Why do Sega SG1000 Mark 1 games look worse than ColecoVision games when they are same system?

[Miner Jumpman]

8 hours ago, ColecoKing said:

N64 Version???????

Someone who owns the DK arcade cabinet and knows the game well claims the new Coleco game (called Donkey Kong Arcade) has the closest version to the arcade. This guy is not a ColecoVision fan, but he loves Donkey Kong. The N64 has a version of Donkey Kong that some consider the best, but this guy disputes it. Take a look at Coleco's version.

 

 

[mr_me]

That's because it's a port of the arcade code, so it is actually running the arcade game on a colecovision.  There's a version on the tandy Coco3 that's really good too.  Not a straight port as code was translated to the native processor.  It has new boards and is called Donkey Kong Remixed.

Edited October 3, 2020 by mr_me

[Miner Jumpman]

14 minutes ago, mr_me said:

That's because it's a port of the arcade code, so it is actually running the arcade game on a colecovision.  There's a version on the tandy Coco3 that's really good too.  Not a straight port as code was translated to the native processor.  It has new boards and is called Donkey Kong Remixed.

Yes. My point is people thought it was impossible to produce this Donkey Kong on ColecoVision not that long ago. For example, the screen resolution is different on the arcade and Coleco, so it's a significant challenge to fit all the girders in. However, those who claimed it was impossible have been proven wrong and we see the right programmer can do it.

 

Yes, there is a limit to have far we can push a system, but Coleco never came close to that threshold while the NES did. That's why no new games for the NES come close to the best in its '80s library. While most recent games for ColecoVision are better than the legacy games.

 

It's doubtful that anyone will push ColecoVision to its limits the way Nintendo did with games like Super Mario Bros 3 because it is an expensive endeavor and not enough profit motive to make it happen.

 

That's why F18A is the best option. Most of what we see with F18A can be done on the stock Coleco (except the number of colors), but it's far less time consuming for programmers to make it happen.

[mr_me]

For sure time was a factor in 1982.  Another thing to consider is the size of the rom cartridge programmers were given in 1982.  They were only 16kB or 8 kB.  Now, with bank switching rom, they can have cartridges ten times, even one hundred times larger.  Programmers still have to deal with the colecovision four sprite limit on one scanline.  Super Mario Brothers is a 40kB cartridge on nes.  A couple of years later, zelda was on a 128kB cartridge.  Dropping rom prices made a big difference from the early 1980s to later in the decade.

Edited October 3, 2020 by mr_me

[ColecoKing]

I don't see how a Donkey Kong port makes CV equal or better than late Famicom but ok.

[ColecoKing]

Black Tiger

Buck Rogers bucks the trend is a case where the Colecovision suffers from poor programming, as everything but the player sprite is choppy and it has a lot of flickering. The SG-1000 version is nice and smooth throughout.

Lots of flicker? I thinnk there is minor flicker on some enemy sprites only some pieces.

Yes it doesn't run as smooth as Zoom909 but it also has better graphics, would SG-1000 be able to run CV version as smooth? Based on the sacrifices I don't believe so.

Coleco not only has more detailed backgrounds but multicolored enemies, Zoom 909 (sega 1000 buck rogers) is flat colors and enemy sprite are all mostly one color only. I don't think that is poor programming I think the priorities were different.

[mr_me]

Probably poor programming.

[Miner Jumpman]

On 10/3/2020 at 6:46 PM, mr_me said:

For sure time was a factor in 1982.  Another thing to consider is the size of the rom cartridge programmers were given in 1982.  They were only 16kB or 8 kB.  Now, with bank switching rom, they can have cartridges ten times, even one hundred times larger.  Programmers still have to deal with the colecovision four sprite limit on one scanline.  Super Mario Brothers is a 40kB cartridge on nes.  A couple of years later, zelda was on a 128kB cartridge.  Dropping rom prices made a big difference from the early 1980s to later in the decade.

You are overstating the "four sprint limit." It's not like it cause the game to crash. The new Donkey Kong Arcade game has two options: more color or less flicker. The more color option routinely puts eight or more sprites on a scanline. If you try it out, you'll see, Coleco handles it surprisingly well with minimal flicker. I wish they had programmed all the games like this because it looks better, and with F18A, there is zero flicker.

[Miner Jumpman]

On 10/2/2020 at 12:36 PM, ColecoKing said:

Miner Jumpman Coleco do not own Buck Rogers, it was port of Sega arcade game.

Wongojack

 

Holy cow! I was speaking figurately. "Owning" means it has the best ports of the game for both a home console and a home computer. I pretty sure I am more knowledgeable about the game than most here.

[mr_me]

29 minutes ago, Miner Jumpman said:

You are overstating the "four sprint limit." It's not like it cause the game to crash. The new Donkey Kong Arcade game has two options: more color or less flicker. The more color option routinely puts eight or more sprites on a scanline. If you try it out, you'll see, Coleco handles it surprisingly well with minimal flicker. I wish they had programmed all the games like this because it looks better, and with F18A, there is zero flicker.

It is a limit.  The fifth sprite on a scanline doesn't crash the game but it will disappear.  It's up to the programmer to get it do display by alternating their priority ie. flicker.  Or they can program software sprites by animating the background.

[Miner Jumpman]

27 minutes ago, mr_me said:

It is a limit.  The fifth sprite on a scanline doesn't crash the game but it will disappear.  It's up to the programmer to get it do display by alternating their priority ie. flicker.  Or they can program software sprites by animating the background.

No, it doesn't "disappear." It's a question of how many frames per second it is visible. Hear about the worst case scenario in Donkey Kong Arcade. 

[mr_me]

Realise that flicker only happens because it is programmed by the game designer.  The tms9918 doesn't flicker sprites by itself.   Actually, flicker is not that bad on a standard crt tv because of the long persistence phosphors.

Edited October 5, 2020 by mr_me

[ColecoKing]

I don't get it is he saying Donkey Kong Arcade on CV prove it is stronger than famicom?? Famicom may not do everything as well but has CV beat clearly. Every console released after CV stronger than CV. Even including 5200.

Maybe Vectex but that is doing vector games doesn't count.

[ApolloBoy]

Quote

Why do Sega SG1000 Mark 1 games

BTW, the original SG-1000 and SG-1000 II (notice there's no "Mark" in that title!) have the exact same hardware, the SG-1000 II is just a cosmetic redesign albeit with an actual controller port in place of the hardwired joystick for player one.

[ColecoKing]

Probably poor programming.

Why would poor programming give you a more detailed game with multicolored enemies?

[ColecoKing]

BTW, the original SG-1000 and SG-1000 II (notice there's no "Mark" in that title!) have the exact same hardware, the SG-1000 II is just a cosmetic redesign albeit with an actual controller port in place of the hardwired joystick for player one.

No one said otherwise. What is this for?

[carlsson]

5 minutes ago, ColecoKing said:

No one said otherwise.

You used "Mark 1" in the title of this thread and has referenced at least thrice to the "Sega Mark" series.

[mr_me]

1 hour ago, ColecoKing said:

Why would poor programming give you a more detailed game with multicolored enemies?

We're talking about smoother animation.  That requires more optimised code so it can do more calculations in each frame of animation as well as fit more code in a given rom size.  Optimising code requires better programming from more talent or more time.  Graphics is mostly about design that has less to do with programming.

[ColecoKing]

carlsson

You used "Mark 1" in the title of this thread and has referenced at least thrice to the "Sega Mark" series.

I also mention Mark III and never mark II games so I didn't think that was an issue honestly.

[ColecoKing]

Mrme

We're talking about smoother animation. That requires more optimised code so it can do more calculations in each frame of animation as well as fit more code in a given rom size. Optimising code requires better programming from more talent or more time. Graphics is mostly about design that has less to do with programming.

This doesn't make sense, you are ignoring CV version is more graphically demanding therefore is it bad programming or is it that CV pushes the hardware more meeting the limits? SG-1000 is very flat colored without much detail even the addition of walls are just one color squares, the enemies are all single colored. CV versions had more detail everywhere, better illusion of perspective, and the enemies are multicolored. I don't think that is bad programming when SG1000 is nearly a different game for it to be smooth.

[Pixelboy]

2 hours ago, ColecoKing said:

This doesn't make sense, you are ignoring CV version is more graphically demanding therefore is it bad programming or is it that CV pushes the hardware more meeting the limits? SG-1000 is very flat colored without much detail even the addition of walls are just one color squares, the enemies are all single colored. CV versions had more detail everywhere, better illusion of perspective, and the enemies are multicolored. I don't think that is bad programming when SG1000 is nearly a different game for it to be smooth.

First of all, if you show a Japanese programmer a game on the Atari 2600, and then show the same game to an American programmer (an entire ocean away) and ask both programmers to reproduce the game on other local consoles, you can be sure that they're not going to produce the same final product. The Japanese programmer will be influenced by his own culture, and more to the point, by what he believes Japanese kids will be more inclined to buy and play, based on the screenshot(s) displayed on the box. This alone explains the widely different graphics between the CV and SG-1000 versions of H.E.R.O.. Look at the other games available in Japan at the time, and you'll notice that H.E.R.O.'s graphics on the SG-1000 are not that far off from other games on the SG-1000, the MSX or the Famicom. Meanwhile, in North-America, programmers had a different philosophy for designing graphics for their games, putting more emphasis on making backgrounds look like paintings as much as possible, and making sprites multicolored, which was something Americans were used to right from the days of the Apple II and TI99-4A. We're talking about a totally different environment, where video game were concerned.

 

Secondly, the CV version of H.E.R.O. doesn't push any particular hardware limits, and neither does the SG-1000 version. In fact, with a little bit of work, you could port the CV version to the SG-1000, and vice-versa. The programmers of the CV version simply put more time into the graphic design phase, nothing more.

 

If you think the SG-1000 version of H.E.R.O. looks worse, then that simply shows that you are America-centric. I'm sure you can find Japanese people who will look at the graphics of the CV version, call them ugly as f*ck, and say that they much prefer the SG-1000 version they grew up with.

 

[carlsson]

11 hours ago, Pixelboy said:

The Japanese programmer will be influenced by his own culture

Very true! Just look at Miner 2049er and Boulder Dash for the Super Cassette Vision (released in 1984, so a tad bit newer than the SG-1000).

 

 

 

Yes, you recognize the games but the respective main characters look very different from e.g. Atari 8-bit versions. Technically the system would have no problems replicating the original graphics but you can see that both Bounty Bob and Rockford were "Japanized" in these versions, just like you could argue that H.E.R.O. also was adopted on the SG-1000 for its demographic.

[ColecoKing]

Pixelboy

First of all, if you show a Japanese programmer a game on the Atari 2600, and then show the same game to an American programmer (an entire ocean away) and ask both programmers to reproduce the game on other local consoles, you can be sure that they're not going to produce the same final product. The Japanese programmer will be influenced by his own culture, and more to the point, by what he believes Japanese kids will be more inclined to buy and play, based on the screenshot(s) displayed on the box. This alone explains the widely different graphics between the CV and SG-1000 versions of H.E.R.O.

I am sorry but this is a pointless comparison that doesn't make sense. Buck Roger is a port based on a Sega arcade game which Sega authorized on other consoles this has nothing to do with random japanese developer, this is at the time of Mark 1 Sega was controlled and ran mostly by Americans and wasn't the company it would become. It's just wrong generic thinking that doesn't apply.

You see this consistently with games that have similar gameplay and art styles, HERO is one of the exceptions but games like 007 and Buck Rogers are not. It is the same game and in all similar games to computer and console ports with similar style the Sega version on Mark 1 always look worse and I don't think that is because japanese culture, HERO yes it was redesignedfor a zoommed in cleaner style at expense of detail, same with Congo Bongo, but this does not apply to the numerous games that are virtually the same game and Sega was not a full japanese company yet to I don't know why you assume this generic argument work here. It don't. Even worse Sega is the one who authorize the ports and was maker of the arcade game ports are based on.

There is no japanese culture involved with Sg1000 version having less detail and flat colors and single-color enemies and this type of problem is seen on various occasions through multiple games where there are not clear design differences to cater to japanese audiences even 007 has more flicker and slow down yet it basically near exact same game is that slow down and flicker for japanese culture? lol no of course not. You continue bringing up HERO because it's one of the only exceptions.

It is very consistent that despite having same hardware pretty much Sega was having problems bringing CV ports over for whatever reason, I don't know why that is hard to believe considering how it happens frequently. Maybe Sega just didn't dig into the silicon enough since they were expecting Mark 1 to sell only 50,000 its first year in japan and did double that. It's clear they weren't really taking that market as serious as Nintendo at least at first. What is more funny is early Nintendo game have opposite problem so even if Sega was fully japanese company your excuse still don't make sense because Nintendo didn't have that problem with early ports.

Edited October 9, 2020 by ColecoKing

[ColecoKing]

Even Carlsson bring up HERO yet ignore all other non changed ports that have same style and gameplay, There is no japanese cultural difference where single colored enemies make more sense than multicolored enemies with less detail yet everything else is the same as the other ports when no power difference between CV and Sg1000.

Atari 2600 make sense for difference because it's a very weak machine.

[Pixelboy]

14 minutes ago, ColecoKing said:

Pixelboy

 

 

I am sorry but this is a pointless comparison that doesn't make sense. Buck Roger is a port based on a Sega arcade game which Sega authorized on other consoles this has nothing to do with random japanese developer, this is at the time of Mark 1 Sega was controlled and ran mostly by Americans and wasn't the company it would become. It's just wrong generic thinking that doesn't apply.

You see this consistently with games that have similar gameplay and art styles, HERO is one of the exceptions but games like 007 and Buck Rogers are not. It is the same game and in all similar games to computer and console ports with similar style the Sega version on Mark 1 always look worse and I don't think that is because japanese culture, HERO yes it was redesignedfor a zoommed in cleaner style at expense of detail, same with Congo Bongo, but this does not apply to the numerous games that are virtually the same game and Sega was not a full japanese company yet to I don't know why you assume this generic argument work here. It don't. Even worse Sega is the one who authorize the ports and was maker of the arcade game ports are based on.

There is no japanese culture involved with Sg1000 version having less detail and flat colors and single-color enemies and this type of problem is seen on various occasions through multiple games where there are not clear design differences to cater to japanese audiences even 007 has more flicker and slow down yet it basically near exact same game is that slow down and flicker for japanese culture? lol no of course not. You continue bringing up HERO because it's one of the only exceptions.

It is very consistent that despite having same hardware pretty much Sega was having problems bringing CV ports over for whatever reason, I don't know why that is hard to believe considering how it happens frequently. Maybe Sega just didn't dig into the silicon enough since they were expecting Mark 1 to sell only 50,000 its first year in japan and did double that. It's clear they weren't really taking that market as serious as Nintendo at least at first. What is more funny is early Nintendo game have opposite problem so even if Sega was fully japanese company your excuse still don't make sense because Nintendo didn't have that problem with early ports.

 

I'm sorry, but your post doesn't make a shred of sense to me, and seems completely disconnected from reality, so I'm just going to walk away from this thread, never to return. Good bye.