The SNES Doom Discussion and Oddities Thread

[Individualised]

This thread is for discussing SNES Doom's various gameplay oddities and obscurities and how this version of the game differs from PC Doom, as well as other general discussion about SNES Doom. Here's some to start with:

 

 

Something weird in SNES Doom is that exit switches play the "menu close" sound effect, just like they're meant to do in PC Doom, but don't due to a bug. Considering Randy Linden didn't have access to the source code, and as far as I'm concerned the sound lump name (DSSWTCHX) does not indicate that it's meant to be used for exits, this is rather strange. Doom 2 on GBA does the same thing, but that was made after the source code release and that version was clearly made using the help of a source port as it has things such as "A SECRET IS REVEALED!"

____

Another "beta" similarity in SNES Doom are the lost souls; not only do they play the player oof sound as their death sound (just like their unused death sound lump in PC Doom), but they act like a mix between the early and final lost souls; they pretty much act like flying demons and don't have a charge attack (their charge animation and sound is used for a melee attack). It's probably just a coincidence (apart from them using the oof sound; that was probably just a mistake since they saw the death sound for lost souls in PC Doom's wad was the oof sound and didn't verify in-game to see if it actually plays or not) but it's still interesting.

____

I've only just realised that SNES Doom's intermission screen is a bit... odd. I don't know what it is about it but it feels bootleg? Don't know how to describe. I also wonder why they didn't put the level names on the intermission screens, they only on the automap. You can see that there's space for the level name above "FINISHED", just like the PC version. Considering there's only 20 bytes left for either data or code on the cartridge I guess there just wasn't enough space to add minor quality of life stuff like this.

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by Individualised

[Quasar]

2 minutes ago, Individualised said:

but that was made after the source code release and that version was clearly made using the help of a source port as it has things such as "A SECRET IS REVEALED!

Hopefully not distracting too much from the topic but, the GBA version is based entirely on Jaguar Doom. I've done a partial reverse engineering of it in the past and there's no evidence it used code from anywhere else, certainly not from any public source ports. They may have gotten ideas from such but there's no way to know that for sure, especially with features that are simple and almost obvious to anybody working on the game.

[Individualised]

5 minutes ago, Quasar said:

Hopefully not distracting too much from the topic but, the GBA version is based entirely on Jaguar Doom. I've done a partial reverse engineering of it in the past and there's no evidence it used code from anywhere else, certainly not from any public source ports. They may have gotten ideas from such but there's no way to know that for sure, especially with features that are simple and almost obvious to anybody working on the game.

Are you sure? The GBA version of Doom 1 is of course a Jaguar-based port, but as far as I know, Doom 2 on GBA runs on the "Southpaw" engine for 3D GBA games, it's entirely custom similar to the Reality Engine used in SNES Doom. There's definitely source port inspiration in Doom 2 for sure. (As a side note Doom 1 was meant to use a custom engine too but they were told to re-do the entire version from the start using the Jaguar source code during the final weeks of development, which pissed the developer off. I wonder if it was just terrible or something.)

Edited March 4, 2023 by Individualised

[Redneckerz]

1 hour ago, Individualised said:

Are you sure?

You are talking to someone who knows more about the Jaguar codebase and its descendants than John Carmack himself. Forgive me for asking but why is there doubt? Its Quasar. And yes, a Quasar Statement is like a seal of approval.

[Individualised]

Just now, Redneckerz said:

You are talking to someone who knows more about the Jaguar codebase and its descendants than John Carmack himself. Forgive me for asking but why is there doubt? Its Quasar. And yes, a Quasar Statement is like a seal of approval.

Oh I don't doubt their expertise on Jaguar Doom - but maybe they misread my original post as saying Doom GBA and not Doom 2 GBA. I'm almost 100% certain Doom 2 on GBA uses the Southpaw engine; even the wiki page says so: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_II_for_Game_Boy_Advance . It would be news to me if that's another Jaguar-based port too.

[Quasar]

2 minutes ago, Individualised said:

Oh I don't doubt their expertise on Jaguar Doom - but maybe they misread my original post as saying Doom GBA and not Doom 2 GBA. I'm almost 100% certain Doom 2 on GBA uses the Southpaw engine; even the wiki page says so: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_II_for_Game_Boy_Advance . It would be news to me if that's another Jaguar-based port too.

Yeah I did miss the "2" part. Makes more sense now.

[Redneckerz]

2 minutes ago, Individualised said:

Oh I don't doubt their expertise on Jaguar Doom - but maybe they misread my original post as saying Doom GBA and not Doom 2 GBA. I'm almost 100% certain Doom 2 on GBA uses the Southpaw engine; even the wiki page says so: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_II_for_Game_Boy_Advance . It would be news to me if that's another Jaguar-based port too.

Quasar is referring to the Doom 1 GBA port, which is based on the Jaguar codebase.

I can see why it is misread though since you refer to Doom 2 GBA.

 

In fact i realize i am now part of bringing unwarranted attention to their post, my apologies.

[taufan99]

The intermission screen may also look odd because of lack of the "par" section, in addition to fewer levels (at least in E2, E1 and E3 have less removed maps).

Also, as mentioned earlier in the SNES DOOM source code release thread, E3's sky on the final version of the port use E2's, whereas in this magazine scan (shared by @D1m3) describing an early developmental version of it, E3 clearly uses its own original screen.

Spoiler

 

Although, I suppose that may have been just a preview at an incomplete state, which later got changed (alongside the ultra-large shotgun sprite(s) and the HUD structure).

[Individualised]

Something ironic about SNES Doom's renderer is that unlike other versions of Doom, the game actually performs better when the player is in a large open space (provided the walls are not very tall), and performs at its worst if the player is hugging a wall. Though I haven't confirmed this, based on things I read a while back on the SNES Doom source threads both here and on NESdev, this is because of the way the SuperFX plots the level geometry (more specifically, wall textures) to the screen. This can be demonstrated in the opening area of E3M1/E3M9 after the lift is raised, the game seems to run at a full 24 FPS (the highest the Reality Engine can go).

Edited March 4, 2023 by Individualised

[Individualised]

I only just realised that this screen is part of Doom and not the XBAND BIOS. This screen doesn't appear on any other XBAND game and it's the same font used for the Doom copyright notice screen. So the "How-to-play goes here" thing doesn't make much sense, now I'm confused.

[Dark Pulse]

3 hours ago, Individualised said:

I've only just realised that SNES Doom's intermission screen is a bit... odd. I don't know what it is about it but it feels bootleg? Don't know how to describe. I also wonder why they didn't put the level names on the intermission screens, they only on the automap. You can see that there's space for the level name above "FINISHED", just like the PC version. Considering there's only 20 bytes left for either data or code on the cartridge I guess there just wasn't enough space to add minor quality of life stuff like this.

 

Lack of room in the ROM - it's got about 16 bytes free. Not kilobytes, bytes.

 

This is also why the XBand stuff is so barebones, probably - no room for a font, and no room to finish it (and it was probably added at the last minute itself, since it was never advertised on the box).

[Individualised]

I've been looking through old magazine previews for Doom 64, and I can say that it's possible that Williams were giving magazines who asked for Doom 64 footage SNES Doom footage, for some reason. It wasn't just EGM doing this; Total! magazine in the UK, who were very enthusiastic about Doom 64 and were giving it lots of coverage ever since it first started development in late 1994, had this low-quality (possibly from a damaged VHS) image of SNES Doom:

Speaking of Doom 64, I can confirm that "Doom 3" and "Ultra Doom" were in fact working titles for the game.

[Fernito]

While my first experience ever with Doom was with the DOS version at my uncle's, after that I was only able to play the game on a regular basis in a videotape/videogame cartridge rental place close to where I lived back in '96, where you could also "rent" a snes they had there with whatever game you wanted for half an hour at a time. The thing is that I kinda got used to the graphics, mechanics and quirks of the snes version, so once I was finally able to have a computer capable of handling the dos version I was totally amazed at how much smoother it was, how much better everything looked and how much was missing in the snes version :O like, I was discovering so many new things! "wow, the monster sprites have more than one angle!" "look, there are some cool planet textures in e1m1!" "Central processing? Wtf is that?" "E2m2? What are all these crates?" "Cyberdemon rockets are now facing me xD" "Bfg doesn't throw baron slime anymore?" 

 

I think one of the things that impressed me the most in the dos version was the gibbing and the knock-back of explosions. I remember how seeing enemies fly away in the form of a bloody pulp after blowing up a barrel made me totally fall in love with the game *_*

 

In any case, I still think the snes version is impressive for the hardware it runs on.

 

 

 

 

[Immorpher]

On 4/9/2023 at 5:32 PM, Individualised said:

Speaking of Doom 64, I can confirm that "Doom 3" and "Ultra Doom" were in fact working titles for the game.

I have definitely come across a lot of press promoting Doom 64 as "Ultra Doom". I have seen some press describe it as a "Doom 3", but I don't recall any calling it Doom 3 specifically. Although there is a lot of press out there I haven't seen!

[Individualised]

On 4/13/2023 at 4:12 PM, Immorpher said:

I have definitely come across a lot of press promoting Doom 64 as "Ultra Doom". I have seen some press describe it as a "Doom 3", but I don't recall any calling it Doom 3 specifically. Although there is a lot of press out there I haven't seen!

While I've seen less coverage referring to it as Doom 3, and it's never used specifically as a name, given that it started development just after Doom 2 it does match up.

Edited January 23 by Individualised

[BlueThunder]

Back then I subscribed monthly to EGM and leading all the way up until the release of the Nintendo 64 they where calling it the Ultra 64, There were even covers of some issues with Ultra 64 on it, and I do recall seeing them referring to Ultra Doom at some point but obviously they dropped the Ultra and went with the 64 on the game titles.

[Individualised]

Yes, it's well known that Ultra 64 was the original product name for the N64 before it was changed for a variety of reasons (branding unity and trademark issues to name a couple)

[Dark Pulse]

On 4/13/2023 at 3:40 PM, BlueThunder said:

Back then I subscribed monthly to EGM and leading all the way up until the release of the Nintendo 64 they where calling it the Ultra 64, There were even covers of some issues with Ultra 64 on it, and I do recall seeing them referring to Ultra Doom at some point but obviously they dropped the Ultra and went with the 64 on the game titles.

Killer Instinct's arcade version proudly touted how it would be available for your home in 1995 "only on Nintendo Ultra 64."

 

 

Spoiler: It wasn't. It went to SNES instead, and was a pretty damn decent port, considering the limitations. I certainly remember having hours of fun with it.

 

Killer Instinct 2, however, DID reach the N64, as KI Gold. Other than a few rather minor things (less voices due to cartridge space limits, none of the FMVs), it was a pretty faithful port, and it did add in some content (such as the training mode).

Edited April 14, 2023 by Dark Pulse

[Individualised]

The "Ultra" comes from it being the successor to the Super Famicom. "Ultra Famicom" was once considered as a name before it was all changed due to the aforementioned brand unity reasons.

[Quasar]

The branding change was a real punch in the gut back in the day. They changed everything to a rainbow playschool logo at practically the last minute with a cop-out excuse of something about trademarks in Japan, as if there wasn't opportunity to have that sorted long before anything was ever announced to begin with. That together with the weird controller, the constant delays in the release schedule, and third parties nervous about the system led to me buying a PlayStation first when I got wowed by it on display at Wal-Mart, whereas I had originally intended to skip out on that and just go for the Ultra 64 when it came out (or Project Reality as we also knew it). I wasn't sold til I got to play Mario 64 first-hand.

[Individualised]

Yeah the N64 branding was ugly. Don't know how to describe it other than tatty. GameCube wasn't much better either. Neither consoles were "kids consoles" - the Wii was really the first to do that - yet many people considered them as such due to their colour schemes and childish branding. Nintendo also does that weird thing a lot where they try to become edgy and then just cop-out. The N64 wasn't the only time they did that. They did the same with when the DS was first coming out and Reggie became head of Nintendo... talking about how they're so much better than the competition and such... then Revolution became Wii and they started being safe again. Same thing happened to a lesser extent with the Switch. Now there's all sorts of talk about how their next-gen "Switch 2" will finally compete with modern hardware, "better than the Steam Deck and Xbox Series S", and that Nintendo want to be a direct competitor again etc... let's see how long that lasts.

Edited April 14, 2023 by Individualised

[Dark Pulse]

22 hours ago, Quasar said:

The branding change was a real punch in the gut back in the day. They changed everything to a rainbow playschool logo at practically the last minute with a cop-out excuse of something about trademarks in Japan, as if there wasn't opportunity to have that sorted long before anything was ever announced to begin with. That together with the weird controller, the constant delays in the release schedule, and third parties nervous about the system led to me buying a PlayStation first when I got wowed by it on display at Wal-Mart, whereas I had originally intended to skip out on that and just go for the Ultra 64 when it came out (or Project Reality as we also knew it). I wasn't sold til I got to play Mario 64 first-hand.

I remember looking at the N64 controller and thinking "How the heck am I supposed to hold this?" I didn't mind the color so much. But hell yeah, Mario 64 was a fucking blast. Spent a lot of nights at friends' houses playing that all night long. (I never owned an N64 myself.) I will second what @Individualised said though, it was downright sensible compared to the Gamecube's controller.

 

But all the people thinking Nintendo will compete on modern hardware... lol, hell no, they never have.

• NES: Released in 1983, but the CPU is a variant of the 6502 that was released in 1975. Time gap: 8 years.
• SNES: Released in 1990, but the CPU is a variant of the 65C816 that was released in 1983. Time gap: 7 years.
• N64: Released in 1996, but the CPU is a variant of the MIPS R4200 that was released in 1993. Time gap: 3 years.
• Gamecube: Released in 2001, but the CPU is a variant of the PowerPC 750 which was released in 1997. Time gap: 4 years.
• Wii: Released in 2006, but is essentially an evolution of the chip used on the Gamecube. A near-identical PC processor exists as the PowerPC 750CL. Time gap: 9 years.
• Wii U: Released in 2012, but is essentially an evolution of the chip used on the Wii. Hence, the lineage is STILL considered from that date. Time gap: 15 years(!).
• Switch: Released in 2017, but is essentially a variant of the Tegra X1 that was released in 2015; closest they've ever gotten to being "modern" in terms of contemporary hardware.

So whatever Nintendo is cooking up, expect - at best - for it to match the specs of a device from around 2020, and going off of more historical trends, 2016-2018 is a lot more likely. Nintendo has always been very good at getting devices that were cutting-edge several years ago for very cheap, building a system around that, and selling it for a very nice price. Of course, nowadays they have to compete with things like Smartphone gaming, so that will probably push them in a direction closer to being closer to current hardware, and stuff like the Steam Deck is definitely going to have them taking notes (although they'd probably never go as ambitious as Steam has - Nintendo has done flops before, as everyone who remembers the Virtual Boy knows, but it's very rare for Nintendo to make a misstep of that magnitude).

 

If you want something that would push limits, that's what Sony tried to do - twice. The PSP had some decent success, but it unfortunately ran into the juggernaut that was the DS. Most would say the Vita was a failure (I had one though; I liked it quite a bit myself), but a lot of that can also probably be attributed to Sony trying to lock down the storage with their proprietary memory cards rather than the device itself. I know they're making a new handheld, but according to the rumors, it's little more than a glorified remote device for an existing PS5, not a system of its own proper.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Dark Pulse

[Individualised]

The GameCube controller was designed to be as ergonomic as possible, and it did succeed at that, there's a reason Nintendo still officially produced them in the Wii U era and why they're still so popular today. It's just by doing that it makes it look like a video game controller for clowns. Similar story with the original PS3 "Boomerang" controller.

 

I don't know what you mean with your list about Nintendo not competing with modern hardware, this list is nonsensical to me. Yes the technology in them was years old... so was every other mainstream game console of the time. Most hardware today is based on old tech, it doesn't mean the tech is outdated, just that it was designed a while ago and is only now being put into use. You weren't going to find an 8086 for example in an 80s game console, those were for high end home computers. Pretty much all of the "normal" home computers and game consoles at the time used a 6502 or Z80 or a derivative. All of those consoles until the Wii were on par with, or better than the competition. The Famicom was better than any other console on the market when it was released - the gold standard at that point was the Colecovision. Compare it to the Sega SG-1000 - released on the same day as the Famicom, yet was pretty much a Colecovision/MSX clone. The SNES is in many ways better than the Megadrive, particularly in it's PPU capabilities. The N64 was the most powerful of its generation, though it did have a few main drawbacks involving video memory and it using cartridges. The GameCube was more powerful than the competition only being outclassed by the Xbox, which was designed like a PC. In fact, Microsoft were impressed so much by the GameCube and how it managed to pack so much power into such a small form factor that it was the basis for the Xbox 360's hardware design. It was only beginning with the Wii that Nintendo starting using outdated tech due to the change in philosophy/becoming "safe" that I mentioned in my post before. If we're talking Nintendo's portable consoles, you might have a point there. The GBA and DS both went through a development hell phase and therefore use outdated technology. The GBA's original specs were designed in the mid 90s. The DS, before it was "Nitro", was "Iris", a console featuring the hardware of the DS but none of the DS stuff (i.e. the two screens, touch screen, or even internet capabilities or anything that would become standard with the PSP.) The 3DS's hardware lineage can be traced back to the GBA, and since that was originally designed circa 1995 - I'll let you do the maths :D

 

I absolutely believe that Nintendo could start competing again if they want to. But that's if they want to, which was the point of my post before.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Individualised

[the_kovic]

On 3/4/2023 at 6:15 PM, Individualised said:

You can see that there's space for the level name above "FINISHED", just like the PC version.

 

Back in the days, it was considered good practice for console games to leave a band of space with no critical information around the edges of the screen in order to account for CRT TV overscan. I don't think the level name would fit while also conforming to that.

[Individualised]

11 minutes ago, the_kovic said:

Back in the days, it was considered good practice for console games to leave a band of space with no critical information around the edges of the screen in order to account for CRT TV overscan. I don't think the level name would fit while also conforming to that.

It's true that Nintendo's official dev kit stuff had guidelines on where things should be placed in case of overscan, but SNES Doom was developed using a custom devkit and in my experience those sorts of games don't usually follow the official guidelines. Overscan also only really applies to NTSC afaik (though maybe that's just a NES thing? I definitely remember playing games that weren't properly optimised for PAL on my Famiclone and seeing things I wasn't supposed to see, like the scrolling buffer thing Double Dragon 2)

Edited April 15, 2023 by Individualised

[Dark Pulse]

On 4/15/2023 at 6:21 PM, Individualised said:

I don't know what you mean with your list about Nintendo not competing with modern hardware, this list is nonsensical to me. Yes the technology in them was years old... so was every other mainstream game console of the time. Most hardware today is based on old tech, it doesn't mean the tech is outdated, just that it was designed a while ago and is only now being put into use. You weren't going to find an 8086 for example in an 80s game console, those were for high end home computers. Pretty much all of the "normal" home computers and game consoles at the time used a 6502 or Z80 or a derivative. All of those consoles until the Wii were on par with, or better than the competition. The Famicom was better than any other console on the market when it was released - the gold standard at that point was the Colecovision. Compare it to the Sega SG-1000 - released on the same day as the Famicom, yet was pretty much a Colecovision/MSX clone. The SNES is in many ways better than the Megadrive, particularly in it's PPU capabilities. The N64 was the most powerful of its generation, though it did have a few main drawbacks involving video memory and it using cartridges. The GameCube was more powerful than the competition only being outclassed by the Xbox, which was designed like a PC. In fact, Microsoft were impressed so much by the GameCube and how it managed to pack so much power into such a small form factor that it was the basis for the Xbox 360's hardware design. It was only beginning with the Wii that Nintendo starting using outdated tech due to the change in philosophy/becoming "safe" that I mentioned in my post before. If we're talking Nintendo's portable consoles, you might have a point there. The GBA and DS both went through a development hell phase and therefore use outdated technology. The GBA's original specs were designed in the mid 90s. The DS, before it was "Nitro", was "Iris", a console featuring the hardware of the DS but none of the DS stuff (i.e. the two screens, touch screen, or even internet capabilities or anything that would become standard with the PSP.) The 3DS's hardware lineage can be traced back to the GBA, and since that was originally designed circa 1995 - I'll let you do the maths :D

 

I absolutely believe that Nintendo could start competing again if they want to. But that's if they want to, which was the point of my post before.

Well, I'll break this down point-by-point.

• The technology is old, and is put into use years later.

True - in most gaming devices, the technology isn't exactly bleeding-edge. Even the PSP was based on a MIPS R4000 (which came out in 1991), so it was hardly cutting-edge. But the thing is, the PSP also only cost $249 - the Switch was $299, for example. And the more bleeding-edge the hardware, the more the thing costs. Quite a few people on here will remember the PS3's infamous $499 launch (and that was the cheaper, 20 GB model - the 60 GB model would set you back ANOTHER hundred bucks). The only game system that was more expensive at launch was the Neo-Geo ($649.99), and that also had games that THEMSELVES could be $200-300 each (ROM was hella expensive back then, and these games were BIG).

 

Nintendo has historically cheaped out on the graphics side of things. The PSP obviously chewed the DS up graphically; it couldn't even approach the same solar system. But the DS was seen as neat due to its touch screen, its dualscreen capability, its much smaller size, its general lack of proprietary hardware bullshit, and of course, the fact it cost a mere $149 won it a hell of a lot more fans.

 

In the end, the PSP sold 80-82 million units from 2004-2014 - pretty damn good shootin', cowboy. Currently just out of the top ten bestselling consoles of all time (it's #11). But in the same timespan, the Nintendo DS sold a whopping 154 million units, nearly outdoing it 2:1 - and it currently sits at second place all-time. Only the PS2 did better; the Switch is third but still needs 30 million more units to sniff the same neighborhood.

 

Needless to say, when it comes to handhelds, Nintendo's strategy is clearly working - devices that are 2nd (DS), 3rd (Switch), 4th (GB/GBC), and 10th (GBA), and this is ignoring that the Wii is 6th. Sony's more flashy and fancy hardware sold well enough for the PSP, but the Vita was a huge flop - 10-15 million tops.

 

Basically: Nintendo owns the handheld market. If you're gonna compete with them, you need to bring that price and specs down, jack. Flashier and fancier is not going to win that race.

• Consoles at par with/better than the competition

Sure... if you're comparing home consoles, of course. The Famicom I'll give you. The SNES, on the other hand, a bit less so. PCs were really starting to kick off around then, and there was also highly stiff competition from the arcades - the Neo-Geo was also released in 1990 and was an absolute beast of a 2D machine. Of course, it also cost $650 for home users and several hundred bucks per game, while the SNES was much cheaper. The system could have add-on chips, but so did the Genesis (albeit this was really only used once). And while it's true that Sega had the inferior tech from a visual point of view, the two machines were in a way built for very different sorts of games.

 

The N64 is where it fell apart. The graphical prowess of the system was amazing, but yes, the cartridges seriously held it back, but Nintendo was paranoid over CD burning. The PS1 quickly swooped in, the PS2 absolutely dominated the Gamecube, and it wasn't until the Wii that Nintendo really got its mojo back. But even then, nobody was going to turn to the Wii for graphical power, you went to a PS3 or a XBox 360 for that.

 

Also, while it's true the Gamecube was more powerful in a graphics sense, it also had two benefits: It came out a year and a half after the PS2 did, and it was still a lot of that SGI expertise holding over and continuing on. That was more than enough time to give the PS2 a strong foothold that got even stronger with Sega exiting the hardware side of things around this time, and along with the fact that while Nintendo finally went optical, it was with those weird mini-discs that cold only hold about 1.5 GB while a PS2 game could easily hold 3x that space, that caused things to just be a runaway success in the PS2's favor. In the end, over 3000 games were put out for the PS2; the GameCube, IIRC, had about 650.

• Current Nintendo

Nintendo is more or less fine with no longer being the top home system. Sure, a design like the Switch is highly useful; they realized that a lot of people would want to take a game from home and play it on the go as well, and they've ridden that wave to massive success. This is basically Nintendo's main strength: They see a market trend, and try to go for it. It often works quite well for them - besides the Virtual Boy, nothing they made in the home videogame market since the 1980s could ever really be considered a serious failure. Where the other systems tout their graphics and their power (and the price to go along with it), Nintendo will tout its long-running franchises, ease of ability to just jump in and play, respectable graphics, and overall the experience more than anything else.

 

That's really the secret of their success. After all, if you produce hit device after hit device and you don't have to push the edge to do it, you're clearly doing something right.

 

Honestly at this point, Valve is more of a threat to them than Sony or MS. Nintendo is happy to let them be the kings of the living room - so long as they get that all-important mobile market. But now you got a device that for $399 is literally a handheld PC, with more than enough power to easily blast the Switch - and it's able to do a whole lot more than a locked down, or for that matter, even a jailbroken Switch could ever do. For those seeking cheap, of course the Switch will still win out, but for those gamers with some deeper pockets, or for those who really would like almost a mobile PC setup, the Steam Deck being only $100 more while being able to do FAR more and with far better graphics is a definite threat to them and their model.

 

I'd still expect things to be somewhat older tech, simply because it would be a less painful price point to hit. It may well wind up being comparable to the Steam Deck in terms of capabilities, or slightly under - after all, even mobile chips now are getting to do raytracing and all that crazy shit. But don't ever count Nintendo out because they won't go for something slightly more powerful than the competition - they have things the competition cannot fall back on, and they are almost always right on the money.

[Dimon12321]

On 4/17/2023 at 9:59 AM, Dark Pulse said:

Honestly at this point, Valve is more of a threat to them than Sony or MS. Nintendo is happy to let them be the kings of the living room - so long as they get that all-important mobile market. But now you got a device that for $399 is literally a handheld PC, with more than enough power to easily blast the Switch - and it's able to do a whole lot more than a locked down, or for that matter, even a jailbroken Switch could ever do.

 

Reading this makes me feel upset regarding the market of mobile games. It could have happened much earlier.

When I got my first Android tablet in 2011, I was shocked by Dead Trigger and Resident Evil 4 Mobile. These were early AAA games for smartphones and 3D graphics looked modern, despite pretty weak hardware back in the day. 

If mobile games didn't change its direction towards money milking one-day-done games so fast, we would have long ago seen Switch and Deck as the portable market would have been much developed than it is now.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Dimon12321

[Individualised]

4 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Well, I'll break this down point-by-point.

• The technology is old, and is put into use years later.

True - in most gaming devices, the technology isn't exactly bleeding-edge. Even the PSP was based on a MIPS R4000 (which came out in 1991), so it was hardly cutting-edge. But the thing is, the PSP also only cost $249 - the Switch was $299, for example. And the more bleeding-edge the hardware, the more the thing costs. Quite a few people on here will remember the PS3's infamous $499 launch (and that was the cheaper, 20 GB model - the 60 GB model would set you back ANOTHER hundred bucks). The only game system that was more expensive at launch was the Neo-Geo ($649.99), and that also had games that THEMSELVES could be $200-300 each (ROM was hella expensive back then, and these games were BIG).

 

Nintendo has historically cheaped out on the graphics side of things. The PSP obviously chewed the DS up graphically; it couldn't even approach the same solar system. But the DS was seen as neat due to its touch screen, its dualscreen capability, its much smaller size, its general lack of proprietary hardware bullshit, and of course, the fact it cost a mere $149 won it a hell of a lot more fans.

 

In the end, the PSP sold 80-82 million units from 2004-2014 - pretty damn good shootin', cowboy. Currently just out of the top ten bestselling consoles of all time (it's #11). But in the same timespan, the Nintendo DS sold a whopping 154 million units, nearly outdoing it 2:1 - and it currently sits at second place all-time. Only the PS2 did better; the Switch is third but still needs 30 million more units to sniff the same neighborhood.

 

Needless to say, when it comes to handhelds, Nintendo's strategy is clearly working - devices that are 2nd (DS), 3rd (Switch), 4th (GB/GBC), and 10th (GBA), and this is ignoring that the Wii is 6th. Sony's more flashy and fancy hardware sold well enough for the PSP, but the Vita was a huge flop - 10-15 million tops.

 

Basically: Nintendo owns the handheld market. If you're gonna compete with them, you need to bring that price and specs down, jack. Flashier and fancier is not going to win that race.

• Consoles at par with/better than the competition

Sure... if you're comparing home consoles, of course. The Famicom I'll give you. The SNES, on the other hand, a bit less so. PCs were really starting to kick off around then, and there was also highly stiff competition from the arcades - the Neo-Geo was also released in 1990 and was an absolute beast of a 2D machine. Of course, it also cost $650 for home users and several hundred bucks per game, while the SNES was much cheaper. The system could have add-on chips, but so did the Genesis (albeit this was really only used once). And while it's true that Sega had the inferior tech from a visual point of view, the two machines were in a way built for very different sorts of games.

 

The N64 is where it fell apart. The graphical prowess of the system was amazing, but yes, the cartridges seriously held it back, but Nintendo was paranoid over CD burning. The PS1 quickly swooped in, the PS2 absolutely dominated the Gamecube, and it wasn't until the Wii that Nintendo really got its mojo back. But even then, nobody was going to turn to the Wii for graphical power, you went to a PS3 or a XBox 360 for that.

 

Also, while it's true the Gamecube was more powerful in a graphics sense, it also had two benefits: It came out a year and a half after the PS2 did, and it was still a lot of that SGI expertise holding over and continuing on. That was more than enough time to give the PS2 a strong foothold that got even stronger with Sega exiting the hardware side of things around this time, and along with the fact that while Nintendo finally went optical, it was with those weird mini-discs that cold only hold about 1.5 GB while a PS2 game could easily hold 3x that space, that caused things to just be a runaway success in the PS2's favor. In the end, over 3000 games were put out for the PS2; the GameCube, IIRC, had about 650.

• Current Nintendo

Nintendo is more or less fine with no longer being the top home system. Sure, a design like the Switch is highly useful; they realized that a lot of people would want to take a game from home and play it on the go as well, and they've ridden that wave to massive success. This is basically Nintendo's main strength: They see a market trend, and try to go for it. It often works quite well for them - besides the Virtual Boy, nothing they made in the home videogame market since the 1980s could ever really be considered a serious failure. Where the other systems tout their graphics and their power (and the price to go along with it), Nintendo will tout its long-running franchises, ease of ability to just jump in and play, respectable graphics, and overall the experience more than anything else.

 

That's really the secret of their success. After all, if you produce hit device after hit device and you don't have to push the edge to do it, you're clearly doing something right.

 

Honestly at this point, Valve is more of a threat to them than Sony or MS. Nintendo is happy to let them be the kings of the living room - so long as they get that all-important mobile market. But now you got a device that for $399 is literally a handheld PC, with more than enough power to easily blast the Switch - and it's able to do a whole lot more than a locked down, or for that matter, even a jailbroken Switch could ever do. For those seeking cheap, of course the Switch will still win out, but for those gamers with some deeper pockets, or for those who really would like almost a mobile PC setup, the Steam Deck being only $100 more while being able to do FAR more and with far better graphics is a definite threat to them and their model.

 

I'd still expect things to be somewhat older tech, simply because it would be a less painful price point to hit. It may well wind up being comparable to the Steam Deck in terms of capabilities, or slightly under - after all, even mobile chips now are getting to do raytracing and all that crazy shit. But don't ever count Nintendo out because they won't go for something slightly more powerful than the competition - they have things the competition cannot fall back on, and they are almost always right on the money.

Yeah I pretty much agree with everything you say here. Thanks for clarifying

Edited April 17, 2023 by Individualised

[Kyle07]

The Game Cube was awesome, wasn't it more powerful than the PS2. I think if the 3rd party support would have been better, the Game Cube would be a more attractive console than it was.

[Individualised]

Found this bizarre article claiming that Sandy Petersen did the SNES levels: https://www.shacknews.com/article/117004/super-doom-how-id-softwares-opus-made-the-jump-to-super-nes

This would be news to me. As far as I know John Coffey at Sculptured Software did the SNES level set. I don't think anyone at id worked on SNES Doom at all. Pretty sure the closest to that ever happening was Randy Linden consulting with John Carmack over thetelephone and giving him updates. It's like they got a quote of Sandy talking about how John Carmack told him to do the Jaguar levels and swapped "Jaguar" for Super Nintendo.

 

For the record neither Petersen nor Carmack are in the credits for the SNES version. None of the id team are.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Individualised