So here it is the battle of the giants, Nintendo and Sega have been
waging war in the console market for years now, with Nintendo always
having the upper hand. Sega looked all set to change this around in
the British market at least, with the launch of the Mega CD. Ninte-
ndo however had different ideas and decided to bring forward the
launch of the Super NES. This launch is all set for spring, with
Super NES's in the shops, possibly as early as February. Sega dont
plan to launch the Mega CD offically till summer next year. Now
heres the question (?) on everyones lips; Do you buy a Super NES,
or wait for the Mega CD? it's not an easy choice, so heres a guide
to whats hot and whats not about the two Machines.
MEGA-CD (Lame Sega Product)
---------------------------
The Mega CD is a compact unit that sits happily underneath the Genesis
It's very similar in styling to the Genesis and once in place looks
dead sexy. The internal gubbins are a mass of smart custom chips and
processor doobries. The Mega CD uses a Motorola 68,000 chip, like the
one you would find inside an Amiga, St. This chip runs at 12.5 Mhz
which is bloody fast, especially when used in tandem with the Genesis's
own 68,000. This is all very well, but a CD-ROM really needs one thing
a RAM cache! whats a RAm cache? Well, when a CD unit sends Graphics and
Sound to the host machine, it needs to hold alot on information in Memory
If it cant do that, then you get a very irrating lag while the machine
accesses the Compact Disc. This was a big problem with the PC Engine CD
Unit, the waiting time can get quite aggravating. Fortunatly, the Mega
CD has a large RAM cache and can handle 6 Megabits of info a time, this
is more than enough space for pause free gaming. As far as sound goes
the Mega CD is a big improvement over the Genesis/Megadrive. It has an
extra 8 Channels of PCM sounds and they are well up to quality of a decent
keyboard. These can be played at the same time as the Megadrives chip
and can also be used with live CD tracks so musically, you can go far
wrong. The extra processing power built into the new unit, means that the
Megadrive can now perform the kind of Scaling and rotation tricks that
the Famicom is Famous for (even though the SNES only has a 3.5 processor
the Megadive+Co is so shit). All in All abit of a smart kit.
The Mega CD has been widely heralded in the land of the rising sun, as
the machine that will bring CD-ROM into the home. There are already a
couple of CD-ROM standards in Japan, the most successful of which is the
Sharp FM Towns. This computer basically a souped up PC, with smart GFX
and a built in CD unit. The thing the FM Towns is most notourios for
is the number of games featuring scantily clad women. It's widely
expected that this kind of dodgy software will appear on the Mega CD,
although Sega's strict quality controls should filter the worst of it
out. The Mega CD was released in Japan last December and basically sold
out as soon as it hit the shops. Sega cleverly released limited numbers,
so selling out completely isnt quite as impressive as it sounds. The
demand though is easily out-stripping supply even now. In the UK, when
the machine was launched, grey importers like Advanced Consoles Etc
were snowed down with oreders. In fact, when we picked up our Mega CD
there was nearly a riot because it was the last one in stock!
After months of sneak previews and much speculation, we finally got
hold of a Mega CD! The machine arrived only days after its release
in Japan. The excitment in the room was unbearable, problem was, when we
first got it, we had no software. When you turn the machine On, you are
presented with a really sexy demo. This shows the Mega CD logo floating
in the sky, it starts turning, spinning and swooping around the screen.
Its all impressive when you discover its not a polygon, its a sprite.
This gives just a peek at the machines true potential. The music that
plays during the demo is groovy, but hardly mind-blowing.
Not only is the Mega CD a smart piece of video gaming technology, its
also a bloody good CD player. Instead of the usual array of buttons
and dials, all you do is slot in a normal CD and press Start on your
control pad. The screen then changes from demo to options. These
allow you to play any track on your CD at random, or if you like, in
a preprogrammed order. There are tons of useful options and if youre
into music youll love it. You can for example, loop small sections of
any track, useful for sampling chords or instrument sounds. There are
a wealth of options and the sound quality is quite remarkable. Using
the audio ports and connecting the Mega CD to speakers, the sound
quality is easily as good as a decent CD player. Put through a good
stereo system with amplifiers and the unit becomes a formidable bit
of Hi-Fi equipment.
Well, theres no doubt about it. The Mega CD is a dead hard piece of
kit. Problem is, the first few games dont take advantage of it. There
are few Japanesse RPG's available already, most with un-translatable
names. The RPG's all follow the gauntlet inspired top-down perspective
with alot of spellcasting and wandering around. The one advantage of
CD brings to this type of game is in the lengthy graphical intros.
You get treated to highly impressive cartoon sequences throughout and
the accompanying music is quite awesome. Weve only seen two arcade
style games so far. The first, Heavy Nova is a cross between a SEMUP
and a BEMUP, its a horizontal scroller, very playable and very fast
again, this game features Huge cartoon intros and smart music, but
graphically it doesnot do anything we have not seen before. Sol Feace
is the second of the arcade games and its a good horizontal scroller.
This a real dissapointment as far as graphics are concerned, this is no
better than say Thunderforce or gaiares. Soon to appear on the Mega CD
will be G-LOC and RABMOBILE for starters and maybe even SONIC 2.
The Mega CD has had its offically launch in the UK set for Summer 1992.
This is resonably fast and well get it around the same time as America.
The machine will cost around 300 quid which is abit expenisve thats
import and offical will be around 250 (Kiss my ass Sega lamers!). The
Mega CD imports only work on the Scart machines (LAME!) at the moment
but the console boys are hard at work converting them to PAL machines
which should be finished Soon.
THE SUPER NES/FAMICOM (Greatest machine of all time)
----------------------------------------------------
The Super NES is a very strange machine indeed! Although its a 16Bit
machine, the cental processor is not a 16 Bit at all. It is in fact
an Eight bit chip, a 65C816 to be precise but a deeply confused one.
It runs as fast as a 16 Bit chip and thinks it is one, but aint. Kind
of like a volvo with a ferrari engine...its not much to look at but it
does'nt half shift (Yeahhhhh). The Super NES main attributes are its
brilliant custom chips. These are used to create some stunning effects.
The color palette is an enormous 32,768 and the machine can display
256 of these at once. You can take a whole screen very quickly or a
small area and expand or reduce it in size very quickly. This effect
has been seen before in the arcades like Afterburner, G-Loc. The SNES
can also rotate screens in real time, much the way Namco's assault
arcade machine does. The chips are powerful enough to combine these
effects and clever programming to produce stunning results (Eat that Sega)
The most impressive about the SNES though, is the sound chip, this uses
12 channel digital PCM sounds, better quality than most mid-range
keyboards. These sounds can be played in true stereo and the effects are
jaw dropping. Trumpiets, pianos, guitars, all can be reproduced
faithfully through the SNES. You can easily link up your SNES to a HiFi
and hear the sound through decent speakers, its well worth doing. In
real terms, its much more a powerful machine then Segas Megadrive (HAHA).
The SNES obviously excels in anything that involves Color and Sound,
especailly using Scaling and rotation hardware. Where it falls down
a little is on its sprite handling. The SNES is capable of displaying
tons of sprites, but the speed suffers when more than 128 are on screen
at once. Much has been made of this problem in the computer press, but
the megadrive also suffers from this too, although not to the same
extent. Where this problem arises most is in fast shootemups with tons
of sprites on screen at once. You'd be less likely to notice say, a
beatemup or a driving game. There are ways round this, with special
programming and tight use of hardware, but its not as big problem as
you'd think.
After wearing our special investigator trousers for months, we dis-
covered something about the SNES that will make you fill your pants
with sheer bed wetting anticipation. This makes the CD-ROM look
pathetic and it will change the face of SNES gameing forever! What is it?
We're not telling! Ha! Are we evil or what? All we can say is this, when
it appears and you own a Famicom, you'll be even happier than a big bag
of happy things. Is it Hardware? Is it Software? Were not telling, but
look out in future issues for more newz its a biggie!
The initial batch of Famicom games upon its release in Japan was
specatular. The one to buy the machine though, was Super Mario World
This is/was the forth installment of the Mario series and is still
the best platform game ever. The games, unusually for a console included
a couple of strange strategy games like, Populous, Sim-City. These went
down a treat in Japan and shifted untold numbers of famicoms. Its
highly likely that the first batch of games will be the same as the
first lot of Japanesse games. Look out in the future for thses great
titles, STREETFIGHTER II, and rumoursa about MARIO 5 and to top that off
it may be on CD-ROM!.
The SNES went on sale in the U.S last year and was greeted with great
interest, but it did not do to good in sales terms as expected. There
were two main reasons for this firstly, the Megadrive had already got a
firm foothold in the market and secondly, NES owners were quite happy
with their old machine. Software support was fine, with alot of great
titles released for the machine, but many stores had problems getting
enough copies. After some teething troubles and alot of speculation,
the SNES is now going great guns.
Nintendo have had alot of political turmoil with their CD-ROM system.
This should have been availble now, but development changes put paid
to that. The Nintendo CD ROM was to be developed with SONY, but the
deal fell through early last year. However, the unit was nearly
finished and SONY still have the legal right to release the machine.
It will probably appear in japan in the next few months, its to be
called the Sony playStation. It will be entirely compactible with
Famicom cartridges, but with the addition of a CD-ROM drive. Early
peeks at the machine reveal it to be a sleek black unit, similar in
appearance to the Megadrive unit. Sadly though, there will be little
in the way of Nintendo support the CD unit, with most developers
opting to use Nintendos system instead. This new system has been
designed by PHILIPS and looks set to beat even the Mega CD, at least
in terms of Spec. It should be ready soon and there will be an inter-
esting three way competition between Sega, Sony, Nintendo.
Its up to you. If youre dead wealthy and have the two get em both, if
not ask yourself these questions;
How much do you have to spend?
How important is a CD-ROM?
Both the SNES and the Mega CD are brilliant machines and both have their
strong points. The Mega CD remember, is an add on and not a stand alone
unit. The SNES is due for release very soon. Add all these points up
and decide for yourself, but remember, you heard it here first.
My Views ( {Mr.SCARFACE} of CRYSTAL )
-------------------------------------
Well why pay 250-300 pound for a unit which was made to do the same
type of things which a SNES already does??. The SNES will be about
150 pounds in a couple of months maximum with a free 40+ pound cart
Mario Worlds so for 150 pounds you can have everything thats in the
Mega CD vertually apart from the fast 12.5 Mhz but the SNES is fucking
fast enough now and soon the slow down problem will be now more.
Remeber everything what Sega has made falls and gets forgotten about
look at the poor master System (Dead!?!?!) but look at the NES still
going quite strong Nintendo always make systems which rule and you
enjoy playing! look at the basic Gameboy shit colors briliant addiction
check out Mario on that!. Well its up to you i have both FAMICOM,
MEGADRIVE, but i will have got rid of the Megadrive soon due to it
being lame! same as the Mega-Cd! (Once the novelty wears off) Nintendo
products always seem to keep ya going ya never get bored of em hmmm
well like i say get what ya wont but Sega is Shit! haha.
CREDITS
-------
Text File : {Mr.SCARFACE} of CRYSTAL!
Idea : {Mr.SCARFACE} of CRYSTAL!
Review : Computer & Video Games Magazine
Machines : Ace-Consoles / C+VG
DEDICATIONS+MSG'S
-----------------
Executioner : Hope the copiers come along Soon mate! 500+ rule ha!
Zigor : Wheres the price lists ?? hehe!
Lonestar : Keep up the good Console game support!
Protocol : Keep those Tips coming! (For SNES though he!)
Megadrive : Hope the conf goes well !! i cant call much now! boo hoo
Hybrid : Ult Dream is kicking some ass Console wise!
>>>> HAPPY CONSOLE 92 TO ALL WHO LOVE THERE MACHINES <<<<
>> TO ORDER YOURE COPIER FOR MEGADRIVE,SNES,PC.ENGINE <<
>> SEE EXECUTIONER ON ULT DREAM <<
