gilbot
Punkic Cyborg
Posts: 137
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Post by gilbot on Oct 10, 2021 3:30:23 GMT
About the relatively small RAM update in Super CD I think I've posted this before. The developers had actually confirmed to increase the amount of RAM to 4Mbit for their next killer game (Far East of Eden II), but then this was banned by the higher ups, citing that if they went with 4Mbit the add-on card will be 10,000 yen+, so as a compromise 2Mbit was chosen.
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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 10, 2021 16:52:09 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.
Final Fight could have been done on the Hucard. They made SF2 on the Hucard pretty much as good as the SNES version, if not better. But in 1993 by the time it was released, the Turbografx was pretty much dead.
I remember the game stores back then had a few Hucard Turbo games, but they were hard to find. I saw Parasol Stars and always wanted that game but my parents never bought it.
By 1992, they were getting very rare. I remember that Air Zonk was released with no case, only a box and a game inside. Maybe they ran out of money to afford manufacturing them by then.
Another game that I think should have been made for the Turbo HuCard is XEXYZ. It was by Hudson Soft, and it even had the sped-up Bonk theme in it (a bonus room section of the game). I would love to see a homebrew port of this game because it's one of my favorite NES games.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 10, 2021 18:06:16 GMT
Final Fight came out on SNES in 90/91 JP/US. Sega responded with a new IP that crushed it (Streets of Rage). Hudson and NEC sat on their thumbs and let the genre pass them by.
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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 10, 2021 18:16:00 GMT
Final Fight came out on SNES in 90/91 JP/US. Sega responded with a new IP that crushed it (Streets of Rage). Hudson and NEC sat on their thumbs and let the genre pass them by.
Another problem was the Turbografx 16 had only one control port and very limited button scheme. Good for shooters but not so good for fighting games. But simpler titles like the Kunio Kun games would have been a great fit for the system.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 10, 2021 18:49:32 GMT
Another problem was the Turbografx 16 had only one control port and very limited button scheme. Good for shooters but not so good for fighting games. But simpler titles like the Kunio Kun games would have been a great fit for the system. You mean the Kunio Kun games that support 2 players? I don’t see any reason why the Turbo needed “simpler” games. Hell, a 2-button controller is perfect for a good brawler.
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Post by turboxray on Oct 10, 2021 19:17:15 GMT
Final Fight came out on SNES in 90/91 JP/US. Sega responded with a new IP that crushed it (Streets of Rage). Hudson and NEC sat on their thumbs and let the genre pass them by.
Another problem was the Turbografx 16 had only one control port and very limited button scheme. Good for shooters but not so good for fighting games. But simpler titles like the Kunio Kun games would have been a great fit for the system.
I see this mentioned a LOT. This honestly was never an issue I even thought about BITD. I mean who didn't have a TAP though BITD haha? Every TG16/Duo gamer in my circle of friends had one. I mean, if it a game supported it and it was awesome, you have bought a TAP. Did it suck to initially spend $20? Yes. Did we do it anyway? Yes. And we justified it by the fact that we weren't just paying for an extra port.. but 4 extra ports. If you wanted to play games that supported more than two controllers on the NES/Genesis/SNES, you had to buy a multiport adapter anyway. To put things into perspective; if you wanted any sort of autofire, you had to buy a special (or 3rd party) gamepad for the other systems. I think I spent like $30 for the NES advantage... just for the option of turbo fire. No one seems to bat an eye at that. But the TG16/Duo came with autofire out of the box. Also, the Genesis has the same number of buttons as the TG16. Button 'A' is almost exclusively an auxiliary button just like select or run. When playing SOR games, it calls the special attack - it's not something you spam or need quick action on. That functions the same on the TG16 controller. It's been a while, but I don't remember Final Fight in the arcade or snes port requiring more than two action buttons. We are talking about brawlers and not fighting games right? BTW since we're talking about the Final Fight series on SNES.. both FF2 and FF3 are very easily doable on the PCE. I was looking at both games in the debugger for bsnes, and they just use 16x16 and 32x32 sprite setup. When it comes to that setup, it literally makes the sprite capability of that of the PCE. The PCE also has 1up on the snes, because the PCE isn't limited to two 16k banks for sprites like the snes is (and sprites can't cross those banks). There's minimal parallax too in those games. Totally doable ports/styles.
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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 10, 2021 22:31:24 GMT
BTW since we're talking about the Final Fight series on SNES.. both FF2 and FF3 are very easily doable on the PCE. I was looking at both games in the debugger for bsnes, and they just use 16x16 and 32x32 sprite setup. When it comes to that setup, it literally makes the sprite capability of that of the PCE. The PCE also has 1up on the snes, because the PCE isn't limited to two 16k banks for sprites like the snes is (and sprites can't cross those banks). There's minimal parallax too in those games. Totally doable ports/styles. I'd totally be down with a conversion of the Final Fight series to Hucard.
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Post by spenoza on Oct 11, 2021 17:47:12 GMT
This discussion of ROM sizes is a bit ironic since the SuperGrafx game Daimakaimura was either the first or one of the first 8 meg cartridge games. I guess by the time 8 meg was the norm few developers were planning complex games for HuCard, and the market for those HuCards was shrinking, despite all Duos retaining the HuCard slot. I do still think not veering to hard away from HuCards could have bought a little more market life, at least in Japan. Give those reluctant to upgrade to CDs a use for their little Core units. Not like HuCard games couldn't still look good, sound good, and play well. They just needed a little room to grow.
And on that note, how hard would it be to develop a physical alternative memory mapper to the SF2 mapper for homebrew HuCards? Is the circuitry and logic basic enough to be cheap to produce (comparatively)?
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 11, 2021 20:51:11 GMT
That 8 meg cartridge game sold for 10900 yen… double what most carts were at the time. When the bubble was showing its first signs of bursting.
The mapper could be done, but not cheaply. And it would either use BGA devices (hard to assemble) or not fit on a cart. If you were to commit to a production run in the thousands, you might be able to get the total cost of production down to $40-$50, not including up-front costs.
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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 12, 2021 16:02:57 GMT
Another game I was thinking about is Little Samson by Taito. That would be a great Turbo platformer.
Also, Clash at Demonhead.
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Post by elmer on Oct 12, 2021 18:13:26 GMT
And on that note, how hard would it be to develop a physical alternative memory mapper to the SF2 mapper for homebrew HuCards? Is the circuitry and logic basic enough to be cheap to produce (comparatively)? The logic is simple enough that something roughly-compatible *might* be possible with a small 8mm x 7mm TSSOP GAL, but I have no idea how you'd program the darned thing. Even if it worked, would you really want a cart that would self-destruct (i.e. lose the GAL programming) in about 20 years? If homebrew authors want to create *huge* games, then the SF2 mapper (and a much better one as well) is already available inside the Turbo Everdrive v2.
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 12, 2021 18:44:58 GMT
How does the Everdrive recognize that the mapper should be used - based on ROM size ? (I recall we disassembled a fair bit of it, but I don't recall seeing that section)
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Post by spenoza on Oct 12, 2021 18:54:00 GMT
And on that note, how hard would it be to develop a physical alternative memory mapper to the SF2 mapper for homebrew HuCards? Is the circuitry and logic basic enough to be cheap to produce (comparatively)? The logic is simple enough that something roughly-compatible *might* be possible with a small 8mm x 7mm TSSOP GAL, but I have no idea how you'd program the darned thing. Even if it worked, would you really want a cart that would self-destruct (i.e. lose the GAL programming) in about 20 years? If homebrew authors want to create *huge* games, then the SF2 mapper (and a much better one as well) is already available inside the Turbo Everdrive v2. Homebrew authors on the PC Engine already have a small audience. Limiting yourself to Everdrive owners shrinks that market further (by how much it's hard to say, however). If a mapper were able to be manufactured on a board very cheaply it would allow for larger HuCard games to be manufactured and sold to anyone with a console with a HuCard slot. I don't know what kind of practical difference in market size and resulting sales that would actually make, though. But it sounds like that's not a thing that will make sense to try for, I guess. Homebrewers will either want to rely on emulators and Everdrives for larger HuCard titles or limit themselves to CD or 8 meg carts, which is pretty much as it has been all along. Of course, now I'm questioning if someone could make a mapper card go-between, sort of a GameGenie-like passthrough device that just has a mapper in it. That would probably be an even WORSE idea! But bad ideas are sorta like my specialty.
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Post by turboxray on Oct 13, 2021 2:51:10 GMT
Well, you have the Turbo Everdrive, the SSDS3, the SHD3 pro, MisTer.. mednafen.. (anything else?). Last I checked, mednafen supported 68megabits with the mapper. I'm not sure about the SSDS3/SSHD3 but probably available with an update (depending if it has enough ram to simulate that much rom access). I built a working SF2 compatible mapper. You mostly just needs a register chip to hold the settings (address lines), a way to select/test a few address lines, line decoder, the write line, some combinational truth logic. I basically had a hucard with a PCB extension attached to it BITD that I could place whatever dip chips I wanted (in this case, I had 74x logic chips). I'm not up to times on what's available for GALs equivalent nowadays, but I thought Dave Shadoff had located a small FPGA/GAL like device that was cheap? I can't remember the name of it. Are you guys talking about production boards or just dev boards?
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Post by dshadoff on Oct 13, 2021 4:21:55 GMT
Anything made for 5V logic is high current draw, not so easy to program, and getting very difficult to find (and expensive... or you can get suspicious refurbs from China that I would be wary of using in a hobby project, let alone something for somebody else).
Anything made for 3.3V logic has other complexities... but some have single-supply and internal flash (like MachXO2 series). These would need level-shift chips... and all are sold out for several months. Some for over a year in advance at this time. These "cheap" FPGA devices are still over $5 each, and the level-shift increases cost, complexity and board area. And you still need the memory devices... but in such a board you could now use 3.3V logic, which means larger capacities are available at reasonable prices (but maybe not as cheap as you think).
My thinking is that limiting yourself to a specific subset - HuCard users - is limiting the audience. Especially if the HuCard shape isn't "just so"... NEC devices all cover a portion of the HuCard with the case... this varies (one or two are over 50%). This is tricky because you need to check every device, if you're going to have any "bump" greater than the original HuCards. And then there's the Analogue Duo which isn't out yet... the cart slot looks like it'll be narrow, and it's not clear what it'll accept.
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