PC Engine CD/TurboGrafx CD Vs Mega-CD/Sega CD - which is better?

[kosko99]

I recently bought a Sega CD and if we are talking about catalogue only I'd say TurboCD wins (imho).
Sometimes I got troubles to pick a game to play on the NEC console because I couldn't decide on so many games to try. On the other hand, when seeing the Sega CD games I had troubles to pick a "non meh" game... sega got few good CD games like Sonic, Final Fight, Shining Force and such, but as for the rest ugh...

[spenoza]

Better is such a loaded word... Technically, the Sega Genny + CD is extremely powerful and should crush the competition hands-down (with the exception of more limited color reproduction). But the catalog is kind of a dog. There are some good titles, but not enough. The PCE CD catalog is so much stronger it's not even a fair fight. Technical specs don't mean a damn thing if they aren't used to good purposes. And two of the better Sega CD games are lackluster SuperCD ports (I guess Dungeon Explorer is different enough it might not be a straight port?).

[esteban]

Better is such a loaded word... Technically, the Sega Genny + CD is extremely powerful and should crush the competition hands-down (with the exception of more limited color reproduction). But the catalog is kind of a dog. There are some good titles, but not enough. The PCE CD catalog is so much stronger it's not even a fair fight. Technical specs don't mean a damn thing if they aren't used to good purposes. And two of the better Sega CD games are lackluster SuperCD ports (I guess Dungeon Explorer is different enough it might not be a straight port?).

Dungeon Explorer on Sega CD...is just a different sort of game. It's OK, I suppose (I haven't really been excited by it), but it certainly is not awesomely fun like the PCE Dungeon Explorer.

Overall, the Sega/Mega-CD library just isn't as interesting to me as the PCE.

[Bonknuts]

Baked potatoes are loaded. Better is subjective and applicable at the same time.

[crazydean]

I just bought a US Sega-CD. I haven't had much time to play it, but the load times are way faster than my PCE Duo. Is this typical?

[Black Tiger]

I just bought a US Sega-CD. I haven't had much time to play it, but the load times are way faster than my PCE Duo. Is this typical?

Just depends on the game and how much is being loaded. Sega-CD lasers are the same speed as Turbo/PCE CD-ROMs.

After being tuned up, my TurboDuo loads the 3-in-1 menus and all of Gate of Thunder about as fast as a cart game.

[SavagePencil]

I just bought a US Sega-CD. I haven't had much time to play it, but the load times are way faster than my PCE Duo. Is this typical?

I'd say that my Duo is faster at loading the initial game, but it varies between level/mode.  I spent the afternoon exploring a Mega CD I bought a decade ago ( http://segaretro.org/Game_no_Kanzume_Vol.2 ) and was upset that until last week I couldn't actually play the f*cking thing.  Initial load is pretty rough, and reboot is slow, but each game itself loads up quickly.  Then again, many of these were early 90s downloadable over modem...

[Joe Redifer]

I choose both! There's more than just FMV games on the Sega CD just like there's more than just sports games on the Genesis. If that taints your memories then that's your problem.

I'm betting that if NEC could, they would have been all over the FMV bandwagon. Nowhere along the line did they say "Let's stick to good, real games because we feel that's a better use of the technology". The problem with Sega is that they had the budget, the marketing and the CPU to make lots and lots of FMV games. They took that money and made it so the FMV was eventually full screen. Of course I'm not saying those games were good, but Sega of America heavily invested in it and advertised it, thus is was. Wasn't really the case in Japan. Road Avenger is the tits, though. NEC's first FMV product on their system was also less-than-stellar. Sherlock Holmes paused every few seconds whereas the Sega CD version did not. "But Joe... the Turbo version has 512 horizontal pixels so much sharper!!!" Would you rather watch a Blu-ray where the video paused every few seconds or a DVD that plays smoothly for the entire duration? I thought so. They shouldn't have done such a high resolution. That was a dumb decision. Needless to say the genre thankfully didn't catch on like some thought it would.

Hardware-wise I appreciated that Sega added more to theirs in the terms of 133t FX and more processing power. NEC's product is basically just a TurboGrafx-16 with a CD player and an additional sound chip. This may be seen as a weakness but at the end of the day it was a strength, because that makes it harder for them to make stuff like FMV games. Magical Dinosaur Tour is truly what the system is all about though.

EDIT: Another thing I'd like to add is that Sega of Japan never really learned how to make proper games for their own system. No Japanese developer really did. It was the Europeans and Americans who got BY FAR the most out of that scaling and rotation hardware. Japan was very inept and making games for the thing. A few exceptions of course, but generally it was just lazy programming over there.

[Bonknuts]

EDIT: Another thing I'd like to add is that Sega of Japan never really learned how to make proper games for their own system. No Japanese developer really did. It was the Europeans and Americans Europeans working for American companies who got BY FAR the most out of that scaling and rotation hardware. Japan was very inept and making games for the thing. A few exceptions of course, but generally it was just lazy programming over there.

Fixed for you.

 I've looked at a lot of Japanese code (well, most of it on the PCE, but others have reported the same thing on other systems like the NES, SNES, etc). Japanese greatest strength is their game design, but their worst attribute is generally inefficient or un-optimal use of hardware. You get a few exceptions, but it's not the norm. If it's there and easy to use, you'll see it in game.

[esteban]

"Sub-optimal".... Damn, that is an interesting pattern, if it is accurate.

[Black Tiger]

The PC Engine can do large windows of fmv just fine and those lazy persons of Japanese descent were the ones who proved it with Yuna and Gulliver Boy.

It just wasn't deemed worthwhile by Hudson.

[Necromancer]

I'm betting that if NEC could, they would have been all over the FMV bandwagon. Nowhere along the line did they say "Let's stick to good, real games because we feel that's a better use of the technology".

Agreed.  If HuVideo was part of the dev kit when Super CDs came out, I'm sure we'd have seen it used in lots of games; I doubt there'd be much stuff like Sewer Shark or Make My Video, but I'm sure it would've been used a lot for cut scenes, especially in rpgs and digi-comics.

Magical Dinosaur Tour is truly what the system is all about though.

[Joe Redifer]

Personally I always liked PCE-style cutscenes vs the FMV anime cutscenes just because I like the clean colors vs the grainy colors. I like Popful Mail's intro on the Sega CD more than I like Keio Flying Squadron's for this reason. One thing that I've noticed in a lot of low-budget PCE CDs (those that usually remained in Japan) is that there was no music behind most of the dialog, they sounded like they were in a small room and the only animation would be moving lips. I prefer a little more effort than that.

PS - Is the guy behind the Batman Returns engine on Sega CD European? I forget the dude's name but would remember if I read it. I'll just call him Brian Green for now.

[spenoza]

Japanese greatest strength is their game design, but their worst attribute is generally inefficient or un-optimal use of hardware. You get a few exceptions, but it's not the norm. If it's there and easy to use, you'll see it in game.

If there's only enough budget for either more efficient/optimal code OR more polishing of the core game design, I'd opt for the latter, so I don't know that that's a problem, really, unless there was time and money for both and they simply didn't have the talent for the former.

[elmer]

PS - Is the guy behind the Batman Returns engine on Sega CD European? I forget the dude's name but would remember if I read it. I'll just call him Brian Green for now.

I assume that you're talking about the driving game, and not Andy Green's 2D side-scroller sections.

It was a guy called John O'Brien, Irish. He did a bunch of driving games back in the UK for Ocean which is how he got the gig.

Batman Returns was made by Acme Interactive/Malibu Interactive (same company, different names per-merger vs post-merger).

Bob Jacobs (of CinemaWare and TV Sports fame) founded Acme Interactive and head-hunted a bunch of guys from the UK for his new company.