For the most part he sucks, but I do have to confess a love for his "Wii Salute" video, which sums up the history of console wars quite succintly.
Except that the MegaDrive/Genesis had lots of great games and didn't suffer from horrible slowdown, and had superior audio to the SNES/SFC by a mile as far as FM is concerned..
By and large though, aside from a few gems like the Ecco series, Knuckles Chaotix, Kolibri, and T-Mek the Sega CD and 32X were disastrous as far as games went, the Saturn while being a very powerful machine made very little design sense. The Jaguar bit .. Right on the money. "You aren't 64-bit get the fuck out of here."
Epicenter wrote:
the MegaDrive/Genesis had lots of great games and didn't suffer from horrible slowdown
True. Neither did the Super NES, except for a few poorly architected programs.
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and had superior audio to the SNES/SFC by a mile as far as FM is concerned..
Are you implying that FM > samples?
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True. Neither did the Super NES, except for a few poorly architected programs.
Slowdowns, no. Though I always thought SNES games in general - I'm sure there are exceptions - felt kind of slow when compared to Megadrive games. That is coming from a 12-year-old me who didn't even know or understand the hardware differences.
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Are you implying that FM > samples?
That's subjective, I prefer the SNES audio. Technically, the SNES is superior in that department.
The Genesis (or MegaDrive) VS SNES debate can go for long, however if there is ONE departement where the SNES crushes down the Genesis to it's doom it's without a doubt the sound. Nothing is worse than FM to my pesonnal point of view, exept if you only like Techno songs.
As I've said before, FM can be great if you know what you're doing and if you only attempt certain kinds of sounds. Sonic 3, for example, pulls off some absolutely jaw-dropping stuff, and the only samples used are the drums (which are, admittedly, hard to get even close to right with FM.) The problem is that a lot of Genesis musicians didn't know what they were doing and/or attempted sounds that you really just can't do with the Genesis FM chip. DOOM 32x is a particularily egregious example of this.
Also, the SNES does suffer from slowdown on some games (Mega Man X is particularily notorious for it.) I haven't run into slowdown on any of the Genesis games I've played, but I haven't played as many Genesis games as I have SNES games. Generally it's just due to the fact that the SNES runs at less than half the speed of the Genesis.
commodorejohn wrote:
Also, the SNES does suffer from slowdown on some games (Mega Man X is particularily notorious for it.)
All this shows is that Capcom's first engine on any platform is slow. This was the case with
Mega Man for NES as well.
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I haven't run into slowdown on any of the Genesis games I've played, but I haven't played as many Genesis games as I have SNES games. Generally it's just due to the fact that the SNES runs at less than half the speed of the Genesis.
A few things make direct speed comparisons difficult:
- The Genesis MC68000 is clocked twice as fast as the Super NES 65C816.
- MC68000 internal and external data buses are twice as wide as those on the 65C816, so 16-bit really means 16-bit.
- But the MC68000 can't access memory on every CPU cycle, which is one difference that Nintendo Power used in its article that debunked the "Blast Processing" myth.
Items 1 and 3 also applied to the Z80 in the Sega Master System vs. the 6502 in the NES.
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All this shows is that Capcom's first engine on any platform is slow. This was the case with Mega Man for NES as well.
I'd rather say Capcom's first engine on the NES was 1942.
So the first game was Son Son?
About colors, SuperNES is much better. The sound output might be polemic, as the Sega Genesis can bring arcade fidelity (Street Fighter games) on sound and graphics animation.
Please pardon the length of this post. This is how I break it down:
CPU: This is the most important factor for me. MD/Genesis games were able to take advantage of vastly superior processing power, including a superior processor architecture, higher clock frequency, full 16-bit bus, faster RAM, and higher-speed access to the cartridge ROM. While the 6502/65c816 architecture is very well designed at such a low clockrate it doesn't have much chance to compete. If you wish to compare the architectures directly you may do so by putting the PC-Engine's ~7 MHz 6502 variant alongside the MD's 68000 at ~7.7 MHz. The clockrate disparity is small but the performance difference is significantly in favor of the 68K in this scenario.
What that boils down to is more onscreen enemies and bullets in shooters like Gleylancer, the Thunder Force series and M.U.S.H.A. with little to no slowdown, complex scenes made of MANY sprites like in 'Sprite 3D' games such as Panorama Cotton, hordes of enemies attacking you at once while maintaining 60 FPS in Gunstar Heroes, et cetera. Games can be faster-paced and more reflex-testing than most titles on the SNES/SFC. But it doesn't all boil down to 'lots of sprites'. Object movement can be more complex, e.g. more objects moving in sinusoidal or other complex trigonometric patterns for more fluid and dynamic movement.
The SNES/SFC's CPU is by no means 'slow', but it's not up to par for a console built in 1991, when the MegaDrive was on the market in '89. The end result is games with more slowdown and platformers/shooters that, while they can be rather complex, lose a lot of their intensity of gameplay in the mix. Bosses are simpler, multisegment bosses in particular are less prevalent and their movement is more restricted. Comparing a platformer like Gunstar Heroes or Contra Hard Corps to Contra 3 or Sparkster or another SFC/SNES platformer will reveal simpler bosses, slower movement, smaller sprites and less utilization of many onscreen objects with complex movement algorithms.
Graphics: The SFC/SNES shows its strength in being a newer design and Nintendo's expertise in building excellent custom ASICs to suit their needs. The graphical capabilities of the SNES/SFC far exceed those of the MD's, with support for a much wider color palette, limited scaling/rotation support (doesn't work on all graphical layers), nice features like the famed "Mode 7". While the MegaDrive/Gen shows its strength in using a powerful off the shelf CPU and audio subsystem, the SFC/SNES shows the superiority of a custom-designed graphics subsystem in a console. However it does have some inferiorities to the MD in the graphical department, namely reduced resolution (higher resolutions are available, but due to the CPU bottleneck these are unfeasible to use in most circumstances) and the fact that despite higher graphical capability exists the CPU must process all onscreen objects, so they tend to be smaller and composed of fewer sprites than their MD/Gen equivalents.
Audio: This is a big preference thing. I prefer the sound of FM as, when used properly, you can produce very complex and stylized instruments all your own with a unique and distinctive sound. A game's music and sound effects take on a life of their own fully realized within the imagination of their composer. With PCM, which the SNES/SFC relies almost exclusively on, all audio is prerecorded. I feel this cheapens the sound and reduces the creativity the developers can express with it, as instruments sound repeated like they were coming from a MIDI synth-- less dynamic. Some games made excellent use of PCM, to their credit, but ultimately I find PCM audio better suits 32-bit consoles and beyond more, and the universal disadvantages namely cost of Sony's audio hardware and the cost of increased ROM size making SFC/SNES games VERY expensive remain.
For me, the MD has the winning combo here; combining a terrific PSG from the Master System, which has the strengths of complex and great-sounding NES audio, with a high-end FM synthesizer from Yamaha (YM2612), plus a DAC that when used correctly could produce PCM nearly as high quality as the SNES/SFC when needed. But in the end it will come down to what sort of ears you've got on your head.
What it all boils down to is that both systems are very powerful but their focus is much different in regards to what they will excel at. If you are looking for fast, reflex-testing high intensity shooters and platformers like me-- Sonic, Ecco, Gunstar Heroes, Vectorman, Gleylancer, Rocket Knight Adventures/Sparkster, M.U.S.H.A., Thunder Force, Panorama Cotton, games like those ... you won't be able to reproduce them effectively on the SFC/SNES. While the SFC/SNES' biggest strengths are games with heavy graphical complexity-- RPGs, titles like Mario Kart that rely on heavy use of the SNES' special graphical features, or slower but graphically-intensive plaformers like the Megaman series.
Nice point-by-point.
However, you can't knock the TurboGrafx! It's "got the arcade feel!"
Also how do you know every PCE game you've played isn't running at 1.79 MHz just like NES? Are you talking about Super CD or Arcade CD games or just HuCards? (I think Hucards mostly ran at 1.79MHz due to ROM speeds...)
One could also argue that SNES had a faster bus since it could access the bus every cycle and the 68K often accesses it 2 or 3 times during a 14 cycle instruction. GEN needs 200ns ROMs while SNES running at 1.79MHz needs 200ns ROMs; 3.58MHz needs 120ns. Games which use the SA-1 have a full 16-bit bus as well.
I also have yet to find a dual platform game where the GEN version looks better (less sprites on SNES and all.) I think the dual platform games also really show how much SNES shines over GEN in the music dept. Some good examples off the top of my head are the Earthworm Jim and Mortal Kombat series.
I'm not junking the Sega Genesis, but the main problem is the color. SuperNES games have more colors. The (SNES) sound, as I said, isn't the same if you compare with the arcade: the Genesis has fidelity, but this doesn't imply quality - quite poor.
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CPU: This is the most important factor for me.
That's what most Genesis enthusiast say. And they say this because the CPU is the only big point where the Gen beats the SNES, it's likely not that they prefer the Gen because of it's CPU. Just like now PS3 enthusiasts wich say it's better than the Wii because of it's faster CPU, wich makes no sense in gaming terms.
I have yet to find SNES games that annoyingly slow downs. I found Mega Man X boss battles are quite fast paced and intense. Castlevania IV slows down a bit, but it's nothing to write home about, and it's a SlowROM game. Most games (and hironically along with Mega Man X) are FastROMs, running at ~3.?? MHz instead of ~2.??? MHz.
Anyway, anyone will most likely like the game console he had played first, and for me I played the SNES first (I never played a Genesis outise of emulation actually).
Also, why I have nothing against the Genesis or Genesis enthusiasts, I definitely refuse to admit that FM syntetis allow for more creativity than a full sample-DSP processor. Not only nothing prevent people to make PCM samples from a FM synth and convert them to the SNES format, but also using original samples with full use of pitch and enveloppe of the SNES CPU can get a lot more expressive than anything. And it's definitely wrong to say the Genesis unique PCM channel can output something equivalent to the SNES : Not only you get only ONE channel, but it lacks echo, enveloppe and pitch modulation as opposed to the SNES ones. And yes, creative use of special noise/waveform samples and pitch modulation feature, along with the noise generator, can make very exiting sound effects competing against FM, while I totally agree that plain recorded sound effects mostly sucks on the SNES (lack of trebbles makes boring sound effects).
The only dual SNES/Genesis game I've ever played was Battletoads & Double Dragon. Hironically, I found the Genesis version better than the SNES, but not as good as the NES. Cannot explain why, tough.
Sega versus Nintendo discussions are almost always stupid opinion-contrasting that yields little value after it's all over. It's a game that's won by not even playing. That is all.
Last I checked, extremely few games had ROMs fast enough to handle sustained CPU operation at ~3.58 MHz on the SFC/SNES. As far as colors; on the MD you can really get away with a lot using creative dithering methods. NTSC/PAL's video 'flaws' can actually provide a poor-man's antialiasing that makes a few colors seem like many. Properly used, this can have dramatic effect, causing a sprite to look like it has literally tens or hundreds more colors than it actually does. A lot of early titles ignore this capability, but it really comes down to the artist.
While of course you can record an FM synth and play it back as PCM, who really did that? It's more interesting to see how composers expressed their ideas in a limited medium to potent effect through FM, just as it is to listen to a complex, well-programmed chiptune on the NES, versus something built primarily from just some notes and pre-recorded samples. Again that comes down to opinion but most SNES games sound like a low-grade PC MIDI to me, not anything glorious, and so I prefer the more creative application of the MD's PSG/YM2612.
For that record I like how the TGFX16/PC-Engine sounds better for the same reason, and in a lot of cases the NES' 2A03. The TGFX16/PCE provides vastly more versatile audio waveforms however.
Well, I can't resist chiming in on the sound thing here.
I've been using trackers long enough to notice there's just an extreme amount of possibilities with samples. Yes, if you have really good samples you can almost get away with mediocre composition. It allows for some laziness. It's harder to do that with FM, it just sounds too generic. But a good song, done properly, will sound good on any hardware.
With samples, there's no rule that everything need to be pre-recorded sounds. It was just the trendy thing to do. One could very easily edit your own samples to turn the SPC into 8 square wave channels (kind of interpolated though, so they won't be perfectly square-edged). Check out the Censor's SID player for SNES, or my NSF player, they sound pretty close to the original chips. The SPC wouldn't have any trouble emulating TG16 sound too. Some SNES soundtracks I like, Drakkhen for example, hardly use anything but simple waveforms with ADSR envelopes.
That's very creative; it just doesn't apply to the majority of games. Likewise there are some MD and TGFX16/PCE games that do a poor job of showing off what good FM is capable of. A feature a system had but never used doesn't hold up too well in comparing 2 systems' histories, though. For example the SFC/SNES had support for VERY high video resolutions, it was just too slow for practical use most of the time and required a very simple scene with minimal processing due to the CPU overhead when that mode was in use.
Likewise systems like the Saturn showed lots of potential that most games didn't properly tap, resulting in performance similar to the PSX on many titles when the Saturn had more raw power on tap.
Another example; the PCFX, a very powerful and versatile machine with terrific 2D capabilities and a powerful CPU, plus LOTS of RAM, but rendered totally useless because all its software is crappy dating sims that could run on hardware years older.
Opinions are opinions, but I can't stand inaccuracy.
kyuusaku wrote:
Also how do you know every PCE game you've played isn't running at 1.79 MHz just like NES? Are you talking about Super CD or Arcade CD games or just HuCards? (I think Hucards mostly ran at 1.79MHz due to ROM speeds...)
Sorry, but it just ain't true. The only time games run at 1.79Mhz is when accessing backup RAM. You can verify this by running almost any PCE ROM in the emulator Mednafen, and checking its clock speed through the debugger.
Epicenter wrote:
...For example the SFC/SNES had support for VERY high video resolutions, it was just too slow for practical use most of the time and required a very simple scene with minimal processing due to the CPU overhead when that mode was in use.
Sorry, could you point to any available article that suggests that the SNES CPU had to intervene with the PPUs when a high-resolution image is displayed? Jumping from low-resolution to high-resolution modes in the SNES is just a matter of setting some registers, as far as I know; the whole point of PPUs is to take all the image-displaying work away from the CPU.
Epicenter wrote:
As far as colors; on the MD you can really get away with a lot using creative dithering methods. NTSC/PAL's video 'flaws' can actually provide a poor-man's antialiasing that makes a few colors seem like many. Properly used, this can have dramatic effect, causing a sprite to look like it has literally tens or hundreds more colors than it actually does...
Wow! Sonic the Hedgehog displays 1000s of colours! Just look at the rainbows in the water. Now that's realism!
I'm sorry for all the sarcastic joking, but yeah, a few arguments presented here are desperately jumping around from invalid point to invalid point. Yes, there's a thing called dithering, but it's been around for millions of years (crosshatches in primitive drawings, etc.). The MD certainly doesn't have a monopoly on it, as any SNES game can use dithering too. (Though I'm not sure truly sure why it'd want to, with such rich shades to choose from.)
The more tiles are displayed onscreen, the more the CPU must intervene to manage their placement. This limits other tasks like complex object movement and game logic which must be simplified to prevent slowdown. Of course, however, you are correct in that the CPU is not physically drawing tiles dot by dot, that is indeed the PPU's job.
The Sonic games are a very poor example of use of dithering. In fact they're some of the few games that often look better with RGB rather than benefiting from the effects of composite video on a good display. A better example is Ecco 2 (Tides of Time) or Gunstar Heroes which made frequent use of 'flaws' in composite/RF video.
Nowhere did I say the MD/Genesis had any sort of a 'monopoly on dithering'. My point is; if the same visual effect can be achieved without a more advanced VDP, it would tip matters in favor of the MD.
ccovell wrote:
any SNES game can use dithering too. (Though I'm not sure truly sure why it'd want to, with such rich shades to choose from.)
Because 16-color tiles take less VRAM than 256-color tiles.
Epicenter wrote:
The more tiles are displayed onscreen, the more the CPU must intervene to manage their placement. This limits other tasks like complex object movement and game logic which must be simplified to prevent slowdown.
Then why didn't non-scrolling games with few moving objects, such as Tetris & Dr. Mario (SNES) or Columns (Gen), use this high resolution?
ccovell wrote:
Sorry, but it just ain't true. The only time games run at 1.79Mhz is when accessing backup RAM. You can verify this by running almost any PCE ROM in the emulator Mednafen, and checking its clock speed through the debugger.
This is surprising, 120ns is PC fast in 1987.
tepples wrote:
Epicenter wrote:
The more tiles are displayed onscreen, the more the CPU must intervene to manage their placement. This limits other tasks like complex object movement and game logic which must be simplified to prevent slowdown.
Then why didn't non-scrolling games with few moving objects, such as Tetris & Dr. Mario (SNES) or Columns (Gen), use this high resolution?
Because high-resolution graphics take more ROM space (c'mon, it's not like Dr. Mario is a large cart) and more time for the artists to draw.
The high resolution doesn't cost more CPU, PPU time or significant space on the SNES.
However, doing the same image in the highest resolution available would require 4 times more VRAM than it on low resolution, because this means 2 times more pixels vertically and horizontally.
Also, high resolution is only available vertically for sprites, if I remember correctly. Only 2 BG modes (5 and 6) allow high resolution horizontally, wich only allow few backgrounds layers with few colors/particular effects available.
However, it's true that very few SNES games takes advantage of this, and this is a shame.
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Opinions are opinions, but I can't stand inaccuracy.
I agree, and the worst by far is game collectors spreading inacuracies and passing them as knownledgefull people because they have loads of stacked games.
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Again that comes down to opinion but most SNES games sound like a low-grade PC MIDI to me, not anything glorious, and so I prefer the more creative application of the MD's PSG/YM2612.
That really makes me laugh, because the Genesis sounds EXACTLY like very old MIDIs. Bad SNES soundtracks sound like averagely old MIDIs, and good SNES soundtracks sounds awesome. If you say this, you should never have played SNES games with awesome sound such as Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Tales of Phantasia (and Tactics Ogre, too). Then you should have only played games such as Zelda III and Soul Blazer, both having horribly bad use of the SNES's sound.
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Another example; the PCFX, a very powerful and versatile machine with terrific 2D capabilities and a powerful CPU, plus LOTS of RAM, but rendered totally useless because all its software is crappy dating sims that could run on hardware years older.
I don't know if I'd call them terrific...then again, it depends on perspective.
The maximum number of layer in hardware is 4 "KING" backgrounds, 2 legacy VDC backgrounds, 2 legacy VDC sprite layers, and 1 JPEG/RLE layer(intended for motion decoding, it can be used for other purposes, like environmental effects in Miraculum and Zeroigar).
HOWEVER, there were limitations. If you wanted to use scaling+rotation with a tile map and tile data, you would eat up all KING RAM access slots, and only be able to display 1 KING background. Also, using the higher-colored video modes reduced the number of backgrounds displayable(for each pixel drawn on the screen, the KING chip could only do 2 16-bit RAM fetches into internal buffers).
You can display 32 VDC sprites per line, but only if you stagger them between the two VDCs, and only with 16-color sprites...if you want to use the 240-color mode for VDC backgrounds or sprites, you'll halve the VDC background or sprite capacity(in numbers and available memory).
Also, the horizontal resolution was...lacking. The KING backgrounds and motion decoder background can only be displayed at a horizontal resolution of 256, while the VDC layers can go slightly higher, to about 341 pixels wide. However, if you put the VDC into the higher horizontal-resolution mode, layer alpha transparency is disabled. Even when layer alpha transparency is enabled, it can only be applied when mixing the layers from different devices...
If games wanted to have decent music(the PSG in the PC-FX was functionally identical to the PCE, with 2 ADPCM channels tacked on), they could either use streaming ADPCM(which sounds ok, but has a rather high noise floor), or CD-DA(takes up a TON of disc space, though the CDROM drive in the PC-FX can vary the playback rate to some degree, which could reduce storage requirements, but I don't think any games did that). I suppose it would have been possible to make a software mixer as well and stream that, but it may take too much CPU time, and the hardware doesn't make such a thing easy.
blargg wrote:
Sega versus Nintendo discussions are almost always stupid opinion-contrasting that yields little value after it's all over. It's a game that's won by not even playing. That is all.
Agreed. I keep checking this thread hoping to find something interesting. Even that is getting boring!
Bregalad's right: the SNES' SPC has the potential for unlimited awesomeness. However, the Genesis only sounds like bad old MIDIs on games where the musician didn't know how to use the YM2612; on games like Zero Wing, Sonic The Hedgehog 3, or Street Fighter II, where the game was either ported from arcade hardware with a similar chip or created specifically for the Genesis by someone who knew how to use an FM chip, it can be quite good, especially as Yamaha's FM chips provide a very clear, smooth sound.
Mednafen]Lots and lots of very informed commentary on use of the PCFX hardware in real world conditions[/quote]
Very good points all. If you look at the game library though there were ways to make much better use of the hardware than was taken advantage of, unfortunately. For example Zeroigar could've been pulled off on the SNES save for the full motion video (and who really wanted it anyway?) The music was lackluster compared to even a modest PCE title, the graphics layers were all woefully underutilized .. in a boss battle nothing moved except bullets and the background didn't even scroll-- it just plain STOPPED. Besides the hardware-utilization issue, the graphics were poor and the music/gameplay was uninspired at best. When I think the Saturn as being a case of serious wasted potential.. the PCFX always puts things in perspective.
[quote="No Carrier wrote:
Agreed. I keep checking this thread hoping to find something interesting. Even that is getting boring!
Well, I hate Sega vs. Nintendo arguments-- this is a discussion of the hardware issues. Sega did a lot of stupid shit that ruined them, and their hardware was often like they just threw components at the wall to see what stuck, and sometimes they just got lucky (the minority of the time..) while Nintendo succeeded by being business-smart, building cheaper and more profitable hardware and locking in lots of developers (through often devious but effective practices) to ensure the most use came out of it. Prime example: SMS vs. NES: Which was the ultimately more powerful system? The SMS. Which one had 98+ of the fun software? Hint, it starts with N and ends in ES...
True... and now we can play Sonic in a Nintendo console, something "bizarre" for that time.
Ah... they could put the NES again into the market, eh? That heated cartridges, that plastic case... ^_^;;
commodorejohn wrote:
Because high-resolution graphics take more ROM space (c'mon, it's not like Dr. Mario is a large cart)
Tetris & Dr. Mario was completely uncompressed.
commodorejohn wrote:
and more time for the artists to draw.
Gimme a break. Nintendo sold
Tetris & Dr. Mario for the same price that some other companies were selling much larger games with more graphics. The price difference can't
all have been the royalty paid to Elorg for the use of the Tetris brand.
Bregalad wrote:
The high resolution doesn't cost more CPU, PPU time or significant space on the SNES.
Yes it does. Decompressing each frame of animation to work RAM and copying them to VRAM takes time.
Mednafen wrote:
they could either use streaming ADPCM(which sounds ok, but has a rather high noise floor), or CD-DA(takes up a TON of disc space, though the CDROM drive in the PC-FX can vary the playback rate to some degree
The noise floor of ADPCM varies based on the amount of treble in the signal, so that most of the noise is psychoacoustically masked by signal. Developers on PlayStation consoles obviously didn't see anything wrong with streaming ADPCM music, as the Mega Man X games for PS1, Super Puzzle Fighter II for PS1, the DDR series for PS1 and PS2, and Katamari games for PS2 all used streaming ADPCM, in either the standard IMA format or Sony's BRR-successor called VAG. I'd bet that even some DS games stream ADPCM music.
Fx3 wrote:
Ah... they could put the NES again into the market, eh? That heated cartridges, that plastic case... ^_^;;
If only there were a
good famiclone, not the "Generation NEX" with an inaccurately designed NOAC.
tepples wrote:
Developers on PlayStation consoles obviously didn't see anything wrong with streaming ADPCM music, as the Mega Man X games for PS1, Super Puzzle Fighter II for PS1, the DDR series for PS1 and PS2, and Katamari games for PS2 all used streaming ADPCM, in either the standard IMA format or Sony's BRR-successor called VAG.
Streaming ADPCM is still used today on platforms like PS2, PSP, Wii, etc. Unless you have an SPU handy to decode a compressed bitstream, who wants to spend main CPU time doing anything but setting up DMA to a hardware voice?
tepples wrote:
I'd bet that even some DS games stream ADPCM music.
You'd win that bet.
Tepples wrote:
If only there were a good famiclone, not the "Generation NEX" with an inaccurately designed NOAC.
There are some decent-sounding FOACs without much of a slowdown problem. The thing is none of them seems strong in every regard .. one will have great audio reproduction in one game and awful in another, for example.. another big issue is the best FOACs are usually in shitty low-budget consoles and marketed nowhere near as strongly as those using worse FOACs like Generation NEX, Yobo/Neo Fami, etc.
The Neo Fami seems pretty good except for the LoZ map bug and the stupid audio errors (wildly inaccurate pulse width, overly loud DMC.)
Comparing the Yobo/Neo Fami side by side with the "Famulator" (another popular FC clone, at least in Japan), as well as a genuine FC Model 2, I noted the Famulator had superior audio reproduction and very little to no slowdown that wasn't present on the real machine. However the Neo Fami had the worst audio in my mini-roundup, and there was a surprising slowdown issue. In fact it was so bad some parts of games became unplayable, such as the final boss battle in Hoshi no Kirby/Kirby's Adventure.
I'm curious how they ended up with a "slow" FOAC and why if so many variants are being made, why no one is making an effort to improve the technology. I guess it's because the ~15 year old FOAC designs work well enough to sell Famicom clones, and the differences can just be chalked up to discrepancies in cloning clone chips, cloned from the FC.
Something good at least to be said about the Neo Fami and Famulator; they don't seem to exhibit the strange pitch increase evident in FOACs that have better imitation of the pulse channels. It seems you can't have everything. So some games sound decent (SMB) and some sound mediocre-to-hideous (Kirby) while on cheaper systems like what I'm just semi-affectionately calling 2 Famiclones I own-- the BS-Fami and the Soccer BS-Fami-- can come extremely close to accurate reproduction of pulse-heavy audio like in Kirby and yet they irredeemably destroy the audio of SMB by distorting the pitch of everything.
Wow.
I said it somewhere before, what someone needs to do is come up with a good NOAC design, GPL it, and then notify all Famiclone manufacturers. Problem solv-ed.
Kevin Horton made a NES FPGA that is allegedly pretty close to perfect, to hear him tell it at least. But the microcontroller is probably way too expensive for most famicom clone makers, when they can just as easily keep doing what they're doing, and profit from it .. most people don't seem to really care if it's exactly right if they're not a retro gaming fanatic like us. So except for companies like Messiah who get a big kick out of hyping the shit out of "Resurrecting the NES" I doubt they'd really care as long as it sells. Messiah clearly didn't care either because they just bought a random crappy clone and resold it with a lot of hype, to appeal to people who didn't know any better and didn't know about the massive clone market.
Kevtris' console uses a FPGA which is 100% logic, not a microcontroller. If he released his CPU and PPU cores, someone could take the RTL output for an ASIC.