Re: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc

[calibrator@freenet.de]

On 3 Feb., 08:28, nem <nem@nospam> wrote:
>
> Despite being more powerful than all it's competitors, the Dreamcast was
> again done in by bad marketing and the wrong kinds of games.

And the *very well done* marketing of Sony which ultimately
boiled down to "You have a PS1? Just wait for the PS2 - no
need for in-betweens!"
Of course they threw massive specs like "75 million polgyons
per second" and lots of I/O connectivity to discourage potential
Dreamcast buyers. Sega however threw lots of money around
where it either didn't reach people or was misunderstood (the
strange TV spots, the sponsoring of soccer teams). The list is
endless.

> RPGs (as I pointed out earlier) have always been vital to a console's
> success in Japan,

Ack.

> but in the US, until FF7, they were a niche genre that appealed to
> only a small number of people. The two biggest RPG series, FF
> and Dragon Quest, long suffered from Nintendo of America's
> censorship policies, and from the larger (and more expensive)
> cartridge ROMs needed for English-language dialogue.

Same here in Europe - except we had even less console RPGs.
SquareSoft weren't really well known - only to importers.
Thank God lots of Europeans are able to understand the English
language...

> The smallest N64 games (such as SMB 64) were 8 MB, but it
> didn't take long to hit the 64 MB ceiling. Meanwhile, a standard
> CD gives you 650 MB. I believe the largest PSX game was X-
> Files, which used four disks.

There were several. I have FF8 and FF9 (FF7 has three disks)
and the first "Fear Effect" in my collection. All of them use the
space for pre-rendered movie sequences and speech. The
X-Files game works probably the same.

> See for example the beautiful, shimmering water in Crash Bandicoot:
> Warped. The N64 could never have done that.

What level is this in? I have the game but can't remember offhand.

On the other hand lots of the better N64 games offer a much
smoother control of the player character. Sometimes it helps
if you can do floating point math in hardware...

> IIRC, the only use of 64-bit code on the N64 was in a few things
> like the 64DD's OS routines.

I really don't know. From what I've read Nintendo had not enough
time to really use it and so only the aforementioned companies
got access to the "advanced stuff" and used it. Factor 5 with its
'Star Wars: Rogue Squadron' being one of them.

> It's ironic that Nintendo's saviour, Pokemon, arrived that same year (it
> also breathed some new life into the aging Gameboy).

Ack.

bye
Marcus