Neo Geo Question

[Confused]

Hey guys,

Ive been curious about this for a while and was wondering if any neo geo tech heads out there have ever examined the internals of a game cart???

What I want to know is wether any carts ever used extra chips to help the neo....
Such as more ram, extra cpu(s) or whatever, much like the SNES and its Super FX & DSP chips.

I understand that later titles are usually more impressive than early titles because developers have had time to learn the new hardware but it just seems like a huge difference to me on the neo. (than again they have had allot of time!)

Actually come to think of it, its much like Amiga 500 which also had a very long life.
1st gen games being poorly ported ST titles and �90s games rivalling MD/SNES

Thanks guys.

[Dr.Wily]

In fact, is very difficult to find any information about NG chip in cart. Some information is the few digit write on it.

But, this chip is generaly memory register chip (like MMC in NES) for allow the Neogeo to support big mask ROM for gigabyte games.

However, I always wondered whether the cartridges contained an additional chip for the sound. Or if all sound channel were managed by the YM2610.

The chip in cartridge before 1995 is labeled :

NEO-ZMC2
NEO-273
PCM (sound chip ?)


The chip in cartridge after 1995 (progbk1y) is the same label.

And finaly cartidge after 2000 contain another chip (never see).

[NFG]

As far as I'm aware no carts added any functionality to the Neo beyond the protection/memory chips in newer games, and the link cable support in a couple of carts like Riding Hero.

[Vertigo]

Sorry to bump this up a little late but I honestly think that this is this: AMAZING! when you compare two games from each end of the NeoGeo era such as Art of Fighting with Garou:MotW.
It only goes, in my opinion, to highlight that shortening hardware cycles mean that nobody really ever gets properly to grips with the capabilities of console hardware.
In these days of near-PC-spec consoles, that probably doesn't really matter, but when Sony promised the world with PS2 and the majority of titles feature horrid draw distances and crappy framerates, it makes me wonder what's going on.
Compare the visual and audio quality of Breath of Fire to Tales of Phantasia to see another very marked difference in quality in the space of only 2 1/2 years. Although these are from two different developers, the sentiment remains.
A three- or four-year hardware cycle just isn't enough to cut past the first- and second-generation generia and let developers really mess about with the hardware.
Gripe over :rolleyes:  

[NFG]

On the other hand, why spend countless hours coming to grips with the intricacies of a convoluted piece of hardware when, no matter what you've managed to do, little Jimmy down the street can do it in an afternoon with the new system his dad bought for him?

I agree with you, but it's a lost cause.

[Vertigo]

On the other hand, why spend countless hours coming to grips with the intricacies of a convoluted piece of hardware when, no matter what you've managed to do, little Jimmy down the street can do it in an afternoon with the new system his dad bought for him?

No, I'm not talking about home developers, I'm on about proper licensed game developers.
Generally (watch that word), the longer a piece of hardware is around, towards the end of its life usually sees the most technically accomplished games.
There's no excuse for shit coding of course, after five years we're still seeing a lot of misconceived, chuggy, blurry PS2 games, but the best games of this year generally (hello) far surpass the majority of first-gen offerings.
My point is actually that it's bewildering that Art of Fighting and Garou:MotW, or Andro Dunos and Blazing Star, or etc. are running on the same system and the 12 (?) years of the hardware cycle have been a massive factor in the wild improvement of games on the NeoGeo.

[Endymion]

I think there is a greater rule of diminishing return at the point that hardware has reached in this century. It is not so simple when programming has gone to various APIs that work via abstraction. There is no doubt that even a Dreamcast or a PS2 could do incredible, amazing stuff if we were satisfied with 2D, games would be virtually indistinguishable across all current platforms.

[kendrick]

Not to rehash Programming 101 here, but Endymion brings up a valid point about dminishing returns. In the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, it was more important to optimize because cycles were more valuable than programming time. You have slower processors moving less data, and you have to spend as much time as you can squeezing out performance. Since the 32-bit era, programming time has gotten more and more expensive, and clock cycles have gotten cheaper. Now you can crunch many more numbers, but it takes longer to make that efficient. Since it's more cost-effective just to accomplish your goal with brute force, one possible result is the shit coding that Vertigo has observed.

It's not just video games that are a victim of this kind of efficiency short-changing. Big corporate financial databases, networking logic code, even home operating systems are all poorly tested and over-engineered because it would be too expensive to take four times as many programmers to optimize everything. Elegant, understated code has been replaced with code which pushes too hard and too far. Imagine if every car in America had 12-cylinder engines and gasoline were 20 cents a gallon: who would be interested in improving engine efficiency when mechanical engineers earn six digits a year?

Sorry, rambling. I'm boycotting the NFL, who's with me?

-KKC, who wonders where the old model Xboxes are now...

[atom]

Sorry, rambling. I'm boycotting the NFL, who's with me?

Im with ya. But on a side note, optimizing game routines would be a lot less expensive then adding hardware to the cartridge. Pay a nerd like me $60,000 for that year or add to the cost of making every super mario bros cartridge by $35. It certainly was profitable to release the SNES with the hardware to be shared by every snes game.

[Dr.Wily]

Humm, interesting. But Neogeo is the best example of the console best exploited whitout chip. but it is at the price of  very large memory cartridges. if Gensis (32x) and SNES had the same memory sizes, we would have seen similar games. And on SNES, the game would have been technically better than neogeo games.

Everybody thinks that the Neogeo was most powerful machine of the 16 bit era.  But in fact, it was the most exploited console.

[NFG]

And on SNES, the game would have been technically better than neogeo games.

The SNES wasn't more powerful than the Neo, except perhaps in the number of colours it could display.  The 3MHz clock held it back significantly.

The Neo had a massive data bus, using 16-bit access to the cart port (the MegaDrive was 16 bit, but the SNES was , and a HUGE number of ways to shuffle data - two ports with over a hundred pins each.  That's massive sprite-shuffling throughput that no other console could match.

[kendrick]

Didn't the Atari Lynx have a similar advantage in sprite handling? I seem to remember that the custom Tom and Jerry chips gave the Lynx a theoretical ability to render an infinite number of sprites. Granted, the more you put up on the screen the fewer frames per second you get, but there wasn't a hard and fast limit like you had in the other competing handhelds.

The difference here is that nobody got around to exploiting the vast untapped abilities of the Lynx. Now that's a crime.

-KKC, noticing that caffeine has absolutely no effect on him anymore.

[Dr.Wily]

The Neo had a massive data bus, using 16-bit access to the cart port (the MegaDrive was 16 bit, but the SNES was , and a HUGE number of ways to shuffle data - two ports with over a hundred pins each. That's massive sprite-shuffling throughput that no other console could match.

I am not agreed. SNES has others advantages impossible to render on neogeo like transparency, mosaic, hardware sprite management, indexed color pallets, high resolution and others hardware facilities that the neogeo cannot make. The sound hardware of SNES is most advanced than Neogeo.

Neogeo is a powefull "eater" of data, but his graphic processor is like more a Genesis than a SNES. But for sprite manipulation, annimation and zooming render (sprite+BG) the Neogeo crushes all 16 bit machines (except the Jaguar).

All converted Neogeo titles on SNES are awfully missed. Why ? Not because of SNES lack of power, but the cartridges on SNES were ridiculously small compared to the Neogeo game. In example, Tubografx convertions (Art Of Fighting, Fatal Fury...) were much better whereas the Turbograx is much less powerful than Neogeo. However games were on CD, more space than little 8Mb SNES cartridges.

:rolleyes: sorry for my english, this thread is veri interesting, but I cannot correctly express all that I think in English...

[Vertigo]

if Gensis (32x) and SNES had the same memory sizes, we would have seen similar games.

I disagree massively with this.
Are the PS2 games that come on DVDs markedly superior to the games that come on CDs?
Are PS2 games more fun to play than Gamecube games because they have more storage space at their disposal?
You'll find that the answer is a resounding no, just as in the same way there are numerous SNES games that are more technically accomplished and just plain more fun than similar games on NeoGeo.
It's not the size, it's what you do with it that counts

On the other hand, the SNES conversion of Samurai Spirits is vastly superior to the godawful 3DO one.

[Vertigo]

Didn't the Atari Lynx have a similar advantage in sprite handling? I seem to remember that the custom Tom and Jerry chips gave the Lynx a theoretical ability to render an infinite number of sprites. Granted, the more you put up on the screen the fewer frames per second you get, but there wasn't a hard and fast limit like you had in the other competing handhelds.

Oddly enough, the only Lynx game I ever played was a horizontal shmup called Gates of Zendecon which my 10+year-old memory of it tells me, even when there was barely anything on the screen, was a slowdown-mired pile of old toot.

Not saying this is the best example of Lynx software but it's the only one I ever played

[Dr.Wily]

Vertigo ---> I did not say it in this way.

But SNES or other 16 bit machine are very limimited by space on thiere cartridge. Is't not the media, but the quantity of aviable space. Bigger SNES game is 48 Mb cartridge. And bigger Neogeo game is more 800 Mb game.

Take a 800 Mb on SNES and other 16 bit machine. When a game was developed on SNES (for example), the programmers had thought of the size of the cartridges.  They were really limited, by the little of space offered on it.

Art of Fighting on Tubografx is really similar to the Neogeo version (except the crappy zoom effect). Not because the game is on CD, but because there is more space of storage on CD to adapt Neogeo games, no limitation on space. Onlylimitations come from the hardware, not of the storage medium.

SNES and 32x games are limited by the space on cartridge, not by the hardware.

[Endymion]

Wily has a point--what every Genesis hater does not want to admit (or possibly does not even realize) is that hardware was based on Sega's System 16 arcade board. For all of the poo-pooing that folks did on its sound chip this was the same synthesizer that did Shinobi, Space Harrier, Out Run and many a Sega classic power house game. The difference? Why did the console get derided and the arcade machine get acclaim?

The arcade boards had as much memory as the designers wanted to give it. The Genesis had to cram it all in tiny carts.

[Vertigo]

Why did the console get derided and the arcade machine get acclaim? The arcade boards had as much memory as the designers wanted to give it. The Genesis had to cram it all in tiny carts.

Megadrive: CPU: 68000@8Mhz; 3 Video Planes (2 scrolling playfields, 1 sprite plane), up to 80 sprites can be defined with up to 20 sprites displayed on a scan line; Sound: Z80, YM2612 (6 stereo FM channels); Colours: 64 colors out of 512 possible colors

System 16: CPU: 68000@10Mhz; 4 Video Planes (2 tile layers, 1 text layer, 1 sprite layer with hardware sprite zooming, translucent shadows), 128 Sprites on screen at one time; Sound: Z80, YM2151 (8 FM channels); Colours: 4096 possible colours

These specs are very much not the same, so saying that the home Megadrive's ROM cartridge space is the only limitation and that the Megadrive was the home version of System16 in the same way that the NGH is the home version of the NeoGeo MVS doesn't really fly. Yes, what Endymion says about the hardware being based on the System 16 arcade board is correct, but the fact that the Megadrive, purely by specs on paper, is significantly inferior would go some way to explaining exactly why the home versions weren't as good as their arcade counterparts. Don't confuse working memory (i.e. RAM) with storage space (i.e. ROM).

[Dr.Wily]

Humm, Megadrive is not the real system 16 home version. Megadrive's VDP is not the same.

But I took only consoles which compete whit Neogeo (32x and SNES). And this machine are limited by ROM space. 32x CD game are limited by Sega-CD RAM space.

But if the SNES and 32x had more place on the cartridges like Neoego, these machines would have been better than Neogeo.

[Vertigo]

But if the SNES and 32x had more place on the cartridges like Neoego, these machines would have been better than Neogeo.

No, not even remotely.
You might find that if the MD and SNES had cartridges of comparable size to the NeoGeo, you'd have been paying $150-$200 and probably more for your games too. ROM memory was an expensive thing in those days and the amount you used tended to dictate massively the price of your cartridge. The more you spend on manufacture and parts, the less profit you make. Something has to give.

Also, the NeoGeo, as mentioned previously, has a lot of efficient ways to access data and with a 68000 running at 12Mhz (a full 50% faster than the Megadrive and that's just the main CPU's pair of balls, we're not even digging as deep as co-processors and data bus bandwidths), has by far the best processor of the lot too.

See how the SNES chugs massively during the majority of it's fast moving games like shmups even when there's not a great deal happening? (Example: Super EDF or Gradius 3)
See how the Megadrive does a much better job at shoving stuff about at speed but still suffers slowdown and flicker when a lot's going on because its hardware is more suited to this work than the SNES'? (Example: ThunderForce IV)
See how the NeoGeo can handle far, far more before it starts to slow down? (Example, the bullet storm boss on level 3 of Blazing Star)

NeoGeo has a colour pallete of 4096 on-screen out of an available choice of 65536.
That is to say in raw terms: The NeoGeo can display on-screen at any one time the same number of colours that the Megadrive can choose from full stop.
At 380 sprites per screen, the NeoGeo can also display 475% the number of sprites that the Megadrive can.

This is not because the NeoGeo has a bigger ROM cartridge.

This is because the NeoGeo is hands-down a superior system.

If you'd still like to waste time trying to demonstrate that, if the SNES/MD had 200Mbit cartridges at their disposal, they'd be superior systems to the NeoGeo, then please, go ahead, but I think I've been pretty concise in the argument for the defence.

All that given that my favourite console of all time is the SNES, and while I do own an MVS board and about 10 cartridges for it, I'm not even what could be defined a NeoGeo fanboy    

[Aidan]

But for sprite manipulation, annimation and zooming render (sprite+BG) the Neogeo crushes all 16 bit machines (except the Jaguar).

Jag's not 16 bit, so doesn't enter this comparison.

[Confused]

Bigger and better graphics/audio are obviously going to take up more space, therefore neo games are obviously going to require larger size carts (meg count) then MD/SNES

But� I do agree back then ROMs weren�t cheap, I remember paying a fortune for strider on MD weighing in at massive 8meg.

MD/SNES developers were definitely limited to how much space versus cost they had to play with. But even if they weren�t I don�t think the conversions would have improved much. They probably would have contained missing frames and samples, that�s it.

There�s noway MD/SNES would be throwing around the same amount of (large) sprites that the neo is capable of.

Kendrick: I hear u mate. The lynx definitely had some tuff 2D hardware under its hood.

Dr Willy: How do u figure that the �snes sound hardware is more advanced�?
Snes: 8 ADPCM Channels
Neo: 4-FM synthesis, 7-Digital (PCM), 3-PSG, and 1 noise channel
Metal Slug X anybody�.

Lawrence: you bring up an interesting point about the neo having a massive data bus, from memory I believe that the NG/MD/SNES all had 64kb of video RAM and the same amount of system RAM (snes may have had 128K?) so the neo must have been thrashing insane amounts of data in and out of that puny amount of RAM compared to the MD/SNES!

Anybody got some figures?

[butane bob]

The 3MHz clock held it back significantly.

Clock speeds on consoles are irrelevent.

[NFG]

Clock speeds on consoles are irrelevent.

Don't be absurd.  You're confusing my statement with the argument that "It's faster, it must be better!"  Clock speeds are in no way irrelevent.

Back up your assertions or I'll just consider them flame bait and nuke them.  Contradictions without facts aren't helpful to a conversation.

[NFG]

Clock speeds on consoles are irrelevent.

Don't be absurd.  You're confusing my statement with the argument that "It's faster, it must be better!"  Clock speeds are in no way irrelevent.

Back up your assertions or I'll just consider them flame bait and nuke them.  Contradictions without facts aren't helpful to a conversation.