How much was Sega CD's success limited by the fact that it was a $300 add on?

[Team Andromeda]

I was playing Joe Montana on the SEGA CD the other days. If only they worked on the passing game more, it could have been a real showcase for the system, it's still very nice mind.

Speak of Joe and Kansas City, I hope my beloved Bills smash them this weekend, booked the day off work to cheer on the boys and get smashed. Helens in work too, so have the house to myself LOL

[Barone]

I was playing Joe Montana on the SEGA CD the other days. If only they worked on the passing game more, it could have been a real showcase for the system, it's still very nice mind.

It's a shame they didn't make more use of the ASIC for sports titles.

Also, why no sequel to Sonic CD? A second game using sprite scaling and rotation for bosses (similar to what Core did with Puggsy) and more sound effects to show off the Sega CD soundchip could have been great.

[Team Andromeda]

It's a shame they didn't make more use of the ASIC for sports titles.

Also, why no sequel to Sonic CD? A second game using sprite scaling and rotation for bosses (similar to what Core did with Puggsy) and more sound effects to show off the Sega CD soundchip could have been great.

Sonic CD should have been a really showcase, and used sprite rotation through out the entire game, along with big scaling effects on the bosses, Sonic Team didn't even use Sprite scaling on the UFOs and not to look to make any use of PCM chip for better sound effects made no sense to me.

Like you day Travellers Tails did make some ok use of the ASIC chip for the bosses in Puggys and Core made nice use of the ASIC chip in Son of Chuck for better spot effects and greatly improved the sound.

Its just a shame more focus wasn't put in that direction and SEGA Japan needed a good kicking for not using the ASIC chip far more in their games.

[Blades]

It's a shame they didn't make more use of the ASIC for sports titles.

Also, why no sequel to Sonic CD? A second game using sprite scaling and rotation for bosses (similar to what Core did with Puggsy) and more sound effects to show off the Sega CD soundchip could have been great.

I felt the ASIC never approached the quality of SNES' mode 7. If it did, I think that would've been a greater impetus for the SCD's success. I read somewhere that all Sato wanted to do with the SCD was add CD-ROM, and the rest was an afterthought. One of the first things I noticed about Sonic CD's bonus stages was the choppy scrolling back in the day, even though they played great (ish).

(PS Barone, you are the exception because you are our resident "Hasselhoff" cool guy and therefore have no reason to be nice.)

[Barone]

Sonic CD should have been a really showcase, and used sprite rotation through out the entire game, along with big scaling effects on the bosses, Sonic Team didn't even use Sprite scaling on the UFOs and not to look to make any use of PCM chip for better sound effects made no sense to me.

Like you day Travellers Tails did make some ok use of the ASIC chip for the bosses in Puggys and Core made nice use of the ASIC chip in Son of Chuck for better spot effects and greatly improved the sound.

Its just a shame more focus wasn't put in that direction and SEGA Japan needed a good kicking for not using the ASIC chip far more in their games.

Sonic CD makes very limited used of the Sega CD hardware. Kinda sad.

I felt the ASIC never approached the quality of SNES' mode 7. If it did, I think that would've been a greater impetus for the SCD's success. I read somewhere that all Sato wanted to do with the SCD was add CD-ROM, and the rest was an afterthought. One of the first things I noticed about Sonic CD's bonus stages was the choppy scrolling back in the day, even though they played great (ish).

I hope Gryson can come up with some magical interview translation one of these days that will clarify what actually happened there during the Sega CD development.
SOJ surely didn't embrace it as we would have hoped.

About the SNES comparison, I both agree and disagree with you.
We surely never got a use of it that immediately delivered great speed sensation and gameplay like in F-Zero, for an example.
OTOH, we did get far more detailed and advanced graphics as seen in games such as Batman Returns and SoulStar.
I remember that one of the BC Racers developers said that his boss demanded them to cram as many sprites in the scenery as possible and that certainly degraded the speed sensation.
One of the issues with the ASIC use is that it doesn't have direct access to the MD's VRAM due to how the expansion port was designed; it yields much less throughput than it could.

(PS Barone, you are the exception because you are our resident "Hasselhoff" cool guy and therefore have no reason to be nice.)

It's OK.
I risked sounding like a complete asshole when I played with the words he had used, but obviously those words weren't coming from my heart. More with the intention of making him realize that it wasn't a healthy path to follow 'cause it does sound mean as heck when you read it.

And I've been here for too long (gone/not gone), in too many heated discussions, too invested at times; English is my second language, etc.
So it's all good; I can't really complain if some people here hate me or find myself disgusting.
I don't make money off of the community, I don't scam people, I don't dox people, never physically threatened anyone and I really doubt I've ever hurt anyone on a personal level despite what has been said about me in these forums at times.
I'm sure there's harmful people that sometimes post here but usually those have commercial interests attached to them in one way or another. If you think I'm like them or worse than them, I'll just have to agree to disagree; but, then again, it's all fair game since if I say whatever comes to my mind it can very well come back to me in the very same way.

[gamevet]

I removed the offending posts from view.

I shouldn't have made them, a lot of my hypocritical nonsense there boils down to constantly feeling inferior to most others within the same interest bubble, as well as some personal bad experiences with people both IRL and online...

... thanks for getting me to think twice, at least @Blades. It's quite rare someone can be bothered to be patient enough and word things in a way I feel somewhat comfy with, not saying anyone should bow down to someone like me, since these places are more tailored to those who can more easily fit in, but it's not often I'd ever reconsider my actions, so clearly I've got reason to have done so.

I really hope this thread isn't beyond salvation, it was my fault for being triggered over some offhand comment...

No problem. The fanboy nonsense doesn't need to exist here. All of the hardware offered games and technology unique to its own. There's nothing wrong with enjoying all of it.

[Team Andromeda]

I felt the ASIC never approached the quality of SNES' mode 7. If it did, I think that would've been a greater impetus for the SCD's success. I read somewhere that all Sato wanted to do with the SCD was add CD-ROM, and the rest was an afterthought. One of the first things I noticed about Sonic CD's bonus stages was the choppy scrolling back in the day, even though they played great (ish).

(PS Barone, you are the exception because you are our resident "Hasselhoff" cool guy and therefore have no reason to be nice.)

It works both ways Blades. Sure the Mega-CD couldn't or never did match Mode 7 F-Zero Effect, but then the Snes could match or couldn't handle the effects seen in Batman Returns, Soul Star or Cliffhanger, let's face it the Snes couldn't even handle the Pal Mega-CD boot up screen with more than one object being smoothly rotated and scaled in. Anything that comes later is an afterthought, otherwise all the hardware and indeed the game delivered method would be in the system on day one and sure thinks change I think the Mega-CD started life out as a Floopy disc drive add-on and not a CD-based one

Sonic CD makes very limited used of the Sega CD hardware. Kinda sad.

It was still good, but the game (I felt) really needed to show off the Asic and sound chip far more during the main game for little stuff like having the Sonic sprite rotate when going through the loops and why wasn't the Asic chip used to smoothly rotate the last boss in the game, when it was set up perfect for it.

It wasn't all about using the ASIC chip either. Final Fight showed what could be done when you used the memory and sound chip of the Mega CD. Ok, mid level loading was a slight pain, but it made sure Final Fight had amazing animation, and the sound chip was used to give us Arcade perfect sound effects and the CD drive used to give amazing music, maybe the ASIC chip was used to smoothly rotate the weapons? but just using the storage space and sound chip of the Mega-CD gave users an experience so much better than what the standard MD could have offered, Fifa is much the same too with the best use of the PCM sound chip I ever heard for sound effects and next gen levels of presentation

Too many Mega CD games just did what many Amiga CD32 games did and that was to slap on a CD soundtrack, but keep almost all the game, the same otherwise

If only the Mega CD had more that and had SEGA made more use of the ASIC chip

[Greg2600]

Andromeda is correct, most pubs didn't have the budget to drastically change their 16-bit titles for the CD system. On one hand, that made financial sense, plus if the system were "sold" by exclusive titles, you can hit that user base with a game specifically for it, and hopefully further convince them to totally covert over to CD away from cart. I guess. Also, as we all know, Kalinske admitted the deal for the old FMV games was simply to have a library at launch. Most of those Sony/Digital Pictures games were old but had never been released before. The Sega CD was very much the first to market in a semi-affordable platform using FMV, with the Commodore CDTV and Philips CD-i later being flops. Did the Lieberman baloney over Night Trap derail SEGA's plans for the add-on?

It's possible, but I also think the model 2 redesign was still a bit too costly for them to continue with it. Lastly, again, this is no surprise, but the company largely treated it, as it would the 32x, maybe a 2-year project, failing to put the necessary funding out there for development. Ironically, Nolan Bushnell recalled as a proponent of the CDTV, admitted it was not sell-able but that thing was like 800 bucks! Take a gander at the holiday 1993 Toys 'R' Us mailer, and you can see the difference in "sticker shock" I'm sure for most families back then. When every other system is $50-$90, and this add-on costs $230 or $320 if you didn't own the Genesis prior. I will say whoever made these graphics were kinda fools, not highlighting even Sonic CD??

http://geewhiznostalgia.com/1993-toy...stmas-catalog/

[gamevet]

The sticker shock would scare most parents away, even at $229. You could buy video game consoles for 3 different children for the price of the Sega CD. That price would buy you a Genesis, SNES and the basic Gameboy being advertised in that flyer. I did eventually get a Sega CD, when it was like $189, but when I saw the Turbo Duo for $300, with the pack-in game being a shooter, I just laughed at the nerve of NEC trying to sell that expensive setup.

[Black_Tiger]

The sticker shock would scare most parents away, even at $229. You could buy video game consoles for 3 different children for the price of the Sega CD. That price would buy you a Genesis, SNES and the basic Gameboy being advertised in that flyer. I did eventually get a Sega CD, when it was like $189, but when I saw the Turbo Duo for $300, with the pack-in game being a shooter, I just laughed at the nerve of NEC trying to sell that expensive setup.

It came packed with 7 games. Two of which are cute platformers/mascot games.

The included CD games were perfect examples of the CD game experience.

But TTi was the equivalent of the AES division of SNK. They weren't trying to compete with Sega or Nintendo.

[Team Andromeda]

Andromeda is correct, most pubs didn't have the budget to drastically change their 16-bit titles for the CD system. On one hand, that made financial sense, plus if the system were "sold" by exclusive titles, you can hit that user base with a game specifically for it, and hopefully further convince them to totally covert over to CD away from cart. I guess. Also, as we all know, Kalinske admitted the deal for the old FMV games was simply to have a library at launch. Most of those Sony/Digital Pictures games were old but had never been released before. The Sega CD was very much the first to market in a semi-affordable platform using FMV, with the Commodore CDTV and Philips CD-i later being flops. Did the Lieberman baloney over Night Trap derail SEGA's plans for the add-on?

I think people forget just how expensive CD rom's were at the start of the 90's. When I imported the Mega CD so few people had CD players in my area that none of the shops even had CD albums at all and even when I went to Cardiff, very little shops stocked CD albums. I had so much trouble the only one I could find was Listen Without Prejudice, which BTW was a great album LOL.
I have to give full credit to Tom and SEGA America, they really pushed the CD tech and hyped it up to well and I loved the Welcome to the Next Level tag line and it was also SEGA America that really showed off what the Mega-CD could do with the wonderful driving sections to Batman Returns It's just a shame SOA spent so much money on the FMV side, I got it with the hype that Night Trap was getting and some of the FMV games were good, but it would have been nice to see more sprite-based games on the Mega CD that used the extra power

[gamevet]

It came packed with 7 games. Two of which are cute platformers/mascot games.

The included CD games were perfect examples of the CD game experience.

Yes, and by today's money, that was about a $455 investment without a Genesis.

The only CD based games included with that pack was Sol-Feace, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective and CD+G music disc. The rest were fine Sega Genesis games for sure, but they didn't show off any of the Sega CD's capabilities beyond storage space.

https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inf...992?amount=229

But TTi was the equivalent of the AES division of SNK. They weren't trying to compete with Sega or Nintendo.

It certainly didn't appear that way. I saw the thing in Toys R's Us, which is a place that (from my memory) I'd never seen a Neo-Geo being sold.

I think people forget just how expensive CD rom's were at the start of the 90's. When I imported the Mega CD so few people had CD players in my area that none of the shops even had CD albums at all and even when I went to Cardiff, very little shops stocked CD albums. I had so much trouble the only one I could find was Listen Without Prejudice, which BTW was a great album LOL.
I have to give full credit to Tom and SEGA America, they really pushed the CD tech and hyped it up to well and I loved the Welcome to the Next Level tag line and it was also SEGA America that really showed off what the Mega-CD could do with the wonderful driving sections to Batman Returns It's just a shame SOA spent so much money on the FMV side, I got it with the hype that Night Trap was getting and some of the FMV games were good, but it would have been nice to see more sprite-based games on the Mega CD that used the extra power

CD players were getting pretty popular in the US. My friend's younger brother got a stereo with a CD player around 1985. There was a very limited selection of CDs at the time, so he ended up with a Madonna CD and one other that I don't recall. I'd bought a Sony CD deck for my 1987 Nissan pickup back around 1992 and I had quite a large selection of CDs by the time I'd sold that truck and got a 1993 Ford Ranger.

My cousin wanted a Sega CD, after seeing FMV games like Sewer Shark, F-14 Tomcat, Dragon's Lair and Prize Fighter, when I'd brought my setup back home. His mom got him a Sega CD that Christmas, when it was selling for $149. He ended up selling his SNES, so he could get a Genesis. I remember going back home, the following year, and all he had was the pack-in game (Sewer Shark) and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. He seemed to be pretty disappointed with it, because of how small his collection was.

[Blades]

My Sega CD (2) spent more time playing audio CDs to make my mix tapes than it ever did playing games. There just weren't enough special games. Snatcher, Sonic CD, Lunar, Ecco(ish) and...? Snatcher came out at the very end too.

Sega Japan gave up on SCD almost immediately, no wonder it didn't thrive.

Here's the interview about the development of Sega CD I was referring to earlier. There was another interview with more details but I can't find it right now.

Despite not working on the Mega-CD were you aware of the design process? Was the hardware complex to implement?
MI: I was told by someone who worked in the Mega-CD production department that because there were no plans to release a CD-ROM add-on when we were designing the body of the Mega Drive, it was really difficult to design the connection between the two units. It seemed, however, that Sato-san was obsessed with the idea of a CD peripheral. The solution involved attaching a metal plate adaptor to the base of the Mega Drive and then sliding it onto the CD unit. Four holes and connectors held them together — it was not screwed on to hold it in position. Another obstacle was that the Mega Drive's side extension connector slot had a carbon resistant coating to prevent rust on the copper connectors of the board, but this actually made electric resistance very high and lowered connection signal levels, which resulted in weaker noise-resistance.

[Tanegashima]

I think it didn't help that video gaming wasn't "Main-Stream" back then and these were all just toys really, expensive toys. I didn't know anybody that had more than a hand-full of video games-its not like today where middle-class adults are buying video games and hoarding dozens upon dozens of them. My parents utterly refused to let my brother and I have more than a handful of games, if we wanted something new, something had to be traded in. Otherwise all we did was rent video games from Hastings, Blockbuster and Hollywood Video-nobody except rich spoiled kids had tons of stuff, I think just culturally it was harder to justify back then and that hurt the Sega CD-it was a tiny industry back then-video gaming is as big as Hollywood is now.

Besides all the best games were released in Arcades first...I always wanted to play something in the Arcade, I played Mortal Kombat II far more in the arcade than I ever did at home (the Circle K across from my house had a MK II cabinet) and I don't know...it was just different back then, people just didn't buy like they do now-I think given the market conditions of the time, no matter how well it was priced or supported it probably would have failed. How do you justify buying it to parents that view it all as frivolous, anybody in their late teens or 20s was a loser if they played video games-they weren't YouTube celebrities, there wasn't a gaming "culture" like there is now.

We all appreciate the Sega CD for what it offered, we all appreciate it more for what it could have been though, I think we all forget to find a little perspective when we talk about this stuff. I mean could Sega have made it work? Maybe? Maybe its really hard to fault a company trying something fairly unheard of that didn't have billions of dollars to burn, it is fairly obvious in retrospect that Sega didn't know what to do with the Sega CD and that wasn't their fault-they had a neat piece of tech but really no track record to lean on and give it direction so they experimented, a bunch of very well meaning people made decisions to improve their business and those decisions didn't work-out and I'm sure there was a lot of stress, heartache and lost sleep when numbers weren't being met and people undoubtedly were fired because John Q in charge of retail sales at Sega couldn't meet his numbers with the new Sega CD and was looking at a pink slip. I doubt all of the people involved meant for it not to work, they made decisions that I'm sure they worked really hard to ensure they were guessing right and they guessed wrong. Its hard for me to look back and say "man that was dumb why'd they do that?" well now as an adult who runs a business I make those decisions constantly and sometimes I'm wrong--they guessed wrong--I actually feel bad for those involved now when I used to just say to myself "what were they thinking??!!" now I figure hell looks like they put their chips on the wrong number, I probably would have made the same decision if I had the same circumstances and information in front of me they did...who knows, food for thought.

2022: Gosh the Sega CD was such a cool idea, it had so much potential, I enjoy it because its such a novelty, such a "different" thing that could never be duplicated today.

1992: Sega CD? What? Why? Give me a break already, I just bought my kids a Genesis...

My best analogy is what a friend of mine who's an air traffic controller once told me about flying: "Its really safe now, lots of people had to die to figure out how to make flying safer, but every time a plane crashed we got better." and I think that's apt for the Sega CD-if it wasn't for relatively small companies like Sega experimenting with things like the Sega CD, the video game industry would not be as gigantic as it is today-Sega took a big risk on something new and weird and that became a pattern with the company-the 32X, the Saturn, the Dreamcast--nothing they did was anything like their competitors and the industry changed and learned and grew because of that...but Sega had to destroy itself so everyone else could make better decisions hahaha.

[Team Andromeda]

CD players were getting pretty popular in the US. My friend's younger brother got a stereo with a CD player around 1985. There was a very limited selection of CDs at the time, so he ended up with a Madonna CD and one other that I don't recall. I'd bought a Sony CD deck for my 1987 Nissan pickup back around 1992 and I had quite a large selection of CDs by the time I'd sold that truck and got a 1993 Ford Ranger..

Not long after I imported, trying to find any CD single or album was next to impossible in my area and one had to travel to the Captial Cardiff and even in Cardiff, trying to find shops that stocked a lot of CD albums wasn't easy in 1992, it was all about tape's back then. I think people forget just how expensive CD and well quite a lot of AV stuff was in the early 90's where even a TV or VHS player was a big and serious investment. I more or less totally gave up my Mega CD after the crushing disappointment of AfterBurner 3.
It wasn't until the hype that started around the USA launch of the SEGA CD that I started to take notice again and that's all down to the hype SOA was able to build up. It was thanks to that hype and the promise of all these amazing games that I set my mind on getting the Pal unit when it launched, so I wouldn't have to put up with Japanese text and due to having a switched Pal Mega Drive knew I wouldn't need to buy the complete USA set up (given the Mega-CD incompatibility with different region MDs at that time)