Retro Video Gamer

So the big question is . . . .

Who is your all-time favourite console manufacturer?

For the purpose of the poll I have only listed companies who have produced multiple different consoles but feel free to choose other and state your own if you need to.

Just a reminder of the consoles they produced:

Atari - 2600, 5200, 7800, Lynx, XEGS, Jaguar, Jag CD
Sega - SG1000, Master System, Game Gear, Mega Drive/Genesis, Mega CD, 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast
Nintendo - NES, Game Boy, GBC, SNES, GBA, N64, Game Cube, Virtual Boy, DS/DSi, Wii, Wii U
Philips - Odyssey 2/Videopac, CDi
Sony - PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PSP, Vita
NEC - PC Engine/TurboGrafx, SuperGrafx, Turbo Express, PC-FX
SNK - Neo Geo, Neo Geo Pocket, Neo Geo X
Commodore - C64GS, Amiga CDTV, Amiga CD32
Microsoft - Xbox, Xbox 360

Very difficult decision, but went for Sega for making the Megadrive, Saturn and Dreamcast.

SEGA!!

A toss up between Atari and Sega but I had to go with Sega because of the Master System, Megadrive and Dreamcast.

Neo Geo by a long shot. Not one of there consoles would I not like. Glad I own a couple.

Quote from: "zapiy"Neo Geo by a long shot. Not one of there consoles would I not like. Glad I own a couple.

Where is your vote then 

Sega!

I was tempted to choose other for the 3DO but they only had the one console compared to the many Sega consoles so Sega it is.

Yea... it was me.

(http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=1490447)

 

Tricky one really. Nintendo is the clear winner for consistent machinery with varied ideas and good reliability. Hardware choices though was mixed as the SNES needed a touch more in the CPU department, N64 wasn't great, the Cube lacked DVD support and the Wii was sort of underpowered. Only the VB is crap hardware. Portables have all been good with a mix of quality, battery life and price.

Sega did great with the MS and MD but the Saturn was certainly a bit of a mess though still good, the MCD and 32X were complete rip offs, The Game Gear was toilet and the DC was just a touch too soon, and hugely unreliable.

Sony made a great PS1 despite early issues, PS2 was wonderfully interesting with the multi core approach and saw the greatest improvements in the quality of the titles and PS3 is packed with power and good media features. All are perhaps a beat weak in terms of reliability. PSP was fantastic and Vita is stunning in terms of the machine.

I think Nintendo win, a little unfair though because they have been around so long. Sega come second because their machines have good build quality generally. Pity they dropped out really. A market with them, Sony and Nintendo would have been great.

Add my vote for:

(http://fc06.deviantart.net/images/i/2003/45/a/8/ATARI_Logo_Wallpaper.jpg)

Hmnnnn.Lets see now (each will be looked at for hardware i've bought from them):

ATARI gave me the 2600, the Lynx and the Jaguar, but starved the Lynx of games to a degree, plus AC port can be an issue in terms of realibility and Jaguar was released with bugs and again ATARI failed to deliver on a lot of the games the hardware deserved.


SEGA:I loved for my MD and dreamcast, i did have a 32X (awful) and MCD-great hardware potential but sadly so little of it was used by SEGA themselves (where were the scaler coin-op conversions?) and i loved my Saturn, but design wise it was a mess which caused it a lot of unfair at times flak.DC was superb, but on my 6th+7th models due to the reset issue.Oh and i had a Game Gear and loved it at the time, but that poor LCD screen is a killer.


Nintendo-It's not going to be, i loathe the GBA and GB (both consigned to the cupboard) due to rubbish screens, i adore my GBA Micro+GB player, GC is a superb piece of kit technically, but had 1 reset on me, so on my 2nd model, love the GB player, SNES was ok, but not the MD beater it's proclaimed to be, plus hardware seems to need DSP chips etc in games to get decent results from it, N64 was nice enough, but looked like TOMY made it and the A.A etc resulted in fuzzy images and the choice of carts often meant weak textures etc, plus hate both the GC and N64 control pads.


Sony:the PS1 was ahead of it's time, introduced me to Import gaming (Mod chip ahoy) and had so many fantastic games, but the lens warp in early days was a blight.The PS2? probably takes crown of 'biggest gap between promised performance+Real performance' 66 Million Polys a sec, pfff and find the video out awful compared to DC, plus limited 60 Hz support on Pal.PS3 has been superb, fantastic media device as well as games machine.Love my PSP to point of having no interest in a Vita...PS3 gets points for Region Free (as does PSP) and easy to add bigger HDD


MS:The Xbox was an amazing console, owned 3 now, even better once modded, but great as a games device and media player, the 360? i've grown to love, but it's media abilities poor compared to PS3 and did'nt like MS's approach to paying for online gaming, having to pay high price for wi-fi adaptor on Elite and i could'nt put in PC HDD like i could PS3, so...


Easy answer:i don't have a favourite, i'll buy (have always done so) the best console that suits my needs and i honestly don't care who's made it.If it delivers VFM then it's served it's purpose.

None of the above have a fautless track record.

Rogue Trooper...... do you sit on the fence when you play them aswell? 

Quote from: "Minerals"Rogue Trooper...... do you sit on the fence when you play them aswell?  :24:

Quote from: "Minerals"Rogue Trooper...... do you sit on the fence when you play them aswell? 

That would assume i've finished building the fence.....


It's going to be left plain when it's done, then i'm going to scrawl every 'Your a SONY/ATARI/SEGA fanboy!!! ' quote i've had thrown my way over the years....looking like it'll dwarf the great wall of China at this rate.


Plus splinters? ohhh please, this is 2013, no-one use's wood, i'm using a nano-fibre, ex-NASA planking system, 100% splinter free, or your money back!.Buy now and we'll throw in a free tin foil hat.

Quote from: "nakamura"Tricky one really. Nintendo is the clear winner for consistent machinery with varied ideas and good reliability. Hardware choices though was mixed as the SNES needed a touch more in the CPU department, N64 wasn't great, the Cube lacked DVD support and the Wii was sort of underpowered. Only the VB is crap hardware. Portables have all been good with a mix of quality, battery life and price.

Sega did great with the MS and MD but the Saturn was certainly a bit of a mess though still good, the MCD and 32X were complete rip offs, The Game Gear was toilet and the DC was just a touch too soon, and hugely unreliable.

Sony made a great PS1 despite early issues, PS2 was wonderfully interesting with the multi core approach and saw the greatest improvements in the quality of the titles and PS3 is packed with power and good media features. All are perhaps a beat weak in terms of reliability. PSP was fantastic and Vita is stunning in terms of the machine.

I think Nintendo win, a little unfair though because they have been around so long. Sega come second because their machines have good build quality generally. Pity they dropped out really. A market with them, Sony and Nintendo would have been great.

Hmm don't agree at all with Nintendo being consistent and reliable! Maybe consistent in churning out underspecced equipment and the same old ip with little changes! And my GBA stopped working and my Wii too so not with you on the reliable front!
The Master System beat the NES hands down on graphics and sound, and the arcade conversions at the time.
Megadrive wins easy against the snes, again for the arcade games and original/Amiga ports, the lower resolution of the snes didn't help esp with the vomit enducing mode7 games that at one time every developer had to put somewhere in their game if the gamer wanted it or not!
The original Gameboy was great at the time, but aged badly now, great choice of games, many blurry, at least gb pocket screen helped.
GBC...the devils handheld and Nintendos worst by a country mile....lack of real decent games and badly outdated, should have been released few years earlier, but the worst thing is the god damn awful screen!! You need to sit under a 60w bulb to play the bloody thing! Wonderswan and neogeo pocket colour much better imo.
Gba Nintendos best handheld, great selection of games, ok original screen not the best but improved on later models.
Virtual boy, owned one a while back, is quite fun to play, but awkward stand and dropped like a stone after 6 months, means hardly anything to play on it.
N64 - few great games it must be said, but selection of games was really lacking against ps1 and Saturn, weird controller badly designed, analogue stick good but should have been like GC controller from start...worst thing about n64 is shitty low snes resolution..come on 64 bit with 8bit type resolutions! Really hurt your eyes after playing along muddy textures made for some bad experiences, at least waverace64 cured me for a while!
N64 dd - oh dear oh dear...makes the mega cd look like pure gold from sega!
GC , nice little console, but lack of developer support against ps2 and Xbox soon made shops drop the format.
DS again nice handheld that I got most hours from MarioKart from..best version imo touch screen just a gimmick though and most games best with dpad.
3ds - hardly used mine for a year, 3d again is really a gimmick and soon novelty wears off, not a massive influx of games, shame when latest games of puzzle and girly games continues where DS left off.
Wii - fun..in moderation, as a pure games console it's pretty naff tbh the ps3 and xb360 piss on it from a great height games wise, but for keeping fit and party games it's the best machine...make of that what you will!
Wii u - more gimmicks from Nintendo, casual gamers want phone games, real gamers want normal control pads...Nintendo go for the tablet controller for upto 2 players.....the rest can just use wii remotes! Lack of games currently, no real exclusives bar a couple, no doubt wii u fit and Mario kart u and Kirby Wii u will sell millions but nothing to warrant buying one by a long shot currently .

That's nintendo... More later!

Ok, so who voted other but didn't actually post to say who?

On the whole Amiga Jay, Nintendo have given the most reliable hardware time and time again. Sure not everything is perfect, nothing is but few have put out the quality of physical product like them. Everything else you said boils down to what games you like.

I put my views across in a way that looks at the topic title, best manufacturer. Like I said before, for 30 odd years Nintendo have generally made decent and reliable hardware. The Xbox 360 might be more powerful than a SNES, but no good if you have to keep replacing it.

Otherwise this topic should have been called who makes the best consoles or which console has the best games.

This thread is just about personal opinion, who was your favourite based on the systems that they made. That simple really.

Nintendo or Atari would have been my second choice.

I just lost a GameBoy Color. It no longer will hold a charge.

The Super Nes has been one of the most dependable systems I have ever owned and Nintendo Entertainment System controllers have my respect for being simple but tough. Never had a bad Nes controller. Maybe a few teeth marks like somebody's dog was chewing on it, but it still worked.

Atari 2600 systems tend to hold up well. Wish I could say the same of the joysticks. I have had good luck with 7800 controllers.

I went with Sega because of the add-ons. I enjoy the Master System adaptor, 32X and Sega CD.

Quote from: "nakamura"On the whole Amiga Jay, Nintendo have given the most reliable hardware time and time again. Sure not everything is perfect, nothing is but few have put out the quality of physical product like them. Everything else you said boils down to what games you like.

I put my views across in a way that looks at the topic title, best manufacturer. Like I said before, for 30 odd years Nintendo have generally made decent and reliable hardware. The Xbox 360 might be more powerful than a SNES, but no good if you have to keep replacing it.

Otherwise this topic should have been called who makes the best consoles or which console has the best games.

Again as you say most reliable in your opinion and experience, I don't think there's any official statistics to say otherwise! Just because you think so doesn't make it true.

And yes just as you put your views across so have I by going through one by one, its not just the quality of the machine, it's how it's supported and how the company's get 3rd party support, which some of the time nintendo have been sadly lacking.

I'm not voting on who makes the finest grade a plastic, but as a company as a whole, I went for Sega.

Quote from: "The Laird"Ok, so who voted other but didn't actually post to say who?

ME! As there is'nt a 'none of the above' or 'Don't have 1, i just buy what suits as and when' option.

My 1st Game Cube would over heat and reset after 30 mins, plus Wii had the laser issue, so Nintendo and optical based systems seemed to have been hit by same issues others have suffered, nature of the hardware i guess.

As for Mode 7-As i've said earlier, it often seems that games that do feature Mode 7, need an extra chip on board the cart (DSP of some nature) to pull it off as SNES CPU is so slow, so never really been that sure personally IF it's a key feature of the stock SNES hardware as if your using on-board math chips in carts, it's an enhancement is it not?Md might have relied on clever coding to increase colours on screen or do sprite scaling etc, but in fairness to it, it was using the Megadrive hardware itself, so i can see where Amiga Jay is coming from here.

:-) But i don't agree regarding the original Gameboy....

F-Zero uses no DSP as do quite a few others. The DSP was added to a few games where scaling was needed on top of Mode 7.

Street Racer did 4 player Mode 7 with no DSP. That was impressive.

Quote from: "nakamura"F-Zero uses no DSP as do quite a few others. The DSP was added to a few games where scaling was needed on top of Mode 7.

Street Racer did 4 player Mode 7 with no DSP. That was impressive.

I just really struggle to see the SNES as the powerhouse it was claimed (when i was a MD owner) by friends and lot of the press at the time when some 60 ? games use enhancement chips of some form and there are so many:


Cx4 (Capcom), DSP-1 (15 games ? used this), DSP-2 (used i gather to convert Dungeon Master from the Atari ST, where it converts ST bitmap data to SNES bitplane data, but also helps out with transparency effects), DSP-3, DSP-4, OBC-1, S-RTC, SA-1, SPC7110, ST010, ST011, ST018,Super FX Mk 1 and Super FX Mk 2.


This is why, for myself what coders got from a stock MD, just using a faster CPU and clever coding routines for 2D games and the MD CPU+Z80+clever coding routines for early 3D games will also make the MD the far more impressive machine for myself.

The MCD might well have been an expensive failure, it's potential squandered by Sega themselves, but when the hardware was used (Thunderhawk, Battlecorps, soulstar, Driving sections of Batman Returns etc), it was far more impressive than SNES Mode 7.


Standard cart games like:Red Zone, Gunstar Heroes, Contra Hard Corps, Adventures Of Batman+Robin, 3D section on Jurrasic Park:Lost World etc just showed what MD was capable of in right hands.

For a newer piece of kit, very surprised just how much help SNES needed at times, all because Nintendo put in such a poor CPU for the time.

PS2 and PS3 take flak (rightly so) for Sony throttling system with not enough Ram etc and Saturn for going the twin CPU route rather than single chip design, but seems SNES really was'nt all that in terms of design, if Nintendo knew it was going to need extra chips on board to get best from it at times.


Carl Mey who did MD Road Rashclaimed SNES was 'Far less powerful than than the MD.The MD had a 16-Bit data bus, while the SNES had an 8-Bit data bus.On the SNES, all data access was around half the speed of the MD'


whilst the SNES clearly had more colours and a newer, better quality sound chip and i loved things like the music+3D sections of Lawnmower Man, music on Plok! and the look of Alien 3, i've personally never found the SNES to be the machine it was made out to be.


Street Racer coders came up with impressive code for SNES version, of that there's no doubt.MD version was a different game and had some impressive coding routines in there as well, as did the Saturn version, which made great use of the hardware and looked better in places than the PSone version (something coders themselves admit) and had great A.I routines-something sadly missing from todays games.

I bought my first Genesis/Mega Drive new in 1990. I still have it and it works fine. I remember buying extra controllers because the one that came with it was junk. Cheers to the big N for packing two controllers with the Super Nintendo.

Also have never had very good luck with the model II or III Sega Genesis/Mega Drive systems. The model II Super Nes works as well as the model I.

I was a big fan of Sega till they released the Saturn and left me hanging with the 32X and Sega CD. If you had asked me in 1992 when I owned both systems, it would be tough to say which was my favorite.

Always will be a big Sega fan because age has clouded my memoires on how bad they treated their customers and of the quality of their systems/controllers. In the end it is my memories of playing Sega games more than Nintendo ones that made my choice.

QuoteI just really struggle to see the SNES as the powerhouse it was claimed (when i was a MD owner) by friends and lot of the press at the time when some 60 ? games use enhancement chips of some form and there are so many:


Cx4 (Capcom), DSP-1 (15 games ? used this), DSP-2 (used i gather to convert Dungeon Master from the Atari ST, where it converts ST bitmap data to SNES bitplane data, but also helps out with transparency effects), DSP-3, DSP-4, OBC-1, S-RTC, SA-1, SPC7110, ST010, ST011, ST018,Super FX Mk 1 and Super FX Mk 2.


This is why, for myself what coders got from a stock MD, just using a faster CPU and clever coding routines for 2D games and the MD CPU+Z80+clever coding routines for early 3D games will also make the MD the far more impressive machine for myself.

The MCD might well have been an expensive failure, it's potential squandered by Sega themselves, but when the hardware was used (Thunderhawk, Battlecorps, soulstar, Driving sections of Batman Returns etc), it was far more impressive than SNES Mode 7.

Carl Mey who did MD Road Rashclaimed SNES was 'Far less powerful than than the MD.The MD had a 16-Bit data bus, while the SNES had an 8-Bit data bus.On the SNES, all data access was around half the speed of the MD'

I like the way you moan about the SNES and its supposed lack of power then throw in that the MCD was more impressive. I should hope it was, it was another £200 on top.

I also wouldn't take the word of anyone who worked for EA seriously. They absolutely hated Nintendo, their policies and the control they had over their market. They also gave a load of shite ports to the machine in the early days. The MD was certainly better at pushing sprites, but there is no doubt in my mind EA could have given the SNES a great road rash.

There are roughly 70 games with enhancement chips in on the SNES. Some are Super FX, which even the MD would probably need to run them at a good frame rate. The Capcom stuff in rather pointless as it is for pointless stuff like a 3D background on the final boss on Megaman X.
Also some of the chips are used for extreme data compression like in Street Fighter Alpha 2. Another chip was used to load a 4 minute fully voiced song in a game intro.

Not all the chips are used to cheaply get around programming and the relatively slow CPU. Also plenty of games got around that, though it's still not as fast as the MD.

The first Madden for the Super Nintendo was rubbish. Leads me to believe that Electronic Arts, later on saw a gold mine and fixed it. By the time of Madden 94 the differences between Sega and Nintendo on the 16-Bit level were trivial.

To this day I still prefer the Super Nintendo for Desert, Jungle and Urban Strike. Again I believe EA saw a cash cow and ported good games.

Quote from: "onthinice"The first Madden for the Super Nintendo was rubbish. Leads me to believe that Electronic Arts, later on saw a gold mine and fixed it. By the time of Madden 94 the differences between Sega and Nintendo on the 16-Bit level were trivial.

To this day I still prefer the Super Nintendo for Desert, Jungle and Urban Strike. Again I believe EA saw a cash cow and ported good games.

I posted a quote from Michael Lubuguin (Who worked on all the 'Strike' games) on differences between MD+SNES versions of Desert Stike (he thinks the Genesis version is superior) but it's down to hardware differences, not just a port.

It's on:Page 4 of the '3D Polygon games on 8/16-Bit Consoles' thread.

I'm sure he does. I just don't take anything from EA seriously. They are a cancer on gaming and will cuddle up to whoever will make them the most money. They always have been.

Made some great games mind.

Quote from: "nakamura"

QuoteI just really struggle to see the SNES as the powerhouse it was claimed (when i was a MD owner) by friends and lot of the press at the time when some 60 ? games use enhancement chips of some form and there are so many:


Cx4 (Capcom), DSP-1 (15 games ? used this), DSP-2 (used i gather to convert Dungeon Master from the Atari ST, where it converts ST bitmap data to SNES bitplane data, but also helps out with transparency effects), DSP-3, DSP-4, OBC-1, S-RTC, SA-1, SPC7110, ST010, ST011, ST018,Super FX Mk 1 and Super FX Mk 2.


This is why, for myself what coders got from a stock MD, just using a faster CPU and clever coding routines for 2D games and the MD CPU+Z80+clever coding routines for early 3D games will also make the MD the far more impressive machine for myself.

The MCD might well have been an expensive failure, it's potential squandered by Sega themselves, but when the hardware was used (Thunderhawk, Battlecorps, soulstar, Driving sections of Batman Returns etc), it was far more impressive than SNES Mode 7.

Carl Mey who did MD Road Rashclaimed SNES was 'Far less powerful than than the MD.The MD had a 16-Bit data bus, while the SNES had an 8-Bit data bus.On the SNES, all data access was around half the speed of the MD'

I like the way you moan about the SNES and its supposed lack of power then throw in that the MCD was more impressive. I should hope it was, it was another £200 on top.

I also wouldn't take the word of anyone who worked for EA seriously. They absolutely hated Nintendo, their policies and the control they had over their market. They also gave a load of shite ports to the machine in the early days. The MD was certainly better at pushing sprites, but there is no doubt in my mind EA could have given the SNES a great road rash.

There are roughly 70 games with enhancement chips in on the SNES. Some are Super FX, which even the MD would probably need to run them at a good frame rate. The Capcom stuff in rather pointless as it is for pointless stuff like a 3D background on the final boss on Megaman X.
Also some of the chips are used for extreme data compression like in Street Fighter Alpha 2. Another chip was used to load a 4 minute fully voiced song in a game intro.

Not all the chips are used to cheaply get around programming and the relatively slow CPU. Also plenty of games got around that, though it's still not as fast as the MD.

Glad you liked it as i bought (in the order they are posted) ALL 3 of the MD, MCD and SNES and as i', sure your aware i've 'moaned' often enough about how SEGA squandered the MCD potential going down the FMV route and more recently how i was'nt that impressed with Core's original MCD offerings (was'nt until Thunderhawk that they showed what they were capable of).MCD was indeed very expensive for an add-on, even SEGA realised that by dropping the motorised tray and flashing lights aspect of it for the MK2, but things like Blastcorps, 3D sections in Batman Returns, Thunderhawk, Soul Star etc just wowed me far more than anyhing i saw SNES pulling off Mode 7+DSP chips an all.


As a MD owner at the time, all i ever heard from the SNES crowd be it mates or in mags was bloody Mode 7 this that and the rest of it, it was brought out everytime as if the MD was a far lesser machine for not having this 'fabled Mode 7', yet MD coders managed to ape so much of what it was doing and when i finally got a SNES, it really did'nt set my world on fire and the games i loved the most (Mr DO!, Alien 3, Plok, Batman returns-side Scrolling beat-em-up sections etc) did'nt seem to need it to be fantastic games.


With the programmer's (that's the important bit, the person who coded the game, not the corp they worked for) speaking out about Road Rash and indeed desert strike (hardware differences between SNES+MD), think it's pretty fair to say i can trust what's being said, these are the guys that wrote the code, designed the games, not some faceless E.A P.R person.

yep, well aware of what else the DSP chips etc did, that's why i mentioned Dungeon Master using 1 to convert ST graphics into a format the SNES could use, others were used for A.I etc, just like SEGA's DSP allowed for extra sound channels on MD.....they could be used for more than just 1 purpose.

Quote from: "nakamura"I'm sure he does. I just don't take anything from EA seriously. They are a cancer on gaming and will cuddle up to whoever will make them the most money. They always have been.

Made some great games mind.

i'm struggling with the logic here:these guys were coders working for E.A, had bills to pay etc, should i doubt what Jeff Minter says about Jaguar Tempest 2000 in his making of...features, when ATARI really screwed up the Jaguar (and Lynx)?.


The entire reason i use CODER quotes is to try and get people's mindsets past the whole 'I would'nt believe what this magazine or publisher said' attitude, we are talking the people that coded for the hardware, put the hours in, probably got shafted by the people they worked for and all they are doing is talking of the games they wrote on the systems they wrote for.Who they worked for then never comes into it when they are asked about a certain game or differences between systems.They just speak openly on how they found them to work for.

After a fair bit of thought I voted for Nintendo. To be honest if it wasn't for them in a post Sega world I would't be into video games as the rest don't seem to be able to create anything that interests me.

It's close between Atari , Sega and Nintendo for me but for longevity and whether you like it to not (there's a lot of Nintendo hate here) innovation - Nintendo wins through.

Yes - their hardware is usually underpowered (though I believe the GC is underestimated) - but it is designed to meet the needs of what Nintendo wants to do on the platform. This means the hardware doesn't need to be overpowered (and thus expensive to manufacture) which I believe is the reason why 1st party stuff usually outshines the rest on their hardware and why Nintendo platforms are harder work for cross platform ports. And anyhow - what has hardware benchmark specs got to do with innovation?

I feel a bit sorry for anyone who hates on Nintendo which has always been the fashionable thing to do for some reason. To miss out on the stuff they make is a shame. On the whole their games are beautifully crafted with loads of deft touches for those who put the time in - and refreshingly - don't take themselves too seriously. Nintendo remember that they are a toy company and the others seem to have delusions of grandeur which in this day and age is mistaken for trying to create a "Holywood" experience which at best will replicate the crap that is shovelled out of tinseltown which only holds gaming back.

I think it depends where you go really. Over at RG there is nothing but gushing praise and love for everything Nintendo most of the time and anyone who disagrees gets jumped on and accused of trolling. If you slag off Atari though then you are one of the cool kids and it doesn't matter how much you troll them you will never get told off.

Across the internet in general I think Nintendo do get a lot of love, except in modern gaming circles maybe where the Sony and MS fanboys like to deride them.

Yeah - there are a lot of Nintards who give the rest of us a bad name !!

Their online strategy has always puzzled me - and when you think they were doing online content as far back as the NES days it makes you wonder why they don't seem to get it.

Being a strong IP company faced with the web where lots of things are free - they are still trying to figure it out while Microsoft have definitely shown how it can be done,

It's not as if they don't know how to - Mario Kart Wii online is really well done - even has 2 player split screen online going and it's really slick. I think they are afraid of the whole scene with kids being exposed to swearing, grooming etc which has to be issue for them.

Quote from: "davyK"It's not as if they don't know how to - Mario Kart Wii online is really well done - even has 2 player spit screen online going and its really slick. I think they are afraid of the whole scene with kids being exposed to swearing, grooming etc which has to be issue for them.

Good point! I never thought of that! You could have just hit the nail on the head there.

Quote from: "tomwaits"SEGA!!

+1

The only real choice.

Quote from: "Rogue Trooper"

Quote from: "nakamura"I'm sure he does. I just don't take anything from EA seriously. They are a cancer on gaming and will cuddle up to whoever will make them the most money. They always have been.

Made some great games mind.

i'm struggling with the logic here:these guys were coders working for E.A, had bills to pay etc, should i doubt what Jeff Minter says about Jaguar Tempest 2000 in his making of...features, when ATARI really screwed up the Jaguar (and Lynx)?.

My logic is simple. John Romero has apparently state the Jaguar version of Doom to be the best version. As I am aware, you cannot strafe and turn in the Jaguar version which makes the game harder to play and stunts the gameplay of other versions. It was Laird who told me you can't strafe and turn, if he is correct, the Jaguar version is not the best version as it is missing a key gameplay feature.

I don't 100% trust what devs say to be honest.

Carmack said that, not Romero.

Quote from: "nakamura"

Quote from: "Rogue Trooper"

Quote from: "nakamura"I'm sure he does. I just don't take anything from EA seriously. They are a cancer on gaming and will cuddle up to whoever will make them the most money. They always have been.

Made some great games mind.

i'm struggling with the logic here:these guys were coders working for E.A, had bills to pay etc, should i doubt what Jeff Minter says about Jaguar Tempest 2000 in his making of...features, when ATARI really screwed up the Jaguar (and Lynx)?.

My logic is simple. John Romero has apparently state the Jaguar version of Doom to be the best version. As I am aware, you cannot strafe and turn in the Jaguar version which makes the game harder to play and stunts the gameplay of other versions. It was Laird who told me you can't strafe and turn, if he is correct, the Jaguar version is not the best version as it is missing a key gameplay feature.

I don't 100% trust what devs say to be honest.

Well, personally, unless i'm into tin foil hat realms here, i have to 'trust' someones comments and it's not going to be the company's P.R people, nor am i going to base my opinion around their buisness practices, so that leaves the grunts, the people that code the games and work on the various platforms.

Carl Mey worked on:Rampage for the atari Lynx whilst at Epyx, Maniac Mansion whilst at Lucasfilm, started doing a banked Road effect for Andretti Racing on the NES before realising system could'nt handle it, so adapted it for the MD and thus created a super-fast scaling algorith that allowed several sprite images in addittion to the road effect, which was exactly like Mode 7, bar the rotating around the Z-Axis, so i'd wager he knew what he was talking about.

Since MD Road Rash he's gone onto work for SEGA, Namco, cramned the 1st FMV onto an N64 cart etc so he's not exactly got any reason to stay loyal to 1 company or format has he?.


You say you would'nt take the word of anyone who worked at E.A seriousily, fine, that's your call, but i'm curious, would you take what he said about say Lynx Ramapage seriousily when he worked at Epyx? or anything he said about Manic Mansion whilst working at Lucasfilm?.

Quote from: "nakamura"

Quote from: "Rogue Trooper"

Quote from: "nakamura"I'm sure he does. I just don't take anything from EA seriously. They are a cancer on gaming and will cuddle up to whoever will make them the most money. They always have been.

Made some great games mind.

i'm struggling with the logic here:these guys were coders working for E.A, had bills to pay etc, should i doubt what Jeff Minter says about Jaguar Tempest 2000 in his making of...features, when ATARI really screwed up the Jaguar (and Lynx)?.

My logic is simple. John Romero has apparently state the Jaguar version of Doom to be the best version. As I am aware, you cannot strafe and turn in the Jaguar version which makes the game harder to play and stunts the gameplay of other versions. It was Laird who told me you can't strafe and turn, if he is correct, the Jaguar version is not the best version as it is missing a key gameplay feature.

I don't 100% trust what devs say to be honest.

Romero is quoted saying the PS1 version is the best.

Quote from: "nakamura"I just don't take anything from EA seriously. They are a cancer on gaming

Very harsh indeed. Especially so coming from a Sony fan, lol!

Since when am I a Sony fan? Just because I have Playstation branded consoles. You need to get this 'fan' nonsense out of your brain.

And whoops, got the Johns mixed up!

Quote from: "nakamura"

Quote from: "Rogue Trooper"

Quote from: "nakamura"I'm sure he does. I just don't take anything from EA seriously. They are a cancer on gaming and will cuddle up to whoever will make them the most money. They always have been.

Made some great games mind.

i'm struggling with the logic here:these guys were coders working for E.A, had bills to pay etc, should i doubt what Jeff Minter says about Jaguar Tempest 2000 in his making of...features, when ATARI really screwed up the Jaguar (and Lynx)?.

My logic is simple. John Romero has apparently state the Jaguar version of Doom to be the best version. As I am aware, you cannot strafe and turn in the Jaguar version which makes the game harder to play and stunts the gameplay of other versions. It was Laird who told me you can't strafe and turn, if he is correct, the Jaguar version is not the best version as it is missing a key gameplay feature.

I don't 100% trust what devs say to be honest.

I looked up EDGE's interview with I.D software where John Carmack talks about the Jaguar hardware and both Wolfenstien+Doom on Jaguar.

John C.says Wolfenstien on Jaguar is the best version on any platform, as he's spent weeks improving it (game runs full screen at 30 FPS, high Resolution graphics, 4X the detail of the PC version, sound at 22 KHz, which is 3X the rate of the PC version etc).


As for Jaguar DOOM:

Lighting calculations are vastly superior:PC ver.only had 256 useable colours, Jag version runs in 16 Bit CRY colour, this is a big improvement.So is it possible you've miss-understood the context in whichthe term 'best' version of, is used...?

where have you taken your John Romero quote from exactly?.

You might like these threads if you havn't seem them before RT:

John Carmack talks about Wolfenstien 3D (//http)

John Carmack talks about the Jaguar (//http)

I didn't post a quote at all. I simply repeated what The Laird told me in conversation.
It may well  be that the Jaguar version has the nicest visuals etc. But if you cannot strafe and turn then it isn't the best version. Any Doom fan will tell you that.

Quote from: "nakamura"I didn't post a quote at all. I simply repeated what The Laird told me in conversation.
It may well  be that the Jaguar version has the nicest visuals etc. But if you cannot strafe and turn then it isn't the best version. Any Doom fan will tell you that.

Yep.

There is an interview with Carmack where he says the Jag version is the best one in his opinion.

Has nothing to do with this topic anyway, this is about your favourite console manufacturer so lets not go off topic further. There are several Doom threads if we want to discuss that game.

Absolutely. And he is certainly allowed to have any opinion he wants. I just used the example of why I take even developers opinions with a pinch of salt. 

Back on topic.... well already answered that!

Quote from: "The Laird"

Quote from: "nakamura"I didn't post a quote at all. I simply repeated what The Laird told me in conversation.
It may well  be that the Jaguar version has the nicest visuals etc. But if you cannot strafe and turn then it isn't the best version. Any Doom fan will tell you that.

Yep.

There is an interview with Carmack where he says the Jag version is the best one in his opinion.

Has nothing to do with this topic anyway, this is about your favourite console manufacturer so lets not go off topic further. There are several Doom threads if we want to discuss that game.

Cheers Laird, coders will always have prefered platforms to code on and versions they are most proud of, for any number of reasons, but for myself, they remain the best source of really knowing what a system was capable of, not the P.R people or magazine/website reviewers.

One reason i love the making of...features in things like RG/EDGE/Gamestm etc over the years and the chance to put questions to developers on here, is i love to know why a game turned out so great or so badly on 1 platform, yet fared so better or worse on others.

Seen too many posts on sites over the years that game X looks shit on platform Y, ergo platform Y sucks, yet game X was knocked up in 6 weeks with coder just told to port and be done or it was a port from a far more powerful system and should'nt really have been attempted.


IF someones going to say a game looks or plays really poorly,it would help if they explained why and espically if it's Retro, look at just what else was around at the time and see if there were better 3D engines on similar specced machines at the time.Reading a lot of the comments left on Youtube etc where 3DO/Jaguar/SNES SFX 3D games are being shown and it's clear folks have no idea of just how much was being done with hardware at the time and to dismiss it with a simple 'That looks shit', is poor as is, but when i've seen it on forums, i just eye roll, as no scope for discussion.


Saturn/Jaguar/MCD/3DO etc are decent enough machines in their own rights, it's just the people behind them made some fundemental errors and the market was rapidly changing at the time.

Did you look at those 2 links RT?

Quote from: "The Laird"Did you look at those 2 links RT?

sorry Laird, i did reply to this in my original message, but that never got posted, anywho, yep, the DOOM one echoed a lot of what was said in the EDGE article, wish more people would learn to accept that there was a lot about the Jaguar hardware that coders loved.

Nintendo edges Atari out by a narrow margin for me.

5200 is king, but NES and SNES have too many good games to ignore.

Quote from: "nakamura"I'm sure he does. I just don't take anything from EA seriously. They are a cancer on gaming and will cuddle up to whoever will make them the most money. They always have been.

Made some great games mind.

Only fair to bring this point up:Desert Strike was pitched to E.A producers, they hated hated the choice of a 3rd person control schemes, so in order to get approval, game designers had to put in the from above system, despite it being hated by folks making the game.

Also Soviet strike started out on 3DO, but was switched to Playstation, pity 3DO version never happened, would have been another shot in the arm for the system.

That is interesting about Soviet Strike for the 3DO! I'm not real good with the Playstation version. I prefer the open end game play of the 16-bit era.

Quote from: "onthinice"That is interesting about Soviet Strike for the 3DO! I'm not real good with the Playstation version. I prefer the open end game play of the 16-bit era.

:-) Glad someone likes my triva.Been clearing out a lot of cupboards over past few days, re-reading some old games mags, hence lot of thread bumps.

Urban strike fell a little flat on MD, Soviet was'nt bad on PSone, but i much prefered Nuclear.

Crying shame the 3DO version never made it....


Sounds like developers knew by time it was finished 3DO would be (commercially) dead in the water, so it was switched to PSone instead.

I have been enjoying the magazine reviews. Thanks for sharing them Rogue Trooper!

Looks like Sega take the spoils here . . .

(http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Daily/2010/04-Apr/7/Gaming%20slogans/SegaAges--article_image.jpg)