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/vr/ - Retro Games

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File: 2.53 MB, 4000x2200, Sega-Master-System-Set.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10474446 No.10474446 [Reply] [Original]

What went wrong?

>> No.10474454

Oh god that one Game sack video with Joe defending its Space harrier port lmao

>> No.10474463

Controller felt uncomfortable and the cord was too short

>> No.10474465

>>10474446
Nintendo's illegal monopolistic practices.

>> No.10474479

>>10474465
did you know Hiroshi Yamauchi wasn't actually a human being? He was a vessel that enclosed 7 yakuza oni spirits from 7 different regions in Japan. These oni monopolized the gambling in Japan with the hanafuda Nintendo cards and put a spell so that no other company could produce cards, truly evil.
Yamauchi, often referred to as "大魔王 ティラノ天堂" (Great Evil King Tyranotendo), tyranized the video games market with his monopolic practises, it is said that the Master System or the PC Engine didn't actually ever exist, and that they were invented time after so hide the fact that the Famicom was actually the one and only console existing in Japan

>> No.10474484

>>10474446
Admins were unable to find a foolproof way of preventing underage to shipost on the board.

>> No.10474503

the games feel janky, they don't have the polish of NES ones. also the sound is crud.

>> No.10474519

>>10474446
Went extremely right in South America and Europe.
In North America it was poor distribution and Nintendo's near stranglehold of the market.
I have no idea why it didn't do so well in Japan. It seems to have been extremely popular in South Korea and Taiwan.

>> No.10474529

>>10474519
br here.
the whole "omg master system is still popular in Brazil!" is actually a meme. Yes we do have a manufacturer called tectoy who has the license for sega stuff and yes they kept making master systems (as well as mega drive), but master system was never as popular as memes made you believe it was. In actual times when it could have been popular it was vastly overshadowed by famiclones (which can't be calculated in quantities sold for obvious pirate reasons, but believe me, for every kid who had a master, 50 had a famiclone).
Master system was mostly the low cost sega console aunts and grandmas would get when kids asked for "the Sega" (meaning the mega drive, which is what kids wanted in the 90s, not the Master)
By the late 90s/early 00s, chipped playstations were super affordable thanks to very cheap bootleg games, and K62 computers let everyone play games on PC for cheap also thanks to piracy (and cyber cafes with LAN)
Master system was never a real mvp as people were made to believe. Sorry for breaking the illusion of brazil being magical master system land.

>> No.10474539

The quality of this thread.

>> No.10474541

>>10474529
Seems to have been far more popular down there more than up here at any rate. Master System was barely a blip compared to the Genesis here. I only knew one kid who had a Master System ever.

>> No.10474543

It kind of sucks that you can't do mid-line scroll changes since NES games commonly do those for parallax effects. You also can't do four way scrolling on the Master System, a game can use H or V scroll but not both.

>> No.10474636

>>10474446
>>10474543
the NES had the rather unique setup with the CHR ROM where you offload graphics to a separate chip. this was especially advantageous in the early days of 16k and 32k ROMs when space was in short supply.

>> No.10474643

>>10474446
no gaems, no mindshare, no presence in the vidya zeitgeist whatsoever.

>> No.10474657

>>10474636
Granted but the Master System came later when 128k and 256k games were the norm.

>> No.10474693

>>10474657
what i mean is the very early Famicom titles with 16k PRG+8k CHR as those were in practice 24k. on Colecovision or something 16k was really 16k, you had to fit all the graphics in there along with the code, level data, sound data, etc but the separate CHR ROM meant that you freed up space in the main ROM for other content.

the SMS of course just had a single ROM all game data was stuffed in and you would copy the graphics to video RAM as needed.

>> No.10474731

>>10474503
>Nes games
>Polished
>>10474541
Anon, that's a pasta.

>> No.10474739

>>10474463
the Dpad is one of the worst of any controllers, and the 1+2 makes start was really terrible

>> No.10474774

>>10474731
shrug

>> No.10474814

>>10474693
Master System games could be up to 48k without bank switching although I believe only some unlicensed Korean games used that particular ROM size. Licensed games were always 32k, 128k, 256k, or 512k.

>> No.10474840

>putting the pause button on the console instead of the controller

>> No.10474843

>>10474731
Such a mundane post to make a pasta out of

>> No.10474851

>>10474840
From a programming standpoint it's also annoying because the Start button generates a NMI (literally why?)

>> No.10474872
File: 61 KB, 805x743, nes roms.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10474872

>>10474693
One of the most common NES ROM configs was 128k PRG+128k CHR which was broadly equivalent to a 256k Master System game.

>> No.10474913

There was no competing with Nintendo's marketing.

>> No.10474920

>>10474872
Didn't this list have a bunch of errors? For example it claimed DQ4 was 1MB.

>> No.10474928

>>10474913
thats ironic considering the only reason the genesis sold at all was due to sega marketing sonic well despite the games being objectively terrible

>> No.10474937

>>10474920
There are some mistakes and omissions but it's fairly accurate.

>> No.10474963

The SG-1000 in fact initially sold better as its games were cheaper and the first Famicoms had problems and got recalled.

>> No.10475012

Sega would never win because Namco, Capcom, etc didn't care to work for one of their biggest arcade rivals.

>> No.10475767

I agree the lack of being able to do screen switches is a problem and why SMS games tend to not have any status bar so you usually have to pause the game to get the status/item screen

>> No.10475787

>>10474872
Master System games also needed more ROM space on average as graphics objects take 32 bytes to store instead of 16.

>> No.10475805

>>10475787
games usually used the tile flip feature and had symmetrical backgrounds to conserve space

>> No.10475826
File: 104 KB, 780x585, intro-import.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10475826

>>10474446
It didn't really go wrong, for it's time it saw moderate success in more secondary markets, while Nintendo dominated the main ones. It had flaws, for sure, having the "Pause" button on the console instead of the controller, and having a mediocre D-Pad, contributed to it being way worse than the NES from the get go, even though it had somewhat superior specs.

It was a superb console though, a vast and also diverse library full of gems, it's no wonder the Game Gear was pretty much just a portable Master System, SEGA had already struck gold.

>> No.10475845

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

games look a little nicer and you could do some graphics effects that weren't possible on NES but most of them feel sluggish. NES games are typically a lot faster.

>> No.10475948

>>10474446
It outsold nes everywhere but Japan and America. It's better.

>> No.10476081

>>10475948
>It outsold nes everywhere but the places that matter

>> No.10476162

>>10476081
Truly a shakespearean tragedy

>> No.10476204
File: 697 KB, 1216x2813, Screenshot 2023-12-03 at 21-56-30 _vr_ - Retro Games » Searching for posts that contain ‘ master system is still popular in Brazil ’.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10476204

>>10474529
>>10474541
It's a pasta, pic related

>> No.10476212

>>10476081
Baseball and NFL are a joke compared to soccer and cricket just like nes is a joke to the mighty master system.

>> No.10476217

I don't hate the SMS but I get why it was less popular here. First with the hardware, the controllers were just bad on the first release, the cords came out of the side right where you want to hold the controller. The D-pad was pretty bad as well, terrible with games that needed quick responses. Plus the pause button was on the actual console instead of the controller, really one of the greatest breakthroughs the NES developed as every console afterwards copied that feature.

Combine that with the marketing, the worst most bland box art possible.

Then there's the games. Most SMS games just weren't that interesting or played poorly. Keep in mind that many early games got released on those cards instead of cartridges to save on cost and were only 32k so they were really basic to play. Jumping in games didn't feel as good compared to the Mario games on the NES. Later SMS games got better but by that point the NES got a better market share, the better games getting released on the SMS were just too rare to find. This is what kept the system from being as collectible for many years later while NES collecting started taking off, the common SMS games people could find were mostly just bad and anything decent was mostly rare or unavailable in this region. The exception was in Europe where the better games got released on the SMS and hardly any good NES games got released there.

>> No.10476243

>>10476217
i get what you mean. a lot of Master System games felt like ZX Spectrum games with more colors. many of the later ones like R-Type and the Asterix games were pretty good but they still never looked or felt as good as the best NES titles. and no the Master System never got anything to rival Castlevania 3 or Dragon Quest 3 or SMB3 or Kirby's Adventure. Instead it got discount down-ports of Genesis games.

>> No.10476282

>>10476217
Double Dragon looks nice on the Master System has the 2 player mode and all but it flickers like hell and the sound is complete ass.

>> No.10476303

>>10476217
Outside a bigger color palette there is no real category where it's meaningfully better hardware than the NES. That said the bigger palette does mean Master System games can look way better and not as monochromatic.

>> No.10476385

The largest SMS games were 512k while the NES had a few bigger ones like Kirby, some Koei games, and Pool of Radiance.

>> No.10476532

>>10476243
I would blame that on the Z80 being kinda pokey compared to the 6502. Execution times for instructions are really long.

>> No.10476596

>>10474814
no 64k games?

>> No.10476604

>>10476596
not on official games, no. some unlicensed games had 48k or 64k ROMs and that bootleg Brazilian SF2 was 1MB but official games only used those four ROM sizes.

>> No.10476609

As others have mentioned, graphics objects on SMS took 32 bytes to store while they were 16 bytes on NES so you would have needed twice as much ROM for the same amount of content, but games would oftne use the tile flipping feature to save space which is why a lot of SMS games have symmetrical backgrounds.

>> No.10476796

>>10476243
>and no the Master System never got anything to rival
Yes it did. Don't spout this nonsense just because you've never played a master system.

Master System doesn't dominate NES outside of Japan and America for nothing.

>> No.10476807
File: 113 KB, 620x388, master.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10476807

>>10474529
>>10474541
>>10474731
>>10476204
I agree with this almost 100% despite the fact its posted just for fun and/or to get a reaction out of people, but while it's true that NES was more common, just not the official one, and that SEGA was more well known for the Mega Drive than the Master System, also that Master System was never this popular thing that everybody owned, most people have never heard of it... but still...

Master System is way more of a big deal here than in pretty much any other part of the world, we still have TecToy's Master System Evolution being sold in stores, and it looks sleek, and while not a lot of people buy it, enough people buy it for it to ALWAYS be there, for YEARS now, with a few revisions here and there. Also, a lot of people grew up with one and/or have nostalgia.

Brazil isn't a Master System heaven where it was the main console at any point, but it always had a presence, way more than any other place, and it was a big deal, just never the main character.

>> No.10478041

it was hard to do racing games well on the Master System when you couldn't do mid-line scroll changes

>> No.10479141

want to second that Master System games looked really crude and janky a lot of the time, they looked like a bad Flash game

>> No.10479336

The sound on the Master System impressively sucks.

>> No.10479365

>>10479336
yeah it takes you out of games. pick any NES classic like Batman or Mega Man 1 or Castlevania 3 and imagine them with that bleeper sound.

>> No.10479387

I recall that the Master System was supposed to be able to display 224 lines but the VDP had a bug that limited it to 192 lines.

>> No.10479410

>>10479387
afaik that bug was fixed early on but of course games (at least on NTSC units) couldn't use 224 lines or they wouldn't work on the original revision of the chip. many later PAL and Brazilian games did use 224 lines because the Master Systems they got never had the original bugged VDP.

>> No.10479474

SMS did about as well as any console could against the NES at the time.

>> No.10479478

>>10474446
The pause button on the console made sense in Japan where people usually put consoles on the floor in front of them so it was easy to reach over there and press it. Fuck those cords sticking out the side of the controller, though.

>> No.10480087
File: 29 KB, 256x355, Wonder_Boy_III_-_The_Dragon's_Trap_boxart.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10480087

>>10474446
>has the best 8 bit game of all time in your path

>> No.10480958
File: 404 KB, 1200x900, IMG_20201202_111442.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10480958

>>10474446
>What went wrong?
Nothing.
NES was better for sure, but Master System was still quite superb for its time, and the best titles on the console feel damn near 16-Bit in graphics and how they play.
It's no wonder SEGA made the Game Gear to be pretty much a portable Master System, they had already struck gold.

>> No.10480979

>>10474446
the only game worth playing is Phantasy Star

>> No.10481102

>>10480087
Its better than Super Metroid.

>> No.10481104

>>10479478
>touching your console mid game
Great way to reset all your progress.

>> No.10482226
File: 159 KB, 512x512, 1656319535800.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10482226

>>10480087
Wait... that's not 8-Bit Sonic 2 though.

>> No.10482352

clone but I'm not sure if the guy selling it recapped it.
>>10474446
Back to de main topic, I'm not sure if the US market was ready for an NES competitor at the time. The NES grabed the market by the balls and parents were upset when Nintendo announced the Super Nintendo because they had to buy a whole new system. Not to mention that the SMS had good games, but not that many killer apps.

>> No.10482387

>>10482352
I fucked up the post. Long story short, a guy is selling a master system and a Sega Saturn, both with one game each, however, another guy is selling a dreamcast with gdemu but it's the same price of both the SMS and SS combined. I feel like I should buy the dreamcast but I want a second opinion.

>> No.10483107
File: 135 KB, 640x288, 327373557722428.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10483107

>>10482387
If you have the money, go for both, trust me, you'll regret passing up on either of these offers... but if you HAVE to choose, I'd go for the Master System and Saturn combo, though I'm biased, Master System is my favorite console, and Saturn prices will probably skyrocket I think.

>> No.10483385

>Cost-cutting was important to Sega due to their small market share. Master System games only came in a handful of standard ROM sizes unlike the dizzying multitude of NES ROM configurations and only a single standard memory mapper was used, capable of banking ROMs in 16k segments and able to support 1MB max, more than any official Master System game ever used (an unlicensed Brazilian port of Street Fighter II used 1MB of ROM, the only Master System game that big). Small 32k games with no need of bank switching were released on cards instead of more expensive cartridges. Some cartridges also incorporated the Sega MMU into the ROM as a further cost reduction measure.[9]

>> No.10483525

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

The music here is surprisingly good considering the Master System's poor reputation for sound.

>> No.10483549

>>10474465
This. I literally never once saw a Master System on store shelves while Nintendo always had dedicated displays.

>> No.10483689

>>10483525
Master system's PSG chip can sound good though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHjaWPP57EI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV2vCoIGj1Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGSIJju2c8Y

>> No.10483691

>>10483689
I always come back to this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fag2iMR_YFc

>> No.10483709

>>10483549
Really?
SEGA had their own space next to Nintendo in the Netherlands at least.
And people could still buy Master Systems as a budget solution when the SNES and Mega Drive were sitting next to them on store shelves.

>> No.10483742

>>10483709
US here. Sega Master System was spoken of amongst the neighborhood kids like some mythical creature. We all knew it had better graphics and had games the NES didn't, but none of us ever actually saw one in person. I didn't even see one for sale until 1997 or so in a used game store, and it was a bit pricey since they were still rare at least where I lived. TurboGrafx-16 had a much bigger presence where I lived. They actually sold them at Toys R Us.

>> No.10483781

>>10475845
> sprites render on top of the statusbar
cute

>> No.10484165

>>10474693
>>10474636
The NES having two split chips wasn't a benefit as such but an additional cost that Nintendo passed along to the publisher. If it was cheaper to put 1x16 + 1x8 on a master system cartridge than to use a single 32K you could do that too. It just generally wasn't. People going with 16K instead of 24K or 32K was just publishers being stingy, so the only real benefit the NES had was that they had no choice. But then that's something other people could have achieved with policy as opposed to hardware limitations.

>> No.10484197

>>10484165
I'm not sure where the nintodlers "muh single chip" maymay started, but I've seen low IQ children parroting it in force for a few weeks now. It sounds a little too retarded even for youtube, so I'm thinking it might be self asspulled.

>> No.10484256

>>10484165
There were other advantages to the setup as well.

>graphics instantly available at power on
>no need to copy them to video RAM
>this included using some valuable ROM space with a routine to copy graphics there
This might have not been such a big deal on SG-1000 or somesuch but the NES used a 6502 which didn't have the Z80's block copy instructions and in general it takes more code to accomplish something on 6502.

>> No.10484293

Can I post my Sega cope here?

>> No.10484305

>>10483691
>implying jeroen tel can't make the shittiest chip sound good

>> No.10484306

>>10484165
there was some added expense as the CHR ROM had to be a higher speed component than the PRG ROM (as the PPU was clocked faster than the CPU)

>> No.10484318

>>10483525
this was a small 32k card game so there's not much to it even if the music is pretty ace

>> No.10484325

>>10483385
>Small 32k games with no need of bank switching were released on cards instead of more expensive cartridges
the Master System could access 48k without bank switching but official games never used that ROM size, just some unlicensed Korean ones

>> No.10484354

>>10484256
>grasping at straws:the post
>>10484293
Nope. Nintendo cope only.

>> No.10484368

>>10484354
But Nintendo is pretty successful nowadays.

>> No.10484517

>>10484368
They've always been a very successful children's toy company.

>> No.10484527

>>10484354
t. assembly language LARPer

>> No.10484584

>>10474446
It couldn't compete with Nintendo at all but in still carved out a good niche over in Europe and did better than the NES over there.

>>10474465
Didn't some companies do some sort of workarounds to get games on the master system? If I recall there were a few cases of games that were released there with a different name and very slightly changed just enough to say it's not the same game.

>> No.10484682

>>10484368
They were pretty successful in the NES days as well. But that doesn't matter. If anyone ever denies that anything they did wasn't the absolute best ever nintoddlers are required by blood oath to go in to full cope mode.
>>10484527
rent free

>> No.10484728
File: 5 KB, 512x384, Galaxian Colecovision.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10484728

>>10484165
>>10484256
so how do you dig it that Colecovision Galaxian had 32k ROM while the Famicom port was only 16k?

>> No.10484759

>>10484728
what were they doing with all that space? the original arcade game was all of 14k in size.

>> No.10484773

>>10484728
>>10484759
Just for lulz this was the smallest Famicom game ever made and the only one to ever use an 8k PRG ROM. It's probably a more accurate conversion because Namco made it themselves. In theory the CV could do a more accurate port because it had the same CPU as the arcade game.

>> No.10484789

>>10484773
so it was 8k PRG+8k CHR no?

>> No.10484795

>>10484789
Yes. Same ROM capacity as most CV games.

>> No.10484807

>>10484165
>People going with 16K instead of 24K or 32K was just publishers being stingy

did you know Atari, Activision, and CBS were the only guys to make Atari 2600 games >4k?

>> No.10484853

>>10484807
They were cheap. The 2600 Donkey Kong was only 4k because Coleco wouldn't pay for 8k.

>> No.10484980

>>10484789
>>10484773
had to be hacked to 16k because emulators didn't support PRG size that small

>> No.10485013

>>10484165
>The NES having two split chips wasn't a benefit as such but an additional cost that Nintendo passed along to the publisher. If it was cheaper to put 1x16 + 1x8 on a master system cartridge than to use a single 32K you could do that too. It just generally wasn't. People going with 16K instead of 24K or 32K was just publishers being stingy,
Technically they could have also done 8k+8k like Galaxian but the fact that you had to pay for two chips anyway probably made it not worthwhile. Namco only used that setup because the Galaxian arcade game was already so small that they didn't need a 16k PRG for it.

>> No.10485038

>>10484773
>In theory the CV could do a more accurate port because it had the same CPU as the arcade game.
Whose theory is that? Sounds like a codelet confusing accuracy with their inability to do anything more than copy and paste. Other resources, such as the sound and graphic hardware will be the key factors dictating accuracy. Whether one or another comparable CPUs is used to drive those is basically irrelevant.

>> No.10485061

>>10485038
no. the CPU does matter too because the core game logic and AI and whatnot are easier to port if it's the same CPU and get them to work correctly. it's hard to convert Z80 to 6502 and get it to run the same way because they're extremely different in how they work. it was controversial when Nintendo went with the 6502 in the Famicom and some engineers wanted a Z80 so as to make arcade ports easier.

>> No.10485149

>>10485061
>it was controversial when Nintendo went with the 6502 in the Famicom
I can imagine, not only is the Z80 clocked typically 2 to 3 times faster, but it also features full 16-bit operations and registers which the 6502 sorely lacked, the Z80 was essentially feature parity with the SNES CPU (actually a little bit better since it runs slightly faster and has more total registers), but a whole decade earlier. It would have been difficult to go back to the barebones and very slow 8-bit 6502 features if that was what you were used to.

>> No.10485159

>>10485149
Z80s are actually rather sluggish as they have long execution times for instructions (observe that Master System games feel like wading through tar). Nintendo didn't use a Z80 mainly for cost reasons and as NEC owned the rights to produce Z80s in Japan and their production lines were running at capacity and couldn't spare any chips. The issue with using a 6502 was the lack of coders in Japan; other than HAL nobody knew how to write code on them.

>> No.10485186

>>10485159
>Z80s are actually rather sluggish
That's an old piece of 6502 propaganda that's long been disproven, Z80's are well known for having a huge performance advantage. Here is an MSX game, running on a Z80 at 3.58 mhz: https://youtu.be/gNkDe0d2_c0?t=273
Master System games often felt sluggish or had performance issues solely because the faster Z80 allowed for development in C, which allowed for much quicker turnaround, but pushed the CPU much harder than coding in assembly. The only real advantage the 6502 had over the Z80 was just that it was much cheaper, both as a part, and to build a system to accommodate it.

>> No.10485191

>>10485186
beg pardon? i'm pretty sure 99% of Master System games were coded in Z80 assembly language. i wouldn't doubt they had a lot of lazy, unoptimized code, though. there are choppy NES games too because the code wasn't optimized very well.

>> No.10485204

Is the nub controller actually good. Like the version that has a nub screwed in

>> No.10485554

>>10485186
Z80s are better at 3D because they have more brute power.

>> No.10485984

>>10485061
>no. now let me explain exactly how you're right. it was all skill issues
lol. Thanks for confirming everything I said I guess. It is indeed very difficult to convert Z80 to 6502, if you're a codelet who cries about Z80 and 6502 being "extremely different in how they work"
>some engineers wanted a Z80 so as to make arcade ports easier.
Bingo! Some codelets wanted to copypasta because they couldn't into 6502. Because that was easier. Nothing to do with accuracy. Nothing to do with hardware really. Purely skill issues.

>> No.10486080

>>10485186
>The only real advantage the 6502 had over the Z80 was just that it was much cheaper, both as a part, and to build a system to accommodate it
It was cheaper in the late 70s but Z80s got cheap quickly and also didn't need a separate RAM refresh circuit which was additional savings. One reason for Nintendo using a 6502 was (aside from the only Z80 manufacturer in Japan being unable to supply their needs) that they wanted to put the audio hardware on the CPU to save on a chip.

>> No.10486093

>>10486080
yeah NEC were too booked up, actually pretty much every fab in Japan was totally booked up. although I bet NEC unlike Ricoh wouldn't have been dumbass enough to do a huge fucking 4 micron chipset that overheated and they had to recall it and go "ha ha whoops guess we should have used a smaller die size this isn't 1978 anymore XD."

>> No.10486105

>>10486093
>although I bet NEC unlike Ricoh wouldn't have been dumbass enough to do a huge fucking 4 micron chipset that overheated and they had to recall it and go "ha ha whoops guess we should have used a smaller die size this isn't 1978 anymore XD."

ICs were a secondary venture of Ricoh's and their core business was more like cameras and printers. It's kind of understandable to make an amaterish mistake with the design that Sony or NEC likely wouldn't have made (unless it was those first Dreamcast GPUs where NEC fucked up and had to throw away most of them due to a mishap with wafer contamination).

>> No.10486348

>>10474446
>What went wrong?
Not much. The mistakes came later.

>> No.10486678

>>10484293
>Can I post my Sega cope here?
Sure, go ahead.

>> No.10486981

>>10486678
Let's redesign the Saturn, being backwards compatible with the MS, MD and CD at the cost of support for alternative forms of CD media playback, a choice for developers to make less impressive games easier while making proper Saturn development slightly harder similar to the Jaguar and removal of the Saturn HDD to be replaced with a built-in dial-up modem.

>> No.10487360
File: 156 KB, 1280x720, img_658.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10487360

>>10484789
8k PRG+8k CHR is less efficient than the single 16k ROM in a Colecovision game because only half that ROM can be used for code. With a single 16k ROM you could for example devote just 15-20% of the ROM to graphics while the rest is used for game logic.

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

Here's King's Valley on MSX. This was 16k. I don't believe this would work on NES if you did 8k PRG+8k CHR, I doubt there would be enough PRG space for the game logic plus sound plus level data.

>> No.10487379

>>10487360
I mean, for one thing MSX is Z80 and Z80 code is generally smaller than 6502 code. It takes an average of 20% more code to accomplish the same task on 6502.

>> No.10487450

>>10487360
wish Konami had actually ported this to Famicom. i would certain prefer it to Road Fighter or Hyper Olympic.

>> No.10487462

>>10487360
This game also has no scrolling and scrolling can be a major memory hog. In SMB they decided to make the screen only scroll one way because they calculated that it would take 8k of code to be able to scroll in two directions.

>> No.10487747

>>10486093
NEC were too booked up making the most based console of all time. The literal famicom killer. That had like a dozen good games until CD. And then a dozen more. So sad.

>> No.10487754

>>10487747
>NEC were too booked up making the most based console of all time
Not in 1983 they weren't.

>> No.10488000

>>10487360
There's workarounds for things such as putting level data in the CHR ROM and reading it during blank although it's slow and it means you lose some space that could be used for graphics instead.

>> No.10488034

>>10488000
I think that was usually only done in CNROM games. I don't think any NROM games put the level data in the CHR ROM but I could be wrong. Once in a while you'll find an MMC1/MMC3 game that does it.

>> No.10488068

>>10487462
That sounds wrong. 8-way scrolling doesn't take much code by itself. I suspect the issue they had was because SMB had an unusual way of compressing the map data that meant it really could only be decoded in one direction. Sounds like rather than come up with a different compression system that let them decode in blocks they just made a convincing sounding reason to reject the idea and finished what they had. Never trust programmers, they will say "can't be done" when they mean "I coded myself into a corner and can't get out."

>> No.10488078

>>10488000
>and reading it during blank
Not blank, turning the PPU off while reading the data.

>> No.10488087

one of the most common NES setups was 128k PRG+128k CHR. you could also use CHR RAM in which case it works like on other consoles with normal VRAM.

https://nescartdb.com/profile/view/1274/dragon-warrior-ii

cf. Dragon Quest II. the Famicom version was UNROM and they bumped it to 256k and MMC1 for the US release but it's still CHR RAM. i guess this could have used 128k PRG+128k CHR but maybe they wanted animated tiles (does DQ2 have animated tiles? i don't remember).

>> No.10488103

>>10485186
Based on average cycle timings a Z80 had to be clocked about 3.5 times faster than a 6502 to match its performance. No surprise then than 3.58MHz was a common speed for it where 1MHz was a common 6502 speed.
But the NES wasn't 1MHz, it was 1.78MHz which is where its advantage came from.
The z80 was nicer to program for, especially for math operations and tended to be in machines with friendlier architecture for dynamic graphics where the NES was basically "fuck you, make the tiles static."

>> No.10488121

>>10488103
They used 3.5Mhz because it was easy to derive the NTSC color burst from it. Z80s used in machines with dedicated monitors like the Amstrad CPC were usually 4Mhz.

>> No.10488181

>>10488087
There's no animated tiles in there. They used CHR RAM so they could fit more game data. By using 256k PRG+CHR RAM you could use at least 75% of the ROM for game logic or level data as the graphics tiles could be compressed and you only needed to reserve as much tile space as the game actually needed. A 128k+128k setup means only 50% of the ROM can be game logic or levels and the other half is wasted on graphics some space of which you may not even need. However it was fine for most games and also faster than CHR RAM.

>> No.10488197

>>10488181
ok but some anon was saying the CHR ROM setup let them have better games than the SG-1000

>> No.10488236

>>10488197
In the early days it was because SG-1000 games were typically 16k (with a few 8k ones and some larger ROMs as well). The 16k+8k setup on Famicom let them offload the CHR data so it wasn't using PRG space and could have more game logic/levels/music. Now there were some SG-1000 games with 32k ROM and a few Famicom games like Bird Week and the second Ninja-kun game that had the 16k version of CNROM (meaning 16k PRG+16k CHR). So 16k+16k=32k, right?

Well not really because a 32k SG-1000 or Colecovision game meant you could apportion the ROM space however you liked for game logic and graphics. Those 16k CNROM carts meant that half the total ROM was used for game logic and the other half on graphics. So you ended up with less game that way and it made more sense to just use 32k+8k NROM because although you had less graphics there was more game logic and ultimately more space as you had 40k total (SMB has an absolutely filled up PRG ROM, there would be no space to put the graphics in there as well).

>> No.10488249

>>10488236
>>10487360
King's Valley is just 16k and it doesn't look like there's any less content than comparable Famicom games.

>> No.10488263

>>10488249
While true also remember that MSX used a Z80 so code didn't take as much space. I would estimate (without actually disassembling the ROM) that probably 6k of the game is code while on NES you would need 10k of code. So that was another reason why the CHR ROM setup was valuable in the early days--more of the ROM will be taken up by code due to how inefficient 6502 machine language is.

>> No.10489227

>>10488000
Did any game actually do that?
>>10488181
When you need to do mental gymnastics that that level you might as well give up

>> No.10489307

>>10489227
>When you need to do mental gymnastics that that level you might as well give up


it's not complicated, he just took 2 sentences to say use chr-ram.

>> No.10489784
File: 540 KB, 779x758, 1676427021497296.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10489784

>>10486981
I don't think that would've worked out, anon... it'd make the Saturn harder to develop for, which was already a problem, and it'd probably be even more expensive than it already was...

>> No.10490227

>>10489307

>>10489227
>>10489147
This is the assembly language LARPer. Please don't reply to it. Thank you.

>> No.10490239

>>10490227

yea it's bizarre when someone is that critical about something they've never tried. kids learned asm in the 70s and 80s.

https://yurichev.com/mirrors/machine-code-for-beginners.pdf

>> No.10491029

>>10489784
That's why I gave up playing this dumb game of "Let's save Sega".

>> No.10491068

>>10482226
You're right, the best 8-bit game of all time is not Sonic 2. Sonic 2 is not even in the top 20.

>> No.10492121

>>10489307
For most people "mental gymnastics" doesn't mean the same thing as "complicated"
>>10490227
>OBSESSED
>>10490239
I'm sure the faggot running around calling everyone the assembly language LARPer has tried. No one could be seething that hard for that long without having tried and utterly failed at something. Indeed hilarious, as many children did learn many flavors of assembly in the 70s and 80s.

>> No.10492329

>>10491029
Indeed, sadly they were pretty much doomed as soon as that generation began, which is a real shame... and even if they could've been saved, it's not what happened, they left the industry and the rest is history.

We live in the worst time line.

>> No.10494293

>>10492121
man you've been at this retardation since about 2016. give up already.

>> No.10494747

>>10494293
>I've been at this retardation since about 2016
Imagine seething and repeatedly making a fool if yourself for that long because some bogeyman caught you LARPing seven years ago. The absolute state of zoomer fragility.

>> No.10495127
File: 1.39 MB, 448x444, 1588041468172.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10495127

>>10491068
>Sonic 2 is not even in the top 20.
Now that's harsh, anon...

>> No.10495147
File: 1 KB, 102x125, 1649811411389.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10495147

>>10474529
>Master system was mostly the low cost sega console aunts and grandmas would get when kids asked for "the Sega" (meaning the mega drive, which is what kids wanted in the 90s, not the Master)

I wonder what percentage of all game and console sales are just confused old people buying the wrong thing because it's all greek to them.

I'll give my grandma credit, she knew absolutely nothing about video games but if you asked for something she got the right one.