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Post by turboxray on Mar 8, 2021 0:32:50 GMT
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Post by SignOfZeta on Mar 8, 2021 0:41:29 GMT
I’M SO OUTRAGED.
Not really. I don’t care what anyone thinks of the PC Engine, let alone whatever/whoever Digital Foundry is.
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Post by turboxray on Mar 8, 2021 1:16:48 GMT
I’M SO OUTRAGED. Not really. I don’t care what anyone thinks of the PC Engine, let alone whatever/whoever Digital Foundry is. I'm beginning to think your outrage is hit or miss haha.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Mar 8, 2021 20:08:46 GMT
It's weird when people like this do unnecessary videos like this. Their credibility was already in question, but they had nothing to gain by judging the PC Engine and can only lose more credibility, particularly when discussing <4th gen consoles going forward. Did they provide a simile for what the SNES basically is (Colecovision?) by contrast when it comes to processing power, sprites, resolution, sampled sound, etc? How do they explain away stuff like the Neo Geo ports and Sapphire? A Famicom cart with MMC3 and a large rom size could do it in Famicom color? R-Type came out in early 1988 and remained unrivaled for the rest of the generation. The other consoles are great in their own ways, but dismissing one as being dramatically inferior backfires as soon as you compare the games that excell instead of cherry picking underperformers.
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Post by gredler on Mar 8, 2021 21:27:16 GMT
Indefensible DF is one of the few I follow on youtube because I really enjoy their speculation on how things are made. This is a blemish on their credibility for sure, but taken in the context that the guest speaker (a text translator not a technician or artist) and said offhand on a stream not read off of a reviewed script, I can look past it. I loved their analysis of the halo infinite trailer, and some of their frame cost breakdowns are so entertaining, I have a hard time looking away! Maybe I just enjoy their 'deep dives' because they are shallow enough for me to understand before it goes over my head hahaha. The splash wave videos are some others I follow, are there other technical breakdown channels that I should be aware of? I love hearing peoples perspectives on how games were made
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Post by spenoza on Mar 8, 2021 21:36:19 GMT
And John Linneman did attempt to counter that point a bit. I mean, it wasn't really relevant to their discussion so I couldn't seem him taking a tangent to really put that misunderstanding to rest.
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Post by turboxray on Mar 8, 2021 22:26:58 GMT
I'm mean I'm half joking about judging DF. And yes, it was their guest speaker. John (the regular at DF) seems to kind of recover from the guys comment after he said it. I enjoy DFs videos for what they are when it comes to looking at new gen stuff.
I think more to the point, is that this represents a rather ignorant view of the PCE in the larger gaming retro world.. that still manages to continue. I don't see it as much anymore in forums, but I see it still in youtube comments about retro systems (which seems to be more active than retro forums these days). I'll give retro gamers the benefit of doubt and say they've mostly seen examples of top tier games on the system, so it's still baffling to see this mentality. As in, those are exceptional examples of the PCE and not representative of the system's capability. I find perspective really odd haha. As if somehow the PC-Engine being '8bit' but clearly capable, somehow lessens their beloved other console (Genesis/SNES). Or maybe they want to things to be simple so they can be easily categorized - when it fact it's definitely a lot messier than that. Because, when you confront such gamers with facts - they simply don't believe it. I've seen a lot comments recently than the PCE actually has lower resolution than the SNES (or it only has snes resolution). I had someone mention that the PCE sounds 8bit. I asked for further details, and they gave me some NES games as examples. Those NES games sounded nothing like the PCE, let alone the game being discussed (Street Fighter 2) - they eventually admitted they over exaggerated. I honestly think the effect is basically rose-colored glasses.. in effect, because they've been told "this is what the PC-Engine is", so that's exactly what they see when they see PCE games. Now I don't expect a lot of gamers to understand all the technical aspects of these systems, but there are definitely games that stand out on the PCE.
I would think such games would challenge their perspective and they'd be like oh, I guess it's more capable than I had originally thought. But it doesn't seem to work like that at all haha. Rather, it's justified as an exception: "impressive for an 8bit console". Going back to the statement of technical specs, they don't even understand 'bits' - so how do they qualify that conclusion? So when I see a comment like that, I ask. I get the typical responses of like "because it's an 8bit processor" - which automatically disqualifies all other aspects of the system. It is so ingrained into them that 8bit is ultimately defining, that they can't even understand that even if you labeled the SNES processor as 16bit, which is kind of stretching it (it's more of a hybrid), and the PCE's processor is much faster - that it's still somehow less powerful. In otherwords, instead of the PCE simply being a 4th gen capable console but simply missing a BG layer in hardware, it's rather a "famicom+". Rather than being and defining the base specs for the 4th gen consoles, because it was the first, that it somehow gets re-written as some in between hybrid. The PCE literally has almost everything, like 95%, in common with the other 4th gen consoles and nothing with 3rd gen limitations/designs. It's just weird in how it's regarded - and continue to be regarded in pop retro game culture, and even lesser sub-culture. And it's stranger still that in 2021, nothing has changed. Why don't a majority of retro gamers want the PCE to simply be a 4th gen console and leave it at that? Why do they need it to be a famicom+? There's literally an opposition for it to be something more - or rather being what it really is. Whether you "care what other people think" or not, it's still part of the discussion/story of the PC-Engine.
On that note, I've been meaning to do some write ups on this. Mostly attempting to explain tech specs of the PCE in relation to the NES/SMS and the Genesis/SNES. Rather than say it belongs to one or the other, I just going to focus on what it actually is. Let the reader decide for themselves where it fits. But I guess much more important than that, what is it capable of. Because I think even fans of the system aren't quite sure. I'd like to dispel some myths; is game "x" actually pushing the systems limits - from a realistic perspective. But not just a splurge of technical capabilities, but context too - "how does this relate? why does this matter? How was/wasn't it used?".
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Post by dshadoff on Mar 8, 2021 23:30:17 GMT
Rather, it's justified as an exception: "impressive for an 8bit console". Going back to the statement of technical specs, they don't even understand 'bits' - so how do they qualify that conclusion? So when I see a comment like that, I ask. I get the typical responses of like "because it's an 8bit processor" - which automatically disqualifies all other aspects of the system. It is so ingrained into them that 8bit is ultimately defining, that they can't even understand that even if you labeled the SNES processor as 16bit, which is kind of stretching it (it's more of a hybrid), and the PCE's processor is much faster - that it's still somehow less powerful. I mean... the name "TurboGrafx-16" implies 8-bit to them ? That's a bit weird, as the name was specifically chosen to distance itself from the thought of being 8-bit. And... the SNES uses a very similar processor with an 8-bit bus and a slower clock speed that is somehow....... not 8-bit ? But clearly these opinions are held by people with little or no exposure to the system - maybe they saw Keith Courage once, or look at the commercial failure in the USA as some sort of 'proof' that the machine was not fit for use, without exploring any deeper. Frankly, it's their loss. Most people who play PC Engine games on the MiSTer platform fort he first time, call it a surprising hidden treasure (or give similar compliment).
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Post by spenoza on Mar 9, 2021 0:32:51 GMT
I’ve actually been long planning a series of techsplainer articles for Racketboy that cover the basics of how sprites and tiles work in 8- and 16-bit systems and how they come together as an image that gets to the screen, including stuff about hsync tricks and palette cycling and whatnot, with real world examples. I was even going to talk about saving tables with pre-calculated values vs real-time math. But I just don’t have the time. I do have a lot of notes, though. I was even going to cover CRTs and basic image generation but YouTube videos are much better for that.
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majors
Punkic Cyborg
Have cabs, will travel
Posts: 158
Fave PCE Shooter: Parodius
Fave PCE Platformer: Legendary Axe
Fave PCE Game Overall: Spriggian
Fave PCE RPG: Ys
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Post by majors on Mar 9, 2021 15:57:29 GMT
Rather, it's justified as an exception: "impressive for an 8bit console". I had a buddy that would help me out at cons to run the retro section, and that was his response to folks that tossed the idea out that the PCE/TG-16 was "only" an 8-bit machine. It was easier to to say that than argue with the ignorant masses. (of course we'd have a couple PCE's running so they could experience it first hand) I thought everyone knew the PCE/TG-16 was 21-bit or at least the memory management is.
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Post by ccovell on Mar 10, 2021 2:35:07 GMT
People will always make comparisons that could be seen as insulting one or the other being compared. Think nothing of it.
Just treat people who mention "It's only 8-bit!!" in the same way as with someone who is casually racist in a conversation: Don't comment; frown at them in silence.
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Post by sunteam_paul on Mar 10, 2021 14:20:20 GMT
Don't forget people: the Neo Geo has only 1 background layer.
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Post by SignOfZeta on Mar 10, 2021 14:58:28 GMT
I’M SO OUTRAGED. Not really. I don’t care what anyone thinks of the PC Engine, let alone whatever/whoever Digital Foundry is. I'm beginning to think your outrage is hit or miss haha. I have zero clue who this person/organization is and nobody explained it. If I allowed myself to be bothered by what people I’ve never heard of say about things I already have an understanding of I’d be even crazier than I am.
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Post by turboxray on Mar 10, 2021 15:36:29 GMT
I'm not really sure when the narrative of "8bits is not enough" entered into geek sub-culture, but if I had to put a finger on it, I would say it was when the 8bit processer lines flattened out in clock speeds fairly quickly in the early 80s. Definitely by '85.
If you look at the 'Accumulator' style processors (the 65x and 6809), they quickly tapped out at 2mhz tops. Z80 pretty much stayed at 3.58mhz (while performance equivalent to a 2mhz 65x/6809), it too stagnated fairly quickly and stayed at that speed. Had the 8bit processor lines advanced into the 2x, 3x, and 4x of their original 2mhz/3.58mhz options, then I don't think there would be such a negative narrative of 8bit processors. I'm sure the less performant BASIC being the common interface for small home computers of the 8bit line didn't help perceptions either.
But whenever negative narrative started to catch on in the 80s computer scene, console game magazines picked it up during the later 80s. I remember a friend believing the TG16 had two 8bit processors running at 3.58mhz, and combined it was 7.16mhz. They believed somehow that having two made it equivalent to "16bits" haha. As long as it was 16bits, it didn't matter if it was slower. It just needed to be 16bits. I blame EGM magazine for that one. But then again, I really did believe the TG16 not having enough system ram (8k vs 64k) as to why it was more 'difficult' for it to do parallax. And when the Duo came out with more CD ram, and Gates of Thunder came packed in - well that just validated my speculation haha. Though my excuse was I came from a small home computer programming background where ram did matter for those kinds of things.
It is interesting though. I'm not really sure how much NEC in North America was worried about this 8bit narrative when they were brining over the PCE to North America, but they really did focus on "16bit graphics" part. But also at the same time that is what you're going to notice first and foremost. Quantifying processor performance differences isn't as immediately apparent. Ironically, Sega boasted "16bit arcade power", when there were 8bit arcade machines more powerful at the time than the Genesis.
Another examples is the CoCo-3 1.89mhz 6809 with its 4bit pixels, 64 color palette and 320x200 resolution, can do more performance-wise with those graphics than its bigger brother the Tandy 1000 series with TGA graphics and 7mhz 8088 16bit processor. Just imagine what the CoCo3 could have done with a 6809 at 7mhz. The PC-Engine is pretty much the only "real world" example of an 8bit processor at that high of a clock speed compared to all the others (by a significant amount too).
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Post by spenoza on Mar 10, 2021 16:21:43 GMT
Clock speeds topping out wasn't the only thing. The 16-bit shift was a big deal on microcomputers for real-world work as well. Being able to work on larger values and address more RAM space was important. Obviously for gaming there was a disconnect between audio and graphics and the ability of the CPU to work with larger word sizes. But there's also the fact that 16-bit CPUs, by virtue of being (usually) more modern designs, often had more modern instruction sets and accommodations. The 68000 was arguably a lot more programmer friendly due to targeting C development. That combination of higher clocks, more modern instruction sets, and larger word sizes and addressable space were collectively a big deal. The fact that, at least for the CPU, those weren't as salient issues for gaming consoles didn't stop that "16-bit is better" mindset from taking hold in this space. I mean, look at how folks insisted the Neo Geo was 24-bit. I don't think they could conceive that it could do what it did and be 16-bit. And the 68k CPU did do the Genesis some favors. Treasure, for example, preferred to do real-time calculations for their special effects rather than pre-calculated tables.
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