MN12BIRD

Yeah I'm sure there's no technical reasons but like you said Nintendo needs as much incentive to buy the 3DS as they can get! I'm sure if you had one of those R4i SDHC carts you could get some type of Sega Emulator on there that would run Genesis or GG games? I had a Flashcart on my old Game Boy Advance and there was NES and SNES emulators on there. Even a Game Boy emulator since I had a micro that couldn't play Game Boy carts on its own! IIRC the SNES emulation was slow at the time but the NES emulation was great. My co-worker got one of those R4i cards online for her daughters DS lite (She also has a DSi XL but I'm not sure if the cart works on that too but I think it does) and I was "putting some DS games on it" for her and I remember there was some emulators out there for the DS. I didn't look too much into it but like I said I'm sure there's a decent Sega one I would imagine. I was really surprised how cheap the card was I think it was like under $30 online and it came with a 2 or 4GB microSD card and tiny USB stick microSD card reader. Just an alternative if you want to play some emulated games on a DS I know it can be done but of course some of you might be looking for legit ways and that's cool too

What? Doom sucked on the 3DO! You bought your 3DO for Road Rash and Need for Speed (but perhaps never realized it ) But seriously I think I bought my Jaguar (and 32X) for Doom so I know how you feel.

LOLOLOL you might as well have the option to plug the Genesis controllers in to the cart too! It's a Genesis clone system, that runs the game completely within the cartridge using it's own built in emulation code (yeah the sound is going to suck like every other Genesis clone) and you have to plug AV cables into the cartridge? Hahaha it's the most pointless thing I've ever heard of! Who wants to play Genesis games with an SNES controller anyway? You might as well buy a real Genesis for the price of this thing. Well or just buy a cheap clone cause it's the same thing. Might as well make an adapter that lets you play PS3 games in an Atari 2600. The adapter will be the size of the 2600 itself. It will cost $300. It will require a seperate power supply. It will require the use of it's own AV cables. But... for no apparent reason whatsoever it plugs into a 2600 cartridge port!

It only took Nintendo 20 years to make a Hand Held that could run Game Gear calaber graphics........... Okay, not 20 years.... but 10 years?

Right I should have mentioned that. I was just using the Japanese imports as the most common example. But once you start getting into PAL (on NTSC systems) you have not only regoin lockout but also 50/60hz to worry about as the game may not run at the correct speed once it does run. I was mainly just thinking of Americans importing Japanese games for SFC and MD since that's what's most common for us. Either way there's plenty of region lockout on the SNES and Genesis.

They both have region lockout The SNES is only physical. Stock system and or stock carts, a Super Famicom cartridge will NOT fit into an American SNES unless you cut out the tabs inside the cart slot or the slots on the back of the cartridge. I bet the store that sold the imports was cutting slots into the back of the carts. The Genesis is physical and electronic. The Japanese Mega Drive games will NOT fit into the American Genesis unless you grind out the cart slot to make it a tad wider. On top of that there is an electronic lockout based on the software. Most Genesis/Mega Drive games after a certain year (apx 1992) are locked and if you put a Mega Drive game in a Genesis (after you make it fit) you will still get a bootup screen that says it's for X region only or for play on a "Japanese Mega Drive" system only.

Okay as for Crash and Burn on the 3DO can someone confirm with proof that the background is indeed FMV and not real time? I know the game looks almost "too good to be true" and I can see why some might think it's FMV based like Mega Race. But in Mega Race when you turn the car left and right the actual car sprite pans across on the screen from the left side all the way to the right side of the screen. You can't really slow down or stop either. Like the video is just playing and you're moving the car over top. But in Crash and Burn the car is always in the center of the screen and to me it really looks like the perspective of the track is changing as you steer. Race in a straight tunnel and move from one side to the other and the center line of the tunnel roof will change angle from one side of your car (the screen) to the other. Drive on the side of the road and the side line/edge of the road will be more into the center of the screen, pull away back into the center of the road and the edge of the road moves away from the screen, drive across to the other side of the road and that edge is now closer to the inside of the screen all whilst the car sprite is dead center on the TV! The car is stationary in the center of the screen and the perspective changes around you as you steer. You can also switch into a first person view in witch the road moves under you as you steer from one side of the road to the other the center line, side lines, the whole perspective moves as you steer. The only way I can see this as being possible is if the FMV video is actually larger than the screen and the video itself can be panned from left to right. Unlike games like Rebel Assault where the sprite ship moves around the screen over top a fixed perspective being a pre-rendered video. Also is the fact you can speed up, slow down and even stop and it plays perfectly smooth as you do this? Oh and one more thing there are 30 tracks so that would be a lot of FMV and it's in full screen, full color, fast and smooth, while changing speeds as you slow down or even stop and all with no MPEG artifacts? I'm so damn certain that Crash and Burn is real time but everyone keeps saying it's FMV. Go back and look at gameplay footage and notice how the perspective changes around the car as the car steers on the track yet remains dead center on screen. The car isn't moving over a fixed perspective and it would be if it was pre-rendered video but rather the perspective of the track is changing around the fixed car sprite.

Must have been because of the Apple Pippin....

Sorry I was talking about the two versions I grew up playing. The SNES and the Genesis version. The Genesis version definitely runs faster than the SNES version. I've never seen the Jag version. It was only on the CD-ROM right? I assume it has the same style pre-rendered 3D FMV as the Sega-CD and 3DO? Once again if anyone's only grew up playing those versions I recommend checking out the real-time raster animation style cut-scenes on one of the other versions. I like the music in those cut-scenes better too. It was faster and a little more frantic IIRC the 3DO music in the cut-scenes was more moody I suppose.

System on a Chip (SoC) is nothing new. It's been around for ages. NVidia Tegra for example is essentially a full SoC with the CPU, GPU, Sound, IDE controller, Memory controller... everything to run a full computer system... all in one chip. This is what is in most of the tablets and smartphones these days. But these are small 2 core processors in the 1GHz range. The XBOX 360 for example has a tripple core CPU running at 3.2GHz and a GPU with 3 times the horsepower of any of these SoC on the market. Oh and BTW the 360 also uses a single chip solution for the main guts. That is the CPU's 3 cores, cache and GPU is all built into one chip anyway. These manufactures already know moving as much as you can to a single chip can save costs in the long run. But only if you can manufacture in large enough quantities to out weight initial design costs. Designing one die with all this extra stuff in it will cost more up front but pay off in the long run of manufacturing costs. Sure someone could build the equivalent hardware of a "360 on a chip" or something in that range of performance but it would cost millions to design, end cost per unit could drop to par at best once manufactured in high volumes and here's the kicker, to manufacture in these kind of high volumes would require a billion dollar factory. Kinda like the ones Intel or IBM have. It takes Intel years to pay for the inital R&D and fab costs (factories) for a new line of processors. That cost is the bulk of a processors value. You aren't paying for the raw material that's for sure. So yeah, someone could make the chip. But not cheaper than the big boys (Intel, AMD, IBM, NVidia etc) are already doing it. Actually AMD doesn't even own it's own Fab anymore. They sold it off when they lost money a few years back. I believe Global Foundations does the Fab for many of the big chip designers right now.

I love Flashback. I originally saw the game in a compucenter running on a PC and I was blown away by the animation. I grew up playing it on SNES and Genesis. The in game graphics are almost identical. The Genesis version runs a tad faster in game but the cut scene animation runs way faster and smoother on the Genesis. I do like the music on the SNES better though. So I guess they tie! It's on almost everything. Even the Sega-CD and 3DO but they replaced the real time raster animated cut-scenes with these pre-rendered 3D videos and I think they ruin the game. They're typical Sega-CD style small and grainy FMV. The real time animated cut-scenes on the other versions are much nicer.

I'm confused but also want to learn a little more about this for myself. So I'll shoot what I think I know and also see what others can say. Your TV is a CRT so it has no native resolution right? The low resolution content should look fine and I don't see the need to upscale. Also of course you're converting analog to digital but the CRT is native analog I would assume. When you use HDMI on a CRT it's actually converting digital to analog too right? So you'd convert analog to digital only to be converted back to analog. Also If the TV required upscaling it would have internal upscaling hardware. If it had it's own than a cheap external one might not be any better. I think the only "good" upscallers are the "really expensive" ones... unfortunately. It's actually not the upscaling done in the TV (or cheap external box) that causes that bad image quality. I think it's usually the de-interlacing. Not sure about your TV but I would think it support native interlaced and progressive right? When you play SDTV games on a modern LCD and it looks like crap it's usually the de-interlacing. Since old video games are usually like 480i output and LCD TV's are native progressive. So the TV hardware has to de-interlace the video. But those external boxes do both the upscaling and de-interlacing I think. Once again the quality you get from an external upscaler box will vary from a cheap model to a high end model.

Yeah I got my female RCA to male Type F adapter thingy at the Source but this was like 4 years ago! They're dirt cheap on EBAY too.

Yeah HDCP encryption only works over digital (DVI, HDMI etc) not analog like component. Eventually everything has to follow this right? Movies with HDCP encryption should not be allowed to play full HD over non encrypted connections. I think they can go up to half the resolution so 1080p becomes something like 540p? That would look like crap but I guess it's to make it harder to record. Who would want to record a movie at half the resolution. I would have figured everything had this implemented by now. I actually would have thought the PS3 was already like this from the beginning. But I remember them saying when HDCP and HDMI was coming out they would give consumers "time" to get ready. I guess if you don't have HDCP capable equipment yet you're too late.

Oh figured. I've heard that song many times so I'm pretty sure it's game over man.