And again...WTF do you mean by that?

 

A pure console without being like a hybrid with a portable

 

Probably not, as I don't think thats where the industry will be going for the most part.

 

Switch feels more pure console to me than the Wii or Wii U.

They were to invested in the gimmicks with those consoles and also have other apps no one cared about.

Switch plays games with minor amounts of motion gimmicks (about PS3 level) and that’s all it does. The gimmick of it being a hybrid isn’t intrusive at all.

 

I agree re: this feeling more like a "pure console" than the last two systems (though I did love Wii U personally.)

In fact... and I know this is a controversial opinion... for me, Switch (like Wii U before it) is in many ways the last and only system that feels like consoles used to feel to me: Unique, novel, yet simple and easy to use systems with their own "spirit."

NES, SNES, Master System, Genesis, N64, Saturn, Dreamcast, and even some of those quirky shortlived systems like 3DO, Jaguar, etc. all had their own unique "feel." Their own controller layouts, their own color schemes, etc. And even their own graphical telltale markers - apart from ports (and sometimes even with ports) - because of their widely divergent and highly proprietary chipsets and even color pallets. (The Dreamcast color pallet - as well as that of the arcade boards that share hardware with them - are so distinctive I can recognize them on sight, personally.)

Even Playstation and the first Xbox felt at least somewhat novel at the time.

After that though, and again I know this is a controversial thing to say, imo Nintendo were the only company still standing whose products had that distinctiveness to them. Playstation and Xbox are great brands and great platforms, but they just feel like similar boxes with similar games and similar graphics (apart fro their respective exclusives, at least... and even there I would argue visual distinctiveness is less common by far than among Nintendo's IPs.) Even the controllers feel similar. (Granted, so do Nintendo's now, to some extent.) That, coupled with the focus on graphical realism, has really deflated a bit of my enthusiasm for gaming over the last decade or two.

So, except for hardware parity not being possible because of it, and that potentially impacting the availability of certain third party IPs on it, I love the simplicity and portability of Switch. Just like I loved the quirkiness of Wii U, for all its faults, and Gamecube's adorable little cube shape and carrying handle and weird proprietary discs. I LOVE quirkiness in my consoles, even though I might complain about it in some cases, because it takes me back to my youth, when every product had that weird 80s or 90s charm and wacky utilitarian design.

Nintendo is sort of the last man standing of the old guard, and it shows in their distinctive product design.

 

Hmm...what's this?

Nintendo files trademark for the N64 controller in Europe - Nintendo Everything

N64 Classic Edition, perhaps?

 

I hope so...only one of these consoles I'd be interested in.

 

Pretty cool...

Shin Akuma can be unlocked in Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers, Capcom reveals how - Nintendo Everything

By following just a few steps, you can add the character to the roster.

Here’s how it works:

1. Select Ryu, cancel on Color 1
2. Select Ken, cancel on Color 9
3. Select Sagat, cancel on Color 8
4. Select M. Bison cancel on Color 7
5. Place the cursor on Random, press L & R at the same time

 

Nuts - I just lost a whole post while editing on 80's/90's console hardware and the surprising use of standard parts, especially at Sega. I can't be bothered to type it in again.

 

Sad to hear   I know most of the stuff from reading my favorite magazine back then, simply called Video Games (started out as a special issue of the magazine Power Play), but I still enjoy hearing stories of the past from other people's experience and point of views. It felt different back then. I always get a warm and fuzzy feeling thinking of that time. I even still got one issue from 1992 or 1993 of Video Games. Doesn't look so good anymore. But it feels good reading it  

 

I've just noticed a slight flicker on the left side of my screen. Hopefully it goes away or I'll have to see if Nintendo can fix it/replace it. Kinda bummed out right now..  

 

So I'm going to try writing this again. In the interests of being a bit of a pedant and because I like writing about this stuff. It's not strictly true that consoles were all custom chips back in the 80's.

Although it's true that many manufacturers were sticking to the custom hardware route, there was a move towards more "off the shelf" parts in the 1980's as well. Sega were an excellent example of this. The Master System and Megadrive/Genesis were both nothing but readily available parts from Zilog, Yamaha, Texas Instruments and Motorola.

The Megadrive/Genesis just used an upgraded VDP from the Master System while the rest of the machine was sort of a down-scaled version of the Sega-16 arcade boards, using standard sound chips.

It's surprising how early this trend started - and at the early to mid-80's, even Commodore/MOS saw the OEM market as a growing business. So much so that the VIC/VICII and SID chip were never really intended for their products. They meant to sell them to device manufacturers (ATM, Medical etc.). I think there was a point where anybody who went for a super-custom, bespoke chip set (like Atari with the Jaguar) found themselves in a bit of trouble with more R&D costs to recoup and issues with cost of goods and supply.

I think what made Sega stand out was that they always seem to have quite a high quality RAMDAC - the bit of hardware responsible for converting digital values into analog signals for TV output. Their arcade experience really stood out here - and the Dreamcast is an excellent example of that - it was pretty much nothing but off-the-shelf components (apart from the Maple bus). But it was the PVR's ability to compress true-colour textures, use true-colour buffers for video output coupled with the RAMDAC and ability to output 480i and 480p that gave it that really great, vibrant colour output on a TV. Something that Nintendo later managed with the Gamecube after having somebody else design the graphics chip.

 

Excellent and fantastic historical context, much of which I was totally unaware of. (Or just have horrible memory with regard to lol.)

My real point though was just the "feel" of the systems (which is much more ineffable and subjective of course) wasn't as homogeneous back then, which I really miss.

 

I'm glad that you appreciated it.   I worry that sometimes I come across as one of those annoying "Erm, actually.." sort of people.

I think you have a really valid point here - even though there may not have been as a big a reliance on custom-chips, the hardware used tended to dictate the general look and feel of the games. Take the Master System vs the NES as an example - the MS definitely had a much more vibrant colour output than the NES's more washed-out picture. I think part of that was the RAMDAC and the other part was the fact that the MS had a slightly larger colour palette available. This meant that a wider colour space was used, requiring less need for the colour values to be boosted during signal conversion and giving a more vibrant colour space.

So all NES games had this very washed out feeling to their look, regardless of who made them, where-as the MS games have a much more vibrant look. And that was totally down the hardware.

 

On the other hand, SMS games (without the FM upgrade) had that "puff-chug-puff" sound, like the music was being played on a chain-smoking calliope.  

Also, (if I recall correctly) the YM2612 was never really used by anyone but Sega. So although it's not technically a custom chip, in practice it might as well be.

 

Update For Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition Enables 1080p Display When Docked

Nice update.

 

Yeah, the ports on the FM chip had ridiculously long response times which led to performance issues. I'm trying to think of non-Sega games that used the FM chip, but you're right; it was just Sega. However, if it has been used in non-JP units, I'm pretty sure the UK developers who were seriously into the machine in the early 90's would have used it - because those guys did some amazing stuff (Cool Spot, Alien 3, Marble Madness).

*ahem* anyhow...I've derailed this thread enough already. But anybody who is interested should check out the re-work of Sonic SMS where some guy wrote a new sound driver and re-arranged the music for it to work with the YM2612. Fantastic stuff.

 

Actually, I was talking about the chip in the MD/Genesis and System 16 family arcade boards at that point. The SMS FM chip was a YM2413. Sorry, I guess I wrote it in a way that made the two topics look related. I've read that the 2612 only ended up getting incorporated into Sega hardware. I can't think of any non-Sega games that used the 2413, unless you count stuff like Bomber Raid that wasn't published by Sega in North America.

It's pretty neat, but it kills the sound effects and tends to crash occasionally. Still a great hack for demonstrating what could've been.

 

Splatoon 2 with HUGE sales numbers in Japan.

Imagine how many they'd sell if there weren't supply issues?

 

MORE HUGE SWITCH NEWS!