same game on NES and MSX, the best version?

Ascended (10768)

23-01-2015, 18:40

Only the Japanese Famicom had sound chips in game cartridges (like SCC on MSX). The American/European NES didn’t have a sound input in the cartridge port so this was impossible.

By gamemastermaarten

Master (164)

24-01-2015, 11:31

Grauw wrote:

Only the Japanese Famicom had sound chips in game cartridges (like SCC on MSX). The American/European NES didn’t have a sound input in the cartridge port so this was impossible.

Yeah I know. But look at Pacman and Mappy for MSX. The same quality as the Famicom NES. But there are more games that are compatible for MSX or Famicom NES. But I don´t know the sound on MSX or Famicom NES. They are not the same version´s

By Hrothgar

Champion (479)

24-01-2015, 15:52

fernando.collazo.5682 wrote:

Do not forget that the best NES games have some kind of Mapper that improves the hardware in many ways, as several scroll plans, better sound and graphics. SMB 3 and Kirby could never been so fantastic without Mappers used in these games.

One of the tricks was a line interrupt generator to achieve those screen splits. I understand that, for that to work, the cartridge had to actually scan the beam continuously so it could determine when V and HBLANK occured.
Purely theoretically, could something like that be done on an MSX1 cartridge or does MSX lack the specific pin with the required information that was used on the NES for this?

By AxelStone

Prophet (3199)

25-01-2015, 11:57

benedick wrote:

The scroll never was an issue for me; MSX2 over NES every day.
Am I the only one who actually enjoys the choppy scroll of msx's Gradius? Back at the that time I played first msx and only after the arcade version; I never liked the arcade because it scrolls too fast, you fly to the end of the game too fast. I like to enjoy the slow pace of the msx.

Me too, I love MSX style games. I'm used to play games like Vampire Killer screen by screen and I really like them, I don't think that adding scroll, as NES version of Castlevania, improves the original.

By l_oliveira

Hero (534)

07-02-2015, 22:46

NES had 2x square waves + 1x triangle wave. (I dunno what made the guy say it has analog audio)
In addition to that it has a special trick called DPCM where it can use a primitive DMA channel to play some sort of ADPCM samples (some mario games use that for the drum samples).

It's gimmick was that It had the video memory bus exposed on the cartridge slot, which allowed developers to play with memory mappers for graphics, which eventually lead to animated tiles. And that was the MAJOR reason why the NES (Famicom in Japan) beat the MSX (and MSX2) on the games department and it's also the reason why the Famicom was able to be stiff competition even to the SEGA Master System and eventually even the Mega Drive. Not always the best platform wins... A lot of times the most versatile one wins.

Mega Drive released in 1988 and by the time it released MSX was also releasing a lot of cool stuff by it's own.

MSX was a computer which tried to also be useful as a Video Game. Usually people who bought it had that in mind, too.

By erikd

Master (255)

10-02-2015, 21:04

In terms of 'vanilla' hardware capabilities for gaming, NES is just better than MSX1 in almost every way. More bits-per-pixel for tiles and sprites, tile-sprite priority bits, a more versatile audio chip, a larger colour palette, and of course scrolling.
Even against MSX2 the NES stood its ground in some (important) aspects.

That said, NES also had some real limitations compared to MSX as well.
One big limitation on NES was RAM size (just 2KB RAM + 12KB VRAM), and imho that often shines through.
Sure some cartridges had on-board RAM, but that obviously made the cartridges more expensive so the developers would try to avoid that where they didn't have to on MSX.
I suspect that's probably why some MSX games were 'deeper'/'richer' than their NES counterparts, even if NES games usually looked flashier.

Sometimes I think MSX might have been a bigger success if they would have put some extra effort into the gaming capabilities of the hardware to better compete with the C64 (or indeed the NES).
Instead they largely went for just off-the-shelf chips that were already getting a bit long in the tooth to begin with.
Just hardware scrolling alone would have gone a long way.

By Grauw

Ascended (10768)

10-02-2015, 22:49

Yeah, if only the V9938 had those few extra features of the V9958... Would've made a big difference I think in terms of what games would be like.

I also sometimes wonder, what if the MSX had the SCC built-in in stead of the PSG .

By Jupp3

Resident (41)

10-02-2015, 23:55

Wolverine_nl wrote:

Not to mention the horrible MG NES version...OMFG!

Yeah, just think that now that it's a rather big brand, if someone got the bright idea "Hey, let's do a port of Metal Gear game without any Metal Gear!"

On the other hand, the NES-exclusive sequel (Snake's Revenge) turned out to be the most important game in the series:

It was simply so terrible, that it convinced the original creator Hideo Kojima (who wasn't involved at all with Snake's Revenge) want to create a proper sequel for the game, that was (afaik) originally planned as just a single game.
And what a big (&profitable) series that turned out to be...

By syn

Prophet (2123)

11-02-2015, 00:30

Grauw wrote:

Yeah, if only the V9938 had those few extra features of the V9958... Would've made a big difference I think in terms of what games would be like.

or a way faster blitter or DMA would have been nice as well

Quote:

I also sometimes wonder, what if the MSX had the SCC built-in in stead of the PSG .

I dont think SCC would have ever happened since its proprietary.
but something along the lines of a YM2203 (which was basically a psg+3 fm channels) would have been cool

By erikd

Master (255)

11-02-2015, 20:10

Grauw wrote:

Yeah, if only the V9938 had those few extra features of the V9958... Would've made a big difference I think in terms of what games would be like.

I also sometimes wonder, what if the MSX had the SCC built-in in stead of the PSG .

Indeed, but I do think MSX1 could already have distinguished itself a little bit more as a gaming machine.
What if MSX1 sported sported something like Sega Master System's VDP (which in many ways is quite similar to MSX1's VDP) and MSX2 went from there
Even just only scroll registers and a line-interrupt would've been nice.

SCC in the box in the box would've been awesome but I do think the SCC really shines with the PSG sitting next to it
As an aside, personally I've always sort of disliked those 2-operator FM chips that were later used in MSX-Audio and MSX-Music, and they didn't age well at all imho. And the audio quality of the Music Module was just terrible imho (in terms of s/n ratio I think it was actually worse than the FM-PAC).