/vr/ - Retro Games

>>2792867
Dead? Maybe for consoles but still alive in arcades.

http://www.system16.com/museum.php?id=1

>>2792867
that design couldn't be more 90s american electroniics

>>2792886
It was a badass handheld, just watch. If some console did what this one did back in the day, I would buy it asap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kYx_byDWf0

>>2792894
So you would have brought a TurboExpress?

>>2792910
>TurboExpress
actually good styling, there

>symmetry
>non-stupid d-pad and buttons, unlike the nomad

>>2792918
>TurboExpress
>Due to a problem with cheap capacitors, sound failure is a frequent problem with the TurboExpress, sometimes even in new systems. The screen used in the TurboExpress was another source for problems, though it was state of the art when it was released. The LCD technology used was still fairly new and the rate of pixel failure was very high. Brand-new TurboExpress systems often had several bad pixels. Text is also difficult or impossible to read in certain circumstances, as many times fonts were written to be seen on a television screen, not on a small LCD screen. As a result, certain RPGs and adventure games can be difficult to play on the unit

>>2792923
i'm just talking about aesthetics

it was released so much earlier too, 1 year after gameboy and 5 before nomad, bretty gud for a handheld that plays the home console's media

The lack of anti piracy on the DC didn't help them. With the exception of the systems made near the end of its life you could just burn games to a regular CD even though DC games came on 1GB cds and they'd play just fine.

>>2792978
>The lack of anti piracy on the DC didn't help them.
DC has strong anti-piracy protection measures that are still uncracked as far as I know. MilCD is another issue entirely.

>>2792923
>Due to a problem with cheap capacitors
Yeah. Pretty much all electronics at the time used a shitty batch of chinese-produced capacitors, meaning they had a high failure rate (a common example of this is the Game Gear). Shitty capacitors are still a thing, and even non-retro consoles are impacted (eg, leaking clock capacitor in the original Xbox).
The "Ultra Durable Japanese Capacitors" you now see written on PC motherboard cases is a relic from this time.

Until Neo Geo Pocket, Turbo Express was the only handheld other than Game Boy that really worked for its intended purpose.

>>2793001
>DC has strong anti-piracy protection measures that are still uncracked as far as I know
...You know, the retail games were dumped out the broadband adapter of retail DCs right?

>>2792876

yeah, they're making some top notch arcade stuff these days

http://www.segaarcade.com/arcade/18

Best developers in the world ruined by the worst management in the world. That is the tragedy of SEGA.

>>2793027
>>2793001
Piracy only would have helped sell consoles and make money the way Sony did releasing mod chips. One of sega's problems was playing publisher on top of hardware manufacturer. Of course that isn't the only thing that killed them because this shit is like trying to chart the fall of Rome.

>>2792886
but isn't it Japanese?
afaik the design used in Japan was the same (unlike NES/SNES)

>>2793060
Nomad was only released in North America IIRC. Presumably SoA designed it.

>>2793037
>arcade versions of phone games
;_;7 Rest in RIP

>>2793061
Ah, yes. I thought it was the Game Gear for a while there. I get them mixed up sometimes (I own neither, so)

>>2792867
>Why did Sega´s hardware branch had to die? ;_; they were actually making cool consoles, so unlike Nintendo
because they made a bunch of shit that nobody wanted and it all flopped. they literally released too much junk and lost the trust of the public because there was so much hardware that they ended up not supporting. when they FINALLY released something truly great again after the Genesis (the Dreamcast) nobody trusted them anymore and they finally croaked because nobody bought it.

>>2793097
This. They add-on'd and constantly redesigned themselves to death.

Then again they could have simply faded away like the PCE/TG16 did if they had taken fewer risks. At least Sega burned brightly in their time.

The actual reason for Sega's downfall of their hardware branch was that they did without broad advertising, unlike Nintendo for example. They didn't want to be the company that places annoying ads everywhere. Pretty cool attidude actually, but what consumers did is that they penalised Sega by not buying their product.

People are just ad slaves and are easily manipulated by marketing and buy products even though their quality is inferior. Off course it's a matter of taste, but you could have had a Dreamcast while nintendo still had 64.

>>2793097
Fuck that, the Dreamcast sold significantly better than the Wii U. Peter Moore deserting to Microsoft had a far worse impact on the company than any of their hardware iterations ever had.

>>2793027
Yeah, but there's still no way of booting that code without repackaging it as milcd. At least as far as I know (my experience is dated and predate stuff like flashing custom BIOSes, or installing a GDemu).

>>2793128
>Dreamcast sold significantly better than the Wii U
More people have already bought Wii U than the number of Dreamcasts that exist in the world.

>>2793125
I think you might not be American if you think Sega didn't advertise like hell. Aggressive advertising, at that.

>Genesis does what Nintendon't

>SEGA!

>>2793138
over one million more Wii U sold than total existing Dreamcasts, btw

>>2793125


This: >>2793141

Sega advertised like fuck.

I'm from south american and traveled to USA in 1994, I remember on TV every single ad was for Sega Genesis, I don't remember any Nintendo TV ad except for multiplat games, which centered on the Sega Genesis and only at the end of the commercial it mentioned it was also on Super Nintendo.

I always loved Sega, but I think their advertising, especially their american advertising, was ridiculous and annoying.

>>2793138
I assume what he means is that the Dreamcast sold more units in its lifetime than the Wii U has in the same amount of time. From the Japanese launch to being discontinued was about 22 months. Only 17 in the west.

>>2792978
I can't bring myself to agree with this. As I remember, most people weren't even aware of this back then, nobody I knew with a dreamcast was playing pirated games.

The Playstation on the other hand... Piracy was RIFE and I mean seriously everyone I knew had a 'chipped' Playstation in the late 90's and it only helped to fuel the consoles popularity.

You can't say it was this or that single thing that made sega fail in the console business. It was a result of a decade of bad decisions and internal instability following the release of the mega drive/genesis that caused their downfall.

Sony on the other hand made very good decisions and created consoles that people wanted to buy and developers wanted to make games for and in doing so ensured sega's demise

>>2793128
>Fuck that, the Dreamcast sold significantly better than the Wii U
wow what a successful console

>>2792876
>still alive
>arcades
wut

But in all seriousness it looks like all they do is use Windows specs which isn't impressive by any means given Sega's history with Arcade boards.

>>2792867
sega is shit and they died accordingly

>>2793150
>I assume what he means is that the Dreamcast sold more units in its lifetime than the Wii U has in the same amount of time
thats really not saying much m8

>>2793157
Not the guy you replied to.

I guess it depends where you lived at that time. In my country it was a well known fact. (1/4 of my games were burned). It was even possible to play SNES game roms, had a large collection on a CD.

>>2793150
Wii U apparently sold 10.73M worldwide in 34 months, 306.6K/mo.

Dreamcast sold 9.13M worldwide ever, and was officially discontinued after 28 months in March 2001, however:

>Sega also announced a Dreamcast price reduction to $99 to eliminate its unsold inventory, which was estimated at 930,000 units as of April 2001.

So let's subtract that from the 9.13M. That's 291.8K/mo.

Wii U has outsold Dreamcast on an average per-month basis worldwide for the entire retail lifetime of the Dreamcast.

>>2793165
wow what a shitpost

>>2793168
/vr/ is especially shit today, any particular reason?

>>2793171
To emphasize, that's despite the Dreamcast being liquidated at clearance prices and the Wii U still selling at full price and not even lose to being discontinued yet.

I love Sega and Dreamcast but we should never pretend it was even close to a sales success.

>>2792867
>NES
>SNES wasn't cool
>Gameboy wasn't cool
>Gameboy Color wasn't cool
>Gameboy Advance (SP) wasn't cool
>Gamecube wasn't cool
>3DS isn't cool

I'll give you that the N64 wasn't all it could have been, with shit controllers and the constraints of cartridge format (yeah loading was faster but I'd be all fine with load times if the games were much bigger), and the library was kind of meh (to me), and the Wii wasn't greatly appealing (though Virtual Console is a great salespitch), but don't shit on Nintendo for Sega fucking up.

The 32X was ill-conceived and cost Sega money and consumer trust they couldn't afford, and hurt the chances of the Saturn, which in my opinion didn't quite get the chance it should have (great system nonetheless).

The CDX and Nomad were cool though (even though the Nomad was a battery monster).
The Gamegear should have had a monochrome screen so it could compete in cost and battery life with the Nintendo Gameboy.
If there wasn't a peripheral for the Genesis to let you play Gamegear games, like the Super Gameboy, there should have been.

>>2793037
Fuck you, air hockey kicks ass!

>>2793125
>Sega didn't advertise
Superlative keks.

>people are just slaaaves, man
Lol underage b&

>>2793224
Don't forget how Sega of America brilliantly marketed the Sega CD as the perfect system for interactive music videos and B-movie FMVs. The blasted idiots.

>OP laments Sega's (admittedly regrettable) console death
>Posts picture of their most hackneyed attempt outside the 32X

Goddamnit, OP.

In my opinion, Sega should never have released the 32X or Nomad. Dump the 32X funds into the MegaCD, dump the Nomad funds into a better handheld, and for fuck's sake try and stick with the Saturn another year or two minimum.

If they had done those things, I do not believe they would have folded during the Dreamcast era.

>>2793235

And that's always the root of the problem, isn't it? The management of Sega as a whole was dysfunctional beyond belief. There is no saving a company from that.

>>2793157

People who try and attribute Sega's "final nail" (so to speak) to piracy are fucking adorable. It reflects such a creatively cherry-picked way of thinking that I pretty much assume at that point they've lost all touch with reality.

>>2793243
Hindsight, 20/20, etc

>>2793125

Garbage post.

>>2793249

Yeah, but some of those problems (like the 32X) were completely foreseeable, even back then.

>>2793224
The Nomad wasn't really meant to run on batteries (just like the MegaJet), and the battery pack was an optional peripheral.

>>2793257
Yeah, I think pretty much everyone went "Wait, what? Are you sure you want to do THIS?" when the 32X came out.

They should have put the chips in the cartridges and released Genesis compatible games as the "32X line" or "Genesis Ultra", give them another color or a little red diod that lights up as it's powered, just to differentiate them.

The idea of having to only buy the chips once as a peripheral seems like it wouldn't be bad, but the unit was just too expensive to justify it's meek library of (proprietary) games.

>>2793235
The Sega CD wasn't even that bad, they should have just looked at FMV games for what they were, a dumb fad, and then push for more real games (though the CD library is without question superior to the 32X library).

>>2793284
The Nomad was kinda just quasi portable, more meant as a mobile compact unit, it could be hooked up to a TV like a normal Genesis, the screen for portable gaming was just really a bonus.

What I complained about was the Gamegear, it didn't really have the best screen, they should have gone monochrome for better contrast, which at the same time would have brought price down and improved battery life, making it more competitive with the Gameboy, which had a supreme advantage over the Gamegear due to being so much cheaper and lasting so much longer.

You could still have great games with 8 shades of gray, a backlit screen and a contrast dial.

>>2793305
So the Game Gear should have been a Gameboy copycat because we know now his successful the Gameboy was? And disregard every sense of SG1000 / SMS history?

>>2793286
$150 per game, sure, what a wonderful idea

>>2793286
Sega CD wasn't bad, no. But the library was quite poor, particularly in the US where it was diluted with the crap that Sega was actively advertising.

SoA could have sold it as offering "film-quality" animation, orchestrated music, and enough storage space to accommodate "epic" games, but instead they went full pop and low-brow. Night Trap? Make My Video INXS? Kriss Kross? Working Designs had to publish the Lunar games. Sega could have and should have published that themselves, and promoted the heck out of it. They should have also had Sonic CD ready for launch.

>>2793135
Yeah, but nobody said it was the GD ROMS they said DC was not very secure, which it wasn't. Theoretically, the discs should have been next to impossible to get the data off of but the broadband adapter was compromised, allowing the game data to actually be dumped. This was even more significant than the burn and boot element. The two combined, being cracked so early in the lifespan add up to an inadequately secure console

>>2793049
Why does some retard never fail to actually believe this? Do you even TRY to think things through? Why aren't console games just free then?

>>2793335

>Why aren't console games just free then?

You could use the same logic on libraries or rental outlets, you mongoloid.

>>2793348
Because so many libraries offer video games, right?

>>2793157
I know it's not what made them fail, I just said it certainly didn't help them. Learn to read faggot

>>2793335
>Why aren't console games just free then?
Yeah, that's a bit of a stretch. The point is piracy does drive sales (a lot) and it's been demonstrated quite a bit by now - but you still need to actually sell stuff to make a profit, sure. Piracy essentially acts similarly as price anchoring / Weber's law in marketing terms.

>>2793335
>Yeah, but nobody said it was the GD ROMS they said DC was not very secure, which it wasn't.

Well, the discussion started with that:

>The lack of anti piracy on the DC

and yes, there are anti-piracy measures on the Dreamcast. It's no Sega CD nor TurboGrafx. People seem to have a misconception about it, since it became so easy and transparent to run MilCD stuff on the console.

>>2793480
Is this meant for anyone in particular?

>>2793317
Did Doom or Starfox cost 150 dollars on launch? Legit question.

I assume you would have to buy all the other guts of the 32X with each game.

>>2793097
pretty much, when Sega decided to stop supporting everything as soon as the Saturn released, trust in them died (also, the 32X didn't help one bit)

and then the Saturn was barely even fucking supported in the US, go look at the list of games we got for the thing over here
that $400 price tag was pretty obnoxious too
the early US launch killed any momentum the system might have been able to obtain

and then the DC didn't save Sega because they were bleeding money just trying to actually support the thing while the PS2 was about to arrive
shit sold pretty damn well, at least early on (had one of the best performing console launches)

>>2793224
color wasn't the battery drain on the GG, the power-hungry bulb for the display was
there's LED mods for the display that massively improve the system's battery life

>If there wasn't a peripheral for the Genesis to let you play Gamegear games
biggest issue with that is that the Game Gear VDP can address 4096 colors
the Genesis VDP can only address 512
could have been doable still, with the VDP on cart and it plugs into the TV

>>2793538
Well what I was thinking is that I've seen a lot of Gamegears and Lynxes with faded out and hard to see screens (which apparently happens as you play it over the years), while Gameboy screens stand up for much much longer (my pocket still looks fine)

>>2793313
>So the Game Gear should have been a Gameboy copycat because we know now his successful the Gameboy was?
Couldn't have hurt, and the Gameboy became a megahit pretty fast iirc, they'd have plenty of time to ape that.

>>2793551
These devices were designed to last about 5 years at most. That they still work is but a happy accident I'd you will. Of course, they suffer now from both aging and comparison to recent technologies.

>>2793536
EB sold it for $60 as part of a promotional event. Unsure what the usual price was other than that. Nintendo and/or EB probably decided to reduce their margins here, and focus on volume of units sold (flood the market).

Keep in mind that the SuperFX is a "cheap" chip to begin with (it doesn't do much). The SVP much more capable and already was significantly more expensive… The 32X is even much much more powerful than that (and is also an excuse to provide another video output for more colors, which would have been impractical to have on a cartridge especially in countries were RGB isn't widespread).

>>2793562
I'd > if. Fucking phone.

>>2793574
>The SVP much more capable and already was significantly more expensive…
So make a not quite as powerful and cheaper chip to put in cartridges?

It's not like most of the 32X games made the greatest use out of it. I mean, Ecco the Dolphin looks almost exactly the same I remember.

And Doom could have been better, but it was rushed as fuck.
It might as well have been on a Genesis cart with a Super FX tier chip in it and rendering floors and ceilings as flat colors.

>>2793685
>It's not like most of the 32X games made the greatest use out of it. I mean, Ecco the Dolphin looks almost exactly the same I remember.

It probably looks the exact same because there never was a 32x Ecco game. There was Kolibri by the same team though.

>It might as well have been on a Genesis cart with a Super FX tier chip in it and rendering floors and ceilings as flat colors.

I'm sure that with the SVP, Doom could've been done on the Megadrive much better than on the SNES. You'd only be limited by map size and monsters, since you can only fit so much in the 4mb cart. Someone did a near-perfect Wolfenstein port on a stock Megadrive, without any SVP chips. The only limitation is that you couldn't fit all episodes in the cart, but if you had the sourcecode, you could possible edit the maps to make more efficient use of the Megadrive.

>>2793685
Again, hindsight, and all that. Sega's was a driving force in tech back then, only rivaled by the likes of NEC (of which the Sega CD is an answer) and similar. Nintendo? Not so much, they didn't care nor had the skills to do so (which is ironically also why they're still around).
When Sega wanted to showcase a graphical powerhouse, they just went all in, and had both incredible successes and spectacular failures after taking high risks. In the end a very large part of that shaped the industry we know today, especially when it comes to 3D.

>>2793736
>there never was a 32x Ecco game
I guess I'm thinking of the CD one?
I recall people complaining that it was pretty much exactly the same aside from redbook audio.

>There was Kolibri by the same team though.
Oh yeah, it felt very similar in concept.

>I'm sure that with the SVP, Doom could've been done on the Megadrive much better than on the SNES.
Oh no doubt, we're literally looking at more powerful hardware here. But they just rushed it and didn't make the greatest of it.

>Someone did a near-perfect Wolfenstein port on a stock Megadrive, without any SVP chips
Oh? Was it like a homebrew? Can I find a rom of it somewhere?

>>2793760
>I guess I'm thinking of the CD one?
I guess so. Ecco on the 32X was just a FMV demo (a Cinepak proof of concept) and nothing more, no game engine at all. It was canned.
https://youtu.be/OHQAJyPinyY?t=2s

>Oh? Was it like a homebrew? Can I find a rom of it somewhere?
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?25663-wolfenstein-3d-demo-for-sega-genesis
There's a 32X one as well.

>>2793851
I found the Genesis rom, it's amazing, aside from the resolution and display, it's just like the PC version, great stuff, better than the SNES port (which, to be fair, was what it was due to circumstance, id rushed it out in a hurry because they had to and were anxious to get back to work on Doom). It even has mouse support, how amazing isn't that?
How's the 32X brew? Even better?

You know, someone should homebrew a proper Doom for the 32X, maybe base it on Final Doom just for variation, the best maps from TNT Evilution, and with proper effort put into making it's music sound good on the system.
You'd have to condense it, but I think it could be done.

>>2793041
Not to mention that they literally cut off their ear to spite their face with how Japan purposely shunned Sega of America.

>>2793061
It's true, Japan and Europe got the Mega Jet, the same thing minus a screen (and maybe battery slots).

>>2793097
>>2793116

I was under the impression that Sega used the flawed notion that the home market, like the arcade market, demanded continual hardware improvements, and aimed to match this goal. This led to just making too much crap. At one point there was support for master system, genesis, game gear, Saturn, Pico, Sega CD, 32X, and promises of Neptune. Even if there was clear overlap (IE. Genesis, Nomad, Neptune) it produced a lot of confusion for buyers and developers. Nintendo beat them there in keeping things simple: buy super nintendo for home and game boy for on the go.

I will say though, any kid who was crazy rich would have had a fucking dreamland with Sega in the 90s. All those hardwares, maybe even some of their badass arcades, he would have been the envy of any kid. And now we can live that dream ourselves, so thanks for being crazy fucks, Sega hardware.

>>2792876
>http://www.segaarcade.com/arcade/18
Yeah that's not really... "sega hardware" anymore. It's just a PC in a case surrounded by a cabinet. Not very impressive compared to what they used to do. Although, it's literally how the progression goes no one makes their own hardware anymore because it would be prohibitively more expensive.

>>2793756
>Sega's was a driving force in tech back then, only rivaled by the likes of NEC (of which the Sega CD is an answer) and similar. Nintendo? Not so much, they didn't care nor had the skills to do so (which is ironically also why they're still around).

The only time I would ever say NEC was a driving innovative force in console technology was with the original PCE-CD and the PCE GT, both incredible achievements from 1988. But the SNES was more capable than anything NEC released prior to the PC-FX in 1994, including the SuperGrafx with CD and arcade card. In fact, since SNES could do hardware rotation and scaling and the Genesis (and PC Engine) couldn't, Sega CD's inclusion of this hardware was playing catch-up with Nintendo.

>>2793929
There was a pretty long period of overlap between NES and SNES in the US, given how popular the NES was here (unlike SMS).

>>2793960
>SNES could do hardware rotation and scaling
only backgrounds with few tiles doe

>>2793929
>I was under the impression that Sega used the flawed notion that the home market, like the arcade market, demanded continual hardware improvements, and aimed to match this goal

That's an interesting way of looking at it, I never thought about it like that before. Obviously it made sense and worked perfectly in arcades, Model 2 and 3 were light years ahead of their competition.

>>2793929
Legit, though with their Genesis-centric focus with all those pre-Saturn add-ons and compatible systems, they really hitched all their wagons to a dying star. All it took was one generation change for their entire Genesis-centrist business to implode.

>>2792867
im just sayin...

>>2792867
>low battery light on
It must have taken him 2 or 3 minutes to pose this shot.

>>2794043
kek

The Nomad was cool. That doesn't mean it was a good portable console. Those cutting edge features came at a price.

>>2793917
How hard is it to homebrew for the 32X?

Could I convert edited TNT evilution maps to a format the 32X port would easily understand, or would I be better off making a brand new port from the ground up?

Know almost nothing of developing or programming beyond some tinkering with ZDoom btw.

Would it be better if I just made a Boom style mapset with the tnt.wad as the iwad and just make my own levels and possibly reaching a wider audience?

>>2792867
Sega does what Nintendont.

>>2793063
>tfw going to Game Works two years ago expecting to see all my favorite arcade games only to get bombarded with arcade conversions of Flappy Bird and Bejewled

>>2793125
So did Devilman get a faithful anime adaptation that goes past volume 2 in your bizarro universe?

>>2797582
>Flappy Bird
>in an arcade cabinet
wot

>>2799268
Yeah. There's also a Fruit Ninja one, a Temple Run one, etc. This is what "arcade gaming" is now.

>>2792876
Sega was slots and arcade to begin with, and arcade is still wildly popular in Japan. Also helps that Sammy, the other half of their holdings company, is arcade as well.

>>2799316
Those are redemption games, which have been around for a while. The biggest problem with modern arcade video is that rail shooters and driving games seem to be the only popular genres. There are still several good offerings, particularly from Namco (Dark Escape, Mach Storm, Time Crisis 5)

>>2799316
I can deal with Fruit Ninja, that has actual gameplay doesn't it?

nintendo was for white people, sega was for black people

>>2799364
>nigga didn't have both a snes AND a genesis
You're a busta anon, straight busta.

>>2799364
>>>/pol/

>>2799360
About as much gameplay as scrolling on this web page using your smartphone, yes

>>2792923

it was also expensive as fuck compared to other handhelds at the time.

>>2799870
Oh.
I was under the impression that you had to time shit and angle things.

>>2799364
>Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, when I was dead broke man I couldn't picture this