My Lord!!!!! such anger (fanaticism?) I mean…. Once you start hearing “Cunt Drip” and I believe someone dropped the N-Bomb, on PCE Forums people the N-BOMB!!! Some of you have lost it. Some of you are real full of your selves, barking that you are “programmers” and what you say goes. Reminds me of that fat chick on the view that prefaced everything with “I’m a lawyer”. Listen guys, I can go to the MD sites and the Neo Sites and there are programmers just as bright eyed and furious as you are that shit over the HU6280 and support the MD68K with ans much vigor and propaganda as some of you. I’m not going to do that and for the record have never shit on the PCE. I don’t think it’s possible with the amount of cash I just dumped into my PCE collection so moving on. What I am going to attempt to do, and I ask for the fan bois to pull off their rose colored glasses, is compare the MD68K to the HU6280.
So I am not going to make gifs or pictures that DISTRACT from the truth, no one has thwarted my attempt in stating that the MD68K is indeed faster than the HU6280. The MD68K was better CPU of the two , a 32/16bit (hybrid) 68000 CPU running at 7.67mhz. I guess if you are doing “8-Bit” things the HU6280 does things better and the evidence in the West at least shows a lot of “8-Bit” looking games running at AMAZING speeds.
Patented Fan Boi Argument 1
It’s not fair to compare Western releases to the PCE releases in Japan, one look at Sapphire and you’d see it’s on par if not exceeds the MD68K in all its glory.
While this is true to an extent Sapphire is a great game let’s take a close look at it.
First of all in order to play this thing you needed the following while in Japan:
A PC Engine
A CD Rom attachment that then came with the Bios Revision #1
You later purchased Bios revision 2 for CD+G
You later purchased System Card 3.0 to add support for Super CD games
You finally had to purchase an Arcade card to play Sapphire.
You had to purchase Sapphire.
In the states you needed to have the arcade card and a converter and a CD ROM then order the game. God forbid you call ANY of those upgrades or you will be bashed and burned at the stake so all of the above are NOT upgrades, not at all.
Now let’s look at the game and how it plays.
Music? Kicks ass, amazing cd pumping sound and great tunes. Sound FX, takes a big step down. We all know the Mega Drive itself had superior sound hardware so I’m not going to bash what I already know is true. I don’t think anyone really argues that the PCE sound chip didn’t provide the best sound FX and or music but once again could argue the artistic merit of the bleeps and bloops and enjoy that so to each it’s own and I personally enjoy all the music of Bonk and Bloody Wolf for some reason. Legenday Ax II is epic. But it’s not pumping out what the MD and the SNES did in comparison, so let’s move on.
Grafx. First thing you notice is the colors and the MD68K could never hope to have any of this. You also notice that even some of the animation is done by pallet swapping, again a favor in the wealth of colors the HU6280 can display. Obvious lack of parallax but that is to be expected as the PCE chose color over multi-scrolling backgrounds. Lots of sprites moving around on screen and little slow down. What is expected and is displayed time and time again on the PCE in the terms of a shooter that would make the SNES melt.
There is nothing going on that the MD68K can’t handle in except color. The MD68K can handle more detailed sprites on screen and larger at that. It’s just what the hardware did. You could argue that it is an advantage for a 2D sprite based machine. You would then add in additional scrolling backgrounds, larger sprites and as stated more of them the game could have done more. These are practical advantages and not dubious such as the SNES having an even higher sprite limit yet would melt before reaching it. That’s why you never saw a game as capable with as large of bosses and the speed they had in games such as Alien Soldier or Gunstar Heroes without cuts in multi scrolling backgrounds.
I hate to bring out this game but everyone points to it. What is happening that can’t happen on the MD68K? Right out of the gate the sound FX would be better, you could through more sprites at it or move the bosses or sub bosses faster. You’d lose the CD music but that is to be expected.
Sapphire came out in 1995 two, way late in the systems life. Look at the 1995 releases on the MD. I keep pointing to Vectorman which also came out in 1995 and wouldn’t be represented well on the PCE. The amount of sprites and animation and very little slow down and giant fast bosses, the MD68K was simply and I mean simply more capable.
What does this mean? Does it mean the games are better or worse? It means whatever you want it to mean. Hardware superiority again means nothing without software to back it up. The PCE had kick ass software. So did the MD. So what if the MD had a faster processor, I put Mega Man 2-3 up against 90% of games on either the MD or PCE in music alone.
So put away your pitch forks and pull back your angry racial epithets and understand what II just posted is not propaganda, isn’t made up, it simply states what is truth.
Thank you
