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Post by elmer on Oct 9, 2021 2:20:13 GMT
I always wondered why the hucard roms were considered expensive? What's the context for that? In general or in comparison for other systems? Because at the end of the day, they're still "mask" roms. They're just glop-top instead of DIP package. And NEC actually fabricated stuff (memory, CPUs, etc). It's not like NEC couldn't have leveraged their existing purchasing power and business ties. I always found that a little odd. There's also plenty of room on the PCBs for larger capacity glop-top roms, so that's not even a factor. It's not like you're trying to fit DIPs on that PCB hahah. You seem to be judging things by production-cost, standards and technology that just didn't apply back-in-the-day. Sorry, but ROMs were *hugely* expensive to make. I remember programming a 128KB Gameboy game back in 1989, when I was shown a sheet of paper with the cost of different cartridge sizes at the time. The game size was chosen to be 128KB before we started developing, because the cartridge ROM cost drove what the retail cost of the game was going to be. IIRC, the ROM production cost (excluding packaging) that the publisher was going to have to pay Nintendo was about $25 (it may have been higher, or heck lower ... I'm old and my memory isn't perfect). In comparison, a mass-manufactured CD-ROM was approx $2. Figures changed over the years, but the economics of ROMs and cartridge-manufacturing was always *horrible* for publishers. I understand that lots of people seem to have a great fondness for HuCards and for the instant-on of cartridge games, but for me, the PCE's enduring legacy has absolutely nothing to do with its 3rd-place showing in the 16bit cartridge-based game-console wars of the late 1980s ... it has to do with its 1st-place showing as the pioneer in spinning-plastic (i.e. CDROM-based) games-consoles, at the beginning of the revolution (pun intended) that changed gaming for the next 20 years, before internet-distribition started to take over.
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 9, 2021 2:27:41 GMT
Well put, those are details I was looking for. It's important to note that the progression of games from 1-2Mb in 1987 for PC Engine to 8Mb closer to 1993 was *NOT* a short period, and the larger ROMs were only possible because of a near-constant drop in the price of ROMs (except I seem to recall a shortage-driven increase somewhere in there too).
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Post by turboxray on Oct 9, 2021 2:48:38 GMT
Well put, those are details I was looking for. It's important to note that the progression of games from 1-2Mb in 1987 for PC Engine to 8Mb closer to 1993 was *NOT* a short period, and the larger ROMs were only possible because of a near-constant drop in the price of ROMs (except I seem to recall a shortage-driven increase somewhere in there too). Larger roms were immediately appearing on the Megadrive in 1988. The PCE format was slow to adopt larger sizes, and 8meg hucards being rare. Even the SNES rom sizes were pretty much ahead of PCE in 1990 when it was released. I'm not saying roms weren't expensive. I'm saying there really isn't anything solid to indicate producing larger mask roms for the PCE was "much" more expensive for the same size vs other systems, other than maybe NEC charging a premium (PCE was seen as a luxury console when it came out; recent interview with Hudson, at the time in 1988, that I read today). I mean initially, they probably didn't even have the tooling ready for 4megabit roms (the interview by Hudson designers thought they'd have 4megabit right out the gate). I guess it's kinda moot though. The CDROM format took over as the primary media for the system.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 9, 2021 3:07:48 GMT
We know ROM prices were an issue, but that affected Nintendo and Sega as well. And yet the Genesis featured a 12 mbit game as early as 1991 and had introduced 16 mbit in 1992. CD titles were well-entrenched by then and the PCE’s shine was starting to fade a little, but certain games, like brawlers, really favored the advantages of ROMs. The SuperCD expanded memory helped a lot for many game types, but not all.
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 9, 2021 3:40:00 GMT
As I mentioned, NEC was NOT a low-cost producer for cartridges, despite their ability to manufacture at all levels. This is partly because they wouldn't buy ROM chips from the lowest-cost producer, and partly because the assembly of the HuCards was a completely different process than Megadrive, and needed to be done by specific machines rather than cheap labour. And partly because they were either greedy or wasteful. Or both.
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bonkzonkmcgonk
Gun-headed
Posts: 54
Fave PCE Shooter: Air Zonk
Fave PCE Platformer: Dragon's Curse
Fave PCE Game Overall: Bonk's Adventure & Revenge
Fave PCE RPG: Legend of Valkyrie
Currently Playing: Son Son II
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Post by bonkzonkmcgonk on Oct 9, 2021 4:06:37 GMT
For instance, Street Fighter 2 was on a HuCard and was just as good as the SNES and Genesis versions. It required a special chip, but so did a lot of SNES games (think the Super FX chip). I wish that they had made more games using that special chip because the original Turbografx was pretty neglected in the US. Do you have a reference for this? I don't remember any mention of SFII using a special chip of any kind, merely that it had more storage than the norm.
Also, the answer to your opening question is obviously Rastan.
The SF2 Hucard that I own is bulkier than your average Hucard. It's the only HuCard I've seen that has this thick extra layer, but I wonder if there are any others like it.
I do wish that the Turbo had stayed with the cartridge format, because I prefer cartridges to CDs (no load times, more durable and fun to collect). Not to mention that Nintendo's N64 kept the cartridge format throughout the 1990s and into 2000, so it wasn't impossible or unheard of. But at the end of the day, NEC went with what would save money.
And they DID make a Rastan game for Turbografx, but it was Rastan II. And it's pretty terrible. I agree that the original Rastan is awesome and it would make a great addition to the Turbo.
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Post by turboxray on Oct 9, 2021 4:14:47 GMT
SF2 is just a simple mapper. It's as simple as the simplest rom mapper on the NES... because that's all it needs (you can make it out a few ICs). Also, there's nothing under the bump (not like the arcade card pro, which does), but the PCB is longer. The bump looks more impressive than just a longer PCB. But who knows.. maybe they had other plans for that form factor.
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gilbot
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 137
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Post by gilbot on Oct 9, 2021 7:07:27 GMT
There could be many reasons, but the IC shortage from around mid-to-late 80's made ROM car tds expensive. That's probably why early PCE games couldn't be larger than 2M bit (R-Type was the most obvious victim), even though there was no technical limitation to having 4 - 8M bit games. (This was also one of the main reason Nintendo released the Disk System for the Famicom.) Also, I think PCE's CPU's internal banking system can only manage at most 2MByte (16M bit) of memory right? So if you want to have a really large Hucard game (SFII') you'll need a memory mapper. By the time games really became large(e.g. the 16+ Mbit carts on the rival systems), the CD-ROM had already become a must-have standard add-on (if the release of the Duo family is not an obvious enough hint), and apart of load times and limitation on available buffer RAM, there were many more merits to release games on CD than on Hucards: 1. Much much large capacity 2. Cheaper to produce (if pressed in large quantity in a factory) than ROM cards (even though the cost had been lowered after the shortage) 3. Enhanced media presentation such as CDDA and voice acting made games more attractive 4. Copy protection, as there was no cheap way to pirate CD-ROMs from the late 80's to early 90's (unless you owned a factory). While nearly everyone today can rip and burn their own copies of these games this copy protection was very effective in the lifetime of the console So CD-ROM soon became the main media for PCE games, especially after the release of Super CD, which improved a lot the situation by adding more RAM, and there wasn't much point to release large games in Hucard format anymore. Edit: Didn't notice this thread has gone into the second page. I was many replying to the last post of the first page.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 9, 2021 12:42:10 GMT
Good point about NEC probably not sourcing ROMs outside their own supply chain.
As for SuperCD’s own advantages, again, two increasingly popular genres, brawlers and fighters, really benefitted from the larger ROMs vs CDs. SF2 was a case in point. Other PCE fighters felt pretty “small” until the ACD released. PCE brawlers tended to be more console-styled like Kunio-kun or with smaller characters (Double Dragon 2) or just poorly animated and mechanically simplistic (Riot Zone). And by the time the ACD came out there wasn’t enough market left for the PCE to make a brawler worthwhile.
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Post by sunteam_paul on Oct 9, 2021 12:53:57 GMT
Do you have a reference for this? I don't remember any mention of SFII using a special chip of any kind, merely that it had more storage than the norm.
Also, the answer to your opening question is obviously Rastan.
The SF2 Hucard that I own is bulkier than your average Hucard. It's the only HuCard I've seen that has this thick extra layer, but I wonder if there are any others like it.
If you rip the card apart, there's actually nothing in that lump. Populous also had one.
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Post by turboxray on Oct 9, 2021 21:22:04 GMT
Good point about NEC probably not sourcing ROMs outside their own supply chain. As for SuperCD’s own advantages, again, two increasingly popular genres, brawlers and fighters, really benefitted from the larger ROMs vs CDs. SF2 was a case in point. Other PCE fighters felt pretty “small” until the ACD released. PCE brawlers tended to be more console-styled like Kunio-kun or with smaller characters (Double Dragon 2) or just poorly animated and mechanically simplistic (Riot Zone). And by the time the ACD came out there wasn’t enough market left for the PCE to make a brawler worthwhile. ^ This. Even at that, Riot Zone failed to take advantage of the CD storage. While you had limited enemy types per area, nothing stopping them from making unique enemies per area. Instead they're recycled with just palette swaps like it's a cart game. And I can tell you that from hacking Riot Zone, that it doesn't use all of CD RAM either. I mean, sure there's not lot of memory left for noticeable extra frames but there are for making the enemies larger (like 33% or so). Can't go more frames? Go larger. Got more detail on the enemy. Go more unique detail/type/art per area. CD definitely helps in that respect. Riot Zone being just average is more to the development team and not top tier development optimized for CD RAM limitations. But yeah - they knew 64kbytes was crippling as soon as they started developing for CD games. Interviews say as much. But an extra 192kbytes wasn't much of an upgrade. I mean the Sega CD had a hell of a lot more than that. I still don't understand why they went with a 64kbyte + 128kbyte ram chip on the SuperCD card. Why wasn't this a single 256k or at least two 128k chips? An extra 64k doesn't sound like much, but in the term of sprites.. 64k is 512 16x16 sprite cells. In the terms of a brawler.. a typical enemy is like 3x4 = 12 cells. Round it up to the odd frame for 14 cells. 512 / 14 = 36 enemy frames. Each enemy has like 6 frames.. that like 6 extra unique/different enemies you can have in that area. So yeah, 256k vs 192k upgrade. 192k is such an oddball number. I just think Hudson/NEC didn't have great business sense when it came to some of their decisions (looking in from the outside). I mean, we do know from developer logs found in Art of Fighting that they had a working full 16megabit Arcade card proto in 1992 - so maybe the SuperCD ram was a stop-gap compromise. Who knows.. I wish Black Tiger had come out for the PCE. I like arcade games from that era, so the more the better. Gunsmoke, Avengers, Gondomania, etc. I mean, as long as they didn't turn out like Tiger Road.. ugh.
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 9, 2021 21:58:02 GMT
Again, the cost of memory was extremely high back then. It was falling, but at some point you have to finalize a specification, and the sales price is based on the bill of materials. As it was, 64KB of SRAM plus 64KB of DRAM was a substantial part of the overall costs of the original device, which went to market at a very expensive price point. 2 to 3 years later, the spec could be improved to be 192KB in the Duo system, because of falling prices - not because they made a mistake.
Everybody wanted the NeoGeo because of its memory, but nobody could afford one.
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Post by turboxray on Oct 9, 2021 22:16:17 GMT
2 to 3 years later, the spec could be improved to be 192KB in the Duo system, because of falling prices - not because they made a mistake. The dev interviews I've read, especially Far East of Eden 1, say otherwise hahah. They said they didn't realize just how limiting 64k was going to be until going into development, in relation to the advantages of the CD storage. The thing with ram, any all chip prices, is that they fall over time. Yeah, you need to finalize a spec but you also don't want box yourself into a limitation for 2-3 years simply because something like $10 initially breaks the budget? Again, the Genesis came out in 1988.. had 64k of system and that's just a cart system. The SNES has 128k of system ram. The MegaCD came out in 1991.. same time as the SuperCD and Duo. It has 768k of ram, an 8 channel pcm chip, another 68k processors, a special ASIC, a real CD to memory DMA chip, etc. I really doubt had the MegaCD been released in 1988 along with the system, they wouldn't have given it 64k of work ram.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 9, 2021 22:18:22 GMT
Yknow, Final Fight was an 8 meg cart in SNES. Though Final Fught is a pretty barebones and short brawler, I wonder why the PCE never really had a response to it.
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 9, 2021 22:49:47 GMT
2 to 3 years later, the spec could be improved to be 192KB in the Duo system, because of falling prices - not because they made a mistake. The dev interviews I've read, especially Far East of Eden 1, say otherwise hahah. They said they didn't realize just how limiting 64k was going to be until going into development, in relation to the advantages of the CD storage. Oh, they knew it would be limiting. But again, a device is spec'd to meet a price point... in order to make sales. They wanted a certain sales price on day 1 in 1989, so that consumers would actually buy it. ...And NEC wanted to make money on the hardware, because that's how the whole deal with Hudson had been structured - Nintendo and Sega could afford to sell at cost, but NEC couldn't. The whole developers thing... these machines were never made to cater to developers. Consoles were made based on what was available (which wasn't much). It was up to the developers to figure out what it could do - not to complain about what it couldn't. Perhaps some feedback from each generation was used to spec out the next generation, but that's about it. In response to spenoza's question about Final Fight... When the SuperFami came out, it was a huge redirection of resources: - Nintendo - especially in the USA - worked hard not just to obtain the rights to popular arcade games, but to make them exclusive. - partly in response to this, and partly because they saw the SuperFami as the next big thing, development teams redirected their efforts away from PC Engine toward Nintendo So really, much of the wind was taken out the sails of the PC Engine just by the mere existence of the SuperFami - and later the Saturn and Playstation. You can see the change in software availability sometime around late 1993... developers seemed to take that moment to say "let's finish this project and move off the console on to the next big thing". But if you're talking about the 1991 period, I think this was a miss - people may not have realized that fighters were a thing, until SF2 dominated the arcades.
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