IF, the PCE never got a CD-ROM add-on..

[nodtveidt]

I vote Yes, and for many of the reasons stated above, but mainly because they could really have tapped the full potential of the hucard if they did not introduce the cdrom. Yeah, SFII is about as far as they ever got, but even that doesn't remotely scratch the surface of what can be done with the hucard port. And if that isn't enough...the expansion port gives virtually unlimited possibilities to the machine, giving it unparalleled expandability that even consoles of the modern age can't even begin to compete with, and certainly no consoles back then could compare with. Virtually unlimited access to the entire machine from that huge 69 pin port. By crafting the correct controller, you can add all sorts of crazy hardware...new CDROM drives, USB flash drives, hard drives, you name it. It's all possible. So even if the CDROM hadn't been introduced, it could easily have been introduced later anyways, since creating new devices for the machine is, for all intents and purposes, exceptionally easy.

As for the Mickey Mouse comment...actually, Castle Of Illusion is one of my favorite Genesis games. SMW is my favorite Mario game. These games could easily have been made on the PCE. The hardware is not the deciding factor between SMW and Bonk...the developers are. Yeah, Hudson's developers were good, but Nintendo's developers were phenomenal and their budget was huge. Swap development teams and you'd have seen a respective change in game quality. The Bonk games rock, there's no disputing that. But SMW is amazing, and the reason for that is because the developers of the game were amongst Nintendo's elite-within-the-elite...their new flagship game wasn't going to be developed by their fresh-out-of-university neophytes. Give me one year and $750,000 and I'll produce a platform game superior to SMW on the PCE.

[guyjin]

I think that if there had been no CD addon, there would have been something else - you can't design a system with that kind of expandability and not exploit it; especially since expandability was central to the design in the first place. (remember the prototype pics where it slotted into a computer?)

But, had NEC been even more idiotic than they already were and not gone ahead with the CDRomrom, it would have suffered mightily, and probably would have it's lifespan cut by several years.

[Arkhan]

But, had NEC been even more idiotic than they already were and not gone ahead with the CDRomrom, it would have suffered mightily, and probably would have it's lifespan cut by several years.

Yeah, it would have lost the extra oomph , it had over competition, and it wouldnt have been the one to set the CD-ROM precedent, complete with easily one of the most kick ass CD-ROM libraries to date.

Plus if NEC was numb enough to not release the CDROM.... whos to say they wouldn't have dropped the ball entirely, and released some useless addons that dont amount to much.

It might have been neat to have a "SuperGrafx" addon to give it more power, and maybe a sound unit, or just beefed up HuCards, but I really don't think the system would have been the same.  It would have been another run of the mill console, where the library would have been the deciding factor in its popularity,...

rather than a sweet hucard library, followed by a kickass CDROM one, complete with sweet power metal.   

[sunteam_paul]

I know from extensive research that NEC scrapped the development of another piece of hardware in favour of the CD-ROM unit. So if they hadn't released it, they would have caused a revolution in console gaming with their state of the art virtual reality helmet.

I even have pictures to prove it.

[ceti alpha]

[nectarsis]

I almost wonder if that was half the reason they jumped to CD so early on?  Storing CD games is super easy.  They have all kinds of racks and things for CDs.  Not so much for carts. 

You mean the Huey cases that were the same size as a cd case?  Even the double case SF2, the only one and how "late in the game" could have been made into a single jewel.

[Necromancer]

I almost wonder if that was half the reason they jumped to CD so early on?  Storing CD games is super easy.  They have all kinds of racks and things for CDs.  Not so much for carts. 

[sarcasm]

Oh yes, no doubt unwieldy game storage was tops in their plans.  Allah knows that you couldn't swing a dead cat back in the mid eighties without hitting a CD player, CD storage racks, and/or stacks of jewel cases.

[/sarcasm]

[ceti alpha]

I almost wonder if that was half the reason they jumped to CD so early on?  Storing CD games is super easy.  They have all kinds of racks and things for CDs.  Not so much for carts. 

[sarcasm]

Oh yes, no doubt unwieldy game storage was tops in their plans.  Allah knows that you couldn't swing a dead cat back in the mid eighties without hitting a CD player, CD storage racks, and/or stacks of jewel cases.

[/sarcasm]

All this time here and I only now find out about the sarcasm text option.

[Necromancer]

All this time here and I only now find out about the sarcasm text option.

Don't worry; it's been disabled for Canucktonians.

[ceti alpha]

All this time here and I only now find out about the sarcasm text option.

Don't worry; it's been disabled for Canucktonians.

I noticed you didn't use the sarcasm text option right there. lol

[Necromancer]

I noticed you didn't use the sarcasm text option right there. lol

Yes I did; it's denoted at the top left of my post (above the avatar pic and just below the line separating posts).

[nectarsis]

I noticed you didn't use the sarcasm text option right there. lol

Yes I did; it's denoted at the top left of my post (above the avatar pic and just below the line separating posts).

LMAO 

[ceti alpha]

 

[Arkhan]

I almost wonder if that was half the reason they jumped to CD so early on?  Storing CD games is super easy.  They have all kinds of racks and things for CDs.  Not so much for carts. 

You mean the Huey cases that were the same size as a cd case?  Even the double case SF2, the only one and how "late in the game" could have been made into a single jewel.

yes but to compete with the ever growing carts of the SFC and the like, I imagine the hueys would have gotten quite a bit thicker than even SF2, which is basically a Sys3 sized card.  SF2 was a early SFC title. It was a 16mb cart!  It only got larger from there.  Its pretty easy to mask the size of the internals when wrapped around a big plastic shell.  Not so much if its a slim card.

eventually the cases would have had to be thicker, and no longer jewel casey.  Or they would have a cutout on the front to accommodate the bulge
 
I may not be fully correct, but space comes at a bit of a premium in Japan in comparison to USA where we just make everything large and obnoxious ! .  I always wondered if that was why FC carts were tinier than NES, and why Saturn games in .jp came in regular cases while they came in huge cases here.   

Maybe the boys in PCE hardware design land really liked having the slimmest form factor mediums possible at the time!

[sarcasm]

Oh yes, no doubt unwieldy game storage was tops in their plans.  Allah knows that you couldn't swing a dead cat back in the mid eighties without hitting a CD player, CD storage racks, and/or stacks of jewel cases.

[/sarcasm]

Hey man!  you can fit more jewel cases in the same space as SFC carts! 

[Necromancer]

yes but to compete with the ever growing carts of the SFC and the like, I imagine the hueys would have gotten quite a bit thicker than even SF2, which is basically a Sys3 sized card.  SF2 was a early SFC title. It was a 16mb cart!  It only got larger from there.

The HuCards wouldn't necessarily have gotten bigger.  The PCE version of SF2' is 20mb, but the hump in the card is empty and only serves as a place for the label; they could have made the HuCard the exact same size as its brethren by using a stick-on label (à la the Arcade Card Duo).  Considering that the bump covers half the rom-fillable area and roughly doubles the thickness of the card, I guesstimate* that with three rom layers at the bump, a game could be twice as big (40mb), which is equal to the largest Genesis game and nearly as big as the largest SNES games (48mb).  Hell, they likely could've made 'em even bigger, as my estimate assumes that 20mb is the max that can fit in a 'normal' sized HuCard, but even if they couldn't, a bumped HuCard could quite possibly hold more gaming goodness than anything that came out on the Genny or SNES, since the Genny has demonstrably less efficient code (in terms of size) and the big SNES games were bloated with samples not game code and graphics.


* - highly accurate and NASA approved