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I think a few companies tried to do something like the CD32, basically companies like Commodore and Atari (with their 8-bit computers) saw that they had existing libraries of games on their machines, and figured that selling a consolized version of their home computers which used carts/CDs and didn't require you to enter in a bunch of commands to launch games might be a decent way into the home console market. Commodore had tried it earlier with the C64GS, Atari with the XEGS, and I think there may have been some "consolized" versions of Japanese PCs like the FM Towns or MSX. None of them really succeeded, IIRC.
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Jan 27, 2020 21:07
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Yeah, the Atari 5200 was essentially a console version of the Atari 400/800, I believe. It's too bad that they basically preemptively killed any chance it had of success by crippling it with godawful controllers; it was a really great system. The 5200 was their first 8-bit console but then the NES came out and took almost the entire market. So almost immediately Atari created the 7800, which they felt would be a better NES competitor. That was the end for the poor 5200.  Edit: God, I loved my 5200. It had some truly fantastic games like Countermeasure, The Dreadnaught Factor and Zone Ranger, as well as great ports of Pac-Man, Joust, Centipede and Pengo. I highly recommend playing them if you possibly can. Especially the Activision games (The Dreadnaught Factor and Zone Ranger). There's another Activision port that I really wish I could recommend but I can't: H.E.R.O. It would be a great game but the 5200's lovely controllers kill it. It's a game that needs a lot of precise movement (especially in later levels), and the 5200's non-self centering joysticks will get you killed so much that later levels are basically impossible. Maybe it's good with a third party controller? 
...! fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jan 27, 2020 |
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Jan 27, 2020 22:22
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Nah, the 7600 was ready to go in 84, but it got delayed by the split and sale of half of Atari by Warner.
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Jan 27, 2020 22:38
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I had H.E.R.O. on Colecovision as a kid and it was one of my favorite games on the system. Definitely a recommend.
Kevyn fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Jan 28, 2020 |
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Jan 28, 2020 01:07
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h.e.r.o. fuckin rocks no matter the system. it's in my top 10 for 2600 games.Randaconda posted:Nah, the 7600 was ready to go in 84, but it got delayed by the split and sale of half of Atari by Warner. i will never in my life understand why they used the 2600's sound hardware on this thing, it's so fuckin jarring playing games that look close to as good as an nes game and then have 2600 sounds come out of it.
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Jan 28, 2020 08:15
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DEEP STATE PLOT posted:h.e.r.o. fuckin rocks no matter the system. it's in my top 10 for 2600 games. Well, they were supposed to add the Pokey chip into the 7800 cartridges so they'd have decent sounds, but Tramiel never was willing to spend any more money than he absolutely had to. Same commitment to being as cheap as possible strangled the Jaguar in the cradle, since they knew about the crippling hardware bugs, but were not willing to spend money to fix it
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Jan 28, 2020 09:53
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Randaconda posted:Well, they were supposed to add the Pokey chip into the 7800 cartridges so they'd have decent sounds, but Tramiel never was willing to spend any more money than he absolutely had to. It turns out a commitment to releasing cheap pieces of poo poo is a good way to go under.
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Jan 28, 2020 14:09
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Seems like it would be cheaper to just add the chip to the console hardware itself rather than the cartridges.
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Jan 28, 2020 22:11
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My favorite thing about the Commodore 64GS is the fact Commodore decided to bundle a copy of Terminator 2 with every unit while completely forgetting you had to use the keyboard to get past the title screen. Since the thing didn't have a keyboard, that was a slight problem. I'm going to assume the title screen was the best part of Terminator 2 on the C64 anyway, so maybe the ten people who bought the 64GS weren't missing out on much.
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Jan 29, 2020 12:42
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...! posted:Seems like it would be cheaper to just add the chip to the console hardware itself rather than the cartridges. Since they had to make the console compatible with the 2600 for some reason, adding the pokey chip would have, iirc, either made the cost per unit too high or necessitated a redesign
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Jan 29, 2020 13:18
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3DO failed so hard it didnt even make the poll I see
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Feb 2, 2020 04:30
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Dell_Zincht posted:Commodore in the 90's was a very badly run company. My Dad, who worked for them when they brought the Amiga folks and a bit before when the C64 was the hot poo poo, says as much.
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Feb 2, 2020 05:08
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I still love my Dreamcast and the giant spindle of pirated games I bought for a pound from some guy at an actual market of all places right at the end of the systems life. Such quality games, such a weird web browser (good enough for early teenage me to find porn on when I convinced my parents to get me a keyboard add on), long nights on PSO ruined when someone would casually steal all your best equipment because it dropped on death, multiple pirated versions of ps1 games, ah the memories. Whenever I replay it now my fingers are torn to shreds by the hard plastic of the d pad and buttons - putting the tiny dot on one of them so you could ostensibly feel where each button was without looking (who needs to look anyway?) just means that you get these tiny little blisters that hurt like crazy. Still worth it for those times you want to fire up MDK2, bass fishing or seaman.
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Feb 3, 2020 18:23
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Randaconda posted:Well, they were supposed to add the Pokey chip into the 7800 cartridges so they'd have decent sounds, but Tramiel never was willing to spend any more money than he absolutely had to. Was he the guy that made the infamous quote about game devs being "worth no more than the person who turns the screws on the cartridges?"
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Feb 3, 2020 20:39
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mind the walrus posted:Was he the guy that made the infamous quote about game devs being "worth no more than the person who turns the screws on the cartridges?" Tramiel wasn't very big on spending money on... well, most anything really, but especially not software since it wasn't as tangible as hardware, and he was a ruthless prick, so...
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Feb 4, 2020 07:20
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The ST was pretty neat, at least. Especially if you were a musician. e) one of my favorite ST conspiracies was that the reason Atari/Tramiel allowed the hardware MIDI-out port which made it used in studios/synth setups for years after it got EOLed was so salesmen could use it to play music while conveniently hiding that the ST was outputting MIDI and not actually making those sounds natively. Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Feb 4, 2020 |
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Feb 4, 2020 15:38
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mind the walrus posted:Was he the guy that made the infamous quote about game devs being "worth no more than the person who turns the screws on the cartridges?" Tbh that sounds like a good progressive statement although I guess not in the way meant by the guy who said it.
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Feb 4, 2020 18:43
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The Kins posted:Tramiel wasn't very big on spending money on... well, most anything really, but especially not software since it wasn't as tangible as hardware, and he was a ruthless prick, so... Tramiel's infamous cheapness went both ways for good and bad for his companies, one of the reason the C64 was such a big success was that it's cheap manufacturing cost meant that Tramiel could ruthlessly price war/undercut its one-time competitor, the TI-99, to death. Not a lot of good stories about the man personally, though, and his cheapness led to some awful decisions like screwing over his dealers multiple times.
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Feb 5, 2020 17:40
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Gobblecoque posted:Tbh that sounds like a good progressive statement although I guess not in the way meant by the guy who said it.
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Feb 5, 2020 17:47
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Feb 5, 2020 20:00
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mind the walrus posted:Definitely not, in the sense that the apocrypha is that game devs were asking for their names to be added to the Game Credits and the businessman in the story told them "no you didn't contribute anything." Uh yeah like I said:"not in the way meant by the guy who said it."
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Feb 5, 2020 22:40
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The Kins posted:That might have been Ray Kassar, who is on the historical record as calling four aggrieved 2600 developers "towel designers ... anybody can do a cartridge". Those guys went on to found a little company called Activision, which did alright for a while I guess. VideoGameVet over in D&D worked at Activision in the early days... might be worth asking him about it. Think he was fairly high up, too.
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Feb 6, 2020 01:48
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RBA Starblade posted:The ROB is actually the most successful add-on of all time because iirc it existed entirely to trick us stupid Americans into thinking that the Nintendo Entertainment System (redesigned to look like a vcr) was not just a video game console and, in fact, an Entertainment System. I still kind of want a ROB. It looks cute. I experienced Sonic 3 and Knuckles as the PC port. The sound didn't work properly on my stepmom's computer, so I played it with the music but no sound effects. Not a big loss, really. (Though it was with the replaced soundtrack with the different music for Carnival Night, Ice Cap and Launch Base)
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Feb 12, 2020 12:22
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A computer AND a console all in one must have have been some insane poo poo back in the 90s
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Feb 12, 2020 12:52
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If I remember correctly, it actually has the main guts of a Genesis in it, and the panel on the front is what switches between PC and Console modes. I don't remeber if it uses the same audio and video outputs, or if both halves have seperate outputs. Edit: Retromancave did a video covering it https://youtu.be/6dWb-uw27Yg
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Feb 12, 2020 14:28
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Randalor posted:If I remember correctly, it actually has the main guts of a Genesis in it, and the panel on the front is what switches between PC and Console modes. I don't remeber if it uses the same audio and video outputs, or if both halves have seperate outputs. yeah, that makes sense, computers of the time might not have had perfect emulation capabilities
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Feb 12, 2020 14:32
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When I think about the Saturn, all I can think about is the weird rear end promo video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyv6ZehQyTQ It acts like this is something revolutionary, something that will literally change the world! What the gently caress? Where the hell did they get the idea this is the way to go about selling a game console? You have halo lady, Destro and annoying raver kid that is clearly on his 15th tab of E. I have no idea where all this random weirdness came from that was all over the place in advertising at the time. The Theater of the Eye ads were decent at least. But notice something major, you see very little of the games. They do quick cuts of them to this really mean shredding guitar, but they're trying to make golf and soccer super exciting. Virtua Fighter and Panzer Dragoon weren't bad, but they're not crazy fast paced games. I remember just being confused by the whole thing at the time. Actually at this time I kind of was giving up on Console gaming because it really seemed to be lagging behind PC gaming. I could play Warcraft 2 or Command and Conquer at this time, nothing on the consoles could match that. Playstation would come out and change my thoughts on that.
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Feb 24, 2020 09:41
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SEGA of America seemed to stake their entire brand on chasing whatever was hip with 90s teenagers at that exact moment, and early on the marketing proved a success. I would guess that by 1994 they were just elbow deep in the arse of whatever idiot Gen-Xers they hired to tell them what the "next big thing" would be.
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Feb 24, 2020 16:06
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mind the walrus posted:SEGA of America seemed to stake their entire brand on chasing whatever was hip with 90s teenagers at that exact moment, and early on the marketing proved a success. I would guess that by 1994 they were just elbow deep in the arse of whatever idiot Gen-Xers they hired to tell them what the "next big thing" would be. Those ads are a long way from GENESIS DOES, what NintenDON'T. But i've said many times, Sega is a company that could have only existed in the 90s, because it's entire brand was 'tude.
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Feb 24, 2020 18:45
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twistedmentat posted:But i've said many times, Sega is a company that could have only existed in the 90s, because it's entire brand was 'tude. Sega has been around since the 1940's, released their first arcade video game in 1973, and is still very much alive today But yes, their peak in America was definitely early 90's, both chronologically and in terms of branding
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Feb 24, 2020 18:52
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rujasu posted:Sega has been around since the 1940's, released their first arcade video game in 1973, and is still very much alive today Yea that's what I meant, and if you say Sega most people are going to think about the 90s. So Sega could only have been what people think of Sega in the 90s. It is amazing how basically everything they did after the Gensis was a failure. Not bad, but they just couldn't make it work. But I can totally blame it on their marketing team which was probably a bunch of 24 olds and a bong.
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Feb 25, 2020 04:54
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twistedmentat posted:Yea that's what I meant, and if you say Sega most people are going to think about the 90s. So Sega could only have been what people think of Sega in the 90s. A lot of it was Sega of Japan's fault for not listening to the American branch about what the American consumer liked. Remember, Sonic 2006 is what the Japanese branch wanted Sonic to be all along.
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Feb 25, 2020 08:58
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rujasu posted:Sega has been around since the 1940's, released their first arcade video game in 1973, and is still very much alive today In 1976, Sega actually released Nintendo's original electro-mechanical version of Wild Gunman in America. Interesting that they worked together back then. And, of course, Nintendo was founded in 1889. A lot of these companies have been around longer than you'd think.
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Feb 25, 2020 14:21
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Randaconda posted:A lot of it was Sega of Japan's fault for not listening to the American branch about what the American consumer liked. Remember, Sonic 2006 is what the Japanese branch wanted Sonic to be all along. Yeah, seems like Nintendo was better about that. The entire reason the US got a reskinned version of Doki Doki Panic as our SMB2 (rather than what we in the US now know as the Lost Levels) is because Howard Phillips played Lost Levels for awhile, got frustrated after dying a trillion times, and told NoJ, "gently caress this poo poo. We can't sell something like this to American consumers. It won't fly over here." And they actually listened to him. Of course, some of the Lost Levels did make it to the US in the Vs. Super Mario Bros. arcade game. Edit: That was probably the cruelest change (among many) to the arcade game to throw off people who were used to the NES version. Can't have an SMB NES expert run through the entire game on one credit, after all. Gotta get your quarters somehow. ...! fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Feb 25, 2020 |
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Feb 25, 2020 14:33
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There's an episode of the Warp World Historians podcast that talks about Sega through the point where they pulled out of the hardware market. https://soundcloud.com/warpworldhistorians/episode-30-sega The discussion starts around 10 minutes in and is definitely worth a listen.
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Feb 25, 2020 16:33
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Randaconda posted:A lot of it was Sega of Japan's fault for not listening to the American branch about what the American consumer liked. Remember, Sonic 2006 is what the Japanese branch wanted Sonic to be all along. Which makes me wonder was that what was popular in Japan? Like I've seen a lot of Japanese ads, but Sega's marketing was a step above Arnold's energy drink ads or PEPSI MAN.
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Feb 26, 2020 09:06
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I have no idea what this is, but my god, we had one of those joysticks, it was poo poo
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Feb 27, 2020 21:33
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Nebakenezzer posted:I have no idea what this is, but my god, we had one of those joysticks, it was poo poo It was a computer, from the early/mid 90s, released only in Japan and Europe, iirc, that also contained a built in Genesis/Megadrive.
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Feb 27, 2020 21:43
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Randaconda posted:It was a computer, from the early/mid 90s, released only in Japan and Europe, iirc, that also contained a built in Genesis/Megadrive. The Japanese system, 1991's Sega Teradrive, was an IBM-made 286 with the Mega Drive hardware on the motherboard, allowing for some degree of interaction between the PC and Genesis parts of the hardware, as used with a packed-in game. Very little about it is due to a blend of language barrier and low sales that resulted in a planned Sega CD expansion getting cancelled 
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Feb 28, 2020 10:05
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The Kins posted:There were two unrelated PCs. That was the European one, 1993's Amstrad Mega PC, which was a generic 386 PC with a region-free Mega Drive stuffed inside. that's a good looking computer
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Feb 28, 2020 10:46
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