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Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
#328884 - 07/29/14 05:33 PM
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They use to stay way ahead in the 90's 80's, at least 2 years ahead i think or more, not even the Sega 32x could do ports of games form the mid to late 80's without some sacrifices to the animation.
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I am the original retro game dork.
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| RATMNL |
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328889 - 07/29/14 07:07 PM
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because putting a pc in is cheaper...
why design something expensive when a pc can do the trick?
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"Those voices in his head might not be real, but they have really good ideas!"
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328890 - 07/29/14 07:14 PM
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> They use to stay way ahead in the 90's 80's, at least 2 years ahead i think or more,
> not even the Sega 32x could do ports of games form the mid to late 80's without some
> sacrifices to the animation.
The premise is incorrect. The better question is: Why did home console systems fall short of the technology found in Arcade machines for so many years?
The answer is costs. Cost to manufacture and produce in harmony with what people are/were willing to pay for a home system. It is(was) a delicate balance that ultimately became matched (For the most part).
Same/Similar to hardware found in the Arcade being made available at home too soon/too early was cost prohibited for most and would not survive (long) mainstream; just ask the Neo Geo AES.
Once the 'arcade-like' hardware could be mass manufactured/produced at a reasonable(cheaper) price for the home [Read: At a current price point of what the vast majority are willing to pay for that experience], due to evolving technology and other factors, home = arcade became the norm. It is in part one of the reasons for the downfall of Arcades.
The truth is people pay less for a game console now than what they did in the past, once you factor inflation.
A ~$200 Atari 2600 console in 1977 is equivalent to ~$800 today. The aforementioned AES in 1990 was ~$600; adjusted it would cost ~$1100 today. In comparison, a PS4 retails for ~$400 today.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore! *DELETED* *DELETED*
[Re: RATMNL]
#328892 - 07/29/14 07:31 PM
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Post deleted by RetroFan4554
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I am the original retro game dork.
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328902 - 07/29/14 10:48 PM
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> They use to stay way ahead in the 90's 80's, at least 2 years ahead i think or more,
> not even the Sega 32x could do ports of games form the mid to late 80's without some
> sacrifices to the animation.
Because Intel and Nvidia and AMD all have staffs of tens of thousands of people working on advancing CPU and GPU power, and they can recover the R&D costs by selling literally millions of units. No arcade maker can compete with that, and even Sony/Nintendo could only try in a brief window.
Back in the 1980s graphics was strictly the domain of games; the original Macintosh was considered unbusinesslike by many because it had a bitmapped display for its GUI instead of the CGA/EGA text mode popular with PC business apps of the time. So of course the game makers were well ahead of PCs. Once Windows 3.x and the Windows versions of Word/Excel/PowerPoint started taking off and removed that stigma, PC makers started trying to do fast graphics, although 3dfx were the first to actually succeed at it in a useful-for-gaming way.
Also, the 32X could've done games with more frames of animation, but cartridge ROM was still very, very expensive at that time.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: Trebor]
#328907 - 07/29/14 11:57 PM
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> The premise is incorrect. The better question is: Why did home console systems fall
> short of the technology found in Arcade machines for so many years?
Because no-one could afford $2000 to buy the console just to play half a dozen games which were released on it, then pay another $3000 for the next generation console for the newer games which can't run on the older hardware without being dumbed down or adapted to fit (hello Atari 2600 Pac-Man). Although, with vertical games, they didn't want kids tipping over the big, clunky, stereotypical 1970s woodgrain CRT TV (or a 50" plasma for that matter) onto its side and/or risking injury and/or damage to the TV, so they adapted them to fit a regular, horizontal TV screen - of course, this doesn't count on consoles which can change resolutions or zoom to fit, or modern (e.g. LCD) TVs which can be rotated to a vertical position..
Of course, other games were simply dumbed down to reduce costs. For example, Street Fighter II on the SNES could easily have been better/more closer to the arcade, had it been given a larger ROM - for example, the sprites are tiny, despite both arcade and console being 224p (it didn't need to be vertically resized, just squashed horizontally since both games were designed for 4:3 monitors regardless of pixel width), and the sound effects are much shorter as well, for example Ryu's move calls and Blanka's roar, and they sounded pretty low quality as well. The music samples are also very short, although I don't know if this was a limitation of the SNES sound hardware or not.
On some games though, the "They Just Didn't Care" trope is definitely the main reason, particularly for modern hardware like the PlayStation and beyond.
Also, on the flip side, there was the Neo-Geo AES, where the home console was the arcade hardware. Naturally, it came with a price tag well over its 16-bit rivals of its era (the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive/Genesis among others).
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore! *DELETED* *DELETED*
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328916 - 07/30/14 06:13 AM
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Post deleted by RetroFan4554
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I am the original retro game dork.
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| Sune |
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328921 - 07/30/14 07:50 AM
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> The PS2 was the 1st home system i think to be ahead of the arcade
There were arcade systems based on the PS2, just like there were arcade systems based on the Saturn, the Dreamcast, the PlayStation and the XBox..and many more.
S
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: Sune]
#328925 - 07/30/14 12:59 PM
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> > The PS2 was the 1st home system i think to be ahead of the arcade
>
> There were arcade systems based on the PS2, just like there were arcade systems based
> on the Saturn, the Dreamcast, the PlayStation and the XBox..and many more.
>
> S
Yeah they were ahead the console the arcade versions, a noticeable difference in some games like Tekken 3, PSX based hardware, they had more video ram and stuff, but the home version of PS2 was released before the arcade version. The PS2 was revolutionary when it was 1st released, ahead of everything involving real time animation, it had the powerful Emotion Engine, the Grand Turismo games looked very good in their day.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: R. Belmont]
#328928 - 07/30/14 02:36 PM
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> Also, the 32X could've done games with more frames of animation, but cartridge ROM
> was still very, very expensive at that time.
The Amiga 500 was good for its time, it probably could of done a arcade perfect port of Double Dragon, judging from some of its games from the early 90's. I think the Sega Saturn was pretty well behind the coin op, even its final games didn't look close to Model 2 games, the PSX wouldn't of been as far behind, the original Ridge Racer was close to the System 22 version, the PSX version had better color i think even though they both have same color capabilities, it just lacked the raw power, it ran at 30fps as opposed to 60fps, PSX only had 1mb of video memory but in most other ways it was as powerful as the Namco 22 and Sega Model boards in 1995, the PSX arcade hardware made Tekken 3 look decent, it looked pretty ugly on the PSX, it is amazing what another 1mb of video memory can do.
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I am the original retro game dork.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328929 - 07/30/14 02:54 PM
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> The PS2 was revolutionary
> when it was 1st released, ahead of everything involving real time animation, it had
> the powerful Emotion Engine, the Grand Turismo games looked very good in their day.
lol
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328931 - 07/30/14 04:40 PM
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> > Also, the 32X could've done games with more frames of animation, but cartridge ROM
> > was still very, very expensive at that time.
>
>
> The Amiga 500 was good for its time, it probably could of done a arcade perfect port
> of Double Dragon, judging from some of its games from the early 90's. I think the
> Sega Saturn was pretty well behind the coin op, even its final games didn't look
> close to Model 2 games, the PSX wouldn't of been as far behind, the original Ridge
> Racer was close to the System 22 version, the PSX version had better color i think
> even though they both have same color capabilities, it just lacked the raw power, it
> ran at 30fps as opposed to 60fps, PSX only had 1mb of video memory but in most other
> ways it was as powerful as the Namco 22 and Sega Model boards in 1995, the PSX arcade
> hardware made Tekken 3 look decent, it looked pretty ugly on the PSX, it is amazing
> what another 1mb of video memory can do.
I am wrong actually, they made another original version of Ridge Racer that ran at 60fps it came as a bonus disk with Ridge Racer 4, they wanted to make Ridge Racer 4 60fps but it had to much animation so they decided make another original version at 60fps and include it as a bonus disk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1IVswx_yFs
The PSX was better than people think, it can't do 60fps and Namco 22 is light years ahead in power people think, why so many of the games looked crap on PSX was cause of time limits they were given to develop them in, probably.
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I am the original retro game dork.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328934 - 07/30/14 05:32 PM
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> > > Also, the 32X could've done games with more frames of animation, but cartridge
> ROM
> > > was still very, very expensive at that time.
> >
> >
> > The Amiga 500 was good for its time, it probably could of done a arcade perfect
> port
> > of Double Dragon, judging from some of its games from the early 90's. I think the
> > Sega Saturn was pretty well behind the coin op, even its final games didn't look
> > close to Model 2 games, the PSX wouldn't of been as far behind, the original Ridge
> > Racer was close to the System 22 version, the PSX version had better color i think
> > even though they both have same color capabilities, it just lacked the raw power,
> it
> > ran at 30fps as opposed to 60fps, PSX only had 1mb of video memory but in most
> other
> > ways it was as powerful as the Namco 22 and Sega Model boards in 1995, the PSX
> arcade
> > hardware made Tekken 3 look decent, it looked pretty ugly on the PSX, it is amazing
> > what another 1mb of video memory can do.
>
>
> I am wrong actually, they made another original version of Ridge Racer that ran at
> 60fps it came as a bonus disk with Ridge Racer 4, they wanted to make Ridge Racer 4
> 60fps but it had to much animation so they decided make another original version at
> 60fps and include it as a bonus disk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1IVswx_yFs
>
> The PSX was better than people think, it can't do 60fps and Namco 22 is light years
> ahead in power people think, why so many of the games looked crap on PSX was cause of
> time limits they were given to develop them in, probably.
I just played the bonus disk on EPSXE, the arcade version in MAME a little better still in texture quality and smoothness or framerate, it is not far behind, they did a good job.
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I am the original retro game dork.
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Are you just expressing that you know about this shit? Cos these folks certainly do, and then some.
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| R. Belmont |
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Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328943 - 07/30/14 08:37 PM
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> The Amiga 500 was good for its time, it probably could of done a arcade perfect port
> of Double Dragon, judging from some of its games from the early 90's.
The question there is how much RAM you require. On the A500 most games wanted to target a stock system since it's a minority platform already and why restrict potential sales further?
> the PSX wouldn't of been as far behind, the original Ridge Racer was close to the
> System 22 version, the PSX version had better color i think even though they both
> have same color capabilities, it just lacked the raw power, it ran at 30fps as o
> opposed to 60fps
Dead or Alive is the canonical Model 2 porting benchmark. It ran 720x480 @ 60 FPS on the Saturn, and 640x480 @ 60 FPS on the PSX (higher than arcade resolution on both systems). Tecmo did a gorgeous job on both ports. Sega's own ports never quite showed their hardware to best advantage, a problem that continued on the Dreamcast. (VF3 on Dreamcast was good, but Soul Calibur 2 and Power Stone were amazing).
> it is amazing what another 1mb of video memory can do.
The secret weapon of the PSX arcade systems wasn't (just) the added VRAM or RAM, it was the fast access to all of the game's data at the same time from ROM. Combined with the higher clocks on System 12 you could easily do stuff the home system simply couldn't.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: R. Belmont]
#328947 - 07/30/14 09:53 PM
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Quote:
On the A500 most games wanted to
target a stock system since it's a minority platform already and why restrict
potential sales further?
Take off your parochial American blinkers!!!
It may have been a minority system in the US, but in Europe it was god like, with millions of sales.
..all the best programming for the Amiga came from Europe as a result, many young programmers started out in the Amiga demo scene and are now veterans of the video game industry.
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: Ziggy100]
#328948 - 07/30/14 10:54 PM
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> It may have been a minority system in the US, but in Europe it was god like, with
> millions of sales.
Even in the countries where they did the best, the 16-bit machines never got close to the installed base numbers that the 8-bit giants like the C64 had. (The C64 was actually still selling when Commodore went under).
And take off your parochial UK blinders, the Atari ST was god like in France ;-)
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: R. Belmont]
#328953 - 07/31/14 02:39 AM
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> Dead or Alive is the canonical Model 2 porting benchmark. It ran 720x480 @ 60 FPS on
> the Saturn, and 640x480 @ 60 FPS on the PSX (higher than arcade resolution on both
> systems).
Yeah but it went from realtime 3D backgrounds on Model 2 to pre-rendered backgrounds on PSX so it didn't have to push anywhere near as much geometry around. Isn't that kind of cheating?
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: Heihachi_73]
#328962 - 07/31/14 04:51 AM
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> Of course, other games were simply dumbed down to reduce costs. For example, Street
> Fighter II on the SNES could easily have been better/more closer to the arcade, had
> it been given a larger ROM - for example, the sprites are tiny
With a quick glimps they looked same the CPS and SNES version, i remember seeing SNES advertised with Street Fighter 2 in the early 90's in a ad and i thought it looks just the same, but yeah with a longer look the sprites are larger and the character animation is better in the CPS version.
The CPS arcade hardware its CPU was about 3 times faster than SNES's and had double the VRAM, so if they made the sprites larger and better animated then it might of effected the frame-rate significantly, it might of been like them old dos games frame-rates, the CPS had a clock speed of 10mhz, SNES only 3mhz.
It was good enough, i loved it in the early 90's that game and the SNES, i had a Genesis at the time and wanted a SNES badly after seeing it advertised.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: R. Belmont]
#328971 - 07/31/14 11:26 AM
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> Dead or Alive is the canonical Model 2 porting benchmark. It ran 720x480 @ 60 FPS on
> the Saturn, and 640x480 @ 60 FPS on the PSX (higher than arcade resolution on both
> systems). Tecmo did a gorgeous job on both ports. Sega's own ports never quite showed
On paper Saturn may be as powerful in some ways but i go with what i see with my eyes.
They took their time with Manx TT and Sega Rally and they still looked horrible compared to the Model 2 versions.
The thing was Model 2 could process photo-realistic-textures in a % of their 3d animation and less ugly cartoony textures and run it at a silky smooth 60 or 120fps, the Saturn couldn't, everything looked cartoon in the Saturn ports of Daytona and Sega Rally and Manx TT and the Model 2 versions had some photo realistic side animation, a limited % but enough to make the games look amazing in their day, Virtual Fighter 2 the river level which the bridges were covered in them, is probably the most i seen used at the same time in a Model 2 game, Saturn games looked like Atari 2600 compared to it.
With the Dreamcast on the other hand there was no excuse, they just wanted to use the fast and easy way with the Model 3 ports except with VOOT, identical to the Model 3, they did a great job but they had to sell them Twin Sticks didn't they now, lol.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#328973 - 07/31/14 12:27 PM
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The days when arcade hardware outperformed anything on the home console were the good ole days IMHO. There was nothing like seeing Daytona USA running for the first time in the arcade, and knowing I had to drive to one in order to obtain that experience.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: R. Belmont]
#328976 - 07/31/14 03:14 PM
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> > It may have been a minority system in the US, but in Europe it was god like, with
> > millions of sales.
>
> Even in the countries where they did the best, the 16-bit machines never got close to
> the installed base numbers that the 8-bit giants like the C64 had. (The C64 was
> actually still selling when Commodore went under).
>
> And take off your parochial UK blinders, the Atari ST was god like in France ;-)
Yeah, at least Germany and most of Scandinavia were heavily Commodore territory, until Doom came out and everyone wanted a PC :P
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| R. Belmont |
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: Vas Crabb]
#328980 - 07/31/14 05:07 PM
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> Yeah but it went from realtime 3D backgrounds on Model 2 to pre-rendered backgrounds
> on PSX so it didn't have to push anywhere near as much geometry around. Isn't that
> kind of cheating?
I consider it to be a decent tradeoff given the fairly severe limitations. 640x480 takes up so much VRAM that you can't double buffer, so you must always run 60 FPS or the display will glitch.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: Outrun2006]
#329026 - 08/01/14 09:07 AM
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> The days when arcade hardware outperformed anything on the home console were the good
> ole days IMHO. There was nothing like seeing Daytona USA running for the first time
> in the arcade, and knowing I had to drive to one in order to obtain that experience.
Yeap Daytona had some magic about it, it was cause of the music as well. The Sega Saturn version played well, it just looked awful.
There was a shop across the road from my house when i was a little kid, i lost count of how many quarters i put in the Ghost and Goblins machine, compared to my Commodore 64 and Atari it was a great experience, i don't think i ever made it past level 2 but i kept trying, that was a challenging game.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: Ville Linde]
#329028 - 08/01/14 10:00 AM
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> > > It may have been a minority system in the US, but in Europe it was god like, with
> > > millions of sales.
> >
> > Even in the countries where they did the best, the 16-bit machines never got close
> to
> > the installed base numbers that the 8-bit giants like the C64 had. (The C64 was
> > actually still selling when Commodore went under).
> >
> > And take off your parochial UK blinders, the Atari ST was god like in France ;-)
>
> Yeah, at least Germany and most of Scandinavia were heavily Commodore territory,
> until Doom came out and everyone wanted a PC :P
Italy too was Commodore territory: as far as I can remember, everyone I knew at the time had a commodore 
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#329035 - 08/01/14 12:20 PM
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While Arcade versions of games looked better and played better, the most interesting games have always been produced for home systems, some of them old dos games were extremely fascinating like Flashback, and Super Metroid on SNES and Alundra on the PSX, games you could play for hours and hours and not get bored of.
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Re: Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
[Re: RetroFan4554]
#329149 - 08/03/14 10:45 AM
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> While Arcade versions of games looked better and played better, the most interesting
> games have always been produced for home systems, some of them old dos games were
> extremely fascinating like Flashback, and Super Metroid on SNES and Alundra on the
> PSX, games you could play for hours and hours and not get bored of.
Home consoles had games that could have more in-depth gameplay and more epic storylines since they didn't have to be designed around sucking down as many quarters as possible as quickly as possible? You don't say! 
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Story?? We don't need no stinkin story!
[Re: MooglyGuy]
#329348 - 08/05/14 08:38 PM
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.....as I load me up some early 80s games, and sit back and relish.....
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Why don't they produce arcade hardware that is ahead of the PC anymore!
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