Hey all, this is just a bit of fun discussion and speculation I wanted to try....
There's one inevitable fact about consoles: Every single one of them... every one, has some kind of boneheaded bottleneck or engineering fault that looking back makes one scratch their heads and wonder what the designers were thinking. Some were due to simple oversights, while many others were business decisions that turned out short sighted or just unlucky. Even with good intentions no one gets it right 100% of the time.
So... how would you fix it? I'm not talking about cobbling together an uber machine, I mean actually make a workable fix using reasonably cost effective tech at the console's time. What sort of ripple effect could you make (if any) in the industry.
One last thing - Yes, we all know software matters more. That's a dead horse. Any posts trying to derail the thread into "quality of games" or some such that doesn't directly address the hardware itself will be deleted instantly.
I'll start this show with a few of my own:
The Genesis started its life as an upscaled Master System, then segued to a scaled down System 16B arcade board, and wound up as a bizarre melding of both. Chip size and cost control required cutting out sprite scaling capability and reducing the palette to 9bits. I suppose Sega felt justified in this because of the Master System's relative European and South American success, but I still think it was a bad move. Especially because it didn't actually have backward compatibility - you still had to buy an expensive converter.
Preface
There's one inevitable fact about consoles: Every single one of them... every one, has some kind of boneheaded bottleneck or engineering fault that looking back makes one scratch their heads and wonder what the designers were thinking. Some were due to simple oversights, while many others were business decisions that turned out short sighted or just unlucky. Even with good intentions no one gets it right 100% of the time.
So... how would you fix it? I'm not talking about cobbling together an uber machine, I mean actually make a workable fix using reasonably cost effective tech at the console's time. What sort of ripple effect could you make (if any) in the industry.
One last thing - Yes, we all know software matters more. That's a dead horse. Any posts trying to derail the thread into "quality of games" or some such that doesn't directly address the hardware itself will be deleted instantly.
I'll start this show with a few of my own:
North American NES
This one is easy. The NES was overall IMO one of the most beautifully engineered consoles ever conceived. Most of its components were off the shelf and severely dated long before the thing ever released, but were so brilliantly optimized it literally invented new game genres. It just had two big problems, both easily fixed:- The Zero Insert Force cartridge port was just plain stupid. You don't need engineering school to know that intentionally bending printed contacts is a bad idea. My first move is firing the guy who presented this design. I'll replace it with a simple stationary rail and port that holds the cartridge at a slight diagonal angle (so it doesn't fall out of the port). You still have the VCR aesthetic, but minus the moving parts and bending contacts. Probably save some money on manufacturing costs while I'm at it.
- The expansion port. In itself you can't blame them for this, but moving the sound chip contacts to it instead of the cartridge port was right up there with the ZIF for bad ideas. The sound chip contacts go back to the cartridge port.
Genesis / Mega Drive
The Genny doesn't really have singular OMG flaws, but looking at the design history it lost a ton of potential on the drawing board. Compared to other 4th gen hardware the Genny's main weaknesses are severely limited color, no hardware pixel manipulation (i.e. scaling / rotation), and finicky interrupt timing for its sound chip. The latter is why so many Genesis voice samples have laryngitis. All three of these are due to one decision - backward compatibility with the Master System.The Genesis started its life as an upscaled Master System, then segued to a scaled down System 16B arcade board, and wound up as a bizarre melding of both. Chip size and cost control required cutting out sprite scaling capability and reducing the palette to 9bits. I suppose Sega felt justified in this because of the Master System's relative European and South American success, but I still think it was a bad move. Especially because it didn't actually have backward compatibility - you still had to buy an expensive converter.
- Graphics: No backward compatibility. Design around the System 16 graphic core from the get go. This gives you a 15bit color palette + shadow and highlight for a total of 98,304 colors, and 128 sprites on screen. You also get sprite scaling, something not even the Neo-Geo or SNES had. No rotation or "Mode 7" backgrounds, but still a massive leap forward compared to the machine we got, and with a comparable, if not equal price.
- Sound: The Z80 CPU and Yamaha chip were actually a sweet setup in the right hands. It's just that FM synth and interrupt timing for samples were hard to program, and instead of proper documentation SEGA created the horrid GEMS format. My fix? Print a dang manual, ship it to the devs, and have a guy waiting on the phone to help out. Problem solved. Output stereo to the RF signal and omit the headphone jack from day one.
- Controllers: Ever notice the Genesis controller had the same number of input bits as the NES (8)? No doubt someone thought they were being cute combining both controller signals into a single 16bit value. Problem is games were already coming down the pipe with more complex inputs. I'd sacrifice a couple of bytes of reserve memory to give each controller its own 16bit signal. My initial controller design would just add a fourth facing button and call it a day to save cost. I can use the remaining 5 bits for expansion later on once 6 buttons become a necessity.
