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The Super Nintendo Cartridges (2024)
- giannicmptr1000 5mo agoThey were a big step up from the original nintendo cartridges we blew in and wiped with alcohol to keep Tyson winking, but I went the Sega route as Genesis was a better system at the time, but that of course is debatable. Happy people still are interested in the archaic gaming systems.
- ericrallen 5mo agoI may be a biased Genesis Kid, but SEGA was always ahead of its time.
- moepstar 5mo ago...much to their detriment, sadly. R.I.P. Dreamcast, R.I.P. 32x, R.I.P. Mega CD, R.I.P. Saturn...
- epcoa 5mo agoNot sure how any of these except maybe the Dreamcast (and then not by that much - it was almost literally a contemporary arcade board clone) were examples of “ahead of its time”.
- actionfromafar 5mo agohttps://dcemulation.org/?title=Bleemcast%21 https://dcemulation.org/?title=Bleemcast%21
- pipes 5mo agoI bought a DC on launch week, it's one of my favourite consoles of all time. I still own one. But what has bleemcast got to do with what the parent said?
- actionfromafar 5mo agoTo demonstrate how powerful and far ahead it was.
- epcoa 5mo agoThe Dreamcast charm is partly how simple it is, a jellybean CPU. The PowerVR is competent but it’s not outside the norm for 3D accelerators of the period (and there was a mass produced PCI card available of it). Nothing about the Dreamcast is exotic. Though the pack in modem and VMU are neat (did say “maybe” for the DC). GD-ROM vs DVD was obviously a dumb move. Perhaps Sega didn’t have the war chest to loss leader a DVD Dreamcast (they didn’t have the vision either at that point). A technical demo like Bleemcast doesn’t demonstrate how far ahead something is, it has to be seen relative to the hardware of a similar generation. Having said that the PS2 which had some early programming hiccups would go on to eat DC’s lunch.
- Grazester 5mo ago...and PS2 eating the DC's lunch has more to do with Sega and their terrible decisions made in prior generations that burnt retailers and consumers alike than anything else. The things the PS2 had going for it at launch was a cheap DVD player(yes Sega didn't have the money for this. They were very close to bankruptcy at the time) and Sony's hype.
- dosisking 5mo agoPC Engine was also ahead of its time, actual 8-bit games on CD-ROM!
- dfxm12 5mo agoGiven its age and considering early games on the system, it's amazing how good the street fighter II’ port is. NEC made some good looking console hardware for the Japanese market too.
- Hackbraten 5mo agoSega was also the first console manufacturer to use Blast Processing.
- CableNinja 5mo agoSega was also the pioneer of online gaming, in a sense. SEGA channel was a service provided by your cable company. You got an adapter that went into your SEGA and had a coax that went to your tv box. Every month you get access to 20-40 games, all of which were a range of titles everyone could enjoy. There was no multiplayer, except locally. You could even plug in games you owned without removing the adapter. Also had the bonus of the ability to play the sonic version with the red sonic, by plugging in one of your sonic versions, when the adapter had the red sonic game expander available in its game list. To me it still holds as one of the coolest technologies (aside from a computer of course) from my childhood. Managed through tv channel sideband data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel
- ButlerianJihad 5mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASICODE#The_first_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASICODE#The_first_standard https://newslttrs.com/in-the-1980s-we-also-downloaded-software-from-tv/ https://newslttrs.com/in-the-1980s-we-also-downloaded-softwa...
- kilpikaarna 5mo agoPfft, only 52 simultaneous colors vs 256!
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 5mo ago(2024) Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40111274 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40111274
- bombcar 5mo agoDarn I saw April 24 and thought it was this year. I need my quake book!
- lightedman 5mo agoOn the S-RTC, it was used in that specific game to control time ruin events. When you start the game you're asked to input date and time, and from there the game tracks time to enable certain events.
- beezlewax 5mo agoThe softer curved design of the PAL versions of these cartridges casings always appealed to me more than the chunky ones sold in the US. I never understood why they were different though.
- rcfox 5mo agoCould be to highlight their incompatibility?
- Cpoll 5mo agoFun fact: Modding an NA SNES to play Japanese games is one step: use some needle-nose pliers to break off a small plastic tab in the cartridge slot.
- pezezin 5mo agoThe PAL SNES just reused the curved design of the original Japanese Super Famicom. I also find it way more appealing than the US version, but I grew up in Europe, so it is the one that I saw back in the day.
- wk_end 5mo agoFWIW I grew up with the North American design and I still find the JP/PAL design nicer.
- AussieWog93 5mo agoI'm the opposite. Grew up in Australia (with a 64, to be fair), love the US design. Our ones can't be stacked, and are missing top labels. A collector's nightmare!
- neuroelectron 5mo agoMarketing basically. They wanted the console to look more like video equipment and less like a toy. This concern was because of the video game crash of '83
- 5mo ago
- HardwareLust 5mo agoThank you, really interesting post!
- THEKROLL 5mo ago[dead]
- drzaiusx11 5mo agoShoving extra chips for bank switching, co processors, and license protection bypasses had been in play since the Atari days (although 2600 had no lock out/cic chips.) NES did though. My personal favorite was the hack on some NES carts that would use a "stun gun" approach to the 10NES lockout chip for loading unlicensed carts onto the console. They'd literally charge up a capacitor to spike a shock to the chip to "stun" it long enough to boot the rom. Classic stuff.
- drzaiusx11 5mo agoThe 2600 had carts with SuperCart/SARA chips added to double the consoles ram (to a whole 256 bytes!) The 2600's Pitfall II cart even added their own co-processor (Display Processor Chip/DCP) providing advanced music generation, improved graphics handling, and increased data storage. I truly love the ingenuity involved in enhancing and prolonging the life of game systems and the bypassing of inherent limitations. True hacks in the literal sense. Some beautiful, some funny (in retrospect like the stun chip I mentioned.)
- atlasagentsuite 5mo ago[dead]