Vigo

Are you saying no other US releases contained an MMC5 other than CV3, because the following US releases have an MMC5 as well: Bandit Kings of Ancient China Gemfire Laser Invasion L'Empereur Nobunaga's Ambition Romance of the Three Kingdoms II Uncharted Waters Hmm, didn't know those were released in the US. Most of them are very obscure strategy games, those "hot" games you people talk about where the NES desperately needs enhanced graphics power...

Thanks Drac, at least someone is understanding me.

Now I am trying for the last time to explain what I mean, this time with picture. Take the game Sirius for example, since it illustrates the problem I am describing. This game scene makes Maria render 7 Objects: 1. The score bar, which is a tile object 2. The game playfield, which is also a single tile object 3. 5 in-game objects Why is this relevant to point out? Because each Object in this scene can have 3 colours out of 256. The score bar can have 3 colours, the background can have 3 colours, and the player/enemy objects can have 3 colours each. Now let's compare this with the C64 game Katakis: This game scene makes the C64 render 3 Objects 1. The ship 2. The item before the ship 3. The enemy on the right side Now why does the C64 screenshot show lots more details and colours than the 7800 screenshot? Because the C64 has a tile background with colour attributes where each 4x8 or 8x8 tile can have its own serperate colour value. Notice the difference? - 7800 renders >multiple< tile objects - C64 renders >one single< tile background On the 7800, there is no difference between the background and objects, the hardware treats them the same, and thus, the same colour limitations apply to BOTH background and sprites. On the C64 and NES, there are 3 colour sprites, but a much more colourful, scrollable background. And again, another example on the NES, Chip 'n Dale: This game scene renders 4 Objects, but not where you would suspect them: -The player sprite -The box the player is holding -The "D" on the upper left -The heart on the upper left Everything else is the static background, and it can be really colourful, since it supports colour attributes, which means every 16x16 pixel block can have its own colours. And it is very easy to handle, since you can move this whole screen horizintally and vertically by changing just 2 registers! And since the screen wraps-around at boundaries, you only have to update the tiles which are going to be displayed at the borders, changinging VERY FEW bytes in video ram,in order to simulate a really huge world. On both C64 and 7800, you can scroll 8 pixels, and then you have to update ALL tiles in video ram in order to make it move 1 block to the left/right. In order to have colourful backgrounds on the 7800, you have to divide the whole background in single Objects, each having their own colour entry, and this is a very heavy burden on both the 6502 and the MARIA display DMA, because each Object needs a seperate Display List entry, and, reading Display List entries steal cycles which MARIA could otherwise use in outputting pixels. That's why having big Objects behind a simple background, is an advantage on the 7800. On Robotron 2084: Maria Display DMA is being used to display lots of objects. But it has to sacrifice a background display for it. A tile background would steal DMA time which Maria could use for single objects. Are you finally getting what I mean? If not, well, what can I do? I could try sock puppets...

What is that extra chip for? I wish I had my cart open to get the number off it, but I know there was an extra chip in there. I think it was surface mounted, unlike everything else. I guess it could be a RAM chip. Since the buses are separate I guess they couldn't just use a CHR_RAM (if I have the terminology right...) I do remember the NES has a PCM channel though, so your explanation makes more sense. Just confused about that extra chip. It's the only game I've seen it in. The NES has several extra chips which mostly do bankswitching. SMB3 uses the MMC3 mapper, which banks both PRG and CHR (in order to use 256KB for program and graphics), also maps 8KB extra RAM and has a simple IRQ counter which counts A12 transitions on the PPU address bus. There are chips which can do more, but they are mostly irrelevant for the US/European consoles, since they lack the audio input line on the cartridge port, and thus can not use the extra audio channels some very few games have (like the japanese Castlevania 3). The MMC5 chip enhances the graphics capabilities of the NES quite vastly, the thing is it was, again, never really utilized in US/European games. The US/European Version of Castlevania 3 (the ONLY western game which uses it) uses the MMC5 for bankswitching, but makes absolutely no use of the extra features this chip has.

Which I, again, have never ever disputed. I am only saying: if you compare the 7800 to the NES, you'll always end up with more things the NES can do than what the 7800 can do. If you want to do cool 7800 games, forget the NES, and concentrate on what the 7800 strenghts are. Both machines have completely different design philosophies behind them. If I would, right now, make a game on the 7800, it would have many colourful gradients, and huge objects in front of a simple background. You can do lots of neat things, but you have to stop looking at NES games. I just wanted to test how many Objects the DMA can render, and I was a bit disappointed, because I expected it to be more powerful. I also learned it takes more effort creating something on the 7800 than on other architectures, because the design is quite complex to handle. You can't expect anybody to write games. There has to be a fun factor for the creator. And I personally do not consider the 7800 so much fun. Other people may look at it differently. I personally prefer the 2600, because that's pretty much the biggest challenge one can expect concerning writing games, and simplicity is beauty for me. I am also quite fond of the PC-Engine, because it is a very powerful and well balanced hardware.

So that basically means I am only entitled to post here when I have written a game? How would you know what I have already done on the 7800, but not released? I coded for myself some tech demos to test how many objects the MARIA DMA is capable of displaying, and I was quite disappointed by the result,because, like most people, I was interested in the 7800 due to the myths that it can display "unlimited objects" and has "vast gigantic untapped potential". To some degree, it is true, the games out there do not represent what can be achieved if the hardware is cleverly utilized. But the whole point of my posts is, it can not be done by porting NES games. You have to shoehorn, pretty much like the 2600, the whole game concept around the hardware to take full advantage of it, and the result can indeed be a lot better than the commercial games released so far. And you can, given you can understand the technical documentation, even without writing a game, already say where a certain hardware has advantages and disadvantages. And the 7800 MARIA needs LOTS OF maintenance from the 6502 to handle and manipulate all those display lists.

Just play it on a regular PAL television, and the whole method how the game tries to achieve colours doesn work anymore. I assume you know what an NTSC colour subcarrier or pixel clock is, right? I'm sorry, but now I am starting to get angry, since you seem to lack the patience to read my posts, which clearly states that the whole effect does not work on PAL televisions anymore. It's a dirty, incompatible trick. The screenshot accurately represents what MARIA is outputting on its video pins. You actually know what PAL & NTSC means? Tile mode emulation supports 4 colours for the characters you are rendering. Less colourful, more choppy looking. And worse sound. So going by that logic, if you really really want it, you can do a 1:1 port of SMB on the 2600, right? We are talking about what the 7800 can not do. It is more limited compared to what the NES can do with much less effort. But I know that since all technical explanations are not going to be heard here, people will now start arguing with taste, how something looks. As much as you can enhance NES sound by more sophisticated programming. The point is, the NES will always have the upper hand. Not if the hardware helps you. Apparently, you really did not understand one single aspect I posted. And I am not really in the mood to post it again, since it's getting quite tiresome, and I am certainly not responsible for your education on certain basic topics which need to be understood in order to grasp what both hardware architectures can do. Well, of course you have crappy games on both systems. That doesn't tell one single fact about the hardware's capabilities. It means you can NOT port games 1:1 to the 7800. You always have to downconvert the graphics, or display them stretched. If something looks good or bad is not the issue here. "Real life" means I am playing Tower Toppler on my PAL television here, and it will suck in graphics compared to BOTH C64 and NES Version, which look the same on ALL televisions around the world. Even the blurred NTSC images of Tower Toppler reveal the fact that 320x200 mode on the 7800 is quite limited. Again: our main here has no white eyes. There is no "BUT". The CV can not do hardware based scrolling, and thus has lots of disadvantages. The fact there are scrolling games does not change the fact. Every brain cell being put into how to work around quite elementary hardware limitations in the Colecovision can be spent on more advanced things on both the 7800 and the NES. I have never argued against this. Well, then that's your problem if you don't mind choppiness. I also don't mind 2600 graphics being inferior to, let's say, SNES graphics, but I would never argue that the 2600 can do almost the same. You still haven't understood the basic difference between the 7800 and the rest of the architextures, which are built around fixed sprites, and tiled backgrounds with colour attributes... And you still have not understood that on the 7800, everything is a moving object, including those objects which are considered "static" on the NES. Again, there are NO BOOSTER CHIPS. NES mappers do what the name say: they handle bankswitching. Gurdian Legend has no special mapper. Why are you constantly questioning my expertise in those matters? Only because I give you answers you don't like? On the contrary, it is turning exactly into what all those "BLA vs. BLIP" threads turn into. In the end, the system wins which is more supported by the fanbase of the community where the thread has been posted, no matter how many people with technical knowledge are arguing here. There is always this fucking emotional factor, which does clearly not help when looking at the raw capabilities of a machine, based on technical knowledge. That way, you can always argue: well, but the 7800 looks better anyway, basta!

Complete nonsense. You can simply not add any sound to an American/European NES, because the cartridge port lacks the required signal lines. Inform yourself before spreading uninformed hearsay. Nope. Grab any technical documents about the NES and the 7800, and you can easily find about each machine's capabilities. Apparently, you know very little about both machines. Sorry, but this is a total nonsensical explanation. First, PCX is a 256 colour PC image format, the 7800 can display without tricks only 12 colour objects in 160x200 mode. Also, of course does Maria aid in animation. You do not have to erase anything to move objects, since Maria renders its objects to a line buffer which is constantly updated and cleared during rendering. What you are ranting about is totally dodging the key issue why the 7800 has a very hard time doing SMB style games, compared to the NES, which is: 1. Lack of tiles with colour attributes 2. No screen wrap-around when scrolling the background layer. Having 160x200 pixels instead of 256x224 also doesnt help much. The 320x200 mode of the 7800 is pretty much useless for colourful games, every 7800 programmer will tell you that. And you can not mix both on the same horizontal line, which is the reason why you even can actually make graphics on the C64 which are impossible to display on the 7800. Another pile of nonsense. The 7800 actually has the bigger colour palette. Lol, if you would have read the 7800 docs, as you claim, you clearly have not understood one single fact how the hardware works. Maria is neither a stripped down version of the 5200 graphic chip (in fact, Maria can do a lot more than ANTIC/GTIA), nor does it make the distinction between players and missiles, since the chip treats EVERYTHING it renders as a moveable object. Maria doesn't display any of the 2600's graphics. The 7800 happens to have the original TIA as a second graphics chip. You are sure you have read the correct documentation? Besides, the colour palette has nothing to do with the bitness of a system. The PC-Engine, an 8 bit machine, can display up to 512 colours simultaneously. The Colecovision has 16 colour sonly. The Game Boy 4 colours. You can pretty much hook anything to an 8bit CPU. This has nothing to do with technical explanations. No, for reasons I already explained in detail. Even the C64 can do lots of things which the 7800 is incapable of, only because the 7800 does not properly support tiles with colour attributes. And again, regarding sound: 7800: 2 sound channels from the 2600 TIA with various polynomial waveforms. NES: 5 sound channels (2 square waves with variable duty cycle, 1 triangle waveform, 1 noise waveform & 1 DPCM DMA driven digi channel). Grab any technical document about the NES and start reading. If you don't understand it, discussing this with you is rather pointless. The 7800 is a nice machine, but its complexity due to the huge overhead the poor 6502 is burdened on limits it quite heavily. Every object you draw on the screen steals cycles from the 6502. That alone is the reason why you can ALWAYS spend much more CPU cycles on game logic on the NES than the 7800. But you pretend to know how the 7800 actually compares to the NES... You haven't understood a single word of what I was saying the previous posts. I explained, I posted comparisons and yet, you'll always have people who ignore technical explanations, trying to reason with an incoherent mush of politics, half assed technical assumptions and a whole lot of fanboyism. Quite embarassing.

It's not the screenshot which is rotten, it's the technique being used to achieve the effect which is rotten, since it's highly imcompatible. As awful as other screenshots from other systems. The NES ones do not represent the actual video output, too. Depends on the camera. I guess I'll have to revisit the 7800 technical documentation again for curiosity, since it has been some time when I tried coding on the machine.

It's a false rumour, the NES can play Delta PCM compressed samples using DMA.Lots of games use it for drums, some for speech, like the 1984 game "Wild Gunman". Here is a better example of speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci_Z7n7kBpw...feature=related

That sounds like bad software design for the European market ... Yup, it is, because you simply can not recreate this effect on a PAL console, since the pixel clock is not a multiple of the colour clock. The C64 and NES versions however, look the same in all countries. If I would be nasty, I could argue now that on the C64 and NES version, our playersprite has at least white eyes.

Thats's because Tower Toppler uses 2 neighboring hires pixels to create a NTSC multi colour display, since the pixel clock of the 7800 is exactly double the NTSC colour subcarrier. However, once you play the game on a PAL console, our happen to modify your 7800 with an S-Video output, it looks exactly as shitty as these screenshots. The screenshots represent accurately what MARIA is outputting. Yes you can, but with lots of limitations. You can render a whole tile display, but with no colour attributes, all tiles have the same colours. If you want more colours, you need for each tile a seperate display list entry, which totally blows the DMA bandwidth of the 7800. That's why having simple backgrounds, but lots of big sprites are an advantage on the 7800. I already explained, the 7800 can do tiles, but very limited. You have the following problems in porting SMB on the 7800: Resolution: 256x224 pixels (NES) vs. 160x200 (7800) The NES supports screen "wrap around" freeing lots of CPU time, the 7800 don't. The NES supports colour attributes for tiles, the 7800 don't. The NES has seperate buses for CPU and graphics, the 7800 has to share both, meaning rendering of graphics steal CPU time. The NES has much better sound than the 7800. The Colecovision can NOT DO smooth scrolling in hardware. The NES can. The 7800 can. The C64 can. And did you ever play the MSX version of SMB? Btw, concerning Xevious on the 7800: look at "The Guradian Legend" on the NES. It has ultra fast scrolling, which is easily possible because the hardware supports coloured tiles, and the screen does wrap around at boundaries: Don't mind the jerkiness of the youtube video, on real hardware, the game runs constantly at 60fps. Another game which I do not think is possible to replicate on the 7800.

The 7800 chipset easily blasts the old Atari 400/800 chipset in the XEGS, well except sound....

Well, then compare these: 160x200 pixel on the 7800 vs. 256x224 pixel on the NES. And I consider the 7800 ports of both games to be quite good. On the 7800, you either have the choice between colourful but blocky, or less colour, but good resolution. The NES has a very good balance between blocky and colourful.

Absolutely, the way Solaris is designed would strongly benefit from the 7800's strengths.

Wrong, it's 7800 C-64 NES I would not attempt to port SMB on the NES, since it would seriously lack compared to the NES version. I would try to make a game which could benefit from the 7800 capabilities, for example Sega's Space Harrier. Lots of big objects in front of a simple background, could work very well:

The Colecovision can't even do scrolling and has much worse sprite capabilities than the NES. Not to mention the sound again. Why are you constantly asking question when you apparently can not understand the answers? The 7800 alone needs extra RAM and a Sound Chip to do anything meaningful. The NES out of the box can do things which are impossible to replicate on the 7800 due to the reasons I explained. The only thing which the NES mappers do is adding bankswitching and in the case of the MMC3 a simple raster counter. And I am clearly saying it can not replicate it 1:1. Only with less good graphics, due to the reasons I explained above, which you apparently do not understand. The 7800 is covered in lots of myths, which are easily clearing up once you try coding on the hardware. I tried and I was quite disappointed, because, the concept of having flexibility is, in the case of the 7800 and how the hardware has been concieved, a clear disadvantage. Just to handle all those display lists to do anything colourful takes LOTS of CPU time.

Compare this: with this: with this: Can you point out the C64, NES and 7800 version? Not as good as on the NES. Even the C64 can do graphics which are not possible on the 7800. Example: Mayhem in Monsterland

I already explained the problem: the background is an object on the 7800. More precisely: MARIA has a tile emulation mode, which means it can generate a tiled display, however, each tile has to have the same colour palette since it lacks so-called colour attributes. In order to have coloured tiles, you have to treat every tile as a seperate object, which means a huge DMA overkill on the 7800. Your display list is growing really big, and MARIA has to fetch new Display list instructions for each tile, which means there is little to no DMA time left to place objects on top of your background. The NES however, treats objects and the tiled background seperately. It also has a very useful feature for scrolling games: when you scroll past the boundaries of a background, the background repeats itself, which means you can simulate very large backgrunds by just updating the last/first column of the tile display, which saves A LOT OF cpu time. On the 7800 however, you can only scroll the background a few pixels, and then you need to update ALL TILES in order to achieve the same effect, which takes a huge performance hit. Add the fact that MARIA constantly steals cpu cycles from the CPU, and it doesn't look well anymore, given the fact that both CPU's in the NES and the 7800 run at 1,78 Mhz. Everyone who knows both NES and 7800 well will agree with me. It's no bashing, the 7800 is a nice machine, but it can certainly not EASILY achieve what the NES can do out of the pocket. You can construct a lot of cases on the NES which will break the 7800's neck. You can do nice effects on the 7800 which are not easily replicated on the NES, but it mostly involves nice colour gradients and huge single objects. If you do not understand what "tiles" and "DMA cycles" mean, it's no use to discuss this further.

Again: it depends on the case. On the 7800, EVERYTHING is an object, including the background display. On the NES, you have smaller Objects, but an independent scrolling background which requires little CPU maintenance to create smooth scrolling games. Plus, on the 7800, MARIA steals DMA cycles from the 6502 while rendering the display, while on the NES, both CPU and PPU work independantly, which means more CPU time for game logic. And last but not least, the NES clearly has the superior sound, while the 7800 needs extra sound hardware in the cartridge to match it. What you can basically do with the 7800 is creating colourful gradients, moving large objects and nice raster effects. However, you would never be able to pull off 1:1 conversions of scrolling games like Super Mario Bros. Being able to display tiled backgrounds, which can have seperate colour attributes for each 16x16 pixel block breaks the 7800's neck, since basically every tile would have to be treated as a seperate object, while on the NES, the PPU renders the whole background automatically. Less flexible, but more efficient. For example, the NES Bucky O'Hare would be impossible to do on the 7800. It has fast scrolling parallax backgrounds, many unflickering sprites and lots of other special effects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ22x78qnHE ALthough the 7800 has more colours, you could never achieve a colourful scrolling game like Kirby's Adventure:

Thomas is talking about my unfinished attempt... Looking at it now, I have to admit it's quite embarassing. Anyway, grab it here: http://atari2600.org/pipermail/stella/2004...ary/015243.html

yep, it was/is this one The 800XL is not nearly as sexy as the original 800. http://www.danwoolston.com/Portals/0/atari800.jpg

Unless he used the MMC5 Mapper (which I very much doubt), I am 99% sure these Screenshots are fake. Why? Look at the score bar. You have a grey time indicator, next line is an green cash indicator and next line is the orange health status. The NES is not capable of doing that, because colour attributes can only affect 16x16 pixel areas, not 8x8 like in this screenshot. Unless you use MMC5 Mapper. Another example are the blue windows in the right house. the 2 shades of blue collide with the 2 shades of grey. Or the orange parts on the left building colliding with the blueish colours of the rest. In the next pictures, exactly the same, he has drawn the graphics using 4 colours distinct colours per 8x8 tile, which is impossible on a standard NES.

Very nice mod, but since the TMS9929 outputs a true YUV component signal, why not making a much sharper RGB mod instead? http://msx.retro8bits.com/msxdocs/rgbmsx1.pdf It's in Dutch, but it doesn't matter to use the circuit diagram. EDIT: just saw that ten-four is attempting to do that mod...

You can't change opinions of fanatics, even with the most elaborate technical explanations. They won't give one inch to aknowledge technical facts, and if it comes apparent, they will switch arguments like "bah, but an IBM PC can do it better, therefore it is useless on C64", although we are discussing A8 vs C64 matters. Fact is, you can not beat the C64 in many scenarios because of 2 simple reasons: - MUCH better sprite handling - MUCH better colour resolution These are the biggest disadvantages the Atari architecture has over the C64, and this is THE reason why it is possible to create action games on the C64 which are simply impossible to do on the A800. Every A800 Player/Missile trick can be easily recreated on the C64, but you can NEVER achieve the amount of sprite pixels per line the C64 can handle. Furthermore, the C64 allows easily mixing different resolutions whithin a screen. You can easily place a multicolor character right next to a hires character. You can easily overlap a hires sprite on top of a multicolor sprite, there is no limit. From a gaming perspective, what counts is gameplay. With more sprites, you can manipulate more objects on the screen, thus you can create more gameplay. That is, for example, the reason why the C16 is kicked its ass by both A800 and C64, although this machine is superior to both machines in terms of colour resolution. It has no sprites, and for manipulating bitmaps, it is simply too slow. The only exception I make here is 3D games, which are better suited on the A800. Sure, the A800 has a bigger colour palette. But what good does a big colour palette do if you are very limited in the ways how to use it, expecially in X-direction? Sure, you can create very beautiful vertical gradients using DLI's, and by reducing the resolution even more, you can actually use all 16 shades per line. But the point is that, although the C64 only has 16 colours, you are much more free to distribute them across the screen without losing quality. That is the reason why you can actually make a C64 game look more colourful than an A8 game, despite the more limited palette of the C64. It's the choice between looking at pixelated rainbows or a crisp 16 colour picture. All pictures shown here so far underline this fact.