Current Events > So, the SEGA 32X came about because SEGA was concerned about the Atari Jaguar...

(+) Yeah! (+)

Oh my favorite joke language is Rockstar because for a while, still going on somewhat, it was common to see job positions requesting a "Rockstar developer" so someone created a language called Rockstar and designed it to sound like heavy metal lyrics. Here's "FizzBuzz"

Midnight takes your heart and your soul
While your heart is as high as your soul
Put your heart without your soul into your heart

Give back your heart

Desire is a lovestruck ladykiller
My world is nothing
Fire is ice
Hate is water
Until my world is Desire,
Build my world up
If Midnight taking my world, Fire is nothing and Midnight taking my world, Hate is nothing
Shout "FizzBuzz!"
Take it to the top

If Midnight taking my world, Fire is nothing
Shout "Fizz!"
Take it to the top

If Midnight taking my world, Hate is nothing
Say "Buzz!"
Take it to the top

Whisper my world


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Tyranthraxus posted...

Nobody really made it. Someone just aliased the fuck out of an existing language. Brainfuck and Ook have the exact same syntax just different stupid combination of characters.

-_-

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BlazinBlue88 posted...

I'm a big Sega fan but the GameGear never interested me. All the game seemed to be just dumbed down ports of Genesis games so I didn't see a point in it. I did get the Nomad though. Being able to play my Genesis games during car trips was mindblowing. The Nomad also ate batteries like crazy. If you didn't invest in the rechargeable battery pack then you were an idiot. It still only lasted about 2 hours.

it's funny, this is the reason I liked the GG.

I liked my console games, so if I had to be away from home but I wanted to keep playing (say you're at grandma's house or your parents took you somewhere you don't want to me, or whatever) I could always bring my GG with me and keep playing a version of the,. It'd be awesome to play the same game, but it wasn't feasible (truly, it wasn't feasible until the Switch!), plus the console experience doesn't translate too well into portables sometimes.

The gameboy was sort of the same too, you had the SNES marios and the GB marios, the donkey kongs, mortal kombats, etc etc

KamenRiderBlade posted...

For the love of all that is holy, WHY on earth would somebody make this?

to empower pikachus?

Coastal_elite posted...

it's funny, this is the reason I liked the GG.

I liked my console games, so if I had to be away from home but I wanted to keep playing (say you're at grandma's house or your parents took you somewhere you don't want to me, or whatever) I could always bring my GG with me and keep playing a version of the,. It'd be awesome to play the same game, but it wasn't feasible (truly, it wasn't feasible until the Switch!), plus the console experience doesn't translate too well into portables sometimes.

The gameboy was sort of the same too, you had the SNES marios and the GB marios, the donkey kongs, mortal kombats, etc etc

Yeah I can see that thought process. I had a cd player for car rides so I was set until they released the Nomad.

The GB did have those type of ports, which I never bought, but it had a ton of quality originals. That made it worth the purchase to me.

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BlazinBlue88 posted...

The GB did have those type of ports, which I never bought, but it had a ton of quality originals. That made it worth the purchase to me.

The Game Boy Mario games (at least, the Land series) weren't ports; they were completely original experiences. The Donkey Kong Land games, though, I think were a mixed bag. Although they borrowed very heavily from their SNES counterparts, they had different levels and level layouts.

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Super Gameboy solos

I loved that thing.

Fuck dumbed down ports, check out these palette swaps bro

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Balrog0 posted...

Super Gameboy solos

I loved that thing.

Fuck dumbed down ports, check out these palette swaps bro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7SjD8kdHA4

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

Yup Sega has a history of going for the "High End" ultimate powerful hardware instead of what was "Affordable". They cared more about the "Upscale Experience". The only time in Nintendo's history that it was the "Most Powerful" was when it released the SNES. And that was because it's timing was "Off-cycle" and caught everybody off-guard. Ergo it had no competition, everybody was scrambling. The SNES was literally the counter-punch to the Genesis, but better in every way because Nintendo had 2 extra years to react to the Genesis. And 2 Years back then gave you ALOT of R&D advancement.

Nintendo historically goes with what is "Affordable" and not cutting edge. The only exceptions were all it's failures. Virtual Boy & WiiU are those major failures where Nintendo was TOO far ahead of the tech curve.

I beg to differ on that one.

The Genesis was made to counter the NES, back when the famicon/NES had already kicked the butts of the SG1000, mark1 and SMS. They had no option but to "double the bits", "add an extra button" and "make sure the console shell has a 16-BIT sign with big letters". The genesis had a lot of years on the NES it was designed to compete with.

The SNES was designed to compete with the Genesis, so that's a more fair comparison. The SNES was clearly more powerful and it had much better sound.

The N64 was actually a moon shot. It was more powerful than the PCs of the time, and it had stuff like z-buffering and antialiasing, which are things that not even the Wii had later on. The N64's one sin was to go with carts, which wasn't decided for affordability's sake, on the contrary, it made games more expensive. It was a decision out of greed (keeping the royalties).

The Dreamcast was far weaker than the GC and PS2. The GC was the most powerful of the 3, until the xbox came along.

Yeah, after the GC nintendo focused on cheap, cheap cheap hardware, but wasn't Sega dead by then? The SNES/N64/GC were known for being the most powerful systems of their generations, with the exception of the xbox, which came later.

As for portables, yes, those were always the weakest, I agree.

KamenRiderBlade posted...

As far as color, Genesis came out with color technology that was better than NES, and that's all that mattered at the time of development. But Nintendo countered with SNES, and we have history.

Game Gear / Lynx was expensive, but it did do what GameBoy didn't. Everything visually that wasn't cheap.

Sega CD was literally to counter 3DO, Jaguar, and PS as a interim solution.

The "Gotta be first mentality" struck again.

SEGA is basically guilty of competing with Nintendo, losing and then after they get their ass kicked by nintendo they usher a new generation out of pettiness.

SMS vs NES - NES wins
*sega gets mad and releases Genesis to beat the NES*
*Nintendo releases SNES because the Genesis is a thing*

Genesis vs SNES - SNES wins
*sega released CD, it doesn't matter*
*Jaguar enters the arena, so does 3D0*

So once again sega got their ass kicked and thought the saturn/32x to beat the SNES. Then they were caught off guard by the PS1's superiority.

The dreamcast was made to compete with the PS1/N64, after their own saturn got their ass kicked. No wonder the PS2/GC were so much more advanced.

Also, the sega CD was NOT made to compete with the jaguar and 3D0, those came much later. It was meant to defeat the SNES.

I dunno about the SNES being more powerful than the Genesis. In a lot of ways that is true (sound is a big one, color is another) but the Genesis can actually handle more from what I understand - I'm technologically illiterate but you can see this in the differences in how well Genesis handles shmups vs SNES in general. Genesis has much less slowdown.

But yeah I generally agree that Sega never had a philosophy except 'turn arcade hardware into home consoles and port the software over' which only really successfully worked with the Genesis (and even then like I said before I really think sonic is a bigger deal than the arcade ports, ultimately)


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Balrog0 posted...

I dunno about the SNES being more powerful than the Genesis. In a lot of ways that is true (sound is a big one, color is another) but the Genesis can actually handle more from what I understand - I'm technologically illiterate but you can see this in the differences in how well Genesis handles shmups vs SNES in general. Genesis has much less slowdown.

But yeah I generally agree that Sega never had a philosophy except 'turn arcade hardware into home consoles and port the software over' which only really successfully worked with the Genesis (and even then like I said before I really think sonic is a bigger deal than the arcade ports, ultimately)

The genesis was basically a very fast processor (for the time) and shit everything else. The SNES was a slow processor but state of the art everything else.

The genesis could display a 512 color palette, while the SNES had 32,768. The SNES could handle many more on-screen sprites and it had built-in support for scaling, rotation and mode 7.

Nintendo knew that the SNES' slow chip wouldn't cut it, but they didn't want to make the console too expensive. So they used chips whenever necessary in the carts. You had the DSP, FX, SA-1, FX2, etc. Even launch games had some of these chips, Pilotwings had the DSP, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips

Coastal_elite posted...

The Genesis was made to counter the NES, back when the famicon/NES had already kicked the butts of the SG1000, mark1 and SMS. They had no option but to "double the bits", "add an extra button" and "make sure the console shell has a 16-BIT sign with big letters". The genesis had a lot of years on the NES it was designed to compete with.

I concur, Genesis was made to counter the NES, console generations weren't as consistent back then as they are now. Then SNES came along 2 years after the Genesis and whooped it's butt in terms of hadware capabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_generation_of_video_game_consoles

But the Neo Geo was the most impressive hardware wise of that generation because it came out 1 year after the SNES.

The SNES was designed to compete with the Genesis, so that's a more fair comparison. The SNES was clearly more powerful and it had much better sound.

The N64 was actually a moon shot. It was more powerful than the PCs of the time, and it had stuff like z-buffering and antialiasing, which are things that not even the Wii had later on. The N64's one sin was to go with carts, which wasn't decided for affordability's sake, on the contrary, it made games more expensive. It was a decision out of greed (keeping the royalties).

The N64 was more powerful, for sure, but they didn't aim for that, they got there by virtue of delaying release and continuing R&D until they got what they wanted at a reasonable price to manufacture.

Remember, Super Famicom was released in Japan in November 21, 1990
The N64 was released in Japan in June 23, 1996

Nintendo didn't want to pull a "SEGA" and release another console so soon after their SNES. The fanbase would've revolted.

And remember:
3DO came out in October 4, 1993
Jaguar came out in November 23, 1993
Saturn came out in November 22, 1994
PlayStation came out in December 3, 1994

Nintendo was definitely waiting for the battlefield to clear up so they know what all their competitors were.
The 3rd Generation of consoles wasn't that long ago when N64 was in production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_generation_of_video_game_consoles

Remember how many Console competitors were in the 3rd Generation other than the big 4? 15 other small consoles came out.

So I'm sure Nintendo waiting to release was a deliberate move.

BTW:

The Game Cube had Z-Buffering & Anti-Aliasing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameCube_technical_specifications

And Wii had the ATi "Hollywood" GPU:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_(graphics_chip)
Which was a upgraded and over clocked GameCube GPU

The Dreamcast was far weaker than the GC and PS2. The GC was the most powerful of the 3, until the xbox came along.

Yeah, after the GC nintendo focused on cheap, cheap cheap hardware, but wasn't Sega dead by then? The SNES/N64/GC were known for being the most powerful systems of their generations, with the exception of the xbox, which came later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_generation_of_video_game_consoles

The Xbox came one month after the GC launched in Japan.

And Xbox went for raw power since it was MS' first console and they wanted a good showing, so they focused on the raw Horse Power that Off The Shelf PC hardware could deliver with a bit of lock down and customization.

The Xbox was by far the most powerful console of the 6th generation, but it didn't matter. PS2 won by virtue of having the better library and including a "DVD Drive" as part of the package.

As for portables, yes, those were always the weakest, I agree.

But they were affordable to the consumer and affordable to mass produce.

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This is my favorite series of Matt's. They're really good.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

I concur, Genesis was made to counter the NES, console generations weren't as consistent back then as they are now. Then SNES came along 2 years after the Genesis and whooped it's butt in terms of hadware capabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_generation_of_video_game_consoles

But the Neo Geo was the most impressive hardware wise of that generation because it came out 1 year after the SNES.

The N64 was more powerful, for sure, but they didn't aim for that, they got there by virtue of delaying release and continuing R&D until they got what they wanted at a reasonable price to manufacture.

Remember, Super Famicom was released in Japan in November 21, 1990
The N64 was released in Japan in June 23, 1996

Nintendo didn't want to pull a "SEGA" and release another console so soon after their SNES. The fanbase would've revolted.

And remember:
3DO came out in October 4, 1993
Jaguar came out in November 23, 1993
Saturn came out in November 22, 1994
PlayStation came out in December 3, 1994

Nintendo was definitely waiting for the battlefield to clear up so they know what all their competitors were.
The 3rd Generation of consoles wasn't that long ago when N64 was in production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_generation_of_video_game_consoles

Remember how many Console competitors were in the 3rd Generation other than the big 4? 15 other small consoles came out.

So I'm sure Nintendo waiting to release was a deliberate move.

BTW:

The Game Cube had Z-Buffering & Anti-Aliasing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameCube_technical_specifications

And Wii had the ATi "Hollywood" GPU:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_(graphics_chip)
Which was a upgraded and over clocked GameCube GPU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_generation_of_video_game_consoles

The Xbox came one month after the GC launched in Japan.

And Xbox went for raw power since it was MS' first console and they wanted a good showing, so they focused on the raw Horse Power that Off The Shelf PC hardware could deliver with a bit of lock down and customization.

But they were affordable to the consumer and affordable to mass produce.

This is all very interesting. Thanks for having this back and forth with me, I am enjoying it so much.

I disagree this too: The N64 was not released so late because they didn't want to pull a SEGA, or because they were waiting for the battlefield to clear up.

When SEGA launched the SEGA CD nintendo freaked out and tried to release a CD add on of their on, the "SNES Playstation". Then they realized they'd lose royalties because it's CD based and backed out. Sony got mad and they worked on the PS1 by themselves.

All of the time lost working on the SNES-PS1 meant that they'd not have a system to compete in time with the Saturn and PS1. So in in their infinite wisdom they decided to "skip the 32 bit generation and jump straight into 64 bits" and they also pressured Gumpei Yokoi to release the VB, which was by no means ready, so it could be a stop gap to "let nintendo players experience the 32 bit generation" and hold off until the N64 was ready. Yeah, we know how that went LOL.

Coastal_elite posted...

SEGA is basically guilty of competing with Nintendo, losing and then after they get their ass kicked by nintendo they usher a new generation out of pettiness.

That's how competition works IRL and in Capitalism

SMS vs NES - NES wins
*sega gets mad and releases Genesis to beat the NES*
*Nintendo releases SNES because the Genesis is a thing*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_generation_of_video_game_consoles

On July 15, 1983, 2x consoles were launched simultaneously:
Sega's SG-1000 vs Nintendo's Famicom.
Nintendo had better Graphical Capability and a better library and proceeded to deliver a ASS WHOOPING to Sega that it couldn't recover from in Japan.

Sega goes back to the drawing board because it got out flanked in terms of hardware and came up with the SG-3000 which became the Sega Master System in NA/EU
The SMS got released on October 20, 1985

The SMS was what allowed Sega to SURVIVE the Nintendo onslaught.

Sales:

Nintendo Entertainment System = Global: 61.91 million (December 2009)[54][55]
Japan: 19.35 million (December 2009)[54]
Americas: 34 million (December 2009)[54]
Everywhere else: 8.56 million (December 2009)[54]

Sega Master System = Global: 17.8 million (2016)
Japan: 1 million (1986)[56]
United States: 2 million (1992)[57]
Brazil: 8 million (2016)[58]
Western Europe: 6.8 million (1993)[59]

In Japan, Sega was a disgrace, they lost at 1:19 sales ratio.

By virtue of the SMS, it survived by releasing in the other territories which gained it enough of a fan base and money to proceed to fight the next round.

Genesis vs SNES - SNES wins
*sega released CD, it doesn't matter*
*Jaguar enters the arena, so does 3D0*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_generation_of_video_game_consoles

The TurboGrafix 16 is the first console out the gate for the 16-bit era on October 30, 1987.
Sega gets nervous and releases their console, the Genesis on October 29, 1988.
The NES doesn't bring in as much money anymore and Nintendo is ready for their counter attack with the SNES on November 21, 1990.

And then Neo Geo comes out for the Arcade and Home on June 18, 1991.

But Neo Geo only was ever really successful in the Arcades because of their business model that allowed it to be everywhere.

SNES dominated Globally
But in Japan:
TurboGrafix AKA PC Engine in Japan beat Sega's Master System.
The PC Engine sold 3.9 million units
Sega's MegaDrive sold 3.58 million units.
The fact that Sega only got #3 in it's Home Territory was a shock.

Sega did better than NEC's TurboGrafix because of combined Global sales.

Nintendo's SFC/SNES had 49.1 million
Sega's MegaDrive/Genesis had 35.25 million
NEC's PC Engine/TurboGrafix had 10 million
Phillips CDi had 1 million
Neo Geo AVS had 980,000

So once again sega got their ass kicked and thought the saturn/32x to beat the SNES. Then they were caught off guard by the PS1's superiority.

Sega got kicked hard, but what stung more was they got booted to 3rd place in their home territory.

Everybody got caught off guard by Sony's PS1

The dreamcast was made to compete with the PS1/N64, after their own saturn got their ass kicked. No wonder the PS2/GC were so much more advanced.

Sega's Saturn had to fight against the:
Panasonic 3DO
Atari Jaguar
Sony PlayStation
&, last, but not least
Nintendo N64

NOBODY at the start of that generation expected Sony to whoop everybody so hard that it destroyed Panasonic and Atari's future in Video Games.

Sega of Japan's only option was to "Be First" and have First mover's advantage for the next gen and gain a early foot hold.

DreamCast was out in Japan on November 27, 1998.

But the problem was Saturn was doing pretty well in Japan despite it's failure elsewhere around the world.

That's where it kind of pissed off the Japanese fan base by releasing a Japanes Sega Console so soon.

Also, the sega CD was NOT made to compete with the jaguar and 3D0, those came much later. It was meant to defeat the SNES.

The Sega CD was a reaction to Philips CDi and the writing that was on the wall that Cartridges were dead and everybody is moving to CD.

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@KamenRiderBlade

The 3D0, Jaguar and virtual boy were such odd balls. They may be officially part of the same generation as the saturn/ps1, but in reality they were a weird fish out of the water sort of oddball.

They were trying to establish themselves as 5th generation consoles, but the industry was undergoing radical transformations. They thought the future was going to be basically the SNES on steroids, and nobody was sure what'd happen. The 3D0 was CD based, the Jag was cart based, the VB was 3D graphics. None could really do polygons well, ranging from no polygons (VB) to slightly above what the SNES + FX2 chip could do (Jag).

The real 5th gen started with the Saturn, in my personal opinion, that's when the idea of what the next gen would be solidified.

Coastal_elite posted...

The genesis was basically a very fast processor (for the time) and shit everything else. The SNES was a slow processor but state of the art everything else.

The genesis could display a 512 color palette, while the SNES had 32,768. The SNES could handle many more on-screen sprites and it had built-in support for scaling, rotation and mode 7.

Nintendo knew that the SNES' slow chip wouldn't cut it, but they didn't want to make the console too expensive. So they used chips whenever necessary in the carts. You had the DSP, FX, SA-1, FX2, etc. Even launch games had some of these chips, Pilotwings had the DSP, for example:

The Genesis had 2x CPU's:
Motorola 68000 (16/32-bit CISC) 7.67 MHz (7.61 MHz PAL) (1.4 MIPS)
Zilog Z80 (8/16-bit) 3.58 MHz (0.52 MIPS)

The Motorola was it's Main CPU

The Zilog Z80 was taken from the SG-3000 / SMS and used as their Sound Processor and offered backwards compatiblity later on.

Nintendo had 1x CPU
Ricoh 5A22 (based on 16-bit65C816) 3.58 MHz (3.55 MHz PAL) (1.5 MIPS)
It was only 0.1 MIPS faster, but Nintendo had an extra 2 years to develop a more efficient processor that did more at slower clock speeds.

2 Years of R&D back then brought ALOT of returns.

Genesis had a Color palette: 512 (standard), 1536 (shadow/highlight)
Colors on screen: 64[37] to 75[62] (standard), 192 (shadow/highlight),[37] 512 (160224 resolution)
Sprites: 80 on screen, 20 per scanline, 88 to 3232 sizes, 16 colors per sprite,[59] integer sprite zoom,[60] sprite flipping[61]
Tilemaps: 2 parallax scrolling planes with line & row scroll effects[62] and tile flipping[61]

SNES had a Color Palette: 32,768 (15-bit high color)
Colors on screen: 256 (13 lo-res planes), 128 (4 planes), 128 to 160 (hi-res)
Sprites: 128 on screen, 32 per scanline, 88 to 6464 sizes, 16 colors per sprite, sprite flipping[42]
Tilemaps: 24 parallax scrolling planes (lo-res), or 12 scrolling planes (hi-res), or 1 scaling/rotating plane (Mode 7)[42]

What a BIG difference 2 extra years of R&D gives you along with knowing what your competitor had out on the market.

And Nintendo was smart ot allow DSP's on the Cartridge by it's original design.

That was a brilliant move.

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Coastal_elite posted...

The real 5th gen started with the Saturn, in my personal opinion, that's when the idea of what the next gen would be solidified.

The real 5th gen started with 3DO back on October 4, 1993

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_of_video_game_consoles

Regardless of our personal feelings.

Atari & Panasonic fucked up because they couldn't see the future of 3D gaming that was coming to fruition.

Saturn was a VERY foreward thinking piece of hardware.

But they fucked it up on many levels.

And Sony whooped the lot of them.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

And Nintendo was smart ot allow DSP's on the Cartridge by it's original design.

I was mystified by chips in carts.

I was amazed at the possibilities that the FX2 chip could bring, and SETA even had a 32bit 10mhz chip, I felt it could turn the SNES into a next gen machine. But turns out they only used it for the AI of a majjong game LOL

Coastal_elite posted...

I was mystified by chips in carts.

I was amazed at the possibilities that the FX2 chip could bring, and SETA even had a 32bit 10mhz chip, I felt it could turn the SNES into a next gen machine. But turns out they only used it for the AI of a majjong game LOL

Back in the early days FPU (Floating Point Units) were a Add-on chip for many PC's.

Until it got integrated by Intel, then everybody else copied and integrated it.

There was ALOT of uncertainty in terms of what is useful and what wasn't.

It's not like now where we have TONS of history to learn from and data to understand from historical research on console battles of the past.

That was the "Wild Wild West" of console wars.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

That was the "Wild Wild West" of console wars.

Yes, and I loved it!

I also recall that many developers thought that THE future of videogames around the end of the SNES era was going to be pre-rendered graphics like DKC. Killer instinct was merely a glimpse into that future. Then 3D happened.

I'd have loved to see how a pre-rendered 2D on steroids generation would have looked like.

Coastal_elite posted...

This is all very interesting. Thanks for having this back and forth with me, I am enjoying it so much.

No Prob, it's fun talking about console war history. There are SOO many stories to tell about it.

I disagree this too: The N64 was not released so late because they didn't want to pull a SEGA, or because they were waiting for the battlefield to clear up.

When SEGA launched the SEGA CD nintendo freaked out and tried to release a CD add on of their on, the "SNES Playstation". Then they realized they'd lose royalties because it's CD based and backed out. Sony got mad and they worked on the PS1 by themselves.

But Sega didn't know what was happening at the time between Sony & Nintendo. That was all "Behind the Scenes" that Sega wouldn't find out the details of until much later.

It was Phillips CDi and it's use of CD's that scared SEGA at first. Then the rumblings of Nintendo + Sony were what pushed Sega into action with Sega CD.

All of the time lost working on the SNES-PS1 meant that they'd not have a system to compete in time with the Saturn and PS1. So in in their infinite wisdom they decided to "skip the 32 bit generation and jump straight into 64 bits" and they also pressured Gumpei Yokoi to release the VB, which was by no means ready, so it could be a stop gap to "let nintendo players experience the 32 bit generation" and hold off until the N64 was ready. Yeah, we know how that went LOL.

Yeah, the Virtual Boy was like WTF?
Then Nintendo was behind and finally came out with the N64.

But by then, Sony had already moved and entrenched itself with the consumers and developers.

The amount of Developers/Publishers that were SICK & TIRED of Nintendo's rules & high % cut along with cost of carts was REALLY bad.

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Coastal_elite posted...

Yes, and I loved it!

I also recall that many developers thought that THE future of videogames around the end of the SNES era was going to be pre-rendered graphics like DKC. Killer instinct was merely a glimpse into that future. Then 3D happened.

I'd have loved to see how a pre-rendered 2D on steroids generation would have looked like.

Alot of them weren't keeping up with Gaming on PC at the time and the 3D graphics revolution.

So by the time it hit them, it was like being smacked by a back of bricks.

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the virtual boy hardware still puzzles me. Ok, it has a 32bit RISC CPU at 10 mhz. It's basically the NEC V810. Why can't it do polygons? It can't even handle mario kart (a homebrew guy tried but said the hardware can't handle the affine scaling)

the master system was superior to the nes in next every aspect, but the nes had better games and was not successful

sega could have been successful with just the genesis, none of the bullshit add ons
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pojr posted...

the master system was superior to the nes in next every aspect, but the nes had better games and was not successful

That's the problem with messing up your first impression on the audience base.

The SG-1000 was a turd compared to the Famicom.

The SG-3000 was the proper contender, but by that time, Famicom had entrenched itself.

sega could have been successful with just the genesis, none of the bullshit add ons

Blame Sega of Japan & Sega of America's infighting.

They had two very different ways of fighting it's competitors.

And because of that, we got all the Add-Ons and BS.

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Coastal_elite posted...

the virtual boy hardware still puzzles me. Ok, it has a 32bit RISC CPU at 10 mhz. It's basically the NEC V810. Why can't it do polygons? It can't even handle mario kart (a homebrew guy tried but said the hardware can't handle the affine scaling)

No dedicated hardware GPU for 3D.

CPU was forced to do all the Graphical work.

And forcing it, the CPU, to render on 2x displays was hard enough given it's limited power while also running the game.

This was it's RAM setup:
128 KiB dual-port VRAM
128 KiB of DRAM
64 KiB WRAM (PSRAM)

I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't enough to do proper Polygons.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

The Sega CD was a reaction to Philips CDi and the writing that was on the wall that Cartridges were dead and everybody is moving to CD.

NEC released their cd add on in 1988. Wouldn't the sega cd being a "reaction" to that?

Yeah I think I mentioned that twice before, not sure why this keeps getting ignored

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The pcengine outperformed Genesis in Japan, too

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ToastyOne posted...

NEC released their cd add on in 1988. Wouldn't the sega cd being a "reaction" to that?

Possibly, but at around the same time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_CD

That year, Nintendo announced a partnership with Sony to develop its own CD-ROM peripheral for the SNES.

So Sega must've known about Phillips entering the console with a CD based machine long before it came out.

Then Phillips CDi came in December 3, 1991

Sega CD came out on December 12, 1991

So it probably wasn't a single competitor so much as all 3x hit around the same time that forced Sega to move it's hand.

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Balrog0 posted...

The pcengine outperformed Genesis in Japan, too

That's gotta sting for Sega of Japan.

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Balrog0 posted...

Yeah I think I mentioned that twice before, not sure why this keeps getting ignored

Because the poor sega cd gets lumped along with the 32x as a failure and the beginning of sega's downfall.

It sold around 2.2 million units, which for a $300 (at the time) add on was ok. I always saw ithe sega cd as a luxury, novelty accessory even as a kid. No huge killer app, imo. I saw Sonic CD, Batman Returns, Night Trap in magazines and wasn't impressed.

KamenRiderBlade posted...

This was it's RAM setup:
128 KiB dual-port VRAM
128 KiB of DRAM
64 KiB WRAM (PSRAM)

I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't enough to do proper Polygons.

oh this could be it.

The VB could technically do polygons (e.g. starfox demo) but in practice it could not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_2

Look how far we've moved on to.

Where the on board L1/L2 cache of 1x Zen 2 Core is larger than the entire VB RAM combined.

Just ignore the massive L3 cache and the RAM we have access to now.

Isn't technological progress great! =D

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ToastyOne posted...

Because the poor sega cd gets lumped along with the 32x as a failure and the beginning of sega's downfall.

It sold around 2.2 million units, which for a $300 (at the time) add on was ok. I always saw ithe sega cd as a luxury, novelty accessory even as a kid. No huge killer app, imo. I saw Sonic CD, Batman Returns, Night Trap in magazines and wasn't impressed.

It wasn't as bad as the 32x mainly because it was (from my understanding) less resource intensive to develop and produce games for and because it didn't step in their own toes the same way.

Lacking a killer app is the problem with every Sega console except for the base Genesis lol. It's all just 'here's an arcade game you'll get bored of in a day'

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Solar_Crimson posted...

The Game Boy Mario games (at least, the Land series) weren't ports; they were completely original experiences. The Donkey Kong Land games, though, I think were a mixed bag. Although they borrowed very heavily from their SNES counterparts, they had different levels and level layouts.

I actually weren't counting them. They were unique enough to be called their own thing.

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Balrog0 posted...

Lacking a killer app is the problem with every Sega console except for the base Genesis lol. It's all just 'here's an arcade game you'll get bored of in a day'

That was part of the problem from Sega of Japan's upper management.

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KamenRiderBlade posted...

That was part of the problem from Sega of Japan's upper management.

sega of japan was so weird.

Sega of america: "we need a killer app"
sega of japan: "we're launching our system with (insert quirky stuff here that only japan would care about, maybe "ramen simulator' or "hello kitty's origami adventure") !! shut up!"

The problem was that "Sega of Japan" was the parent company, so in the end, they had final say.

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Nintendo had some crazy business practices back in the NES and SNES days. They wanted to control everything and you had to get the carts from them.

Plus once Sega had an uphill battle. If a store wanted to carry Nintendo product you pretty much couldnt carry a competitor.

Sega of America did some shrewd tactics to combat this. They bought and made a place called Sega World right outside Walmarts headquarters. And for a year kept it open so people could come and play. Cause at the time Walmart didnt want to rock the boat at all so Nintendo and get cut off. But the execs after seeing Sega World and how popular it was not to mention being beaten down on why they didnt carry Sega products finally caved!

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To be fair, Dreamcast had alot of killer apps. It just lacked a DVD player.

LampChop posted...

To be fair, Dreamcast had alot of killer apps. It just lacked a DVD player.

It was also pirated to hell & back.

My old college roomie was a HUGE DreamCast pirate.

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Balrog0 posted...
'here's an arcade game you'll get bored of in a day'

I feel this is why the Intellivision Amico will fail.

ToastyOne posted...

'here's an arcade game you'll get bored of in a day'

I feel this is why the Intellivision Amico will fail.

I'd never heard of it, but I read the concept of it on Wikipedia and the big issue to me is that the Switch is a "return to family gaming and "couch co-op" among people in the same location" already.

Also, tbf, that is a little harsh of me. I do like a lot of the arcade games and ports Sega offered (and honestly wish they would have and would still port more, like golden axe: revenge of death adder). But I think most people wouldn't pay full price for a straight arcade game port with some pretty limited exceptions, even back then. And of course, by the time the Saturn rolled around you kind of had to be a certain sort of gamer to want to buy a memory cart for a Saturn to get an arcade perfect experience.


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KamenRiderBlade posted...

It was also pirated to hell & back.

My old college roomie was a HUGE DreamCast pirate.

So were the PS2 and XBOX, in fact, that might be one of the reasons they left the GameCube eating dust.

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LordFarquad1312 posted...

So were the PS2 and XBOX, in fact, that might be one of the reasons they left the GameCube eating dust.

I'll agree that PS2 left every other console of it's generation (COMBINED) in the dust.

But Xbox vs GameCube? I think those two were alot closer than you think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_generation_of_video_game_consoles#Worldwide_sales_standings
Global Sales:
PlayStation 2 = 155 million (as of March 31, 2012)
Xbox = 24 million (as of May 10, 2006)
GameCube = 22 million (as of September 30, 2010)
Dreamcast = 9.13 million (as of September 6, 2002)

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Another video on SEGA was just uploaded:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNu7bOx75-A

Basically how SEGA Japan screwed over the very successful Eternal Champions because they wanted to focus on pumping up Virtua Fighter.

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Basically theres one reason Sega ever mattered and it's tom kalinske

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