What's the most powerful system ever, in its day?

[Zap!]

26 minutes ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

I looked... the Mega Drive came out pretty much exactly 1 year later...

 

PC Engine in Oct 30, 1987

Mega Drive in Oct 29, 1988

Yup, so it doesn't meat the "at least a year" threshold for this thread.

[Tanooki]

Well that's just getting by on a hairs width for a fair argument if there ever was one (and as shoddy as the Genesis output typically was) so yeah that should fall into this set of rules if barely.

 

Also as it is a fair game argument there on the optical side, the TG/PCE CD unit arrived on Dec 4th 1988, the Sega CD unit came along Dec11 1991.  That's notably longer than a year and I'd put it to the TG CD being the better package again there too.

[128Kgames]

8 hours ago, glazball said:

@masschamber was correct: the Bally Professional Arcade (aka Astrocade), the Neo Geo of the 70's.

I've been saying that for years, one of these days I hope someone will show the Astrocade's full potential.  

[elmer]

7 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Also as it is a fair game argument there on the optical side, the TG/PCE CD unit arrived on Dec 4th 1988, the Sega CD unit came along Dec11 1991.  That's notably longer than a year and I'd put it to the TG CD being the better package again there too.

 

As someone that was working as a professional game developer in the 1980s/90s/etc ... I've got to go with this, too.

 

The NEO Geo was a more powerful piece of hardware at the time ... but it was basically an arcade machine that was being sold/rented to a small cadre of high-end rich gamers at a premium price. It really doesn't belong in any sane discussion of retail-consumer hardware.

 

The MegaDrive was a nice evolutionary step, but it did absolutely nothing new that hadn't been seen before.

 

The PCE CD on the other hand was a revolutionary leap (pun intended) over cartridge consoles or floppy-disc based computers.

 

Suddenly you went from have a megabyte-or-less of game on an expensive-to-manufacture format to having 650MB available for the game and high-quality audio on a format that only cost a few cents to manufacture.

 

It not only felt like a game-changer at the time ... it was. We've spent the last 35+ years (until digital took over) playing games that were delivered on spinning-plastic and not cartridges (excluding handhelds).

 

The PCE CD was there first, and it gave a lot of (Japanese) developers their first chance to expand their imaginations and skills into what-was-to-become the standard way of making and delivering games for decades.

Edited December 17, 2019 by elmer

[schuwalker]

Neo Geo for me too.

 

The first time I saw Neo 4 slot with Magician Lord - was blown away. Eventually I saw Babbage's selling Neo Geo games, mouth was drooling 'till I saw the price of said games!

 

I'm thoroughly impressed you got a AES unit in '90. 

[Tanooki]

10 hours ago, elmer said:

 

As someone that was working as a professional game developer in the 1980s/90s/etc ... I've got to go with this, too.

 

The PCE CD on the other hand was a revolutionary leap (pun intended) over cartridge consoles or floppy-disc based computers.

 

Suddenly you went from have a megabyte-or-less of game on an expensive-to-manufacture format to having 650MB available for the game and high-quality audio on a format that only cost a few cents to manufacture.

 

It not only felt like a game-changer at the time ... it was. We've spent the last 35+ years (until digital took over) playing games that were delivered on spinning-plastic and not cartridges (excluding handhelds).

 

The PCE CD was there first, and it gave a lot of (Japanese) developers their first chance to expand their imaginations and skills into what-was-to-become the standard way of making and delivering games for decades.

You got it, that's right there why I broke that off saying the PCE CD/TGCD is a fair game call on something that was the most powerful.  The base system capabilities may have been on processing power there with Sega, but they made better choices, and then the supremely better move of the earlier jump to optical, it was daring and different, required more ram but gave back so much new freedom.  You'd have anything from FMV and steaming music, down to FMVs all animated, and other interesting choices on how to use the space to something as simple as raw storage beyond the space a HuCard could handle, even at the 20mb that SF2CE used.  They also with that CD/System Card/Duo setup gave us a console with internal saving which was a nice touch over passwords.

[DJ Clae]

Neo Geo.

 

Sometimes I wish someone would do a high-end system like that. Not sure what that would look like now -- probably similar specs to a top-of-the-line gaming PC. The world doesn't need it.

[Zap!]

23 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Well that's just getting by on a hairs width for a fair argument if there ever was one (and as shoddy as the Genesis output typically was) so yeah that should fall into this set of rules if barely.

 

It's my fault for mis-representing what I wanted to say. I didn't mean a year as in literally 365 days or less. For example, I meant if a system comes out anytime in 1987, it must stay on top for all of 1988 too.

[Laner]

On 12/15/2019 at 9:45 PM, Zap! said:

 

2) Sony PlayStation 3, 2006. An absolute beast of a system. It's Cell processor was so powerful that it still beats out many traditional processors today. A Blu-Ray drive way back in 2006 that worked as a great player as well, and fully 1080p! It was made to compete for 10 years, and it did!

Eh. It was marginally more powerful than the 360, and the difficulty in developing for it compared to the 360 pretty much negated any advantage it  possessed, unless you had a truly crackerjack team developing specifically for the hardware (e.g. Naughty Dog).  Even then it wasn't leaps and bounds beyond the competition.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Laner

[adamchevy]

I’ve heard the GameCube was quite a bit more powerful than the PS2 and the Xbox. And that Nintendo decided to never compete on this level ever again. Also, I think the Saturn could technically stomp on its competitors as well.

 

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

3 hours ago, Laner said:

Eh. It was marginally more powerful than the 360, and the difficulty in developing for it compared to the 360 pretty much negated any advantage it  possessed, unless you had a truly crackerjack team developing specifically for the hardware (e.g. Naughty Dog).  Even then it wasn't leaps and bounds beyond the competition.

The biggest advantage the PS3 had over the 360 was the Blu-ray discs... and even the smallest disc capacity was still more than twice the capacity of the largest Xbox 360 disc. This is the main reason why late Xbox 360 releases had install and play discs. Many games were too big to fit on one disc. 

[masschamber]

10 hours ago, DJ Clae said:

Neo Geo.

 

Sometimes I wish someone would do a high-end system like that. Not sure what that would look like now -- probably similar specs to a top-of-the-line gaming PC. The world doesn't need it.

can't really be done again, custom hardware used to be such a big component of game consoles, what could custom hardware really offer?

[+Charlie Cat]

On 12/15/2019 at 10:45 PM, Zap! said:

 

1) SNK Neo-Geo, 1990. This system absolutely demolished the completion. I got this for my 18th birthday in November of '90, and it was literally worlds ahead of my Genesis and Turbo Grafx. A true legend, it lasted into the 2000's!

 

 

I wholeheartedly agree Ter. Neo-Geo for sure.   

 

 

Anthony..

[CatPix]

9 hours ago, masschamber said:

can't really be done again, custom hardware used to be such a big component of game consoles, what could custom hardware really offer?

Well I recall that the PS3 (or PS2?) had custom hardware dedicaced to IA; this allwoed developpers to save power on designing a custom AI that would take processing power from the CPU.

I think such things are still relevant since console are non-upgradable unlike PC. Also there is little to no graphics options in console games, some auto-adapt especially with "cnsole upgrades" but the player rarely have control over it.

So unlike PC game where the player usually have fine tuning over graphical options and can decide if he prefer less anto-aliasing and more FPS, a good console should have custom hardware to relieve functions from the CPU and GPU.

But of course it's more complex and expensive to design so It's unlikely we'll see that again outside of niche markets.

 

 

Also, for the Neo Geo, it is in fact no really much custom hardware. There is more custom hardware in a Megadrive and way way more custom hardware in a Super Nintendo!

A Neo Geo is made of a stock 68 000 CPU (sometime sourced from Toshiba or Hitachi rather than Motorola, to tell you how "generic" it is), a stock Z80 co-CPU, a stock Yamaha YM2610 sound chip. Even the memory card is a standard JEIDA (ancestor of PCMCIA) memory card!

The only custom part is the GPU, and... It's not terribly complex either. It just know to move sprites. It only have ONE fixed tile map! Each and every visual effect you see on a Neo Geo is absolutely, solely, completely made in software by making sprite moves. It doesn't include any zoom, distord, spin, etc.. functions. It's just really good at moving sprites, and it can have a bit under 400 sprites on screen (for comparison, the PC-Engine can have 64 sprites on screen, Megadrive can have 80 sprites, the Super Nintendo 128)

[adamchevy]

Obviously the VCS was and is the most powerful system today!

[bluejay]

I'd say the early Atari 8-bit systems. Released in 1979, the 400 and 800 had enough graphics capabilities to compete with the Commodore 64 of 1982, ColecoVision of 1983 and the Famicom/NES of 1983/1985. Sure, the early computers didn't have BASIC in ROM, but even as a game console, the only competition it had in 1979 was the Atari 2600, which had crude graphics, the Magnavox Odyssey 2, which had cruder graphics, the Commodore PET and the TRS-80, which had no graphics, and the Apple II and II+, which were too expensive. Even the Mattel Intellivision that came out a year later(1980) couldn't compete with the Atari 8 bits when it came to graphics.

[Zap!]

1 minute ago, bluejay said:

I'd say the early Atari 8-bit systems. Released in 1979, the 400 and 800 had enough graphics capabilities to compete with the Commodore 64 of 1982, ColecoVision of 1983 and the Famicom/NES of 1983/1985. Sure, the early computers didn't have BASIC in ROM, but even as a game console, the only competition it had in 1979 was the Atari 2600, which had crude graphics, the Magnavox Odyssey 2, which had cruder graphics, the Commodore PET and the TRS-80, which had no graphics, and the Apple II and II+, which were too expensive. Even the Mattel Intellivision that came out a year later(1980) couldn't compete with the Atari 8 bits when it came to graphics.

If we're talking computers, someone is gonna mention the Amiga and it's gonna start a nasty "Amiga vs. ST" war.

[bluejay]

Just now, Zap! said:

If we're talking computers, someone is gonna mention the Amiga and it's gonna start a nasty "Amiga vs. ST" war.

Oh, it's the "Video Games" section. My bad!

As for video games, I'd say the original Magnavox Odyssey or the ColecoVision. The Odyssey because it's the first freakin' game console, and obviously, being the first, it had no competition. The ColecoVision because of its graphics and sound that can fight the NES, the fact that it has a startup screen, which surprisingly, almost, if not no game console of the era had, and because of its innovative controller.(hey, I never said good, I said innovative.)

[elmer]

11 hours ago, CatPix said:

Well I recall that the PS3 (or PS2?) had custom hardware dedicaced to IA; this allwoed developpers to save power on designing a custom AI that would take processing power from the CPU.

 

Where-on-earth did that rumor come from???

 

No, they didn't, neither of them.

 

Just because Sony call the PS2 chipset the "Emotion Engine" doesn't somehow give it dedicated AI hardware, and nor do the 8 subprocessors in the cell chip count as dedicated AI hardware.

 

The cell processor had a number of interesting features, but it was a real swine to program for.  Don't forget that Sony started off believing IBM's optimistic projections for the power of the cell processor, and weren't going to include a GPU ... only to find out that the Xbox 360 (with ATI's chipset) was going to absolutely wipe the floor with them, causing a rapid conversation with Nvidia, who absolutely had them over a barrel, and who negotiated a sweetheart deal that cost Sony a lot of money (thus the move to an ATI chipset for the PlayStation 4).

 

OTOH, I completely agree that the inclusion of the BluRay drive was a important factor in the success that the PlaySation 3 had.

 

 

11 hours ago, CatPix said:

Also, for the Neo Geo, it is in fact no really much custom hardware. There is more custom hardware in a Megadrive and way way more custom hardware in a Super Nintendo!

A Neo Geo is made of a stock 68 000 CPU (sometime sourced from Toshiba or Hitachi rather than Motorola, to tell you how "generic" it is), a stock Z80 co-CPU, a stock Yamaha YM2610 sound chip. Even the memory card is a standard JEIDA (ancestor of PCMCIA) memory card!

The only custom part is the GPU, and... It's not terribly complex either. It just know to move sprites. It only have ONE fixed tile map! Each and every visual effect you see on a Neo Geo is absolutely, solely, completely made in software by making sprite moves. It doesn't include any zoom, distord, spin, etc.. functions. It's just really good at moving sprites, and it can have a bit under 400 sprites on screen (for comparison, the PC-Engine can have 64 sprites on screen, Megadrive can have 80 sprites, the Super Nintendo 128)

 

So the Neo Geo is made of "stock" parts, but the Megadrive isn't?

 

That is despite them both sharing the same 68000 main processor, the same Z80 sound processor, both using off-the-shelf Yamaha sound chips, off-the-shelf RAM chips, and in the Megadrive's case, a Yamaha VDP chip that was a direct (and fairly predictable) evolutionary step over the previous Yamaha VDPs that were in the SMS and MSX2+ computers?

[enoofu]

Neo Geo wasn't the first system that gave decent or perfect ports of arcade games.

Neo Geo AES tried to create a mainstream audience do to the High End Arcade computers lines that were in Japan.

FM Town, Sharp 68000X, and PC-98 were the powerhouse of their days though Expensive.

 

Also don't forget Dreamcast was also somewhat success as both a Arcade (NAOMI) and console system, though it had far better success with NAOMI. Even Nintendo launched Nintendo VS. System as a multi-board arcade system based on NES.

 

Neo Geo also wasn't the best Arcade System on a technical level as it was designed as a budget Arcade System, which meant it didn't have the best Graphics or Sounds possible, as the hardware was around 2 years old of date when it launched. Very Similar to the Hardware on a Truxton board "88. 

 

Neo Geo biggest strength was their ability to attract some of the best game programmers of the time, and good quality control practices.

Edited December 19, 2019 by enoofu

[carlsson]

Speaking about the Neo Geo, I was just amused when I filled in an online survey. One of the questions is which formats I am playing video games on and how often. The survey obviously is aimed at modern gaming in 2019 and has the following systems to choose from:

 

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC Windows, PC Linux, Mac, Android, iOS and Neo Geo.

 

I'm not sure if anyone is kidding with me, but if the Neo Geo still to this day is considered a top gaming system in line with all the others, that is more than impressive. Or perhaps I missed something and there is a brand new Neo Geo type system?

[128Kgames]

4 hours ago, enoofu said:

Neo Geo wasn't the first system that gave decent or perfect ports of arcade games.

Neo Geo AES tried to create a mainstream audience do to the High End Arcade computers lines that were in Japan.

FM Town, Sharp 68000X, and PC-98 were the powerhouse of their days though Expensive.

AES carts aren't ports of the MVS, they are the exact same same games.  They were neither decent nor perfect- they're the exact, same games.  MVS conversions to AES carts use the MVS chips, hence it was cheaper for some AES carts like Metal Slug to be converted from MVS.  You said Neo Geo wasn't the first but what was then?  The examples you gave were computers, not game systems, unless I'm wrong.

[carlsson]

I would think at least the FM Towns and Sharp X68000 were game computers, not that suitable for general purpose computing. For instance the FM Towns came with a CD-ROM but no hard drive. The X68000 has graphic modes that are tailored for gaming but terrible for desktop environments. The NEC PC-98 series may have been more of general purpose though.

[CatPix]

NEC PC-98 was indeed a more versatile, home/business orientated platform, though usually less powerful than the system you named. It's hard to say it was "more powerful" at some point because like IBM-PC it was an upgradable system, with PC-98 starting to sell in the early 80's and stopped selling in the early 2000's. You can consider it as a "Japanese IBM-PC" because it's pretty much how it worked. And it's what caused it's demise as IBM-PC compatibles were cheaper and "compatible with the rest of the world".

 

Though the OP said "systems" and not "console" so technically it's valid to consider computers in this thread.

[Tanooki]

5 hours ago, carlsson said:

Speaking about the Neo Geo, I was just amused when I filled in an online survey. One of the questions is which formats I am playing video games on and how often. The survey obviously is aimed at modern gaming in 2019 and has the following systems to choose from:

 

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC Windows, PC Linux, Mac, Android, iOS and Neo Geo.

 

I'm not sure if anyone is kidding with me, but if the Neo Geo still to this day is considered a top gaming system in line with all the others, that is more than impressive. Or perhaps I missed something and there is a brand new Neo Geo type system?

Umm nope.  The only thing maybe that got their attention is the Neo Geo Mini and their released this year HDMI input to your TV dual joystick neo geo device.  Originally pitched stupidly only for fighting games with more to unlock later, they just allowed the first 2 hidden inside unlocks and they're Metal Slug 1 and 2.  But really, it's niche, like the mini, but more so like those ghetto theft based pandora box joystick harness things for TV except on the level since SNK did it.  But it's not like you can just walk into a Target, Best Buy etc and buy one of those big joystick setups either.  So maybe all the ACA releases on Switch?