N64, fillrate monster of the previous generation?
- Thread starter Roly
- Start date
I actually saw the M2 system in action but it wasn't running any games. My step father worked for a building company and they bought M2 based systems to display 3d mock ups of projects.
Very impressive from what I remember seeing.
Pity MX never came to fruition. The use of embedded RAM was probably just too much for the kind of process availible back then.
Very impressive from what I remember seeing.
Pity MX never came to fruition. The use of embedded RAM was probably just too much for the kind of process availible back then.
Megadrive1988
Veteran
It's cool that you remember that MX was going to use embedded ram - I first read that in Intelligent Gamer magazine, lol. I'd never heard of such a thing... putting RAM on a graphics processor. They said it might allow upto 20 million polygons to be pushed. I think the final MX was capable of around 4 million small triangles though. that was at the time that Nintendo was looking into acquiring it along with the hardware team, CagEnt, for use in its sucessor to the N64. That was just before Nintendo settled on ArtX instead.
The SuperFX and FX2 chips really seemed to give the SNES some much needed assistance. The Doom port was pretty remarkable given how poorly suited the SNES CPU was for 3d. I suspect it was left with housekeeping duties while the FX2 did all the heavy-lifting. The 'Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy' effects in Yoshi's Island were also pretty neat. Pity there was no similar co-processor the N64, but I suspect such a thing wasn't feasible.
Roly said:
Yeah, that effect was pretty neat, but it was probably no coincidence that the game also went into slow motion during that effect...
Maybe they could have done something with the memory expansion slot? Should be possible to communicate with an external processor through that bus. The GC 'parallel-port' is just an external connection to the sd-ram memory bus, but isn't meant to be used for memory expansions anyway... and wasn’t the N64 supposed to have some sort of disk drive add-on? Where was that supposed to be connected?
All?
I seemed to remember the memory expansion module selling quite well, along with the PC-Engine's SuperCD-Rom2 add-on (enough so that it became built-in on the Duos). You can probably also through in the PS2's network adaptor as well, along with perhaps the headset in due time. Speaking of headsets, one might also consider the Xbox Live headsets when the time comes. If you want to throw in non-standard controllers (i.e. GunCon, DDR mats), then Konami has made a killing with DDR and Beamani add-ons...Megadrive1988
Veteran
I seem to remember there was a series of DSPs for SNES games - some where from Nintendo, others from Seta - the earlier DSPs might have been 10 Mhz, the later ones around 20 Mhz -
F1-ROCII was one such game that got a boost from a DSP.
I'd really have liked to have seen SNES games with the mythical
33 Mhz co-processor, or at least the 32-bit CD-ROM (the ND)
with its 21 Mhz co-processor.
Might have seen games close to what Saturn typically did (games that didnt take full advantage of Saturn's processing power)
F1-ROCII was one such game that got a boost from a DSP.
I'd really have liked to have seen SNES games with the mythical
33 Mhz co-processor, or at least the 32-bit CD-ROM (the ND)
with its 21 Mhz co-processor.
Might have seen games close to what Saturn typically did (games that didnt take full advantage of Saturn's processing power)
archie4oz said:
All?
Well the majority then :\ Controllers don't count. Also the expansion pack is an iffy case because it only cost $30, not even as much as a game.
At what point in the PC-Engine's life cycle was that addon released? It seems like the earlier they're released AND the more tangible their improvements are, the more relatively successful they'll be. Meh.
megadrive0088
Regular
From what I remember, the PC-Engine was quite successful, in Japan. It was the American version, the TurboGrafx-16 that wasn't so successful. In Japan, the PC-Engine beat the MegaDrive during their years. In fact, the PC-Engine was second only to the Super Famicom. What kept NEC from being successful long term was the lack of strength overseas (in the U.S. and Europe) - Even the PCE CD attachments, the CD-ROM2 and Super CD-ROM2, had quite a following in Japan. (the Arcade Card ver CD-ROM games weren't too big though)
The TG16 CD-ROM bombed in the U.S. and TG16 only had a cult following a few years after its 1989 introduction (PCE was out in 1987 in Japan!) and it had NO market presence in Europe at all, AFAIK. Though in the U.S., owning a Turbo Express (PCE GT in Japan) was concidered pretty cool, even though it didnt sell enough to even start to compete with the Gameboy.
The PCE was really an entire line of different machines and addons/ upgrades.
The one PCE system that REALLY, REALLY did not do well in Japan was the PC Engine SuperGrafx.
Once known as the PC-Engine 2 - most just call it the SuperGrafx or SG for short. unlike all the other versions, addons and enhancments of the base PCE, the SG was actually an upgraded, more powerful machine, with double the sprites (128), 2 background playfields, twice the VRAM and I think more main RAM, as well as a larger color pallete and possibly more colors on screen, all over and above the regular PCE (or CoreGrafx, CGII, Shuttle and CD-ROMs) The SG only had 5 native games released for it (Strider, Galaxy ForceII, Forgotten Worlds and a few others never made it) the SG came out in 1989, two years after the original PCE, it had one game the year it was released, Battle Ace, a cross between AfterBurner and Galaxy Force. Then in 1990 the SG got Grandzort (or Granzort) the sequel to Keith Courage in Alpha Zones. SG's third release was its best, Ghouls N Ghosts--a graphically awesome, but aurally poor version of the game that had just skyrocketed every gamers opinion of the MD/Genesis into the stratosphere. I say the SG was aurally poor because its sound chip was the same lame one used in the PCE/TG16. Though some say SG games feature better music & sound than PCE games, that's probably because SG game cards could have higher "meg" counts. Next for SG came Aldynes, an original shooter (non-arcade) that was never made in any other form on any other machine. Last, came a decent conversion of Capcom's WWII shooter, 1941 Counter Attack, and that was it for the SG. by 1992 it was deader than the Atari 5200 or the Sega Saturn was that soon after their releases, but the SG did become a collectors item. The Japanese were perfectly satisfied with their original hyper 8-bit system, the PCE.
To say the basic PCE wasn't a success is simply not the case
The TG16 CD-ROM bombed in the U.S. and TG16 only had a cult following a few years after its 1989 introduction (PCE was out in 1987 in Japan!) and it had NO market presence in Europe at all, AFAIK. Though in the U.S., owning a Turbo Express (PCE GT in Japan) was concidered pretty cool, even though it didnt sell enough to even start to compete with the Gameboy.
The PCE was really an entire line of different machines and addons/ upgrades.
The one PCE system that REALLY, REALLY did not do well in Japan was the PC Engine SuperGrafx.
Once known as the PC-Engine 2 - most just call it the SuperGrafx or SG for short. unlike all the other versions, addons and enhancments of the base PCE, the SG was actually an upgraded, more powerful machine, with double the sprites (128), 2 background playfields, twice the VRAM and I think more main RAM, as well as a larger color pallete and possibly more colors on screen, all over and above the regular PCE (or CoreGrafx, CGII, Shuttle and CD-ROMs) The SG only had 5 native games released for it (Strider, Galaxy ForceII, Forgotten Worlds and a few others never made it) the SG came out in 1989, two years after the original PCE, it had one game the year it was released, Battle Ace, a cross between AfterBurner and Galaxy Force. Then in 1990 the SG got Grandzort (or Granzort) the sequel to Keith Courage in Alpha Zones. SG's third release was its best, Ghouls N Ghosts--a graphically awesome, but aurally poor version of the game that had just skyrocketed every gamers opinion of the MD/Genesis into the stratosphere. I say the SG was aurally poor because its sound chip was the same lame one used in the PCE/TG16. Though some say SG games feature better music & sound than PCE games, that's probably because SG game cards could have higher "meg" counts. Next for SG came Aldynes, an original shooter (non-arcade) that was never made in any other form on any other machine. Last, came a decent conversion of Capcom's WWII shooter, 1941 Counter Attack, and that was it for the SG. by 1992 it was deader than the Atari 5200 or the Sega Saturn was that soon after their releases, but the SG did become a collectors item. The Japanese were perfectly satisfied with their original hyper 8-bit system, the PCE.
To say the basic PCE wasn't a success is simply not the case
Megadrive1988 said:
Mario Kart used a DSP chip as well. Mega Man X2 and X3 used Capcom's C4 graphics chip for wireframe enemies and some 2d stuff, Street Fighter Alpha 2 used the SDD1 graphics compression chip(which still isn't emulated). The ZSNES developers think the Seta DSP may actually be a 68000 CPU though.
Megadrive1988
Veteran
yes I remember that there were alot of specialized chips and DSPs in SNES games. Even PilotWings was said to use a DSP as well. And that was odd to me, because PilotWings being one of the first SFC/SNES games, I thought it was showing off what the SNES could do itself, with its much hyped (years before its release) scaling & rotation abilities. I wondered why a DSP was used so early to boost SNES. I suppose that 3.58 Mhz CPU was really just too slow even from the start. but I thought the machine's standard math co-processors did the scaling & rotation in PilotWings, as in the earliest SFC demos of DragonFly (fore-runner of PW).. It makes sense that SNES got so many special chips much later in its life. It seemed to me it was just a continuation of Nintendo's strategy as with the NES and its MMC series of memory mapper chips, boosting a weak console that was originally going to be much more powerful (famicom/nes designers first concidered a 16bit CPU but cut that down to 8bit)
Its also very interesting about the Seta DSP possibily being a 68000... that was the original CPU choice for the SFC..
Its also very interesting about the Seta DSP possibily being a 68000... that was the original CPU choice for the SFC..
Megadrive1988
Veteran
The PC-Engine got its first CD-ROM (CD-ROM1) in 1988 I believe (PCE released in 1987) Then shortly after that, I think in 1989, it got CD-ROM2 which was the main CD-ROM for PCE until the Super-CD format - the American version, the TurboGrafx-CD (CD-ROM2) came out in late 1989 or early 1990, I dont remember which. AFAIK, CD-ROM ver 1 and 2 were basicly the same. it had a 64k buffer. CD-ROM2 quickly superceded CD-ROM1.
The Super CD-ROM2 format (System 3.0 card upgraded the older CD-ROMs) with 4x the memory buffer (256k or 2 megabit) came out in 1991 in Japan, IIRC. In Japan you could buy a Super CD-ROM2 with the memory built in, or the 3.0 card to upgrade your old CD-ROM. Or you get a PCE Duo.
In America, to get to play SuperCDs, you had two options, get the 3.0 System Card to replace the 2.0 Card in your TG16+CD-ROM, or buy a TurboDuo.
The American TG16 CD-ROM2 and
TurboDuo (SuperCD) both bombed, while their Japanese counterparts both did very well, being strongly supported until the 32bit generation.
The Arcade Card was the final CD-ROM format for the PCE and was only released in Japan. It boosted the CD format to 16megabit (2MB) plus the 2megabits already in the Super CD-ROM.
with 18megabit total, developers pushed the 8-bit PC-Engine further than it should have ever been pushed. NeoGeo games were converted to this format but I dont know how they fared (not to well I guess)
by the time the Arcade Card CD games were coming out, NEC and Hudsonsoft had LONG been working on the successor to the PC-Engine. (SuperGrafx couldn't cut it, as SG was based off the PCE too heavily) the 32-bit Hudson/NEC console that would face Saturn and Playstation was first known as Iron Man FX, aka Project Tatsujin, or Hudson HuC62. This 32-bit chipset/prototype board was shown in 1992 in Japan and perhaps also at the summer CES in Chicago... this was the fore-runner of the PC-FX which didnt come out until 1994-- 7 years after the PC-Engine first hit Japan. Yes, the PC-Engine was quite successful. otherwise, NEC wouldn't have put out so many variations and formats, many of which I have not even mentioned!
Mr. Angry Pants
Newcomer
The DSP 'band-aids' were a cheap ploy by Nintendo to reduce the cost of manufacturing the SNES while third-party developers footed the bill.
Gotta love the Big N. Microsoft of the video game industry from 1986-1996
Gotta love the Big N. Microsoft of the video game industry from 1986-1996
Ahh but Nintendo did not put a gun to any developers head and say 'you must use these cheap band aids!'
However I got to agree the cartridge based model was very bad for 3rd party developers - but Nintendo did not care. It was their console and if they could be successful with being the only ones producing games for it - even better!
Regarding the SFX chip - they were originally developed for the NES by Argonaut (British based company) and shown off by Jez San to Nintendo. At that point (this is BEFORE SFC was released worldwide) Nintendo asked Argonaut to develop something similar for their SNES instead. A couple of years (or more) later you had StarFox which made Argonaut and Jez San VERY rich. Funny how Argonaut went on to develop Croc for the Playstation afterwards though.
Regarding the SETA chip from what I remember (Got A Screw Driver Magazine was great for this) it was touted as a 21MHz RISC Chip but I don't think it saw the light of day (or at least in it's original carnation).
The SNES CDROM was co-developed with Sony until Nintendo pulled the plug on that and was in fact called the xxxxstation even then. Sony learnt a lot about the games market and capitalised with a firm two fingers up at Nintendo with the amazing Playstation (which in itself was touted as being as powerful as the hardware running Ridge Racer at the time).
Ahh... nostalgia.
However I got to agree the cartridge based model was very bad for 3rd party developers - but Nintendo did not care. It was their console and if they could be successful with being the only ones producing games for it - even better!
Regarding the SFX chip - they were originally developed for the NES by Argonaut (British based company) and shown off by Jez San to Nintendo. At that point (this is BEFORE SFC was released worldwide) Nintendo asked Argonaut to develop something similar for their SNES instead. A couple of years (or more) later you had StarFox which made Argonaut and Jez San VERY rich. Funny how Argonaut went on to develop Croc for the Playstation afterwards though.
Regarding the SETA chip from what I remember (Got A Screw Driver Magazine was great for this) it was touted as a 21MHz RISC Chip but I don't think it saw the light of day (or at least in it's original carnation).
The SNES CDROM was co-developed with Sony until Nintendo pulled the plug on that and was in fact called the xxxxstation even then. Sony learnt a lot about the games market and capitalised with a firm two fingers up at Nintendo with the amazing Playstation (which in itself was touted as being as powerful as the hardware running Ridge Racer at the time).
Ahh... nostalgia.
Mr. Angry Pants
Newcomer
misae said:
Yes, but since Nintendo could afford the luxuries of such chips for their games they could achieve a Wow! factor that the 3rd parties couldn't.
Nintendo basicly waged war on 3rd party developers for over a decade. They are business Nazis and how they have been able to gain the reputation of being the 'good guys' of the industry baffles me.
