Which hucard games save and is any extra hardware needed?

[Duo_R]

for the Shuttle Backup unit, is the memory functionality the same as a TurboBooster plus? What menu comes up when you power on without a Hucard?

[Black Tiger]

PC-Engine only has 8 kilobytes of RAM. So a game like Populous needs more, so it has it on the card. Atleast that would be the assumption as the game certainly wouldn't contain more RAM if it didn't need it. RAM is/was expensive.

Thank you! I am surprised that it was Populous, of all titles, that did this.

Any gurus want to speculate on what assets/features of the game/maps made this necessary? Surely, Hudson wouldn't have done this unless they thought it was necessary.


In a desperate, ignorant attempt to figure out why Hudson may have done this...
This is a random thought, does it have anything to do with "sharing code" between the HuCard and CD versions of Populous?

I know CD-ROM games access data differently than a HuCard...

Tom explained it once. It wasn't impossible at all to do on HuCard without the extra ram, it just would have been more convoluted somehow and might have required enough more regular memory that this was overall cheaper.

I just happened to look at the case last night and noticed the "Memory back-up" (or whatever) logo with a picture of a battery behind it at the corner of the cover and manual. That combined with the RAMROM logo and pregnant HuCard must have been what convinced people that it saved internally. Near the back of the manual though, it shows how to save using a Tennokoe II.

[esteban]

PC-Engine only has 8 kilobytes of RAM. So a game like Populous needs more, so it has it on the card. Atleast that would be the assumption as the game certainly wouldn't contain more RAM if it didn't need it. RAM is/was expensive.

Thank you! I am surprised that it was Populous, of all titles, that did this.

Any gurus want to speculate on what assets/features of the game/maps made this necessary? Surely, Hudson wouldn't have done this unless they thought it was necessary.


In a desperate, ignorant attempt to figure out why Hudson may have done this...
This is a random thought, does it have anything to do with "sharing code" between the HuCard and CD versions of Populous?

I know CD-ROM games access data differently than a HuCard...

Tom explained it once. It wasn't impossible at all to do on HuCard without the extra ram, it just would have been more convoluted somehow and might have required enough more regular memory that this was overall cheaper.

I just happened to look at the case last night and noticed the "Memory back-up" (or whatever) logo with a picture of a battery behind it at the corner of the cover and manual. That combined with the RAMROM logo and pregnant HuCard must have been what convinced people that it saved internally. Near the back of the manual though, it shows how to save using a Tennokoe II.

I see. I was fooled by the RAMROM logo + pregnant HuCARD.

Of course, someone dissected a Populous HuCARD years ago and snapped pictures...to set the record straight.

Thanks .

[A Black Falcon]

for the Shuttle Backup unit, is the memory functionality the same as a TurboBooster plus? What menu comes up when you power on without a Hucard?

I'm not sure, most of what I know about the Japanese backup addon units is what's on that page I linked ( http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww6.airnet.ne.jp%2Fwataru%2Fpce%2Fback_sys.htm&act=url ).  The site has pictures of most of the Japanese devices, which is nice, but doesn't go into great detail.  I would guess that it's probably similar to how the TurboBooster Plus works, though, yeah.  I mean, those "plug into the back" Japanese addons are functionally based on the same exact idea, after all, even if each one seems to use a different save mechanism.

I do find it odd how they released so many different addons, at different prices, but as far as I can tell all of them only have 2000 blocks... I mean, the Tennokoe Bank card has 8000, why do all of those much larger physical addons only have such a tiny amount of save space?  The exception of course is the Memory Base 128, but that's different , given how it plugs into the controller port instead of the back, and only works natively with the games designed to support it.  Is there some kind of restriction where the back port can only access 2000 blocks or something?

[_joshuaTurbo]

Cosmic Fantasy 2 - 338 blocks per file, 2 files required (CD)

RANDOM:
I believe that once you start the game you can come back out to the file/format menu and delete the 2nd file that would free up 338 blocks.  This is nice if you're looking to conserve how much space you have available.

[ccovell]

I do find it odd how they released so many different addons, at different prices, but as far as I can tell all of them only have 2000 blocks... I mean, the Tennokoe Bank card has 8000, why do all of those much larger physical addons only have such a tiny amount of save space?  The exception of course is the Memory Base 128, but that's different , given how it plugs into the controller port instead of the back, and only works natively with the games designed to support it.  Is there some kind of restriction where the back port can only access 2000 blocks or something?

It was a limitation decided on when the PCE-CD/Backup hardware was designed (probably due to the cost of RAM at the time...)  Could have been more, pretty arbitrary, really, but deviating from this standard would have been a bad idea for compatibility.

Look at PS1 memory cards... no matter what manufacturer or snazzy decorations it has, it's limited to 15 blocks.  Want more, then switches, buttons, LED displays, etc, come into play, to HARD switch RAM banks.