Battle of the Ports

[Asura]

I didn't even realise the likes of Road Avenger were coin-ops. I assume they were a laserdisc job, like Dragon's Lair?

[Nu-Eclipse]

I didn't even realise the likes of Road Avenger were coin-ops. I assume they were a laserdisc job, like Dragon's Lair?

They were coin-ops that were powered with Laserdisc hardware, and constantly getting damaged as a result - finding original cabinets still in working order today is nigh-on impossible

[nakamura]

Area 88 SNES too easy? First I've heard about that.

[Yakumo]

New BOTP for today - Turbo Out Run

[S3M]

Was Turbo Outrun even a success? I think I saw it like once in all the years I roamed the arcades in the 80s and 90s saw, Outrun hundreds of times but this you just never saw.

[Yakumo]

I think Turbo Out Run is a load of crap to be honest.

[Mayhem]

I saw it precisely twice I believe in my arcade visiting experience, and both times, AFTER the conversions had come out. Didn't even knew it existed until the conversions were done by US Gold.

[Arashikage]

I remember seeing it at the local chippy by my college back in the day. It was a severely borked version mind you, the graphics were so garbled that the game was unplayable. That chippy had some great games around that time...Turbo Outrun, Street fighter 2, World Heroes, Mortal Kombat. We will never get those days back again.

[Leon Retro]

Well back in those days memory and CD-Rom drives just weren't cheap .

Yep that's the worst part and where SOJ should really have taken the lead. It wouldn't have much difference to the units sales , but if SOJ had made some real use of the hardware and gave the Mega CD ports of Space Harrier , After Bunner II, OutRun, Hang on and Super Hang On all with scaling and Arcade perfect music and near to dam it sound effects . Then it really would have helped with the Mega CD image imo.

The Mega CD came out in 1991 , not even SEGA Arcade teams were using polygon Hardware back in those days

Yep.. Both machines were overpriced and not really used to their fullest, but both system had some classic and some really really good games - But the release schedule for both systems sucked where you would go for months with out any half decent games out for the systems

I agree with everything you've written. The MCD had so much against it: CD-Rom drives were expensive and slow; not many publishers got onboard with top quality games; and Sega didn't do a good job when it came to making lots of great in-house games for the system.

As much as the MCD seemed really cool and interesting at the time, and it went on to eventually have some nice games, I think Sega shouldn't have released it or the 32X. They should have put all their energy and focus on the future and just let the Mega Drive do its thing until the proper next generation was ready to impress people.

Who knows, if Sega hadn't messed about with the MCD & 32X, they might have focused more on making the Saturn more developer-friendly, and the 32-bit generation might have been more succesful for them. Sony didn't have any distractions, and that's probably one reason why the PlayStation turned out to be such a developer-friendly machine.

[Team Andromeda]

Area 88 SNES too easy? First I've heard about that.

Well I remember getting UN Squadron from Woolworths after reading the Super Play review and being letdown with the game and finishing it straight away and taking it back to swap it for another game (making out I had 2 copies for my birthday) .

Who knows, if Sega hadn't messed about with the MCD & 32X, they might have focused more on making the Saturn more developer-friendly,

The Mega CD never really hurt SEGA at all . Mega Drive Hardware and software sales were still fantasic and the MD was well supported . The 32X though split SEGA PR and development plans when they should have been 100% focused on the Saturn and while I doubt SEGA would have even been #1 in the West it could have been #1 in Japan and a strong number 2 (insert jokes if one must) if it just supported the Saturn for the 32 bit battle

That chippy had some great games around that time...Turbo Outrun, Street fighter 2, World Heroes, Mortal Kombat. We will never get those days back again.

Yeah tell me about it . That's what I miss about modern gamming

[JazzFunk]

Wow, comes to summat when the CPC version looks lusher than the rest! Did the arcade version really look as choppy as that?

[Yakumo]

I can't remember. It's been so long since I played it. The fps counter on MAME was set to 60fps with no frame skip so I guess that was the correct speed. Watch the show in 720p at 60fps via Chrome or apples browser. Fire Fox and IE don't offer 60fps via YouTube yet.

[Team Andromeda]

Wow, comes to summat when the CPC version looks lusher than the rest! Did the arcade version really look as choppy as that?

No its a bit smoother . I didn't mind the game but it played and looked worse that the original and for me the camera was zoomed in too much , it had awesome music though and was fun to play back inthe day , but for me it felt more like a TATIO sprite scaler game than a SEGA one

[JazzFunk]

I was thinking that cos SEGA's super scalers were always consistently smooth. Ugly-looking game compared to the elegant original, or Chase HQ (which it reminds me more of), but there's still something about that beefy, fast scaling I adore!

Wonderful channel which just keeps getting better and somehow the typos add that extra MSG charm into the recipe...don't ever change that!!!

[Yakumo]

Glad someone likes my typos