Would you rather have a SuperGrafx or a PC-FX?

[SamIAm]

You know, the PC-FX might have had a chance as a digital comic machine in the mid-90s if it had done a few things differently. If it started and stayed below the competition in price, if NEC courted developers with tools for making digital comics efficiently early on, if they embraced digital comics as the heart and soul of their image, and if NEC put together quality first-party development teams to pump out exclusives...then maybe it would have worked.

The fact that Hudson basically abandoned NEC and NEC didn't seem to do much to try to replace them is another baffling part of the whole PC-FX story.

[SignOfZeta]

Nah, Bandai basically did that with the Playdia and that didn't work either.

[KingDrool]

The thing is, and you've gotta be honest about this: that while the PC-FX had a handful of good games, some of which were really unique, it didn't have any great games. The Saturn and PS1 had shitloads of games that could be considered great.

I still voted PC-FX, but I'm able to put it into perspective. Like a previous commenter said, there were no games that were absolute "you've gotta see this!" system sellers.

[Arkhan]

Hell, the PCFX is cheaper!

though, you could get the whole SGX library + system cheaper than the whole PCFX library + system...

neither has alot of games.

[Joe Redifer]

I hope you were just trying to be funny here, since I just named more games than the SGX that are worth playing on PC-FX

I was being semi-serious, but to be honest I can't truly judge because I've never even played the PC-FX.  I can say that the game examples I've seen so far don't seem tremendously appealing in a "I'd love to play this" type of way.  But I'd still love to try the system itself and a bucket of its games just for the sake of playing it.

[kazekirifx]

I'm willing to bet that Aaron's PC-FX video is 40 to 50 times better than the PC-FX itself.

Haha. That's really true in a way. At least, it makes the hardware design look way more awesome than the content of the game library generally is. On that note, I, like many people here, was pretty much convinced to buy the system back in the late 90's thanks to the awesome graphic design of pcenginefx.com. It may not look like much now, but back then this was one of the most beautiful sites on the Internet.

Some of the games mentioned require 0 Japanese.

Also, I didn't see that kazekirifx posted a list too.
the top 4 games on his list are all action games and require no reading.
Power League FX is sweet, and I hate baseball.

Oh yeah. Forgot Power League FX. Forgot that one.

Ruruli Ra Rura is a platformer.

It's not a perfect game, but it aint bad.

It ain't? Cool. This is the first time I met anyone who enjoyed it. Never heard anyone comment much at all about this game, come to think of it.

...and SignOfZeta has a point. Japanese people rejected this stuff.

And they didn't reject the SGX? Pretty much a moot point when discussing two systems which were both huge commercial failures. If anything, the PC-FX is the winner on this point since NEC didn't immediately pull the plug on it. There was certainly a handful of hardcore 'FX freaks', no matter how small the handful was, who kept purchasing the few games released until the end.


Personally, I can honestly say I have logged a lot of hours on my FX, and have plenty of great memories - mostly of playing Blue Breaker, which I wrote the walkthrough for on gamefaqs. The FX version is way better than the Saturn or PS1 in my opinion. Also, Fire Woman Matoigumi was magical.  I really enjoyed searching out and unlocking everything in that charming gem of a game. There are quite a few other games I put the time in and finished, including some digital comics, but the two aforementioned games are really the standouts for me. Definitely a minority here.

[SignOfZeta]

I don't think it was the Japanese public that rejected the SGX. It seems to have been killed by NEC before it was even released but put on sale anyway because NEC f*cking loved selling hardware, even if it was useless.

The SGX launched with one game, Battle Ace. It was five months before Granzort, then another four months before Daimakaimura. A whole year after that you still only had two more games, and by then they weren't even making the machine anymore. Darius was somewhere in the middle there.

It's pretty obvious they couldn't get any developers. The system didn't even have an actual "second generation" of software, just stuff that got so delayed it took as long to get as second generation software. Honestly, I see where they were coming from. The SGX is like...%10 more powerful than the PCE, maybe, which might have mattered if PCE devs were regularly pushing the system to the %100 point, but of course they usually weren't even close.

What was Hudson supposed to do? Make a version of Gate of Thunder that only runs on a version of the PCE that costs twice as much and has...what, an extra layer of scrolling? Nobody would even be able to tell.

Famicom to Super Famicom, MkIII to Genesis, that's how you sequel a system. The SGX is more like...this year's MacBook compared to last year's MacBook. It's the same dang thing only it isn't paid for yet.

[SamIAm]

If the SGX games had been made for one of the other popular (and comparable) systems around at the time, they would still be regarded as good games. Particularly Daimakaimura, Aldynes and 1941. Regardless of the system, they were great games for their times.

If you move the PC-FX library to the Saturn or Playstation, however, the stuff just gets buried. Zeroigar and Zenki, as well as the better anime games, would be considered 2nd rate compared to the real heavyweights.

EDIT: In response to some of the above, I think the best way of looking it is to see that there is no way that the SGX would have been successful. Maybe if a miracle happened and the best game ever came out on it, it would have sold. With any less ideal conditions, though, it was doomed.

The PC-FX, on the other hand, had much more of a chance. Sure, they flubbed the hardware design, but even so, all they needed was a few really solid and distinctly next-gen games in 1995. Preferably including at least one great action game. It might not have lead the pack, but it wouldn't have sank like it did.

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, the FX certainly *could* have done much better. Something like Sakura Wars 1/2 would have been at least as good on FX. Could it do Street Fighter Alpha or Donpatchi? As well as PS and SS? I have no idea. We only have retail games to use as a gauge of its power and those look like PC doujin most of the time. It certainly could have done Lunar, Tokimeki Memorial, and other quasi-hits like that.

[Arkhan]

http://pcfxtoo.com/rrr.htm

on my eventually-to-be-finished-after-Atlantean-orsomething PCFX library site!

[kazekirifx]

I think Team Innocent could have been a relatively popular title had it been released on another system. It was basically Resident Evil, except without any polygonal graphics and released 1 year and 3 months earlier. Apparently it didn't generate enough hype to sell the FX, but the main reason it isn't well-known is precisely because it was only released on an unpopular platform. (Kind of a 'chicken or the egg' problem I know...)

Guess in the end the game just didn't generate enough hype... Wasn't considered a must-play. The combat system and some of the sprite graphics were a bit too crappy I suppose.