Graphics: Turbo vs. Genesis - ye old debate

[Joe Redifer]

I doubt the SuperGrafx-16 took much wind out of the Super Famicom's sails.  It had much more in common with the Mega Drive than it did with the SFC.  It couldn't even perform the state-of-the-art space-age cutting-edge MODE 7 that the Super Famicom could do.  The Japanese laughed at the SGX because it was perceived to be weak compared to the SFC which was more powerful than motherf*ckin' Buddha hisself.  Did other magazines report good things about the SuperGrafx-16?  I highly doubt it.  The only magazine with relevance in Japan seems to be Famitsu.  Just look at the name of that magazine.  Famitsu.  Translated to English, it literally means "We love the f*cking Famicom and everything Nintendo makes or does.  If you want to talk about something other than Nintendo, then GTFO and STFU".  The more accurate translation does not contain the "GTFO" part but does contain "STFU".  The magazine's name wasn't Enginitsu.  It's almost like Nintendo Power singing praises of the TurboGrafx.

[Keranu]

Joe is full of wisdom, I love his commentary on Japanese translations! 

[malducci]

SuperGrafx could not have been the PC-FX in 1989 or even 1990. that would not be possible or practical.

I didn't say the SGX was the PC-FX. I was speculating the SGX was the stripped down version of the PC Engine 2, released to buy some time/stall the competition, while work on the PC Engine 2 evolved - eventually into the PC-FX.

 It's not hard to see the similarity.

The PCE is made up of: CPU(huc6280), PSGPCM unit(on the CPU die), VCE (video & color/palette generation), and a VDC(sprites/BG).

The SGX is made up of: CPU(6280). PSGPCM(on CPU die), a VCE, two VDCs, and a priority controller for the VDCs.

The PC-FX is made up of: v810 32bit RISC CPU by NEC (not hudson this time), a VCE (a newer version but still a VCE), two VDCs(nothing different than the SGX or PCE), a video priority controller (a little more complex than the SGXs), and KING ( it's own BG unit that can scale and rotate only it's own BG, not sprites or BGs from the VDCs), an iDCT for decoding MPEG frames and RLE bitmaps (RAINBOW), and two ADPCM controllers(the same as the PCE CD unit). I've also been told the SCSI interface (proprietary SCSI version) is *very* similar to the PCE CD's. It even uses the same MCU from the CD unit that the original PCE CD used (probably with updated rom though).

You can see the similarity to the SGX with its two VDCs, a VCE, and a PSG unit. The priority controller was integrated into the VCE (makes sense). The ADPCM is the same type as the PCE CD used as is the CD MCU(SCSI).  KING (Hudson's chip) handled the scaling and rotation of it's own BG layers (up to 4). The 32bit RISC CPU was available in 1990 so it that puts it in the time frame. IMO, the PC-FX was definitely doable in '90-92. Heh- besides the CPU it seems at the support chips are Hudson's.

Also notice the name progressions:

Original VCE -huc6260, FX VCE - huc6261
Original VDC -huc6270, FX KING VDC -huc6272 (huc6271 is the mpeg/bitmap layer of RAINBOW - a VDC chip).

The Huc6273 was the 3D chip for the addon card. There are no skips in the naming progression.

Does anyone have some specs/links/or scans of the PC Engine 2 articles?

[Tatsujin]

SuperGrafx could not have been the PC-FX in 1989 or even 1990. that would not be possible or practical.

what the SuperGrafx should have been, IMO, is something more like  a "Super X68000" in a console, with a faster clocked 68000.  without the floppy disc drives,  with more colors on screen (4096) the same palette (65,536)  the addition of true hardware scaling & rotation.  maybe more sprites (say 256 16x16).    something roughly as powerful as Sega's highend boards with Super-Scaler technology.   a real leap above the PC-Engine, something with more power than the SNES,  more or less on par with the NEO-GEO, though more reasonably priced with games costing no more than $90.      also the "Super CD-ROM" should've been a CD-ROM for this SuperGrafx.  the regular PC-Engine would use CD-ROM2  system card 1.0 2.0, 3.0 etc but leave Super-CD-ROM exclusive to SuperGrafx. even if only say 50 or 40 or so SuperGrafx  SHu-Cards and SCDs came out, if the quality of the games remained very high, it would've been so much more worthwhile.

that sounds like something Fujitsu did with their marty but didn't succeed either, even with a typical PCE soft lineup (> some very great shooter, RPGs, mah jong, erotic [and more..], div. mixed genres etc..

but i see your point. NEC had the great chance to create a following successor to th PCE because its already big popularity at that time as a game manufacturer, but didn't choose the right time. 1990 was too early, coz the PCE was still on its top, and when they came up with the PC-FX, the 32-Bit Polygon era was just a little step ahead.

[Tatsujin]

Joe is full of wisdom, I love his commentary on Japanese translations! 

yeah, that one was a great fun

[handygrafx]

SuperGrafx could not have been the PC-FX in 1989 or even 1990. that would not be possible or practical.

what the SuperGrafx should have been, IMO, is something more like  a "Super X68000" in a console, with a faster clocked 68000.  without the floppy disc drives,  with more colors on screen (4096) the same palette (65,536)  the addition of true hardware scaling & rotation.  maybe more sprites (say 256 16x16).    something roughly as powerful as Sega's highend boards with Super-Scaler technology.   a real leap above the PC-Engine, something with more power than the SNES,  more or less on par with the NEO-GEO, though more reasonably priced with games costing no more than $90.      also the "Super CD-ROM" should've been a CD-ROM for this SuperGrafx.  the regular PC-Engine would use CD-ROM2  system card 1.0 2.0, 3.0 etc but leave Super-CD-ROM exclusive to SuperGrafx. even if only say 50 or 40 or so SuperGrafx  SHu-Cards and SCDs came out, if the quality of the games remained very high, it would've been so much more worthwhile.

that sounds like something Fujitsu did with their marty but didn't succeed either, even with a typical PCE soft lineup (> some very great shooter, RPGs, mah jong, erotic [and more..], div. mixed genres etc..

but i see your point. NEC had the great chance to create a following successor to th PCE because its already big popularity at that time as a game manufacturer, but didn't choose the right time. 1990 was too early, coz the PCE was still on its top, and when they came up with the PC-FX, the 32-Bit Polygon era was just a little step ahead.

yup.  I was proposing a SuperGrafx that had all of the abilities of the X68000 plus somewhat beyond since it X68000 was out in 1987, while the SuperGrafx could've been held until early to mid 1990. I was thinking of a machine a bit less powerful than the NEO-GEO yet almost as powerful and actually stronger in the areas of scaling & rotation -- like the SNES when combined with DSP accelerator chips. Though not SuperFX chip or anything else with polygon capabilities or anything close to PC-FX.   basicly nothing more than what we read in those old EGM news clips.
*16-bit CPU
*more power than MegaDrive or Super Famicom
*scaling & rotation
*better sound than PCE

[Joe Redifer]

Screw that.  Here's how the SuperGrafx should have been:

SPECS:
1024 Bit CPU with 9,000 15THz cores
12 TB main RAM
128 GB Video RAM
16 quintillion colors with up to 47 quadrillion on screen at once (more with programming tricks)
Max resolution:  300,000 x 168,750 (16:9 aspect)
16 million independent backgrounds (all simultaneous)
900,002 sprites per scanline, up to a total of 16 million onscreen at once
Sprite size 1x1 to 100,000x100,000
Scaling, rotation, morphing, transparency, on all backgrounds and sprites
Mode 7 AND Mode 8... up to Mode 32.
128-Bit Z-80+Alpha CPU with 32,768 512Ghz cores to control sound
12,000 PSG sound channels, 65,535 ADPCM sound channels with 64KHz 32-bit sampling, 6 FM sound channels and 1 white noise channel

INPUT/OUTPUT
AV connectors built in:
-RF (channels 3, 4, or 5.  No other system offers this many channel choices)
-Composite video RCA connector
-S-Video connector
-Component RCA connectors
-VGA connector
-HDMI version 9.3 connectors
-Stereo sound RCA jacks
-Headphone jack with slider volume control for maximum enjoyment
-TOS-Link optical out
-Coaxial digital out

CONTROLLERS:
-7 button design plus START, SELECT and 9 way d-pad (1 more direction than any other competing system)
-Controllers can be merged (like Voltron) if any game requires more buttons.
-Up to 600 controllers can be connected at once with the optional SuperTap.

MEDIA:
-8 megabit HuCard.

[ccovell]

Screw that.  Here's how the SuperGrafx should have been:

SPECS:
1024 Bit CPU with 9,000 15THz cores
...

CONTROLLERS:
-7 button design plus START, SELECT and 9 way d-pad (1 more direction than any other competing system)
-Controllers can be merged (like Voltron) if any game requires more buttons.
-Up to 600 controllers can be connected at once with the optional SuperTap.

What, no synaptic link?

[Necromancer]

Screw that.  Here's how the SuperGrafx should have been:

Insert lots of stuff here.

You forgot that the controller's cord length would be stretched to a full 50 centimeters, and where's the Blast Processing^TM v2.0?

[ceti alpha]

and where's the Blast ProcessingTM v2.0?

hehe. I guess Sega would have conceded and joined the NEC developing team. 

[Joe Redifer]

Be realistic, guys.  The SuperGrafx couldn't have everything!  Sega Genesis would still be better than the SuperGrafx due to the high quality and intense power of Blast Processing™.

[ceti alpha]

Sega Genesis would still be better than the SuperGrafx due to the high quality and intense power of Blast Processing™.

Bwwwahahaha!! 

Funny. But the TG-16 didn't need blast processing because its "wee" 8-Bit CPU destroyed the competition.   

[spenoza]

The PCE had Bust Processing, for all those hentai CD games. I betcha Sega didn't have that!

[Keranu]

It is a known fact that Blodia had a special chip installed in it's HuCard that supported Blast Processing™.

[awack]

I think they should have just taken the pc engine, added a second bg layer, reduce the colors it could put on screen at once to 64, gave it a sound chip that produced music which sounded like two tin cans being rub together and released a bunch of hockey, football, basketball and baseball games for it and nothing but FMV games for the cd side of things.....this would have sold like hotcakes in the US