That didn't really change until 1991, I think. Nintendo still had contracts with third party developers in the west that permitted them from making games on competing consoles. Also, keep in mind, that Sega really didn't have much in the way of third parties during the first couple years of the Mega Drive/ Genesis. The SNES was always expected to sell well, though. The bridges had not only been burned, but hacked, bombed, and nuked. Sadly, by the time they made a singular, fantastic console again ten years after Genesis, even at an awesome MSRP it was met with muted trepidation and lackluster sales. I think they overly feared Nintendo and then Sony, abandoned a successful platform and then buried their fans under a mountain of hardware releases, most of which met limited success. The SNES was great, but honestly there was no reason to rush towards leaving Genesis behind, or dividing development between the confusing mess of : Stock Gen/MD, 32x, Sega CD, and CD+32X *and* the upcoming, crazily complex Saturn design, which kept changing up to release and had a confounding mix of processors to tackle. They had actually developed an add-on chip like the Super FX, that could have been used for a handful of titles such as Virtua Fighter etc, while focusing on a powerful and elegant system for a 96ish release. No, the SegaCD should have never existed, and the same is true of the 32X. I can't imagine how complicated it would be to program a game to take advantage of all that technology, but you could probably make some amazing stuff with it. > 32X audio processor (QSound PWM), which adds only two channels but is capable of surround sound > 32X video processor (custom Sega chip), capable of displaying about 32,000 colors as opposed to the Genesis' roughly 1,500 as well as rotation and scaling effects for sprites > Two Sega CD audio processors (CD digital audio chip and a RICOH PCM), one of which streams audio from a CD with two channels while the other is similar to the Genesis' audio chip but adds eight more channels > Sega CD video processor (custom Sega ASIC), capable of decoding video streamed from a CD and also able to perform rotation and scaling on sprites that the Genesis VDP normally cannot > Sega CD CPU (another Motorola 68k), essentially the same as the Genesis' CPU but runs about 66% faster > Genesis audio processor (the Yamaha 2612 or equivalents), with six channels, one of which is able to essentially play pre-made sound effects stored in a ROM > Master System audio processor (the PSG), a four-channel chip often used in tandem with the Genesis audio chip for Genesis games > Master System CPU (the Z80), typically used to handle audio operations for Genesis games Consider how many chips would be in that Frankenstein's monster: I've been thinking lately about what a game could do that took advantage of a CD 32X setup.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |