Seriously. Why did it take all the way until 1993 to have PCs (DOS) outcompete consoles in every category (except audio)?
Sure, PC games tended to have freeware (glorified demos), and significantly better audio quality, but the games themselves, especially ports, tended to age like poop compared to the consoles. Was less effort put into them because the consoles were more popular, or is it due to advances in Genesis and SNES emulation that those versions are, in retrospect, ignored? I mean PC trounces consoles in almost all categories (with the three exceptions being optimizations due to the billions of possible setups, 20 year old games not being guaranteed to work properly, although since 2002 or so, almost all games work as intended with one of the only things needed modified is widescreen support, and rampant cheating and "hacking" in online multiplayer games), but this wasn't exactly the case until those two games decided to kickstart the PC gaming master race. Consoles were poop too when arcades dominated the scenes, but I can squarely blame that on Atari pushing the extremely primitive (even when it first released), 2600.
>Was less effort put into them because the consoles were more popular Yes. If you were an up-and-coming dev who wanted to make money you wanted nothing to do with PCs. PC was too expensive to be marketable for gaming.
Jose Foster
Because IBM PCs were literally made for spreadsheets and office work and were very expensive.
Its graphics hardware was very simple and didn't support advanced features like scrolling and sprites until the VGA in the early 90s. Computers that were more focused on games like the Amiga or Atari ST were leagues ahead of both IBM PCs and consoles at the time.
This, also take in mind that most consoles didnt have a bitmap based framebuffer, all graphics were tilebased
Nolan Cook
>VGA in the early 90s Didn't CGA and EGA also support this or am I not remembering it right?
Hunter Allen
So games that were ported to absolutely EVERYTHING, such as The Lost Vikings for instance, was best played on consoles with all other versions suffering
Cooper Ortiz
This, it was 85% the hardware, consoles were built to rapidly push 2D sprites and backgrounds, PCs were very bad at it, and had poor sound capabilities as well. As you note platforms like Amiga had much better support for genres like platformers because of the hardware, but they were mostly weird European titles that nobody here ever heard of.
PC gaming was built around genres like RPG, strategy, single screen action, and sim where pushing graphics around quickly was not a high priority. And of course the markets evolved around that so even when PC got better hardware those were still the popular genres. Even when I was getting PC Gamer in the late 1990s they would frequently put shit like flight sims on the cover.
Ryder Foster
Scrolling could be done but it wouldn't be very smooth or fast since it wasn't supported by hardware.
Clever people like John Carmack managed to create smooth scrolling in EGA by doing unintentional things with the hardware, for games like Commander Keen.
Matthew Walker
It's not that they couldn't compete, it's just that they didn't try. PCs back then were like the hardware mentality of modern Macs but with the software of linux. Everything was focused around spreadsheets, programming and office work, hardware was built around the CPU and they had incredibly barbones GUIs. They could've made mainstream computers that pushed graphics more (which would probably result in expensive PCs that ran games similarly to late 80s arcades), but IBM didn't care about it.
Luke Perry
You know the crazy thing is that when the NES came out it was called the Famicon in Japan, short for Family Computer. It's kind of a ringer for the times as computers were not considered an appliance for the average household.
Nathan Powell
Same reason why PCs aren't popular in Japland. They were seen as a work machine, and the prospect of using them for games was for foolish hobbyists.
Apple took the same approach, wanting to look more boring and "business oriented" compared to the "whimsical" Windows platform which Microsoft had ALWAYS pushed for gaming being a primary focus starting with Windows 95.
It's funny how things turned out.
Brody Jones
The NES and the Amiga 500 were both released in 1985 in the US
>except audio ..eh.. i don't know about that. it's mixed.
Leo Brown
what the fuck are you talking about nigger, games like ultima and wizardry were aldready made in the 80s
William Turner
There is a difference between the two. The NES had games that were more or less in line with other titles that had contemporary releases. The Amiga demo was created this year, using an emulator, and using modern techniques and possible exploits of the system that were entirely unknown when the computer was first released, so its a modern tech demo on old hardware.
Ryder Cruz
>comparing early nintendo release to a 2019 demo
Camden Rivera
Wait what? a cellphone in 1985? were the programmers time travelers?
Nathaniel Perry
go to the end of the video you dingus
Adam Price
Yes, they had cell phones by 1985
Juan Phillips
getting a game to run before that was a roll of the dice.
Parker Rodriguez
PCs where inferior to consoles until around 2010 when console exclusives stopped being releavent.
i mean it took them awhile just to figure out how to scroll the screen. developers were losing their minds when nintendo figured that shit out.
Michael Cook
Not 100% comparable, as the amiga is definitely more capable, but it'd be good to do similarly set comparisons to make your argument more honest and irrefutable.
Personal Computers were insanely expensive wayback, no one besides rich people would buy one just for "fun." So the audience for PC Games was greatly lower.
Just to compare the original NES was sold for a scant $200.
I think you have this wrong. I love the X68000 but to use that in this argument is retarded and so are you.
Levi Reed
Too many PC brands competing and there wasn’t a unified OS/general software.
Juan Sanchez
Stop shilling for this fucking asshole. I swear, you summer flags are always worshipping random assholes, because you gib the, all your hard earned paper route money. KYS!!!
Connor Brown
I'm just showing that PCs in the late 80s/early 90s could run what consoles at the time couldn't,you just needed to pay good dosh. Oh and the X68000 actually had plenty of good games that are still worth playing today compared to most computers so there is that.
Mason Foster
Was this done by the people who made the original Star Fox? The visual similarities can't just be coincidental.
Gavin Brooks
Nope but they developed PS1's launch title Jumping Flash which is really similiar to Geograph Seal
