Why do HuCards have low Meg counts?

[PukeSter]

I've kind of always wondered this.

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of beautiful Hueys. Especially IREM and Hudsons' games, they always looked super nice. But, it wasn't until near the end of the system's life that it got a standard 8 meg count.

Shame too, as Bomberman 94 was an 8 meg, and easily one of the best looking games of the 16-bit gen.

I'm not talking about CDs. They were bigger, sure, but a lot of the memory was for music.

I mean, games could have only been improved. Splatterhouse may have even had the gory background details from the arcade, instead of being barren.

Were HuCards cheaper than Carts? Or was it more than that.

[CrackTiger]

They use high speed memory that was expensive.

[TurboXray]

I'm leaning more towards NEC pricing range for developers. Sure, the PCBs are thin and the roms tend to be blobs instead of chips, and there's a hucard plastic card instead of a case, but once you setup all tools and such to manufacture this stuff - hucards aren't any more expensive than carts.

 I would say two things, pricing from NEC for larger roms. And the CDROM itself. What's the best way to make the CDROM system shine? Make sure the gap between the games, is enough of a difference warrant the purchase of the addon. There's an audio in line on the hucard port, yet no hucard game uses it. Why didn't we see audio upgrades for hucards? Because that brings the difference between hucards and CDROMs games, that much smaller in difference for audio. The Megadrive/Genesis is the has the same situation; has stereo audio in lines for the cart - but never upgraded the audio via cart - even when the sound of the system started to show its age against the SNES/SFC. MegaCD/SegaCD. That was your audio upgrade. Anything you do on the cart side, starts to negate that audio difference.

 Addon chips aren't as expensive as you think. Nintendo actually added DSPs to SNES carts that did nothing more than decompress data. That chip was cheaper than simply throwing more rom at it.

 There's an article that refers to the PCE as the 'core' system (before the 'core grafx' system even came out). The CD system already was in development when the original PCE launched. From a marketing stand point, I would want the CD addon to be as a big of a jump as possible to regular hucards. Limiting hucard sizes, is one way to mitigate this.

 Part of the reason, at least for the first year, might be been that they didn't have the tooling setup for larger roms yet (remember, these are glop top - not just simple dip mask roms). But that doesn't explain why sizes remained smaller after the first year. I'm putting my money on the CDROM addon as the culprit.

[TurboXray]

They use high speed memory that was expensive.

 The PCE system can access slower rom. The 1.79mhz mode of the CPU is specifically for accessing slow devices on the address bus. They could have easily mixed slow and fast rom. Slow rom for tiles and sprites, to be loaded into vram at the start of the stage (which is what almost ALL hucard did, because of the limited ram to buffer any such things).

[Tatsujin]

but it's funny that daisenpu and dorabian actually looking better on le huey than on le cd

[Xak]

imagine a little car on turbo

[Nazi NecroPhile]

I'd say it's about timing and costs (especially later).  You didn't see 8 and 16 megapowa games from Genny in that time frame either; and by the time the bigger sizes were common (and the SNES was out), it made more sense to put games on cheap CDs.

[pulstar]

Storage was expensive back in the earlier days and by the time the megabit per £/$/ ¥ came down the CD-ROM attachment was out and the space vs. cost on a CD-ROM was way more efficient than ROMs.

[awack]

Yeah, its a shame that almost every hucard game is 2, 3 or 4 megs...here are some of the larger games.

Bonk 3(8megs)
Raiden(6megs) i think.
Parodius(8megs)
Bomberman 94(8megs)
Streetfighter 2 (20megs)
i believe there is at least one 8meg sports game, and of course Aldyness, GNG, and 1941 were all 8megs...which in my opinion counts, its still the pc engine, how do i know this because it says it right there on the console, it can play all standard games and use the add ons and such, it just has extra chips, its a pcengine just as much as star fox is a snes game.

[PukeSter]

Hana tala Dakar and Darius are both 6 meg.

[CrackTiger]

Neutopia II: 6 megs
Power League 5: 6 megs
Power League '93: 6 megs
Fire Pro Wrestling 3: 8 megs
Super Momo Taru Densetsu II: 6 megs

[TurboXray]

Twin Bee is 6megs, even though the rom dump shows 8megs.

[TurboXray]

Yeah, its a shame that almost every hucard game is 2, 3 or 4 megs...here are some of the larger games.

Bonk 3(8megs)
Raiden(6megs) i think.
Parodius(8megs)
Bomberman 94(8megs)
Streetfighter 2 (20megs)
i believe there is at least one 8meg sports game, and of course Aldyness, GNG, and 1941 were all 8megs...which in my opinion counts, its still the pc engine, how do i know this because it says it right there on the console, it can play all standard games and use the add ons and such, it just has extra chips, its a pcengine just as much as star fox is a snes game.

I used to think of it as a different console, but yeah says right on it "PC-Engine SuperGrafx". It might be an upgraded PC-Engine, but it's still a PC-Engine.

[CrackTiger]

Twin Bee is 6megs, even though the rom dump shows 8megs.

I was going to say that I was surprised when I found out it was only 4 megs (on pcecp).

[PukeSter]

In all honesty, Parodius should have been a Super CD. As an 8 meg, it's impressive. But apart from a fantastic special stage, pales in comparison to the SNES version in all aspects.

[CrackTiger]

In all honesty, Parodius should have been a Super CD. As an 8 meg, it's impressive. But apart from a fantastic special stage, pales in comparison to the SNES version in all aspects.

So slowdown is a good thing?

[Xak]

^boom! low blow

Cant beat a faster processor

[PukeSter]

In all honesty, Parodius should have been a Super CD. As an 8 meg, it's impressive. But apart from a fantastic special stage, pales in comparison to the SNES version in all aspects.

So slowdown is a good thing?

Parodius PCE has slowdown too, I used to own it.

Great game, but inferior port.

[CrackTiger]

In all honesty, Parodius should have been a Super CD. As an 8 meg, it's impressive. But apart from a fantastic special stage, pales in comparison to the SNES version in all aspects.

So slowdown is a good thing?

PCE Parodius has slowdown too. I used to own it.

The PCE version has some stages and some graphics too, but you don't seem to be cancelling them out as equal. The PCE version of Parodius may not be as good as it could be, even on the same sized HuCard, but it doesn't pale in comparison to the SFC version is all aspects. This is coming from someone who used to own some games.

There's a big difference in slowdown between PCE and SFC. It goes: PCE------------->Arcade---->SFC.

It's a cool game, but much better as a GT title than yet another SCD shooter. We already have Gradius II.

[TurboXray]

That's Konami for you. Great at game designs, poor at writing optimal code. Gradius 2 on the arcade PCB, has two 68k processors running at 10mhz. Yet the thing still slows down.

[CrackTiger]

That's Konami for you. Great at game designs, poor at writing optimal code. Gradius 2 on the arcade PCB, has two 68k processors running at 10mhz. Yet the thing still slows down.

Hardcore schtroumpf fans like to say that Konami shooters have very specific spots of slowdown programmed in by expert game designers. They also say that the game-enhancing slowdown is faithfully ported to home versions as well (even though it is inconsistent between various versions... ).

[PukeSter]

Hardcore schtroumpf fans like to say that Konami shooters have very specific spots of slowdown programmed in by expert game designers. They also say that the game-enhancing slowdown is faithfully ported to home versions as well (even though it is inconsistent between various versions... ).

I thought the slowdown in the PCE version was "bad" programming, but apparently it's arcade accurate. And it seemed to mainly be during boss fights. You can turn it on or off in the Saturn version.

[CrackTiger]

Hardcore schtroumpf fans like to say that Konami shooters have very specific spots of slowdown programmed in by expert game designers. They also say that the game-enhancing slowdown is faithfully ported to home versions as well (even though it is inconsistent between various versions... ).

I thought the slowdown in the PCE version was "bad" programming, but apparently it's arcade accurate. And it seemed to mainly be during boss fights. You can turn it on or off in the Saturn version.

It's not arcade accurate. Compare the pink cloud stage between the PCE, SFC and arcade versions. The PCE version is like playing a different game.

[PukeSter]

Hardcore schtroumpf fans like to say that Konami shooters have very specific spots of slowdown programmed in by expert game designers. They also say that the game-enhancing slowdown is faithfully ported to home versions as well (even though it is inconsistent between various versions... ).

I thought the slowdown in the PCE version was "bad" programming, but apparently it's arcade accurate. And it seemed to mainly be during boss fights. You can turn it on or off in the Saturn version.

It's not arcade accurate. Compare the pink cloud stage between the PCE, SFC and arcade versions. The PCE version is like playing a different game.

Sorry, I meant to say salamander, but I backspaced.

I wouldn't mind owning both parodius ports, though.

[awack]

In all honesty, Parodius should have been a Super CD. As an 8 meg, it's impressive. But apart from a fantastic special stage, pales in comparison to the SNES version in all aspects.

The pce port has much better animation, the scaling fx (frames) on each of the playable characters in the pce game, is far better, the huge walking women in stage 2 has more frames of animation, the rotation of the smaller enemies are once again better(more frames) the pig enemies butts jiggle in the pce port, the large female boss who blows bubbles also has better animation,and it goes on and on and on. the first level is far better looking in the snes port, but the 2nd level is a bit better looking in the pcengine game, I ask myself,  which is the better game, the one with the extra stages  or the one with better animation, less slowdown, oh and the better opening cutscene:), I don't know.... I remember that shmups.com and most of the people who were on the forums thought more highly of the pc engine game, but again I don't know.

BlackTiger

It's a cool game, but much better as a GT title than yet another SCD shooter. We already have Gradius II.

I just did a comparison of between Gradius 2 pce and Gradius 3 for the snes...and let me tell you, Gradius 2 for the pce is a fantastic game, its a far better port of gradius 2 than the snes port is of Gradius 3.