. In fact, in Japan you expect consoles to get more game releases than they get in the West. It happens all the time. Cheap distribution costs, easy access to the market, low budgets for games that match the expected sales... that's how the industry worked, and still often works, there.
Um, if the Genesis hadn't been popular, a fair number of those games would not have been released on the platform, they, or other ones like them, would have been on other systems instead. You do understand that right?
The SNES is definitely the best for performing SNES-specific stuff, but not the best overall, aside from personal preferences. Just as with other consoles, people who like to say this are thinking more of the SNES's strengths, oblivious to some of its limits/weaknesses and seem to either ignore or be oblivious to the ways in which rival consoles are superior.
The SNES has the best hardware, if you don't count the Neo-Geo. The Genesis is second, and the Turbografx third. This is a fact, just like how the next gen, the N64 had the best hardware, PS1 second, and Saturn third, overall (or, for the generation after that, first Xbox, then Gamecube, then PS2, then Dreamcast). Each system has strengths and weakness, but system power is a combination of all the factors, and you can always figure it out. This gen, for instance, the PS3 is the most powerful, 360 is second, and Wii is way behind.
Plenty of people prefer the visual looks of systems that aren't the most powerful system over the most powerful system's graphics, and that's just fine, but I find it really annoying how people insist that no, not only do they like the graphics of that #2 or #3 system more, but it's actually more powerful too. Never mind that when you actually look at the overall hardware it isn't true, they like it more so it is, right? That's not how things work. The most powerful system is the most powerful system overall, not the one that wins in only the cherrypicked stats that that system wins in.
I mean, why insist that it's the most powerful hardware anyway? Does that have an effect on how much you like the system, or something? (lol! :lol:) That doesn't make much sense, system power and how much you like it shouldn't be too closely related... the Wii are DS are my favorite systems this gen, for instance. I don't care that they're far weaker than their competition...
Or, to return to the SNES v. Genesis, I don't think that the SNES is better just because of its graphics, or something. Yes, I like that it can put more colors on screen and I like Mode 7, but those aren't the reasons that it's great, the games are. As for the specs though, the SNES has better hardware because it's got a good amount more RAM, a better, higher-end sound chip, many more hardware features, 64 times larger color palette and four times more colors on screen, etc. The Genesis is older hardware. It was great for 1988, but the SNES is two years newer. You would hope that it was going to have better hardware, and it does. The denials in this thread are both odd, as I've said above (seriously, why do you care so much about arguing against facts? It shouldn't affect how much you like the systems.), and off base; yes, the Genesis has a few advantages, but it's the overall picture that matters, not only the things the Genesis has advantages in.
The SNES was an amazing machine, more powerful than anything that generation apart from the Neo-Geo by a significant margin overall. The system has beautiful graphics, a huge color palette, 256 color visuals, awesome Mode 7 scaling and rotation, a very powerful sound chip, and was designed for addon chips in the carts, too. "Needlessly and wastelessly feeble" is completely ridiculous and as false as can be. A console is more than just its CPU, and the SNES proves that. The SNES is better overall than the NES, and is only even with the Genesis once you add on the addons (which adds more to the Genesis than the SNES, because well, would many people say the Satellaview even matches up to the 32X, much less the Sega CD?).
Indeed, the Super Nintendo is the one and only partial exception to the general rule that the most powerful console of each generation never wins (in sales, that is). It's a partial exception because of course the Neo-Geo utterly destroys it, and technically counts as part of that generation, but with its $200 carts, I think it's arguable about how much real competition it was...
The SNES was the least powerful of its generation. Neo Geo, Genesis, Turbografx, CDTV, and CDi are all more powerful.
I really hope you're joking there. :)
What about more speed and less slowdown?
As I've said, SNES games don't have nearly as much slowdown after the first generation of titles. And some have decent speed.
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Black Tiger's search skills for the win! :lol:
Yeah, for you people somehow it's both an addon AND part of the library, because it shifts definition mid-generation. As I've said, you can't do that. What something is at the start is what it is.... There weren't any PC Engine games after 1994, though.
I guess you were just kidding when you said "They [PCE CD games] do belong in the broader category of TG16/PCE games." You seem to be struggling to keep your bullshit straight.
Also, once again, in a list like this , if you had also done Sega also would you have merged the Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X all onto one list, or would you have kept them separate? Those two lists there are TG16+TCD and SNES+Satellaview, so of course a Sega list should include all addons as well... but you people keep trying to split hairs in order to exclude Sega's addons, which is absurd if you're including Nintendo and NEC's.
I've already stated in no uncertain terms that the FEKA sales numbers I compiled (but didn't post) did include Sega CD and 32X.
No, the idea that addons must increase system power is NOT valid....
I've never said they did.
I have, however, claimed that not all add-ons (and their games) are worth counting separately. It's a point you seem to agree upon, though, seeing as you lump together CD, Super CD, and Arcade CDs.
.... remember the Wikipedia definition saying that adding a new media format is also an addon!
I never said it wasn't.
If you would have included all Genesis addons then it'd be a fair all-formats comparison....
I've said I would have multiple times.
.... but I'd still rather see a list that separates systems out from their addons as well -- the main consoles and their addons are not the same thing, and what is on what format is quite important. It'd be fair to have both a merged list AND a separated list, but merged only I don't like.
Then compile your own list, but make sure you do it for all add-ons (including ram upgrades) and not just the ones you've deemed worthy.
The use of the term "device" makes it clear that they are NOT including things inside game cartridges.
How so? NOWHERE in the definitions of 'device' or 'add-on' does it disallow the possibility of the 'device' being within a cartridge. Do you not understand plain English?
If you look up any enhancement chip article (NES mapper chips, Super FX, , you will see that none of them call them add-ons.
None? (http://snesemu.black-ship.net/misc/hardware/-from nsrt.edgeemu.com-chipinfo.htm) That page is even linked from the SNES enhancement chip wiki page.
Anyways, they don't call them "videogames" either. They read along these lines: "The Super FX is a family of coprocessor chip used in select Super Nintendo (SNES) video game cartridges."; in this case, the 'device' mentioned in the definition of 'add-on' is the co-processor. It's not that difficult to understand.
They are enhancement chips in games, not addons.
enhancement chip = add-on
It meets the three criteria listed within the definition of 'add-on'
1) sold separately from the console
2) connects to the main unit
3) adds significant new functionality
Nope. No one would ever call a game a "device".
Similarly, nobody would call a CPU a "game".
Read the quote! Actually read it. It is VERY clear that the add-on article is referring to expansion devices which are NOT games.
NOWHERE in the description of 'add-on' does it say anything about the impossibility of one being built in to a game. You're just making shit up again.
And once again no enhancement chip article calls the things addons.
And once again, yeah they do.
If you think enhancement chips are addons that's your opinion, but it goes against all authoritative sources, and you need to recognize that.
Like it or not, my opinion fits the text book definition of add-on.
It is, though. It absolutely 100% is. If you were right, sites like Wikipedia, IGN, GameFAQs, Gamestop, or any other game listing site would list things like the Super FX or NES mapper chips as addons, like they do the 32X or Turbo CD. There's a reason why they don't: they are not addons. They are enhancement chips built in to game cartridges. They are categorized differently.
Your argument is invalid. Such sites separate based on media type; if they separated games based on add-ons, they wouldn't separate downloads from physical media and they'd count ram upgrade games separately.
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I found the real problem here
and it's the N64, not the SNES, that is my favorite console.
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Black Tiger's post above is a bizarre, bizarre post. I'm seriously incredibly confused about why you'd somehow think that statements about hardware power are the same as opinion about what I think of the console as a whole, but those two things are completely different, you know... but you clearly don't, with this crazy post that combines game-opinion with hardware power comparison and then insanely tries to call those two completely different, entirely unrelated things similar. That's just ridiculous, stop it.
As for those numerous quotes, here are a few comments.
-For the block of quotes at the end about hardware power, I was comparing base systems there, SNES vs. TG16 vs. Genesis. If you include addons, then the 32X is surely the most powerful system of the generation, and if you include the Neo-Geo it is of course. Versus the TG16 and Genesis the SNES only loses in CPU power, but overall hardware power of a system is about more than just CPU power. It's about overall hardware ability.
-For all of the quotes about opinion on games I like, that has nothing to do with this discussion. I could respond to all of that stuff, but it'd be a complete waste of time and would divert this thread into something it should not be about, because none of that is in any way relevant here. All I will say is that your massive anti-SNES bias shows. I love all three major platforms that gen, they're all fantastic. The TG16+TCD is certainly in my top 5 consoles ever.
-For the part about sales and Genesis games, I don't understand what you're trying to say there. The Genesis did well enough in Japan to get some software support, obviously. Not as much as the competition got, but some. Because of Japan's easier distribution costs, systems could get good software support with less hardware sales than they would need in the West.
-Shmups - what? I'm a huge Gradius series fan, and Gradius III is incredible. So are Gradius I and II on the TG16 and CD. All three are certainly among the best shmups ever. Then I said Gradius III was the best, but next time I could say Gradius I is the best; with such incredible games, it's hard to decide. As for the Genesis though, it does have lots of great shmups, but it doesn't have any from Konami...
Aside from the hypocrisy of selectively choosing when to count SNES addons as addons,
Console addons and addon chips / enhancement chips are not the same. Sure, you've proven that I've used the word "addon" for enhancement chips before, but that doesn't mean anything... even if the word 'addon' was used there, the key term is 'chip', ie, chip in a cartridge. Those chips are 'addons' in that they are additional chips in the cartridges, but they are not addons like the Sega CD because of the distribution method. I know you people claim to not care about distribution methods, but for classification it is absolutely key.
you said that Nintendo designed the SNES for addons and by releasing games with addons, it proves "complete consistency there between the design and the execution". But NEC/Hudson designing the PC Engine around NEC's CD-ROM and showing it off before it was released and then following through with releasing and supporting it, that doesn't count and is instead a tacked-on stop-gap years later?
I don't get it, why would you say that addons are 'tacked-on stopgaps'? An addon is just a hardware expansion with games that require it that is sold separately from the system it adds on to. Usually they are designed after the original system, because the base system comes first, but also usually the idea for the addon was in development from early on in the project. The 64DD was in development from before the N64's release for sure, for example, and it was originally designed to be a key part of the system. It didn't work out that way, but that was the intent. The Turbo CD is sort of like that, except the strategy actually worked. Calling something an addon is not saying anything bad about it as a system. It's just putting it into its category.
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I found the real problem here
and it's the N64, not the SNES, that is my favorite console.
It's the only console of the time that doesn't have "hideous" graphics.
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I found the real problem here
and it's the N64, not the SNES, that is my favorite console.
It's the only console of the time that doesn't have "hideous" graphics.
3d graphics, that is. The PS1 and Saturn obviously do 2d quite well. And "hideous" is going a bit far as an overall generalization -- certainly not all PS1 and Saturn 3d games look equally bad -- but it is true that perspective correction and the rest of the N64's 3d features (anti-aliasing, triple buffering, z-buffering...) are really important things for 3d graphics which make them work much better. Perspective-incorrect popping polygons are awful!
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Since no one can define what the hell the Laseractive is, let's try another oddball.
WTF is a Turbo Express? Is it its own system? The games are the same as the TG16, but there is no TV out, where can you plug inanother controller, etc. It isnt a console, what is it?
The Nomad is another one. Is this the Genesis 4? Or is it its own console?
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Since no one can define what the hell the Laseractive is, let's try another oddball.
WTF is a Turbo Express? Is it its own system? The games are the same as the TG16, but there is no TV out, where can you plug inanother controller, etc. It isnt a console, what is it?
They were just waiting for modern techno-wizards to come along to add TV-out and a controller port. :)
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I always hook up my MegaDrive+MegaCD to my TurboExpress to use it as a monitor. Then I do the same with my PCE+SCD.
That little screen makes an excellent monitor.
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Black Falcon is just too stupid for words. :lol:
WTF is a Turbo Express? Is it its own system? The games are the same as the TG16, but there is no TV out, where can you plug inanother controller, etc. It isnt a console, what is it?
The Nomad is another one. Is this the Genesis 4? Or is it its own console?
They're both handheld versions of consoles.
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Stupid in the way of he's not realizing that you're making fun of him all the time? ;)
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Stupid in the way of he's not realizing that you're making fun of him all the time? ;)
???
Idiots who can think of nothing better to do than throw insults around should be ignored, not responded to.
Since no one can define what the hell the Laseractive is, let's try another oddball.
WTF is a Turbo Express? Is it its own system? The games are the same as the TG16, but there is no TV out, where can you plug inanother controller, etc. It isnt a console, what is it?
The Nomad is another one. Is this the Genesis 4? Or is it its own console?
I wouldn't consider those two their own consoles, myself; they are handheld models of those consoles, that's all. Handhelds are just consoles with a built-in monitor, so I'd just consider these another model of the system. I sometimes do separate handheld (consoles) from (tv) consoles, but both are video game systems, and I don't think that just switching the format from one category to the other makes it an entirely new system, as long as it plays the same games.
You can also apply this to TV versions of handhelds, such as the Super Game Boy, Game Boy Player, or Playstation (Vita) TV.
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Hi Falcon, no harm intended. I'd even go as far to say that I share a good chunk of your opinions in the initial discussion, but after crawling through so many pages with the same arguments over and over and over again, I'm pretty much bored. Plus, I can't understand how you are apparently not realizing that there's no need to repeat yourself, which makes it possible to get ridiculous posts out of you. Stand to your opinion like everybody else does, and don't give a f*ck if somebody disagrees. 'Cause there'll always be people who are not likeminded, and that's OK.
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Disclaimer: I have not read up enough on video game console hardware to call myself an expert by any means.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
I understand that ALL of the PC Engine CD games, Super CD games, and Acade card games COULD have been made as HuCARDs and played on the base Core Grafx if the HuCARD chips had simply been large enough. Is this correct? (Yes, I know that the theoretical HuCARDS would have been much bulkier, maybe even sticking out from the sytem, and would have needed RAM chips (like many SNES games) to be able to play most Super CD games and all Arcade cards games.) The difference between the HuCARD format and the CD format (not counting the extra RAM for Super CD/Arcade, which COULD have been put into the HuCARDS) is simple the way that the data is stored. As was referenced above in regards to computer games, I can remember a time when computer games could be purchased in multiple different formats - 5" floppy disk, 3 1/2" disk, CD, etc..., yet they were (and are) all considered Windows '95 games. Even many games today can still be purchased as physical media or as digital download media. Now, I do understand that computers are continually changing, but it seems to me that all of the PC Engine games are actually PC Engine games :-" , just with 2 different storage mediums. I mean, if a video game console today has 2 different storage mediums, say for example, physical disks, or digital downloads (like the Wii virtual store, are they all considered Wii games? Or if Playstation had regular-sized CD disc games, small-sized disc games (like Gamecube or PSP), and/or DVD disc games, would they all be considered Playstation games? :-k :-k :-k
Sorry for the necro bump, but while browsing some old posts of mine, I realized that no one really ever answered my above question. Maybe one of our resident PC Engine game developers?
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Bardoly, from what I know some developers used the extra sound hardware to improve graphics, such as Spriggran and Monster Lair.
Black Falcon is an idiot for thinking SNES Gradius III is the best shooter. I like it plenty, but it has way too much slowdown and even Konami's own Salamander outclasses it.
Yes, snes hardware has a great gpu, but it has a large amount of slow paced games and the sound is often bland.
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Disclaimer: I have not read up enough on video game console hardware to call myself an expert by any means.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
I understand that ALL of the PC Engine CD games, Super CD games, and Acade card games COULD have been made as HuCARDs and played on the base Core Grafx if the HuCARD chips had simply been large enough. Is this correct? (Yes, I know that the theoretical HuCARDS would have been much bulkier, maybe even sticking out from the sytem, and would have needed RAM chips (like many SNES games) to be able to play most Super CD games and all Arcade cards games.) The difference between the HuCARD format and the CD format (not counting the extra RAM for Super CD/Arcade, which COULD have been put into the HuCARDS) is simple the way that the data is stored. As was referenced above in regards to computer games, I can remember a time when computer games could be purchased in multiple different formats - 5" floppy disk, 3 1/2" disk, CD, etc..., yet they were (and are) all considered Windows '95 games. Even many games today can still be purchased as physical media or as digital download media. Now, I do understand that computers are continually changing, but it seems to me that all of the PC Engine games are actually PC Engine games :-" , just with 2 different storage mediums. I mean, if a video game console today has 2 different storage mediums, say for example, physical disks, or digital downloads (like the Wii virtual store, are they all considered Wii games? Or if Playstation had regular-sized CD disc games, small-sized disc games (like Gamecube or PSP), and/or DVD disc games, would they all be considered Playstation games? :-k :-k :-k
Sorry for the necro bump, but while browsing some old posts of mine, I realized that no one really ever answered my above question. Maybe one of our resident PC Engine game developers?
The RAM in the IFU and System cards is cart space, the same as other 16-bit carts. It's RAM instead of ROM because the CD-ROM fills it up each time it loads. CD2 game stages are <0.5 Mb each. So a 6 stage CD2 game could be a 3 meg HuCard. But a HuCard version would be even smaller, because carts can draw assets from anywhere in the rom, but CD games must load certain assets each time as well as duplicate code. Tom has said that the code in CD games can take up 0.25 megs, or half the space a CD2 game segment has. So you can see how much smaller a HuCard version could be compared to the sum of each loaded segment of a CD game.
Some developers used unconventional tricks, like how Monster Lair stores some graphical assets inside the adpcm ram. In theory, some SCD games could have used some of the segment storage RAM to make large calculations easier to program at the development level. I've asked the experts several times and the closest answer I've received is that the Arcade Card ram is too slow for anything but simple segment storage.
Even if some games (maybe Populous TPL?) did use some of the SCD ram for something you'd do with Work RAM, that still doesn't mean that the PCE could only have done it that way. The way that the PCE updates the screen and maybe does other things(?), is not the same as the MD and SFC. It is extrenely fast and doesn't need to load everything into RAM before it's rendered a frame. I can never remember the exact technical terms, but the bottomline is that the PCE doesn't need much RAM to pull of 2D games. PCE HuCards obviously prove this. It might help with real-time effects like polygons though. I believe that the SuperGrafx was given so much RAM as overkill to compensate for lazy developers who couldn't push the hardware well enough through skill and work and to just make it future proof in general.
Some devs who didn't want to put in the work to make their code efficient enough might have dipped into the SCD RAM, but it should have been a rare occurance if it happened at all, because the limited segment space was already so tiny and valuable. I'm guessing that you might ve able to use less space on code if you used some extra ram for calculations, but then you've just wasted the extra space you gained. :P
I'd love for one of the programming experts who have examined CD games to say whether any CD games definitely have or have not used RAM for more than content. Because too many console war fanboys like to say that the CD-ROM is a major hardware upgrade and that the System cards don't allow larger content segments, it only upgraded the Work RAM so that the PCE could handle running 16-bit quality games. But as Tom likes to say, SFII' alone proves that the PCE can do anything a CD game can (other than the exact same redbook and adpcm audio*) and actually more, as the SCD format couldn't handle SFII'. SNES fans like to say that CD games cheat to give consoles 4000 meg roms, but in reality it's the opposite: you get a string of tiny roms instead.
*The base PCE hardware can do adpcm audio through brute force. Tom has made some great HuCard examples.
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I've asked the experts several times and the closest answer I've received is that the Arcade Card ram is too slow for anything but simple segment storage.
The Arcade Card memory isn't randomly accessible ... you set a starting address then grab a byte at a time.
Think of it like a modern SSD, it is fast storage, but you need to load things into real work RAM if you want to execute code. (There are limited exceptions, but the basic point is accurate.)
OTOH, you can pretty much copy sprites/tiles from the Arcade Card to VRAM very fast without copying them to work RAM first.
That's what it was designed for ... to give CD games access to a lot of sprite and background data, just like the SFII cartridge.
I believe that the SuperGrafx was given so much RAM as overkill to compensate for lazy developers who couldn't push the hardware well enough through skill and work and to just make it future proof in general.
I'd suspect that it was more to allow for developers to store compressed data on the HuCard, just like people do on the SNES and Genesis.
You need to decompress the data into RAM before you use it, and the original 8KB in the PCE is just too small to store much sprite/map data.
"Yes", you can decompress directly into VRAM, and that's great for some things, but it's not really useful for "real-time" graphics, and decompressing into RAM gives a programmer a lot more options.
I'd love for one of the programming experts who have examined CD games to say whether any CD games definitely have or have not used RAM for more than content.
Well, I've only looked at one PCE CD so far, but it's doing some pretty sophisticated dynamic asset juggling in-and-out of RAM.
And by "assets", I'm including "processor-code" and "scripting-language" as well as graphics data.
Because too many console war fanboys like to say that the CD-ROM is a major hardware upgrade and that the System cards don't allow larger content segments, it only upgraded the Work RAM so that the PCE could handle running 16-bit quality games.
Well, that's because way too many "fanboys" are talking out of their behinds because they've never written a game!
It's so easy to poke fun at SNES owners ... just ask them why their 8-bit processor runs at 1/2 or 1/3 the clock speed of the PCE's processor.
They'll always come back about how much better the SNES video chip is, and there's a good argument there ... but Hudson and Nintendo both had access to similar technology back-in-the-day.
Nintendo decided to use the complete VRAM bandwidth to produce more screen layers. That meant that you had very little time available per-frame for the CPU to actually update any graphics.
Hudson only used 50% of the VRAM bandwidth to produce the PCE's background and sprites, and let the CPU have free access to video memory at any time.
As a programmer ... I much prefer Hudson's design choice.
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You need to decompress the data into RAM before you use it, and the original 8KB in the PCE is just too small to store much sprite/map data.
"Yes", you can decompress directly into VRAM, and that's great for some things, but it's not really useful for "real-time" graphics, and decompressing into RAM gives a programmer a lot more options.
So if I understand this correctly, some CD games use some of the IFU/3.0 Card ram to decompress assets that are loaded into vram? If so, wouldn't this mean that a HuCard could run the same content, only it would take up more space in the rom because it wouldn't use the same level of compression or maybe none at all?
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So if I understand this correctly, some CD games use some of the IFU/3.0 Card ram to decompress assets that are loaded into vram? If so, wouldn't this mean that a HuCard could run the same content, only it would take up more space in the rom because it wouldn't use the same level of compression or maybe none at all?
Well, I was actually talking about the using the SuperGrafx's extra RAM for decompressing from HuCard ... but "yes", CD games could typically do the same thing.
For one concrete example ... Xanadu II keeps everything compressed on CD, loads it into SCD RAM, and then actually leaves some of it compressed-and-resident until it wants to decompress it and copy it to VRAM. Then it will overwrite the VRAM later with something else ... but still be able to quickly decompress a new copy when it needs it.
At the end of the day ... "yes", none of the decompression would be needed if you had enough RAM or HuCard space. But you don't.
Compressing data in ROM was a standard way of fitting more data into a smaller (and therefore cheaper-to-manufacture) cartridge.
Nintendo could easily have released 640MByte cartridges for the SNES, it was never a question of technical capability. It's just that nobody would have wanted to pay the ridiculous price that it would have cost to manufacture cartridges with all the dozens of ROM chips that it would have needed.
CD-ROM was a revolutionary reduction in the price-per-megabyte cost of data storage for games ... which allowed people to make much more expansive games affordable.
IMHO, the original PCE CD was just too starved for memory to more than hint at the capabilities. SCD was when things really took off.
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I am pretty sure the CD hardware preemptively killed the SuperGrafx.
That thing basically launched dead in the water.
Why bother going back to card-only shit when you have the cheap, seemingly endless CD storage?
Nobody wants to go from anime cutscenes and fancy audio, back to a "new" console that can't do any of that...
....
unless you bank on people buying the RAU-30, and hoping enough people have SuperGrafx SuperCD setups to make it worth the effort it takes to write the game.
I joked about making a SuperGrafx arcade cd game for all 4 of you.
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I am pretty sure the CD hardware preemptively killed the SuperGrafx.
Yep, I agree.
That, and the SuperGrafx pricing, the stupid H.R. Giger Alien-inspired design rather than just making it slip directly into an existing IFU-30, the very few and expensive games, etc, etc.
Pretty much a text-book example of how not to try to fracture a console's marketplace.
I joked about making a SuperGrafx arcade cd game for all 4 of you.
That's still my dream ... it's the most interesting 4th-gen "combination-console" to me, with the most elegant technical design (not physical look).
X68000 was a multi-thousand-dollar home computer and so doesn't really count as a "home console"; Neo Geo really was an Arcade-machine-in-a-box, but it was still a cartridge machine, even after the Neo Geo CD came out; Sega CD was the usual brain-damaged Sega mess of a design, totally hampered by the Genesis's 4-palette 60-color video output; and the SNES was a nice video chip with a slow CPU and a brain-damaged memory-map (with no CD).
Is there anyone that I missed offending there? :wink:
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Is there anyone that I missed offending there? :wink:
You missed a chance to point and laugh at the CD-i. :mrgreen:
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You missed a chance to point and laugh at the CD-i. :mrgreen:
Damn, how on Earth could I have forgotten that excellent target! :wink:
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The limited amount of system ram on the PCE prevented devs from using more complex compressing schemes (although technically they could have used a small ring buffer). If you look at hucard games, except for the late gen ones - they all use simple RLE-ish style compression. That means less animation or grafx overall (Parodius PCE vs SNES). The smaller amount of ram also means less decompressed asset space for quick updates to vram dynamically throughout a level (animation, etc). The SGX is definitely a better setup with the additional 24k. 64k would have been prime though. 8k is just fairly limiting. It means throwing more rom at it or putting ram on the hucard.
Yeah, original CD games are starved for ram too. Except for a few games, most load all sprites and tiles into vram for that level, all sound FX into ADPCM, and leave the 64k of ram for code and map/level data. Most original CD games don't even bother compressing the graphics. The SuperCD breathes much easier thanks to the extra ram. Not only that, but optimized SCD games tend to use LZss compression schemes and leave the data compressed in CD ram. A small amount is coupled with the 8k to give the "work" ram area a large working range. Usually +16k. A few games use self modifying code (more of convenience than speed; no need to take up variable space at page $2000 or map ram in, for temporary work variables) like Dracula X.
If you look at Gate of Thunder and Lords of Thunder, both games compress the graphics with LZss schemes, and while the game logic is running, it'll run a background process to decompress assets ahead of time. IIRC, GoT even does linear to planar conversion after decompressing.
The original CD should have been 192k-256k range and the SCD as 448k-512k range. The ADPCM ram is slower in speed and port based/accessed. They could have made that area much larger for hybrid fast/slow ram configuration. I'm sure that ram was cheaper than the faster ram.