I'm a subscriber and regular viewer of PatmanQC's channel, and feel very sad hearing the news of his passing. His videos are all top-notch, entertaining and educating us at the same time. He was one of my favorite YouTubers. Slope's tweet that you've reproduced above is quite representative of what most of us retro-fans surely feel: A truly great loss to this community ! My prayers are with Patrick's family.
The SNES architecture was conceived with this kind of thing in mind, otherwise they wouldn't have chosen the W65C816 CPU, which was created with the sole purpose of making possible 16-bit systems with backward compatibility to 6502-based 8-bit forebears. It was used in the Apple IIGS (could run 8-bit Apple II software) and in the SuperCPU add on for the C64. They could have gone with something cheaper like NEC did, or with the more powerful M68000 like Sega and SNK did. I think they just didn't see a market for NES ports when the SNES finally came out, but used the architecture to allow GameBoy carts to run on the system.
This kind of view is 'NES-Centric' rather than US-centric: I live in the northern part of South-America so almodt everything gaming-related comes from the US, but my dad bought a C64 in 1984, I was 7 at the time. I didn't care about consoles until 1989 when my little brother got an NES, and still, all through 1985-1990 I only played games on the C64 : Accolade, Activision, Epyx, Microprose, Electronic Arts, Sega, Califormia Dreams, Lucasfilm Games, Brøderbund, Data East (i think they imported Ocean's titles), Cosmi. Those were the big names in video games for me, and it was a very vibrant market. Maybe not as massive as consoles, but pretty big and healthy if you counted C64, Apple II and PC Clones together. So yeah, all the criticisms shown above are accurate: structuring video-game historical narrative around Atari's 1983 colapse and Nintendo's 1986 rise in the US is, to say the least, very myopic and ignorant. PD: there was plenty of european software, although it was mostly through piracy because it had to be dumped to disk and made to run in NTSC machines.
It's absolutely not true that 3D games lose their appeal fast as opposed to 2D bitmaps. Look at the resurgence in interest for Atari VCS / 2600 games, which have the most primitive graphics. I, for example, have been playing VIRTUA FIGHTER 2 for almost 30 yeras and it still looks good to me, especially the camera motion and the backgrounds. And Tekken is loads of fun, especially in comparison to Mortal Kombat.
Don't forget that it did come out for Mac, then for Windows 95, that's what incensed Sony. They didn't care about Dreamcast : those people didn't buy a Playstation anyway. But PC & Mac users were potential customers.
Comments 6
Re: Tributes Pour In For Retro Gaming YouTuber Patrick "PatMan QC" Davies
I'm a subscriber and regular viewer of PatmanQC's channel, and feel very sad hearing the news of his passing. His videos are all top-notch, entertaining and educating us at the same time. He was one of my favorite YouTubers.
Slope's tweet that you've reproduced above is quite representative of what most of us retro-fans surely feel: A truly great loss to this community !
My prayers are with Patrick's family.
Re: Three More Konami NES Titles Are Getting Fanmade SNES Ports
The SNES architecture was conceived with this kind of thing in mind, otherwise they wouldn't have chosen the W65C816 CPU, which was created with the sole purpose of making possible 16-bit systems with backward compatibility to 6502-based 8-bit forebears. It was used in the Apple IIGS (could run 8-bit Apple II software) and in the SuperCPU add on for the C64.
They could have gone with something cheaper like NEC did, or with the more powerful M68000 like Sega and SNK did.
I think they just didn't see a market for NES ports when the SNES finally came out, but used the architecture to allow GameBoy carts to run on the system.
Re: Feature: "I Guess You Could Say I Was In The Zone" - The Story Behind Classic Fighting Game Anthem 'Edge of Soul'
Excellent article ! This is why I read Time Extension daily: your top-notch journalism and unabashed love of classic videogaming.
Re: "Poorly Analyzed US-Centric Garbage" - Why Do Americans Keep Ignoring European Gaming History?
This kind of view is 'NES-Centric' rather than US-centric: I live in the northern part of South-America so almodt everything gaming-related comes from the US, but my dad bought a C64 in 1984, I was 7 at the time. I didn't care about consoles until 1989 when my little brother got an NES, and still, all through 1985-1990 I only played games on the C64 : Accolade, Activision, Epyx, Microprose, Electronic Arts, Sega, Califormia Dreams, Lucasfilm Games, Brøderbund, Data East (i think they imported Ocean's titles), Cosmi. Those were the big names in video games for me, and it was a very vibrant market. Maybe not as massive as consoles, but pretty big and healthy if you counted C64, Apple II and PC Clones together. So yeah, all the criticisms shown above are accurate: structuring video-game historical narrative around Atari's 1983 colapse and Nintendo's 1986 rise in the US is, to say the least, very myopic and ignorant.
PD: there was plenty of european software, although it was mostly through piracy because it had to be dumped to disk and made to run in NTSC machines.
Re: Don't Hold Your Breath For A Tekken Collection
It's absolutely not true that 3D games lose their appeal fast as opposed to 2D bitmaps. Look at the resurgence in interest for Atari VCS / 2600 games, which have the most primitive graphics. I, for example, have been playing VIRTUA FIGHTER 2 for almost 30 yeras and it still looks good to me, especially the camera motion and the backgrounds.
And Tekken is loads of fun, especially in comparison to Mortal Kombat.
Re: Bleem, The Company That Took On Sony And Won, Rises From The Dead (Again)
Don't forget that it did come out for Mac, then for Windows 95, that's what incensed Sony. They didn't care about Dreamcast : those people didn't buy a Playstation anyway. But PC & Mac users were potential customers.