Sega announces a tiny Sega CD retro console
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I had the original Sega CD, the one with the motorized tray for the CD that sat under the Genesis/Megadrive console, not the discman-esque top loading device they are copying here.
I suppose I'm the exact target market for this, as a pure nostalgic impulse purchase. But I have to say even as a kid I was so disappointed in the games available for it, that to impulse buy this would be to relive that disappointment, so ... pass.
Credit goes to the original device's included Video-CD for introducing me to Jimi Hendrix though (it had Manic Depression with a multimedia accompaniment) . That definitely changed me!
I also do find that, in hindsight, there's a bizarre charm to the Full Motion Video games that were popular in the 90s. Night Trap and Corpse Killers aren't "good" games in any kind of objective sense, but at the same time they're extremely entertaining games in 2022, at least worth playing on an emulator.
Alas the video gaming portion of my life ended right after I got the Sega CD, so never knew about the later better titles.
Between Shining Force to Golden Sun I can see that the aesthetics of the overworld UI's first layer (very small illustrated buttons arranged as an overlay near the bottom of the screen) and the perspective of the battle system when an attack is performed (3/4 over the shoulder) are quite clear carry-throughs. The font and box graphics are also similar - thin white text on a deep blue. They even both ubiquitously have multi-headed dragons as the final boss!
The creators of these games had a very particular, very effective experiential vision of a fantasy adventure and I'm grateful I got to experience it as part of my childhood and even got to see it when looking further back in time. Even though some of the Djinn were very frustrating to catch sometimes!
IIRC it did not officially support the 32X, but it did work?
The Genesis started losing to the SNES. They thought they could improve/extend it with the Sega CD but that flopped.
Nintendo of America realized they needed something better. So they designed the 32X. They later planned to sell a Genesis with one built in, sort of like the CDX. Honestly 32X + Sega CD was pretty good.
But Sega is a Japanese company. And Sega of Japan didn’t care for what Sega of America was doing (and possibly wanted to teach them a lesson?). So they basically refused to support the 32X, leading to very few games.
To make things worse Sega of Japan had their own solution to the problem, the Saturn. It was further off (this why the 32X made it out), but it got announced. And it was incompatible. Why buy a 32X if it’s going to be obsolete in like a year anyway?
So SoJ basically undermined/killed the 32X, though it may not have been a great idea in the first place.
Sega found out about Sony and got scared. I believe that’s why the added the second CPU to the Saturn (making it harder to program/more expensive). But they decided to beat everyone to market to see things up with a first mover advantage. So they announced the console officially and said “It’s out today in the US”. That was a huge bombshell no one expected.
Not even KB Toys and Toys R Us. They didn’t know and were PISSED. They were responsible for the vast majority of game sales. KB pulled all Sega stuff and stopped selling it. Huge loss. TRU did something too (lack of advertising? Low stock?).
Between that, the insane price of $400, and the lack of promotion (it was a surprise launch so no pre-release coverage) the Saturn started in serious trouble and never recovered.
Sony, famously, went up to the mic at their press conference, said “$299”, and walked off stage. It was a huge hit.
Sony had money (Sega wasn’t doing hot), partners (Sega pissed ‘em all off), a lower price, and Nintendo didn’t come out until later. Nintendo was also expensive to develop (carts) and didn’t have much space (carts).
So Sony cleaned everyone’s clocks.
(I love video game history. I got to live through such an amazing time)
But it was sort of odd. The 32X didn’t seem too stable since it stuck up so far. I think they later had a piece of plastic they offered (in box or via mail?) to fix that.
Eventually I'll sit down and watch a let's play or find a good copy.
It holds up extremely well.
The big issue is that most of those early consoles were designed with the expectation that games were on ROM chips directly connected to the CPU bus and mapped into memory so you wouldn't have to load all the assets in RAM (which was miniscule, a few dozen or low hundred kilobytes at most). If you just bolted a CD-ROM onto that architecture it can't be mapped into memory so now you have to cache things in RAM or architect your game to allow for seeking and getting them on demand.
Sony did take all the learnings from the SNES CD-ROM and used it to design the Playstation hardware. They added 2 megabytes of RAM, a huge increase over the SNES, which worked much better with games on CD-ROM.
A good demonstration would be the CD-i version of Lost Eden, it takes up to 3 (three!!) seconds to get a response for the action. 1x (and even 2x) CD-ROMs are unbelievable slow by any modern standard.
[0] https://youtu.be/evZw8WFqQ5g?t=398 (6:38)
The reason the Sega CD tanked was because you had to buy two games consoles (the Mega Drive + Sega CD) just to use it. The fact that Sega CD games had no copy protection probably didn't help much either (the Famicom Disk System suffered a similar problem there too).
Access time. You loaded from the cassette, but once loaded you didn't need it. CD-ROM games (like LE) needs to access the disk for everything and with an already minuscule RAM you can't cache anything.
I played LE on the PC (and with 2x drive and SMARTDRV) and I don't remember such big lags, though it was 25 years ago so of course my memory could deceive me.
Of course if you can find some balance not using the CD all the time then of course it could greatly enchance the experience.
Syummary: yeah, they could be used, but access time was another small, but a nail in the coffin, at least IMO.
I was specifically on about load times. As already discussed several times in this thread, most CD-ROM games systems had onboard RAM to solve the access time problem (Sega CD especially so).
Sure there might be some outliers of bad CD systems, but there’s also bad cartridge systems too (like Amstrads attempt at rebranding the CPC 646 architecture as a games console). You simply cannot compare the worst CD systems against the best cartridge systems if you want a sensible discussion.
> I played LE on the PC (and with 2x drive and SMARTDRV) and I don't remember such big lags, though it was 25 years ago so of course my memory could deceive me.
I’ve not played LE so cannot comment on that game specifically but there are such things as bad console ports of good PC games even on consoles that are technically capable of playing the game well. I own a few examples of this myself. It’s far better not to compare one game and make a conclusion based off that in isolation.
> Syummary: yeah, they could be used, but access time was another small, but a nail in the coffin, at least IMO.
Again, the Sega CD had a large on board RAM. I have a Sega CD (well, the Mega CD because it’s PAL) and games play fine on it.
I wish HN wouldn’t perpetuate this complete fallacy that console CD addons were as limited as their host systems. It’s completely false. I even have the hardware to prove it.
Given the tight schedules and and overall pace of the things back then it is understandable why it didn't flew the way it could be.
Totally unrelated but somewhat relateable anecdata: a couple of weeks ago I decided what I needed some more notification sounds for my two phones and bazillion apps which trigger notifications. Being (mentally) a greybeard I decided to use some sounds from Duke3D. After extracting VOCs from DUKE3D.GRP I came to realisation what if you exclude monsters sound variants (roam, attack, death etc) - there is overall a pretty pale palette of sounds. Yet, back then (and even now - it is only a couple of years since I did kick those alien asses) it were perceived as a wonderful, submerging experience. Duke3D shipped on the CD, with only 35Mb of data used.
That's not true at all. I've said multiple times already that systems with slower access times on storage media was the _norm_ and cartridge based systems were the exception. I've cited multiple examples of how that was the case as well. I don't understand why you're still containing on with this myth of yours even when presented with evidence that clearly disproves it.
> Given the tight schedules and and overall pace of the things back then it is understandable why it didn't flew the way it could be.
Neither of that had any baring on why the Sega CD flopped. Most of the games on the Sega CD were quality games. The issue was mostly down to cost. You had to literally buy two consoles to use it. And games were only marginally better on the Sega CD (plus quite a few Sega CD games were also released as cartridge games for the Mega Drive) so few people saw the Sega CD as a worthwhile purchase. Hence why Sega CD's rise in popularity was afterwards with retro collectors.
You keep saying that games on the Sega CD were crap and that simply isn't true. I have a shelf full of Sega CD games that are to a very good standard. Sure there were some naff titles and those were typically FMV games, but that doesn't mean that every game for the Sega CD was FMV, nor that other non CD-based systems didn't also have their fair share of duds. You're intentionally comparing the worst of CD with the best of cartridges and not even realising how skewed an analysis that is -- then retroactively applying some made up technical facts to fit the analysis. Thus your entire reasoning here is completely backwards.
> Totally unrelated but somewhat relateable anecdata: a couple of weeks ago I decided what I needed some more notification sounds for my two phones and bazillion apps which trigger notifications. Being (mentally) a greybeard I decided to use some sounds from Duke3D. After extracting VOCs from DUKE3D.GRP I came to realisation what if you exclude monsters sound variants (roam, attack, death etc) - there is overall a pretty pale palette of sounds. Yet, back then (and even now - it is only a couple of years since I did kick those alien asses) it were perceived as a wonderful, submerging experience. Duke3D shipped on the CD, with only 35Mb of data used.
Yeah that is totally unrelated. :) Asset sizes naturally get exponentially larger as the quality increases. Audio would be dropped to ridiculously low bit rates and in mono. Textures would be low resolution. etc. I remember some of the tricks I had to pull to crunch sound effects for Worms down to < 1MB for the entire sound pack. If you played them through a HiFi set up they sounded dreadful but over your average PC speakers* and blended into the background ambient sound effects streamed from CD audio, and you had something that sounded pretty ok. But individually those SFX were dreadful. The same is true for Duke3D and every other game of the 90s. The N64 had to pull similar tricks to fit all the audio data onto one cartridge too and didn't even have the luxury of CD audio.
Another thing to remember is our expectations were lower back then. I remember being blown away at Sonic 3 thinking those graphics looked incredible. I also remember playing Wolf3D for the first time and being shocked at a PC could generate real time 3D graphics that played that smoothly. And back when a lot of people were still stuck with MIDI and PC Speakers, hugely bit crunched sound effects sounded amazing compared to what came before it. Heck, I remember hearing spoken text via PCM audio on a 64k BASIC micro and being shocked that was even possible and that spoken text consisted of 2 works that were almost impossible to make out if it had not been for the fact it was the same two words as the games title.
* as in those little desktop speakers that were the norm -- not to be confused with the PC Speaker sound device that most IBM-compatibles shipped with at one time
But anyway, back to the point: the access times for CD were not the downfall of the Sega CD. It was the fact that you needed a Mega Drive to run it and half the library was re-issues of Mega Drive games anyway. So it effectively became a novelty for rich kids rather than a mass consumer addon.
Also streaming assets from the optical drive on demand is doable too. Plenty of games (old and new) have employed this kind of hack.
Lastly you haven't even got your estimations of memory right. The Sega CD had a few megabytes of dedicated RAM [edit: sorry, megabits. Still more than your estimations though]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_CD#Technical_specificatio...
I was around at that time, buying hardware, playing games and even writing my own games too. While your arguments here and your post before sound informed I'm sorry to say they're completely unfounded.
What do you mean? Weren't the ROMs connected directly to the main bus through the cartridge port? As far as the CPU was concerned, there was no difference accessing RAM or ROM.
Larger games, especially on systems with a 16-bit address bus (64 kbyte address space), included memory mapping hardware on the carts to swap in and out graphics as needed. It was still all in ROM.
Also I seem to recall the DMA trick was something that came alone a little after the Mega Drives release. Though I could be wrong on that. But I vaguely recall it wasn't something people knew how to do on day one.
6 megabits = 768 kilobytes.
It added 6 megabits of RAM. The order of magnitude is forgetting to divide by 8.
And the SNES-CD that they were talking about only added a 256KB ram bank onto a main memory of 128KB.
Playstation had 2 megabytes of main memory, and >1.5 in other chunks.
Ack dang it. You're right. Though even at 8Mb it's still significantly greater than the GP's estimations.
> And the SNES-CD that they were talking about only added a 256KB ram bank onto a main memory of 128KB.
The SNES CD was cancelled with only one known prototype made. One could speculate whether those specifications would have made it to the final console or not had the project continued but it would be pure speculation. So I don't think it's all that constructive to compare the SNES CD with the Sega CD.
Well also the specific phrase of "few dozen or low hundred kilobytes at most" was about ROM-based systems.
The downfall of the Mega CD had nothing to do with CD access times.
The library is very much a mixed bag, but I think a large part of that was game developers needing time to figure out what to do with all the extra space. The largest cartridge released during the Genesis/Mega Drive's heyday was only 5 MiB and most were a fair bit smaller than that. CD-ROM gave you two orders of magnitude more storage. The other problem is that Sega of America didn't believe there was much demand for RPGs in the US so while there were quite a lot of them released for the system in Japan, only a few of them made it here.
I think the main thing that did it in was the cost though. CD-ROM drives themselves weren't cheap at the time, all the RAM wasn't cheap and neither was all the extra hardware they stuffed in there. The much more modest CD add-on for the PC Engine/TG-16 sold almost as many units despite the base console being much less popular than the Genesis/Mega Drive and it seems likely that hardware costs were a major factor in that.
+ CD audio (this advantage cannot be overstated given the limitations of sound chips of that era
+ higher storage (cartridges were very limiting. It's why Sonic 3 was originally split over two carts (Sonic 3 + Sonic & Knuckles)
+ Cheaper to produce
The issue wasn't that the world wasn't ready for CD-based consoles. The issue was that it was effectively buying a whole new console as an addon to an existing console. In fact the Sega CD had it's own RAM, CPU and graphics processor too. I cannot blame families for not buying the Sega CD because why would you when you already had the Mega Drive?
So the issue wasn't a lack of technical capabilities. It was just that it was an expense too many for most people.
As an aside, I do have a Mega CD (PAL) and a bunch of games hooked up in my games room. It's a great system. I love it. However I got it when it was cheap retro hardware (before the 16bit retro market exploded). I love collecting hardware and even I wouldn't have paid release prices for it at the time.
Yep, memories of a $300 attachment to play my Information Society CD+G, which was cool but not enough.
For me, the system always seemed like a waste of money for my friend that had it. Sewer shark and night trap weren't exactly great games. So I guess I never had to regret the purchase. I'm excited about the games that aren't fmv based though.
And if you are a "preservationist", you'll either want to play/document/whatever it on the original console, or on one which is dedicated to emulate the system as faithful as possible, i.e. the systems from Analogue or a MiSTer FPGA solution.
Me? I would do exactly what the GP said. But that why I won’t buy it, because I know I don’t care enough. Even for something I have much more nostalgia for (PS 1) it would have been more a art nick-knack for me if I bought it.
If it's sold in retail and costs 60$, the BOM needs to be less than 20$. It's hard to get just an adequate FPGA suitable for the task at that price, and there are still a lot more components needed. I expect the linux chip to const less than 5$.
FPGAs also quickly require much more complex board & power delivery designs.
> The console will cost 9,980 yen before tax; at just under $80, this is in line with the pricing of earlier mini-consoles.
At the same time, on eBay the analogue pocket routinely sells for $700 - $1000, so it seems there's quite a gap in supply for this
They still use the original motherboard and whatnot...
Yet, somehow, they still manage to make it have issues, seemly they replaced several of the original chips with cheaper ones that don't have same algorithms, some games notoriously have issues (Sonic 3 for example has audio problems).
Also they removed the cartridge port from the mobo... but still left the holes and space on the mobo for it.
I find all this so confusing, why not just sell either the original hardware or an FPGA based one instead of stupid hacks?
Picture of the mobo with missing cartridge slot: https://i.imgur.com/tqOM56N.png?3
Also very impressive to see all the work being done on mister cores including things like Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, the first Playstation and Saturn
Of course form a hardware hacking perspective, the FPGA would be fantastic, but those toys are not meant for that.
[1] Even though my thoughts on what an FPGA can really do better in this situation are complex.
Obviously there’s tons and tons of Genesis/MegaDrive documentation, but there’s little documentation for the CD.
It’s not uncommon to see PlayStation 1 JRPGs eschew Red Book audio (and use sequenced samples) in order to take advantage of loading game data while music’s playing. In some ways, it’s not unlike the bulk of Snatcher’s soundtrack being mostly YM2612. I wish I saw more of that during the Sega CD’s lifetime, although homebrew could change that!
Nintendo got off the GPU treadmill and started playing a different game. It’s the only reason they survived.
But other companies have tried doing a Switch like thing of taking an existing chip and making a console. nVidia and Google couldn’t do it and they have tons of money too. Steam had a niche, but a giant existing library (of a sort) and a strong name.
Sega has published the Yakuza series (supposed to be great), Sonic (let’s face it, garbage for 15+ years), and what? Their nostalgia is running low. They don’t have the money to make a Tegra 1 console.
And if they did? Who would buy it? Why risk buying that unless you’re a collector? I doubt they could undercut the Switch price much but the Switch has an amazing library and massive name behind it.
I don’t see how Sega could do any more than be a publisher/creator. Hardware is a losing game. The market is full.
Anyway Yu Suzuki can always just make a kickstarter for a shenmue specific dreamcast mini and get another $4 million in 2 hours. I want another chance to donate $10,000 so I can get Ryus jacket.
Perhaps you are right in a sense though, as i'm happy to play emulators on my pc, and more likely to make a weekend project of converting an old NES into a raspberry pi console than shell out a couple hundo for some of Sega's weaker entries.
Sad to see that the dreamcast hate won; some of my fondest gameplaying memories are with the unusual and stellar titles released for dreamcast. It is unfortunate to see people equating the console's commercial failure in the US market with some sort of failure to create excellent games (crazy taxi, chu chu rocket, dead or alive 2, shenmue, seaman, etc etc)
Seems like a missed opportunity.
>Katrina Gibson - Jean Jack's young daughter. Works as a model. Her house is attacked by snatchers later on in the game but she manages to find refuge in Gillian's apartment. In the Japanese version, her age is given as 14 years old, and the player can sniff her panties while she's showering before walking in on her.