Nintendo Continues To Blame Wii U For Its Financial Woes

True, but the point of that post was to highligt that the SNES wasn't a match for an arcade cabinet, not to discuss the economics of the underlying hardware.
 
I think my clock rate was off there. I don't think they were that fast, but they were pretty advanced for the time, and not cheap.
 
However, we can infer that for the SNES to even come as close as it did in the home without the need for the DOS 486+ version or the like, was... somewhat revolutionary... :p
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Coprocessors were pretty common by the time the SNES came out. The 486 mostly overcame the need to have even a dedicated coprocessor like the 80387 FPU and as the Pentium was already selling at that time, every new CPU had a floting point processor embedded.

Besdies that, in order to handle 3D graphics smoothy, the SNES needed a cartridge to contain the SuperFX coprocessor which drove up the cost of the game's hardware and made it unappealing to companies which is why there were so few SuperFX equipped games.
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Exactly. The PC was great for polygons while the SNES was great for sprites. The whole point of the debate is that the vast majority of games at the time were sprite-based. And, because polygon-based games of the time looked like a pile of bricks, all the prettiest games were sprite-based.

Nobody cared about a plane model going from 10 polys to 50 polys; but going from 16 colors at 20fps to 256 colors at 60fps with parallax scrolling and rotating backgrounds was an absolutely enormous difference.

Modern pixel art is a great example of how people have lost perspective. Whether you prefer the original NES version of Mario or the SNES version is just a matter of preference nowadays. But back then it marked a generational hardware leap.
 
J3RK said:
However, we can infer that for the SNES to even come as close as it did in the home without the need for the DOS 486+ version or the like, was... somewhat revolutionary... :p
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It was evolutionary because the economic realities of technological advancement made the computational power available at a cost they were willing to endure to reap the benefit of zombie children. While the change might have seemed drastic to a person buying a SNES who was previously playing a NES, the incremental advancement of chip lithography were happening pretty smoothly all along behind the scenes. Nintendo just sat around waiting for a while until they were forced to sell something newer and more powerful because of the actions of an industry competitor.
 
hordaktheman said:
Exactly. The PC was great for polygons while the SNES was great for sprites. The whole point of the debate is that the vast majority of games at the time were sprite-based. And, because polygon-based games of the time looked like a pile of bricks, all the prettiest games were sprite-based.

Nobody cared about a plane model going from 10 polys to 50 polys; but going from 16 colors at 20fps to 256 colors at 60fps with parallax scrolling and rotating backgrounds was an absolutely enormous difference.

Modern pixel art is a great example of how people have lost perspective. Whether you prefer the original NES version of Mario or the SNES version is just a matter of preference nowadays. But back then it marked a generational hardware leap.
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I dunno, people seemed pretty intested in Doom with it's 3D hallways *snerk* in 1993 and they were pretty impressed by Wolfenstein 3D the year before. The 3D craze was already happening even then, but not to kids who couldn't get their hands on the equipment. People who were kids with Nintendo branded controllers in their hands didn't have any perspective of what was happening outside of the Nintendo ecosystem and their views of entertainment of the time are pretty narrow.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I dunno, people seemed pretty intested in Doom with it's 3D hallways *snerk* in 1993 and they were pretty impressed by Wolfenstein 3D the year before. The 3D craze was already happening even then, but not to kids who couldn't get their hands on the equipment. People who were kids with Nintendo branded controllers in their hands didn't have any perspective of what was happening outside of the Nintendo ecosystem and their views of entertainment of the time are pretty narrow.
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Yep, there's no denying that. I still remember when and where I was when I first saw Doom. But that was also a full three years after the SNES came out and that was a very long time in hardware terms in those days. Doom caused games to go from 2D to 3D and marks the beginning of the generation after the SNES.

Coincidentally, it's also one of the reasons that the Sega Saturn didn't do better. That was a 2D oriented system released when games were starting to shift towards 3D.
 
hordaktheman said:
Yep, there's no denying that. I still remember when and where I was when I first saw Doom. But that was also a full three years after the SNES came out and that was a very long time in hardware terms in those days. Doom caused games to go from 2D to 3D and marks the beginning of the generation after the SNES.

Coincidentally, it's also one of the reasons that the Sega Saturn didn't do better. That was a 2D oriented system released when games were starting to shift towards 3D.
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The SNES didn't make it to the US until 1992. Doom came out in 1993.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
The SNES didn't make it to the US until 1992. Doom came out in 1993.
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1991, actually. Doesn't change the fact that the hardware was designed much earlier and with custom logic intended for 2D gaming. Doom was the 'killer app' for FPUs and during a time when CPU performance still doubled every 12-18 months. You needed a seriously cutting edge PC to run that game well.

I had a 25mhz 386SX at the time and, believe me, it did not.
 
J3RK said:
The SNES could display a lot more colors on the screen simultaneously. I don't remember all of the specific modes off the top of my head, but in at least some modes, it could do 2048 onscreen colors I believe from either a 15 or 16 bit palette.

The Megadrive could display 64 out of a 512 color palette at once.

Both systems had 16 bit processors. The Megadrive's was a Motorola 68000 which was clocked at 7.16MHz, but some of its instructions took more than one clock cycle. The 65816 in the SNES was half that at 3.58MHz (I think) but had a much more efficient instruction set. Both decent.

The SNES had a lot more hardware assisted graphical features, (Mode 7 scaling and rotation) I believe hardware sprites as well. Where the MD was all done through software.

I'm a fan of FM synthesis, so I actually like "most" of the MD music/audio better, but there are some undeniably good sounds on some SNES games.

I'd say overall the SNES was much more powerful, and and had nicer graphics. (especially real transparency modes as opposed to the "checkerboard" effects seen on a lot of MD games.)

It's of course down to taste for the most part, and the sum of the parts on one or the other could go either way for someone. I feel like there was a lot more unique content on the SNES though whereas the MD had a lot of arcade ports and ports from other computers/machines. It had some unique as well of course though.
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Very well said. :cool:

tumblr_ms8q3wBgSi1sgl0ajo1_400.gif
 
hordaktheman said:
1991, actually. Doesn't change the fact that the hardware was designed much earlier and with custom logic intended for 2D gaming. Doom was the 'killer app' for FPUs and during a time when CPU performance still doubled every 12-18 months. You needed a seriously cutting edge PC to run that game well.

I had a 25mhz 386SX at the time and, believe me, it did not.
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I've seen it run on a 386 at 33 MHz, but any modern day 486 would run it just fine and those really weren't cutting edge. Well, they may have seemed that way to a younger audience that was playing SNES games, I guess.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I've seen it run on a 386 at 33 MHz, but any modern day 486 would run it just fine and those really weren't cutting edge. Well, they may have seemed that way to a younger audience that was playing SNES games, I guess.
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What? No, they didn't. Everyone and their uncle was trying to run Doom decently in those days. I had one friend sell off pretty much everything he owned just to get that damned game running well.

Hell, you needed a VESA Local Bus graphics card in addition to the CPU to get decent framerates. And that didn't even exist until 1992. The ISA bus just flat out wasn't fast enough.
 
hordaktheman said:
What? No, they didn't. Everyone and their uncle was trying to run Doom decently in those days. I had one friend sell off pretty much everything he owned just to get that damned game running well.

Hell, you needed a VESA Local Bus graphics card in addition to the CPU to get decent framerates. And that didn't even exist until 1992. The ISA bus just flat out wasn't fast enough.
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Maybe you're right....if youtube is to be believed, it's kinda sluggish on a 40 MHz 386.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mLFSsXF2TQ

(about 3 mins into the video whoever is recording it actually starts Doom)

It seems fairly playable though and is a lot faster than GTA San Andreas on my netbook.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Maybe you're right....if youtube is to be believed, it's kinda sluggish on a 40 MHz 386.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mLFSsXF2TQ

(about 3 mins into the video whoever is recording it actually starts Doom)

It seems fairly playable though and is a lot faster than GTA San Andreas on my netbook.
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Haha, yeah, that looks like my old 386. I think I got something like 5fps on that system. I had to reduce the window to something slightly smaller than a cigarette pack to get decent framerates.
 
hordaktheman said:
Hell, you needed a VESA Local Bus graphics card in addition to the CPU to get decent framerates. And that didn't even exist until 1992. The ISA bus just flat out wasn't fast enough.
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Heh. A holler out to anyone else who actually built their own PC's back in the VLB days of the early 90s. I had some kind of Western Digital VLB card that did graphics and IDE controller all in one convenient 10" long card on my 486SX 25mhz (overclocked to 33mhz, of course... I actually had to remove the timing CRYSTAL and put in a 33mhz one)
 
If you are in the market for a wii u, dont even wait 6 months or a year, just purchase used. Nintendo doesnt deserve your monies!

Let them make games for both premier current generation consoles. :D
 
Burticus said:
Heh. A holler out to anyone else who actually built their own PC's back in the VLB days of the early 90s. I had some kind of Western Digital VLB card that did graphics and IDE controller all in one convenient 10" long card on my 486SX 25mhz (overclocked to 33mhz, of course... I actually had to remove the timing CRYSTAL and put in a 33mhz one)
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Oh, those were the days of real [H]ardcore action... =D

Looking back, my 8-9 year-old self was really fortunate that my father could afford buying computer stuff for me to play with. Back then I didn't have a clue how expensive it really was.
 
All of you talking about SNES, Doom, and 386/486's, I just remember when I was younger playing my SNES constantly, then one time I went over to my aunts house who had a 486 with Doom on it. It was AWESOME. I think that's one of the first times I ever used a computer and what started my addiction. :p
 
I remember shopping for parts with a friend. He bought a 486 DX-50 (so the highest stock speed you could get with out the DX-2 doubling.) For some reason it wouldn't work right on his motherboard, and instead of taking it back he gave it to me. So I went and picked up a VL motherboard and an Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 with 2MB. That played Doom exceedingly well.
 
I always forget when I'm in a front page thread with no edit... Bleh... Anyway, before that I had a 386 DX-40 which wasn't bad either. It ran Doom ok. Still that 486 killed it...
 
Doom is what made me upgrade my RAM. From 4 MB to 8 MB ($200 for the upgrade). 4 1MB 30 pin SIMM's. I was big into games. I always loved the PC (and C64 before that), because not only could you play games, you could make your own.

A 486DX/33 with 8MB RAM would run Doom, but for a decent frame rate you have to use a smaller window. Overclocking it to 50 or 66 MHz did a lot better.

Doom on the 32X or Jaguar was decent, but you had the small viewing window. Those consoles weren't PC's, and you could easily tell.

Before PC's got big, it was arcade vs. console. The console was trying to bring arcade ports (arcade games cost thousands of dollars for a single game, when a console ran $189 with a game, plus $50 per game) to the home console. It worked great. Then, PC's started getting better and better. Better visuals, resolutions, speed and sound. Then, as arcades started declining (sadly), it started to become a console vs. PC war. Each time trying to outdo it. You still have a financial difference between the two. As well as a longer shelf life for consoles. No one wants to buy a new console every year or two just for small speed updates that bring slightly better visuals. So, you have a 5-7 year lifespan on a console. PC's aren't like that. If you want to play a new game for a PC you bought 5 years ago, it probably won't run (or run well). The console, it will.

Consoles at the time were cheap and considered toys. PC's were not toys. Now, consoles are more of a consumer electronic device as are computers.
 
Ahh the good old days... Except jumpering for three hours to get your IRQs and DMAs set right to avoid your COM ports... :D

I remember I had a 286 16MHz that was the first board I ever saw that used SIMMs. I upgraded from 1MB to 2MB so I could play Wing Commander in the enhanced mode. We had a Soundblaster 1.0 in that computer that I got my dad for his birthday. Of course I wanted to use it too :D but we had a lot of fun on that thing. My first VGA card (had a few EGA before that) had 256K on it. :D (luckily I never had the 4 color CGA setup... That was almost more disappointing than having a monochrome display. Like it teased you that it had color, but not enough to make you happy. hehehe Coming from a C64 I needed at least 16 colors. :D
 
chimera996 said:
If you are in the market for a wii u, dont even wait 6 months or a year, just purchase used. Nintendo doesnt deserve your monies!

Let them make games for both premier current generation consoles. :D
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I sense a bias.
 
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