NES vs 7800

[Metal Ghost]

Why don't we try somewhat of a shift here to get things back on track and less, er, personal.

 

This is going to be a multi-part question here, so bear with me.

 

I don't really have much NES experience at all. Is Kirby's Adventure a game that would commonly be considered 'the pinnacle' of what the NES could do? If not, what game would be?

Edited December 22, 2010 by Metal Ghost

[Atarifever]

Why don't we try somewhat of a shift here to get things back on track and less, er, personal.

 

This is going to be a multi-part question here, so bear with me.

 

I don't really have much NES experience at all. Is Kirby's Adventure a game that would commonly be considered 'the pinnacle' of what the NES could do? If not, what game would be?

Mario 3 is pretty high up there. I believe it has a bunch of stuff inside to help make it possible.

[Metal Ghost]

Mario 3 is pretty high up there. I believe it has a bunch of stuff inside to help make it possible.

 

Ok, great!

 

So, I know I'm really oversimplyfying this, but is there anything preventing the 7800 from having Super Mario 3 programmed for it? If so, specifically what is?

 

When I say specifcally, I mean what chip, memory, etc., does the NES have that the 7800 does not that would prevent it?

 

I'm not very advanced on the technical side at all (trying to change that though!), so maybe the answer is XYZ in the NES console. Maybe the answer is ABC in the cartridge. Maybe the answer is there is nothing preventing it. I don't know, but I'd like to find out from those that do.

 

I'm sorry, but the thread got so convoluted that I thought it needed a reboot.

[Tubular Gearhead]

First, as was mentioned earlier, the stock NES can't do Kirby's Adventure either. It uses additional hardware to pull it off.

 

The NES can't do Kirby's Adventure without additional hardware in the cart. The 7800 can't do Kirby's Adventure in your opinion. In my opinion I don't see why it couldn't do a reasonable port of the game. Since I've coded several scrolling games on the 7800 and you haven't, I'll take my opinion over yours any day of the week.

 

In both cases, well said. This is basically the bottom line. I am not quite sure why people are arguing about it- it is what it is.

They are both good systems, but the NES got the "luxury treatment" as far as game development and the 7800 did not (far from it).

 

The 7800 is very powerful in it's own right, but if given the same additional circuitry boost that many later NES games got just to keep the system viable, of course it could do most everything seen in Kirby's.

 

It is as if some of the prior discussion is not being read, understood, or just ignored...

[Mord]

Let me get this straight: I can't use GameFAQs screenshots to compare games on the two systems because they don't make 7800 look good? However, Laird can get away with deliberately singling out the games that were badly ported to NES, in an effort to make it look bad. I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or roll my eyes. Maybe I should do them all.

 

The source of where you got the screenshots are besides the point if they were shot from a time when the emulator in question was not accurate to the real thing. And remember even if YOU didn't blow up the size of a screenshot, it doesn't mean the people you got it from didn't.

[Mord]

Mario 3 is pretty high up there. I believe it has a bunch of stuff inside to help make it possible.

 

Ok, great!

 

So, I know I'm really oversimplyfying this, but is there anything preventing the 7800 from having Super Mario 3 programmed for it? If so, specifically what is?

 

 

All the 7800 needs is a better cartridge that has more supporting hardware put on it, much like what the NES has with it's mappers. Luckily that's basically what the XM will be like only instead of sticking the guts of a XM on every single cartridge, it'll just stick on the console so that any game plugged into it can make use of it. Far cheaper/saner solution.

[Metal Ghost]

Mario 3 is pretty high up there. I believe it has a bunch of stuff inside to help make it possible.

 

Ok, great!

 

So, I know I'm really oversimplyfying this, but is there anything preventing the 7800 from having Super Mario 3 programmed for it? If so, specifically what is?

 

 

All the 7800 needs is a better cartridge that has more supporting hardware put on it, much like what the NES has with it's mappers. Luckily that's basically what the XM will be like only instead of sticking the guts of a XM on every single cartridge, it'll just stick on the console so that any game plugged into it can make use of it. Far cheaper/saner solution.

 

Well, the XM will be adding 128K of program available memory and additional sound resources (via POKEY and what I believe is a Yamaha chip). How is the MM5 chip mentioned in conjunction with Kirby's Adventure different or the same, from a technical standpoint?

[ZylonBane]

The source of where you got the screenshots are besides the point if they were shot from a time when the emulator in question was not accurate to the real thing. And remember even if YOU didn't blow up the size of a screenshot, it doesn't mean the people you got it from didn't.

[toptenmaterial]

Mario 3 is pretty high up there. I believe it has a bunch of stuff inside to help make it possible.

 

Ok, great!

 

So, I know I'm really oversimplyfying this, but is there anything preventing the 7800 from having Super Mario 3 programmed for it? If so, specifically what is?

 

When I say specifcally, I mean what chip, memory, etc., does the NES have that the 7800 does not that would prevent it?

 

I'm not very advanced on the technical side at all (trying to change that though!), so maybe the answer is XYZ in the NES console. Maybe the answer is ABC in the cartridge. Maybe the answer is there is nothing preventing it. I don't know, but I'd like to find out from those that do.

 

I'm sorry, but the thread got so convoluted that I thought it needed a reboot.

In these comparisons, we are all overlooking one thing: sound.

[Rex Dart]

In these comparisons, we are all overlooking one thing: sound.

 

I dunno, I think we're all in agreement that sound isn't worth arguing over.

 

Either you're of the opinion that only what's in the console & cart casing counts, and they're about equal* when you consider the POKEY chip, or you allow for the XM add-on that's being released, and figure that the 7800's new yamaha chip is better than the NES.

 

What DOES everybody think about sound?

 

*I need to hear more POKEY music to form an opinion, really, but BallBlazer's pretty cool.

[The_Laird]

If you want to hear some really great Pokey music then look no futher than the XL/XE machines that use that chip. Here's a few of my Pokey favourites:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX8oSf4LuWg

 

Outrun - Great versions of the original arcade music

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tODAXAg7u8o

 

Tempest Xtreem - Amazing Pokey version of the Jag games music

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYIU_KDmJNc

 

Space Harrier - Music, speech and sound effects

[+Stephen]

Good choices for Pokey tunes Laird! I am so looking forward to Space Harrier - the speech and digital effects don't slow down the gameplay at all.

[Rex Dart]

Alright, so NES beats the 7800 in out-of-the-box sound capabilities.

[AtariNerd]

We don't know exactly what the "mapper-like" functionality of the hardware in the XM really is. So far we know it can blit the screen memory to enable scrolling and possibly help with tiling. Apart from that, it is a mystery. Hopefully we will see the documentation soon, even if the official launch might be an unknown time off.

[kool kitty89]

Alright, so NES beats the 7800 in out-of-the-box sound capabilities.

Yep, and arguably beats it with a POKEY... especially if you throw out software driven tricks (as there's plenty of that possible on the NES too). You've got 2 pulse wave channels (4 bit linear volume), 1 fixed volume triangle channel, 1 noise channel, and 1 7-bit DPCM playback channel reading DPCM samples via DMA in banks of 8 or 16 kB (independent of video accesses -due to the dual cart buses) with 16 sample rates stepped from just above 4 kHz to just above 33 kHz. (there's also a direct DAC mode for software driven 7-bit PCM playback -hardware playback only supports compressed DPCM audio)

You could definitely argue that the NES's sound system is superior to the SID, then again for certain circumstances you could also argue that POKEY+TIA is superior to SID. (more so if you take software tricks into account across the board)

 

And then there's the fact that both systems were fundamentally designed for audio add-ons... but the US version cocked that up unfortunately. (the later model 5200s also had on-cart sound expansion, as did the MSX -Konami actually used their VRC6 on both the NES and MSX)

 

The 7800's historical performance is hardly indicative of its potential though, it lacked both the in house funding/support and 3rd party interest to drive that at the time, that and the 1986 release vs the '84 plans. (otherwise you'd have seen a hell of a lot more and probably most 3rd parties introducing their own sound add-ons among other things -on-cart RAM, etc -and in terms of 3rd party off the shelf stuff, the cheapest/smallest option would obviously be the simple SN76489 from the SMS/Colecovision/etc and the AY8913 after that)

[toptenmaterial]

and that's just it, the NES was agressively supported... but there's always homebrew!

[PAC MAN FEVER]

both systems have there low and strong points

[AtariNerd]

Interesting notion about homebrew on the NES; I haven't hung out in that sphere, but I suppose they have boards now with the added logic and keys needed (though I understand breaking the locl-out is as simple as removing a chip) to use all the goodies? Or is more of a purist bare hardware hobby for most coders?

[Godzilla]

for me, it's never been about the technical end of the sound performance. I've always cared about the tone of the sound. The nes always sounded so twee and high-pitched-doot-dee-doot that I never really liked it's sound back in the day. Later I found solstice, which has some of the best nes music I've heard, but it's such an isolated incident. The tone of the c64 is -still- to this day one of my all-time favorites (modern hip-hop seems to agree with me,) with the amiga coming in second. That being said, some of the long-after-the-death of the atari 8 bit computers demo code that somehow made the pokey sound like a sid brings that sound up the level of favorites for me, and far superior to the nes.

 

i used to love how certain sid music would sound different each time I listened to it on a c= monitor... the rambo 2 music is still some of my fave synth music of all time....

[kool kitty89]

Interesting notion about homebrew on the NES; I haven't hung out in that sphere, but I suppose they have boards now with the added logic and keys needed (though I understand breaking the locl-out is as simple as removing a chip) to use all the goodies? Or is more of a purist bare hardware hobby for most coders?

No, not removing a chip... cutting/breaking 1 pin on 1 chip inside the console (except the NES2 which has no lockout), it's pin 4 on the lockout IC (for North America it's chip 3193A). (technically you're supposed to ground it, but >99% of the time, cutting it does the job fine)

There's been some extremely simple bypasses since the late 80s though... what Tengen did was over the top and totally unnecessary (and far more legally problematic). Others (like Camerica/Codemasters, Wisdom Tree/Color Dreams, etc) used a very cheap and simple voltage spiking mechanism to freeze the lockout chip. (only a handful of very late model NESs blocked that mechanism and then they dropped lockout altogether with the NES2 in 1993 anyway)

[Underball]

for me, it's never been about the technical end of the sound performance. I've always cared about the tone of the sound. The nes always sounded so twee and high-pitched-doot-dee-doot that I never really liked it's sound back in the day.

This x 1,000. NES games, in every aspect - music, graphics, characters, game plots - always came off as twee, and kidsy crap. (except for the occasional Arcade port) I mean they all felt like Sesame Street aged kids stuff. Games for 5 year olds. Mushrooms. Pastel vomit colors. ballerina music box music. Something my sister should be playing with. Everything looked all Hello Kitty compared to the space ships, shooters, and racing games of Atari.

Edited December 30, 2010 by Underball

[kool kitty89]

for me, it's never been about the technical end of the sound performance. I've always cared about the tone of the sound. The nes always sounded so twee and high-pitched-doot-dee-doot that I never really liked it's sound back in the day. Later I found solstice, which has some of the best nes music I've heard, but it's such an isolated incident. The tone of the c64 is -still- to this day one of my all-time favorites (modern hip-hop seems to agree with me,) with the amiga coming in second. That being said, some of the long-after-the-death of the atari 8 bit computers demo code that somehow made the pokey sound like a sid brings that sound up the level of favorites for me, and far superior to the nes.

 

i used to love how certain sid music would sound different each time I listened to it on a c= monitor... the rambo 2 music is still some of my fave synth music of all time....

That's really a matter of taste and what the developers chose to do with the sound chips more advanced capabilities (compared to plain square waves and such -especially compared to the extremely limited SN PSG on the CV/SMS/etc and to a lesser extent POKEY or the AY/YM2149 PSG).

Some feel the same way about how the SID was usually used: abject disgust/distaste of what developers chose to do the SID did 99% of the time, not hatred of what the chip could do, but what programmers/composers chose to do with it. The NES's sound hardware is in some ways superior to the SID, but in other ways more limited. (and some limitations force styles of music that some like more than others... OTOH sometimes it's things like overused arpeggios that turn people off -and that was common among most home computers in Europe and occasionally on consoles too -like codemasters on the NES)

 

Making POKEY "sound" like the SID, isn't quite accurate... some things are tweaks made possible through some of POKEY's flexibility, but in particular I think you're referring to pulse wave generation and that's normally done with CPU help as software pulse width modulation. (in hardware POKEY can do random pulse width stuff as a form of noise generation -TIA did something similar)

like here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUmh68be-CU

 

Pulse waves are what give NES music most of the characteristic sound... though it's only got 4 pulse widths vs a wider range of variable pulse (it does seem more accurate and stable than the grainy sounding SID pulse stuff). But pulse wave generation is only a tiny fraction of the SID's technical capabilities, there's several other waveforms (namely saw and triangle -the latter the NES also has but at fixed volume), filtering, ADSR, ring modulation, etc. OTOH, the simple addition of pulse wave would indeed have made a huge difference for many simpler sound chips and probably made them a hell of a lot more competitive. (for most people, the waveform generation was probably the most significant ... and some things like envelope control could be replicated in software with far less overhead than things like PWM)

[Tubular Gearhead]

for me, it's never been about the technical end of the sound performance. I've always cared about the tone of the sound. The nes always sounded so twee and high-pitched-doot-dee-doot that I never really liked it's sound back in the day.

This x 1,000. NES games, in every aspect - music, graphics, characters, game plots - always came off as twee, and kidsy crap. (except for the occasional Arcade port) I mean they all felt like Sesame Street aged kids stuff. Games for 5 year olds. Mushrooms. Pastel vomit colors. ballerina music box music. Something my sister should be playing with. Everything looked all Hello Kitty compared to the space ships, shooters, and racing games of Atari.

 

+1 Thank you. Not to anger anyone, but I have always felt this way and was never "on board" for the whole NES bandwagon in 1985+. I have always felt that the games are so different than the "American" (if you will) culture and feel of the Atari games. Nintendo is STILL this way- cutsie. Obviously some people like it...

 

I think the video game scene really lost something when it all went to Nintendo. I know everyone credits them with "revitalizing" it- but no, they ruined it for the games I like.

[The_Laird]

for me, it's never been about the technical end of the sound performance. I've always cared about the tone of the sound. The nes always sounded so twee and high-pitched-doot-dee-doot that I never really liked it's sound back in the day.

This x 1,000. NES games, in every aspect - music, graphics, characters, game plots - always came off as twee, and kidsy crap. (except for the occasional Arcade port) I mean they all felt like Sesame Street aged kids stuff. Games for 5 year olds. Mushrooms. Pastel vomit colors. ballerina music box music. Something my sister should be playing with. Everything looked all Hello Kitty compared to the space ships, shooters, and racing games of Atari.

 

+1 Thank you. Not to anger anyone, but I have always felt this way and was never "on board" for the whole NES bandwagon in 1985+. I have always felt that the games are so different than the "American" (if you will) culture and feel of the Atari games. Nintendo is STILL this way- cutsie. Obviously some people like it...

 

I think the video game scene really lost something when it all went to Nintendo. I know everyone credits them with "revitalizing" it- but no, they ruined it for the games I like.

 

A big +1 for both of you as somebody from "Britain" I also feel exactly the same.

[toptenmaterial]

for me, it's never been about the technical end of the sound performance. I've always cared about the tone of the sound. The nes always sounded so twee and high-pitched-doot-dee-doot that I never really liked it's sound back in the day.

This x 1,000. NES games, in every aspect - music, graphics, characters, game plots - always came off as twee, and kidsy crap. (except for the occasional Arcade port) I mean they all felt like Sesame Street aged kids stuff. Games for 5 year olds. Mushrooms. Pastel vomit colors. ballerina music box music. Something my sister should be playing with. Everything looked all Hello Kitty compared to the space ships, shooters, and racing games of Atari.

 

+1 Thank you. Not to anger anyone, but I have always felt this way and was never "on board" for the whole NES bandwagon in 1985+. I have always felt that the games are so different than the "American" (if you will) culture and feel of the Atari games. Nintendo is STILL this way- cutsie. Obviously some people like it...

 

I think the video game scene really lost something when it all went to Nintendo. I know everyone credits them with "revitalizing" it- but no, they ruined it for the games I like.

 

A big +1 for both of you as somebody from "Britain" I also feel exactly the same.

how do you guys feel about games today? is there enough variety?