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90's arcade hardware was a joke


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Does anyone find it funny how arcade machines took so much power just to run a simple 1 vs 1 fighting game. They needed a 20 Mhz 68000 and hundreds of hardware sprites just to display 2 guys with jerky movement.

You got to remember that those old arcades are also running an old tube style monitor, and it's own speakers, with who knows what types of boosters in them, as well as the coin mech. And most of them are lighted outside of the monitor, the marque thing for example. That's a lot of crap to run.

 

The computer itself was overly complicated because for the most part, they were built one to one for a specific game, and all the components were custom set up, even if some of them were off the shelf parts. Not being locked into "X system" meant that if they wanted another jerky character that did some crappy move, they just added more chips to the system to handle that, rather than trying to figure out how to stuff it into whatever console limitations they had at the time.

 

I'm sure there was a limitation oh how much complexity they could put into a game, but it's more based on time than cost, as those old machines cost so damn much to begin with, that that wasn't really an objective.

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I got tired of programming the SNES with the people at Sega-16.com insulting me for not having enough sprites, sprites being too small, not enough parallax layers, not enough background animation ect. So much that I found most of my time tweaking my engine to prove that the SNES can handle X amount of sprites and Y amount of background layers at the same time, than focusing on actual gameplay. The more graphical trinkets I added the harder it was to add more important things like gameplay elements. They didn't understand there were more technical limitations than just the usual "not enough CPU power" where you can use any amount of sprites and background layers in any way, and it will work, just with a little slowdown if you do a little too much. The SNES doesn't work that way. There is only a small amount of memory devoted to sprites and backgrounds, with a small amount of time the CPU is allowed to access the PPU. No amount of FX-chips can fix these hardware limitations. Even the programmers of Star Fox and Yoshi's Island still had to deal with a small v-ram and a slow bandwidth.

 

Yes, having 128 sprites animated at 60 fps at 256x224 would be awsome, but I am happy with 96 sprites animated at 30 fps at 256x192, because it actually gives me room for gameplay, instead of constantly tweaking my engine everytime I want to change an enemy's AI.

 

Yeah, my motto is "If its fun, fuck it" as far as maximizing hardware potential goes. I don't see the point. I am one person, and I'm not getting paid by the hour to do these things. I'd like to see the game get done in a timely fashion instead of taking years to complete!

 

I made a Berzerk clone for PCE. It has no scrolling or parallax. The graphics are drawn by me and look like complete shit. :)

 

It's got kickass music/sfx, and is fun to play, just like Berzerk. It's more rewarding to actually FINISH a project for a dead console, learn some stuff, and realize others like the game too despite it not being the flashiest thing around.

 

However, under the hood, theres a TON of collision checking happening all at once.... Every sprite on screen to every sprite on screen basically, plus wall-checking! Thats alot of crap to manage. The average gamer doesn't really notice or care, but its still present.

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I don't fully understand the title, how it relates to MJM's fuzzy logic (remember Fisher's "AI" focusing system?) or the complaint about arcade gaming from the 90's at all. Seems the OP has it entirely backwards.

 

Proprietary hardware from the 70's, 80's and 90's is where it's at. It was/is efficient and there's nothing "jerky" about it. the Street Fighters, the Mortal Kombats, anything from Neo*Geo, Killer Instinct, Primal Rage, etc. are all as smooth as silk. All done with modest processors and co-processors, minimal RAM, no hard drives, etc.

 

Today's arcade gaming hardware is a totally different story and *IS* a joke. Overpriced, non-proprietary, Windoze PeeCee clones with active cooling on their video cards (some games such as Blazing Angels) AND oversized powersupplies to name a few complaints. Despite the RAM, fast bus speeds, multi-ghz processors and accelerated graphics, ALL of these new machines from the 2000's still exhibit the famous Windoze glitchy graphics syndrome we all know and hate. Not to mention how fragile these POS towers they stuff in these cabinets are. I'm constantly replacing RAM modules, power supplies, video cards, network cards, harddrives and CPU's out of these damn things.

 

On top of this, the cost of todays gaming hardware has risen disproportionately with the economy, making it near impossible for ANY small to medium sized gaming company to stay in business, let alone be profitable and instead of exploiting themselves or the industry they're trying cling to, the handful of manufacturers left are creating and banking on delivering an experience not so easily captured at home. Motion captured feedback, moving/rumbling seats, cockpits, VR headsets, etc. And that's all well and good, but they're still junk comparatively.

 

MOST of the machines produced today cost an operator between $5k-$15k, yet they're utilizing <$1k generic PeeCee's and car audio amps and speakers. You read that right. 12v car audio amps inside of today's arcade games and let me tell you, they sound about as good as you'd expect icon_wink.gif

 

I'll take my 90's Virtua Racing arcade game with its custom hardware, perfectly smooth scrolling and awesome sounding speaker system over any racing game Raw Thrills is pumping out today thank you very much icon_wink.gif

 

PeeCee clones running Windoze. Loading games from a harddrive. Pffft. icon_rolling.gif

So true, I have an actual VR racing and it's still great, along with Tokyo Wars, (Huge box full of custom hardware) Cyber Sled (Same thing) Very cool hardware!

Those of you reading this should go over to system16.com and read the harware specs from these systems, some are so complex we dont even have documentattion of it all!

Here is an exerpt for Namco Super System 22 (Alpine Racer,Tokyo wars etc)

"CPU : Motorola 68EC020 32-bit @ 24.576 MHz

Sound CPU : Mitsubishi M37710 16-bit @ 16.384 MHz

3D DSPs : 2xTexas Instruments TMS320C25 16-bit fixed point DSP @ 49.152 MHz

Sound chip : Namco C352 32 channel 42KHz stereo supported 8-bit linear and 8-bit muLaw PCM - 4 channel output

Additional Chips : Insanely large amount of Namco custom chips.

Colours : 16.7 million colours onscreen

Features : Texture mapping, Gouraud shading, Translucency effects, Depth-cueing, More than 240000 polygons/sec.

Board composition : Crate containing many PCB's"

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Yeah, my motto is "If its fun, fuck it" as far as maximizing hardware potential goes. I don't see the point. I am one person, and I'm not getting paid by the hour to do these things. I'd like to see the game get done in a timely fashion instead of taking years to complete!

I think the idea that a "good game" has to "push the hardware to the max" is a leftover notion from the 2600 and other very old consoles and computers, when you had to pull all kinds of tricks to get the hardware to do things it wasn't designed to do. This was a necessary skill for game designers because they were trying to implement new types of games at a time when the hardware was so limited, but by the time you get into the 1990s, the hardware is no longer as big a limitation as human imagination. That's especially true of arcades, which still had more money to spend on fancy hardware relative to the consoles available at the time.

 

Game players don't care what the hardware is theoretically capable of doing, or the extent to which the game exploits it (unless they're hardcore Jaguar fans who argue about it endlessly on message boards); they only care about whether the game they're playing right now is fun for them or not, and you don't necessarily have to "push the hardware to the max" to achieve that. Several of the most popular arcade games (the Pac-Man games, Tetris, etc.) weren't especially taxing on the hardware.

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I'm guessing your average character in a 90s 2d fighter was probably composed of 8, 16 or more sprites, plus the animated background and weapon fx, plus much much more in-depth AI sucking CPU cycles than a typical shmup, which doesn't really have any AI to speak of. So I'm not sure if some 2D fighter is taxing its hardware more than any given shmup. It really depends on the game and the specific hardware.

 

I think the idea that a "good game" has to "push the hardware to the max" is a leftover notion from the 2600 and other very old consoles and computers, when you had to pull all kinds of tricks to get the hardware to do things it wasn't designed to do. This was a necessary skill for game designers because they were trying to implement new types of games at a time when the hardware was so limited, but by the time you get into the 1990s, the hardware is no longer as big a limitation as human imagination. That's especially true of arcades, which still had more money to spend on fancy hardware relative to the consoles available at the time.
Not that pushing the hardware is bad by any stretch, but that's a very good point. Edited by BydoEmpire
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Has everything to do with it. Load times. Proclivity to mechanical failure. Takes more power than necessary for said app and as a result, exudes more heat and attracts more dust - in which BOTH are destroyers to your a chinsely made PeeCee board it's typically huddled next to.

 

Ok.... The OP was talking about CPS1 and CPS2 hardware, and things relative to that era (he had already mentioned a game in context and gave example as to what the problem he had said software relative to said hardware). You're talking about mechanical failure? Connect the two for me, please. Not sure what that has to do with the context of the original poster making the statement that a 1 on 1 2D fighter with advance graphic hardware, need a 20mhz processor? Specifically early 90's arcade hardware. I don't see what 'chinsely made PeeCee board' has to do with said early arcade hardware.

 

Check out an IT Silver Strike 2007 Bowling game sometime to see how adversely HD's and the Windoze file system affect modern video games. When you're done with that, tell me how much you reminisce the Windoze 3.1 screen saver running on a powerful 486 Packard Bell.

 

:| ... Why? Why would I comment about that? That has nothing to do with the original discussion. I'm not here to dispute what you posted (whether it's correct or not, I don't know or care).

 

"Waste of money to have less complex games running on a very capable setup"? Re-read what you just said. And then re-read it again if you're still confused. In what instance can you say, yeah - that particular game took full advantage of the hardware it was running on?

 

Here's a hint: I'm not making the case. I was merely helping YOU understand where the original poster was coming from, since YOU posted this:

 

I don't fully understand the title, how it relates to MJM's fuzzy logic (remember Fisher's "AI" focusing system?) or the complaint about arcade gaming from the 90's at all.

 

Or were you not being serious with that statement?

 

Here's an idea; dial back your defense mechanisms.

 

You got to remember that those old arcades are also running an old tube style monitor, and it's own speakers, with who knows what types of boosters in them, as well as the coin mech. And most of them are lighted outside of the monitor, the marque thing for example. That's a lot of crap to run.

 

MJM can correct me if I'm wrong, but the context of 'power' doesn't mean literally power/current. It's in context of cpu, sound, video measurement in what it's capable of producing (also coined as 'resource'). Not how much electricity it takes to power an arcade cabinet. And in the context of resource, it's not managed by the cpu (marquee lighting, CRT drivers, speaker amps). Those are external of the "computer's" resource.

 

I also like how people make quick assumptions about my posts; that I actually share his passion or opinion on the topic. I have yet to speak my own opinion. WTF? Seriously... (read: I have no qualms about 90's 1 vs 1 2D fighters).

 

Arkhan, correct me if I'm wrong - but no one is saying otherwise about your game. Why do constantly have to bring that up when anyone remotely mentions something about graphics or GFX or pushing a system? Are you that insecure about it, that you have to constantly outwardly project your own confidence that "simple can be fun", to convince others? People already understand that (this thread isn't a debate about that, in case you haven't noticed). And on the flip side, people also like games that do push the hardware. You even see it here. Any game that pushes any Atari system is immediately herald as a great achievement (Lynx, A8, 7800, etc). So dial your insecurities back a notch. It's past getting old.

Edited by malducci
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Arkhan, correct me if I'm wrong - but no one is saying otherwise about your game. Why do constantly have to bring that up when anyone remotely mentions something about graphics or GFX or pushing a system? Are you that insecure about it, that you have to constantly outwardly project your own confidence that "simple can be fun", to convince others? People already understand that (this thread isn't a debate about that, in case you haven't noticed). And on the flip side, people also like games that do push the hardware. You even see it here. Any game that pushes any Atari system is immediately herald as a great achievement (Lynx, A8, 7800, etc). So dial your insecurities back a notch. It's past getting old.

 

No retard, its not about insecurities. I know no one said otherwise about my game. I'm not insecure about my college project turned full game at all. It was so well received at local conventions and online, that I am more than happy with the turn out. Plus, it tackled the chiptune blockade. yay. You would know all of this if you paid attention more, or I dunno, played the game?

 

I don't see why you have to go into a personal attack here, but since you are, cool. Lets dance.

 

The reason I brought it up, aside from MJM also talking about developing games himself, is because its about a recent example of a simple, fun game on a system known for balls-to-the-walls action games that do all kinds of exciting visual things. The PCE was pushed pretty far during its heyday, and now we have a simpler, yet still fun game WAY after that fact.. Its perfectly relevant to the discussion. You don't need to take full advantage of hardware to produce a fun game. If I wasn't the one who made the game, I would still bring it up. The line of discussion has reached the point where myself and others are pointing out that full use of the hardware isn't required for games to be good. Gameplay > visuals. If you don't see that as relevant, you might want to start at the top and work your way back down until you do, because you're basically saying multiple posters in this thread are irrelevant. You're in the minority.

 

Or here, let me help you since you probably wont bother to attempt to understand anything except your own POV: The fact that the games the OP talked about don't push the limits of the hardware does not mean the games in question aren't fun and playable. Yes they could probably be done with less hardware, but so could alot of games. Or they could have possibly looked better? Who knows. Maybe the developers were firing out games and building up experience to try new things with the next game they work on with the same / similar hardware. Maybe they just wanted to get fun, playable games out the door ASAP to generate money. Maybe they didn't think anyone would really care that much given the other games of the time.

 

I'm sorry you fail to understand the purpose of other peoples examples, and fail to connect all the dots in conversations, as usual. That seems to be your forte online.

 

Quit telling people to dial back their defenses or insecurities. You shouldn't be doing that until you've dialed back your own stupidity and learned how to comprehend peoples examples and points, and how to follow evolving topics. Its getting old.

Edited by Arkhan
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Check out an IT Silver Strike 2007 Bowling game sometime to see how adversely HD's and the Windoze file system affect modern video games. When you're done with that, tell me how much you reminisce the Windoze 3.1 screen saver running on a powerful 486 Packard Bell.

 

:| ... Why? Why would I comment about that? That has nothing to do with the original discussion. I'm not here to dispute what you posted (whether it's correct or not, I don't know or care).

Then why bring it up?

 

Arkhan, correct me if I'm wrong - but no one is saying otherwise about your game. Why do constantly have to bring that up when anyone remotely mentions something about graphics or GFX or pushing a system? Are you that insecure about it, that you have to constantly outwardly project your own confidence that "simple can be fun", to convince others? People already understand that (this thread isn't a debate about that, in case you haven't noticed). And on the flip side, people also like games that do push the hardware. You even see it here. Any game that pushes any Atari system is immediately herald as a great achievement (Lynx, A8, 7800, etc). So dial your insecurities back a notch. It's past getting old.

Wow really? Really?

 

I mean it's quite simple. People speak from experience. It's what they know. You talk to a game programer and they are gonna say "well when I was working on etc..." Arkhan only has the one game to go off of. He's just starting and it's all he knows, for now. You need to grow up and get a live instead of trolling.

 

 

Also learn how to quote douchebag.

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Also learn how to quote douchebag.

Hmmm ... a member for less than two weeks, and already he's picking fights and calling people "douchebag." This should go well.

 

well it's not like a member for 3ish years picking fights and calling people insecure is any better, amirite? :)

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Arkhan: Yeah, that's the complete opposite of dialing back yourself. Do yourself a favor and create a new/nerd rage thread if you really feel the need to vent your frustrations towards me. Name calling shows how you've really matured since I've last talked with you, too. Nice.

 

The PCE was pushed pretty far during its heyday

 

Again, this topic isn't about the PCE. It's about early 90's arcade hardware. Nothing everything needs to be put into the context or comparison of the PC-Engine.

 

The fact that the games the OP talked about don't push the limits of the hardware does not mean the games in question aren't fun and playable.

 

This is about the only thing in your comment relative to this topic. And what you stated is correct. I'm not disputing it. But no where did I see the OP imply otherwise. It's you reading into things (you have similar reactive posts anytime someone mentions pushing the PCE's limits or related systems. Well, when it comes to something someone else has done. Simple is enough, until you up the bar yourself (or selective areas) - then it's ok. And yes, you're insecurities are pretty apparent. I've seen you talk a lot of shit about people. It was pretty pathetic you wasted good article space in the online PCE mag bitching about petty drama. Makes you look petty and shows your insecurities and weakness. You think people want to read that drama/crap? A perfectly good opportunity of space to promote your works and the PCE, wasted. But I digress). He directly asks why CPS2 was needed for a specific game when CPS1 was completely up to task. How do you read 'a game isn't fun unless you push the limits of the system'?

 

Nikdog: Who the hell are you? His mother? Jesus...

 

Here's an original idea; instead of bringing down the thread with drama how about we get back on topic? Or.. do whatever you want. Whatever.

Edited by malducci
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Name calling shows how you've really matured since I've last talked with you, too. Nice.

Speak for yourself. You've called people stupid, moron, and asshat in your typo/incomplete sentence filled tirades both to their face and behind their backs. *shrug*. At least I don't try to pretend I'm innocent. I tell anyone what I said about them directly to them. I don't really care.

 

Again, this topic isn't about the PCE. It's about early 90's arcade hardware. Nothing everything needs to be put into the context or comparison of the PC-Engine.

No kidding, but the concept involved is the same. It's platform agnostic. When are you going to learn how to take concepts/examples/beliefs and apply them elsewhere? "Nothing everything"? Proof read my man! Haven't you learned this yet? Your broken sentences are amusing, but it'd be nice if they were fixed up.

 

I can compare early 90s arcade hardware to the PCE if I damn well want to. It's not really too farfetched anyway considering the PCE brought early 90s arcade action to your home.

 

Platform agnostic beliefs. They're pretty gangsta.

 

This is about the only thing in your comment relative to this topic. And what you stated is correct. I'm not disputing it. But no where did I see the OP imply otherwise. It's you reading into things you have similar reactive posts anytime someone mentions pushing the PCE's limits or related systems. Well, when it comes to something someone else has done.

The conversation shifted that way, as others have chimed in about it as well. I'm sorry you don't like where the topic went. If you don't like it, don't address it. Theres plenty of other stuff in the thread to talk about.

 

I don't see whats wrong with thinking current development for old consoles doesn't *need* to push the console to be good. It's better than being convinced you have to squeeze every drop out of the thing and never get anything done because of it. Most of the fun homebrew out right now barely pushes anything. :) The proof is in the pudding. Legend of Wukong, Insanity, Zaku, Knight n Grail... the list kinda keeps going. Alot of it may LOOK flashy, but great art doesn't mean the game is raping the hardware for all it's worth.

 

And yes, you're insecurities are pretty apparent. I've seen you talk a lot of shit about people.

What exactly does talking about stupid people being stupid have to do with being insecure? The only thing I'm insecure about is my music. I usually think people will hate it. That's pretty normal for musicians to feel that way, IMO.

 

 

BELOW CAN BE SKIPPED IF YOU DON'T GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT IRRELEVANT FORUM DRAMA

Simple is enough, until you up the bar yourself (or selective areas) - then it's ok.

*shrug* Fully working chiptunes, and 22 sprites onscreen actively checking 22 sprites + wall collisions with no slowdown. I think that's a pretty good accomplishment. On pressed CDs no less! I believe I set the bar pretty good. Graphically it may not be impressive, but under the hood, it's pretty wicked. Especially considering HuC.....

 

It was pretty pathetic you wasted good article space in the online PCE mag bitching about petty drama. Makes you look petty and shows your insecurities and weakness. You think people want to read that drama/crap? A perfectly good opportunity of space to promote your works and the PCE, wasted. But I digress).

Thats nice you feel it was a waste. However, a lot of people were glad to read that article actually. I got a handful of e-mails about it, and inquiries about what Aetherbyte is doing along with offers to help, so yay, work was promoted, and questions were answered! I'm sorry you're pee-pants about it. I wonder why that is?

 

Also, despite what the article says, I didn't create those questions in the interview. Someone else did. Nice job. Lots of people are aware of the clusterfuck that is the PCE homebrew development scene. At least I have the balls to address it instead of shuffling it under the rug or just pretending theres no problem. I prefer to take shitty situations by the sack and make them my bitch. It gets things done, and lets people know whats really going on.

 

People wonder why the PCE homebrew scene is practically dead in the water, and that is why. You're not really proving the statements otherwise with shit like this yknow. :)

 

Here's an original idea; instead of bringing down the thread with drama how about we get back on topic? Or.. do whatever you want. Whatever.

A novel idea coming from the guy that started the attack, and then chose to drag COMPLETELY, AND UTTERLY IRRELEVANT PCE MAGAZINE INTERVIEWS AND POSTS, AND OPINIONS IRRELEVANT TO THE DISCUSSION INTO THIS. FOR WHATEVER STUPID REASON. JEALOUSY? A GRUDGE? PROJECTING? DUNNO, DON'T CARE.

 

Try practicing what you preach before you make an ass of yourself. As usual. You want to talk being petty and noone wanting to read drama, look what you're guilty of in this thread, jackass.

 

 

If all the name calling hurt your feelings, I'm sorry.

 

 

just kidding, I'm not.

Edited by Arkhan
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I don't see whats wrong with thinking current development for old consoles doesn't *need* to push the console to be good. It's better than being convinced you have to squeeze every drop out of the thing and never get anything done because of it. Most of the fun homebrew out right now barely pushes anything. :) The proof is in the pudding. Legend of Wukong, Insanity, Zaku, Knight n Grail... the list kinda keeps going. Alot of it may LOOK flashy, but great art doesn't mean the game is raping the hardware for all it's worth.

 

That's nice. Except this topic isn't about homebrew. Must everything you say/do in relation to games, be rationalized in the context and example of homebrew? (It's a rhetorical question) You're getting pretty worked up. I suggest creating a separate nerd rage thread to vent. We're done here ;) (But continue on venting if you want)

Edited by malducci
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That's nice. Except this topic isn't about homebrew. Must everything you say/do in relation to games, be rationalized in the context and example of homebrew? (It's a rhetorical question)

Considering the only difference between homebrew and commercial game development is a paycheck motivating/allowing progress, I think you can rationalize them this way. Though I guess I have worked on commercial stuff too to an extent, so I suppose I could just comment on it from that perspective, but it's going to be the same frigging thing dude. Do you think commercial developers had some like radically different experience with banging on hardware? No. Duhrp. :)

 

You're getting pretty worked up. I suggest creating a separate nerd rage thread to vent. We're done here ;) (But continue on venting if you want)

No, not really worked up. Grinning the whole time at your predictability. As for creating a nerd rage thread to vent, you might want to do that before you retard up another thread with irrelevant complaining. Thanks for the early morning amusement. Always a pleasure.

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Wow this got off topic and little childish fast. So back to the original post entirely.

 

Did those games push the hardware to the limit? Not all of them, hell not many of them. Should that matter? No. Good games are good games no matter what they do with the hardware.

 

As a community of collectors we should understand this better then anyone. If we were concerned with hardware specs and amazing proformance we would all be on the modern gaming forum all the time. There is alot to be said for what matters at the time. I personally view most video games, and classic games even more so, as art. To those that are interested in it the work speaks for itself in its own time and in some cases language. The history of video games matters because we are rapidly becoming a people defined by the things we do to entertain ourselves. Even if we look past the idea of being defined by our free time activities we are clearly moving forward based on technology, something video games are often pushing forward and creating new ways to do better things.

 

The price for such a machine more then likely had more to do with the money it would bring in. We view these machines as fun and interesting pieces of our past. Arcade owners of the time viewed them as investments. Good investments can require a heavy price, but the smart business man knows where to put his money to make much more. In the 90s that was 2D fighters. As proof that they were right on the money, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are still on the top of the list for people. Not always the new stuff, but the old stuff for sure. Those games seemed simple from a tech standpoint, but were deep in game play. Not many, if any, modern games compare in terms of possibilty and complexity.

 

Also, speaking to how "over powered" the hardware might have been for a 2D fighter: the beatiful part of the arcade machine design is the ability to do many things with the same hardware. I'm not huge into arcade machines, so I can't be completely sure, but I'm sure the hardware that didn't have to work too hard to make a 2D fighter work has a game on it somewhere that pushed it to limits the designers never thought it would. This happens all the time in home system. Launch titles never really push the hardware, but the titles toward the end of the life cycle always impress.

 

Just my 2 cents.

Edited by HatefulGravey
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I'm just going to point out that using terms like M$ or "Winblows" make your point, no matter how well reasoned, sound like something really petty and stupid.

 

Getting past that, who says fighting games aren't effectively using the hardware? Super SF2 added in additional characters and animation, with new stages, audio samples (that are much better quality) and music to go with them, all of which requires storage space on the hardware itself and the proper processing to run it successfully. Could the CPS-1 handle it? Possibly. There's a CPS-1 version of Alpha 1 that's not so great compared to the CPS-2 version. Fighting games are no slouches in terms of hardware usage. if they were, we'd be seeing Alpha 3 running on Street Fighter 1 hardware. It's likely Capcom threw the new SF2 on that board to help sell CPS-2 machines, but it's not like they didn't do anything with it.

 

Shmups are processing hogs only if they are bullet hell ones that just throw a shitload of shots on the screen at once and call it a day. Before Cave came along, you didn't see a whole lot of those.

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I'm just going to point out that using terms like M$ or "Winblows" make your point, no matter how well reasoned, sound like something really petty and stupid.

I know, right? Immature too! I hate those kinds of people that publicly observes irony. Can't wait for the day we all become singlularly minded robots, devoid of humor and awareness. Now if you'll please excuse me, I've got an appointment with a tattoo artist, some football to watch, mp3's to download, text messages to send and some fast food that needs eating.

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I'm just going to point out that using terms like M$ or "Winblows" make your point, no matter how well reasoned, sound like something really petty and stupid.

True dat.

 

All the OS's suck, :D no point in making funny names for them. Its a given. They're all dopey.

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I'm just going to point out that using terms like M$ or "Winblows" make your point, no matter how well reasoned, sound like something really petty and stupid.

I know, right? Immature too! I hate those kinds of people that publicly observes irony. Can't wait for the day we all become singlularly minded robots, devoid of humor and awareness. Now if you'll please excuse me, I've got an appointment with a tattoo artist, some football to watch, mp3's to download, text messages to send and some fast food that needs eating.

 

I think perhaps you have the wrong definition of irony in mind. It has nothing to do with irony, or humor, awareness, or even robots. All it is is undermining your own point.

 

I actually don't really mind arcade machines running on more uniform hardware, even if it is PC based. if it's easier and cheaper for the developers to work with and test, and quicker for them to make an accurate port to a home system if desired, then what's really the problem? They still deal with the limitations of their hardware, even if they're much higher.

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Coming from an area of embedded system design, I can see why designers in the 90's built hardware the way they did.

 

Even if a game's hardware requirements are relatively modest, sometimes it makes sense to build a platform that can scale up reasonably well for several reasons: some of these cabinets could run different games through a ROM/kit upgrade so that an operator could incrementally upgrade the game so that more kids pump quarters in to them. The other is that if the game is too specialized, it limits its usefulness to one game or class of games...whereas a more universal design has the capability to replace multiple designs and scale production costs in your favor. If a design scales up nicely too, it alleviates any problems with painting yourself in a corner capabilities-wise 5 years down the road when you design your next, more sophisticated game. By then you've already absorbed all those hardware development costs, and hopefully have a robust platform with all the kinks worked out.

 

Now, as far as 90's arcade hardware being a joke... I have to contend with that. There were a number of systems that had some pretty stellar 3D hardware accelerators in them (Solvalou, Hard Drivin', STUN Runner, etc.) that you would never have been able to play on a home system with any degree of satisfaction. Every arcade game that was 3D at the time either had in-house designed 3D hardware with reasonable-to-high polygon counts which were either unmatched or unavailable on home systems (game consoles or PC's alike).

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Even if a game's hardware requirements are relatively modest, sometimes it makes sense to build a platform that can scale up reasonably well for several reasons: some of these cabinets could run different games through a ROM/kit upgrade so that an operator could incrementally upgrade the game so that more kids pump quarters in to them. The other is that if the game is too specialized, it limits its usefulness to one game or class of games...whereas a more universal design has the capability to replace multiple designs and scale production costs in your favor. If a design scales up nicely too, it alleviates any problems with painting yourself in a corner capabilities-wise 5 years down the road when you design your next, more sophisticated game. By then you've already absorbed all those hardware development costs, and hopefully have a robust platform with all the kinks worked out.

 

Yeah, if you look at the arcade setups in general for each company; Capcom, Taito, etc. You see a trend of common hardware/main boards between games. It makes sense to build a core system, with the capabilities as not to limit the in house developers, even if that means that hardware isn't fully taken advantage of. In that perspective, I think a lot of arcade systems didn't 'push' for all they could. Hell, many arcade systems of that era rarely did line scrolls (but were very capable of it) - yet home consoles used it more often. Or tons of parallax (like TF4 or ristar, etc). Well, mostly the Genesis - but that goes entirely into a whole different debate of whether or not they (developers) were substituting FX for a lack of graphic detail via color.

 

In the case of SF2 2D fighters (and other Capcom 2D fighters) coming out on the CPS-2 hardware, but that could have run on CPS-1 hardware (SF Zero was hacked to run on CPS1 emulators early on), given by example of MJM... I think it was more of just phasing out the CPS1 hardware and gearing up or already in production of CPS2 hardware. Yeah, the CPS2 had some upgrades that could have been applied to the CPS1, but I don't think that was their thinking. I don't pretend to know everything about the company or how it works or details about internal happenings, but externally is seems apparent that they just chose to move forward and whatever project(s) that might have started on the CPS1 moved to the CPS2 platform. And as far as even CPS1 being kind of overkill for a (relatively) simple 2D fighter, while that might be true , I think my first first paragraph in this reply addresses that.

 

If I know anything from MJM's past posts, it's that he has a pet peeve about peoples perceptions are of what cpu resource (and other related hardware resource) is needed to run a game (mostly relative to home console ports). This seems to be an extension of that. Would that be correct, MJM? I can see how it could be seen as wasteful or just plain stupid decisions, but the arcade biz was much different than home consoles.

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Does anyone find it funny how arcade machines took so much power just to run a simple 1 vs 1 fighting game. They needed a 20 Mhz 68000 and hundreds of hardware sprites just to display 2 guys with jerky movement.

I think it had less to do with the games requiring that hardware and more to do with the fact that fighting games were popular and everyone was trying to rush their own fighting game out the door.

That hardware just happened to be what was available at the time and in the rush to market all you got was jerky movement.

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Coming from an area of embedded system design, I can see why designers in the 90's built hardware the way they did.

 

Even if a game's hardware requirements are relatively modest, sometimes it makes sense to build a platform that can scale up reasonably well for several reasons: some of these cabinets could run different games through a ROM/kit upgrade so that an operator could incrementally upgrade the game so that more kids pump quarters in to them. The other is that if the game is too specialized, it limits its usefulness to one game or class of games...whereas a more universal design has the capability to replace multiple designs and scale production costs in your favor. If a design scales up nicely too, it alleviates any problems with painting yourself in a corner capabilities-wise 5 years down the road when you design your next, more sophisticated game. By then you've already absorbed all those hardware development costs, and hopefully have a robust platform with all the kinks worked out.

 

Now, as far as 90's arcade hardware being a joke... I have to contend with that. There were a number of systems that had some pretty stellar 3D hardware accelerators in them (Solvalou, Hard Drivin', STUN Runner, etc.) that you would never have been able to play on a home system with any degree of satisfaction. Every arcade game that was 3D at the time either had in-house designed 3D hardware with reasonable-to-high polygon counts which were either unmatched or unavailable on home systems (game consoles or PC's alike).

 

+1 and stuff.

 

You gotta figure they go into the hardware with plans for it to last awhile, so they slowly advance in what they do with the hardware as they learn new tricks / ways to utilize it.

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