Best 8/16 bit console hardware

[zurich]

Most multiplatform games looked better on TG16 than on the Genesis. One example would be SFII CE. The Genesis just didn't have the simultaneous color variety as the TG16 let alone the SNES. Anyone who's seen and played Vigilante and R-Type on TG16 would know how beautiful the graphics the TG16 is capable of.

I wonder how much I could get for my still-very-much-working TurboExpress on EBay.. complete with Military Madness, Bonk's Revenge, and that F-16 Flight Sim... :

Those are the only games you have? Have you tried the import SFII CE on the TE? A 99% arcade perfect conversion on a portable was unheard of back then, but SFII CE was solid proof 8) Too bad the TE didn't have 6 buttons for those types of fighting games :?

www.tzd.com still sells the TurboExpress brand new for $150 so you probably couldn't get more than $75 for it. I keep mine just as a collectors item. I had like 20 HuCard games, but my nephew secretly sold them

Sorry for the late reply PCEngine, i missed your post with the E3 hoopla.

At one time I had ALOT more games.. Splatterhouse (this seriouslly needs a remake/sequel), Blazing Lazers, etc.. but one by one they got lost Man, that system hauled serious ass. IMO, its still better in many ways than the GBA.

Wasn't SFII CE a PCE-CDrom game? I remember hearing how great it was, but the only thing the PCE really had going for it over the Genesis was the higher (slightly) colour palette.. yet somehow the blackbars disappeared from the PCE version

On a slightly related note; what happened to Hudson? Did all their teams from the PCE days disappear? They really haven't put out a quality game in ages... (compared to the 8/16bit days).

 

[PC-Engine]

Wasn't SFII CE a PCE-CDrom game? I remember hearing how great it was, but the only thing the PCE really had going for it over the Genesis was the higher (slightly) colour palette.. yet somehow the blackbars disappeared from the PCE version

On a slightly related note; what happened to Hudson? Did all their teams from the PCE days disappear? They really haven't put out a quality game in ages... (compared to the 8/16bit days).

SFII CE was originally rumored to be a HuCard/CDROM hybrid game, meaning all the audio would be RED BOOK on CD and all the game data would be on the HuCard. Eventually NEC decided to make it the first huge HuCard that ever existed with sampled music kinda like the sampled music in AirZonk. The HuCard/CDROM idea eventually became the ACD or Arcade Card upgrade for ACD games like Samurai Showdown and other NeoGeo converions.

The PCE version of SFII CE was closer to the arcade version than than the Genesis version. It might of had better animation too I don't remember. Even the SNES version used the squeezed screen mode that made the character look squashed. The PCE version used the who screen like you said. Vigilante was also one of the prettiest HuCard games ever made. It was an arcade conversion and was very short though. It had beautiful color and used layering especially the last level.

Oh regarding Hudson, they still make the Bomberman games for various consoles. They released Bomberman Generations for GCN a while ago. They mostly do research and make PC games for the Japanese market.

They recently developed ROOT for copy protection on CDROMs etc.

http://www.hudson.co.jp/ct/root/

 

[Tagrineth]

Mario Kart uses 2 3d planes. Unless somehow mode 7 can render the same plane from 2 angles at the same time. Pilotwings also used DSP1, it was originally supposed to use the extra hardware that was removed from SNES(which became DSP1).

And I didn't notice any 3d audio in Mario Kart...

Actually, you have a point, if you're in splitscreen Mode 7 can't cut it. Guess you're right on that one...

And I'm probably just thinking of the 'distance' effect - the closer someone is to you, the louder their engine is.

 

[Tahir2]

By the way, London-boy, I looked up Virtua Racing: It is not a Genesis game... it's 32X. 32X has a 32-bit, ~20.8MHz SH-1, and IIRC also some sort of dedicated 3D hardware.

I played it on the Megadrive, it used the SVP (Sega Virtual Processor) in the cartridge (a very fast DSP I think from NEC). It was mental fast but severely lacking colours.

 

[PC-Engine]

Oh forgot to mention that Fighting Street aka the orginial Street Fighter I from Capcom was a PCE CDROM only game that used the orginal CDROM configuration. It had RED BOOK audio. The graphics were pretty close to the arcade game. With the amount of graphics content in SFII CE, it had to be either a huge HuCard or an ACD game and since the ACD didn't yet exist and since NEC wanted to use the HuCard/CDROM hybrid idea for many games instead of just SFII CE, the ACD was born.

 

[FiggyG]

Noooooooo..... you forgot Stunt Race FX Heh, when I was quite a bit younger I used to constantly rent that game.

Wow... you just brought back all kinds of memories. I had completely forgotten about that game Thanks! Another game that I loved was World Cup for NES. Fun soccer game, you could kick the ball into other players and knock them over... you could beat down other players so bad that you knock them over and they don't get up Then when my friend and I played against each other... well, let's just say our teams were nappin' most of the time

 

[Evil_Cloud]

I recently bought a SNES with Star Wing... Wasn't this a game to demonstrate SNES's FX chip? (that it COULD do 3D)

 

[Tagrineth]

I recently bought a SNES with Star Wing... Wasn't this a game to demonstrate SNES's FX chip? (that it COULD do 3D)

Yes. The poly counts actually get pretty decent in some scenes too ^_^ And keep in mind, the SuperFX chip is being held back by the 65816. Like thorougly held back.

 

[DeanoC]

IMHO The best demo of graphics power of the SNES is SMW2 Yoshi Island, uses SuperFX2 (IIRC the only one, as StarFox 2 wasn't released). Loads of colours, multiple background planes, sprite rotation and scaling and real 3D objects all mixed together.

 

[Tagrineth]

IMHO The best demo of graphics power of the SNES is SMW2 Yoshi Island, uses SuperFX2 (IIRC the only one, as StarFox 2 wasn't released). Loads of colours, multiple background planes, sprite rotation and scaling and real 3D objects all mixed together.

Um... there are other games that use SuperFX 2. DOOM, for example. And we were talking about showing off SNES's 3D capabilities; Yoshi's Island uses 3D only on the title screen.

And StarFox2, according to pagefault, doesn't use SuperFX2 - it uses a short-lived SuperFX3 (used in one released game, IIRC; and is part of the real reason SF2 was shelved at the last minute).

 

[Tahir2]

3D only on the title screen

That is not true. There are plenty of 3D effects throughout the game or so I remember.. like the spinning tubes and stuff.

 

[Tagrineth]

3D only on the title screen

That is not true. There are plenty of 3D effects throughout the game or so I remember.. like the spinning tubes and stuff.

Actually, yeah, it's been too long since I last played the game

I got 100% in every level though, so I do know what I'm talking about, somewhat...

The main thing the FX2 was used for though was complex sprite morphing, which the SNES simply can't do on its own (scaling / rotation / skewing / stretching, etc).

 

[Tahir2]

Anyone remember SETA's chip? 21MHz RISC chip in a SNES cartridge, I don't think it ever was out... but it could have blown the SFX 2 chip away apparently.

I didn't ever play Yoshi's Island but I do remember it in screenshots etc. It's all gravy though.

 

[zurich]

Does the GBA hardware allow for special function chips on carts? Would give the system a nice shot in the arm for 3D.

 

[Grall]

I doubt it. There's probably no linear address space access across the cart interface and the transfer speed is probably pretty rotten too if one wanted to hack something together.

Besides, any 3D upgrade that's cheap enough to stick in a cart would be a marginal shot in the arm at best.


*G*

 

[Sonic]

Can anyone recall if Killer Instinct for the SNES used one of the FX chips or not? I remember the game being released and I was kind of awed that the SNES could do graphics like that, but I never really thought of one of the FX chips being in the cart. Can anyone clarify?

 

[Tagrineth]

Can anyone recall if Killer Instinct for the SNES used one of the FX chips or not? I remember the game being released and I was kind of awed that the SNES could do graphics like that, but I never really thought of one of the FX chips being in the cart. Can anyone clarify?

It's just prerendered sprites, like Donkey Kong Country.

 

[Fox5]

Wow, virtua racing really looked like crap, even less polygons and textures than starfox!(and to think, computers had games like tie fighter....which I don't think had much in textures either, not even a pretty nice logo like starfox, but pretty high in polygons....or heck, what about the wing commander series?)


BTW, genesis games sort of cheated too, sega had its own 3d chip(used in games like the 2nd echo the dolphin game) but they weren't too well known.(other than people getting the idea that sega needed add ons and chips to do what the snes could do without)

Oh, and 32x had 2 sh-2's at 23 Mhz/40 Mips(I have the box.) The hardware was basically the exact same as the saturn, but slower.(well, it may have been sh-1, but I'm pretty sure it was sh-2) And saturn had like 8 cpus, I think reduced in later models to 3. 32x sucked for 3d though(decent amount of polygons, but way low on textures, the best 32x game was maybe equal to early psx and saturn games though, so perhaps it just wasn't given a chance to shine....or rust). It was good for 2d though(I think it had an arcade perfect port of mortal kombat 2), however, that didn't stop knuckles chaotix from looking like ass.(on a technical level, it was great, but my god, did they mess up character and level design, and it had a problem with bleeding colors)
Anyhow, the 32x was developed as sort of a sister to the saturn, meant to be exactly the same, but sega wasn't sure if the market would catch onto carts or cds.

 

[Tagrineth]

Wow, virtua racing really looked like crap, even less polygons and textures than starfox!(and to think, computers had games like tie fighter....which I don't think had much in textures either, not even a pretty nice logo like starfox, but pretty high in polygons....or heck, what about the wing commander series?)

Keep in mind SNES was SERIOUSLY limited in poly-pushing by the incredibly pathetic 3.4MHz 65816... even with the SuperFX chips; the FX chips had to process in bursts - they couldn't be active all the time. (hahaha... 'Blast Processing', anyone?)

Whereas PC's had 33 and 66MHz 386 and 486 processors (in some cases even 100-133MHz) which weren't held back by anything other than bandwidth.

 

[Fox5]

Strange that even still, snes 2d games looked better than 2d games on computers.(I remember 2d games dieing out really quickly on pc, but commander keen, blackthorn, and plenty of others didn't look as good, though 2d on pcs was mainly just used for startegy games, which consoles just couldn't handle due to memory restraints) However, that may have been a limit of most 2d games being produced pre-SVGA(and perhaps even pre-VGA), and thus had a very limited color palette.