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/vr/ - Retro Games

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6961431 No.6961431 [Reply] [Original]

Are IBM Compatibles the first time personal computers actually started being taken seriously by AAA game developers, or it was just a coincidence?

>> No.6961453 [DELETED] 

Imagine if James fucked that girl, sniffed her ass and everything, fucking hot

>> No.6961470

Everyone knows western developers are dogshit. IBM Compatibles were never taken seriously by AAA game developers.

>> No.6961483

I'd say perhaps Sierra was the first developer to have big box game projects such as Time Zone where it was more than just one guy in his living room making a game.

>> No.6961501

>>6961431
Until the last (two now) console generation, PCs were far inferior to the latest console. The opposite being true now is a recent phenomenon.

>> No.6961515 [DELETED] 

>>6961453
He’d have Mike lick it up afterward.

>> No.6961516

>>6961431
Absolutely not. Most games for the XT/AT era were complete dogshit. Tandy is the sole reason the IBM PC wasn't totally disregarded as a gaming system. Tandy 16 color mode+3 voice sound were the first real step up from godawful CGA 4 color. It was only after Tandy started to outsell IBM in the late 80s, did the IBM PC compats start getting games that were more than just hobby projects.

>> No.6961528

>>6961516
> Tandy 16 color mode+3 voice sound were the first real step up from godawful CGA 4 color
CGA Composite mode says hi.

>> No.6961545

>>6961528
CGA composite was a step up, yes, but it was more of a hack than anything. You were pretty SOL if you didn't have composite out, either.

>> No.6961549

In the early days, commercial game releases on PCs tended to just be ports from other systems, most often the Apple II. Although since the PC was not a mainline gaming platform back then, it tended to only get ports of a game if it sold well enough. That meant the better quality games like Archon, Lode Runner, etc got ported and it missed a lot of shitty games. Other than that, games were often just freeware or shareware games like 3-Demon that were written in Pascal or compiled BASIC.

>> No.6961567

And another thing that held PC games back for a long time was a lack of quality x86 coders. At that time, most game programmers knew 6502 or Z80 asm and weren't versed in x86 coding or the best or most efficient way to do it. Not that there weren't great x86 coders out there, problem was they weren't working in the game industry, they were all doing application stuff. The best x86 coders were working for Borland and Lotus. Not until Michael Abrash's book "The Zen of Assembly Language" did the art of x86 game coding significantly improve.

So while Apple II games could have buttery smooth, flicker-free animation on a 1Mhz CPU with frame buffer graphics, PC games tended to be poorly coded and plagued by herky-jerky animation and unresponsive controls.

>> No.6961587

Other issues included the need to support multiple graphics standards as well as multiple CPU speeds and generations of x86. One of the big headaches of x86 coding is that each generation of chip would often have internal differences from its predecessor, which meant that code optimization tricks that worked on an 8086 might not work on a 386.

One change that comes to mind is how on all x86 chips up to the Pentium III, a DEC or INC instruction was always faster than using ADD or SUB. Due to a change in the pipeline of the P4, it now became faster to use ADD EAX,1 instead of INC EAX.

>> No.6961605

>>6961431
>did [thing] not exist/happen before i was born
The answer to this question is usually no. As it is in this case.

>> No.6961665

>>6961431
>T-shirt of Zeppelin's '77 US tour
Jesus, what the fuck are you doing, James?

>> No.6961675

>>6961665
He's probably wearing a Zeppelin t-shirt from their '77 US tour.

>> No.6961680

Jimmy Page won't even release an official DVD box set of that tour because he'd prefer to just forget it happened.

>> No.6961687

>>6961680
what happened? I don't know much about zeppelin.

>> No.6961696

they were like literally almost dead from drugs and could barely even stand up straight on stage, let alone play. that tour shouldn't have happened at all, but their greedy manager and Atlantic suits pushed it through anyway for shekels. as far as Page and Plant are concerned, that tour is damnatio memoriae which is why there's no official box set of it.

>> No.6961710

>>6961431
C64 was considered a personal computer. Also, muh speccy

>> No.6961757

>>6961545
>You were pretty SOL if you didn't have composite out, either.

If you had a proper CGA card you had composite out. By the time most new computers didn't have composite out, EGA and VGA were available.

>> No.6961763

>>6961501
Aboslutely false, it was just different. PCs sucked ass at platformers but anything that required a high resolution, like strategy games, or complex calculations, like FPS, was way better on PC.

>> No.6961769

>>6961763
Also depends on what we deem a PC. If we mean just strictly the IBM PC and compatibles, there's some room for debate. If we include anything marketed as a personal computer, then consoles are completely outclassed as things like the X68000 come into the equation.

>> No.6961780

>>6961763
For simplistic single screen platformers like Miner 2049er then fine. When you got into scrolling platformers, most computers fell behind consoles. Not until VESA could they keep up.

>> No.6961781

>>6961431
Define AAA game developers pre Gen 6?

>> No.6961786

>>6961763
You're right, i was thinking strictly graphics calculations, raster / scrolling before the mid 90s and triangles after. Text adventures or RTS games would not have worked well on a console.

>> No.6961787

>>6961769
Is the X68000 a general purpose computer? I was always under the impression it was designed to play games.

>> No.6961791

>>6961786
We saw what happened when games like Ultima, Bard's Tale, F15 Strike Eagle, Pirates!, and King's Quest were ported to consoles. It wasn't pretty.

>> No.6961797
File: 123 KB, 1274x509, king's quest v.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6961797

Errrghh...

>> No.6961803

>>6961797
That isn't really fair at all. NES is 1984 tech.
More fair is Doom on 486 versus Doom on SNES and Sega 32x.

>> No.6961807

>>6961803
1983 but whatever. I don't know who thought that port was a good idea at all and not even Konami could make it work. It came out in 92? Why not just put it on the Mega Drive instead? It would still be compromised some due to the smaller color palette, game pad controls, and probably lose a bunch of content to fit on a cartridge (the PC game was 10MB) but it wouldn't be nearly as gimped as it was on early 80s hardware designed for Donkey Kong and simplistic sports games.

>> No.6961809

>>6961791
Also the horrendous controls and framerates of C&C on PSX and Starcraft 64

>> No.6961838

>>6961431
Whoa. I have a pic of myself standing next to James in the exact same spot.

This is when he came to Toronto, Canada.

>> No.6961859

>>6961787
From what I understand it was aimed at being just a really powerful personal computer. Really it doesn't really matter what it was designed for, the point is that if we consider it a personal computer, it pretty much smokes all the competition at the time. And then we can start bringing up things like the Commodore 64, the Amiga, the MSX/2/2+/TurboR, the PC88 and PC98, FM Towns, etc. If those get thrown into the mix things get a lot more interesting.

>> No.6961863

>>6961803
except NES games had access to more modern hardware through cartridge chips

>> No.6961879

>>6961863
There's a practical limit to what you can get out of it and you can't do anything about the eight sprite per line limitation or only being able to access 40k of ROM at one go.

>> No.6961907

>>6961797
pulse thread ruined your life lmao

>> No.6961913
File: 20 KB, 300x340, 20.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6961913

>thread is specifically about PCs
>already NES living rent free again in their heads
Awesome, this is what I come to /vr/ for.

>> No.6961920

>>6961907
>>6961913
Take it easy before you stroke out, Australia-kun.

>> No.6961926

>>6961907
>>6961913
fuck off, NES is SHITE, spectrum is better

>> No.6961936

>>6961926
> spectrum is better
yeah maybe if your on the spectrum.

>> No.6961939

>>6961936
Fuck you, NES is shit. mappers and shit. Nintendo sucks and did monopolistic shit. Their games were too expensive.

>> No.6961945

>>6961879
Calling Mario 3 1984 tech is still disingenuous.

>> No.6961973

>>6961939
>Fuck you, NES is shit. mappers and shit. Nintendo sucks and did monopolistic shit. Their games were too expensive

I've pointed out before that the NES Arkanoid was missing the intro sequence with the spaceship, although every other port of the game had it, all because it wouldn't fit in the available ROM space.

>> No.6961983

>>6961939
Didn't atari try to sue activition for making games on the 2600?

>> No.6961990

so the thread really turned into NES discussion...

>> No.6962020

>>6961990
Name one example of a AAA game dev that existed before IBM compatibles

>> No.6962050

>>6961665
Led zeppelin is awesome and its a shirt he bought around 2008 at hot topic

>> No.6962060
File: 47 KB, 500x478, Final-Fantasy-VII.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6962060

>>6962020
>AAA game dev that existed before IBM compatibles
Activision, but even then, the concept of "AAA game dev" was not a thing. Atari had in-house 2600 programmers that worked on games for 6 months as acts of solo authorship. Games took about 1-10 people to make. The first "AAA game" arguably as we know it today might be FF7.

>> No.6962067

>>6962050
i had that same shirt in blue

>> No.6962071

>>6962060
What made activisions games more AAA than Sierra's?

>> No.6962075
File: 20 KB, 344x226, the_more_you_know.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6962075

>>6962071
> Sierra
oh i guess they existed too. i didn't know that.

>> No.6962105

>>6962075
If only someone mentioned them earlier, >>6961483

>> No.6962114

>>6962020
EA, Activision, Atari

>>6961431
From what I've seen the big developers EA, activision etc mostly supported Apple 2 and then C64 a bit later and then in about 1985 or 86 did more things on the IBM.

But look it up, most games before about 1986 on IBM were just stuff like space invaders or whatever. I would consider one of the best early pc games to be silpheed which was ported from a japanese nec computer. A lot of early Ibm stuff is like bedroom coder zx spectrum stuff but still they can be pretty fun too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdRH9Sm_4-0

>>6962071
Well Activision made the first Wonderwilly in pitfall 2

>>6961781
Tempest and Starwars arcade, Hero on 2600 and others. Simcity.

>> No.6962156

>>6962114

>>6961549
An especially popular game might get a PC port but most game developers were focused on 8-bit machines until after 1985. As for bedroom coder stuff, there was a lot of that. Games like PC-Man, Pitfall, 3-Demon, Bert and the Snake, Caverns of Gink, etc. Usually clones of some other popular game and often written in compiled BASIC or Pascal. And Canada-based Windmill Software made a bunch of great little PC games, also clones of arcade games and they're true exclusives not found on any other platform.

>> No.6962257

>>6962020
Give me a list of what qualifies in your little mind as an "AAA game dev" and I'll tell you if any existed before 1982, which is 20 years before you did. zoom zoom

>> No.6962259

>>6962060
>The first "AAA game" arguably as we know it today might be FF7.
True, all that money spent in cutscenes, not to mention advertising. Unprecedented in video games, I think.

>> No.6962471

When is a mod going to come in and clean up all these cinemassacre bait threads. There are about 7 of them here now.

>> No.6962473

>>6962471
If you don't like it, hide it.

>> No.6962474

>>6962471
>I don't like the image in the OP, therefore it's a bait thread
Not how it works.

>> No.6962705

>>6961797
The NES version pales in comparison but it’s still good looking for a Nes game

>> No.6962772

>>6962257
>>I think your being an idiot for thinking "AAA" devs even existed back then.
>No. I think YOU'RE being an idiot for thinking "AAA" devs even existed back then.

Love this board.

>> No.6963023

>>6962772
>i decided to make up a new word that means water
>water didn't exist before i made up my new word
I hope you now hate this board and go back where you belong

>> No.6963034

>>6961431
>AAA game developers
They didn't exist yet when IBM PC clones took over, Newb numbskulls. EA was almost an indie corp. Sierra specialise in mostly GAGs. Can you even google or perceive the flow of time?!?

>> No.6963036

>>6961516
>+3 voice sound
That just slightly better PC Speaker....

>> No.6963041

>>6962259
>>6962060
Probably this. Sony was the first big money spender in publishing of games.

>> No.6963241

>>6961687
Page was in the peak of his heroin addiction, Plant got laryngithis and then his son died and Bonham beat up a security guard.

>> No.6963245

>>6961797
the NES scene looks suspiciously like monkey island's first forest scene

>> No.6963250

>>6963034
Capcom, Konami and a couple other companies were already pretty professional, although definitely not million-dollar-budget companies like today

>> No.6963312

>>6963036
>just slightly better than pc speak
Not really, considering it had 3 voices and a 4th channel for noise, so it could output digitized samples. Tandy sound is as good as an NES.

>> No.6963361

>>6961710
We are talking about the big boys here, not the microdick computers

>> No.6963375

>>6963312
The sound chip in the Tandy 1000 is just a TMS9919 (or really a second source clone) so it has three square wave channels and a white noise channel, it's very limited and playing samples with it is a hack--it has no PCM channel like the NES does.

>> No.6963440

>>6963375
>playing samples is a hack
Maybe, but to my ears samples out of my tandy sound much cleaner than samples out of an NES.
Also, tandy sound does include CPU controlled ADSR

>> No.6963443

>>6961763
FPS games weren't around until fifth gen and until Q3 N64 arguably had the best shooters (Goldeneye, better version of Turoks, Doom64, etc.)

>> No.6963445

>>6963034
>EA was almost an indie corp

EA was only a publisher in the 80s, they didn't develop games in-house, that wasn't until the following decade.

>> No.6963484

>>6963023
You think you've been arguing with the OP this whole time

>> No.6963496

>>6961696
>damnatio memoriae
neato

>> No.6963538

>>6963443
>N64 had the best shooters
You mean of a console, right? Right??

>> No.6963552

>>6963538
Nope. N64 shooters were even better than PC.

>> No.6963580 [DELETED] 

>>6963538
uh... no zoomboy, Goldeneye was the best shooter on any platform PC included. I know this may be surprising to zoomers now, but back then it was more the rule than the exception to see a consoles dominating PCs in any action genre. I remember reading reviews about Quake 64 and Quake 2 on N64 where they nitpicked about how they were slightly inferior in some ways to the £1,200 PC versions. It's really only the fifth gen and especially by the sixth gen that PCs started to always have the best fps games.

>> No.6963584

>>6963538
uh... no zoomboy, Goldeneye was the best shooter on any platform PC included. I know this may be surprising to zoomers now, but back then it was more the rule than the exception to see a consoles dominating PCs in any action genre. I remember reading reviews about Quake 64 and Quake 2 on N64 where they nitpicked about how they were slightly inferior in some ways to the £1,200 PC versions. It's really only the latter half of the fifth gen and the sixth gen that PCs started to clearly have the best games in an action genre (fps and rts).

>> No.6963594

>>6961431
>Are IBM Compatibles the first time personal computers actually started being taken seriously by AAA game developers,
Not at all. Thats ignoring everything that devs like Sirtech, Origin, EA, and LucasArts did on platforms like the C64 and Apple II. Ultima III, The Last Ninja, and Maniac Mansion were "Trippe A" for it's time.

>> No.6963598

>>6963594
Most of the early developers like Sierra, SSI, and Sirius started with the Apple II. Epyx was initially focused on the Atari 8-bit. Later on most were C64-centered and PCs didn't become dominant until near the end of the 80s.

>> No.6963606

>>6963598
>PCs didn't become dominant until near the end of the 80s.
Yeah, it was really the introduction of EGA and Adlib that kick started IBM compatibles being taken seriously as media/gaming platforms. And by the time VGA was really hitting mainstream and the original Sound Blaster landed, the deal was sealed for sure.

>> No.6963613

OH COOL ANOTHER ONE OF THESE FUCKING THREADS

>> No.6963657

>>6963584
>goldeneye
>good in any way
Yea I sure do love playing my fps games at 12 fps with the worst controller known to man.
>1200 brot dollar versions
Oooooh, so you're just an older console baby. I see now.

>> No.6963982

>>6963657
Seethe more PC tranny

>> No.6964115

why is it that every single thread that deals with computers ends up with PC guys deflecting at consoles?

>> No.6964236

damn what was that girl's name again?? she's cute

>> No.6964256

>>6963584
>>6963982
why can't you argue without acting like a faggot?

>> No.6964278

goldeneye literally plays itself, it's the first ultra-casual game