Yeah. I kind of missed out on the SNES and Genesis. I was more of the NES generation. I caught up after college when emulation became a thing and I could afford consoles.
I did use some money from my parents in college and secretly got an N64. I probably pissed them off a little bit.
Really, the SEGA Master System was kind of fancier than the NES.
I think older people realized this, but it was lost on the kids.
Well, I was a kid back then, and I don't think it was a matter of us being presented with both the NES and Master System, and not being able to understand that it was "better", but rather most of us just didn't know the Master System existed. I never saw it or heard of it until the mid-90s. Before that, I always assumed the Genesis was their first console. Though this could just be an American perspective. Just seems like it was very poorly marketed here.
I think it is an American perspective, not incorrectly of course. NES was the dominant game platform for at least the mid-to-late '80s and I met many American gamers who had no idea there was a Sega machine before the Genesis. The Master System was barely a footnote in the US.
History lesson time! If you guys will indulge me...
In the UK the entire market was different; Atari never took off hugely with the 2600, so the crash of '83 effectively never happened here. Home microcomputers were the big games scene over here; the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum were the biggest hitters but there were many others of varying levels of note such as the BBC Micro from Acorn, and the Amstrad CPC.
The NES did come out here, marketed by Mattel, so it was squarely positioned as a toy, and frankly didn't do very well; the Sega Master System was marketed by hugely successful budget software publisher Mastertronic, who managed to gain more traction with their existing foothold in the computer games market and the Master System's relatively impressive (for the time) arcade conversions and ports.
By this time the 8-bit home micros were starting to be superceded by the 16-bit Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, which had plenty of time to establish a foothold before the next generation of consoles.
Nintendo's first huge success over here wouldn't come until the Game Boy, which did gangbusters (building on the fairly successful Game & Watch line) and laid a very solid foundation for the SNES when it eventually showed up officially on these shores, although by then Sega had the Mega Drive (Genesis) out here too and they both proved big hits - in turn paving the way for the PlayStation to utterly dominate after it released.
It's worth noting here that, in particular with machines after the NES/MS but before PlayStation, "grey imports" were big business here. Console makers regarded the UK (and I presume Europe to a degree but not sure about that) as very much a third-class market, and the machines released significantly later here than either Japan or the US. But the demand was still strong here, so imports of Japanese (and less so American) versions of the PC Engine/TG-16, SNES (Super Famicom), Mega Drive (Genesis), and others were sold by specialist importers who modified the consoles to work with UK PAL TVs and power supplies and offered their own warranties. This in turn gave the UK gamers of the time crash-courses in region locks and how to defeat them, and even after the machines belatedly launched officially sometimes years later, also access to much wider software libraries than were officially released here.
During the SNES/MD years the Amiga and ST faded away a bit and the PC finally took over as the dominant home computer platform; by the time the PlayStation was out, everything had largely settled to roughly some sort of parity with the US market. But before that, it was wildly different here.
Also the Version of Valis 1 included in Collection 2 is.... the MSX version, which is a heavily truncated version of the PC88 original, which is extremely different from what ended up on the PC Engine. So its got to be one of the worst versions! The PC Engine Valis 1 is over in the first collection (and subbed only in the English release.)
Its utterly baffling that they have an MSX emulator and didn't stretch it to play Valis 2 as well. The computer game has a radically different story than the somewhat boring PCE versions, and the MSX2 is the best playing port, especially with an overclock. (Even if its early PC platforming jank reminiscent of Duke Nukem) Fortunately, there IS a fan translation for this version...
I do love all the gory boss deaths you get to witness in the cutscenes of computer Valis 2. Yuuko is a certified stone-cold killer.
Apparently the museum side of the Atari 50 collection is insanely good. Timelines, hardware pictures, magazine clips, video interviews.... Giant Bomb spends 30 whole minutes just browsing that and barely scratches the surface.
Edit: Going to guess that means it'll be available digitally as well.
Yeah. They are sold out. I missed it.
I will probably have to get the digital version. I am surprised it is not out yet.
Who are all these nuts buying Limited Run shit anyway? Their prices are outrageous.
I am still waiting for past orders to come in.
One nut here. I have bought some of their stuff and got both of their Valis for the Switch. Some of the games I bought were the same price as the digital version so I figured might as well get it in a physical media instead.
Really, the SEGA Master System was kind of fancier than the NES.
I think older people realized this, but it was lost on the kids.
Well, I was a kid back then, and I don't think it was a matter of us being presented with both the NES and Master System, and not being able to understand that it was "better", but rather most of us just didn't know the Master System existed. I never saw it or heard of it until the mid-90s. Before that, I always assumed the Genesis was their first console. Though this could just be an American perspective. Just seems like it was very poorly marketed here.
I think it is an American perspective, not incorrectly of course. NES was the dominant game platform for at least the mid-to-late '80s and I met many American gamers who had no idea there was a Sega machine before the Genesis. The Master System was barely a footnote in the US.
History lesson time! If you guys will indulge me...
In the UK the entire market was different; Atari never took off hugely with the 2600, so the crash of '83 effectively never happened here. Home microcomputers were the big games scene over here; the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum were the biggest hitters but there were many others of varying levels of note such as the BBC Micro from Acorn, and the Amstrad CPC.
The NES did come out here, marketed by Mattel, so it was squarely positioned as a toy, and frankly didn't do very well; the Sega Master System was marketed by hugely successful budget software publisher Mastertronic, who managed to gain more traction with their existing foothold in the computer games market and the Master System's relatively impressive (for the time) arcade conversions and ports.
By this time the 8-bit home micros were starting to be superceded by the 16-bit Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, which had plenty of time to establish a foothold before the next generation of consoles.
Nintendo's first huge success over here wouldn't come until the Game Boy, which did gangbusters (building on the fairly successful Game & Watch line) and laid a very solid foundation for the SNES when it eventually showed up officially on these shores, although by then Sega had the Mega Drive (Genesis) out here too and they both proved big hits - in turn paving the way for the PlayStation to utterly dominate after it released.
It's worth noting here that, in particular with machines after the NES/MS but before PlayStation, "grey imports" were big business here. Console makers regarded the UK (and I presume Europe to a degree but not sure about that) as very much a third-class market, and the machines released significantly later here than either Japan or the US. But the demand was still strong here, so imports of Japanese (and less so American) versions of the PC Engine/TG-16, SNES (Super Famicom), Mega Drive (Genesis), and others were sold by specialist importers who modified the consoles to work with UK PAL TVs and power supplies and offered their own warranties. This in turn gave the UK gamers of the time crash-courses in region locks and how to defeat them, and even after the machines belatedly launched officially sometimes years later, also access to much wider software libraries than were officially released here.
During the SNES/MD years the Amiga and ST faded away a bit and the PC finally took over as the dominant home computer platform; by the time the PlayStation was out, everything had largely settled to roughly some sort of parity with the US market. But before that, it was wildly different here.
I mean, I grew up in NC, of all places, and I knew about the Master System. Even knew one kid who had one.
But then, I was the one who basically read virtually every game magazine cover to cover, so... YMMV?
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You know it is funny. You find these lots of SNES games on eBay and they are for the crappiest games ever.
You have to go to video game conventions to get good deals.
I need to find a website that shows where they are at.
This game is a guilty pleasure of mine. I never beat it. It is absurdly hard at the end. The AVGN did an episode on it.
I think I got it in the box. To the game shelf! https://youtu.be/zyqeCXZCSGw https://youtu.be/gU21wBNSVWU
Really, the SEGA Master System was kind of fancier than the NES.
I think older people realized this, but it was lost on the kids.
Well, I was a kid back then, and I don't think it was a matter of us being presented with both the NES and Master System, and not being able to understand that it was "better", but rather most of us just didn't know the Master System existed. I never saw it or heard of it until the mid-90s. Before that, I always assumed the Genesis was their first console. Though this could just be an American perspective. Just seems like it was very poorly marketed here.
I think it is an American perspective, not incorrectly of course. NES was the dominant game platform for at least the mid-to-late '80s and I met many American gamers who had no idea there was a Sega machine before the Genesis. The Master System was barely a footnote in the US.
History lesson time! If you guys will indulge me...
In the UK the entire market was different; Atari never took off hugely with the 2600, so the crash of '83 effectively never happened here. Home microcomputers were the big games scene over here; the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum were the biggest hitters but there were many others of varying levels of note such as the BBC Micro from Acorn, and the Amstrad CPC.
The NES did come out here, marketed by Mattel, so it was squarely positioned as a toy, and frankly didn't do very well; the Sega Master System was marketed by hugely successful budget software publisher Mastertronic, who managed to gain more traction with their existing foothold in the computer games market and the Master System's relatively impressive (for the time) arcade conversions and ports.
By this time the 8-bit home micros were starting to be superceded by the 16-bit Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, which had plenty of time to establish a foothold before the next generation of consoles.
Nintendo's first huge success over here wouldn't come until the Game Boy, which did gangbusters (building on the fairly successful Game & Watch line) and laid a very solid foundation for the SNES when it eventually showed up officially on these shores, although by then Sega had the Mega Drive (Genesis) out here too and they both proved big hits - in turn paving the way for the PlayStation to utterly dominate after it released.
It's worth noting here that, in particular with machines after the NES/MS but before PlayStation, "grey imports" were big business here. Console makers regarded the UK (and I presume Europe to a degree but not sure about that) as very much a third-class market, and the machines released significantly later here than either Japan or the US. But the demand was still strong here, so imports of Japanese (and less so American) versions of the PC Engine/TG-16, SNES (Super Famicom), Mega Drive (Genesis), and others were sold by specialist importers who modified the consoles to work with UK PAL TVs and power supplies and offered their own warranties. This in turn gave the UK gamers of the time crash-courses in region locks and how to defeat them, and even after the machines belatedly launched officially sometimes years later, also access to much wider software libraries than were officially released here.
During the SNES/MD years the Amiga and ST faded away a bit and the PC finally took over as the dominant home computer platform; by the time the PlayStation was out, everything had largely settled to roughly some sort of parity with the US market. But before that, it was wildly different here.
I always enjoy hearing about these regional market conditions, for lack of a better term. In Taiwan, home video game consoles didn't take off until well into the Fourth Generation of hardware, and what should probably be called the Fifth Generation; finally reaching that time in 1990s when middle-class people could afford to purchase hardware and the Super Famicom, the original Playstation (and to a lesser extent Nintendo 64 and Sega Megadrive) were all basically on the market at the same time. And a lot of that, invariably, had to do with how relatively easy Nintendo and Sony-distributed software was to pirate (with 3.5" diskettes and copied CDs respectively) versus the games for the hardware that came after that, as well as ease or difficulty of Japanese imports before distribution formalized in Traditional Chinese, etc. x86 PC gaming (on DOS, Windows, mostly from Blizzard and Battle.net) and public arcades remained the norm throughout the whole of my childhood; home consoles didn't really carve out a niche as a comparatively cheap, straightforward alternative until well into the 2000's, especially in Taiwan we had companies like Acer, among the largest PC manufacturers in the world, keep desktop PC prices comparatively low. It genuinely shocked me how much more popular home console, and how much less popular PC gaming, was in Japan when I moved to Yokohama in the 1990's.
This also ties in somewhat to the pricing conversation in the Xbox thread and especially your observation of '80s console game prices, @Synthesis :
One enormous advantage that the home microcomputer scene in '80s UK had over consoles of the era was the price of the games - full price titles on Spectrum/C64/etc would typically be £8-10 on cassette, maybe £15 on floppy disk (very much a "premium" format), and budget software (both originals - often of excellent quality - and re-releases of older full-price games) would be £2-3, which compared extremely favourably to £20-25 for Master System games and £30-35 (if memory serves - they were definitely more expensive) for NES games; and meant to a kid of the era, like myself, it was more realistic to actually be able to save up and buy games rather than them being confined to just birthday/Christmas etc. Budget games in particular would even be on cassette racks at places like petrol stations (gas stations), for impulse buyers.
This also ties in somewhat to the pricing conversation in the Xbox thread and especially your observation of '80s console game prices, @Synthesis :
One enormous advantage that the home microcomputer scene in '80s UK had over consoles of the era was the price of the games - full price titles on Spectrum/C64/etc would typically be £8-10 on cassette, maybe £15 on floppy disk (very much a "premium" format), and budget software (both originals - often of excellent quality - and re-releases of older full-price games) would be £2-3, which compared extremely favourably to £20-25 for Master System games and £30-35 (if memory serves - they were definitely more expensive) for NES games; and meant to a kid of the era, like myself, it was more realistic to actually be able to save up and buy games rather than them being confined to just birthday/Christmas etc. Budget games in particular would even be on cassette racks at places like petrol stations (gas stations), for impulse buyers.
I remember years ago on these forums--probably more than a decade, in retrospect--during what I will term the twilight of the halcyon days of Gabe Newell's weird personality cult as the savior of gaming--I noted that Steam was only gradually catching on in Taiwan (and a lot of places in East Asia were Windows gaming still outnumbered Japanese-made home consoles). This coincided with a time where there had been a popular, if disproven, narrative that "PC Gaming is dying" (really "Windows", since there were realistically still no OS alternatives in the gaming space), and that it had been narrowly saved by the intervention of Steam. The answer someone gave me was, "Yeah, because in Taiwan everyone is pirating games."
First, I kind of want to say "Fuck that guy", though is otherwise baseless claim did have some historic truth (~ten years before was probably the last gasp of the golden age of PC software piracy in Taiwan going back to the arrival of the personal computer). I think more to the point was that he (probably) couldn't comprehend the idea that Taiwan was still home to literally thousands of small software vendors selling cheap boxed software (sometimes up to date, sometimes years old), because the extreme level of urbanization (few Taiwanese live in the countryside; basically none of them had computers at the time anyway, before the rise of the smartphone) made this sustainable (and it's actually still possible to buy physical software releases in Taiwan, albeit mostly in department and franchised convenience stores). I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Steam, as an actual software marketplace, was at least ten years behind in Taiwan; they would've needed something equivalent to World of Warcraft, which absolutely put Battle.net on the map, along with Diablo and Starcraft.
That kind of software market--the kind that Taiwanese domestically were developing for, when Taiwan was already home to like two of the three largest global PC manufacturers before Lenovo entered the scene--was not ideal for video games in an ironic way. Ten years before that, through the 1990s, home console piracy, since it was being done outside of the commercial space, managed to cling on; I think 3.5" floppy diskette (actually the international 90 mm diskette--which was inspired by Sony's earlier version, though apparently that flopped if you'll excuse the expression) was actually the most common way to play Super Famicom games, via a slew of different diskette drive readers. I was definitely an outlier by having (mostly Japanese) plastic cartridges for my Super Famicom (all of which I inherited from a neighbor; I don't think I ever purchased a single one). The fact that I remember at least some of them not even having a standard SNES edge connection built in (so you could only use diskettes, or only use cartridges, but not both at the same time) leads me to think it was really considered the normal way of playing Super Famicom games, which in retrospect seems kind of crazy (also there were annoying load times and occasional diskette switching).
Part of that was piracy, obviously. Part of that was cost mitigation--you could buy these drive adapters anywhere you could buy a Super Famicom console (itself an import, I'm not sure how Nintendo otherwise distributed them in Taiwan; I think it wasn't until the Wii when Nintendo really sold hardware in Taiwan regularly), but you couldn't actually buy the diskettes themselves (effectively, you were expected to use some authorized service from Nintendo or, more likely, copy it from a friend who copied it from a friend etc.). And part of that was that far more people owned Windows PCs with diskette drives than ever owned Super Famicoms, which people already knew were "old" when they came to the market; the original Playstation didn't have that same problem, and I think enjoyed a lot better longevity as a result. In the same style, the Xbox 360 was actively advertised in physical retailers. Ten years after that, I think the lone Xbox One console I saw in Taiwan was in a Maid Cafe (I swear, my cousin and her girlfriend brought me there) in Taipei, hooked up to a Kinect as a social gaming device, probably in the exact same capacity you'd expect a Wii to take a few years earlier. In it's "defense", I can't actually recall having ever seen a PS4 in a home (my eldest cousin was the Playstation owner, but he definitely didn't own a PS3, and I'm not sure he bought a PS2); it was just a hostile marketplace to home consoles (not in an arcade or public setting), though I think the Switch--because of its portability--made significant headway in cracking that barrier.
By now, the Taiwanese marketplace is probably nearly interchangeable with that of Japan (there's even formal distribution in Traditional Chinese), to the point where imports are probably pretty rare today. It's just that, even per capita, home consoles just aren't as popular (then again, with Japan being home of two of the three commercial ecosystem owners, what exactly am I expecting). But I haven't actually been back in ten years (I know at least one of my cousins owns a Switch, because it's been described to me). Taiwanese developers are pretty much still bringing everything to PC, and with games coming to consoles as kind of an afterthought (even including Playstation, which you would be more popular for obvious reasons; I hear about as many modern Taiwanese releases, like The Legend of Tianding, coming to Xbox as well Playstation, and it was very obviously intended for the PC market first). At least Steam has become absolutely more popular with developers, if primarily as a way to cheaply access an overseas audience if you're willing to distribute your game in English.
EDIT: I don't know if we ever got the PC Engine. I don't think we did, despite its big success in Japan. I think what I'm remembering is a decade or more of Windows games that were ported from PC Engine or possibly even just styled as such; a lot of them were erotic in some way. For all I know that whole lineage of gaming just rotted my brain.
Speaking of the PC Engine, RMC is covering another super obscure form of it, an expensive RGB monitor with a PC engine built into its bottom, offering one of the best viewing experiences at the time by bypassing composite. What's of more general interest though is one of the uses of such an expensive monitor, for creating great screenshots, and he gives a small demonstration and some general info about how it was done back in the day; creating ideal conditions for photographing high-quality CRTs, no direct capture here. You can see this section start at 6:15.
Another tidbit I learned is that the Pioneer Laseractive, which had two add-in modules to play mega drive and PC engine games, also had a small number of laserdisc titles created for the two hybrid consoles, which had access to analog laserdisc playback on top of the console's normal abilities. Probably the absolute best way to play road avenger or the like.
The NES did come out here, marketed by Mattel, so it was squarely positioned as a toy, and frankly didn't do very well; the Sega Master System was marketed by hugely successful budget software publisher Mastertronic, who managed to gain more traction with their existing foothold in the computer games market and the Master System's relatively impressive (for the time) arcade conversions and ports.
It's kinda crazy how the global gaming market was back in the "Wild West" days of the 80s. Since it wasn't nearly as big as it is today, very few of the players had any kind of global presence, which lead to some weird partnerships and some wildly inconsistent marketing and distribution. Sometimes it seemed like they weren't sure if they should market it as a toy or some sort of appliance. Then you have the NES/Famicom just having a straight up different name and wildly different aesthetic in different countries.
+2
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Edit: Going to guess that means it'll be available digitally as well.
Yeah. They are sold out. I missed it.
I will probably have to get the digital version. I am surprised it is not out yet.
Who are all these nuts buying Limited Run shit anyway? Their prices are outrageous.
I am still waiting for past orders to come in.
One nut here. I have bought some of their stuff and got both of their Valis for the Switch. Some of the games I bought were the same price as the digital version so I figured might as well get it in a physical media instead.
I was really into their stuff early on, but as the company's gotten bigger and bigger, their limited editions have gotten crappier and crappier, like the limited edition of Ground Zero Texas that came with a script which was the size of my palm.
The NES did come out here, marketed by Mattel, so it was squarely positioned as a toy, and frankly didn't do very well; the Sega Master System was marketed by hugely successful budget software publisher Mastertronic, who managed to gain more traction with their existing foothold in the computer games market and the Master System's relatively impressive (for the time) arcade conversions and ports.
It's kinda crazy how the global gaming market was back in the "Wild West" days of the 80s. Since it wasn't nearly as big as it is today, very few of the players had any kind of global presence, which lead to some weird partnerships and some wildly inconsistent marketing and distribution. Sometimes it seemed like they weren't sure if they should market it as a toy or some sort of appliance. Then you have the NES/Famicom just having a straight up different name and wildly different aesthetic in different countries.
The SNES too with its chunky US redesign, although that was less radical of a redesign than the NES got from the Famicom of course.
The SNES in the UK was still called the SNES, but used the Super Famicom design, oddly enough!
Yeah, I totally get the NES redesign, as the Famicom is just fugly. But the US SNES is kinda mind-boggling. The Super Famicom already looked like a sleeker, more advanced NES. Nope, let's take a step back and make it boxier.
Edit: Going to guess that means it'll be available digitally as well.
Yeah. They are sold out. I missed it.
I will probably have to get the digital version. I am surprised it is not out yet.
Who are all these nuts buying Limited Run shit anyway? Their prices are outrageous.
I am still waiting for past orders to come in.
One nut here. I have bought some of their stuff and got both of their Valis for the Switch. Some of the games I bought were the same price as the digital version so I figured might as well get it in a physical media instead.
I was really into their stuff early on, but as the company's gotten bigger and bigger, their limited editions have gotten crappier and crappier, like the limited edition of Ground Zero Texas that came with a script which was the size of my palm.
I do admit I limit my purchases from them and actually buy some from Play Asia and other sites now that I know they're not the only game in town to get physical media.
Yeah, I totally get the NES redesign, as the Famicom is just fugly. But the US SNES is kinda mind-boggling. The Super Famicom already looked like a sleeker, more advanced NES. Nope, let's take a step back and make it boxier.
I can only assume it was the same sort of thought process that turned the tiny, sleek, beautiful PC Engine into the TurboGrafx-16. Make it bigger and chunkier because that means POWAH! to the American consumer. Or did then. Supposedly.
The NES did come out here, marketed by Mattel, so it was squarely positioned as a toy, and frankly didn't do very well; the Sega Master System was marketed by hugely successful budget software publisher Mastertronic, who managed to gain more traction with their existing foothold in the computer games market and the Master System's relatively impressive (for the time) arcade conversions and ports.
It's kinda crazy how the global gaming market was back in the "Wild West" days of the 80s. Since it wasn't nearly as big as it is today, very few of the players had any kind of global presence, which lead to some weird partnerships and some wildly inconsistent marketing and distribution. Sometimes it seemed like they weren't sure if they should market it as a toy or some sort of appliance. Then you have the NES/Famicom just having a straight up different name and wildly different aesthetic in different countries.
The SNES too with its chunky US redesign, although that was less radical of a redesign than the NES got from the Famicom of course.
The SNES in the UK was still called the SNES, but used the Super Famicom design, oddly enough!
It wasn't limited to the UK; I believe all of Europe where it was actually distributed used the same rules.
In a way, it's unsurprising. I think "Famicom" was a generic in Japanese (or at least before the console release), but obviously not anywhere else; Nintendo was capitalizing on its recognizability for the follow up. But everywhere else it made sense to name it after the corporation more overtly. I think the United States was the only place where a complete cosmetic redesign (down to the Nintendo-distributed cartridges) was authorized.
In Taiwan, we didn't get Super Famicom for many years (I think at least 1994, if not later, which is when the CIS countries also got it). But it was called "SUPER Famicom", as in Japan, unlike Super Nintendo elsewhere, but I believe were the exception (edit: namely, I think we were getting them straight off surplus in Japan, not as a regional market). Apparently the ROK got it under the name "Super Comboy", built by Hyundai, except it still had Super Nintendo branding on it.
Well you are doing a plastics rework anyway because region locking, otherwise you could play JP carts on NA systems and vice versa. Europe used PAL so games would play wrong anyway. And boxes were the style at the time at least in the US/Canada
What's really interesting though is there's a pinout difference between the Famicom and the NES. Despite the NES carts having more pins, the Famicom routes the analog audio signal through the cart which allows the cart to include its own audio mixer and the NES does not
American cartridges do fit into Japanese and European console slots, right out of the gate, so that's not very effective. The PAL/NTSC issue is more serious.
The reverse is true too, but you have to break open the plastic. If it's not the least effective form of region locking ever, it's close to it.
Synthesis on
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
I just found a game that will not work in the Canoe emulator on the SNES mini, Rock n' Roll Racing.
I am also putting some Japan RPGs on there.
I recall Uniracers/Unirally was one that had issues on some emulators; it doesn't work on the SNES Classic, for example.
The Hakchi2 CE lets you add a couple SNES emulators that you can swap in. One is based off Mednafen. The other is based off Snes9x.
I have been using the Mednafen one as a replacement since it is probably the most accurate. I swapped it in for Yoshi's Island to fix the Canoe bug.
Hakchi usually detects what does not work with Canoe, but it missed Rock n' Roll Racing.
Yeah, I totally get the NES redesign, as the Famicom is just fugly. But the US SNES is kinda mind-boggling. The Super Famicom already looked like a sleeker, more advanced NES. Nope, let's take a step back and make it boxier.
I did a couple of pieces some years ago for Old School Gamer about the SNES redesign:
Yeah, I totally get the NES redesign, as the Famicom is just fugly. But the US SNES is kinda mind-boggling. The Super Famicom already looked like a sleeker, more advanced NES. Nope, let's take a step back and make it boxier.
I can only assume it was the same sort of thought process that turned the tiny, sleek, beautiful PC Engine into the TurboGrafx-16. Make it bigger and chunkier because that means POWAH! to the American consumer. Or did then. Supposedly.
That's what I heard. Smaller = weaker and all that stuff, so they bulked it up to look like a serious piece of equipment.
LBD_Nytetrayn on
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
The Valis Collection has a reversible cover with the crappy American Valis cover.
I got it in the mail.
Now to wait for Valis IV to go digital. I really wish there was a fan patch. Make a wrapper or something.
Posts
I did use some money from my parents in college and secretly got an N64. I probably pissed them off a little bit.
I think it is an American perspective, not incorrectly of course. NES was the dominant game platform for at least the mid-to-late '80s and I met many American gamers who had no idea there was a Sega machine before the Genesis. The Master System was barely a footnote in the US.
History lesson time! If you guys will indulge me...
In the UK the entire market was different; Atari never took off hugely with the 2600, so the crash of '83 effectively never happened here. Home microcomputers were the big games scene over here; the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum were the biggest hitters but there were many others of varying levels of note such as the BBC Micro from Acorn, and the Amstrad CPC.
The NES did come out here, marketed by Mattel, so it was squarely positioned as a toy, and frankly didn't do very well; the Sega Master System was marketed by hugely successful budget software publisher Mastertronic, who managed to gain more traction with their existing foothold in the computer games market and the Master System's relatively impressive (for the time) arcade conversions and ports.
By this time the 8-bit home micros were starting to be superceded by the 16-bit Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, which had plenty of time to establish a foothold before the next generation of consoles.
Nintendo's first huge success over here wouldn't come until the Game Boy, which did gangbusters (building on the fairly successful Game & Watch line) and laid a very solid foundation for the SNES when it eventually showed up officially on these shores, although by then Sega had the Mega Drive (Genesis) out here too and they both proved big hits - in turn paving the way for the PlayStation to utterly dominate after it released.
It's worth noting here that, in particular with machines after the NES/MS but before PlayStation, "grey imports" were big business here. Console makers regarded the UK (and I presume Europe to a degree but not sure about that) as very much a third-class market, and the machines released significantly later here than either Japan or the US. But the demand was still strong here, so imports of Japanese (and less so American) versions of the PC Engine/TG-16, SNES (Super Famicom), Mega Drive (Genesis), and others were sold by specialist importers who modified the consoles to work with UK PAL TVs and power supplies and offered their own warranties. This in turn gave the UK gamers of the time crash-courses in region locks and how to defeat them, and even after the machines belatedly launched officially sometimes years later, also access to much wider software libraries than were officially released here.
During the SNES/MD years the Amiga and ST faded away a bit and the PC finally took over as the dominant home computer platform; by the time the PlayStation was out, everything had largely settled to roughly some sort of parity with the US market. But before that, it was wildly different here.
Steam | XBL
I know you don't like LRG, but they just had the English version for pre-order.
https://limitedrungames.com/products/switch-limited-run-162-valis-ii
Edit: Going to guess that means it'll be available digitally as well.
Steam: betsuni7
No English in the Japanese versions!
Also the Version of Valis 1 included in Collection 2 is.... the MSX version, which is a heavily truncated version of the PC88 original, which is extremely different from what ended up on the PC Engine. So its got to be one of the worst versions! The PC Engine Valis 1 is over in the first collection (and subbed only in the English release.)
Its utterly baffling that they have an MSX emulator and didn't stretch it to play Valis 2 as well. The computer game has a radically different story than the somewhat boring PCE versions, and the MSX2 is the best playing port, especially with an overclock. (Even if its early PC platforming jank reminiscent of Duke Nukem) Fortunately, there IS a fan translation for this version...
I do love all the gory boss deaths you get to witness in the cutscenes of computer Valis 2. Yuuko is a certified stone-cold killer.
Yeah. They are sold out. I missed it.
I will probably have to get the digital version. I am surprised it is not out yet.
Who are all these nuts buying Limited Run shit anyway? Their prices are outrageous.
I am still waiting for past orders to come in.
One nut here. I have bought some of their stuff and got both of their Valis for the Switch. Some of the games I bought were the same price as the digital version so I figured might as well get it in a physical media instead.
Steam: betsuni7
I mean, I grew up in NC, of all places, and I knew about the Master System. Even knew one kid who had one.
But then, I was the one who basically read virtually every game magazine cover to cover, so... YMMV?
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You have to go to video game conventions to get good deals.
I need to find a website that shows where they are at.
I think I got it in the box. To the game shelf!
https://videogamecons.com/event/18327/holiday-matsuri-2022
I wouldn't mind running to Japan some time in my lifetime. Make a video game run.
I always enjoy hearing about these regional market conditions, for lack of a better term. In Taiwan, home video game consoles didn't take off until well into the Fourth Generation of hardware, and what should probably be called the Fifth Generation; finally reaching that time in 1990s when middle-class people could afford to purchase hardware and the Super Famicom, the original Playstation (and to a lesser extent Nintendo 64 and Sega Megadrive) were all basically on the market at the same time. And a lot of that, invariably, had to do with how relatively easy Nintendo and Sony-distributed software was to pirate (with 3.5" diskettes and copied CDs respectively) versus the games for the hardware that came after that, as well as ease or difficulty of Japanese imports before distribution formalized in Traditional Chinese, etc. x86 PC gaming (on DOS, Windows, mostly from Blizzard and Battle.net) and public arcades remained the norm throughout the whole of my childhood; home consoles didn't really carve out a niche as a comparatively cheap, straightforward alternative until well into the 2000's, especially in Taiwan we had companies like Acer, among the largest PC manufacturers in the world, keep desktop PC prices comparatively low. It genuinely shocked me how much more popular home console, and how much less popular PC gaming, was in Japan when I moved to Yokohama in the 1990's.
One enormous advantage that the home microcomputer scene in '80s UK had over consoles of the era was the price of the games - full price titles on Spectrum/C64/etc would typically be £8-10 on cassette, maybe £15 on floppy disk (very much a "premium" format), and budget software (both originals - often of excellent quality - and re-releases of older full-price games) would be £2-3, which compared extremely favourably to £20-25 for Master System games and £30-35 (if memory serves - they were definitely more expensive) for NES games; and meant to a kid of the era, like myself, it was more realistic to actually be able to save up and buy games rather than them being confined to just birthday/Christmas etc. Budget games in particular would even be on cassette racks at places like petrol stations (gas stations), for impulse buyers.
Steam | XBL
I remember years ago on these forums--probably more than a decade, in retrospect--during what I will term the twilight of the halcyon days of Gabe Newell's weird personality cult as the savior of gaming--I noted that Steam was only gradually catching on in Taiwan (and a lot of places in East Asia were Windows gaming still outnumbered Japanese-made home consoles). This coincided with a time where there had been a popular, if disproven, narrative that "PC Gaming is dying" (really "Windows", since there were realistically still no OS alternatives in the gaming space), and that it had been narrowly saved by the intervention of Steam. The answer someone gave me was, "Yeah, because in Taiwan everyone is pirating games."
First, I kind of want to say "Fuck that guy", though is otherwise baseless claim did have some historic truth (~ten years before was probably the last gasp of the golden age of PC software piracy in Taiwan going back to the arrival of the personal computer). I think more to the point was that he (probably) couldn't comprehend the idea that Taiwan was still home to literally thousands of small software vendors selling cheap boxed software (sometimes up to date, sometimes years old), because the extreme level of urbanization (few Taiwanese live in the countryside; basically none of them had computers at the time anyway, before the rise of the smartphone) made this sustainable (and it's actually still possible to buy physical software releases in Taiwan, albeit mostly in department and franchised convenience stores). I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Steam, as an actual software marketplace, was at least ten years behind in Taiwan; they would've needed something equivalent to World of Warcraft, which absolutely put Battle.net on the map, along with Diablo and Starcraft.
That kind of software market--the kind that Taiwanese domestically were developing for, when Taiwan was already home to like two of the three largest global PC manufacturers before Lenovo entered the scene--was not ideal for video games in an ironic way. Ten years before that, through the 1990s, home console piracy, since it was being done outside of the commercial space, managed to cling on; I think 3.5" floppy diskette (actually the international 90 mm diskette--which was inspired by Sony's earlier version, though apparently that flopped if you'll excuse the expression) was actually the most common way to play Super Famicom games, via a slew of different diskette drive readers. I was definitely an outlier by having (mostly Japanese) plastic cartridges for my Super Famicom (all of which I inherited from a neighbor; I don't think I ever purchased a single one). The fact that I remember at least some of them not even having a standard SNES edge connection built in (so you could only use diskettes, or only use cartridges, but not both at the same time) leads me to think it was really considered the normal way of playing Super Famicom games, which in retrospect seems kind of crazy (also there were annoying load times and occasional diskette switching).
Part of that was piracy, obviously. Part of that was cost mitigation--you could buy these drive adapters anywhere you could buy a Super Famicom console (itself an import, I'm not sure how Nintendo otherwise distributed them in Taiwan; I think it wasn't until the Wii when Nintendo really sold hardware in Taiwan regularly), but you couldn't actually buy the diskettes themselves (effectively, you were expected to use some authorized service from Nintendo or, more likely, copy it from a friend who copied it from a friend etc.). And part of that was that far more people owned Windows PCs with diskette drives than ever owned Super Famicoms, which people already knew were "old" when they came to the market; the original Playstation didn't have that same problem, and I think enjoyed a lot better longevity as a result. In the same style, the Xbox 360 was actively advertised in physical retailers. Ten years after that, I think the lone Xbox One console I saw in Taiwan was in a Maid Cafe (I swear, my cousin and her girlfriend brought me there) in Taipei, hooked up to a Kinect as a social gaming device, probably in the exact same capacity you'd expect a Wii to take a few years earlier. In it's "defense", I can't actually recall having ever seen a PS4 in a home (my eldest cousin was the Playstation owner, but he definitely didn't own a PS3, and I'm not sure he bought a PS2); it was just a hostile marketplace to home consoles (not in an arcade or public setting), though I think the Switch--because of its portability--made significant headway in cracking that barrier.
By now, the Taiwanese marketplace is probably nearly interchangeable with that of Japan (there's even formal distribution in Traditional Chinese), to the point where imports are probably pretty rare today. It's just that, even per capita, home consoles just aren't as popular (then again, with Japan being home of two of the three commercial ecosystem owners, what exactly am I expecting). But I haven't actually been back in ten years (I know at least one of my cousins owns a Switch, because it's been described to me). Taiwanese developers are pretty much still bringing everything to PC, and with games coming to consoles as kind of an afterthought (even including Playstation, which you would be more popular for obvious reasons; I hear about as many modern Taiwanese releases, like The Legend of Tianding, coming to Xbox as well Playstation, and it was very obviously intended for the PC market first). At least Steam has become absolutely more popular with developers, if primarily as a way to cheaply access an overseas audience if you're willing to distribute your game in English.
EDIT: I don't know if we ever got the PC Engine. I don't think we did, despite its big success in Japan. I think what I'm remembering is a decade or more of Windows games that were ported from PC Engine or possibly even just styled as such; a lot of them were erotic in some way. For all I know that whole lineage of gaming just rotted my brain.
Another tidbit I learned is that the Pioneer Laseractive, which had two add-in modules to play mega drive and PC engine games, also had a small number of laserdisc titles created for the two hybrid consoles, which had access to analog laserdisc playback on top of the console's normal abilities. Probably the absolute best way to play road avenger or the like.
It's kinda crazy how the global gaming market was back in the "Wild West" days of the 80s. Since it wasn't nearly as big as it is today, very few of the players had any kind of global presence, which lead to some weird partnerships and some wildly inconsistent marketing and distribution. Sometimes it seemed like they weren't sure if they should market it as a toy or some sort of appliance. Then you have the NES/Famicom just having a straight up different name and wildly different aesthetic in different countries.
I was really into their stuff early on, but as the company's gotten bigger and bigger, their limited editions have gotten crappier and crappier, like the limited edition of Ground Zero Texas that came with a script which was the size of my palm.
The SNES too with its chunky US redesign, although that was less radical of a redesign than the NES got from the Famicom of course.
The SNES in the UK was still called the SNES, but used the Super Famicom design, oddly enough!
Steam | XBL
I do admit I limit my purchases from them and actually buy some from Play Asia and other sites now that I know they're not the only game in town to get physical media.
Steam: betsuni7
I can only assume it was the same sort of thought process that turned the tiny, sleek, beautiful PC Engine into the TurboGrafx-16. Make it bigger and chunkier because that means POWAH! to the American consumer. Or did then. Supposedly.
Steam | XBL
It wasn't limited to the UK; I believe all of Europe where it was actually distributed used the same rules.
In a way, it's unsurprising. I think "Famicom" was a generic in Japanese (or at least before the console release), but obviously not anywhere else; Nintendo was capitalizing on its recognizability for the follow up. But everywhere else it made sense to name it after the corporation more overtly. I think the United States was the only place where a complete cosmetic redesign (down to the Nintendo-distributed cartridges) was authorized.
In Taiwan, we didn't get Super Famicom for many years (I think at least 1994, if not later, which is when the CIS countries also got it). But it was called "SUPER Famicom", as in Japan, unlike Super Nintendo elsewhere, but I believe were the exception (edit: namely, I think we were getting them straight off surplus in Japan, not as a regional market). Apparently the ROK got it under the name "Super Comboy", built by Hyundai, except it still had Super Nintendo branding on it.
What's really interesting though is there's a pinout difference between the Famicom and the NES. Despite the NES carts having more pins, the Famicom routes the analog audio signal through the cart which allows the cart to include its own audio mixer and the NES does not
The reverse is true too, but you have to break open the plastic. If it's not the least effective form of region locking ever, it's close to it.
I am also putting some Japan RPGs on there.
I recall Uniracers/Unirally was one that had issues on some emulators; it doesn't work on the SNES Classic, for example.
Steam | XBL
The Hakchi2 CE lets you add a couple SNES emulators that you can swap in. One is based off Mednafen. The other is based off Snes9x.
I have been using the Mednafen one as a replacement since it is probably the most accurate. I swapped it in for Yoshi's Island to fix the Canoe bug.
Hakchi usually detects what does not work with Canoe, but it missed Rock n' Roll Racing.
There seems to be a mod for that.
I did a couple of pieces some years ago for Old School Gamer about the SNES redesign:
https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/the-radical-redesign-of-the-super-nes/
https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/the-radical-redesign-of-the-super-nes-part-2-the-controller/
Suffice to say, there was indeed a reason behind it.
That's what I heard. Smaller = weaker and all that stuff, so they bulked it up to look like a serious piece of equipment.
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
Edit: Ah. HAH!
https://www.reddit.com/r/miniSNESmods/comments/a3j4ov/is_it_possible_to_go_back_to_hakchirertroarch/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I got it in the mail.
Now to wait for Valis IV to go digital. I really wish there was a fan patch. Make a wrapper or something.
Here's one wit miyamoto
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You could try the SNES version in the meantime, even though its fairly different and lacking cutscenes. A part of SNES online apparently?
It has cutscenes for the ending but that’s about it.
Fun game.
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