The BEST thing I ever did was change the sonic CD title Screen music to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5DnqW3F57E
Final Fight CD actually has pretty nice remixed music. If I recall, Lords of Thunder for Sega had a really LOUD and distorted sound to the music. It was part of the reason I never seriously played the Sega CD version. After having played the PCE version first I was just so annoyed by the shitty music by comparison I couldn't play.
All I recall back then was all the hype about how CD-based games were going to change everything... They were right at the end, but it took them almost 6 years to prove it. Problem with the first CDROM consoles is that those were very undepowered, having roughly the same hardware as the cart versions, just that those had to deal with 16Mb games, while a CD contained 600MBs. They choosed to fill that space with something else because there's no point in loading a billion sprites on that if the console could barely display 80 on the screen. Just look at the FMVs: hardware at the time couldnt keep up with the task so all the videos looked grainy with few colors and jerky framerate. My point is that CD games were brought to the market too early, and were only relevant when the true 32bit consoles arrived.
it's never to early as long it brings you good advantages, as the first of all cd-roms in the gaming sector just prooved very well!
I've been hard pressed to find non FMV games for it to the point I'm not sure if it's worth bending over backwords to aquire an unlocked Magic Engine FX to play these.
It had little to do with "power" and more to do with RAM to hold data loaded from CD-ROM. The earliest CD-ROM console platform was the PC-Engine CD-ROM which had I think 64 Kilobytes of RAM. Not alot to work with to make Cartridge games look inferior. When the Super CD-ROM for PCE came out it was still only 256 Kilobytes. That's the size of many mid to late NES games. The latest NES games were twice that size. It wasn't until really late that the Arcade Card came out giving it a decent 2048 Kilobytes, the size of a good Genesis or SNES cartridge game. The Sega CD only had something like 1.5 megabytes of total RAM in it which wasn't that great. The problem goes on with the Sony PS1 with only 2 Megabytes of Work RAM and 1 Megabyte of Video RAM. Sega Saturn held out better with 512kb more Video RAM though I'm not sure how it was organized, but that doesn't matter since they were smart enough to design to have the RAM expansion cartridges. Aside from PCE CD and Sega Saturn, none of the early disc based systems seemed to have expansion in mind when RAM was cheaper and could be added for decent cost. It really had nothing to do with "not enough power". With CD-ROM you had huge amounts of storage compared to Cartridges with ROM chips. But then the problem shifts to how much RAM you have. Just look at the PC-Engine CD-ROM games and how they differ based on what System Card they use. Original CD-ROM games look probably very much like regular HuCard games with CD Audio. Super CD-ROM games probably look to have an edge over most HuCard based games. Arcade Card CD-ROM games like Sapphire are mind blowing with the level of animation granted thanks to all that RAM. So the issue with early CD-ROM consoles had nothing to do with the "power" and more to do with the RAM needed to really utilize all that storage space.
Available memory is part of the "power", so I think we're both saying the same here. Sorry for simplifying the whole thing down (wuz sleepy at the time). There was a bit of a software issue too, since for example in the SegaCD early FMVs looked sloppy and crude, but when better codecs appeared (thanks in part to GamesArts) video in that console was very similar to what we got later in PSX and Saturn. What I believe is funny in that some of the consoles that could've benefited the most of CD drives didnt have one (N64) or were improvised (NeogeoCD). The latter, with its 330Mb carts which sometimes were almost as expensive as the console, could have had a very different outcome had SNK decided to focus more on the CD version than the AES version. Why not make a console with as much RAM as a cart? and a 2X drive? sure it would've been more expensive, but what really limited the AES weren't the price of the console but that of the games, so the prospect of cheap arcade games (maybe even cheaper than Genesis and Snes games) which at the time were mind blowing compared to console's, would more than convince gamers of making the initial investment. The N64, well its pretty much the same case here. What's funny is that even when the technology was in part sony's, Nintendo had more than enough info about the HANDS system for the SnesND, so they could have hired another company to replicate it on the N64 in order to get rid of the long loading times. Sure there's still the issue of piracy, but lets be honest: the high price of carts in the N64 did much more damage to it than piracy could ever do.
Well I see the term "power" and thought of processing, not RAM as I think of RAM as storage. But I see we are on the same page. I totally agree with what you were saying where an expensive console is a turn off but expensive games are even worse. I was blown away when I heard maybe in the early 2000s that NeoGeo AES carts still came out and retailed at $300. For that much you could have bought a piece of shit computer and internet and just played it on an emulator. And you'd still have money left over for donuts! A CD-ROM based N64 may have helped it's standing but I suppose like Sega, they had their own issues. Like fucking their 3rd parties. People were eager for Sony, the new kid on the block.
seirei senshi spriggan f.e. prooved very well of what 64KB of RAM could bring on the screen in combination with a CD-ROM. that game wouldn't have been possible on a huey. good tricks and interim load sessions made that possible. that game even beats many of the later SCD games. not sure if it also used the cd-roms ADPCM storage like f.e. monster lair did.
sure you have to. it's an absolute must own! and one of the best programms on the system. compile you know and shubibinman 3 as well. quite impressive stuff for a simple cd-rom game!
You guys need a 3DO to truly understand what was wrong with early CD-ROM ideas. Most of its library is what I would label as the embodiment of horrible FMV gaming. They even made a few classics annoying by adding shitty video footage that not only causes delays in loading but you also get to view the same video over and over. I read somewhere that the dev kit actually came with stock video footage for game developers to use. How about that? lol. watch the same video in multiple games! Not that there aren't a few gems on 3DO, however.
i know this is about early cd but i think the same "wtf do we do with all this space?" thing is happening with ps3. the answer usually seems to be "fill it up with every countries vocal track!" i'd like to know if dev's really can't fit everything in a dual layer dvd or if they're just getting lazy and don't remember how to compress things.
