Shoving extra chips for bank switching, co processors, and license protection bypasses had been in play since the Atari days (although 2600 had no lock out/cic chips.) NES did though.
My personal favorite was the hack on some NES carts that would use a "stun gun" approach to the 10NES lockout chip for loading unlicensed carts onto the console. They'd literally charge up a capacitor to spike a shock to the chip to "stun" it long enough to boot the rom. Classic stuff.
drzaiusx11 11 minutes ago [-]
The 2600 had carts with SuperCart/SARA chips added to double the consoles ram (to a whole 256 bytes!)
The 2600's Pitfall II cart even added their own co-processor (Display Processor Chip/DCP) providing advanced music generation, improved graphics handling, and increased data storage.
I truly love the ingenuity involved in enhancing and prolonging the life of game systems and the bypassing of inherent limitations. True hacks in the literal sense. Some beautiful, some funny (in retrospect like the stun chip I mentioned.)
ghstinda 1 days ago [-]
They were a big step up from the original nintendo cartridges we blew in and wiped with alcohol to keep Tyson winking, but I went the Sega route as Genesis was a better system at the time, but that of course is debatable. Happy people still are interested in the archaic gaming systems.
kilpikaarna 1 days ago [-]
Pfft, only 52 simultaneous colors vs 256!
ericrallen 1 days ago [-]
I may be a biased Genesis Kid, but SEGA was always ahead of its time.
Hackbraten 15 hours ago [-]
Sega was also the first console manufacturer to use Blast Processing.
dosisking 1 days ago [-]
PC Engine was also ahead of its time, actual 8-bit games on CD-ROM!
dfxm12 19 hours ago [-]
Given its age and considering early games on the system, it's amazing how good the street fighter II’ port is.
NEC made some good looking console hardware for the Japanese market too.
moepstar 1 days ago [-]
...much to their detriment, sadly.
R.I.P. Dreamcast, R.I.P. 32x, R.I.P. Mega CD, R.I.P. Saturn...
epcoa 1 days ago [-]
Not sure how any of these except maybe the Dreamcast (and then not by that much - it was almost literally a contemporary arcade board clone) were examples of “ahead of its time”.
I bought a DC on launch week, it's one of my favourite consoles of all time. I still own one. But what has bleemcast got to do with what the parent said?
actionfromafar 17 hours ago [-]
To demonstrate how powerful and far ahead it was.
epcoa 16 hours ago [-]
The Dreamcast charm is partly how simple it is, a jellybean CPU. The PowerVR is competent but it’s not outside the norm for 3D accelerators of the period (and there was a mass produced PCI card available of it). Nothing about the Dreamcast is exotic. Though the pack in modem and VMU are neat (did say “maybe” for the DC). GD-ROM vs DVD was obviously a dumb move. Perhaps Sega didn’t have the war chest to loss leader a DVD Dreamcast (they didn’t have the vision either at that point).
A technical demo like Bleemcast doesn’t demonstrate how far ahead something is, it has to be seen relative to the hardware of a similar generation. Having said that the PS2 which had some early programming hiccups would go on to eat DC’s lunch.
Grazester 14 hours ago [-]
...and PS2 eating the DC's lunch has more to do with Sega and their terrible decisions made in prior generations that burnt retailers and consumers alike than anything else.
The things the PS2 had going for it at launch was a cheap DVD player(yes Sega didn't have the money for this. They were very close to bankruptcy at the time) and Sony's hype.
beezlewax 1 days ago [-]
The softer curved design of the PAL versions of these cartridges casings always appealed to me more than the chunky ones sold in the US.
I never understood why they were different though.
10729287 1 hours ago [-]
US market was huge and US subsidiairies could impose their very own vision to HQ. It’s been the case for a lot of vg companies in those days. Check Capcom. Plus everything must look badass in the states, especially as the Genesis (Megadrive) was king back then there and looked way more mature.
pezezin 1 days ago [-]
The PAL SNES just reused the curved design of the original Japanese Super Famicom. I also find it way more appealing than the US version, but I grew up in Europe, so it is the one that I saw back in the day.
wk_end 1 days ago [-]
FWIW I grew up with the North American design and I still find the JP/PAL design nicer.
AussieWog93 20 hours ago [-]
I'm the opposite. Grew up in Australia (with a 64, to be fair), love the US design. Our ones can't be stacked, and are missing top labels. A collector's nightmare!
neuroelectron 20 hours ago [-]
Marketing basically. They wanted the console to look more like video equipment and less like a toy. This concern was because of the video game crash of '83
rcfox 21 hours ago [-]
Could be to highlight their incompatibility?
Cpoll 20 hours ago [-]
Fun fact: Modding an NA SNES to play Japanese games is one step: use some needle-nose pliers to break off a small plastic tab in the cartridge slot.
HardwareLust 20 hours ago [-]
Thank you, really interesting post!
lightedman 1 days ago [-]
On the S-RTC, it was used in that specific game to control time ruin events. When you start the game you're asked to input date and time, and from there the game tracks time to enable certain events.
My personal favorite was the hack on some NES carts that would use a "stun gun" approach to the 10NES lockout chip for loading unlicensed carts onto the console. They'd literally charge up a capacitor to spike a shock to the chip to "stun" it long enough to boot the rom. Classic stuff.
The 2600's Pitfall II cart even added their own co-processor (Display Processor Chip/DCP) providing advanced music generation, improved graphics handling, and increased data storage.
I truly love the ingenuity involved in enhancing and prolonging the life of game systems and the bypassing of inherent limitations. True hacks in the literal sense. Some beautiful, some funny (in retrospect like the stun chip I mentioned.)
NEC made some good looking console hardware for the Japanese market too.
R.I.P. Dreamcast, R.I.P. 32x, R.I.P. Mega CD, R.I.P. Saturn...
A technical demo like Bleemcast doesn’t demonstrate how far ahead something is, it has to be seen relative to the hardware of a similar generation. Having said that the PS2 which had some early programming hiccups would go on to eat DC’s lunch.
I never understood why they were different though.
Some discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40111274
I need my quake book!