/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6209378
Because SEGA Japan was completely retarded.

32X was going to be an entire new console that was to be released months before the Saturn

>>6209386
SEGA of America are not geniuses either to be fair
>OK so we gotta get more games for the SEGA CD
>Oh I know fuck lobbying for more video games lets just get Marky Mark

>>6209378
>and effectively grab the SNES by the balls
Because it'd still be an expensive add-on that costs the same as a new system.
Didn't work for the 32X. More colors alone wouldn't have been a selling point at the time, people actually wanted FMVs because it was new tech, digital videos, the future.

>>6209401
By the time the 32X is out the entire ship has sailed, the Saturn is already out in Japan.
MEGA CD still had some breathing space
1991 JPN
1992 US
1993 EU

>>6209415
But it's still an add-on for a system that's still 16-bit. At least the 32X had the actual generation leap with the 32 Bit and having games like Virtua Fighter on it.

>>6209401
as a kid i thought FMV was the coolest shit

>>6209420
It's funny how something that has become so trivial we basically don't even think about it anymore was so mind-blowing back then.

>>6209418
Solving the color palette issue kind of secures the Mega Drive/GENESIS ground on all fronts though
>Regular MD CPU is still more powerful than SNES and PC ENGINE
>Color Palette either better or equal to SNES
>CD Sound & Space
>Potentially additional ram
Seems like a more wise choice

>>6209420
The novelty wore out kind of quickly also the only FMV games I enjoyed were games such as Road Avenger,Night Trap etc who the hell liked Marky Mark let alone who with a SEGA CD would even care about INXS

>>6209420
>>6209427
>i was a bugman before bugman was even a thing

>>6209435
It still doesn't solve the issue of it being an (expensive) add-on. Also loading times, Sega CD loadings are slow.

>>6209661
Newer systems have just as long loading times or longer.

>>6209667
Modern people are just cucked into accepting it, back then loading times were a major turnoff for people who were used to arcades or consoles, only home computer nerds knew loading times existed.

>>6209435
>>Color Palette either better or equal to SNES
>MD: 4,096
>SFC: 32,768
Nope.

>>6209386
Sega of Japan wasn't retarded. It was Sega of America that refused to let go of the Mega Drive and pushed 10 addons and put the Genesis in every fucking device ever.

>>6209391
I'd take a 32x over a Sega CD anyday. Like most said, Sega of Japan hated seeing Sega of America taking over with the Genesis, so the Saturn was made in Japan while the 32X was made in America. In my opinion, Sega of Japan should have given the 32X time to develop and wait until 1996 to release. You need at least a year and a half of fun time with add-ons.

>>6209378
>>6209418
>>6209661
>>6209670
In Japan the PCE-CD format got good sales, great dev support and almost completely overtook PC Engine development over HuCARDs after ~1992-1993.
The Mega CD was the direct answer to the PCE-CD and did a lot more to improve the base hardware but also had shit dev support so it's no wonder it never caught on anywhere.
The best hardware in the world doesn't matter when there are barely any good games on it.

>>6210470
One of the main goals of the MEGA CD in Japan was to bring more J-RPGs to the SEGA platform again solving the color palette makes hell of a lot more sense then throwing in some new CPU with rotation effects.
Again I don't understand how one of their main goals is J-RPGs and the system somehow ends up with a new CPU and fuck tons of RAM. Meanwhile Sega of America instead of lobbying for more bankable software such as Final Fight CD(how about King of Dragons CD etc) instead just threw everything at INXS,Marky Mark and Kris Kross

>>6210543
Wanting more RAM in a CD based system is natural.

>>6210548
They had a empty cartridge slot if the system ends up a success and developers want even more ram they can go down the MEGA SYSTEM Cartridge road. Better to drive down the costs of the base unit.

>ditch all the fancy enhancements
>Optical drive some additional ram and call it a night
>Shit it out even earlier at 149 USD
Does it end up working?

>>6209378
Good idea, but generally not possible without a genlock layer system like 32X.

In what was possibility the least forward thinking move ever since NoA removed the sound channel expansion pins from the NES, the Mega Drive VDP has an external color palette expansion pin which allows the console to be upgraded from 61 colors on screen at once to THOUSANDS on screen at once (see Sega System C which used the same VDP as Mega Drive). Except Sega didn’t hook up this pin to anything! Not the cartridge slot, and not the expansion slot.

>>6210576
I think the issue was that the Mega CD was generally used as Sega’s laundry list of things they wanted to include in the base Mega Drive console but couldn’t in 1988 due to expense.

It’s got the 68000 CPU at the speed Sega originally wanted, the scaling/rotating chip that they wanted to fit into the VDP with late 80s fab tech but couldn’t, and the PCM sound capabilities that they originally wanted but instead had to opt for a FM Yamaha chip that only did part-software driven PC,

Then throw in a shitload of RAM in order to spite the PC Engine CD. Sega just didn’t know when to say no. And the biggest irony is despite their eventual lust for ‘completing’ the Mega Drive, the idea of it must have only come later since the original console wasn’t properly designed for comprehensive expansion!

>>6210543
>One of the main goals of the MEGA CD in Japan was to shit out another overpriced useless addon as is required by the Sega charter
FTFY

>>6210576
Well, that's just about what it was originally intended to be, although I'm not sure that would have been enough on its own. A system with no games isn't gonna be worth more than 50 bucks to most people, unless it says Nintendo on it. But if it has enough cool games to get people exited about it, it usually helps them justify spending 300$ or more.
So while nearly 400$ for an add-on is crazy talk and going all the way down to 150$ would do a lot to lower initial skepticism, price in itself isn't ultimately the primary factor in success, and I don't think trying to use sales to generate dev-support is as good as using dev support to generate sales. Just compare with Sony taking over the market despite their business model being "uhh, just do everything the SNES did, I guess".

But the part about putting the Mega CD out earlier instead of delaying it with constant upgrades would have done a lot to give it some more breathing room -along with maybe pushing the Saturn back six months to a year instead of launching it early. Although I think a big part of getting support for the thing would have been Sega pretending to actually give a fuck, instead of playing dead-beat dad like they do with all their shit.
I do agree that a lot of the extra hardware wasn't strictly necessary, and that an optical drive for FMVs and some extra ram to cut down load times would have been about all it needed. After all, PCE-CD did fine, and simple 2D graphics were still doing fine in the Saturns lifetime, and surely you could have done something like FFVII, but in beautiful 2D instead of vomitous early 3D and called it Phantasy Star CD and still do fine as long as you had FMVs for 14 year olds to fap to not-Tifa's tits.
As is, they still sold millions of the thing, with a better library they surely could have sold millions more.

>>6209681
It wasn't the color palette that made carelessly developed Mega Drive games look much worse than Super Famicom games, it was the limit of 64 colors that could be displayed on the screen. If Sega had managed to get that number up to 256 (it was essentially impossible without an entirely new MD graphics subsystem design), it would have been more than enough to look as good as the SFC.

>>6210559
That's problematic because that is yet another optional piece of hardware that not everybody will have. Developers would have had to write software for a bare Mega Drive; a Mega Drive with a Mega CD; and a Mega Drive with a Mega Drive, Mega CD, and Mega System RAM cartridge. The historical reality was that the Mega CD sold poorly enough that many developers did not bother writing games for it. It would have been even worse if there were also an optional RAM cartridge.

>>6210906
>it was essentially impossible without an entirely new MD graphics subsystem design
See >>6210627

I mean, in theory they could have included another copy of the VDP in the Mega CD except with the color palette pin attached to an external palette cache

>>6210910
On the PCE-CD they introduced the Super System Card, which added 1.5 Mbit of RAM and was required for many games. This "Super CD-ROM2" completely superseded the original format, helped by the introduction of hybrid consoles and separate add-ons that had the extra RAM built in. In the end there were more SCD games than original CD games on the system.
What NEC/Hudson really had over Sega was time. They released the CD add-on in late 1988, not long after the system itself, and it also helped that the base system itself sold pretty well.

>>6210925
Definitely the most crucial thing about the relative success of the PC Engine CD is that it was fairly cheap. I think the focus on the relatively limited color on the Mega CD is fairly misguided, it wouldn't have sold even if it had a higher color count.

The system, while it could have been technically even better, didn't really have a technical deficit. It was very capable.

I mean the fact that it can scale both sprites and backgrounds, and more than one "object" at the same time was pretty cool, and the fact that it supported up to 18 channels of sequenced audio (not even including CD audio).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdoia58bDxs

It just didn't sell better due to price. At the cost of a Mega Drive + Mega CD, even a Neo-Geo wasn't a whole lot more.

>>6209670
not really. have you ever seen some of the load times on the famicom disk system? Metroid had some pretty insane loading times. I'm sure there are more examples. you shouldnt just make things up anon. People complained about load times sure. But the only people who acted like it was some huge flaw were fags who only owned a shitty n64 with 3 whole good games in the entire library.

>>6211594
>you shouldnt just make things up anon
I didn't. I didn't know anyone with a Famicom Disk System because I didn't grew up in Japan.
By the time 5th gen rolled around, loading times weren't as bad as on Sega CD, although still pretty bad on playstation, Saturn had shorter load times.

>>6210627
Sega wanted scaling originally but they cut back so they wouldn't lose money like they did with the saturn. With saturn they thought costs would go down quick but they didn't.

>>6210912
That would have been good but I think they thought people would be too stupid to connect and extra video cable.

>>6209378
The Mega CD was actually a good system, the better music makes a big difference and some of the fmw is good quality. It showed a lack of faith when even Sega didn't put an enhanced Sonic 2 on it. Its just the market back then wasn't ready for people to spend so much on systems since it was parents paying.

As for the colour palette issue, would you say that Mario 3 is a shit game because of its lack of colours.