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.
I am honestly stunned that I am reading this from you of all people. It is tantamount to saying that the things made possible on the PC Engine by a CD drive are actually superfluous.
This means that all those CD RPGs
could have been every bit as good on the Super Famicom.
Sam, my friend, you're really hung-up on the cost of the CD-ROM2 add-on when it came out.
Yeah, I do think the price matters, especially for the vast majority of gamers at the time i.e. kids. It's one valid perspective on the situation.
It's the old "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."
You pay 25,000 yen, get a Super Famicom, you can now play a large library of Super Famicom cartridges, when you play them you're playing Super Famicom.
You pay 25,000 yen, get a PC Engine, you can now play a large library of PC Engine cards, when you play them you're playing PC Engine.
You pay 50,000 yen, get a Super CD, you can now play a large library of Super CDs, when you play them you're playing...Super CD?
*WHAP!*
Forgive me, sensei! I should have known that since it plugs into my PC Engine, I am still playing PC Engine.
This, by the way, is why I don't think more moderately priced peripherals that only work with a few games and
usually come with them anyway cause anything remotely like the bedrock fracture that the PCE CD system did.
If NEC/Hudson had been clear with their vision (and you know after the SuperGrafx/Power Console that those guys were half out of their minds), they would have at least had the sense to either call the Hucard system "Core Grafx" from the beginning and the brand umbrella "PC Engine" or stick with "PC Engine" from the beginning and call the whole thing "HE System".
Actually, HE System is the most logical name for everything. It's not like they never used it, either. How come we don't call it that? The warning on the first track of every Japanese CD game says "This is an HE System CD-ROM disc".
That's it, elmer. You and I are translating Xanadu 1 and 2 for HE System.