Kong Mip

Console History

On 26 November 1990, Nintendo invaded, what would seem to be dominated by competition, the 16-bit market. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth! Nintendo with their previous system acquired a great appreciation and following from players and because of that their new toy was named the most popular console on the Japanese market. In the U.S., it was a different story and there, of course because of late release, the console did not do well. The heart was the processor 65C816 /1.79 MHz – 3.58 MHz with 128 KB RAM, 64 MB Video RAM, 64 MB RAM, Audio, and a maximum resolution of 512 × 448 pixels with 256 colors. The specification was so much weaker than the older Sega MegaDrive! Yet this was not a problem for the Big N. The card games often included more chips that supported additional graphics, and one can say that both platforms offered the same level. Of course, it does not have to be mentioned that the SNES provided a much better sound.

Do you know the company SNK? They created such hits as Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown and Metal Slug, that are still popular, and recently, they even released a new Metal Slug. The success of these games in the early 1990s yielded huge profits for the company. They became so large that it allowed the company to develop and present their own invention called NeoGeo. SNK took the easy way out and it was virtually an automatic system, in a nice small package. The heart was the processor Motorola 68000/12 MHz and the system to assist it was the Zilog Z80/4 MHz. It is not difficult to guess why the console did not become a bestseller. The price was starting from $650, and the prices of games were near the $250 mark! Even by today’s standards, these prices would be considered to be high. Despite the great games, NeoGeo became a failure, which is hardly surprising given the prices. It was surprising that people from SNK were counting on its success.

In 1991, Trip Hawkins, the founder of a prominent software company Electronic Arts, founded the 3DO Company. The plan, which he funded himself, was very ambitious and practically had no right to fail. He had built a new system for the whole family, whose central element was to be a CD player. Cooperation was established with such giants as Time Warner, Paramount, Warner Bros.., AT & T, MCA and Matsushita. The first prototype of the new console was introduced in 1993 in Chicago at the Electronic Entertainment Show. The specification was impressive, it had a 12.5 MHz (32-bit RISC) processor with a 2x Video Co-Processor/25 MHz (graphics) and 2MB DRAM, 1 MB VRAM (video RAM) and a 1 MB ROM. Finally, the graphics had a hardware accelerator (scaling, rotation, and compression texture mapping, shadowing, and transparency), and finally, a “normal” stereo, Dolby Surround, 16-bit, 44.1 kHz sampling. The debut took place in 1994 and ended in defeat. Price was an astronomical $700 and only a few companies decided to issue the equipment on the market (3DO was not producing the console, but sold licenses).

Excellent plans very quickly and unexpectedly shattered.

In 1993, ATARI attacked again. The console was called Jaguar, and was the first 64-bit platform. Had a 13.3 MHz processor and 2MB RAM. Cartridge carriers were up to 6 MB of ROM. Then in a panic before Sony and Sega could, ATARI added an accessory – a CD drive. Obviously, this was a stupid idea, since the console was obviously too weak and they finished with the concept of 3D, with the game “Wolfenstein 3D.” The device had disappeared shortly after the release of the PSX. The reason for the failure was a very small amount of good games and weak developer support. It was, as it turned out later, the nail in the coffin of ATARI.

32 and 64 bits were very tempting, and when it was loud about the 3DO console, three new great players were quietly preparing for their projects. Wait, wait… three? On the market there was to appear a new, unproven player. But let’s start from the beginning…

SEGA first released, in 1994, the SEGA Saturn. It was predicted that the three-dimensional image domain will be a next-generation console, and will put special emphasis on improving the systems responsible for the display of 2D objects. But when suddenly, Sony and then Nintendo announced specifications for their console, the company bosses feared that their system would fall behind and quickly added additional processors for 3D graphics. Initially, the product sold really great, and it’s mainly thanks to the genius of Yu Suzuki’s world famous AM2 development team. A shock was caused the two parts of “Virtua Fighter”, and there were also an excellent “Nights” and “Sega Rally” and “Panzer Dragon”. But as time passed, with the emergence of the next generation of games, the defects came to light because it was all done quickly and hastily. Sega encountered great difficulty in writing software and the next generation of games on the PSX and N64 led to the death of the console. In the heart there were two Hitachi SH2 processors/28.6 MHz (32-bit RISC processor) and Hitachi SH1 (32-bit RISC processor). It also had a memory of 2MB RAM, 1.54 MB Video RAM, 512 MB RAM, Audio, 512 KB cache, a CD-ROM and a number of system accessories.

Probably a small part of the players know that if not for Nintendo, Sony would not be today’s most popular console in the world. Even, before the beginning of the 1990′s Nintendo partnered with Sony with the aim to develop a CD-ROM drive for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Famicom. But at some point, there was a conflict and Sony, in June 1991, announced plans for their own platform. Nintendo probably regrets that move, because we all know how it ended. Chipsets and a processor from Nintendo, plus the Sony drive, that would have given us probably the greatest equipment on the market, at that time. But it did not happen and in 1994 the PSX landed on store shelves. Interestingly, the beginning the sales were poor due to the Saturn. PSX was based on a 33 MHz 32 bit RISC processor (30 MIPS) and 2MB of memory. Although he did not have any hardware effects, even mipmapping it reached its capacity of about 1.5 million polygons per second. Agreements with companies such as Square, Namco and Konami have resulted in a huge number of hits. The Final Fantasy series, Tekken, or the memorable Metal Gear Solid created milestones in gaming history. In addition, the company has under its wings the developers from Polyphony that created the very popular and revolutionary Gran Turismo series.

The console enjoyed huge worldwide success, and only in the United States had the Nintendo 64 sold better. Piracy and easy access to the games were very helpful. Especially poorer countries, the PSX were a huge success. Even if Nintendo had better games, and certainly better graphics, the price was $50 to $60 per game, when you could get a pirate version for approx. $10, so it seemed obvious to get the pirate version as the difference was huge.

Nintendo meanwhile, began to scare the market with its 64-bit monster, named Ultra 64. Even more threatening to their competition, was the agreement between Nintendo and the famous company Silicon Graphics. This allowed a potential buyer of the system to be sure that they will get a graphical monster. Leading up to the premiere in 1996, a large proportion of the consumers became tired of waiting for the Nintendo console and Sony had already won a good market position, however, the premiere of the console has been amazing! It took place in Japan, on 23 June 1996, and after several hours the entire stock cleared from stores which was approx. 350 000 consoles! Almost every buyer has purchased, with the console, the game Super Mario 64, which caused a huge shock in the world! Finally, we had great revolutionary graphics, freedom and incredible playability. The first 3D game – you could go anywhere you want and the plot were not linear, and the tasks we performed were specified by us. The game was played by older and younger gamers. This was the beginning of a new era. The console debuted in September in the U.S., to a similar situation.

The processor in the console clocked at 93.75 MHz, or nearly three times more than the PSX. We had 4MB of memory and a “Reality Immersion Coprocessor” clocked at 62.5 MHz (a 64-bit RISC processor responsible for the graphics). During that time, Nintendo released the Expansion Pack, a cube with 8MB of memory. Nintendo put Sony once again in its place, because the console allowed the resolution of 640 x 480, with the addition of new effects.

The only downside was the lack of a CD-ROM drive. Next were the cards, with capacities from 8 to 256MB. This was, for several companies too little and they turned away from Nintendo, so they announced an additional drive 64DD (something like a snap to Jaguar), but this came far too late and this has not left the borders of Japan. In total, the PSX console had won, except for the U.S. market. The reason for this was probably the lack of good games in various subjects and the small amount of developers developing games for the Nintendo console. In total, the truck was pulled by the N itself and certain games that became legendary like “Zelda”, or such gems as “Perfect Dark”, “Goldeneye 007″, “WaveRace”, “Donkey Kong 64″, “Banjo Kazoo”, other Zelda titles, and the “Conker’s Bad Fur Day”. However, there was a lack of good racing and good “shooting” games – in this field SONY reigned.

In a very short time there was a fall of the Saturn system and immediately, SEGA had announced work on a new console code-named Katana. At that time, because of successive generations of games, Sony had won the world and was making huge money. Nintendo also had performed very well and this situation lasted until the Dreamcast release. Sega developed two projects, in Japan, codenamed “Dural” in cooperation with NEC, and Sega’s U.S. division worked on a project codenamed “Black Belt” with the company 3Dfx Interactive. In 1997, the console, tentatively called “Katana” omitted 3Dfx, by deciding to go with the PowerVR from NEC. The heart was the processor from Hitachi SH-4/200 MHz (128-bit RISC processor, 360 MIPS, 1.4 GFLOPS). The memory was 16 MB RAM 8 MB Video RAM and 2 MB of RAM Audio. PowerVR graphics chip had been able process 3 million polygons per second.

Debut occurred in the country, of course, of Japan, on November 27, 1998. The console was selling extremely well, but not for long. There were a lot of games that were very good. The price of the console fell through time with various promotions, but most players… were waiting for the PlayStation 2! When SEGA realized that they were at the losing end they stopped production and the console became dead. It’s worth noting that they could have held on, in the market for a long time – the difference between the SEGA console and the PS2 with regards to the graphics is not so huge. SEGA, as we know, withdrew completely from the production of the consoles and their games today support the PS2 and X-Box, and sometimes even the PC market.

The current landscape consists of three consoles that share the marketplace. The fight is between Microsoft with their X-box series, Sony and their Playstation series and Nintendo with their Wii.

About the Author

www.wencelsite.com

Kid’s mip