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A few years after this demo, Jazz Jackrabbit [0] (1994) was a huge hit, I believe. Mario could have been successful as well. Though by releasing Mario on the P

by wsc981 11y ago

A few years after this demo, Jazz Jackrabbit [0] (1994) was a huge hit, I believe. Mario could have been successful as well. Though by releasing Mario on the PC, might have cost Nintendo console marketshare. I do think people by Nintendo consoles often because of the games / game characters like Mario, Zelda, etc... --- [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b16upFloYak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b16upFloYak

nkozyra 11y ago
Sure, but there was "PC huge hit" and "console huge hit" and they were light years away in terms of metrics. Best I can tell Jazz Jackrabbit did not sell 1MM copies, SMB3 sold 17MM. Doom ended up selling something like 3MM, but the key difference was it was an experience that didn't exist much on consoles, and Carmack & Co. did everything possible to make it futuristic compared to anything then possible on PC. I just don't see an SMB copy doing anything noteworthy at that stage, and the end result probably would have stunk, too. But that was a limitation with the platform more than anything.
jerf 11y ago
Jazz Jackrabbit is another interesting example of the tech difference between the two consoles. That YouTube video is running on a Soundblaster. PCs had superior storage and a lot of processor power compared to the consoles, so Jazz had incredible music compared to consoles because it could use modfiles, basically CPU-synthesized music using arbitrary wave files as instruments, played through the Soundblaster (used as a generic digital sound out, which may not sound impressive, but the consoles didn't have that yet, it still just had various cheap synthesis chips and a smidge of wavetable capability not sufficient to play dynamically-generated sounds). The PS1 was not quite out yet, so the current (popular, people I know actually owned them) gen was basically Genesis and Super Nintendo. Neither could pull that off. Graphically, Jazz had more colors to work with. But mechanically, Jazz at best had parity and at worst would have been considered a low-tier platformer at best on the Super Nintendo. I honestly don't know what it was with PC platformers of the era, if they were actually incapable of "feeling good" for some technical reason or if nobody ever, well, for lack of a nicer way of putting it, did it right. But they were always bizarrely floaty and had poor physics and feel. Whether or not the PC hardware could have competed on platformers, I do not ever recall playing one that felt as good as a console game did.

by wsc981 11y ago

nkozyra 11y ago

Sure, but there was "PC huge hit" and "console huge hit" and they were light years away in terms of metrics. Best I can tell Jazz Jackrabbit did not sell 1MM copies, SMB3 sold 17MM. Doom ended up selling something like 3MM, but the key difference was it was an experience that didn't exist much on consoles, and Carmack & Co. did everything possible to make it futuristic compared to anything then possible on PC. I just don't see an SMB copy doing anything noteworthy at that stage, and the end result probably would have stunk, too. But that was a limitation with the platform more than anything.

jerf 11y ago

Jazz Jackrabbit is another interesting example of the tech difference between the two consoles. That YouTube video is running on a Soundblaster. PCs had superior storage and a lot of processor power compared to the consoles, so Jazz had incredible music compared to consoles because it could use modfiles, basically CPU-synthesized music using arbitrary wave files as instruments, played through the Soundblaster (used as a generic digital sound out, which may not sound impressive, but the consoles didn't have that yet, it still just had various cheap synthesis chips and a smidge of wavetable capability not sufficient to play dynamically-generated sounds). The PS1 was not quite out yet, so the current (popular, people I know actually owned them) gen was basically Genesis and Super Nintendo. Neither could pull that off. Graphically, Jazz had more colors to work with. But mechanically, Jazz at best had parity and at worst would have been considered a low-tier platformer at best on the Super Nintendo. I honestly don't know what it was with PC platformers of the era, if they were actually incapable of "feeling good" for some technical reason or if nobody ever, well, for lack of a nicer way of putting it, did it right. But they were always bizarrely floaty and had poor physics and feel. Whether or not the PC hardware could have competed on platformers, I do not ever recall playing one that felt as good as a console game did.