Biggest lost opportunities for the PCE

[nat]

Faussete Amour is a good, very unique platformer for the Duo.

Then of course there is the Valis series, the Axe series and the Bonk series among tons of varying quality one-off titles. I'd take the Bonk series over the Sonics (Sonic CD aside) any day.

[SignOfZeta]

well Jackie Chan and New Adventure Island are pretty awesome platformers but you are right that it never had that one big blockbuster like Super Mario Bros or Sonic that would make people buy the system just for that title. 

I already had the system, and I still didn't buy those games. The only reason why I had Bonk 1&2 was because they were pack-ins. I didn't get Bonk 3 until last year. There isn't really a shortage, per say, of platformers on PCE, there's just a shortage of anything better than a C+. Maybe Mario and Sonic are asking for too much, but what about Rystar, Rocket Knight, Heady, etc? Shit even Vector Man embarrasses most PCE platformers, most of which seem to be Wataru or Wonderboy hacks. Same floaty jumping arc, same shitty shops.

I'd say the biggest missed opportunity on the PCE was the fact that the last few years of the system were dominated almost entirely my menu driven games. Galget, RPGs, and Digital Comics, mainly. At the end we all had CD systems and Arcade Cards but if you wanted a shooter, a platformer, a beat-em-up, or even a sports game you had to go to the early CD or even HuCard era for any kind of selection. Of course, before eBay, this forum, etc it was really f*cking hard to find PCE games that weren't brand new so...there wasn't a lot of "action" in 1993, 94, 95.

Specifically, I guess I would have liked to see an Assault Suits series game for SCD. Given NCS Masiya's huge support of PCE its kind of odd there never was one.

[SamIAm]

Faussete Amour is a good, very unique platformer for the Duo.

Then of course there is the Valis series, the Axe series and the Bonk series among tons of varying quality one-off titles. I'd take the Bonk series over the Sonics (Sonic CD aside) any day.

Ha ha, we have very different taste, my good man.

To me, Bonk is decent, but if I were making a list of my top 5 favorite games ever, Sonic 3 and Sonic CD would both be on there. I love Sonic 1, as well.

As for Valis and Faussete Amour, well, I think they sum up the PCE-CD in more ways than we'd like to admit - great visuals, but not a lot of good action to be found.

[nodtveidt]

A Mario game would be pathetically easy to make on the PCE, and a Sonic game not much harder. The fact that we didn't get any such high-quality titles is pretty much just attributed to the fact that Mario and Sonic were done by top in-house teams with huge budgets, and most PCE games were made by companies with very limited budgets, some of which were one-hit-wonders on the PCE. We really did need some better platformers... but I suppose the ones we got weren't terrible, with a few exceptions... but yeah, some killer ones would have been nice. Other platformers on the two other consoles were almost always made by companies with larger budgets, and with the knowledge that sales would come easy. The PCE never really had such a comfort zone, and the TG16 even less so. That might have contributed to the lackluster efforts of said C+ games.

Ristar would have been pretty easy to do. Same with Rocket Knight. I don't know enough about Dynamite Heady to make a judgement call there.

Hell though... I could make a kickass Mario game over the freakin' weekend... in fact, I think I was gonna a few weeks back... never did it though... dunno why, not enough challenge I suppose.

[soop]

I think what sums the PC Engine up in my opinion is "if you want something done ... get Hudson to do it".

IMO, Hudson have got the greatest stable of hits for the system, an extraordinary run rivalled only by Sega and Nintendo at the time.  However what really hurt the PCE was the fact that Nintendo tried to strong-arm developers into developing only for their system.  That's the reason there were so many NES-only titles - part of Ninty's "license" was "we'll let you develop for our system if you give us a cut, let us have the final say and promise not to develop that game for any other system.

And later, I think moving to CD so quickly undoubtedly hurt the Super Grafx, which really should have been the bees knees.  everyone praises the CD system, but I own about 3 CD games, and I just see so many more great games in HuCard format :/

[apachacha]

Hell though... I could make a kickass Mario game over the freakin' weekend... in fact, I think I was gonna a few weeks back... never did it though... dunno why, not enough challenge I suppose.

You mean as in programing a new one, or just modify a previously used engine ?

[Arkhan]

Don't forget Might and Magic III.
 

What do you think Isles of Terra is, lol

EDIT: oh wait, i never said IoT, but I said two M&Ms, same difference.

I liked the first M&M even though its all Anime'd up and a bit more "THIS IS WHAT YOU USE, DO IT. TOUGH IF YOU DONT LIKE".  Kind of like OotG, only not as lame.

ootg is still good, but they left out the customization of the goldbox games and left the rest -_-

OotG is awesome.

That would be better if I wasnt stuck with generic party 9000

[Digi.k]

would had loved more scrolling beat em ups and more racing games like outrun, victory run which I really do feel were lacking on the pc-e

[Arkhan]

Too bad we couldn't has battletoads.

We did get RCR though, and that's my favorite beat em up, lol.

[nodtveidt]

You mean as in programing a new one, or just modify a previously used engine ?

From the ground up. If I were to modify existing source, I could do it in a day. Of course, I'm referring to the code alone, since that's my department. That doesn't take into consideration the graphics and sound.

In any event, most platform games are composed of two major portions: finite state machines (FSMs, and not Flying Spaghetti Monsters either, though that would be teh jawsum ), and collision detection (coldet). At the lowest level, that's all they are. Where they differ is in the level of coldet (some have additional collision types, such as platforms you can "jump up to") and the number and capabilities of the states (all platformers have "run around and jump around" but some have attack states, some have multiple attack states, some have special jump states and substates, etc etc etc etc). A basic player FSM can be coded in a couple of hours, even in assembly. Enemy FSMs tend to be simpler. Coldet is usually even easier, especially if you already have a robust mapping scheme and understand bounding boxes and thresholds. Of course, to do them well, you need to have not only experience but also skill... it's pretty easy to f*ck both of them up if you don't know what you're doing.

[Necromancer]

Passing up on exclusive rights to Mortal Kombat was a heck of a missed opportunity; love it or hate it, that game sold like hot cakes and surely would've sold some systems too.  Of course, one game couldn't have made a huge difference all by itself, but had the profits been used for effective marketing and/or bringing over additional popular titles, who knows how things might've ended?

[soop]

A basic player FSM can be coded in a couple of hours, even in assembly.

Yeah, but you really need to know what you're doing.  Massively so.  I haven't touched assembler since Devpac 2/3 on the Amiga, and it's certainly not something most people could do on a whim in a matter of hours.  You'd need to live it, and who really does these days?

But yeah, if you have decent tools and reference Mario would be a snap as far as I can think.  It does have nice jump physics though, I've always thought that.

[Mathius]

A basic player FSM can be coded in a couple of hours, even in assembly.

Yeah, but you really need to know what you're doing.  Massively so.  I haven't touched assembler since Devpac 2/3 on the Amiga, and it's certainly not something most people could do on a whim in a matter of hours.  You'd need to live it, and who really does these days?

But yeah, if you have decent tools and reference Mario would be a snap as far as I can think.  It does have nice jump physics though, I've always thought that.

I think our Rovie knows what he is doing I would assume.

[SignOfZeta]

And later, I think moving to CD so quickly undoubtedly hurt the Super Grafx, which really should have been the bees knees.  everyone praises the CD system, but I own about 3 CD games, and I just see so many more great games in HuCard format :/

The Supergrapfx was a terrible idea, or at least a terribly executed idea. It seems like a half-ass attempt by NEC to sell hardware without much though of WTF customers/developers/Hudson were supposed to do with it.

CD had way way more to offer us. When they invented it nobody had any clue we'd get something like Y's IV or Fatal Fury Special, but there they are...and you aren't doing that shit with a SGX (not without a really f*cking expensive/huge HuCard anyway). Obviously the SGX didn't see its full potential, but even if it had I just can't see it giving us much that was all that different from a standard PCE HuCard.

BWT, jeez, get more CD games! You have three? No wonder you don't think its so great.

[nodtveidt]

I wish the SGX would have become the de facto standard... the machine really is better, at least from a coder's point of view. Having two graphics chips and double the total VRAM is great, and four times the scratch RAM helps a LOT. Out of anything else, I think the SGX itself was the largest missed opportunity.