Mad Stalker - Arcade or Super System game?

[Black Tiger]

Those graphics look like they could run from a HuCard if SFII is any comparison

CD games are the same as HuCard games, only they're bottlenecked by only being able to run a small segment at any given time.

That's why SFII' wasn't also released for Super CD, because a match wouldn't fit within the tiny space that CD games have to run out of.

Er, have you seen Art of Fighting or Fatal Fury Special on PCE CD? Both are considerably more advanced than SFII!

It's still just sprites and tiles and no kind of "hardware parallax" or anything else. Instead of a gameplay segment being stuck with half a meg or 2 megs, the Arcade Card expands upon the Super CD's space to allow up to 18 megs used at once.

All three CD formats use identical hardware, which only adds parallel adpcm and redbook audio channels. Otherwise CD games are pretty restricted for what can be done compared to HuCards and cart games in general.

That's why many CD versions of HuCard games have neutered assets.

I assume you're talking about non-arcade system cards right? Otherwise your SFII statement makes no sense.

The Arcade Card format wasn't released until over a year after SFII' came out.

[Artabasdos]

Those graphics look like they could run from a HuCard if SFII is any comparison

CD games are the same as HuCard games, only they're bottlenecked by only being able to run a small segment at any given time.

Fair enough. I also thought the Super system card had more RAM than it actually has. It has 3x less than the MegaCD lol.

That's why SFII' wasn't also released for Super CD, because a match wouldn't fit within the tiny space that CD games have to run out of.

Er, have you seen Art of Fighting or Fatal Fury Special on PCE CD? Both are considerably more advanced than SFII!

It's still just sprites and tiles and no kind of "hardware parallax" or anything else. Instead of a gameplay segment being stuck with half a meg or 2 megs, the Arcade Card expands upon the Super CD's space to allow up to 18 megs used at once.

All three CD formats use identical hardware, which only adds parallel adpcm and redbook audio channels. Otherwise CD games are pretty restricted for what can be done compared to HuCards and cart games in general.

That's why many CD versions of HuCard games have neutered assets.

I assume you're talking about non-arcade system cards right? Otherwise your SFII statement makes no sense.

The Arcade Card format wasn't released until over a year after SFII' came out.

[Necromancer]

I'm aware of that, but it does allow for storage of graphics data.

Of course it does, but that's no different than the rom of a huey.

[Artabasdos]

I'm aware of that, but it does allow for storage of graphics data.

Of course it does, but that's no different than the rom of a huey.

Of course it's different. The CD can hold 500MB+ of data, and load it into RAM when required. A HuCard/cart can only hold a few megs in total. IIRC SFII on PCE is 20 megabits, or 2 1/2MB!

[Necromancer]

Of course it's different. The CD can hold 500MB+ of data, and load it into RAM when required. A HuCard/cart can only hold a few megs in total. IIRC SFII on PCE is 20 megabits, or 2 1/2MB!

The only appreciable difference there is cost.  20 megabits isn't the max allowable rom size; with the right mapper, a huey could be made to hold just as much as any cd game made, none of which are even close to 500 megabytes in game size (most disc space is filled with adpcm samples and redbook).

[Artabasdos]

Of course it's different. The CD can hold 500MB+ of data, and load it into RAM when required. A HuCard/cart can only hold a few megs in total. IIRC SFII on PCE is 20 megabits, or 2 1/2MB!

The only appreciable difference there is cost.  20 megabits isn't the max allowable rom size; with the right mapper, a huey could be made to hold just as much as any cd game made, none of which are even close to 500 megabytes in game size (most disc space is filled with adpcm samples and redbook).

Are you sure about that?

Even if that is true, the price of such a HuCard would be brutal. Approaching higher end AES cart prices back in the day. That's to say nothing of the reduced performance from the phenomenal amount of bank switching that would be required. CDs were far cheaper and more simple to deal with.

[Black Tiger]

Of course it's different. The CD can hold 500MB+ of data, and load it into RAM when required. A HuCard/cart can only hold a few megs in total. IIRC SFII on PCE is 20 megabits, or 2 1/2MB!

The only appreciable difference there is cost.  20 megabits isn't the max allowable rom size; with the right mapper, a huey could be made to hold just as much as any cd game made, none of which are even close to 500 megabytes in game size (most disc space is filled with adpcm samples and redbook).

Are you sure about that?

Even if that is true, the price of such a HuCard would be brutal. Approaching higher end AES cart prices back in the day. That's to say nothing of the reduced performance from the phenomenal amount of bank switching that would be required. CDs were far cheaper and more simple to deal with.

That's why disc-based consoles became standard. Large SNES carts were very expensive bitd, but CD games typically never used more than <1% of the space on a CD for anything other than redbook and adpcm audio. A game like Dracula X wouldn't have been any bigger than larger non-RPG SNES and Genesis games from around the same time.


Here's how CD games work compared to normal HuCards:

[TheOldMan]

That's to say nothing of the reduced performance from the phenomenal amount of bank switching that would be required.

As opposed to the time to load things from CD?

[esteban]

Of course it's different. The CD can hold 500MB+ of data, and load it into RAM when required. A HuCard/cart can only hold a few megs in total. IIRC SFII on PCE is 20 megabits, or 2 1/2MB!

The only appreciable difference there is cost.  20 megabits isn't the max allowable rom size; with the right mapper, a huey could be made to hold just as much as any cd game made, none of which are even close to 500 megabytes in game size (most disc space is filled with adpcm samples and redbook).

Are you sure about that?

Even if that is true, the price of such a HuCard would be brutal. Approaching higher end AES cart prices back in the day. That's to say nothing of the reduced performance from the phenomenal amount of bank switching that would be required. CDs were far cheaper and more simple to deal with.

Comrade, I know what you are thinking... I, too, was confused about the "bottleneck" that is created for CD-ROM games based on the fact that only ____________ of data (depends on the system card) can be loaded and therefore available at any given moment.

If you want LOTS OF ANIMATION in large sprites... you can quickly run out of room.

Therefore, once it was evident that the install base of CD-ROM hardware was healthy,  developers/publishers *still* had a decision to make: did the technical requirements/challenges of the game lend itself to HuCARD or CD-ROM.

CD-ROM was not automatically the best fit for every project.

[Artabasdos]

Of course it's different. The CD can hold 500MB+ of data, and load it into RAM when required. A HuCard/cart can only hold a few megs in total. IIRC SFII on PCE is 20 megabits, or 2 1/2MB!

The only appreciable difference there is cost.  20 megabits isn't the max allowable rom size; with the right mapper, a huey could be made to hold just as much as any cd game made, none of which are even close to 500 megabytes in game size (most disc space is filled with adpcm samples and redbook).

Are you sure about that?

Even if that is true, the price of such a HuCard would be brutal. Approaching higher end AES cart prices back in the day. That's to say nothing of the reduced performance from the phenomenal amount of bank switching that would be required. CDs were far cheaper and more simple to deal with.

Comrade, I know what you are thinking... I, too, was confused about the "bottleneck" that is created for CD-ROM games based on the fact that only ____________ of data (depends on the system card) can be loaded and therefore available at any given moment.

If you want LOTS OF ANIMATION in large sprites... you can quickly run out of room.

Therefore, once it was evident that the install base of CD-ROM hardware was healthy,  developers/publishers *still* had a decision to make: did the technical requirements/challenges of the game lend itself to HuCARD or CD-ROM.

CD-ROM was not automatically the best fit for every project.

I can understand that. I thought the system 3.0 card had 512KB of RAM, not 192KB. Given the fact that its main rival the MegaCD had 768KB of RAM (outside of sound), I would of thought the general purpose amount of the PCE CD would have a competitive amount!

[esteban]

I would of thought the general purpose amount of the PCE CD would have a competitive amount!

That's actually a good question: both PCE Super CD and Mega Drive CD were released in December of 1991...

...technical specs had been released to the public, I am assuming, but at what point were NEC and Sega aware of *exactly* what the other company was doing?

Had the technical specs been nailed down by the engineers long before knowledge of competitor's hardware?

[Artabasdos]

I would of thought the general purpose amount of the PCE CD would have a competitive amount!

That's actually a good question: both PCE Super CD and Mega Drive CD were released in December of 1991...

...technical specs had been released to the public, I am assuming, but at what point were NEC and Sega aware of *exactly* what the other company was doing?

Had the technical specs been nailed down by the engineers long before knowledge of competitor's hardware?

Hard to say without some pretty hardcore research most likely. One thing to mention that the cost of RAM in the 100s of KB amount was pretty low by 1991. Also, they are only selling the HuCard with RAM built-in, unlike the MegaCD, which had a whole ton of crap. I'd of thought 512KB would have been the best idea.

[Punch]

That's to say nothing of the reduced performance from the phenomenal amount of bank switching that would be required.

Yes, phenomenal microseconds lost to order an instantaneous bank change as opposed to the seconds long optical + mechanical maneuvers every time you want data outside the tiny window already loaded into the syscard ram. Truly phenomenal

Your posts make you sound like you're the kind of random Internet expert that says stuff like "the PCE is 8 bit but has two 16 bit video chips"

[Artabasdos]

That's to say nothing of the reduced performance from the phenomenal amount of bank switching that would be required.

Yes, phenomenal microseconds lost to order an instantaneous bank change as opposed to the seconds long optical + mechanical maneuvers every time you want data outside the tiny window already loaded into the syscard ram. Truly phenomenal

Your posts make you sound like you're the kind of random Internet expert that says stuff like "the PCE is 8 bit but has two 16 bit video chips"

I suggest you look up how bus bandwidth affects data transfer, especially when it's constantly jumping back and forth between the CPU, memory mapper, RAM, and game data. The same kind of thing happens on modern handhelds using the largest supported flash memory. The 64GB Vita memory card is considerably slower than the 32GB and lower. Same for the 3DS & DS. Game carts of 512MB on the DS were noticeably slower. Same for SD cards or any kind of Flash data.

So kindly take your sarcasm and stuff it where the sun doesn't shine.

[Black Tiger]

I guess that Paprium is going to crawl along, since it's 2.5 times as big as the hardware can accept without bank switching and larger than many/most PCE CD games.

Of course SFII' PCE is also 2.5 times the hardware's max rom size and we saw how crippled that game was.