Preface
Today's content comes from a fan's message:
Why does 8-bit host PC engine screen sound effect operation feel kill all 16-bit hosts in seconds?
Some readers may feel unfamiliar with the name PC Engine (PCE). Indeed, history is written by the winner, and it is rare to leave a name. In the 8-bit computer market under the rule of FC, although we can propose Sega's SEGA Mark III to compete, the 16-bit SEGA MD was the one who finally successfully overturned FC in memory.
is actually just one year before Sega's official release. This home game console PCE with high with high comprehensive quality is born. However, due to various reasons, it almost did not leave its name, including the immaturity of marketing and the sadness of generations. The mall is like a battlefield, and the mall is even more important than the battlefield.
Hudson is the first third-party manufacturer to cooperate with Nintendo FC. This name may be unfamiliar, but the game " Bomb Man " should be one of the most familiar games for FC fans. "Bomb Man" was written by Hudson. If you have never played Bomb Man, then you must have heard of his other game, "The Island of Adventure". Look, as a third-party manufacturer, Hudson still had a great influence in that era. Simply put, it is the position close to the main seat during the meeting.
has successively developed popular games such as "Gold Digging", "Bombman", and "Story of Adventure". While becoming bigger and stronger, he also had the ambition to compete with Nintendo. In addition, Nintendo at that time began to withdraw preferential treatment from the first batch of third-party manufacturers and further increased restrictions on third-party manufacturers, namely the "Nintendo model" mentioned in the previous article. After the honeymoon, Hudson began to prepare for a new start.
Explain the timeline. It was 1987. Nintendo FC launched only a few first-party games in the first year. The following year, it started to cooperate with third-party manufacturers in 1984, and Hudson was the first partner. After three years of cooperation, Hudson, as a software developer, discovered the problem of FC. Because in those years it also caught up with the booming development of arcades, FC seemed quite backward in terms of functionality. The hardware is gradually restricting the performance of the game. Game development has a ceiling, and it has become increasingly difficult to perfectly transplant arcades.
Because of the three years of cooperation, Husdon has long been very familiar with FC, and he also knows the height of FC's hardware ceiling more clearly. So when the relationship began to cool down, Husdon began to independently develop new home game consoles.
At that time, many third-party manufacturers wanted to try to explore and develop their own devices, and they could not use to "be controlled by any means" . However, the problem faced by game consoles was not just R&D. The sales channels required for hardware promotion were spread throughout Japan and overseas North America, which could not be realized overnight. Therefore, most of the manufacturers' hardware plans were abandoned. Only Hudson found NEC, which was a personal computer at that time, and had a relatively complete and mature sales and after-sales system, which was indeed the best partner.
CD-ROM
On October 30, 1987, PCE was released, challenging FC positively.
Paper strength standing on the shoulders of giants
Let’s first look at the PCE game console. Since it is a game console developed to defeat FC, PCE aims at FC in terms of graphics, sound and computing, and has severely suppressed Nintendo.
CPU , because of its familiarity with Nintendo, it is also for the convenience of research and development. Therefore, PCE still chose the 6502 chip, but the computing speed has been greatly improved. It's just like Core i7 , but there is still a clear gap between the 5th-generation i7 and the 8th-generation i7. After all, FC has been released for 4 years, and the chip industry is also improving, but Nintendo did not upgrade the hardware at that time. As a price, the overall price of latecomer PCE is 10,000 yen higher than FC. Of course, not all of them are spent on the CPU.
image expressiveness , FC can only display 54 colors at the same time, while PCE can display 512 colors. FC's sprites size is 8*8 pixels and 4 colors, while PCE is improved to 32*64 and 16 colors.From this perspective, Wanqun is a crushing improvement. It is worth mentioning that PCE also surpassed the MD released by Sega later. The MD displays 256 colors and the elves size is 32*32. The improvement on
audio is also quite obvious, and PCE directly doubled according to FC specifications.
read this, which solved the problem at the beginning. PCE has indeed surpassed 8-bit computers represented by FC in both the picture and the sound effects, and 16-bit computers represented by MD in the picture.
But the home game console battlefield, so many companies have died and can it be that simple?
modular design with their own functions
In the name of PC Engine, engine means engine. From the overall process, the main body of the game console is indeed like an engine, connecting devices of different uses.
PCE is the first game console that can use CD-ROM peripherals. At the same time, the game console body is very small and exquisite, and looks like a CD record player. Such hardware technology was very advanced at the time. Although it was small, it was full of weight. In today's terms, it was willing to use materials.
As the "engine" main body of a modular game console, PCE can connect a large number of peripheral devices to modify home game consoles for other purposes, such as CD discs, printers, keyboards, handles, etc. mentioned just now. If more interfaces are needed, there are also corresponding "USB splitters" to expand. The modular design idea of
is unpremium, but most of the transcendent design ideas will have problems. The performance in PCE is to design a home appliance empire around the host, but it seems to be powerless in actual research and development and development. Although as a loser, it is still remarkable in terms of design.
Perhaps Hudson himself does not have much hope for the future, because when improving the model and developing peripherals, Sega made a big move. One year after the release of
on PCE, at the end of 1988, Sega launched a 16-bit console MD, which directly pushed home game consoles into the 16-bit battlefield. No matter how powerful the 8-bit PCE can fight, it is not as good as the big "16-BIT" on the MD box. The ending of
Hudson, the fallen leaves come back to the root of
PCE is designed to defeat FC in the field of home game consoles, and MD is designed to transplant home games based on arcades. Although it is all enhanced to improve the hardware functions of FC, MD's dual CPUs directly press PCE tightly. What's more, Sega's marketing strategy directly blocked the publicity of 8-bit computers, and directly crushed the number of digits, making it even more difficult to survive 8-bit computers.
is just like the promotion of 5G mobile phones today. Without further ado, 5G is the future. Just make the "5G" logo bigger and brighter, which is the strongest advertisement. The failure of
PCE was not only abandoned by the 16-bit generation, but was determined by the special nature of that period. Even though Hudson has strong R&D capabilities, the number of games is still beyond Nintendo. Nowadays, game companies have to make games with 73 yuan, and the money they get is not much, and the balance between channels and content has long been tilted.
Later, Hudson was not very experienced, but the bank that saved money went bankrupt, and its capital chain was completely broken. In 2001, it was invested by its partner Korome , and was directly acquired by Korome in 2005; in 2011, it became a subsidiary of Korome; in 2014, the brand was removed, the official website was closed, and it was completely game over.
It is worth mentioning that Hudson's "fallen leaves return to the roots" is a bit ironic. After losing the company's dominance, Kudo Yuji, one of the founders, joined Nintendo and brought many old employees. From cooperating to starting a new job, to going back to being a working person, Hudson's story is just as worth talking about as ambitious PCE.
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