/vr/ - Retro Games

Atari

shit thread by the way

>>3230691
Nintendo would have probably dominated
Sega would have continued to bicker between regions, SNK might have pulled something surprising though.
Dreamcast would have redeemed Sega later seeing as the PS2 wouldn't be around so the 6th gen would really have been fun to watch

>>3230694
> Atari

Lol. You say that like its obvious. You don't know shit about the subject but responded anyways, I bet.

what if i had a huge dick?

>>3230765
What if we both had huge dicks?

>>3230867
>>3230765
We can't all be Mike Matei

>>3230867
>>3230765
Well I guess OP would suck it then

>>3230897
>>3230884
>>3230867
YOU HAVE TO GO BACK

>>3230708
>Nintendo would have probably dominated
>expensive cartridges vs. cheap CDs

>>3231018
CDs are a shit medium when it comes to anything but storage space and cost.

And soon enough optical media will be objectively worse than solid state in every way.

>>3231117
what would be a better medium?

>>3231018
expensive console with cheap media vs cheap console with expensive media, could go either way tbf. Though Sega seemed to be in a better position to grab the Playstation audience, they'd have fucked it up and we probably would have seen a much smaller industry and neither console dominating.
>CDs are a shit medium when it comes to anything but storage space and cost.
And consumers and developers of the mid to late 90s made it very clear how much they valued those advantages.

>And soon enough optical media will be objectively worse than solid state in every way.
What's that got to do with the market in the 90s?

>>3230694
Atari fucked up when they didn't release the Panther

>>3231018
expensive console with cheap media vs cheap console with expensive media, could go either way tbf. Though Sega seemed to be in a better position to grab the Playstation audience, they'd have fucked it up and we probably would have seen a much smaller industry and neither console dominating.

>>3231117
>CDs are a shit medium when it comes to anything but storage space and cost.
And consumers and developers of the mid to late 90s made it very clear how much they valued those advantages.

>And soon enough optical media will be objectively worse than solid state in every way.
What's that got to do with the market in the 90s?

>>3233895
Cartridges were always the better medium. They naturally progressed to SD Cards.

>>3233927
>It's the Atari Panther poster again

The Sega Saturn was very popular in Japan in its first years, it even outsold the PS1 for a while. We would have a very strong competition to this day between Sega and Nintendo. The Dreamcast would have been a success.

PC. Playstation started to steal away RPGs and other games from the PC. Only reason we have XBOX right now. If Playstation wasn't around there would be a lot of Nintendo + PC cross platform games. If any at all.

If Nintendo had gone ahead with the Playstation deal and "sold their soul" or however the Nintendrones see it then they would have curb stomped Saturn or Neptune. Think even bigger than N64+Playstation sales because franchises wouldn't have gotten split up.

Sega would have still survived though and probably realized what needed to be done and signed THEIR souls away to Microsoft instead of just working along side them to produce Dreamcast.

We would have gone right back to the best-ever 4th gen console two-party system Nintendo Playstation vs Sega XBox and it would have been better that way than what we have instead.

>>3235049
Yeah its possible that nintendo might have went with a cd platform if it wasn't for sony

>>3237162
Or Philips

>>3233931
do you think a cartridge based console would work today?

If the playstation would have never reared its ugly head in december 1994 Arcades would have lived far longer. They might even be around today. Sega would probably still be in the home console market. Microsoft would probably never have entered with their shitty xbones turning consoles into low end PC's. IN SHORT THE WORLD WOULD BE A HAPPY PLACE FUCK SONY FOR THE BOTTOMLESS GREEDY BASTARDS THAT THEY ARE.

>>3238970
People glorify arcades. Why the fuck wouldn't you want to buy a game then play it as much as you like? Versus getting cucked quarter by quarter at the arcade. Arcades sucked. People just remember the games more fondly because they spent more money on beating them and they were shorter.

>>3238970
Arcades are dead in the States because Americans are casuals. Not because of the PlayStation. There's a reason there are still arcades in Japan.

>>3233927
>audio input
what
>dual headphone jacks
neat

>>3238987
Its about the social experience anon. It's good to go outside sometimes

>>3238987
>he uses continues

>>3241984
I thought it was the social network shovelware games and online only multiplayer games that were killing modern games. Your "social experience" can go fuck itself.

>>3238450
We're on the verge of consoles with fixed internal solid state storage.

A permanent cartridge.

>>3230691
Probably my sex life.

Way too many hours gaming with my friends instead of clubbing.

For reals though, probably Sega. There were a lot more possibilities with disk based systems. But then, if the Playstation wasn't around, would it have been because Nintendo actually went ahead with the CD system that became the PSX?

>>3242248
The true advantage of a cartridge is teh ability to make hardware changes to the console for a particular game. We saw this with the battery save systems on NES and later, and particularly in Star Fox with the Super FX chip.

SSDs behave the same as a disk. It's just a faster way to read/write.

>>3242248
That's a pretty retarded way of looking at things. Cartridges were a distribution medium, not just for storage. And and expensive one at that, offering little over the far cheaper CDs of the time. But that doesn't matter anyway because digital distribution is better than those things and always will be, something that Nintendo will have to accept if they want to survive the next 10 years.

>>3243106
>digital distribution

You mean paying £40 for some bits of data and no physical object whatsoever and no possibility of trade ins? Hm, sounds great to some im sure.

>>3243128
Enjoy your fried batteries, scratched/missing discs, corroded connectors, and losing them when you move.

>>3243152
I didn't say I liked cartridges either. Plus, if you keep stuff in good condition - I.E. not like a neckbeard- then yes, they last. We still have tapes and floppy disks that work fine 20-40 years later. Meanwhile when download servers eventually go down so does any possibility of downloading the game officially again.

>>3243158
>Meanwhile when download servers eventually go down so does any possibility of downloading the game officially again.
You can't buy NES cartridges officially anymore. Cartridges will go extinct before the roms of those games do.

>>3243170
The point is that if we take care of teh cart, it's ours forever. We can play it, trade it, sell, it turn it into a belt buckle...

>>3243170
see >>3243189

To move data on a cartridge you pick it up and move it to a different machine. To do so with a digital game you either put it on a disk/usb/physical (in which case proving the limitations) or redownload it, which can take hours in some cases.

>>3239031

>>3233927
If this had cd-rom, it would have been a rival for Amiga cd-32.
Which flopped.
No chance.

>>3243106
>offering little over the far cheaper CDs of the time
yeah, only near-non-existent seek times, memory mapping, durability, shock protection, you know, the most important things for game development and handling.
All the oh-so-hailed space of CDs was pissed away on CDDA and FMVs, with the actual game remaining being utter shit, because of excessive loading times or tiny memory footprint. You can blame CDs directly for the "cinematic experience" bullshit we're still having today. Games that are glorified interactive movies, instead of games.

Lets assume after Ninento pulled out on Sony, Sony just walked away from vidya for good.

With no Playstation, Sega wouldn't have re-engineered Saturn at the last minute, since many speculate Sega shitting their pants over Sony is what prompted the last minute changes. This alternate reality Saturn would have been a 2D powerhouse that would be hella easy to develop for. Nintendo would have stuck with their 3D tech and I can't imagine them not releasing the N64 we know and bicker about today (especially since many speculate Nintendo greatly under-estimated Sony).

RPG devs would have flocked to Sega as well as most Japanese developers. Meanwhile most western devs wouldn't have stuck with Nintendo and put up with N64's limitations and difficult development.

Sega may have won this battle between cheaper games and easier development. They wouldn't appeal to the mainstream as well as the Playstation did and gaming in general would remain a niche till Microsoft would enter the game in 2001.

>>3246224
>Sega wouldn't have re-engineered Saturn at the last minute

This was always a meme and not true. Sega never redesigned Saturn - it was always going to be a 3D console with some 2D capabilities.

All Sega did to response to PS1 was add an extra CPU to boost 3D performance and add an extra VDP to further boost 2D performance. Yes, Sega's response to Playstation was to further boost its 2D capabilities.

And that's hardly the only reason Saturn was hard to develop for. Without those extra chips, the Saturn would have just been plain underpowered.

>>3246267
Well, Japanese devs preferred CD's and Nintendo distribution issues in Europe was just as bad as Sega's (maybe even worse). I think Saturn would have survived if it was just Sega and Nintendo that gen.

>>3246283
Sega didn't have major distribution problems in Europe. For example, most G/MD games got released over there unlike SNES games.

Without putting the extra chips in the Saturn the console would have been more affordable to manufacture, which would have been a big plus. The console would have also had an 18 months start.

But I'm not sure if it's that simple. 3D was truly a big thing, and a single CPU/VDP Saturn would be producing graphics not much better than the 3DO and I think the N64's graphics would look practically a generation ahead of that. The Saturn's success would pretty much entirely be predicated on the market's taste for 2D games.

>>3246267
>All Sega did to response to PS1 was add an extra CPU to boost 3D performance and add an extra VDP to further boost 2D performance

If they hadn't done that though, they would have an under-powered console yes, however. wouldn't it have made it easier to develop for without the extra complexity? The most powerful console doesn't always win the war. And also without the last minute change wouldn't it have resulted in cost savings? Saturn's $400 price tag was quite steep in 1995. If it was more like $300 I could see it better competing against Nintendo.

>>3246343
>The most powerful console doesn't always win the war
Does it ever?

>>3246348
I know it will start a shit-storm here, but SNES

>>3246353
Neo Geo > SNES

>>3246353
I think PS4 is probably a better answer. The SNES arguably as well but I consider it to be equally powerful with the Genesis. Both consoles won in different regions (SNES wins Japan, USA was a tie and Mega Drive wins Europe).

>>3246353
SNES was deliberately designed to be underpowered and simple. That was its strength.
That's the thing, really. Power is meaningless, if the devs can't harness it efficiently. The systems getting the most dev support are usually the ones that allow a dev to rapidly prototype, develop and execute their games. Sure, you "could" do more with more power, but that's also a burden. Higher costs, more risk. The more powerful a system gets, the more limited the games end up being, as nobody's willing to, or able to, take the excessive risk of dumping huge amounts of money into wrestling the hardware for the potential of a game failing hard.

>>3246360
>I think PS4 is probably a better answer
That was more a coincidence and/or the competition producing junk, than actually the PS4 being the most powerful.

>>3246360
Is there any actual proof Sega won in Europe?

>>3246412
as console wars are largely made up, no

>>3246412
>Is there any actual proof Sega won in Europe?

Sega won outside of Japan actually. It's simple maths.

Genesis - 40 million sales worldwide. (4.3 million in Japan, 35.7 million outside of Japan)
SNES - 49 million sales worldwide (17 million in Japan, 32 million outside of Japan).

USA was approximately a tie for both (came down to about a ~100 000 difference there's argument on which side that 100k is). So the rest of the difference is pretty much made up by Europe.

>>3246417
Wiipedia says the system sold 8 million in Europe and has a citation to the CVG magazine.

>>3246363
It certainly helps that its competition was more expensive, less powerful and had packed in DRM. Also half of its features don't function outside of the US, so it's already gunning for a smaller market right out the gate.

>>3246417
>USA was approximately a tie for both
SNES won in North America by a large margin:

SNES: 22.88
Genesis: 16.98

http://www.vgchartz.com/analysis/platform_totals/

>>3246469
There's a good reason VGChartz is seen as a joke

>>3246476
>There's a good reason VGChartz is seen as a joke
Yes, there is: It doesnt favor Sega.

Any case, I would like to see the source of the "Snes tied with Genesis in USA" argument. VgChartz is a better source than absolutely nothing.

>>3246491
The reason it's seen as a joke is because it has the infamous 29 million global total

This is the global total taken just prior to Christmas 1994 - the SNES figure on the other hand is the final figure from the time they stopped selling Super Famicoms in 2001 or whatever.

There are few good sources but here's a decent one that compiles magazine scans

http://segatastic.blogspot.com.au/2009/12/mega-drive-sales-figures-update.html

>>3243404
Amiga CD-32 was unable to be released in the US at the time though

>>3246359
No duh.

>>3243404
It didn't need the CD-Rom. It was supposed to be released in 1991 alongside the SNES, where it would have toppled the SNES and quickly usurped the Genesis. It was just so much more powerful the shit it would have been doing would've been nuts in 91.

I don't know why there isn't more discussion about the system.

>>3251241
> Atari Panther poster shows up once again.

nintendo would still be the only normie console
xbox would have failed harder
probably good games would still be released today

I love the ps1 with all my heart too but it is only delusion to ignore what it had done right in so many ways. That said we would probably be further behind technologically when it came to consoles. Now everyone is on the same page and it sucks.

>>3251241

You underestimate just how unimportant "power" was back in 90's. Your argument fails at the moment you start arguing specs.

Video game mascots existed for a reason, marketing had a far greater impact on sales success than "power." The console space (especially pre-Playstation) was like the cereal aisle. You can have the most nutritious, healthy and highest value-per-dollar cereal on the shelf and it will still fail to get a fraction of the sales of the sugary crap with a cartoon rabbit on the cover.

In the early 90's if you didn't have Mario or Sonic then you had a steep hill to climb. The Panther would have flopped horribly.

Microsoft

How the hell do you run ePSX emulator? Keeps giving me an error when I run the bios