Why didn't any released 7800 games have even a password system?

[Prosystemsearch]

It wans't beyond the 7800's capabilities. AFAIK. Midnight mutants, and maybe Xenophobe would have benifitted from a password battery.

[Thibr]

True it's definitely not beyond its capacities. Even some VCS 2600 games have a password system (e.g. Fatal Run).

You're right about that : this would be useful for many other games such commando or ikari warriors.

[toiletunes]

Fatal Run (7800) did have passwords. Why it wasn't used for other games like Scrapyard Dog, I'll never understand.

[DracIsBack]

If I remember right, Meltdown also had passwords.

[+madman]

It wans't beyond the 7800's capabilities. AFAIK. Midnight mutants, and maybe Xenophobe would have benifitted from a password battery.

Are you asking about passwords or battery backed saves?

[Trebor]

Arcade titles like Xenophobe, personally, I rather not see have some sort of password system, or batter backed system, as it's an Arcade game designed for 'one sitting'.

 

Midnight Mutants on the other hand would have benefited greatly, being able to save a game (via battery backup) and return to it later. I rather that than a password based system, as those tend to be abused and used as a cheat to skip directly to a certain level or part of a game which cheapens the game and overall game playing experience, IMHO. Scrapyard Dog is also a good candidate for game saves.

 

Impossible Mission may have benefited, but I'm sort of on the fence for that title whether I would like to see game saves or not. Having saves may diminish the whole 'crunch time' factor which is part of the game's experience.

 

Having batter backed saving would have caused the company more to produce games needing to design a new PCB for it and then also supplying the battery. This is the same company that tried to trim every cost with something as essential as sound. Not seeing a battery backed save cart is not a big surprise in this regard.

[Jaynz]

Because it was a fairly new idea that wasn't yet widely adopted? Really, nothing more to it than that.

[Lynxpro]

Arcade titles like Xenophobe, personally, I rather not see have some sort of password system, or batter backed system, as it's an Arcade game designed for 'one sitting'.

 

Midnight Mutants on the other hand would have benefited greatly, being able to save a game (via battery backup) and return to it later. I rather that than a password based system, as those tend to be abused and used as a cheat to skip directly to a certain level or part of a game which cheapens the game and overall game playing experience, IMHO. Scrapyard Dog is also a good candidate for game saves.

 

Impossible Mission may have benefited, but I'm sort of on the fence for that title whether I would like to see game saves or not. Having saves may diminish the whole 'crunch time' factor which is part of the game's experience.

 

Having batter backed saving would have caused the company more to produce games needing to design a new PCB for it and then also supplying the battery. This is the same company that tried to trim every cost with something as essential as sound. Not seeing a battery backed save cart is not a big surprise in this regard.

 

Impossible Mission really needed a POKEY chip because the 7800's audio sfx were obviously borrowed from 2600 Jedi Arena and sound was one of the memorable features from the C-64 version.

 

Not that I don't enjoy Jedi Arena. I would love to see a 7800 version of it…with POKEY audio. Heck, some of the audio from my proposed homebrew could be swiped from Atari's Star Wars arcade game [since it was POKEY, ahem, QUAD POKEY].

 

 

But since we're discussing saved games and password saves, I think we're overlooking the obvious feature that all 7800 games should/should've used [aside from the likes of Impossible Mission]…High Score Cartridge [HSC] functionality! That damn thing was revolutionary and it should've made it to market! [whether in 1984 or 1986].

Edited May 26, 2014 by Lynxpro

[high voltage]

Because Atari players are ace, they don't rely on that. That's for baby NES players

[Prosystemsearch]

Because Atari players are ace, they don't rely on that. That's for baby NES players

>What are Rpgs

[high voltage]

>What are Rpgs

 

Best played on computers

[gorfcadet]

I don't know about that. Thats like saying certain genres should only be on one type of console ever.

Final Fantasy and Zelda are both console. I would have flipped to see FF on an Atari cart back in the day.

[Classic Pac]

I could of used a password on the day I got further in both Impossible Mission and Midnight Mutants than I ever did before or since. The problem was I had to take my dog for a walk he got excited and bumped the power supply, I still can't believe it happened twice but it did.

[ApolloBoy]

Because Atari players are ace, they don't rely on that. That's for baby NES players

You're slowly descending into insanity aren't you?

[Jinks]

Its the truth. Pure skill self taught"No thanks to you dad!"

[DracIsBack]

 

Impossible Mission really needed a POKEY chip because the 7800's audio sfx were obviously borrowed from 2600 Jedi Arena and sound was one of the memorable features from the C-64 version.

 

 

It might have been able to get away with TIA. The big thing about Impossible Mission was its digitized speech - the scream when you fall, the "Another visitor, Stay Awhile Stay Forever" line, the end "no no no", "destroy him my robots" and the like.

 

There are good TIA voice samples ... contemporary and current. In the day, Jinks and Quadrun did it. More recently, Bob did a great job with it in Astro Blaster

[Trebor]

It's a shame particularly with Impossible Mission as the speech samples would have worked beautifully (Even with the TIA limitation of no graphic animation while speaking) as there needs to be no action/movement occurring on screen while the speech parts would occur.

 

All the speech parts could/do happen before an action/event or just after it, and then the action continues.

[Lynxpro]

It's a shame particularly with Impossible Mission as the speech samples would have worked beautifully (Even with the TIA limitation of no graphic animation while speaking) as there needs to be no action/movement occurring on screen while the speech parts would occur.

 

All the speech parts could/do happen before an action/event or just after it, and then the action continues.

 

That's quite a limitation I was unaware of. Then I guess it would be best to use POKEY then even for audio samples.

 

However, I think the reason why voice wasn't included was due to ROM size. The programmer of the 7800 port was on this board about a year ago also mentioning his desire to fix the bug in the NTSC version and other tweaks but I lost track of it after he had asked for a 5 1/4" disk drive to retrieve the source code. I think someone here did ship one to him but that was the last I heard of it.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Due to the smallish cartridge size, save batteries may have required an oversized cartridge with all the extra parts. Some Famicom and Genesis/MD carts were extended or had irregular shapes because of this.

[DracIsBack]

It's a shame particularly with Impossible Mission as the speech samples would have worked beautifully (Even with the TIA limitation of no graphic animation while speaking) as there needs to be no action/movement occurring on screen while the speech parts would occur.

 

All the speech parts could/do happen before an action/event or just after it, and then the action continues.

 

Is this a TIA limitation or a processor limitation?

 

I think they can have simple animation (see the Tainted love demo) but having sprite interaction with the screen while the speech is going is tricky on an 8bit console because of the limited processor power

 

To be fair to Art, he probably didn't think it could be done at the time. I remember him asking him if he could add samples if he fixed the game and his response was something like "is that possible". When I showed him the tainted love demo, he was shocked, and graciously said, "clearly I have more work to do" or something like that.

Edited May 30, 2014 by DracIsBack

[+Gemintronic]

Due to the smallish cartridge size, save batteries may have required an oversized cartridge with all the extra parts. Some Famicom and Genesis/MD carts were extended or had irregular shapes because of this.

 

Can you give any examples of SNES or Genesis titles with different shapes because of the battery?

[Trebor]

 

Is this a TIA limitation or a processor limitation?

 

I think they can have simple animation (see the Tainted love demo) but having sprite interaction with the screen while the speech is going is tricky on an 8bit console because of the limited processor power

 

Correct...and poorly worded by me. I should have not stated "no graphic animation" period. The statement was to get across the notion that there is no sprite movement/control on screen, due to the TIA speech taking up all processing time.

[Trebor]

Due to the smallish cartridge size, save batteries may have required an oversized cartridge with all the extra parts. Some Famicom and Genesis/MD carts were extended or had irregular shapes because of this.

Using the Famicom/NES taking Zelda as an example - the size is of a typical cart:

 

 

Plenty of room for the battery, additional memory, and MMC1 chip which not only allowed saved games but provided the NES with multi-directional scrolling configurations that the base console system did not have on its own.

 

Thinking about it some more, focusing now on the Sega Genesis, the EA carts tend to be larger than a typical one, but believe that is a design/aesthetics choice, rather than any real need for it.

 

Here's a Genesis PCB with battery - normal/typical size:

 

[Andromeda Stardust]

Have you guys seen the size of A7800 PCBs? Those are a lot smaller than SNES and Genesis. Given the cart loader takes up half the cartridge, there's barely enough real estate for two chips on the back end of the PCB. I doubt there's enough room for a battery holder, plus RAM, plus ROM, plus mapper logic.

 

Examples of oversized carts: Virtua Racing Genesis, Lagrange Point Famicom.

http://gendev.spritesmind.net/mirrors/www.nepereny.com/misc2/games/genesis_virtua_racing.htm

http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=3643

 

The fact that SNES and NES carts are bigger means that there's less likelyhood of needing more room. Most NES game carts are practically empty, but there are exceptions. CVIII takes up most of the cartridge space.

http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=15

[Trebor]

I doubt there's enough room for a battery holder, plus RAM, plus ROM, plus mapper logic.

Almost sounds like a challenge to CPUWIZ

 

 

CVIII takes up most of the cartridge space.

 

Castlevania III cartridge hardware adds a lot to the NES base capabilities. When looking at a game like CV III, the following additional features via hardware chip support was provided to expand the NES capabilities and to offload processing:

 

-Extra sound channels

-Supported vertical split screen scrolling

-Allowed 16,384 tiles per screen instead of just 256.

-Updated the restriction of one color set per 2x2 tile group allowing each individual 8x8 pixel background tile to have its own color

-Highly configurable ROM towards both PRG and CHR bank switching

-A scanline based IRQ counter.

I'm surprised they could fit all of that in one cart.

Again, looking at the Zelda example mentioned above, you can fit battery-backed saving with some extras on the same size Famicom/NES PCB though - the point of the post

Ditto with the Genesis and SNES - You can easily add just battery backed saving to the average PCB without needing a larger than usual PCB/cartridge.

Regarding adding battery saving capabilities to a 7800 cart along with additional memory and the necessary mappings, perhaps the hardware 'brewers' can weigh in definitively, but it does not seem to lack the room for it (Cost effective may be another story)

An example to look at is the High Score Cart for a 7800 PCB/cartridge with battery and a few 'extra chips'.