Hucard / SuperCD are NOT the same system...

[StarDust4Ever]

1a = PC Engine; 1b = TG-16. Level 2 = both region hucards. Level 3a, 4, and 5 are the CD systems, ending with Arcade. Level 3b is the Supergrafx. Don't let the smallish number fool you. That club is super exclusive.

So I've worked up the rank from 1b to 2. Yay! And I happily accept my position for the time being. But if we define games by the hardware necessary to play them, no, they are not equivalent.

So What's your point on Geny and MD? SF, SNES and Super Nintendo?  Not the same systems?

Super NES / Super Famicom and Genesis / Megadrive (not counting PAL regions) are practically the same system from a hardware perspective as well as interface. Region modding to play Japanese region games on an American SNES or Genesis is extremely easy. Nice of Sega to put eaily accessible jumpers on the Genesis/Megadrive motherboards that you can wire to a toggle switch. Use a Genie for passthrough if the Japanese carts don't fit the slot; no need to butcher the cartridge port. You don't even need to use codes if you install the region switch. For North American SNES, it's simply cutting off a piece of plastic. A trained monkey could do that.

Turbo / PCe are more involved. I compare the Turbografx / PCe moreso to the NES / Famicom in that you need an adapter to switch regions. Physically they are the same just different pinouts. PC Henshin got me covered. I'm glad that none of the existing PC Engine Hucards check the console region. NEC/Hudson could have easily added region checks to later Hucard releases if they really wanted to. I think they realised imports were lucrative and only helped them financially, hence none of the CDROM titles perform any sort of region check on either system. They certainly could have programmed that in if they wanted to.

[SignOfZeta]

You guys are nuts. "Discrimination"? Defining a console by how easy it is to mod? These are all totally irrelevant external labels.

If it says "PC ENGINE" on it it's a PC ENGINE. It doesn't get any more complicated than that.

If two people have a new computer but one lives in BFE and can't get cable internet and therefore can't play WoW he does not have a different system than the guy who lives in WoW thanks to Berkley fiber.

An audio compact disc with a video tacked on the end is still an audio compact disc. It still plays in my car and still has the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo on it.

You guys have a D&D Players Handbook level maze of ideological bullshit used to hyper segment and categorize a bunch of shit that's all the same shit. 

A few other details:

There is no sales proof that I know of that proves that PCE was all that "segregated". By 1994 it's quite likely that anyone without a CDROM2 had abandoned PCE for SFC at that point. The SFC tanked PCE pretty hard, and basically EVERYONE had a SFC in Japan...and a SFC cost less than a CDROM2 system. The ones buying PCE in 1994 were the hardcore fringe. The days of R Type or Super Star Solider were long gone. The occasional thing like Bomberman 94 was just them being nice, hoping to sell as many copies as possible. I don't think there were a lot of HuCARD only PCE fans by then, all those HuCARD only systems were probably just collecting dust after 1992.

Secondly, by and large what CD-ROM games offered back then WAS in fact doable on a HuCARD. ROM size and CD audio were the only additions and while these things are terrific, they are usually unrelated to gameplay. If you load up Gate of Thunder and turn the sound down while playing through the 1st level, all of that could be done on a HuCARD. The CD doesn't add color. It doesn't make sprites bigger. It doesn't speed anything up (the opposite...). It's main achievement is being able to hold more stuff than any affordable HuCARD could but a giant ass Dracula X HuCARD is totally possible and only the audio would suffer.

In practical terms the PCE became a different system by this point by virtue of the fact that it became a proto-PC-FX, switching almost totally to menu based otaku bullshit. In technical terms though, it's all the same. An N64 with a ram cartridge in it is still an N64. A Honda Civic with a turbo on it is still a Honda Civic. Chocolate milk is still milk.

[deubeul]

Super NES / Super Famicom and Genesis / Megadrive (not counting PAL regions) are practically the same system from a hardware perspective as well as interface. Region modding to play Japanese region games on an American SNES or Genesis is extremely easy. Nice of Sega to put eaily accessible jumpers on the Genesis/Megadrive motherboards that you can wire to a toggle switch. Use a Genie for passthrough if the Japanese carts don't fit the slot; no need to butcher the cartridge port. You don't even need to use codes if you install the region switch. For North American SNES, it's simply cutting off a piece of plastic. A trained monkey could do that.

Yep, you're right, region mod on MD or SNES is far easier, but it still can be done on TG/PCE for next to nothing.

As already better said earlier in the thread, it's a matter of perspective.

When you grew up with cards and one day add the CD library, it was all natural, it still had the same flavor.

When I finally had a Duo, it was still the same feel I had all those years with my GT, that exotic, japanese ambiance/gameplay, that excitement I didn't find on other consoles.

When I talk or think about Hucards, Super Hucards, Turbochips, CDs, SCDs or ACCDs, I always say
"PC Engine".

[Black Tiger]

PC-FX isn't a PC Engine though, just another system to collect for. Is it backwards compatible with SuperCD games? Didn't think so. I guess it's like comparing the SegaCD to a Saturn. I really need to stop comparing NEC/Hudson to Sega...

The PC-FX is the PC Engine equivalent of the 32X. It has the SuperGrafx hardware inside of it and mixes layers and sounds of PCE aesthetics with original 32-bit quality elements.

You can even play the ripped chiptunes on PCE hardware.

[SamIAm]

If you're a Japanese guy in 1992, and you've got a Mega Drive and a Core Grafx, I just don't see why buying a Mega CD means buying an add-on/expansion that people should classify as practically its own system with its own library while buying a Super CD means making your PC Engine whole and gaining access to its complete library.

It ain't the price - both are a shade under 50,000 yen. Is it that the Mega CD has a couple extra chips and now it can scale stuff? Is it because Sega is advertising the Mega CD as some kind of "next-level" thing and put the games in a separate kind of packaging? Is it because you read an article that said the PCE was designed with a CD system in mind?

None of those things would really make a difference to me on the user end. I would be much more concerned that both options cost much more than their base systems (or a Super Famicom, if I didn't have one yet), and that both options would allow the base systems to play games that they never could on their own. To me, they would seem like add-ons that effectively function as separate consoles, and both have separate libraries.

At the very least, I think you have to say that if the PCE and PCE-CD are the same, then so are the Mega Drive and Mega CD.

By the way, the base PC Engine's first retail price in 1987 was 24,800 yen (from which it did not drop much), and the CD-ROM unit with IFU briefcase was 57,300 yen. The Duo, when it first went on sale in September 1991, was 59,800 yen. The Duo-R in March 1993 was something just under 40,000 yen. The Super System Card 3.0 was 9,800 yen.

How the different system cards fit in is a whole other can of worms.

Secondly, by and large what CD-ROM games offered back then WAS in fact doable on a HuCARD. ROM size and CD audio were the only additions and while these things are terrific, they are usually unrelated to gameplay. If you load up Gate of Thunder and turn the sound down while playing through the 1st level, all of that could be done on a HuCARD. The CD doesn't add color. It doesn't make sprites bigger. It doesn't speed anything up (the opposite...). It's main achievement is being able to hold more stuff than any affordable HuCARD could but a giant ass Dracula X HuCARD is totally possible and only the audio would suffer.

Why didn't they release Gate of Thunder on a Hucard, then? Could it be that maybe the CD music was considered a critical feature of the game?

Could it be that whether or not Rondo of Blood could work on a giant Hucard doesn't even matter because a Hucard that big had a 0% chance of existing?

Needless to say, I don't buy your reasoning at all. It's completely stuck in the hypothetical. That you could get the first stage of GOT running on a Hucard is little more than an interesting factoid.

An N64 with a ram cartridge in it is still an N64.

And every game that needed a RAM cartridge came with one, so everyone who owned a plain N64 could play it.

[Black Tiger]

I consider Sega/Mega-CD games part of the Genesis/MD library, just as I count Neo Geo CD games as part of the Neo Geo library. I also count all of those SNES games with a couple extra chips inside and Sattelaview games. I also count Mega Modem and Sega Channel games as real. Same with FDS games.

There are some variants that I think can stand alone as an independent library as well as being part of the larger library it's based off of, like 32X, Mega LD, etc.

It seems ridiculous to me to argue that 32X CD games are a unique console library and platform, separate from the 32X cart console library and platfirm, Mega-CD console library platform and Mega Drive cart console library platform.

Even though the Duo replaced the Core hardware with the launch of the Super CD format and no 32X cart consoles or 32X CD consoles were ever released.

The problem with discussions like this is that a majority of game world fans inherit ideas from mags, youtube and the group mentality. They assume that everything is done the same way and reverse engineer their logic from absolutrs they've been told. That's why the PC Engine has to be the "NEC" system, "cause Nintendo. It's an 8-bit generation system, cause that how generations work, you count the bits rattling around inside the cpu. "Everyone knows that..."

[StarDust4Ever]

If you're a Japanese guy in 1992, and you've got a Mega Drive and a Core Grafx, I just don't see why buying a Mega CD means buying an add-on/expansion that people should classify as practically its own system with its own library while buying a Super CD means making your PC Engine whole and gaining access to its complete library.

It ain't the price - both are a shade under 50,000 yen. Is it that the Mega CD has a couple extra chips and now it can scale stuff? Is it because Sega is advertising the Mega CD as some kind of "next-level" thing and put the games in a separate kind of packaging? Is it because you read an article that said the PCE was designed with a CD system in mind?

None of those things would really make a difference to me on the user end. I would be much more concerned that both options cost much more than their base systems (or a Super Famicom, if I didn't have one yet), and that both options would allow the base systems to play games that they never could on their own. To me, they would seem like add-ons that effectively function as separate consoles, and both have separate libraries.

At the very least, I think you have to say that if the PCE and PCE-CD are the same, then so are the Mega Drive and Mega CD.

By the way, the base PC Engine's first retail price in 1987 was 24,800 yen (from which it did not drop much), and the CD-ROM unit with IFU briefcase was 57,300 yen. The Duo, when it first went on sale in September 1991, was 59,800 yen. The Duo-R in March 1993 was something just under 40,000 yen. The Super System Card 3.0 was 9,800 yen.

How the different system cards fit in is a whole other can of worms.

Finally someone who gets it. Thanks for sticking up to me SamIAm. BTW, I have tried the green eggs and ham ie PCe/TG-16 and do like it much!

It seems there are two horses in this race, the haves and the have nots. The haves don't accept the fact that the have nots should have a say when it comes to how games are categorized. The haves just assume it's a standard fare upgrade despite being twice as expensive as a base unit, both then and now, and everybody simply gets one or misses out. They fail to get the gist that it is a separate system with unique hardware and software requirements. The have nots may occasionally bitch and moan about being excluded but ultimately either accept the fact that they have been barred access, or they pay up for the CD system. As for me, I've accepted that I can't play SuperCD games without buying more hardware and am okay with that. There are still tons of great gameplay experiences available on the Hucard format. I just wish people would treat them as the two distinct libraries that they are. Props to Aetherbyte for giving a nod to us poor folks by creating the first ever physical release Hucard homebrew, Atlantean!

CD Audio isn't everything. There's good and bad chiptunes as well as good and bad redbook audio. I used to hate the lameo pop/rock scores from noname poser groups that played as bgm tracks in many PS1/PS2 games. Devs used to work really hard composing chiptune soundtracks for their games, and all that turned into with the comeuppance of disc based media containing compressed or uncompressed PCM, was that developers didn't have to work at producing music for their games, and instead many took the low road of licensing the cheapest crap to use as score. Nintendo apparently still used MIDI well into the Game Cube era to great effect, and many Wii / Wii-U games contained fully orchestrated soundtracks by way of the Japanese equivalent of the Philharmonic.

I am by no means suggesting that SuperCD games used "filler" soundtracks; in fact judging by gameplay videos on Youtube, as well as my own personal experience with a handful of SuperCD games released on Virtual Console (I would personally love to play Star Parodier on real hardware as I have a soft spot for cute-em-ups), many titles had fantastic scores which really complemented the native synth output by the PCe/Turbografx. In fact you can play and appreciate them in most any CD player. It was really the PS1 era where many 3rd party devs rushed to produce games, that game soundtracks took a backseat.

[SamIAm]

I consider Sega/Mega-CD games part of the Genesis/MD library, just as I count Neo Geo CD games as part of the Neo Geo library. I also count all of those SNES games with a couple extra chips inside and Sattelaview games. I also count Mega Modem and Sega Channel games as real. Same with FDS games.

Well, at least you're being fair.

I still think that these consoles and libraries are best classified as separate and only appreciated as closely related.

[Necromancer]

I don't think you could tell PC Engine users with a straight face that the CD systems, which until their twilight years were fantastically more expensive than base Hucard systems....

In Japan only; here they were soon relatively cheap (especially compared to the cost of a plain ol' CD player), and the TurboDuo was quite a bargain considering the value of the included games.

If you're going to base you argument on a very narrow and specific time frame, why not say the CD isn't just a separate system but that it doesn't exist at all because you couldn't buy one in October 1987? 

I guess it comes down to how you define a "console" and "console games". To me, there's a certain uniformity to the idea, or a certain standardization, and anything that causes one guy to be able to play a game and another guy to not be able to play a game violates that whole concept. By definition, it becomes necessary to say that these guys have two different consoles.

Following this logic to its ultimate conclusion, the PCE is really five different systems - Hueys, CDs, Super CDs, Arcade CDs, and GE CDs. 

It's completely stuck in the hypothetical.

Bullshit.  The capabilities of the system are well known not hypothetical.

And every game that needed a RAM cartridge came with one, so everyone who owned a plain N64 could play it.

Wrong.  DK64 did but Perfect Dark and Majora's Mask did not, ergo those two games must be for a different system. 

It seems there are two horses in this race, the haves and the have nots. The haves don't accept the fact that the have nots should have a say when it comes to how games are categorized. The haves just assume it's a standard fare upgrade despite being twice as expensive as a base unit, both then and now, and everybody simply gets one or misses out. They fail to get the gist that it is a separate system with unique hardware and software requirements. The have nots may occasionally bitch and moan about being excluded but ultimately either accept the fact that they have been barred access....

Nobody thinks less of you because you don't have a CD system, nobody is discriminating against you, and nobody is stopping you from buying a CD system or playing 'em for free in Mednefan.  The only 'have nots' are the people that have decided to limit themselves to hueys only.

As for how they're categorized, who really gives a shit?  It's interesting to discuss and each side has their reasons (some more logical than others), but there's no definitive write or wrong answer.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on the matter, and one person's has no bearing on what another person buys, plays, etc.

[Black Tiger]

Before the Genesis and TG-16 launched, there was magazine coverage and ads showing the Turbo-CD along side the TG-16, with pics of the physical discs and screenshots of Monster Lair and Fighting Street. I got a Genesis at launch and became a Sega fanboy because magazines told me that it was a war and I had to choose a side. But even before I soon gave in and got a TG-16 with plans to buy the Turbo CD within months, I still never once thought of the CD games as a separate console or library. And throughout the console war generation, none of the hardcore and casual gamers I knew thought any different. I never even heard anyone try and argue something so silly until at least 15 years later. We didn't hear someone say the other day that 'technically' the CD-ROM predates the PCE launch. We lived reality ourselves.

Now we have people who didn't get into 16-bit for a decade or two and people who had a narrow isolated view at the time because their parents bought them a SNES (especially if they graduated from NES), trying to rewrite history and create rules for everything. No group feels the need for a selective sets rules more than SNES fans (with Nintendo fans close behind), who are stuck in a console war mentality and are so insecure about the console they know is superior either way. A 21Mhz cpu in a cart counts as a real game, but a CD game that uses no redbook or adpcm is fake. A Saturn game that uses a ram cart for extra load space the same as the PCE worked is fake. A Nintendo 64 game that uses an upgrade which physically replaces and increases the system ram is real.

The games are the games. Get over it.

[wiseau]

Well if the CDs were separate then it'd be one of the most pathetic libraries you'd ever see at a mere 20-something games, or 40-something with a special addon. Think the only thing below that would be the Jaguar CD.

[esteban]

Clarification: the TG-16 + TG-CD is a more cohesive and superior design to the PCE + IFU design.

SUCK ON THAT, Zeta.

Seriously. TG-CD is a streamlined, magnificent  beast.

This doesn't make any sense. Bait me with something funnier next time.

Ok.

Aesthetically, IFU PCE is a mismatched hodgepodge of a bodge.

It looks like something two cosmonauts had to improvise in order to get the Salyut 1's plumbing functioning for another few hours.

Two warts slapped on cheap plastic.

The IFU looks best when the briefcase cover is soundly locked in place, concealing the warts.

Don't get me wrong—the PCE and CD-ROM units are gorgeous independently. Gorgeous. Therein lies the tragedy.

You see, the MegaDrive was always an ugly wart. Slapping it on top of (or next to) a CD unit wasn't going to help matters.

One would hope that the PCE would fare better.





IN CONTRAST:

TG-CD + TG-16 intimately achieve Unity*. There is a deliberate design present. Seamless. Streamlined. Cohesive. Coherent.

"Behold the obsidian monolith!"

And so it began.

[hoobs88]

Following this logic to its ultimate conclusion, the PCE is really five different systems - Hueys, CDs, Super CDs, Arcade CDs, and GE CDs. 

What are you referring to by "GE CD"?

[Necromancer]

What are you referring to by "GE CD"?

The Games Express CDs that required use of their own custom system cards.

[Black Tiger]

There's at least two types of Games Express system cards. One of which can only be played on a Duo or Super CD combo.