Hucard / SuperCD are NOT the same system...

[Black Tiger]

Anyway, I think gamers did get something more with games like Ys 1&2. Put that on a 4mb Hucard (heck, put it on two of 'em), and I guarantee nobody would care about it like they do now. It would just be another (good) game. The same goes for a lot of CD games.

Most CD games are comparable in content size to Sega and Nintendo carts. The fact that you're using 4 meg cards as an example us once again exposing your true intention of taking a round about way to "prove" that CD games couldn't be done on stock hardware. SFC got 48 meg games + add-on hardware compression. The Legend of Xanadu II would be smaller than 48 megs if you dropped the few redbook tracks and streaming voice acting. Even if you kept all of the sound samples in as non-adpcm channel samples. The chip tunes still sound great. Dracula X is a <16 meg game without the crappy cinemas.

As a Genesis fanboy, the day I became determined to get a TG-16 with Turbo-CD was the first time I saw screenshots of Ys I & II in a magazine. It was a dream come true, because the SMS version had such an impact on me. Seeing the ingame visuals blew my mind. Particularly the ruined column in Zepik Village. I continued to dream about the in-game content. A few cinematic pics thrown in only sweetened the deal. I'd give anything for a HuCard version today.

[Necromancer]

I learned something today.

When I play Gate Of Thunder, I'm not playing on PC Engine.

OK...

Heh.  Did you know Metal Combat isn't really a SNES game?

[Bonknuts]

You came here, exposed your point, and asked us our.

We answered.

We respect your noob point of you.

Please respect our 20years old PCE lovers' point of view too.

 And that's all this boils down to; noob point of view VS 20 year PCE veterans.

 I just wanted to say that I agree with what elmer said about technical side of things. I know that most members here don't have the luxury of really understanding what's under the hood of the PCE and to code for it, but CD games really are nothing more than Hucard games. Loading data from the CD does not change that. It's the same hardware, same cpu, same coding style, etc.

 There's this argument that hucards aren't large enough, or whatever, to handle CD games. Most CD games aren't that large, if you re-organized the data assets for redundancy (same code used over again per level, or sub level. Same graphics used over again, main sprites, enemies, etc, for levels and sub levels) - they'll realistically fit on a cartridge. If the CD format never took over at the dominant format, you would have seen an evolution of hucard technology. Those "bubbles" in SF2 and other hucards? There's nothing inside of them. There as lot of room for space AND advancement of hucard technology. Did you know that Street Fighter 2 could have fit under a regular hucard format? They extended the PCB only because they didn't want to use a single large rom (they used multiple roms). Anyway, the point is - is that you would have seen audio enhancements (either via hucard, or via backplace addon), you would have seen hucards with memory mappers, on board ram (populous already adds 32k of ram), etc. The CD format stopped this from happening. Any game on CD, is possible on hucard format (with the exception of FMV, but regular cinemas are fine). Obviously not Red Book audio. The CD audio part is an upgrade, the rest is just a format medium delivery mechanism.

[elmer]

Most CD games are comparable in content size to Sega and Nintendo carts. The fact that you're using 4 meg cards as an example us once again exposing your true intention of taking a round about way to "prove" that CD games couldn't be done on stock hardware. SFC got 48 meg games + add-on hardware compression. The Legend of Xanadu II would be smaller than 48 megs if you dropped the few redbook tracks and streaming voice acting. Even if you kept all of the sound samples in as non-adpcm channel samples. The chip tunes still sound great. Dracula X is a <16 meg game without the crappy cinemas.

The SFC got precisely 2 48Mb(it) games, and 48Mb(its) is 6MB(ytes).

I've read that Star Ocean packs 13MB of graphics into 4MB, leaving 2MB for code and audio.

Xanadu 1 has approx 6MB of compressed files, plus 0.1MB code, plus 15MB of ADPCM, plus 527MB of CD audio.

Xanadu 2 has approx 9MB of compressed files, plus 0.1MB code, plus 1MB of ADPCM, plus 553MB of CD audio.

The software compression in the Xanadu games get approx 2.1-2.5x compression, and the hardware compression in Star Ocean gets approx 3.2x compression.

If you want to compare Star Ocean's 13MB graphics in 4MB, then Xanadu 2's 9MB of files decompress into 23MB of data (which mixes code and graphics).


The thing to me isn't that the basic size of the graphics is or isn't comparable, it's that from a developers POV, on the CD I can afford to do whatever I wish to do, and the cost-of-goods for the game isn't going to increase.

Cartridges cost a lot of money to make, and bumping up from one size to another could totally change the financial projections for the game.

CDs are cheap to make, and I can get my 59MB of uncompressed Xanadu 1 voice overs, plus 527MB of CD audio voice overs and music, and I can make the player's experience more immersive.

So I've got to both agree and disagree with folks ... while the basic gameplay isn't going to be really any different if I'm limited to a HuCard ... it's all the extra details that enhance the "experience" that developers could deliver when the CD medium freed them from worrying about cartridge sizes that makes the most difference to me.

That's why the PC Engine is so special. It's the very first time that developers could afford to deliver that kind of enhanced experience.

It's still the same darned machine that's delivering the experience, it's just the medium of the game's delivery that makes the CD an affordable way to manufacture/distribute that game.

[GoldenWheels]

 As far as people new retro gamers coming to the PCE scene and trying to figure stuff out - they get the "buy a Duo" advance.. and what did they almost always do? Buy the hucard only systems because the Duos are too "expensive". Then complain about their upgrade options, followed by a defensive claim that CDs are a different "platform". Why? Because they bring their Sega/Nintendo centric views into the picture and think they know better or whatever. If you don't want to buy Duo on top of that TG16 or PCE that you bought, then fine. Don't enjoy the rest of the majority of PCE awesome titles. Limit yourself to hucards and division addon mentality. While you at it, slap a SegaCD sticker on your CD setup if you do eventually get one. I'm sure it'll make you feel right as rain.

I made this very mistake, albeit for different reasons. I A: never thought I would be interested in the CD library (no idea why), and B: knew of the caps issues after a little research and was just plain paranoid to buy one. That was all before I found this place and learned more about the CD library and found reliable folks who refurb duos. So the step-bro gets my turbografx for xmas and I am out a few extra bucks I didn't need to be.

I have since told at least two people seeking advice"just get a duo, I can point you to a safe place to find one" and what did they do....bought a Turbo. The circle continues....

[elmer]

Basically, I still think that PCE-CD game = PCE game as an unquestionable truth is dubious.

When it comes to any system, game hardware or otherwise, an addition or modification that comes at such an extreme cost and makes such an extreme difference in the system's capabilities could arguably be said to make it a different system altogether.

Sam, my friend, you're really hung-up on the cost of the CD-ROM2 add-on when it came out. 

IMHO, a Ferrari is still a "car", even if it costs more than a Ford.   

Back in 1989 I had no trouble at all in seeing the CD-ROM as just an add-on.

To me, it was no different from home computers that loaded their games off of cassette, and then you could buy a 3", 3.5" or 5.25" floppy drive as an expansion, and developers often provided "more" on their floppy releases ... and then eventually abandoned tape altogether.

And "yes", back in the early 1980s, a floppy controller and dual floppy drives could easily cost you far more than the original computer.

To me, regardless of how they conceived it, how they built it, or how they advertised it, the way that the end user experienced it is a really big deal.

I didn't have one of these back in the day, so maybe I should just shut up, but I am incredibly skeptical that people who bought the CD system assumed that they were merely getting Hucard games on a hi-fi format. I suspect they thought they were getting something more. You know, like Dragon Quest x1000.

No, of course you knew that you were getting "more", that was the point of buying the add-on!

And that was precisely what developers could afford to deliver with the voice-overs in Ys, or the intro and music in Gate of Thunder.

But ... it's still the same PC Engine that's behind it all, you've just added a huge storage medium to it, and the ability play CD Audio.

Lots of home computers had add-ons, even audio ones.

I just don't see that any huge disconnect that requires classifying the PCE plus CD-ROM as a totally different machine to the PCE without the CD-ROM. That's just factually innaccurate.

Fact still remains there are a lot more working Hucard only systems floating about than working CD-ROMs so not everyone who wants one can have without paying a premium. Law of supply and demand. Some gamers will have to settle without the CDROMs. I unfortunately am one of them.

Am I missing something? I don't see any great shortage of realatively-affordable PCE systems that can play the CD games ... they're the Duo/Duo-R models.

The only real shortage is in North American CD-ROM2 and North American System Card 3.0 units to add onto a TurboGrafx.

If you choose to go that route, and pay the huge premium for those, then that's your choice. The Japanese units play the North American CDs fine without any modification. It's only the HuCards that have any region-protection.

And for that, then you can either region-mod the unit, or just "collect" whatever boxes you like and then play the game on the console with a TurboEverdrive, or you can keep your existing hardware.

I really don't see that you've got much in the way of grounds to complain about the $225 price for a recapped and working Duo when you've just blown a bunch of money on reproduction HuCards.

That's entirely your choice ... but IMHO it pretty-much undercuts your protestations of poverty when it comes to PCE CD units.

[GoldenWheels]

I really don't see that you've got much in the way of grounds to complain about the $225 price for a recapped and working Duo when you've just blown a bunch of money on reproduction HuCards.

That's entirely your choice ... but IMHO it pretty-much undercuts your protestations of poverty when it comes to PCE CD units.

Knowing Stardust from Atari Age I believe this is the case.  Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Lay off the 7800 homebrews for a while Stardust my man. Your duo will be paid for in no time. 

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, if there's one purchase I'll never regret it's probably my first Duo.

[Necromancer]

I sometimes miss the GB and games I traded in for it, but I've never regretted getting my first either.

I really don't see that you've got much in the way of grounds to complain about the $225 price for a recapped and working Duo when you've just blown a bunch of money on reproduction HuCards.

Indeed. 

[Bonknuts]

All these salty people complaining about the price of a Duo; I beginning to doubt their commitment to sparkle motion..

[Gentlegamer]

Stardust, go talk to Keith Courage and get a cherried out Duo-R!

[crazydean]

If you need some money to buy a Duo, sell the TG-16 along with some of that Atari garbage.

[johnnykonami]

I'm surprised this became such a hot topic!  I'll throw my worthless opinion into this mix.  I got a TG-16 first, never got the CD-Rom attachment.  Then my TG-16 died on me and I got a Duo in 1992.  The upgrade at the time seemed significant to me - with the addition voice especially, followed of course by redbook audio.  The games themselves seemed more expansive/complex in a lot of cases no doubt due simply to storage space.  But even still I consider it part of the same family.  I think of it as analogous to the Genesis vs. Sega CD.  Same basic underlying hardware (I'm aware they added some more hardware features in the Sega CD itself) but in general games have the same style/vibe.  I think this is partly due to the characteristic video features of particular consoles, i.e. resolution, color depth, etc.  Think about the Genesis again, it has very characteristic video/audio qualities and they're both shared on the Genesis or the Sega CD.  The Duo is the same in my mind.  The same vibrant color quality, familiar resolution, etc. with lightened restrictions on memory and added redbook audio.  I'm not sure if any newer special chips were added (Like the Sega CD did with scaling, apparently).

[Bonknuts]

I'm surprised this became such a hot topic!  I'll throw my worthless opinion into this mix.  I got a TG-16 first, never got the CD-Rom attachment.  Then my TG-16 died on me and I got a Duo in 1992.  The upgrade at the time seemed significant to me - with the addition voice especially, followed of course by redbook audio. 

A friend and I had the TGCD addon, before games went SuperCD, and they (CD 2.0 games) indeed felt more like the characteristic of hucards games in that connection. The SuperCD games felt more like an advancement to that (CD 2.0 games), but in the same way all consoles advance as the devs get more familiar with the hardware and competition between them (3rd part companies) raises the bar for expectations. I guess if you skipped original CD 2.0, SuperCD would have felt like a larger step. Even with the technology for 8megabit games on hucard, most hucard games during 1992 were less than 8 megabits (which was more of the standard for consoles of that generation). I'm not sure if that was a price thing NEC did in order to promote/encourage CD development and discourage hucard development, or if hucards were just relegated to "budget" titles as CD games became the premium. I'm sure the truth is somewhere along those lines.

[johnnykonami]

all consoles advance as the devs get more familiar with the hardware and competition between them (3rd part companies) raises the bar for expectations. I guess if you skipped original CD 2.0, SuperCD would have felt like a larger step.

Yeah, this is a thought I had also.  Stuff just gets better all the time (even on the same platform).  Progress is basically inevitable.  I know I didn't have experience with SFII, Parodius, Bomberman '94, etc. before switching over to CD, so certainly those close the gap even more.  And yep, for me, CD-Rom and SuperCD are basically the same thing since I started buying/playing both formats at the same time.  I can't really tell too much of a difference between those.  Hell, Spriggan is a CD-Rom game and one of my favorite looking shooters on the system.  Could have easily mixed it up with a SuperCD title.