Nintendo PlayStation...so, apparently someone has one.

Rocky said:
The person I was responding to said it was not possible. Not that it wasn't feasible. Feasible and possible are two very different things.
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Sometimes it's worth just accepting that the point you're trying to make is wrong, and people with far greater knowledge on the subject are going to repeatedly prove that to you. Move on, retain your dignity.
 
FyreWulff said:
Today's disc drives have much, much higher bandwidth and lower latency than the PS1 drive, and also the fact that every game on the One and PS4 actually runs from the hard drive.

There's also the fact that modern consoles have enough RAM that they can just load the entire N64 ROM into RAM, which will be faster than even streaming from the HDD. While OoT performs fine on GameCube, Majora's Mask has issues because there wasn't enough fast RAM space to load the entire Majora ROM into RAM. When you're playing OoT on GameCube, it's not even using the disc drive after the initial load.


edit: PS1 had a 2x CD ROM drive. The real world bandwidth was roughly 100-200kb/sec for PS1 games. For N64, it was 25-40MB/sec. You traded space for speed. The top speed of N64 cartridges still beats out the disc drive of the One and the PS4. The latency of an N64 cartridge is still lower than the hard drive of a One or PS4.


Most all Nintendo and Rare games on the N64 exploited the near RAM speeds to do level streaming and a whole bunch of tricks. Ocarina of Time loads and deloads entire level segments on the fly when you walk down a hallway in under a second. Banjo-Kazooie has the camera jump into Gruntilda's Lair or another level entirely instantly when it's showing you a hint or a Jiggy being created. On Playstation you'd have to fake it with an FMV or just show a still frame.
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Great explanation. Couldn't have said it better myself.
 
FyreWulff said:
Today's disc drives have much, much higher bandwidth and lower latency than the PS1 drive, and also the fact that every game on the One and PS4 actually runs from the hard drive.

There's also the fact that modern consoles have enough RAM that they can just load the entire N64 ROM into RAM, which will be faster than even streaming from the HDD. While OoT performs fine on GameCube, Majora's Mask has issues because there wasn't enough fast RAM space to load the entire Majora ROM into RAM. When you're playing OoT on GameCube, it's not even using the disc drive after the initial load.


edit: PS1 had a 2x CD ROM drive. The real world bandwidth was roughly 100-200kb/sec for PS1 games. For N64, it was 25-40MB/sec. You traded space for speed. The top speed of N64 cartridges still beats out the disc drive of the One and the PS4. The latency of an N64 cartridge is still lower than the hard drive of a One or PS4.


Most all Nintendo and Rare games on the N64 exploited the near RAM speeds to do level streaming and a whole bunch of tricks. Ocarina of Time loads and deloads entire level segments on the fly when you walk down a hallway in under a second. Banjo-Kazooie has the camera jump into Gruntilda's Lair or another level entirely instantly when it's showing you a hint or a Jiggy being created. On Playstation you'd have to fake it with an FMV or just show a still frame.
Click to expand...
Great read.
 
Call me crazy but I think had Nintendo launched the PlayStation in 92 or 93 it probably would not have been that much more successful than the Sega CD. The cost combined with the SNES and Genesis being cheaper and having better libraries would have sunk the concept much like the Sega CD was never able to gain ground significantly.

The PlayStation was the perfect storm to take over the video games market. The Nintendo/Sony PlayStation wouldn't have been such.
 
FyreWulff said:
Today's disc drives have much, much higher bandwidth and lower latency than the PS1 drive, and also the fact that every game on the One and PS4 actually runs from the hard drive.

There's also the fact that modern consoles have enough RAM that they can just load the entire N64 ROM into RAM, which will be faster than even streaming from the HDD. While OoT performs fine on GameCube, Majora's Mask has issues because there wasn't enough fast RAM space to load the entire Majora ROM into RAM. When you're playing OoT on GameCube, it's not even using the disc drive after the initial load.


edit: PS1 had a 2x CD ROM drive. The real world bandwidth was roughly 100-200kb/sec for PS1 games. For N64, it was 25-40MB/sec. You traded space for speed. The top speed of N64 cartridges still beats out the disc drive of the One and the PS4. The latency of an N64 cartridge is still lower than the hard drive of a One or PS4.


Most all Nintendo and Rare games on the N64 exploited the near RAM speeds to do level streaming and a whole bunch of tricks. Ocarina of Time loads and deloads entire level segments on the fly when you walk down a hallway in under a second. Banjo-Kazooie has the camera jump into Gruntilda's Lair or another level entirely instantly when it's showing you a hint or a Jiggy being created. On Playstation you'd have to fake it with an FMV or just show a still frame.
Click to expand...
It's good to learn things.
 
wcw said:
Call me crazy but I think had Nintendo launched the PlayStation in 92 or 93 it probably would not have been that much more successful than the Sega CD. The cost combined with the SNES and Genesis being cheaper and having better libraries would have sunk the concept much like the Sega CD was never able to gain ground significantly.

The PlayStation was the perfect storm to take over the video games market. The Nintendo/Sony PlayStation wouldn't have been such.
Click to expand...

I agree with what you said. I also think that the partnership would not have lasted very long had that been the case, one of the two companies would have surely felt at some point in time that they can do better by themselves and ended the deal right then and there.
 
FyreWulff said:
Most all Nintendo and Rare games on the N64 exploited the near RAM speeds to do level streaming and a whole bunch of tricks. Ocarina of Time loads and deloads entire level segments on the fly when you walk down a hallway in under a second. Banjo-Kazooie has the camera jump into Gruntilda's Lair or another level entirely instantly when it's showing you a hint or a Jiggy being created. On Playstation you'd have to fake it with an FMV or just show a still frame.
Click to expand...
Or just stream it, same as on N64. There were streaming games on PSX, including ones that streamed entire 3D worlds with no loading pauses or scene cuts.
 
Dreamwriter said:
Or just stream it, same as on N64. There were streaming games on PSX, including ones that streamed entire 3D worlds with no loading pauses or scene cuts.
Click to expand...
No, not how it works. Compromises have to be made for that to happen, most obviously in the form of long, plain corridors between major sections to mask the loading.

It also means the main sections must be designed with less RAM resource, to enable the program to start pre-preparing new data when you approach a new area, even before the plain corridor. And if you do something unexpected (like turn around and go back out of a loading corridor), you hit a black load screen, or a scene full of glitches, and hear the CD drive whine as it goes looking for the data it didn't expect you would want at that point.

Nothing on PS1 does what Rare's N64 games do, dynamic loading wise. Carts allow the full graphical power of a system to be on display all the time, without having to compromise the design or the levels or try and guess what the player would do next.

It's like how Crash Bandicoot 2/3 have very little of the pop-up prevalent in most PS1 games, simply by designing the corridors to have bends, hiding the pop-up with game designs. It's doing the best the system can do, but means the game's design is compromised.
 
crimilde said:
I agree with what you said. I also think that the partnership would not have lasted very long had that been the case, one of the two companies would have surely felt at some point in time that they can do better by themselves and ended the deal right then and there.
Click to expand...

It would have been more interesting to see how Sega and Sony would have done teaming up on the PlayStation as a CD based system that was supposed to be the standalone follow-up to the Genesis.

In the Console Wars book they talk about the head of Sega of America around 1993 going to Sony and trying to work out a deal to take the PlayStation and develop it into Sega's next system in a Sega Sony partnership. Had Sega's development teams been combined with Sony's resources and third party support that would have been uber interesting.

It didn't sound like the talks went very far. But from my reading it sounded like Sega and Sony had some sort of preliminary framework worked out between Sega of America and the PlayStation division. Then it went to Sega of Japan and Sony corporate and it fell apart.
 
That's such a cool story about how his father obtained this. They should make a movie about it!
 
wcw said:
It would have been more interesting to see how Sega and Sony would have done teaming up on the PlayStation as a CD based system that was supposed to be the standalone follow-up to the Genesis.

In the Console Wars book they talk about the head of Sega of America around 1993 going to Sony and trying to work out a deal to take the PlayStation and develop it into Sega's next system in a Sega Sony partnership. Had Sega's development teams been combined with Sony's resources and third party support that would have been uber interesting.

It didn't sound like the talks went very far. But from my reading it sounded like Sega and Sony had some sort of preliminary framework worked out between Sega of America and the PlayStation division. Then it went to Sega of Japan and Sony corporate and it fell apart.
Click to expand...

That is such interesting information, I was not aware of that. I think that console would have had a lot more success that just a combined SNES/CD system.
 
crimilde said:
That is such interesting information, I was not aware of that. I think that console would have had a lot more success that just a combined SNES/CD system.
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I'm happy with how things turned out. Sony going it alone forced them to get into software to support their own machine and they made a lot of great games. If they'd partnered with seta (or Nintendo) I think there would be a risk they'd stay focused on the hardware side which is their wheelhouse, and not invested as much in software.
 
More SNES PlayStation patents from Japan:

http://astamuse.com/ja/published/JP/No/1994075663
http://astamuse.com/ja/published/JP/No/1994089566

000002.png


The last one shows the insides!
 
mrklaw said:
I'm happy with how things turned out. Sony going it alone forced them to get into software to support their own machine and they made a lot of great games. If they'd partnered with seta (or Nintendo) I think there would be a risk they'd stay focused on the hardware side which is their wheelhouse, and not invested as much in software.
Click to expand...

I think a Sony/Nintendo partnership would have not done very well. The SNES CD would not have done much better than the Sega CD. But Sega/Sony would have been very interesting. 1993 was the year that Sega of America started to negotiate the deal.

By then Sony had a development studio and infrastructure (The studio that would produce Twisted Metal and the one that produced Micky Mania were already built up by Sony) and Sega would have had a great platform to produce their games on. Sega produced a lot of good games on the Saturn in Japan but having a 3-D system with a simpler infrastructure would have enabled much better development.

I also think Nintendo would have stepped up their game had a Sega/Sony giant emerged in the market. But then again two giant companies could have fought over the success of the machine and it could have ended poorly.
 
wcw said:
I think a Sony/Nintendo partnership would have not done very well. The SNES CD would not have done much better than the Sega CD. But Sega/Sony would have been very interesting. 1993 was the year that Sega of America started to negotiate the deal.

By then Sony had a development studio and infrastructure (The studio that would produce Twisted Metal and the one that produced Micky Mania were already built up by Sony) and Sega would have had a great platform to produce their games on. Sega produced a lot of good games on the Saturn in Japan but having a 3-D system with a simpler infrastructure would have enabled much better development.

I also think Nintendo would have stepped up their game had a Sega/Sony giant emerged in the market. But then again two giant companies could have fought over the success of the machine and it could have ended poorly.
Click to expand...

SegaxSony would've been the best thing to ever happen in the industry. Just imagine where Sega would be if they could tap in that huge ps1/ps2 install base. Some of their franchises started in the early 3D era would be as big as MGS or RE now. We'd probably have Shenmue 5 by now. Panzer dragoon would still be a thing. PSO likely one of the biggest ips in console gaming. Both companies' library complement each other nicely.
 
Canis lupus said:
SegaxSony would've been the best thing to ever happen in the industry. Just imagine where Sega would be if they could tap in that huge ps1/ps2 install base. Some of their franchises started in the early 3D era would be as big as MGS or RE now. We'd probably have Shenmue 5 by now. Panzer dragoon would still be a thing. PSO likely one of the biggest ips in console gaming. Both companies' library complement each other nicely.
Click to expand...

2wAz8I4.png
Click to expand...
.
 
wcw said:
Call me crazy but I think had Nintendo launched the PlayStation in 92 or 93 it probably would not have been that much more successful than the Sega CD. The cost combined with the SNES and Genesis being cheaper and having better libraries would have sunk the concept much like the Sega CD was never able to gain ground significantly.

The PlayStation was the perfect storm to take over the video games market. The Nintendo/Sony PlayStation wouldn't have been such.
Click to expand...

It's hard to say but I think it would have been more successful. It's cool to think about all the different "what if..." scenarios. If Sony & Nintendo had gone ahead and released this and it ended up being a flop or not as successful as the Sega CD would Sony had even pursued doing their own console later on? Maybe they do, maybe they don't....but it didn't happen and things worked out better for them in the end....and Nintendo.
 
I keep popping into this thread every time it updates expecting to hear that the prototype was irreparably damaged when they tried to power it on. I can just imagine the shit that would spew from certain circles if that were to happen.
 
damn how can it be finding an ac adapter seems to be the biggest quest for humanity???

i want to see whats on the cart as well as if there is a cd inside the tray.

fuck i want to know it.

also hoping for the most awesome "welcome screen" of all time.

still thinking that the psx one is super creepy.
 
crimilde said:
I agree with what you said. I also think that the partnership would not have lasted very long had that been the case, one of the two companies would have surely felt at some point in time that they can do better by themselves and ended the deal right then and there.
Click to expand...

Sony absolutely sought out a partnership with the ultimate goal to break free then go it alone. They had the technical chops to create hardware (as they had been providing components for video game hardware for years,) but needed to get more expertise in software, and fostering connections with developers/publishers. Nintendo, and Sega had no delusions as to Sony's ultimate intentions, but they both knew that Sony would enter the industry with, or without them. The question was whether they could foster a positive relationship with them, but egos, and politics put the kibosh on that.
 
All of this talk of cartridges vs disk is very interesting. Makes me wonder about the possibility of a fourth competitor in the console space using different technology that would give them an advantage. What company could realistically enter into the console race and have a unique style and first party studios?
 
D.Lo said:
It's like how Crash Bandicoot 2/3 have very little of the pop-up prevalent in most PS1 games, simply by designing the corridors to have bends, hiding the pop-up with game designs. It's doing the best the system can do, but means the game's design is compromised.
Click to expand...

I do agree with everything in your post but I have to be pedantic about this paragraph. Saying Crash Bandicoot's game design was "compromised" by the CD read speed of the PlayStation 1 is a little misleading. Technically, every game on any console, from the very first ones on Atari to the ones on the PS4, are a collection of tradeoffs and compromises. Even when getting down to Generation 5 it's not fair to say that only PSX games had to compromise. N64 games still had to contend with plenty of compromises such as the comparably microscopic total cart size and the fact that they couldn't ship on more than one cart at a time, whereas PSX could get games massive in scope and shipped many games in 4 CDs at a time. Undoubtedly N64 games also had to do compromises around their own hardware to account for the tiny texture and cart size, which affected game design in different ways.
 
EatinOlives said:
I do agree with everything in your post but I have to be pedantic about this paragraph. Saying Crash Bandicoot's game design was "compromised" by the CD read speed of the PlayStation 1 is a little misleading. Technically, every game on any console, from the very first ones on Atari to the ones on the PS4, are a collection of tradeoffs and compromises. Even when getting down to Generation 5 it's not fair to say that only PSX games had to compromise. N64 games still had to contend with plenty of compromises such as the comparably microscopic total cart size and the fact that they couldn't ship on more than one cart at a time, whereas PSX could get games massive in scope and shipped many games in 4 CDs at a time. Undoubtedly N64 games also had to do compromises around their own hardware to account for the tiny texture and cart size, which affected game design in different ways.
Click to expand...

resident evil 2, shipped on 2 cds was on one cartridge. it looked even better on the n64 as well as had additional content.

btw. we should stick to the topic.

does anyone know what is going on?
owner of the holy grail hasnt responded lately....
 
Sakujou said:
resident evil 2, shipped on 2 cds was on one cartridge. it looked even better on the n64 as well as had additional content.

btw. we should stick to the topic.

does anyone know what is going on?
owner of the holy grail hasnt responded lately....
Click to expand...

It also had worse texture resolution, and really bad fmv..
 
FyreWulff said:
edit: PS1 had a 2x CD ROM drive. The real world bandwidth was roughly 100-200kb/sec for PS1 games. For N64, it was 25-40MB/sec. You traded space for speed. The top speed of N64 cartridges still beats out the disc drive of the One and the PS4. The latency of an N64 cartridge is still lower than the hard drive of a One or PS4.
Click to expand...

We used the Game Boy Advance the same way. Pulling from cartridge was in many ways faster than pulling from RAM. Of course, the downside to this method is you can't compress anything you want to pull that way, so it's really bad for the tiny amount of storage you have to work with.

The N64 was similar in that while you can move data to RAM very fast, it was arguably cheaper to pull from the cartridge direct (though on the N64 it was because Rambus latency was so awful. Peak latency would just crush your ability to keep the CPU fed)

If the N64 had a much more competitive amount of cartridge space by default (1/2? 1/4?) graphics would have improved quite a bit. But the texture cache would still be a critical problem.
 
EatinOlives said:
I do agree with everything in your post but I have to be pedantic about this paragraph. Saying Crash Bandicoot's game design was "compromised" by the CD read speed of the PlayStation 1 is a little misleading. Technically, every game on any console, from the very first ones on Atari to the ones on the PS4, are a collection of tradeoffs and compromises. Even when getting down to Generation 5 it's not fair to say that only PSX games had to compromise. N64 games still had to contend with plenty of compromises such as the comparably microscopic total cart size and the fact that they couldn't ship on more than one cart at a time, whereas PSX could get games massive in scope and shipped many games in 4 CDs at a time. Undoubtedly N64 games also had to do compromises around their own hardware to account for the tiny texture and cart size, which affected game design in different ways.
Click to expand...
That paragraph was basically making the same point you have here - just an illustration about game design compromise. It had nothing to do with CD, but another limitation of the PS1 - draw distance, which they designed the game around, making it look better, but at the expense of freedom of level design.
 
Crazymoogle said:
We used the Game Boy Advance the same way. Pulling from cartridge was in many ways faster than pulling from RAM. Of course, the downside to this method is you can't compress anything you want to pull that way, so it's really bad for the tiny amount of storage you have to work with.

The N64 was similar in that while you can move data to RAM very fast, it was arguably cheaper to pull from the cartridge direct (though on the N64 it was because Rambus latency was so awful. Peak latency would just crush your ability to keep the CPU fed)

If the N64 had a much more competitive amount of cartridge space by default (1/2? 1/4?) graphics would have improved quite a bit. But the texture cache would still be a critical problem.
Click to expand...

Factor 5 mentioned the cart-as-RAM thing once

Factor 5 said:
The big strength was the N64 cartridge. We use the cartridge almost like normal RAM and are streaming all level data, textures, animations, music, sound and even program code while the game is running. With the final size of the levels and the amount of textures, the RAM of the N64 never would have been even remotely enough to fit any individual level. So the cartridge technology really saved the day.
Click to expand...

pretty cool trick. It's a shame cartridges aren't economical to ship huge games on, though.
 
bobeth said:
It also had worse texture resolution, and really bad fmv..
Click to expand...

ok, its a no-brainer that the n64-version would have worse resolution thinking about what made the cd superior at the time: infinite data storage.

btw.

i still believe this system will make a huge amount of money, if it gets onto ebay.

Borman said, this will be at most 5k.

why is he insisting on such a low price? because sega pluto was?

this beauty has to go for more 50k. iam sure.
 
Setzer said:
It's hard to say but I think it would have been more successful. It's cool to think about all the different "what if..." scenarios. If Sony & Nintendo had gone ahead and released this and it ended up being a flop or not as successful as the Sega CD would Sony had even pursued doing their own console later on? Maybe they do, maybe they don't....but it didn't happen and things worked out better for them in the end....and Nintendo.
Click to expand...

It's hard to say and of course this is all hypothetical. But If the SNES launched in 1991 and then they launched a SNES CD circa 92 or 93 as planned it would have been hard to support a console and an add on and have the add on be successful.

For one if it was a CD add on to the SNES then you would limit your sales to only people who have a SNES which in North America was struggling against the Genesis which had close to 60% market share up until late 1994. So right there you have a limited install base to basically being Japan and a smaller segment of the North American market.

Also you have the problem of the SNES CD competing against the Genesis. The Sega CD ran into a wall because why on Earth would you spend 200$ on a Genesis add on when you could spend less than that on an SNES which had way better games? So it's unlikely that a lot of consumers who had the cash to spend on an add on wouldn't have chosen the Genesis over a SNES CD.

Unless Nintendo and Sony would have been able to develop a series of killer apps that made the add on a must have (Games that were so good and so unlike anything available on the SNES/Genesis/SegaCD) then I can't see how successful an add on would be even with Nintendo's talent and both Nintendo and Sony's resources behind it.

Nintendo would also still have to support the SNES which would have taken up development resources and made their output on an add on more limited. If given good support it would have been a nice side venture and a good experiment into CD's for Nintendo and Sony, but considering that the Sega CD sold about 2+ million units I think a Nintendo Playstation would have topped out somewhere between 3-6 million depending on how much support it saw.

If the Playstation failed or was only a moderate venture (Sega never viewed the Sega CD as a failure internally, they thought it was an OK risk to take and they didn't lose money on it according to the console wars book) I am not sure what Sony's next move would have been. Would they have gone it alone or would Nintendo have gone with CD's for the N64 after having been more familiar with the tech and having Sony's talent chime in on their joint venture? Who knows but it for sure changed the course of video game history.
 
All this talk of carts vs. discs makes me so glad that Nintendo has stuck with cartridges for its handhelds. Although, most of my 3DS games are on SD cards instead of 3DS-specific cartridges... but there shouldn't be too much of a difference there, right?
 
Dreadx_Jecht said:
All of this talk of cartridges vs disk is very interesting. Makes me wonder about the possibility of a fourth competitor in the console space using different technology that would give them an advantage. What company could realistically enter into the console race and have a unique style and first party studios?
Click to expand...

Back then? Probably Capcom. They made their own arcade hardware and also had incredible production/variety in those years. Imagine their take on the SNK/NEO GEO concept with a home equivalent. Or even a disc based console from them with Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and MM Legends as first party games.

Their ip, hardware experience, and production was arguably on par with both Nintendo and Sega from the 8-bit generation up until DC/GCN/PS2/Xbox era.
 
Sakujou said:
ok, its a no-brainer that the n64-version would have worse resolution thinking about what made the cd superior at the time: infinite data storage.

btw.

i still believe this system will make a huge amount of money, if it gets onto ebay.

Borman said, this will be at most 5k.

why is he insisting on such a low price? because sega pluto was?

this beauty has to go for more 50k. iam sure.
Click to expand...

No, I said 5k+, very different thing. And I also clarified with this being an offer from a museum with a non-permanent contract. Selling isn't the only option here, and honestly a straight sell would be a disappointment. Either way, Im rallying against sloppy, made up numbers (like 500k). I've had some pretty unique things come my way, which if I showed it people would say was worth thousands, meanwhile it is worth hundreds at best. The prototype market is very unique. Obviously this piece transcends the prototype market, but you would be surprised how little some things do sell for.
 
I kinda wish someone would reverse engineer the thing and have people create custom games for it :lol. Would be super cool
 
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