Md 68k and hu6280 comparison

[Arkhan Asylum]

Oh please, ResQ is doable on the PCE.


and, its the 68000.  Not the 6800

[EvilEvoIX]

This argument has gone back and forth for years.  Look at the games and what the system is capable of.  Later MD games would be really hard to visualize on the PCE.  The PCE is really good at color and I think that is the systems strong suit.  The md has poor color but can be displayed cleverly.  Systems and chip sets have strengths and weaknesses.  In my experience the PCE does shooters really well.  The md certainly does animation better, and the snes did RPGs.  It was an amazing time as all systems were so different and had so much personality.  I don't think that the PCE suffered so much from it's "bit-ness" however it really does straddle the line between 8bit and 16bit.  When push comes to shove you won't see earthworm Jim on the PCE or Ranger x, at least not without noticeable sacrifices.

And yet the MD/Genesis couldn't give you a decent copy of BomberMan, Fatal Fury 2, Fatal Fury Special, or Art of Fighting to save its own life. Dracula X is far better then Bloodlines hoped to be, visually or otherwise. Snatcher, better looking on PCE. Raiden, better on PCE. This happens to be the case with most games, including all the arcade ports, that were on both systems, and there are plenty of games on PCE that are visually more appealing then Ranger X. Ranger X is mostly standard fare for the Genesis in its later life, with a few neat tricks in spots but honestly a lot of smaller to average sprites, dull looking colors and boring enemies and sub par audio. It's also another one of those titles that could have been done on on PCE, esp if on Super Cd. Yeah you'd lose the background scrolling, but fuck it, who cares. The sprites and over all detail and color in the game could have been improved, and over all that is more important.

The Genesis was a great system for being able to move a lot of stuff around the screen fast background wise. Regardless of that, a lot of the crap did not look that great as a whole. Low colors and a rough look are common among even the top tier Genesis titles, and Earthworm Jim is def not that impressive. Tiny to average sprites and a lot of filler spaces in the background art where there is no actual details. Other then the scrolling going on in the background, the game could have been done on PCE, with cleaner, better looking sprites for that matter. The sprite animation could have been handled fine. If you are going to name a game that really holds its own still on the Genesis, pick something like Lightning Force, Shinobi III or Sonic 2, but def not Ranger X or Earthworm Jim.

I'm not really going to go into the sound, people have their own preferences on that, and both systems are able to generate great music and voices when the right programmers are handling it. In the end though don't just assume that because it wasn't done on PCE that it simply can't be done. You may have to ditch some background scrolling, sure, but that is not what makes the game fun or over all visually appealing (and push come to shove, the PCE does have its own nifty tricks up its sleeve, see Vasteel or Metamor Jupiter for a couple of examples). Most everything else the PCE does better, hands down.  And back onto Earthworm for a sec, the only reason Earthworm Jim didn't even get a TG16 release was because Interplay/Shiney did not support Nec systems.

I'm sorry we are AGAIN going to ignore the CD memory storage (yes I know it's just a CD and no power added except tehzz biosessez) and the fact that some games get bad ports?  Are we to judge the TG-16 based upon Bravo-Man or the pile of shit we westerners were given?  Everyone is quick to make excuses for that plague of shit and everyone looks passed that.  So I say we get to look passed piles of shit on the MD as well and there are bad PORTS but you mean to tell me a game like UMK3 would run as well, with as much animation and speed, and proper sound FX; dreaming.  Even using the CD the loads alone would kill the game.

Look at Sonic 2, the amount of shit going on in that game, the quality of sound FX and Music and then the speed, no fucking way.  Way too much going on.

Look at fucking Altered Beast?  Why is that shittyness ignored?  Apples to Apples MD Vs. PCE.  Great Animation intro thanks to CD Rom, great voice over, then 8-bit shittyness.  What excuse is there?  Why couldn't the game look as good as the MD?  Look how choppy and darty the animation is?  The music sounds like it's coming from a Halmark Music Card.  And now you tell me Earthworm Jim can come from this?

How can this game be improved, seriously?  It can't do these style of games well so play on strengths.  Shooters, well all know the PCE does shooters.  I've been hammering my way through a stack of PCE SUper CD versions and great games.

More Apples to Apples?

I have Street Fighter for all systems (16-bit)  The PCE is VERY slow in running the game in comparison to the MD.  Prolly has something to do with the fact that the MD can handle more sprites and animation on screen than the PCE.  Just keep ignoring that.  Of course the MD could handle the ports with a CD add-on but it's unfair since the Sega CD is so much more powerful so again I point to Dynamite Headdy and Earthworm Jim.  Direct comparisons are hard to make but try to keep the games within the same years. Sonic 2 Vs. Bonk; really?  Mascot crazes was all there was back then, Mario, Sonic, Bonk.  They went toe to toe back then but the level of game play, depth of game play, and just the quality Bonk took a back seat. 

Music?  Not gona happen with those scratchy bleeps and bloops unless you go CD.  The animation?  Maybe but with so many dynamic tiles to pick up the slack you'll hit a limit faster.  Colors?  Duh.

Ranger X is standard indeed except when you rule out the fluidity, that much crap going on is not going to handle well on the PCE; sorry.  Did you ever play that game?  The controls alone are amazing.  Back in the day when reading game mags I always thought the SNES was superior (sales wise it was ;) ) when looking at screen shots.  What I failed to do is play the game.  Writhe with slowdown and poor controls.  Great still sprites.  Flash back to Ranger X.  The speed the game runs at, the depth of color (For the MD) is amazing and shade and highlight tricks bring it up to acceptable standards but obviously not PCE standards. 

Oh and this level, not gona happen on the PCE, sorry.


Not  gonna do Alien Soldier, not gona get a lot of Mega Drive games without sacrifice.  It'll look watered down like Altered Beast.  So many excuses flying around.  Later games are the biggest excuse, how is a systems success in the market place an issue?  I mean seriously how can a game from 1995 be excluded when the Turbo had games in 1995?

I will agree with one thing though, there is a LOT of Shit on the Mega Drive, almost as much as the TG16 Western Releases,  the pile of sports crap alone is enough to choke a horse.  I see the Mega Drive as  a superior system, and don't take that negatively but it can just do more stuff grafically intensive stuff.  Can you really imagine Vector man running just as well?  No?  Me neither.  RESQ?  Nope.  Certainly in the sound FX Dept very scratchy and lacks clarity on the PCE.  Not saying the MD hasn't any shit-fests on it's sound chips but when done right the sound just pumps absolute clarity.  One listen to Dynamite Headdy or Street of Rage and you can't imagine that quality coming from the PCE unless CD.  The Westerns certainly chose the MD did, the Japanese did not.  The MD owned the States and Europe, the PCE won Japan until unseated by the SNES.

Thanks again!!

[TurboXray]

We discussed with stef about bloc transfers, and it seems that 68k is very more efficient than 6280 in this department .
A peek of 2.2 cycles /bytes, and an average of 4.3 cycles for the 68k.

I'm assuming this is cpu only and not DMA from the VDP of the MD. Here's what I got:

Code Select Expand

68k:
  
memory->port copy:  
@loop
  move.l  (a0)+,(a1)      ;20 cycles.  20/4=5 cycles a byte. If the port is 32bits wide
  dbra    d0,@loop        ;10 cycles for each branch, 14 cycles for last no branch.
  
                          ;(20+10)/4= 7.5  cycles a byte. If the port is 32bits wide
  
@loop
  move.w  (a0)+,(a1)     ;12 cycles.  12/2=6  cycles a byte. If the port is 16bits wide
  dbra    d0,@loop        ;10 cycles for each branch, 14 cycles for last no branch.
  
                          ;(12+10)/2= 11 cycles a byte. If the port is 16bits wide

@loop
  move.b  (a0)+,(a1)      ;12 cycles.  12/1=12 cycles a byte. If the port is  8bits wide
  dbra    d0,@loop        ;10 cycles for each branch, 14 cycles for last no branch.
  
                          ;(12+10)/1= 22 cycles a byte. If the port is 8bits wide
  
 Note: doesn't include setup time to load source and destination regs
  


6280:
  
  TII,TDD                 ;6 cycles a byte
  TIN,TIA,TAI             ;6 cycles a byte (assuming not VDC destination)

 Note: doesn't include setup time to load source and destination regs
 If we did apples to apples comparison to block transfer, a 16bit port write, then the 6280 comes out ahead. I showed port write examples on the MD side, but memory->memory transfer is the same size for all data elements that I posted in the example because MD can do (An)+,(An)+ without extra over head of the second port increment. Of course, the 6280 has no penalty for memory to memory copies either. The 6280 even comes out ahead for 32bit memory->memory copies as well.

 Of course, you can bring down the overhead of the DBra by expanding the loop - but then you must adhere to the block copy segments (i.e. if it's 10 unrolled move.l then data transfer must be a multiple of 10 (long,word, or byte); no more or no less). If you unrolled the copy loop on the 68k side so that DBra is less than 1 cycle, then the 68k is only 1 cycle faster per byte copy to the 6280 (5 vs 6).

 But if you're gonna do something akin to unrolling a loop, MOVEM.L would be a better option:

Code Select Expand

@loop
  movem.l (a5),d0-d6/a0-a4    ; 8+(12*8) = 104
  adda.l  #12,a5              ; 6+8 = 14
  movem.l d0-d6/a0-a4,(a6)+   ; 12+(12*8)= 108
  dbra    d7,@loop            ;10 cycles for each branch, 14 cycles for last no branch.
  
                              ;104+108+14+10 = 236 cycles. 12 long words = 48 bytes. 236/48 = 4.9166 cycles per byte.
  
  Note: doesn't include setup time to load source and destination regs

 That's the max size I could transfer: 48 bytes (12 long word regs);  4.9166 cycles per byte.

You need one reg for the counter, one reg for the source address, one reg for the destination address and the stack is already taken with A7. And if your data chunk size needs to be less than that, the cycle count per byte goes up from there. What did stef post for memory moving code? Btw, I like stef. Stef's a good guy, but he's definitely a 68k fan and a little bit on the biased side (don't want to say fanboy, because I don't want to insult him).

[TurboXray]

... [some bullshit]

One, you don't know shit. All you do is look at games and determine the systems abilities. You have no clue what limitations any of these systems have, you just talk out your ass. Even Sega fans on Sega16 have corrected you on your ignorant ass assumptions of what any of these consoles can do, let alone the PCE/TG16. So w(hy)TF are you even here? This is a technical discussion about two processor; nothing else. You have NOTHING to contribute; so GTFO. Go post your bullshit in some other thread (make a new one or hijack some other thread).

I have Street Fighter for all systems (16-bit)  The PCE is VERY slow in running the game in comparison to the MD.  Prolly has something to do with the fact that the MD can handle more sprites and animation on screen than the PCE.  Just keep ignoring that.  Of course the MD could handle the ports with a CD add-on but it's un-fare since the Sega CD is so much more powerful so again I point to Dynamite Headdy and Earthworm Jim.

 SF2 runs slow? You mean because it's NOT turbo edition and therefore does not have the speed adjustment? The PCE doesn't struggle to run SF2. I looked into the game. I hacked the game to run animation for both characters at 60fps (a character update on every frame; not the stock ~12fps). So the PCE can easily transfer to vram; it's not limited there. I hacked the game logic to perform two frames into a single NTSC; that's 120fps. But not just game logic, but everything; line scrolls, map updating, frame updating, two channel sample playing an decompression - all the stuff it wouldn't normally have to do to run twice as fast. The game didn't slow down. Not to mention the CPU, the only cpu in the system, is doing other stuff the MD 68k is not doing; it's playing samples on TWO channels, as well as decompressing them in realtime (which takes up cpu resource). Dude, you don't know anything about anything.

 This discussion is about what's capable, not what was done. The PCE is much more capable that what most software for it, leads you to believe. If you don't want to believe that, then fine - but you have no understanding or experience to argue otherwise. All you do is troll bullshit about the PCE (on other forums and now you bring it here).

[EvilEvoIX]

He meant that the MD is better at hand-drawing with pencils than the PCE.

I wish I were being sarcastic.

LOL ..

I do not mean to be a pce fanboy, but there are some points where Md is better than PCE, and IMO not for CPU ..

It should not be a general CPU usage, because the main use is the game, and assembly was the main language, the c was trivial in professional studios.

The MD has lots of strengths over the PCE and vice versa, just as the SNES has strengths and weaknesses that balance out overall with the MD & PCE. But ever since evilevolx first declared that he "has all the roms", yet was unfamiliar with most games, he has been preaching that the PCE and its games are not in the same class as the MD and SNES and that it is instead in the higher end of the 8-bit generation.

It's pretty bad when you end up with everyone in a Genesis forum arguing against your Genesis>PCE opinions. It's even crazier to think that you'd find any more support for them here.

Here we go, we all forget to list the MAIN ingredient.  FUN.  Which was a better system, the NES or the Atari Jaguar?  You can argue Bits and bloops till teh cows came home but the NES rules.

We all forget the fun factor some times.  Oh and SHit Dick, I have all the games, and now all the systems and last I checked a CD Burner.  I've played the games, they are fun, stop it.  You guys get butt-hurt so easily and AGAIN I point out that hardware=shit when the software = shit.  Nobody seems to get their head around that.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Look at Sonic 2, the amount of shit going on in that game, the quality of sound FX and Music and then the speed, no fucking way.  Way too much going on.

There's not that much going on in Sonic 2.  Outside of the fancy bonus levels, double layers, and the fast speed.   You can do the fast speed stuff on the NES, for shits sake, dude.

Look at fucking Altered Beast?  Why is that shittyness ignored?  Apples to Apples MD Vs. PCE.  Great Animation intro thanks to CD Rom, great voice over, then 8-bit shittyness.  What excuse is there?  Why couldn't the game look as good as the MD?  Look how choppy and darty the animation is?  The music sounds like it's coming from a Halmark Music Card.  And now you tell me Earthworm Jim can come from this?

Apples To Apples?  Well then how about you compare the card version of Altered Beast, instead of the CD one.    That seems like a solid idea.   Not to mention, of course the Sega version is the best.  You think Sega wants the best version of their pack-in game on a different console?  Huhdrhrhrhrhr.

Also, comparing the sound chips is stupid.  Everyone's got preferences.   A lot of people think FM sounds like shit.

Also look at RELEASE DATES.  You know developers don't start out as experts on the system, right?  EWJ was way after Altered Beast.  

Altered Beast is a giant pile of shit compared to anything that came out just a few years later on the Genesis.

Direct comparisons are hard to make but try to keep the games within the same years. Sonic 2 Vs. Bonk; really?  Mascot crazes was all there was back then, Mario, Sonic, Bonk.  They went toe to toe back then but the level of game play, depth of game play, and just the quality Bonk took a back seat.  

the Bonk series is an entirely different type of platformer.   If Sonic didn't have you moving at ADHD rates through most of the game, there's hardly shit to do in that game.   Most of it's just watching loop-de-loops and cool twirly shit.  The platforming itself takes a backseat.

Bonk presents itself in a highly cartoon fashion.  I thought that was obvious.

Music?  Not gona happen with those scratchy bleeps and bloops unless you go CD.  The animation?  Maybe but with so many dynamic tiles to pick up the slack you'll hit a limit faster.  Colors?  Duh.

What?  Please stop.  The Genesis FM chip is not that glorious.   It's scratchy AND tinny.   I made a PC Engine version of Doom's level 1 music.  It sounds less shit than the Sega 32X version.   Also, go listen to shadow of the beast on Genesis, and then:

_{► /downloadables/sotb.mp3}

Check that out.    Draw your own conclusions.

Ranger X is standard indeed except when you rule out the fluidity, that much crap going on is not going to handle well on the PCE; sorry.  Did you ever play that game?  The controls alone are amazing.  Back in the day when reading game mags I always thought the SNES was superior (sales wise it was ;) ) when looking at screen shots.  What I failed to do is play the game.  Writhe with slowdown and poor controls.  Great still sprites.  Flash back to Ranger X.  The speed the game runs at, the depth of color (For the MD) is amazing and shade and highlight tricks bring it up to acceptable standards but obviously not PCE standards.  

I've determined that you have ADD and think that more distractions from simplicity = better.  Winds of Thunder is equally impressive compared to Ranger X.  Explain why the Sega CD one isn't as good as PCE CD?


You really should not comment on whats possible/not possible with CD vs. No CD.   Because alot of what you say kind of makes no sense.

Go look at Coryoon.  It's a card game.    Highly detailed/colorful/fast/full of things going on.   Its on a card.


You're too fanboyish about the Genesis.  It's a good system, but it's by no means vastly superior to PCE

[Nazi NecroPhile]

Here we go, we all forget to list the MAIN ingredient.  FUN.  Which was a better system, the NES or the Atari Jaguar?  You can argue Bits and bloops till teh cows came home but the NES rules.

We all forget the fun factor some times.  Oh and SHit Dick, I have all the games, and now all the systems and last I checked a CD Burner.  I've played the games, they are fun, stop it.  You guys get butt-hurt so easily and AGAIN I point out that hardware=shit when the software = shit.  Nobody seems to get their head around that.

This thread is clearly about TECHNICAL MERITS, you useless cunt. 

[EvilEvoIX]

This argument has gone back and forth for years.  Look at the games and what the system is capable of.  Later MD games would be really hard to visualize on the PCE.  The PCE is really good at color and I think that is the systems strong suit.  The md has poor color but can be displayed cleverly.  Systems and chip sets have strengths and weaknesses.  In my experience the PCE does shooters really well.  The md certainly does animation better, and the snes did RPGs.  It was an amazing time as all systems were so different and had so much personality.  I don't think that the PCE suffered so much from it's "bit-ness" however it really does straddle the line between 8bit and 16bit.  When push comes to shove you won't see earthworm Jim on the PCE or Ranger x, at least not without noticeable sacrifices.

Says the man who's lacks any real understanding or even experience coding for these systems. I *know* that you are here just to troll. Go back to Sega16, please.

 The PCE hucard setup lacks system ram. 8k is enough to handle all variables, but it's no where near enough to decompress and keep graphics in a buffer for fast access (like the Genesis and SNES). Thus piss poor compression schemes used and minimal animation. I've seen quite a few hucards store graphics in 8 color tile format (sprites and bg tiles) to save on space. The PCE was originally setup for 32k (you can see the evidence as the first 8k bank is mirror on the next three banks. The supergrafx actually fills those slots), and it that would have helped tremendously in using schemes like LZ compression BITD (like Genesis and SNES did).

 The PCE doesn't lack speed (game logic speed is faster than the snes and about even with the Genesis). The PCE doesn't lack vram bandwidth; it can write to vram during all of active display (if vblank isn't enough). It does have block transfer instructions which are essentially dma 'instructions'  (while not as fast the snes DMA or Genesis DMA, it's a hell of a lot faster than any manual copy method and the previous 8bit game platforms lacked this). The PCE doesn't lack VRAM; it has the same as the Genesis and SNES. Matter of fact, the PCE vram layout is like the Genesis in that it's pretty flexible as where to put stuff (tiles/sprites/SAT); unlike the snes that's more rigid in it's layout. The PCE's sprite scanline limit is also inline with the other two systems. The sprites can be any of the different sizes on screen like the Genenis and unlike the snes that's limited to only 2 sprite sizes per screen.

 The PCE being the first system out, of the next generation, does lack a few things compared to system that came out *afterwards*. And the second BG layer is pretty much the only thing to stand out. If you want to criticize the PCE, do it for that. Not all this other bullshit.



 Anyway, I thought this was supposed to be processor vs processor, and not game console vs game console. Let's get back on track.

Not quite extreme.   The more 16-bit operations you do, the more the 68k will begin to win out.   Unless you make frequent, proper use of the zero page.

So it really just depends what kind of game you're making.  What's really funny though, is you would most often be using 16 bit numbers for RPGs (for stats, EXP, gear, combat stuff), so you won't even notice that there's a speed difference.  Smile

Even if you gave the 68k the full benefit of doubt and said all 16bit operations are faster, how many 16bit operations do you have to execute per 1/60 frame in relation to everything else? I would think an RPG would be the lowest; it'd not like you're going to be hitting those on  1/60th frame basis (at least not for turn base RPGs).

 

Some other exemples, are super aleste, ans rendering ranger R2

The '816, even with its hindering 8bit data bus, would smoke both the 6280 and the 68k at the same clock speed. Even with the 8bit data bus, the '816 is faster at both 16bit and 32bit math cycle wise. But if the '816 had a model with a full 16bit data bus, it would just be stupidly crazy fast.

Yes i think so, this is the strong department of this machine, colors and sprites moving, but his sprites limit is very low for a certain kind of games, like beats them all.

I understand the 16 wide sprite cell setup on the pce, but it wouldn't have been that hard for have a 'half flag' in the SAT that would treat all sprites as 16x8 instead of 16x16. That goes a long way IMO. But that said, MD has a much better sprite size setup (smaller is better in this case) for beatem ups. But if you designed a beatem up from the ground up, you can get something better than Crest of the Wolf/Riot Zone. Check this out:  /SOR_exm_1.png
 All the sprites have been resized to 32 width segments (the top half are offset from the legs). Right there, that's seven 32 wide sprites per scanline. It's not busting the scanline limit. Of course, you wouldn't be fighting all 7 at once; take a note from the SOR2 and SOR3 games - move sprites to the top and bottom and have them wait (sometimes the game even moves them off screen). Also have them fall back really far (almost all the way off screen), etc. SOR2 and more so with SOR3, plays really dirty with the AI to keep the sprite scanline limit down.

FIRST OF ALL!!!!  Thank you for calling me a man.  Second of all, the thread is titled Md 68k and hu6280 comparison
So we are just comparing single chip sets here, not the whole multichip architecture.  Toe to toe between these two the MD68K is more powerful and can handle more operations so end of thread right?  Well wrong of course that would be silly, almost as silly as what you wrote above so allow me to retort.
I've played these systems to death.  Who knows more about what an Indy car or a NASCAR can do, the engineer or the driver?  Just because I didn't sit there with my dick in my hand and a computer keyboard in the other doesn't mean I don't know what these systems can do.  I have all three of them since day one, act one, scene one.  I have all the games now as well and years of experience.  One thing that is not acceptable is theoretical stuffs that haven't been done.  Technically the new Dodge Viper is geared to 300 MPH in top gear, so it's the fastest car in the world right?

About even with the Genesis in game logic, that's an interesting way to put it, some folks would call it SLOWER.  The SNES is a pile of shit in processing power but we all know it is designed with multi chip architecture to pull it's weight, just like the PCE.  Obviously if it was only the HU6280 we'd be calling it the NES 2.
It's not just the 2nd back ground layer.  The sound took a huge hit.  The CD add-on covered this beautify because no one can argue with CD quality sound but the actual sound FX are quite stratchy.  Now I didn't say they were not appealing, but man the sound is iffy at times.

Lets look at Bonks Revenge and Sonic 2, both came out around the same time, both were major mascots.  I think the MD could handle that game so long as the developer did something with the colors.  You mean to tell me you can get Sonic 2 on the PCE?  Seriously?  This is my point, hell even the NES had a decent port of Bonk with it's 24 colors or so.
My point is missed every time with the fanboi rose colored glasses however.  We all love the PCE, hell I have three versions of the systems and basically all the games.  It get's hours of my attention.  But in comparison of the hardware, specifically the specific chipsets in this particular thread, we all know which system is more powerful.

That's all my fingers hurt.

[touko]

Stef explanation was to use all registers to make bloc transfers ..
but you have a 80 cycles init before (if i'am right),and you can transfer 50/70 bytes at once .


Stef told me ,he had made a fast clear routine with 2.2 cycles/byte,and for logical copy at 4.3/4.4 for his dev kit .
i quote the translated message :

https://code.google.com/p/sgdk/source/browse/trunk/src/bmp_a.s

If you want you can have fun counting the cycles but basically with this routine I clear a buffer of 256x160 pixels (4bpp) is 20480 bytes in about 44,000 cycles.

Or 2.2 cycles / byte ... (thus a clear flow of 3.58 MB / s)
And the copy is logically happens about twice or 4.3-4.4 cycles / byte.
And then your 6280 is dropped, already in the copy, but the clear one is more related x3 ...

Link is for loading his routine source code .

@EvilEvoIX: for sound capabilities, the PCE chip is more flexible, you can make several kinds of sound than FM chip only in MD ..
And cherry on the pudding, you don't need a 68000+Z80+ all MIT employees for doing a single correct sample .

For SF2 i'am a big fanboy of snes version, and when i have played with the PCE version, nothing slow, i was surprised on how playing sensations are the same than snes ..
You can only blame the lack of second layer,nothing more ..
SF2 on PCE is a fucking good conversion, we can not say the same of the MD version, no slowdown, but large dithered graphics, and uggly sounds ..

[EvilEvoIX]

Look at Sonic 2, the amount of shit going on in that game, the quality of sound FX and Music and then the speed, no fucking way.  Way too much going on.

There's not that much going on in Sonic 2.  Outside of the fancy bonus levels, double layers, and the fast speed.   You can do the fast speed stuff on the NES, for shits sake, dude.

Look at fucking Altered Beast?  Why is that shittyness ignored?  Apples to Apples MD Vs. PCE.  Great Animation intro thanks to CD Rom, great voice over, then 8-bit shittyness.  What excuse is there?  Why couldn't the game look as good as the MD?  Look how choppy and darty the animation is?  The music sounds like it's coming from a Halmark Music Card.  And now you tell me Earthworm Jim can come from this?

Apples To Apples?  Well then how about you compare the card version of Altered Beast, instead of the CD one.    That seems like a solid idea.   Not to mention, of course the Sega version is the best.  You think Sega wants the best version of their pack-in game on a different console?  Huhdrhrhrhrhr.

Also, comparing the sound chips is stupid.  Everyone's got preferences.   A lot of people think FM sounds like shit.

Also look at RELEASE DATES.  You know developers don't start out as experts on the system, right?  EWJ was way after Altered Beast.  

Altered Beast is a giant pile of shit compared to anything that came out just a few years later on the Genesis.

Direct comparisons are hard to make but try to keep the games within the same years. Sonic 2 Vs. Bonk; really?  Mascot crazes was all there was back then, Mario, Sonic, Bonk.  They went toe to toe back then but the level of game play, depth of game play, and just the quality Bonk took a back seat.

the Bonk series is an entirely different type of platformer.   If Sonic didn't have you moving at ADHD rates through most of the game, there's hardly shit to do in that game.   Most of it's just watching loop-de-loops and cool twirly shit.  The platforming itself takes a backseat.

Bonk presents itself in a highly cartoon fashion.  I thought that was obvious.

Music?  Not gona happen with those scratchy bleeps and bloops unless you go CD.  The animation?  Maybe but with so many dynamic tiles to pick up the slack you'll hit a limit faster.  Colors?  Duh.

What?  Please stop.  The Genesis FM chip is not that glorious.   It's scratchy AND tinny.   I made a PC Engine version of Doom's level 1 music.  It sounds less shit than the Sega 32X version.   Also, go listen to shadow of the beast on Genesis, and then:

_{► /downloadables/sotb.mp3}

Check that out.    Draw your own conclusions.

Ranger X is standard indeed except when you rule out the fluidity, that much crap going on is not going to handle well on the PCE; sorry.  Did you ever play that game?  The controls alone are amazing.  Back in the day when reading game mags I always thought the SNES was superior (sales wise it was ;) ) when looking at screen shots.  What I failed to do is play the game.  Writhe with slowdown and poor controls.  Great still sprites.  Flash back to Ranger X.  The speed the game runs at, the depth of color (For the MD) is amazing and shade and highlight tricks bring it up to acceptable standards but obviously not PCE standards.

I've determined that you have ADD and think that more distractions from simplicity = better.  Winds of Thunder is equally impressive compared to Ranger X.  Explain why the Sega CD one isn't as good as PCE CD?


You really should not comment on whats possible/not possible with CD vs. No CD.   Because alot of what you say kind of makes no sense.

Go look at Coryoon.  It's a card game.    Highly detailed/colorful/fast/full of things going on.   Its on a card.


You're too fanboyish about the Genesis.  It's a good system, but it's by no means vastly superior to PCE

Right, Sonic 2 on the NES, and I'm the idiot.  Would it look like this?

Yup just like the Genesis ;)  What the fuck was I thinking?

Now I have to compare cards to Carts vs CD's?  Why do the rules keep changing? I thought the CD didn't count as an add on as it didn't add any horse power?  Preferences on sound chips?  Hey listen that is a 100% valid argument but comparing the sound quality from say a VHS Vs a Blue Ray you MAY prefer the VHS but one is technically better.  Now the MD and the PCE are not that far apart as the previous example but one is clearly better, certainly clearer.

Bonk is obviously a great game, I have all three on Chip, but when I sit down to play these things and the game is beat my first time through on all of them, there is something amiss.  Grafx wise just a bunch of still sprites with almost zero animation.   The fire in game is just rapid color changes.  Now in terms of Art Design it is indeed a work of art but serious lacks anything other than color to make it part of the next generation of console gaming.  There is nothing amazing going on in that game except for the style.

The genesis FM is indeed glorious.  What it lacked was competent hands.  Listen to Dynamite Headdy, listen to Earthworm Jim, Listen to Streets of Rage.  This is just not an argument.  You made sound using tech and know how from the 2000's, how about we keep this argument in the late 80's early 90's OK?  BTW you should see what is being done with the MD sound chip these days, but that's not fair right?  And I hope that sound clip you left me was a Joke because it sure sounded like it.
Not doing this, sorry.

You really can't compare the Sega CD to the Turbo CD as the Sega CD is so much more powerful as upgrades are SUPPOSED TO BE.

[TurboXray]

Stef explanation was to use all registers to make bloc transfers ..
but you have a 80 cycles init before (if i'am right),and you can transfer 50/70 bytes at once .


Stef told me ,he had made a fast clear routine with 2.2 cycles/byte,and for logical copy at 4.3/4.4 for his dev kit .
i quote the translated message :

https://code.google.com/p/sgdk/source/browse/trunk/src/bmp_a.s

If you want you can have fun counting the cycles but basically with this routine I clear a buffer of 256x160 pixels (4bpp) is 20480 bytes in about 44,000 cycles.

Or 2.2 cycles / byte ... (thus a clear flow of 3.58 MB / s)
And the copy is logically happens about twice or 4.3-4.4 cycles / byte.
And then your 6280 is dropped, already in the copy, but the clear one is more related x3 ...

Link is for loading his routine source code .

@EvilEvoIX: for sound capabilities, the PCE chip is more flexible, you can make several kinds of sound than FM chip only in MD ..
And cherry on the pudding, you don't need a 68000+Z80+ all MIT employees for doing a single correct sample .

I looked over the code; there's no memory copy at ~4.3cycles that I saw in there. First routine is just a clear buffer (writes zero's to the buffer). Yeah, 2.160 cycles per byte (doesn't include the overhead of setting up, so 2.2 sounds about right). But there is no mem copy code in there. There's just line drawing code; not memory->memory copy code. Look at the fill code list, it's just the same value written over and over (single register, multiple addresses). Btw, I always disliked GNU's assembler syntax for 68k.

 So he's talking about fills. I thought you meant memory copy (memory->memory or memory->port). But yeah, it's got the 6280 beat on fills. Even if I did a super code list like his (even larger), the fastest to fill would be 5 cycles per byte (excluding setup overhead).


EvilEvoIX: Make a new thread somewhere else. Say, PCE/SGX subforum or TG16 area. Or hell, even in this subforum (although since you have nothing technical to bring to the table, I don't think it the appropriate subforum for it). But for fuck sake, take it somewhere else.

 Edit: oh and:

Who knows more about what an Indy car or a NASCAR can do, the engineer or the driver?

Really? That's a piss poor analogy, annnddd self defeating. Wtf makes you think I haven't played all these games into the ground? I was gamer long before I was a coder. Secondly, I owned all three system back in the day and would import games even before they came out (I played Ex-ranza way before it came out in NA as Ranger-X). On top of that, that analogy makes no sense. You played the games, you didn't develop the games. There's gamers, then there's developers, and there's what the system can actually do. You're just a gamer; your analogy is invalid.

[PCEngineHell]

This is an argument I've been rehashing for months.  Look at the roms I have and ignore what the system is capable of.  MD games are impossible for me to visualize on the PCE.  The PCE is really cute and I think that is the systems strong suit.  The md has poor color but I can be fooled by simple tricks.  Systems and chip sets have strengths and weaknesses which I cherry pick to acknowledge.  In my experience, I have only seen the PCE do shooters.  The md certainly hand-draws cartoons better, and the snes has more RPGs in english.  It was an amazing time that I missed out on, or so I am told, as all systems were said to be so different and had so much personality.  I don't think that the PCE suffered so much from it's "bit-ness" however it really does straddle the line between NES and SMS.  When push comes to shove you could see Sapphire on the MD or Lords of Thunder, without any noticeable sacrifices.

Fixed.

Here we go again.

Man I had all three systems in the day.  Idk why my opinion is being dismissed.  Arguing the specific chipset we all know the M6800 is a more powerful processor.  The MD was given a lot more tools to work with.  It lacks color.

Only the parts of your opinions which dismiss and ignore all presented facts. See this latest comment for example. Did you even read any of the tech talk before ignoring it and just re-posting the same stuff again?

Butt-hurt?  Sorry you feel that way :/


I have the express, the tg16 and now the duo r.  I forgot how much Bloody Wolf looks like Gunstar;).  The 6800 is more powerful SND can do more.  As stated in previous threads the PCE can run 8bit data really well but in comparison to the md with 16/32bit stuff it falls behind.  You are not gona run Resq on the PCE.  Keep ignoring those facts?

You even have programmers here even telling you otherwise, and a quite massive library of games to import and play on PCE before you make such uneducated statements. I'm sorry, but you are just not correct, and you honestly don't have enough experience with the PCE library, both hucard and cd wise to make these kind of baseless statements. It's not even like you have had the Duo-R forever, you just bout it off me a short while ago. I seriously doubt within that time you have amassed 300+ of the best titles for the system.

The video processor in the Genesis was not that great and took some real talent to make some great looking titles on the system, and the 68000 used in the Genesis was hampered by a low clock rate too. You shouldn't class the one used in the Genesis with everything else out there using a 68000. There was multiple versions of the cpu used using multiple clock rates and the one used for the Genesis was not one of the best, it was one of the worst versions.

I get it, your a die hard Genesis fan, and there is no shame in that. Everyone has their own preferences, but your opinion isn't fact, and your argument you keep presenting are just not put together well and the examples you bring to the table as proof are rather terrible examples of what the Genesis really could do well. I suggest picking up 200-250 of the best titles PCE has to offer. And no I don't mean playing some roms. I mean sitting down and playing real copies of titles on both CD and hucard. When you do this YOU WILL start to notice that most every game you buy that also has a Genesis version, the PCE version is going to look, play, and probably even sound better.

Before you start touting here in the tech section the power of the Genesis compared to the power of the PCE, you need to either have extensive experience with the large library of BOTH and come back with real side by side examples video or pic wise, and preferably some background experience in programming for both if you want to get into the nitty gritty. There are a few people here doing active programing that you are arguing with and its making you look like a idiot.

Concerning ResQ, yeah coulda been done easily. Nothing against Jason Backhouse, but again this is another shining example of the Genesis doing a nice background scroll and adding it to an otherwise mundane/average looking game (I will pretend I didn't ever see the terrible 3D bonus stages that have really bad 3D polygon graphics running in very low fps that drag the game down further). Tiny sprites, not much use of color going on, and a average soundtrack. Just on visuals alone pitting that one against other Psygnosis titles, Shadow of the Beast is visually more impressive then that game. Hell even Kim Power on PCE looks better and I fucking hate Jim Power.

Like I said also, you are picking some really terrible examples title wise when trying to brag about what the Genesis could do. Due to the way the Genesis did handle visuals when maxed out, there are actually a few really high quality titles done on the machine that wouldn't carry over as well to PCE  at all due to the background scrolling being integral to the over all look (ie Shinobi 3), but Earthworm Jim and ResQ are def not one of them. It sounds like you are being impressed by the Genesis for all the wrong reasons.

Even stuff like Alien Soldier, it does have some pretty large sprites and some impressive things do go on, but over all its a very noisy game and visually is not pretty. Its one of those that just pushed a lot of large objects with ok to subpar colors around really fast. I had Ranger X, and I have Hercs copy sitting here right now. I have played through it before. I don't care for the game. Its not as action packed as you make it out to be, and the stage you reference is not as impressive as the stage trickery done later in the game on Metamor Jupiter on PCE.

And thats not to say something like Shinobi 3 couldn't be done, but again, due to the way the backgrounds moved and looked, sacrifices would have to be made, and some trickery done, otherwise you'd end up with a more plain looking background. The trade off would obviously be better looking sprites and colors though in spots. The core of the game could easily be retained.

I have Street Fighter for all systems (16-bit)  The PCE is VERY slow in running the game in comparison to the MD.  Prolly has something to do with the fact that the MD can handle more sprites and animation on screen than the PCE.  Just keep ignoring that.  Of course the MD could handle the ports with a CD add-on but it's unfair since the Sega CD is so much more powerful so again I point to Dynamite Headdy and Earthworm Jim.

Street Fighter II slow? Really, you kidding me? It plays just as fast as its supposed to be, Its Champion Edition, not Turbo. It sounds better on PCE to boot. The Genesis port sounds terrible and some details on the Genesis port look meh. This is moot anyway. Again, the Genesis couldn't do a good port of Fatal Fury 2, Fatal Fury Special, World Heroes 2, or Art of Fighting to save its life. And don't forget, it damn well tried, via efforts from both Takara and Sega that ended up being fail, just like most every other arcade port that was on both systems. The PCE version of those games are awesome. Those titles are also visually quite a bit more impressive the the PCE, Snes, and Genesis SF2 ports, easily.

Sega CD you say? Well, they had Lords of Thunder, and it wasn't as good on Sega CD. Snatcher you say? Looks better on PCE (Dead in the Brain on PCE also looks better then Snatcher Sega CD). Fatal Fury Special on Sega CD? Yeah, it was crap, and the PCE curb stomps it. Any of the RPG titles on Sega CD, well, they are good to great sure, but there are better ones done on PCE by far. The Sega CD did one thing really well, and that was hardware scaling. For such a bigger hardware upgrade with a cd drive and all, I would have expected better games in general, but they were just not there. THAT IS A FACT. You bought a really expensive piece of crap that made a couple of impressive Batman simulators and SoulStar. Most everything else that was on it could have been done on Genesis minus the cd audio and crap FMV. Enjoy.

Direct comparisons are hard to make but try to keep the games within the same years. Sonic 2 Vs. Bonk; really?  Mascot crazes was all there was back then, Mario, Sonic, Bonk.  They went toe to toe back then but the level of game play, depth of game play, and just the quality Bonk took a back seat.

Sonic 2? I like Sonic 2 to an extent and all, but come on, Sonic does what? Runs, Thats mainly all the fuck he does. The game was built around that. The actual gameplay is not impressive and not as fun as Bonks Revenge, let alone Super Mario World. Visually I agree its a great looking game in motion and there is little like it outside of maybe Bubsy. Its another one of the few examples of the Genesis moving the background graphics around rather well and actually maintaining a good look to it. Its not even a fair comparison because the games are not even remotely similar in visuals or anything. I mean seriously though, it wouldn't even be fair to compare the Bonks on Snes to Sonic 2 due to the totally different approach Sonic games take. I'd rather not compare Sonic 1-3 to anything other then other Sonic titles, or Bubsy.

The visuals are made around the way the game was designed to play. You hardly have to fight or kill any enemies in Sonic 2. What enemies are there are usually tiny and not all that great visually. Most of the visual efforts were put into the stage graphics and the stages were designed to be giant pretty video game versions of Hot Wheels stunt tracks. All you have to do is be good at timing your jumps while you speed through the stages. If your idea of fun is just blasting through a few sets of nice visuals then cool, but I'd rather get more interaction out of my games, and Sonic 2 can be one of those rather un-engaging games at times where you just wonder when the cpu is finally going to try to stop you outside of a boss battle or the air plane stage. Its almost sounds as if in some ways you are willing to choose a few pretty visuals over actual gameplay, and that's a terrible compromise. Sonic is one of those game series that I was rather glad was left to the Genesis due to its lack of substance.


This is one of those times where I'd have to say the typical Japanese gamer had better taste in games then typical gamers in North America did at times. The arguments you are making are basically the same kind 12 year olds made against the Snes during its battle with the Genesis, and there is no damn way I'd choose Sonic 2 over Super Mario World. I dont care how fucking fast Sonic can run. You are too easily razzle dazzled.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Right, Sonic 2 on the NES, and I'm the idiot.  Would it look like this?

https://youtu.be/Iyqmm3ecxUs

Yup just like the Genesis ;)  What the fuck was I thinking?

Uh, rather than compare it to some goony hack video, try using your head instead.  

Or how about Sonic 2 for game gear.   That uses a z80.   It's 8-bit, and done properly because professionals did it, instead of some hackjobs. What now?  

NES is capable of doing games that move as fast as Sonic.  It's not really much of anything to scroll around fast.  

Now I have to compare cards to Carts vs CD's?  Why do the rules keep changing? I thought the CD didn't count as an add on as it didn't add any horse power?  Preferences on sound chips?  Hey listen that is a 100% valid argument but comparing the sound quality from say a VHS Vs a Blue Ray you MAY prefer the VHS but one is technically better.  Now the MD and the PCE are not that far apart as the previous example but one is clearly better, certainly clearer.

Yes, you said apples to apples.  If Altered Beast was a Mega CD game, you can bet it might have some of the same goofy animation.   It's fair to do cart vs. cart.   You just want to have it your way because otherwise your argument is less useful.

Bonk is obviously a great game, I have all three on Chip, but when I sit down to play these things and the game is beat my first time through on all of them, there is something amiss.  Grafx wise just a bunch of still sprites with almost zero animation.   The fire in game is just rapid color changes.  Now in terms of Art Design it is indeed a work of art but serious lacks anything other than color to make it part of the next generation of console gaming.  There is nothing amazing going on in that game except for the style.

There's nothing amazing going on in Sonic aside from the ADD loop de loops and hot wheels race tracks.  What about Super Mario World?  It's slow paced, and mostly just has sprawling levels to go through.

Sonic is full of simple shading and gradients, too.  What's your point?

Bonk is a cartoony platformer, and it does it perfectly.   The game play is more than solid, and the gameplay is also more interesting than Sonic.  I like Sonic alot, but I prefer Bonk.

The genesis FM is indeed glorious.  What it lacked was competent hands.  Listen to Dynamite Headdy, listen to Earthworm Jim, Listen to Streets of Rage.  This is just not an argument.  You made sound using tech and know how from the 2000's,

I made sound using the same tech and know how that would have been used in 1987 on the PC Engine.   It's called MML and it has existed since the 80s.   It's the exact same way music was made professionally back then for various platforms.

I made it using notepad.  That's a text editor.   They had those in the 80s.  

how about we keep this argument in the late 80's early 90's OK?

Mind explaining why you used a ROM hack as your point of argument above, then?   That was made with modern know how/tech.  

Or, was that OK to do since it keeps your argument from falling on it's face.

BTW you should see what is being done with the MD sound chip these days, but that's not fair right?  And I hope that sound clip you left me was a Joke because it sure sounded like it.

It wasn't a joke.  It was a demonstration of Shadow of the Beast's song, done on the PC Engine.   It doesn't sound out of line with what you might have heard on the MD version, had that song actually appeared in the game.   It didn't though.

You really can't compare the Sega CD to the Turbo CD as the Sega CD is so much more powerful as upgrades are SUPPOSED TO BE.

Then, how come Winds of Thunder isn't as good on the Mega CD?

Why is Snatcher better looking on PCE CD?  

Why does Ecco the Dolphin look basically the same between versions?

How come PCE CD RPGs look just as good, if not better, than stuff like Lunar 2?





I really think you need to drop the Sega fanboyism, and go pound sand somewhere instead of pissing all over a thread with your ignorant jive.


EDIT:  I just caught ProfProf's post after posting mine, and Loled because I basically echoed him.


HOTWHEELS SONIC EDITION.  NOW WITH SPINDASH LOOP DE LOOP POWERRRRRRRRRRRR

[touko]

I looked over the code; there's no memory copy at ~4.3cycles that I saw in there. First routine is just a clear buffer (writes zero's to the buffer). Yeah, 2.160 cycles per byte (doesn't include the overhead of setting up, so 2.2 sounds about right). But there is no mem copy code in there. There's just line drawing code; not memory->memory copy code. Look at the fill code list, it's just the same value written over and over (single register, multiple addresses). Btw, I always disliked GNU's assembler syntax for 68k.

 So he's talking about fills. I thought you meant memory copy (memory->memory or memory->port). But yeah, it's got the 6280 beat on fills. Even if I did a super code list like his (even larger), the fastest to fill would be 5 cycles per byte (excluding setup overhead).

Thank you for looking at the code .
The 4.4 cycles is for mem to mem copy, he's unroll all movem copy, but for each he use all available registers .

if I find the code, i'll show you tom .

[PCEngineHell]

I forgot about this remark:

Now I have to compare cards to Carts vs CD's?  Why do the rules keep changing?

Actually they never did change. The Pc-Engine platform evolved from a Hu-card format into a compact disc one. Its not like the Genesis where development mainly continued to focus on the cart format and the Sega and Mega Cd were playing 2nd fiddle after they were added years later. Development for the Pc-Engine slowly switched gears from mostly hucard to mostly the cd format after Super Cd-Rom was made available. The cd-rom drive was available to the PCE less then a year after it's initial release. Its something they were slowly building up to with each system card release and system revision. This is simply how it is, and you may feel that's unfair, but who cares, that's life. Game systems will never be even remotely apples to apples when it concerns anything prior to 2005. You wouldn't have a problem comparing the PS1 and Saturn to the Nintendo 64, and yet the first two use cd formats, so why does it matter to you that the PCE did also? Cd wasn't treated as a simple add on in regards to the PCE/TG16, and it didn't take a back seat to the hu-card side of things in Japan.

And personally, I don't care if you want to include the Sega CD into the equation, because outside of a few shining examples of games with solid scaling, all it does is bring a bunch titles that could have been done on Genesis, and bring a ton of fail to the table. The best RPGS the Sega Cd has to offer cant stand up next to the best ones the PCE has. You might as well forget action games. As good as The Terminator is, the Sega Cd has nothing to go toe to toe against Dracula X. Fighting games? Yeah other then the garbage SNK ports and a still half assed port of MK, all you got is Eternal Champions, and outside of the FMV, it could have been a cart game. What little it has shooter wise is topped by whats on both hu-card and cd wise on PCE. If you factor in the Sega Cd and its library, it makes the Genesis look worse rather then better.

[Vecanti]

You really can't compare the Sega CD to the Turbo CD as the Sega CD is so much more powerful as upgrades are SUPPOSED TO BE.

The PC Engine CD wasn't an upgrade.  It was released around the same time as the system (within `5 months) it was an accessory.  That was one of the disappointing things about the Sega CD I remember when it came out. It had +3 years (an eternity back then) of technological advantage to take advantage of extra CPUs more system ram and really here we are arguing if the Sega CD was really any better.  Maybe it was the devs fault for making so much FMV crapware. ;)  But still PC Engine CD came out in frinkin' 1988 and pretty much blows the Sega CD out of the water from a "fun" perspective and even technical perspective when you look at things like Sapphire and Neo Geo ports.

[TurboXray]

I looked over the code; there's no memory copy at ~4.3cycles that I saw in there. First routine is just a clear buffer (writes zero's to the buffer). Yeah, 2.160 cycles per byte (doesn't include the overhead of setting up, so 2.2 sounds about right). But there is no mem copy code in there. There's just line drawing code; not memory->memory copy code. Look at the fill code list, it's just the same value written over and over (single register, multiple addresses). Btw, I always disliked GNU's assembler syntax for 68k.

 So he's talking about fills. I thought you meant memory copy (memory->memory or memory->port). But yeah, it's got the 6280 beat on fills. Even if I did a super code list like his (even larger), the fastest to fill would be 5 cycles per byte (excluding setup overhead).

Thank you for looking at the code .
The 4.4 cycles is for mem to mem copy, he's unroll all movem copy, but for each he use all available registers .

if I find the code, i'll show you tom .

If you used all 16 regs (that means disabling the interrupt register so it doesn't mess with A7 stack), you get 4.5 cycles a byte.

Code Select Expand

 
  movem.l abs.l,d0-d7/a0-a7    ; 20+( 16*8 ) = 148
  movem.l d0-d7/a0-a7,abs.w    ; 12+( 16*8 )= 140
                               ; 148+140= 288 cycles. 16*4=64 bytes. 288/64= 4.5 cycles per byte


 I mean, that's being realistic; the source address is long so you can copy from anywhere in rom (the first instruction). If used ABS.w (base opcode cycle count of 16 instead of 20), that means you can only copy from the first 32k of rom (of the whole address range) or the last 32k of ram. That seems a bit limiting, but it does give you 4.4375 cycles per byte.




But... that's a one time shot. If you put it in a loop, you don't get that (at least from what I tried to do):

Code Select Expand

@loop

@opc1    
  movem.l abs.l,d0-d7/a0-a7   ; 20+(16*8) = 148
  addi.l  #16,(@opc1+2).w     ; 20+8=28
@opc2  
  movem.l d0-d7/a0-a7,abs.w   ; 12+(16*8)= 124
  addi.w  #16,(@opc2+2).w     ; 12+8=20

                              ; 148+28+20+140= 320 cycles. 16*4=64 bytes. 320/64= 5 cycles per byte

  subq.w  1,abs.w             ; 8+8=16 cycles.
  bvc     @loop               ; 10 cycles
(self modifying code. I'm not sure I got the address part of the opcode offset right, but the logic is there. Also, you need to pad/offset the opcode, before the loop, so the long address of the opcode is long word aligned - else it won't work on the real system).

 You'd have to unroll that 26 times in order to get rid of the decrement/loop overhead. That gives you 5 cycles per byte using all 16 regs in an unrolled loop (if I did my math right). Also requires a larger over head of presetting all those address (52 of them). On top of that, it's limited because you can only do small chunk copies at a time if you wanted linear copy style ('cause after 26 times, the addresses need to be reset), unless you totally reorganized the source data... then shit starts to get real complicated - real quick. It's very limited IMO.

 I thought it was faster not to use all the regs for MOVEM:

Code Select Expand

 @loop
    
  movem.l (a7),d0-d7/a0-a5    ; 8+(14*8) = 120
  adda.l  #14,a7              ; 8+8 = 16
  movem.l d0-d7/a0-a5,-(a6)   ; 12+(14*8)= 124
                              ; 120+16+124= 260 cycles. 14*4=56 bytes. 260/56= 4.642 cycles per byte

  subq.w  1,abs.w             ; 8+8=16 cycles.
  bvc     @loop               ; 10 cycles
 
Using 14 regs at 4.642 cycles per byte if the loop unrolled 26 times. It has little over head and is very flexible in size operand of the routine.


 I'd like to see what stef came up with.

[EvilEvoIX]

This thread keeps going but I'll make it simple and save the novel.

Everyone and their mother agrees the M68k ALONE is a more capable CPU than the hu6280 alone.  We all know this and this is the answer to the thread.  the 68K is extremely capable and can has been used in home consoles, computers, arcades, etc.  It is so versatile it is still being used to this day 30 years later.  Fon Boi facts aside it is a better processor.  I have every game for the MD/Genesis, I have every game for the TG16/PCE.  It's not hard these days.

I keep hearing arguments from programmers but not evidence.  I am playing these games and have been for 20 years now.  Every argument I make against the PCE there is a group of guys holding hands and making excuses for the short fall.  I point out obvius deficiencies and it is deflected better than the most seasoned politician could ever hope.  I shore the superiorities and some of you write it off as an easy thing for the PCE to do.  The PCE can move sprites around the screen fast.  It can't do true multi-scrolling backgrounds but in shooters it can still get a parallax effect with stars or tiles.  Otherwise toe to toe I see a deficit.  Makes perfect sense as the system was from 1987 and was between the 8-bit 16-bit leap.  Hell the MD had short sightedness in that it thought 64 colors would be enough.

FYI I am more of a Neo Geo fan boi.  The Genesis I like as it is dirt cheap to collect for and easy to find, you can get it everywhere.

[EvilEvoIX]

You really can't compare the Sega CD to the Turbo CD as the Sega CD is so much more powerful as upgrades are SUPPOSED TO BE.

The PC Engine CD wasn't an upgrade.  It was released around the same time as the system (within `5 months) it was an accessory.  That was one of the disappointing things about the Sega CD I remember when it came out. It had +3 years (an eternity back then) of technological advantage to take advantage of extra CPUs more system ram and really here we are arguing if the Sega CD was really any better.  Maybe it was the devs fault for making so much FMV crapware. ;)  But still PC Engine CD came out in frinkin' 1988 and pretty much blows the Sega CD out of the water from a "fun" perspective and even technical perspective when you look at things like Sapphire and Neo Geo ports.

I feel the Turbo used it's CD technology better than the Sega CD.  Mostly because of the FMV shovel ware.  All I was stating is that if you are going to go through the trouble of making a CD upgrade, give it some power like the Sega CD.  The Sega CD shoulda added more color and the 32X shoulda never existed.

[Tatsujin]

I have every game for the MD/Genesis, I have every game for the TG16/PCE.  It's not hard these days.

btw. you are repeating yourself since months, telling pure made up out of thin air crap, and what is correct is the obvious stuff every 3 year old knows by today.

WE ALL KNOW IT LACKS HARDWARE PARALLAX SCROLLING.
WE ALL KNOW IT HAS BETTER COLORS THAN THE MD.
WE ALL KNOW IT IT CAN MOVE SPRITES FAST AND A LOT OF 'EM.
WE ALL KNOW IT IS GOOD AT SHOOTERS..

so please do not repeat that crap again and again, several times on one single page.

And as for your argument programmer vs. gamer (driver vs. mechanics), I am sure most of the peeps in here are gamers since DAY ONE as well. had all the systems back then and still up until today as well. played tousands of these games as well. so you are not the fucking only guy on this planet who played that shit and therefore has the ulitmate license to judge on what is good and what not.

most in here even have 100x more original games than you probably ever will have. it always amuses me when some clowns come in and proudly brags about having every fucking game for every existing system....on one single HDD.

[EvilEvoIX]

I have every game for the MD/Genesis, I have every game for the TG16/PCE.  It's not hard these days.

btw. you are repeating yourself since months, telling pure made up out of thin air crap, and what is correct is the obvious stuff every 3 year old knows by today.

WE ALL KNOW IT LACKS HARDWARE PARALLAX SCROLLING.
WE ALL KNOW IT HAS BETTER COLORS THAN THE MD.
WE ALL KNOW IT IT CAN MOVE SPRITES FAST AND A LOT OF 'EM.
WE ALL KNOW IT IS GOOD AT SHOOTERS..

so please do not repeat that crap again and again, several times on one single page.

And as for your argument programmer vs. gamer (driver vs. mechanics), I am sure most of the peeps in here are gamers since DAY ONE as well. had all the systems back then and still up until today as well. played tousands of these games as well. so you are not the fucking only guy on this planet who played that shit and therefore has the ulitmate license to judge on what is good and what not.

most in here even have 100x more original games than you probably ever will have. it always amuses me when some clowns come in and proudly brags about having every fucking game for every existing system....on one single HDD.

Funny, I was gona say that you guys repeated yourselves as well.  However this is a PCE site and I will always have an up hill battle.  Pure made up crap?  IDK how many vids I posted in reference to limits and constraints and I believe me I don't have a movie studio making all these propaganda vids so maybe watch them with your rose colored glasses off?

I had the privilege of growing up with a programmer/engineer.  Truth be told my number one system growing up was my PC.  I still had the consoles and my dad would call them shit and I was wasting my money but I enjoyed the console gaming.  I spent half of my free time and would pray for rain so I wouldn't get thrown out of my house on a sunny day.  You get behind the wheel so to speak and you see what a system can do.  The SNES has amazing color and a bag of tricks to do heavy lifting but slows down if you tap the A button too fast.  The PCE has that eye popping color and sprite capability but not so much when pushing muti scrolling and intense animation.  The MD did it all.  You had to twist it's arm to get color but approaching 200 colors with simple tricks isn't too shabby.  Seriously what can the Md 68k and hu6280 comparison give us now?  We already know what these two chips are capable and we already know which one has been used millions of times more; why is there any confusion?  You are mixing PASSION with REALITY. 

FYO that M68K you guys like to brush over has been the choice of programmers and hardware manufacturers for over 30 years now.  Nothing reveals success and usability more than a long history.

You are getting upset because some guy on the internet is giving so comparisons about the System (Team, Religion, Partition politics and insert your talking head news argument here, it's all the same thing).  Trouble is everyone I know or ever knew seems to agree with me, in fact this is the only site that seems to have trouble understanding what is obvious to anyone with a pair of ears and eyes.  The amount of excuses being made and the amount of facts just obliterated are beyond even what I get on www.neo-geo.com and that is saying something.  Why can't you understand that if something is less capable doesn't mean it is inferior?  Basically we are dealing with an interactive form of electro-art.  When something doesn't age or bend to the will of the masses it becomes a classic.  The PCE is etched into gaming history and left a huge foot print, doesn't that make you happy?  We all know why the PCE used a 8-Bit processor, back in 1987 it was just more cost effective, it even added the two additional chips for more power.  It was originally designed to be the Super Nintendo.  Nintendo didn't like it and passed.  That happened once again and we got the Playstation.

You have 100x more original games than me, where do I mail you your medal?  If not I can fly to your location and personally give you a high 5.  Your choice.

[EvilEvoIX]

Nice quote I found on the 16 Bit Trio we all love....

Speed wise?

The cut and dry here:

Genesis:  This wins CPU wise.  It's a great 68k CPU.  The addressing modes and 16-bitness, coupled with the actual speed of the CPU make it an excellent processor.  The color choices are the crippler of the genesis.  The CPU itself is superb.  The instruction set is cleverly designed for maximum potential.  It even handles C very well.  Ecco the Dolphin was done entirely in C.  This sort of thing doesn't occur with a 6502.  The TG-16 chokes on C.  It can't process all of the overhead of C without denting performance.

Lets also not forget, it has the z80 onboard as well. 

TG16: I am a TG-16 fanboy.  I love this thing.  I just wish it had a 16-bit CPU.  The 65C02 is the fastest 8bit CPU in the 6502 family.  A similar example is the Apple IIc+.  Try running some of the old old Apple II games on a IIC+ without holding escape to toggle it to slow mode.  Your games are unplayable.  Falcons is warpspeed.  You die.

It really can powerhouse through computations.  However, it is still limited in it's uses because of its 8-bitness, and it's 6502 based quirks.  When this thing is coerced properly, it is an excellent CPU.  The new features the 65C02 adds

Plus, the TG-16's color choices didn't suck.  That's why the shooters are so arcade-close, and the performance is so great.  It is a great CPU all around.  Definitely the nicest 6502 based CPU.


SNES: WTF is all I can say.  It's a 65816.  Its the successor to the 65C02, but the one in the SNES is balls-frigging-slow.  Yes it gets the benefits of 16 bit operations, but its still so frikking slow that it doesn't really matter. It sort of cancels itself out by being so slow.  It's like having a Ferarri that can only shift into 3rd gear.

The SuperCPU for C64, now there is an actual example of a 65816 being used right.  This was a wasted opportunity for the SNES.  If they'd clocked the thing higher, it would have been excellent.

Plus, it's backwards compatible with the 6502 based CPUs before it.  It supports all of the things the 65C02 does!

But, if you were to run code from a TG-16 on a SNES, it'd fuckin run slower than shit because the CPU is going to process it as it were (compatible with the 65C02), but do it like half as fast.

Totally blows.


I actually have this really cool chart in a book somewhere (I will find it!), that shows the features of the various 6502 variants in comparison to each other.  It's a better example of what makes each sucessor better than the previous.  I'll scan that thing and post in here.  It's better than typing it all out in a text-wall.

You'll be able to see why the TG-16 was such a nice machine CPU wise, and why the SNES should have basically stomped it, but wasn't able to due to it's clock speed being so damn slow.

comparing raw CPU stuff is only half the picture here though.  When you consider what else was going on, each machine has other pros/cons.

Like the color comparisons.  The TG wins out on that, but loses out on background planes.

This post probably sucks.   I suck at explaining technical shit.

Now I basically agree with this, am I wrong?

[HercTNT]

I don't have a much of a dog in this fight as i clearly don't know shit about the internal workings of these cpu's. I would like to point out though, that if the original argument was "which cpu is better", then you were given an answer Evil. I believe bonknuts quite clearly provided testing information stating the technical pro's and cons of each chip. I believe based on that information, it was pointed out that these chips are fairly equal depending on how they are used. You claimed no programmer or tech gave you an answer, they clearly did. It may not have been the answer you wanted, but it was a definite answer. If your not biased then why did you disregard the answer you were given, on point to the topic no less? I really could care less who's right as the topic is a moot point. However, if your trying to take the high road and not look like a chest thumping fan boi, Then why did you not accept the answer you were given? You don't have to like it, but you don't have to lie about it either. The answer was not evening damning for your precious chip. You were told that both cpu's were basically even? Not entirely sure why that bothers you so much. Worse is, if your so upset about people being off topic, why the hell are you going on and on about what chip was used more. I use a fork more than a spoon, does not mean my fork is faster dipshit. Thats whats called going off topic.

[EvilEvoIX]

I don't have a much of a dog in this fight as i clearly don't know shit about the internal workings of these cpu's. I would like to point out though, that if the original argument was "which cpu is better", then you were given an answer Evil. I believe bonknuts quite clearly provided testing information stating the technical pro's and cons of each chip. I believe based on that information, it was pointed out that these chips are fairly equal depending on how they are used. You claimed no programmer or tech gave you an answer, they clearly did. It may not have been the answer you wanted, but it was a definite answer. If your not biased then why did you disregard the answer you were given, on point to the topic no less? I really could care less who's right as the topic is a moot point. However, if your trying to take the high road and not look like a chest thumping fan boi, Then why did you not accept the answer you were given? You don't have to like it, but you don't have to lie about it either. The answer was not evening damning for your precious chip. You were told that both cpu's were basically even? Not entirely sure why that bothers you so much. Worse is, if your so upset about people being off topic, why the hell are you going on and on about what chip was used more. I use a fork more than a spoon, does not mean my fork is faster dipshit. Thats whats called going off topic.

Read my quote above, some good info in there from someone smarter then us.  How are the chips even?  It's better than the 65816 but head to head the 68K moves more crap faster, how is that not understood?

[Tatsujin]

Everytime you post something, we get two or three more laughters out of this topic.














Please Don't stop Posting

[EvilEvoIX]

Everytime you post something, we get two or three more laughters out of this topic.

Please Don't stop Posting

Just keep telling yourself that, you may start to believe it.

[HercTNT]

Evil I can't comment on that quote, I'm not a programmer, I know nothing about it. I just have this vision of you with a ruler measuring the length of the cpu in your genny so you can prove its longer to. At the end of the day evil, a friendly debate is when people give and concede points based on factual technical merits. Your just gonna keep going no matter what. More so, quoting ones guys post does not make for a solid argument. You need to stand on your own two feet, not use someone elses. Bonknuts testing used point for point numbers demonstrating the differences between the two cpu's. You continue to ignore this fact. Hence, your just trolling and were from the beginning.

[EvilEvoIX]

Evil I can't comment on that quote, I'm not a programmer, I know nothing about it. I just have this vision of you with a ruler measuring the length of the cpu in your genny so you can prove its longer to. At the end of the day evil, a friendly debate is when people give and concede points based on factual technical merits. Your just gonna keep going no matter what. More so, quoting ones guys post does not make for a solid argument. You need to stand on your own two feet, not use someone elses. Bonknuts testing used point for point numbers demonstrating the differences between the two cpu's. You continue to ignore this fact. Hence, your just trolling and were from the beginning.

We are arguing about vintage computer hardware?  We aren't arguing about healthcare or the national debt here.  My biggest enjoyment is that there are people out there (myself included) that still care about this utter meaningless time waster of a topic.  My biggest concern is how upset people get like I bad mouthed their children.

Again, FYI, I'm a Neo Geo Fan Boi.  It also has the 68K so maybe Ima 69K fan boi.  I was impressed with it's versatility and longevity, you can respect that right?


Stand on my two feet, in explaining which processor is better?  The Md 68k and hu6280 comparison in my own words?  Lemy try again...

The 68K wins.  First and foremost it's a true 16-Bit CPU.  Obviously at the time bit-nes wasn't the end all be all and we already proved that the PCE CPU was in fact superior to the SNES CPU but the 68K had the speed as well.  As stated before it can handle more operations than the 6502.  The 6502 alone would be in trouble so it added dual 16-bit GPU.  Why did it do that?  Wasn't the 6502 enough?  Nope it needed additional helper chips just to even compete while the MD used the 68K and the z80 for sound.  They even tried again with the SGX and that failed.  The CPU it self had to work harder to accomplish the same task as the 68K could.

Sega had a whole year after the release of the PCE to look at it and make something to compete with it.  Obviously they were going to use something better or at least more versatile; they did both.  In order for the PCE to compete with multi scrolling you had to program in Dynamic Tiles and Sprites to make a multi plane effect.  That took up CPU resources as well.  I could go on about ram limitations or the sound but I think we are just going after a specific 68K vs hu6280 and as I said unless you are a fan boi it is clear cut.

[HercTNT]

yes actually i can. i'm geeky enough to respect the quirks of all the hardware out there and what makes it tick. I don't focus on just one of them though. Thats not how these conversations usually go though do they? I wish they did. The whole topic is moot as the programmers are what made the machine regardless of what hardware was in it. All the technobable amounts to squat if the programmers are not up to par. thats why cpu vs cpu is just bout as inane as it gets. it does not matter, not would it ever. If you really wanna get technical about it, Nintendo and Sega should be ashamed that the Pc-engine held its own so well despite being much older than the other two machines. This whole argument has the opposite effect on me that it does on others. It does not make me say "wow, look at how great the 68k is" it makes me say "wow, look at how great the turbo is despite a co called 8-bit cpu" After all, if the 68k is actually a 32-bit cpu, then it should be ashamed of itself in comparison. I realize thats flawed logic as i don't really know how the cpu's work, but it makes you think don't it?

[EvilEvoIX]

yes actually i can. i'm geeky enough to respect the quirks of all the hardware out there and what makes it tick. I don't focus on just one of them though. Thats not how these conversations usually go though do they? I wish they did. The whole topic is moot as the programmers are what made the machine regardless of what hardware was in it. All the technobable amounts to squat if the programmers are not up to par. thats why cpu vs cpu is just bout as inane as it gets. it does not matter, not would it ever. If you really wanna get technical about it, Nintendo and Sega should be ashamed that the Pc-engine held its own so well despite being much older than the other two machines. This whole argument has the opposite effect on me that it does on others. It does not make me say "wow, look at how great the 68k is" it makes me say "wow, look at how great the turbo is despite a co called 8-bit cpu" After all, if the 68k is actually a 32-bit cpu, then it should be ashamed of itself in comparison. I realize thats flawed logic as i don't really know how the cpu's work, but it makes you think don't it?

Very clever programing and eye popping color were the Turbo's strong suit.  Shooters themselves had a lot of sprites bit the sprites themselves didn't animate much so you can have a very detailed and relatively large sprite of your ship and all the other ships and bosses.  Even the bad shooters I liked as the system just draws you to them.


I will still stand by my statement on the PCE and SFII, I don't get the hype.  I have the game I play it, I prefer the other two to this one.  I think the floor scrolls nicely however and obviously the color.

[HercTNT]

I"m not a fighting game fan so it really does not matter to me. I would imagine though that anyone that owned a turbo and not the other systems would have been tickled to get sf2 at all. As for the shooters, i can't agree on the animation thing. Sapphire has so much animation and stuff going on it reminds me of pulstar and blazing star on the neo. Past that, again, i don't care. I would love to know all the technical aspects about these machines and there cpu's, but not so i can argue about them. Rather, so i could understand just how some of the best games were made despite the hardware. to me thats much more fun.

[TurboXray]

I will always have an up hill battle.

See, this is exactly your problem. You come here with the mentality to battle. And you're doing the same here about the PCE as you were doing on Sega-16. Wtf does it even matter to you, if neither of these two systems are your 'fanboi' favorite? Poke the bear and you get the claws. What else did you expect? Seriously.

FYO that M68K you guys like to brush over has been the choice of programmers and hardware manufacturers for over 30 years now.  Nothing reveals success and usability more than a long history.

FYI, the original 68k (used in the Genesis and NeoGeo) was long surpassed by better versions. A 68000 != a 68040 or 68060. They are not using the original 68k 30 years later, wtf. The HuC6280 is a custom cpu. It's not an off the shelf 8bit 65x processor. It had quite a bit of instructions and support added to it, including a 21bit address bus (2megabyte external address range). All of the original and clone 65x processors only have 64k external addressing and needed 'mappers'. Not only that, but the 65x 'core' that it's based off of - was certified to use in critical life sustaining applications (medical equipment). It was used in a number of cars all through out the 90's. It's still sold and used today (you can by the MCU of 65x and '816 on their site). But none of that is relative and your rambling is just that.

It was originally designed to be the Super Nintendo.

Uhhh no. It was a system created to be licensed, like the MSX. Nintendo declined when offered. NEC licensed the system as did a couple of arcade developers (Bloody Wolf game being one of then).

We all know why the PCE used a 8-Bit processor, back in 1987 it was just more cost effective, it even added the two additional chips for more power.

It didn't 'even add two additional chips'. They *are* the system chips! Without those chips, there is no video.

We all know why the PCE used a 8-Bit processor, back in 1987 it was just more cost effective

It's a completely *new*, custom cpu (it's not just a repackaged cpu). You think that's more cost effective than using a stock 65c02??? No. Just... no. Wth?

I had the privilege of growing up with a programmer/engineer.

That's great, but you're not. End of story.

If not I can fly to your location and personally give you a high 5.  Your choice.

I doubt you could afford the ticket. But I'd love to be proven wrong

Shooters themselves had a lot of sprites bit the sprites themselves didn't animate much so you can have a very detailed and relatively large sprite of your ship and all the other ships and bosses.

And almost always a limitation of storage (and design choice for some CD games). Look at sapphire: it has lots of animation. From little sprites to huge bosses.

Seriously what can the Md 68k and hu6280 comparison give us now?

A lot. A lot that you'll never understand because you're not a coder of old outdated chips. The fact that you have to ask this question, means you shouldn't even be in this thread. Plain and simple. The 68k (the original 68k) was wildy used in a lot of systems and computers. It has an overflated reputation for being the best. But it's not. It's actually relatively a slow processor (especially if you consider it a 32bit cpu) and that was changed in later models. But that's fine, because it was only the first edition. The reason why it was used in computers is because it has real support for OS related stuff. It had dynamic linked code, it had branch relative code, it had a real *useable* stack, and the flat memory model makes things soooooooo much easier than bank switching. It was a real next gen computer CPU. A new 'clean' design and a forward thinking design as well (it was designed in that the cycle times would come down and the alu would be upgraded to a real 32bit alu). That's why it was so popular. And the fact that it had higher clock speeds than ANY 8bit cpu at the time, really makes it a perfect design choice (1981 had a 16mhz model released).

 But consoles != computers. There is no *OS* to contend with. There is no multitasking, etc. And these consoles have a LOT of hardware assist. So much so, that the cpu is pretty much regulated to game logic. The 65x is a fast execution design; it does certain things really fast. It makes a great embedded processor (which it moved onto). It's just not a suitable cpu for computer with an OS. Though that didn't stop intel with its pathetic x86 design running DOS for years (even windows 3.x). So regardless of how 'powerful' it is (powerful does not always mean 'fast), overall it's a little overkill for a game console. The flat memory model is nice and so is the ISA, but those aren't need for a programmer that knows how to deal with bank switching and such. Even with unoptimized code, the 6280 can contend.

 This discussion is about looking at the strengths and weakness of both processors relative to each other (game logic). Why? Because there's a lot of misinformation about the capability of the '8bit' 6280 and a lot of over inflated reputation of the 68k (mostly from Amiga and ST users, from what I've seen). You're not a processor geek. You wouldn't get it.

Edit: fixed my typos

[EvilEvoIX]

I"m not a fighting game fan so it really does not matter to me. I would imagine though that anyone that owned a turbo and not the other systems would have been tickled to get sf2 at all. As for the shooters, i can't agree on the animation thing. Sapphire has so much animation and stuff going on it reminds me of pulstar and blazing star on the neo. Past that, again, i don't care. I would love to know all the technical aspects about these machines and there cpu's, but not so i can argue about them. Rather, so i could understand just how some of the best games were made despite the hardware. to me thats much more fun.

Pulstar and Blazing Star are BIG shoes to fill (Inner Neo Geo fan boi emerges) so I will say they are more in line of Alpha Mission II or Last Resort.  Sapphire is a great great game and I play it a lot in fact.  I love the music but the shooting sound effects are a poor choice.  I think it's just another great Shooter on the PCE and it rules at that.

I will always have an up hill battle.

See, this is exactly your problem. You come here with the mentality to battle. And you're doing the same here about the PCE as you were doing on Sega-16. Wtf does it even matter to you, if neither of these two systems are your 'fanboi' favorite? Poke the bear and you get the claws. What else did you expect? Seriously.

FYO that M68K you guys like to brush over has been the choice of programmers and hardware manufacturers for over 30 years now.  Nothing reveals success and usability more than a long history.

FYI, the original 68k (used in the Genesis and NeoGeo) was long surpassed by better versions. A 68000 != a 68040 or 68080. They are not using the original 68k 30 years later, wtf. The HuC6280 is a custom cpu. It's not an off the shelf 8bit 65x processor. It had quite a bit of instructions and support added to it, including a 21bit address bus (2megabyte external address range). All of the original and clone 65x processors only have 64k external addressing and needed 'mappers'. Not only that, but the 65x 'core' that it's based off of - was certified to use in critical life sustaining applications (medical equipment). It was used in a number of cars all through out the 90's. It's still sold and used today (you can by the MCU of 65x and '816 on their site). But none of that is relative and your rambling is just that.

It was originally designed to be the Super Nintendo.

Uhhh no. It was a system created to be licensed, like the MSX. Nintendo declined when offered. NEC licensed the system as did a couple of arcade developers (Bloody Wolf game being one of then).

We all know why the PCE used a 8-Bit processor, back in 1987 it was just more cost effective, it even added the two additional chips for more power.

It didn't 'even add two additional chips'. They *are* the system chips! Without those chips, there is no video.

We all know why the PCE used a 8-Bit processor, back in 1987 it was just more cost effective

It's a completely *new*, custom cpu (it's not just a repackaged cpu). You think that's more cost effective than using a stock 65c02??? No. Just... no. Wth?

I had the privilege of growing up with a programmer/engineer.

That's great, but you're not. End of story.

If not I can fly to your location and personally give you a high 5.  Your choice.

I doubt you could afford the ticket. But I'd love to be proven wrong

Shooters themselves had a lot of sprites bit the sprites themselves didn't animate much so you can have a very detailed and relatively large sprite of your ship and all the other ships and bosses.

And almost always a limitation of storage (and design choice for some CD games). Look at sapphire: it has lots of animation. From little sprites to huge bosses.

Seriously what can the Md 68k and hu6280 comparison give us now?

A lot. A lot that you'll never understand because you're not a coder of old outdated chips. The fact that you have to ask this question, means you shouldn't even be in this thread. Plain and simple. The 68k (the original 58k) was wildy used in a lot of systems and computers. It has an overflated reputation for being the best. But it's not. It's actually relatively a slow processor (especially if you consider it a 32bit cpu) and that was changed in later models. But that's fine, because it was only the first edition. The reason why it was used in computers is because it has real support for OS related stuff. It had dynamic linked code, it had branch relative code, it had a real *useable* stack, and the flat memory model makes things soooooooo much easier than bank switching. It was a real next gen computer CPU. A new 'clean' design and a forward thinking design as well (it was designed in that the cycle times would come down and the alu would be upgraded to a real 32bit alu). That's why it was so popular. And the fact that it had higher clock speeds than ANY 8bit cpu at the time, really makes it a perfect design choice (1981 had a 16mhz model released).

 But consoles != computers. There is no *OS* to contend with. There is no multitasking, etc. And these consoles have a LOT of hardware assist. So much so, that the cpu is pretty much regulated to game logic. The 65x is a fast execution design; it does certain things really fast. It makes a great embedded processor (which it moved onto). It's just not a suitable cpu for computer with an OS. Though that didn't stop intel with its pathetic x86 design running DOS for years (even windows 3.x). So regardless of how 'powerful' it is (powerful does not always mean 'fast), overall it's a little overkill for a game console. The flat memory model is nice and so is the ISA, but those aren't need for a programmer that knows how to deal with bank switching and such. Even with unoptimized code, the 6280 can contend.

 This discussion is about looking at the strengths and weakness of both processors relative to each other (game logic). Why? Because there's a lot of misinformation about the capability of the '8bit' 6280 and a lot of over inflated reputation of the68k (mostly from Amiga and ST users, from what I've seen). You're not a processor geek. You wouldn't get it.

Mentality to battle?  It's an internet forum, it's not real life and I'm not trying to prove superiority over some other stranger who takes himself WAY too seriously.  But for entertainment value I'll be more than happy to answer some of your questions.  I don't even know how to battle nor do I know the rules and I left my Magic cards at home.  I said this is an up-hill battle which is a common colloquialism and isn't meant to be taken literally.  You can't "preach to the converted"  (Read I am not a preacher nor do I work in a church, it's a saying)  I just like to see that bias is removed and people understand that the 68K did more stuff faster.  You skipped over that part in your rant but more on that later.


I understand that there are updates to the 68K, I was simply arguing the use of the series but not even that that chip was just in everything at the time.  You know how many systems, computers, arcade machines; it was in everything.  The same goes for the PCE chip as it had some revisions and upgrades in it's time.  Very simple reason why too but I don't wish to battle ;)

Nintendo declined the offer, meaning it was designed as a successor to the NES or at least tried to be.  I must have misspoke when I called it the Super Nintendo as it wasn't so that was certainly a mistake on my part.  I just named it as such as if it were chosen as the successor it would be known as the SNES or at least a variation of that.  Again, semantics.  You are driving wedges where there shouldn't be any and it's all filler.  Focus on the thread title please.

Are you telling me a 16BIT CPU would have been cheaper back in 1987, and I mean a new proper 16-BIT over the HU6280?  Stop it.  Hardware gets better and then cheaper with age and revisions.  Everyone knows this.  The PCE had *-bit machines to contend with back in 1987 so it built a killer 8-bith machine with  the 16-Bit Video Color Encoder and then yes a 16 Bit Video Display Controller to get picture.  Even NEC harped on the bit-ness as a matter of marketing and it back fired in the West.  It was however as you stated for console gaming instead of the computer market so just game logic.  

The notion that the PCE CPU was entirely new was misleading as it is a revised version of the 65SC02 which was used in many other devices and computers.  It was originally designed to compete against the Z80.  So basically a chip from the mid 70's that has been tarted up to run at very fast speeds.  

Doubt I can afford a ticket, what is this grade school?  Seriously I am embarrassed for you.  You lack tact and took things personal which shows you are missing the point, that is just silly of you to say and weakens your argument.

I also appreciate the revisionist history lesson, lots of memories in there from the eyes of a hater but the fact remains that the 68K alone is faster than your precious HuC6280.  I can see it in your fan boi eyes as you so naively decided to add bias rant that the 68K was, oh what did you say?  

 "The 68k (the original 58k) was wildly used in a lot of systems and computers. It has an overinflated reputation for being the best."  

and lets not forget....

"a lot of over inflated reputation of the68k (mostly from Amiga and ST users, from what I've seen)"

Anger, bias, why?  Why not the facts?

 Not one word about clock speed and what chip does more faster.  Read the title of the thread and get back to me again.

You said yourself that programmers and coders in addition to hardware MFR's decide what is easy to use and code for and make/break systems.  They want too use the real next gen hardware so why is it over inflated if it was used for so long in so many variations?  Why did Arcades use it in so many variations?  Highly confusing.

In short the PCE at the time (1987) only had 8-bit machines to worry about so it made a more advanced version of what was already available on the market and blew everything away.  They looked back and saw a lack of colors and crippling sprite limits in existed consoles and murdered it.  Sega took one look at that and reached into their arcade drawer and did something to compete with that.  

So lets hear you chip-set knowledge and just tell us which chip does more things faster.

[touko]

If you used all 16 regs (that means disabling the interrupt register so it doesn't mess with A7 stack), you get 4.5 cycles a byte.

Code Select Expand

 
  movem.l abs.l,d0-d7/a0-a7    ; 20+( 16*8 ) = 148
  movem.l d0-d7/a0-a7,abs.w    ; 12+( 16*8 )= 140
                               ; 148+140= 288 cycles. 16*4=64 bytes. 288/64= 4.5 cycles per byte

I mean, that's being realistic; the source address is long so you can copy from anywhere in rom (the first instruction). If used ABS.w (base opcode cycle count of 16 instead of 20), that means you can only copy from the first 32k of rom (of the whole address range) or the last 32k of ram. That seems a bit limiting, but it does give you 4.4375 cycles per byte.
But... that's a one time shot. If you put it in a loop, you don't get that (at least from what I tried to do):

Code Select Expand

@loop

@opc1    
  movem.l abs.l,d0-d7/a0-a7   ; 20+(16*8) = 148
  addi.l  #16,(@opc1+2).w     ; 20+8=28
@opc2  
  movem.l d0-d7/a0-a7,abs.w   ; 12+(16*8)= 124
  addi.w  #16,(@opc2+2).w     ; 12+8=20

                              ; 148+28+20+140= 320 cycles. 16*4=64 bytes. 320/64= 5 cycles per byte

  subq.w  1,abs.w             ; 8+8=16 cycles.
  bvc     @loop               ; 10 cycles
(self modifying code. I'm not sure I got the address part of the opcode offset right, but the logic is there. Also, you need to pad/offset the opcode, before the loop, so the long address of the opcode is long word aligned - else it won't work on the real system).

Yes that's what I told him, it was a result of interpolation.
he took the result, and multiplied X time as needed, without counting the registers reload, end test ..
he had no loop, because all was unrolled ..

You'd have to unroll that 26 times in order to get rid of the decrement/loop overhead. That gives you 5 cycles per byte using all 16 regs in an unrolled loop (if I did my math right). Also requires a larger over head of presetting all those address (52 of them). On top of that, it's limited because you can only do small chunk copies at a time if you wanted linear copy style ('cause after 26 times, the addresses need to be reset), unless you totally reorganized the source data... then shit starts to get real complicated - real quick. It's very limited IMO.

Of course, and it's a huge ram consuming, IMO the txx instructions are really great .
Stef is a great coder not doubt, but too fanboy really, you can not have a technical discussion, all is always better on MD, even sound chip ..

I thought it was faster not to use all the regs for MOVEM:

Code Select Expand

 @loop
    
  movem.l (a7),d0-d7/a0-a5    ; 8+(14*8) = 120
  adda.l  #14,a7              ; 8+8 = 16
  movem.l d0-d7/a0-a5,-(a6)   ; 12+(14*8)= 124
                              ; 120+16+124= 260 cycles. 14*4=56 bytes. 260/56= 4.642 cycles per byte

  subq.w  1,abs.w             ; 8+8=16 cycles.
  bvc     @loop               ; 10 cycles
 
Using 14 regs at 4.642 cycles per byte if the loop unrolled 26 times. It has little over head and is very flexible in size operand of the routine.


 I'd like to see what stef came up with.

It can be close to your code, but like i said, stef interpolates the result .

Code Select Expand

movem.l (a0)+,d0-d7/a2-a6 / 124
movem.l d0-d7/a2-a6,-(a0) / 120
add.l #56, %a0 / 14

258 cycles for 56 bytes, an average of  4.6 cycles / byte...

or

move.l (a0)+,(a1)+ / 20

you take 20 cycles for 4 bytes,an average of 5 cycles / byte,  a transfer rate of 1.53 Mo/s.


It takes these values, regardless of the number to be copied, and makes a simple multiplication .

[EvilEvoIX]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Must be one of those vile Amiga Fan Bois tarting up the 68K again....

[OldMan]

Everytime you post something, we get two or three more laughters out of this topic.

Hear, Hear!.  I'm rather enjoying the laughs from his "arguements". Sloppy logic, inappropriate analogies, and constant shifts of opinion that 'prove'....absolutely nothing.

Everyone and their mother agrees the M68k ALONE is a more capable CPU than the hu6280 alone.

First of all, consider that thought. If even one person disagrees, it is false, and thus the whole arguement collapses.
Very Funny. So I asked my wife, and she said "Who cares?" Of course, he's going to say "Well not everyone", just...
and try to limit it to a small group of people. However, if you limit it to the people who already agree, it becomes a
circular arguement : Vocal Opinion shouted is still an opinion - not the truth. You can't convert the convinced.

And I love this one:

I keep hearing arguments from programmers but not evidence.

Nope, no evidence here - just blindly ignore the cycles per instruction that Tom posted. Completely ignore the need to use all registers on a 6800 to do a fast copy. And ignore the fact that the ti- instructions do what are effectively memory copies at a cost of 1 cycle per byte, with a 5 cycle overhead. And are capable of doing so across an entire 64K address space.
Nope, no evidence - that supports your arguement.

I had the privilege of growing up with a programmer/engineer.

Ah, that explains it. He absorbed all his knowledge by being around people who knew what they were talking about
FYI, dude: Tom and I -are- programmers and engineers. Both of us have 25+ years experience at this stuff.
I doubt you have 25+ years of age. Yet, somehow. miraculously, that makes you an expert.

Just keep telling yourself that, you may start to believe it.

And another one I find absolutely hilarious:

FYO that M68K you guys like to brush over has been the choice of programmers and hardware manufacturers for over 30 years now.  Nothing reveals success and usability more than a long history.

Think about how funny that really is. The 6502 core was around for years before the 68000. So if longevity = success.....
6502 core wins. Proving his own arguement is wrong. Gotta love that.

And this quote? Spoken like a true 20 something who listens to the companies, and never compares their lines to reality...

Hardware gets better and then cheaper with age and revisions.  Everyone knows this

Again with the "everyone"......
Tell that to the folks that lost backwards compatibilty on the ps3.
Tell that to all the people who buy Macs. (My mac mini was only $500 on sale...down from $!k - because they couldn't sell them at that price.)
Tell that to all the people whose phones broke after a year, and had to be replaced - with more expensive models that did tons of things that no one really wants in a phone.
I bet you find a lot of people who disagree about hardware getting "better" or "cheaper".

And my favorite quote, but you have to remember this is from a guy comparing apples to oranges....

Not one word about clock speed and what chip does more faster.

Presumably, a faster clock speed would allow the chip to do more - but that's not always true (anyone else own a 486?)
Given equal clock speeds, I think the 6502 core would outperform the 68000, based on the cycle counts Tom posted.
Even more radically, -ignoring the clock speed- I still believe the 6502 core could outperform a 68000 in a special purpose application - like a video game.

Of course, by his same logic, the New pentiums running at 2.4GHz are better chips than the same exact chips running at 2.0GHz.
<lol>
..................................................................................
Now. before you decide to rip into me (and have fun with it, I really don't care) I don't care either way.
It's not the CPU or the clock speed, or even how much memory a system has. It's what the programmers do with it.
After 40+ years of work, the engineers have pretty much decided the kinds of things a CPU needs to do. They all do the
same things. The field is pretty level anymore. There is no "better". Just "different".

[touko]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Must be one of those vile Amiga Fan Bois tarting up the 68K again....

what's your problem ???, the fact than a 8 bit processor, can compete with 68k ??
There is no troll on it, it's only the reality of code ..

We just took the case of game consoles, not in general use .

Look at this :

yes, this is on snes with his "crappy  CPU", when this CPU is programmed by a master of 65xx, there is no slowdown, a lot of sprites on screen,
lot of action, no sprites flicking ..
Technicaly, this shoot is better than any Md ones .
Can you imagine what he would do with a CPU clocked at 7mhz ??
You can see also his last game on C64, enforcer :

Only with a 6510 @0,9 mhz, yes less THAN 1 MHZ ..

[SignOfZeta]

I love how SFII is constantly used as a reference by people who have a piss poor understanding of the game to compare 16-bit systems. Usually it's guys like Black Tiger sprite ripping and dick measuring every minute aspect of the game in a "frozen in amber" way that is impossible to appreciate while actually playing the thing. The reality is that the PCE ver of SFII' was a very very good port of the game, but because it wasn't Turbo, and because Turbo was released on SFC a month later for 3000 yen less, the PCE version was nearly useless to real SF maniax back in the day. This has nothing to do with the technical side of SFII' on PCE, which is excellent, it's just...the breaks.

However, this EvilEvo douche is the only guy I've ever seen who not only slams the PCE ver of SFII' but cites it specifically as evidence of the PCE's weakness. This isn't the first time he's mentioned that the game is "slow", saying this is the PCE's fault. And this isn't the first time people have told him that it's "slow" because it's SFII', not SFII' Turbo, and that it could run at any speed the programmers wanted it to run at. Seriously, compare it to the CPS version. It's just as slow. The PS version of SFII' is also slower than the SFC/MD version of Turbo. Does this mean the SFC and MD are more powerful than the PS?

What a dipshit.

Anyway, as for the original topic, I have nothing to contribute other than to say that I'm a huge fan of the 68k, if its actually possible to be fan-ish about a CPU. While the Genesis isn't that great, IMHO, I love the old Macs, Amigas, and arcade boards (CPS, MVS, Taito, Cave, etc) that used this chip for so many years. The original designers probably never thought that something like Marvel Super Heroes versus Street Fighter would ever be possible with their chip back when they first developed it.

[PCEngineHell]

You know, I used to have a link to this but lost it. Anyone have a link to this one page that showed what all arcade titles used the Hu6280 either as a main cpu or for co-processing? I know there was quite a few that used it (Capt America, Bloody Wolf etc).

[CrackTiger]

I love how SFII is constantly used as a reference by people who have a piss poor understanding of the game to compare 16-bit systems. Usually it's guys like Black Tiger sprite ripping and dick measuring every minute aspect of the game in a "frozen in amber" way that is impossible to appreciate while actually playing the thing. The reality is that the PCE ver of SFII' was a very very good port of the game, but because it wasn't Turbo, and because Turbo was released on SFC a month later for 3000 yen less, the PCE version was nearly useless to real SF maniax back in the day. This has nothing to do with the technical side of SFII' on PCE, which is excellent, it's just...the breaks.

However, this EvilEvo douche is the only guy I've ever seen who not only slams the PCE ver of SFII' but cites it specifically as evidence of the PCE's weakness. This isn't the first time he's mentioned that the game is "slow", saying this is the PCE's fault. And this isn't the first time people have told him that it's "slow" because it's SFII', not SFII' Turbo, and that it could run at any speed the programmers wanted it to run at. Seriously, compare it to the CPS version. It's just as slow. The PS version of SFII' is also slower than the SFC/MD version of Turbo. Does this mean the SFC and MD are more powerful than the PS?

What a dipshit.

Anyway, as for the original topic, I have nothing to contribute other than to say that I'm a huge fan of the 68k, if its actually possible to be fan-ish about a CPU. While the Genesis isn't that great, IMHO, I love the old Macs, Amigas, and arcade boards (CPS, MVS, Taito, Cave, etc) that used this chip for so many years. The original designers probably never thought that something like Marvel Super Heroes versus Street Fighter would ever be possible with their chip back when they first developed it.

That's not what those kinds of comparisons are about, but since you love joining in them so much, I guess you're only confirming your motivation. But the speed at which you resort to screaming and swearing every time you feel that the SNES's superiority is being questioned already made that clear for everyone. The only difference between you and EvilEvoX in discussions like this, is he championing the MD instead of SNES and is much more polite. You also ignore real game examples ("ALL PCE TRANSPARENCIES ARE FLICKER EFFECTS!"), explanations from programmers, and love to throw out names of games that you just can't see being done at all on PCE. No matter how simple and straightforward too many of those games are or how something similar was already done better on PCE.

Other crazed Nintendo fans also blindly use the SFII as evidence of SNES superiority in ways that defy logic. No matter how frequently they actually play the thing on consoles, they'll still tell you that the voice and sound effects are identical in each version, except that SNES is the clearest and Genesis is the poorest quality. In reality, the SNES sounds are sped up, shopped up, echoed, muffled and reverbed and don't sound like the arcade at all anymore. You can tell them that, but even if they swear that they've actually played them, they will just stick to your kind of "I can't hear you!" argument.

Because it's not about dick measuring for me, that's why my SFII' comparison is unbiased and just lists pros and cons about the various aspects, presents them as-is and in the overall summary is harsh against the PCE version and more or less calls the SNES the best overall. But I didn't put it all together to prove how awesome the SNES is, I did it because I love video games, SFII', pixel art, etc.

[soop]

Gah, this is turning from a really interesting thread into a dick measuring contest.

EvilEvoIX, please shut up, you're embarrassing yourself.  This is like a child walking into a lab where two geneticists are comparing the genetics of rabbits and hares, and declaring "I like bunnies better because they're softer".

NOT THE POINT.

[OldRover]

EvilEvoIX, you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground. Here's a hint... one talks shit, the other is dug with a shovel. Come back when you have some actual coding and/or hardware experience, eh? In the meantime, thanks for the laughs, but I'm afraid you're just too stupid for this thread.

[Tatsujin]

[Tatsujin]

[Opethian]

all fart and no shit....

[Arkhan Asylum]

Read my quote above, some good info in there from someone smarter then us

That post was from me, who you previously disagreed with and insulted in this thread.

So, maybe you are bad at reading.


The whole thing boils down to 6280 is a worthy competitor, that is on par or better than the 68k (outside of lots of 16bit operations), but requires a bit more finesse to get it to perform that way. 

Also, the truth of the matter is, we are discussing the MD's CPU.   It's a nice 68000 in the sense that it's a 68000, but.. it's no 68060.  That's for sure.

[TurboXray]

The notion that the PCE CPU was entirely new was misleading as it is a revised version of the 65SC02 which was used in many other devices and computers.  It was originally designed to compete against the Z80.

I'll give you props for using 65SC02 (also known as R65C02S and 65C02S). That was the last revision of the cpu (the one WDC was working on was abandoned; the 65CE02), and it was not done by WDC. Rockwell made a custom core with new instructions. It wasn't until later than WDC incorporated those instructions into the 65C02 core. The 6280 is branch of (back then at the time) and unofficial 65x core. The 6280 shares an interesting trait with the mitsubishi e740 (a super custom 65x modded core); the T flag. Though the T flag is much more usable on the e740 since it doesn't get cleared after every instruction. The 6280 wasn't meant to compete with the z80; the 2mhz 65c02 (not even the rockwell version needed) competed just fine. And the 6809 even more so. I think by the time the z80 got into 7-8mhz range, WDC was already moving onto the '816.

 Anyway, do you understand what it means to 'revise' a hardwired cpu? The original 6502 design was fast because everything was hardware by hand. It was also fast and cheap, because it didn't have microcoded instructions (the z80 and 68k did). That means less transistors and faster instructions (not unlike the early RISC processors). Simply 'revising' the cpu, means adding new instructions by *hand*. And the fact that you need an engineer capable in this field (processors, specifically). And I'm completely disregarding the sound IC that's on the same cpu chip; that's just a consolidation into a single package to save on cost (not the same thing as adding new support and instructions). A lot was added to the r65c02s core to make the 6280 (including little more relaxed bus timings). A hell of a lot more expensive than just simple using an off the shelf processor (they also had to have these fabricated as well, which means more cost as well).

 I do know the 68000 wasn't cheap in the 80's. And motorola didn't provide a freely licenseable core until some time in the 90's (for embedding into packages). The cost of the 6280 (they had to license the original core, higher an engineer/team to build this thing, and also fabricate it) was probably close if not on par to the cost of the 68k. If you put a 68k in the PCE, nothing would really change. And I've already stated that a 68k would actually be slower for hsync effects due to it's interrupt latency. What you get with a 6280, is a very fast processor at 7.16mhz (no other 65x ran that fast at the time) that put it in the league of higher end machines (arcades/computers) but with an instruction set that was familiar to anyone that coded on the 65x; mainly the dominating Famicom at the time. Developers could port game code very easily, both forwards and backwards. Or just transition to the new platform with little downtime. The power of the 16bit arcade systems, the familiarity of the older well known 65x.

Code Select Expand

movem.l (a0)+,d0-d7/a2-a6 / 124
movem.l d0-d7/a2-a6,-(a0) / 120
add.l #56, %a0 / 14

258 cycles for 56 bytes, an average of  4.6 cycles / byte...

or

move.l (a0)+,(a1)+ / 20

you take 20 cycles for 4 bytes,an average of 5 cycles / byte,  a transfer rate of 1.53 Mo/s.


It takes these values, regardless of the number to be copied, and makes a simple multiplication .

A jump table with a code list of "move.l (a0)+,(a1)+" would be the more practical of all of them. Though you could do the same with the one I provided for 4.62 cycle per byte as well, with a little more bloat to it (jump table and code list instead of a loop). Yeah, I don't see him getting a realistic 4.3 or 4.4cycle per byte transfer, unless they're fills.


 I had done an object to object collision detection routine that I wrote for both the 68k and the 6280 (I was working on porting my code to the 68k MD at the time). The routine wasn't anything fancy (it was a simple X1,x2,y1,y2 compare check against another object). I had an object list that I would parse, if the object was active - I'd jump to the collision routine. The 68k and 6280 were about the same (the 6280 was either a few cycles faster or a few cycles slower), but the 68k one ended up being slower - because of the JSR/RTS overhead. I never understood why those two instructions where so slow. It's not like anything gets push or popped from the stack from these instructions.

 Another interesting fact, though it doesn't really have any real barring on speed, was the MIPS of both processors. Not the max capable MIPS, but what games were doing in 1/60 frames. Exophase told me that his emulator calculated about ~1.8 MIPS for the average PCE game and that his friend that was doing an MD emulator said games tended to be about ~0.75 MIPS. That means the average instruction time for the PCE games were about 3.9 cycles (a little bit lower than I had predicted) and average instruction time on the MD was 10.22cycles. Just a reminder of how different these two processor architectures are.

[spenoza]

Look at this :

yes, this is on snes with his "crappy  CPU", when this CPU is programmed by a master of 65xx, there is no slowdown, a lot of sprites on screen,
lot of action, no sprites flicking ..
Technicaly, this shoot is better than any Md ones .
Can you imagine what he would do with a CPU clocked at 7mhz ??
You can see also his last game on C64, enforcer :

Only with a 6510 @0,9 mhz, yes less THAN 1 MHZ ..

Hrm... That programmer loves putting lots of asteroids in his shooters  : )  While both examples you list are technically impressive, from a fun standpoint I'm not really keen on shooting tons of asteroids for an entire level.

And what's really funny about both examples, and most of the back and forth here is that while the CPU is handling collision code, the actual blitting of BG and sprite objects is based on the VDP hardware and has a lot less to do with the CPU. Look at the Neo Geo vs the MD. Both are driven by the m68k CPU, but the Neo Geo had an insane amount of graphics and audio hardware in it. What made the Neo Geo special was not the CPU but all that custom hardware. It's ability to push sprite around and the flexible, if odd, audio setup was what defined the system, not the CPU.

Evo:
It's like Tom has said repeatedly throughout the thread, the M68k is a "modern" CPU design. It wasn't necessarily valued for speed so much as easy of development and general robustness. The arcade boards that used it were successful for the same reason the Neo Geo was successful: they had killer video and audio capabilities. The CPU just sat in the background doing collision detection and keeping the show running. It was the video and audio hardware that pushed everything around on-screen and kept the tunes jamming. I imagine the M68k was as popular as it was because the clock speed scaled up better than some of the older CPU designs and because they could hack out some C programming for the main loop and collision detection and not have to get their hands dirty with tons of assembly code optimization.

If anyone wants to claim the M68k is a better CPU than the 6280, go ahead, but do it for the right reasons. The M68k is easy to develop for, is good at multiplication, has good support for the kinds of features an OS-based system needs, and supports higher clock speeds than previous chips. But when you get down the the metal and start comparing memory access latency, the clock cycles needed to perform core integer maths, etc... the older 8-bit CPUs hold up really well. Their biggest flaw was simply that they could be a real pain to get good performance from. The 6280 is a very capable CPU, but it takes more knowledge and more work to extract performance from it. The M68k has lots of low-hanging fruit, programming-wise. The 6280 makes you work for the performance. I would contend that that's a strong argument for the M68k being a "better" CPU, for some definitions of better, but when you look at some of the more striking examples of good code, it is clear that the 6280 is no performance slouch and can hold its own.

Tom has already pointed out that M68k code doesn't really optimize dramatically, because C code is already pretty optimal. The 6280 has lots of tricks and weirdness that can be exploited for speed. So crap code by novice programmers (like I hope to be someday) is probably going to run better on the M68k, but optimized code by experienced programmers will probably look much more similar from a performance profile. And that's what this discussion is about. It's not about whether the Genesis or the PCE is a superior platform. This thread is about theoretical optimized performance levels between two specific CPUs in the hands of experienced and capable programmers, which you (Evo) are not. I also am not, but because I'm a CPU/hardware wonk I can interpret, minimally, the discussion going on in here.

Tom, if I've summarized your statements incorrectly, please feel free to rip me a new one. Anyone else can sit on a tack  : )  I trust Tom not to be an ass when correcting me.

[TurboXray]

Tom, if I've summarized your statements incorrectly, please feel free to rip me a new one. Anyone else can sit on a tack  : )  I trust Tom not to be an ass when correcting me.

Dude, you were spot on. 

[Tatsujin]

Lol, I have R2. It's a technically amazing game, especially consdering all the other stuff done on the SFC so far. Many Trenz is a coder legend.