Snes and Sony

Kaiser Sigma · May 24, 2003

Originally posted by Lord Kane
The SNES was the first machine with Hardware 3d accelleration, it's true. From what I've heard however, the SuperFX chip was madly underpowered, even for it's time.
Futhermore, how many games do you know that were great and that used the SuperFX chip? Most of hte great games on the SNES only used Mode 7.

Bleh, the SuperFX chip was meant for crappy games (unless you liked that bad racing game with cars featuring eyes

). The Genesis on the other hand featured the Virtua Racing port and while you had to use an adapter to play the game (was it related to something about the color ? Help me on that one) the graphics were superb and way better than the ones displayed by the SuperFX.

Another great example would be Silpheed (Sega CD) which featured impressive scenes with polygons (ships being blasted into lots of triangles ? It was heavenly

)...

Praise the Lord of Darkeness for Sega, otherwise ppl would still think that Nintendo is the best company because of Square's RPGs (BTW third party support doesn't count

)...

DarkAurora · May 24, 2003

Despite dropping Sony, Nintendo would have still been the 3rd party king if they had just made the N64 a CD system. Companies were jumping on the FMV bandwagon on the time and they couldn't make much in the FMV when being able to use only one cartridge, so they were a little forced to switch to PSX. Then the PSX started selling really well because everyone wanted to see all the cool FMV's. Then since the PSX was selling so well, the companies started putting the games with no FMV's on PSX too. Also, N64 came out a little late and Nintendo made it kinda difficult to develop for.

Rhombus · May 24, 2003

I think it had ALOT more to do with the dirt cheap cost of manufacturing CD's than the FMV and CD sound implementations... of course those didn't hurt either. It costs literally hundreds times more to manufacture cartridges.

Guest · May 24, 2003

Sega Saturn = 1994 November. PSX = 1995 offical release for sale to public. Sega Saturn was released first.
Sony ended up not making the planned for CD unit for the SNES, but they did make the custom sound chip for the SNES. I believe the designation is the SP 7000. This is the SPU that gave early emu authors so much trouble in emulating the SNES and led, for a while, to the statement that "There will never be sound on SNES emus, it is not possible." Sony designed this sound chip for Nintendo's then new console.
sincerely,
sx/amiga

Guest · May 24, 2003

Originally posted by Kaiser Sigma

Bleh, the SuperFX chip was meant for crappy games (unless you liked that bad racing game with cars featuring eyes ). The Genesis on the other hand featured the Virtua Racing port and while you had to use an adapter to play the game (was it related to something about the color ? Help me on that one) the graphics were superb and way better than the ones displayed by the SuperFX.

adapter? no...the cart had a processor in it, like the snes superfc games. Me thinks you're confusing Virtua Racing (megadrive) with Virtua Racing Deluxe (32x)

Kaiser Sigma · May 24, 2003

Originally posted by Samor

adapter? no...the cart had a processor in it, like the snes superfc games. Me thinks you're confusing Virtua Racing (megadrive) with Virtua Racing Deluxe (32x)

I don't know about the rest of the world, but in my country we had to use an adapter in order to use VR (the genesis version). The VR cartdridge was taller than normal ones, this adapter had a series of switches that you had to set on a special way in order to use the game...

Don't ask me why, though...

Kaotic Soul · May 25, 2003

Why say that the Super FX chip was only used in crappy game what about Star Fox and Super Mario World 2 huh??

Kaiser Sigma · May 25, 2003

Star Fox was good, I didn't like it much but I reckon that the game was good for its time... though IMO Silpheed reduces it to a pulp

Super Mario World 2 uses another type of effects of the Super FX chip, I was just speaking about polygonal games...

takwu · May 26, 2003

Originally posted by Samor
the lynx boosted some 3d; was it first or later...?

I have a 2nd gen Lynx. I think the original was much older than the consoles mentioned (like 1990? just after the Gameboy I think...). However I don't think it has hardware 3D. It had scale and rotate tho. Blue Lightning was awesome.

takwu · May 26, 2003

Originally posted by Kaiser Sigma
Bleh, the SuperFX chip was meant for crappy games (unless you liked that bad racing game with cars featuring eyes ).
. . .
Another great example would be Silpheed (Sega CD) which featured impressive scenes with polygons (ships being blasted into lots of triangles ? It was heavenly )...

That racing game was called Stunt Race FX. It was and still is a very fun game. Too bad there still isn't very good emulation of the SuperFX chip. A game can be hurt by bad framerate, a racing game can be killed. If you can come over to my house I can show it to you on the real thing

Doom was ported really well with the SuperFX.
Dirt Bike FX is the original 3D motorcross game, and it is also fun.

As for Sega: if you think Silpheed for the Sega CD was good (which I agree) then you should check out the 32X games, like Shadow Squadron. It blew me away.

Kaiser Sigma · May 26, 2003

Indeed, Stunt Race featured some issues with the framerate (though I still don't know if the framerate was bad or the frame skip was too high) making the game look... well, odd.

Even so, when compared with the likes of Virtua Racing (making aside that VR had an almost perfect Frame rate) Stunt Race FX is a puny match for it (no offense meant to anyone, just the truth

).

takwu · May 26, 2003

umm you got me wrong there. I meant Stunt Race FX has good framerate on the real SNES, but the emulation on PC is choppy, according to my experience. When I first tried SuperFX emulation, I was so pissed that I dug out my old SNES and Stunt Race FX cartridge to make sure I wasn't remembering it wrong. And ended up reliving the game for hours.

As for Virtua Racing. I never had the plain Genesis version, but the 32X Virtua Racing Delux was good. However, at the time I was more distracted by Virtua Fighter. :thumbup:

Kaiser Sigma · May 26, 2003

Well IMO (and I mean it, IMO

) Stunt Race FX featured a horrible frame skipping issue when compared with the beautiful VR on the Genesis...

Maybe I'm being picky but to it seemed as if the car's (if you can call them cars

) movement were like a bad slide show... but then again, maybe it's just me...

Dark Watcher · May 26, 2003

Excerpts from our Console History webpage..

Sony went on to develop two units. One was a 16-bit add-on for the Super Famicom / NES that sat underneath the system and allowed CD based gaming (SNES CD), and another as a stand-alone unit. Initially the agreement allowed Sony the ability to license CD based games for the system. Nintendo was not willing to relinquish control over software licensing. They dropped Sony from the project, and approached Phillips to develop the add-on. Ken Kutaragi, the Sony researcher who had worked on the SNES PlayStation prototype (and the sound chip for the SNES) did not want to give up the hard work put into the unit. He wanted to continue working on this project and so approached then Sony President Norio Ogha to develop the stand-alone console without Nintendo. The project continued, and the new Sony Computer Entertainment Division was formed. Sony announced the console dubbed ‘Playstation’ at the Tokyo International Electronics Show in October 1991. The original Playstation concept would be able to play SNES games, as well as educational CD software. Nintendo would try to re-negotiate with Sony in fear that they would drop support for the SuperNES sound chip, but the joint effort between the companies never saw the light of day. Ken Kutaragi went back to develop the Playstation from scratch making it a 32-bit console

The Playstation (a.k.a PSX) was released shortly after the Sega Saturn on December 2nd 1994. (thats in Japan btw)

Between 1993 - 1994, 3D gaming was growing in popularity. Sega's rival Nintendo collaberated with another company to develop a chip that could enhance games with 3D polygon abilities (the Super FX chip). Not to be outdone Sega teamed up with Hitachi to create the 'Sega Virtual Processor'. The SVP chip was primarily designed for Sega's 3D arcade titles, but one game was released for the Genesis with the chip installed in the cart. In 1994 "Virtua Racing" was released and retailed for $90-$100USD.

Yes..Sony did manufacture the SPC700 sound chip..thats why Nintendo tried to re-negotiate the deal...it obviously didn't fall thru..and it has not been reported as to what Sony walked away with in the deal...

also the SVP chip was in cart..the cart was taller then most..however we are not sure about this dip switch thing mentioned...find us some facts and we will add it to the site.

Kazuya · May 26, 2003

I dont really remember a bout s dip swith but i remember the 32x version where you needed to have the adapter.
I also think that stunt race fx was really choppy in a real snes compared to virtua racing. Also, vr appeal more to me. Its like todays' childish Link versus Solid snake...

Kaiser Sigma · May 26, 2003

Well... actually now I realize that I played the JP version (grey cart) so the adapter may have been in there for using the game... it was quite interesting as the adapter featured various possible combinations but that's all what there is to it.

My bad.

Exophase · May 26, 2003

Originally posted by Samor
actually from a technical POV I'd prefer the Megadrive over the snes. as for the game libraries; about the same; If I were an rpg freak snes would easily win.

From a technical POV? Why? SNES has much better hardware, even if the CPU is slower/weaker. The video hardware is far superior and so is the audio hardware... and that's what counted for the games; anyone could tell you that for the most part SNES ended up with higher quality games..

- Exo

Exophase · May 26, 2003

Originally posted by Lord Kane
The SNES was the first machine with Hardware 3d accelleration, it's true. From what I've heard however, the SuperFX chip was madly underpowered, even for it's time.
Futhermore, how many games do you know that were great and that used the SuperFX chip? Most of hte great games on the SNES only used Mode 7.

Actually no, no hardware 3D acceleration. SuperFX isn't a 3D accelerator at all, just a general purpose-ish CPU with some extra stuff to make doing framebuffer like video on SNES easier. If it were a true 3D accelerator we would have probably seen much better things.. but the time for mainstream 3D acceleration hadn't really come yet. Note that computers had been providing much better soft rendering for years now.

- Exo

Exophase · May 26, 2003

Originally posted by Kaiser Sigma

Bleh, the SuperFX chip was meant for crappy games (unless you liked that bad racing game with cars featuring eyes ). The Genesis on the other hand featured the Virtua Racing port and while you had to use an adapter to play the game (was it related to something about the color ? Help me on that one) the graphics were superb and way better than the ones displayed by the SuperFX.

Virtua Racing had expensive dedicated hardware on the cart much like SuperFX games (except apparently much more expensive).. I remember the cart cost over $100 here... adding special hardware that makes the games cost this much is kinda "cheating", it's like buying a console upgrade but doing it for every game...

- Exo

Kaiser Sigma · May 27, 2003

Originally posted by Exophase

Virtua Racing had expensive dedicated hardware on the cart much like SuperFX games (except apparently much more expensive).. I remember the cart cost over $100 here... adding special hardware that makes the games cost this much is kinda "cheating", it's like buying a console upgrade but doing it for every game...

- Exo

Much more expensive ? Agreed. But you should also mention that it was much more better...
Cheating ? Perhaps, but it was the basis for the cart era... Sega wasn't the only one who did it, Nintendo did it as well (though maybe the N64 is a better example for that). However I don't consider that it's like cheating (except for the part of the outrageous price), cart had that advantage... companies could pump their games without having to depend entirely on the main hardware.

Virtua Racing is an example of that, but so are some of the games released on the SNES or the N64...

Snes and Sony

Kaiser Sigma

DarkAurora

Rhombus

Guest

Guest

Kaiser Sigma

Kaotic Soul

Kaiser Sigma

takwu

takwu

Kaiser Sigma

takwu

Kaiser Sigma

Dark Watcher

Kazuya

Kaiser Sigma

Exophase

Exophase

Exophase

Kaiser Sigma

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