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Sonic Megamix

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by Stealth, Jul 8, 2015.

  1. Flygon

    Flygon

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    If it made a decent profit, it succeeded. As far as I understand, the addon successfully made a profit.

    I'm compelled to believe it's the failure of the 32x that also soured peoples opinions on the Sega CD.
     
  2. Felik

    Felik

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    Probably because there were things that work against the idea. Like name confusion (so the REAL name of the hack is supposed to be simply "Megamix" with a random prefix now or what?) or it being kinda superficial and pointless feature
     
  3. Stealth

    Stealth

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    Sonic Mania, HCGE, Sonic Megamix, SonED2, [...]
    Looking at the way the 32X works, it just feels like a piece of trash. It was a huge mistake

    The SegaCD- it, to my knowledge, was only one of few major pieces of add-on hardware that was actually released outside of Japan, and at launch it was about as expensive as buying a new base console. That alone probably turned off several people not only because they couldn't really afford it, but also because it barely brought the Genesis up-to-spec with some stuff the SNES could already do

    It was also marketed with an emphasis on FMV games for a while (and honestly I don't remember much else, myself), and otherwise, I don't think there was very much that actually took advantage of what it could do rather than just having the game use CD as media instead of a cartridge. Rotate/scale and the extra processing power probably being the most under-utilized

    Not that it'd be common knowledge, but the hardware itself also fell short of what it could have been, given (speculation[?] I've seen) that they dropped what's been referred to as a "SuperVDP", which would be a secondary VDP within the SegaCD hardware that used a crossover cable to mix with the Genesis VDP output, similar to what the 32X eventually did. One major problem with SegaCD graphics is just how long it takes to manually transfer a significant amount of the graphic processor's output to the Genesis VDP for display; even with DMA, it's super-slow, which is why, for example, Sonic CD's Special Stage uses 256x224 mode and still runs at only like 20fps. It also limits you to a total of 16 colors for a rotated/scaled sprite/background of any size, whereas the graphic processor on the SCD itself supposedly actually has a 256-color bitmap mode. These issues would make it less effective for some uses than the SNES' rotate/scale support (Ex: the effect commonly referred to as "mode 7"), which arguably makes the price tag almost inexcusable. Including a second VDP on the SCD could have allowed for direct and automatic transfer from the graphic processor, possibly transferring faster overall and definitely freeing up the processor time associated with the manual transfer, would have allowed for the use of a 256-color palette for its graphics, and could have added more simultaneous on-screen graphics due to not having to be applied to A/B plane or sprites on the Genesis VDP, not to mention the benefits to FMV quality and framerate. I'd call it enough of an improvement to possibly have prevented the 32X from ever happening*

    (*Note that the 32X doesn't have any dedicated graphic rendering hardware like the SegaCD's graphic processor. All 2D and 3D graphic rendering is done in software by code running on at least one of the two SH2 processors, meaning that you have that much less of their power to apply to any game logic you might have wanted to enhance, if/when there's any left)

    I'm glad somebody was able to understand this because I still have no idea what either of you are saying :/
     
  4. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    My understanding is the Mega-CD did reasonably well. Its base appears to have been mostly in Europe where it went unchallenged for a bit in 1993/1994 (there's the Amiga CD32 which sold better in the UK, but wasn't as widespread on the mainland). It got a lot of attention from the likes of Core Design and developers of that ilk.

    While the 32X bombed everywhere because it's a piece of tat.


    The internet likes to think that any console that didn't sell 43892532095 million units is somehow worthless. I've no reason to believe the Mega-CD was a market failure, it just "succeeded" in much smaller numbers.

    But it's not helped by the fact the Japanese barely touched it and the Sega of America couldn't market the thing to save their collective lives. But the latter really isn't that new - every other culture in the world seems to accept that video games were more than just an expensive product you could shove down someone's throat.
     
  5. Josh

    Josh

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    I think they were saying...

    I guess it IS a bit like S&K locked-on to Sonic 2 giving you "Knuckles the Echidna 2," which wouldn't make much sense. But so many things change depending on the character, I'm sure Sonic is the default. I don't think it'll confuse anyone.
     
  6. Stealth

    Stealth

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    Sonic Mania, HCGE, Sonic Megamix, SonED2, [...]
    Oh that. It's just a fun little thing, like "why are you calling it 'Sonic' if you're playing somebody else" or when a sub-character gets pissed they're not in the title or something. It's like an easter egg that shows up under certain conditions; the game is actually still called "Sonic Megamix"

    Except, I have been considering leaving the "Megamix" name to the old content game and changing the name of the game with the new content to something else... not sure yet :|
     
  7. rata

    rata

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    Trying to be useful somehow.
    Thank you Josh for translating my poor redaction to proper English. :)
     
  8. ELS

    ELS

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    https://twitter.com/TCZElliot/status/651990425893515264

    This happened to me, it's a nice game but there are a lot of opportunities for this to happen.
     
  9. Stealth

    Stealth

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    Sonic Mania, HCGE, Sonic Megamix, SonED2, [...]
    Yeah, it'll do that. When it was released in 2009, there was a misunderstanding that led to a former lead team member declaring the project cancelled and releasing the then-current in-progress (incomplete) build. It was full of errors, test code, and incomplete stuff; under normal circumstances, it never would have been released in that state, and the wiki article and official website both contain warning sections that explain that. That's why I'm working on a clean build now
     
  10. MrPhysics

    MrPhysics

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    Super happy to see you're still hard at work on your projects, and happy to support in any way I can. Megamix is by far the hack I've played and enjoyed the most over the years, and the money I paid for the Android/PC remaster of Sonic 1/2 and CD you worked on was far too little for how grateful I was for that. You and Taxman did a phenomenal job on those ports and I couldn't have asked for a better version of some of my all time favorite games. Now if I could only get the Android version of Sonic CD to install on my Nvidia Shield TV haha. I hope some day Sega moves forward with the release of Sonic 3&K you showed off the working concept of, then the collection will be complete, I'll buy that shit in a heartbeat if/when it ever gets the green light.

    I don't post here much, but I often lurk and see what everyone is up too. I'm still blown away at the frequency in which new content still shows up here, you guys are all so awesome with the stuff you come up with!

    Cheers, and all the best of luck!