Nintendo's SNES/SFC cartridge prices shaved some character rosters?

[@M]

Years ago, I can recall reading, I believe in Gameplayers' Magazine, that Nintendo used to charge publishers/developers more for their SNES/SFC cartridges with higher megabit counts (i.e., a 24 meg cart cost more than a 16 meg one), which resulted in some game makers cutting content to avoid the bigger memory fees. In contrast Sega did not do that with their Genesis/Megadrive cartridges (of course, with EA reverse-engineering the Genesis and manufacturing their own carts for the platform, that policy probably wouldn't have flown even if Sega had tried it). As legend has it, said memory pricing is the primary reason that WWF: The Arcade Game and Shaq Fu had larger character rosters on the Genesis versions than the SNES ones (and, yes, I know Shaq Fu isn't very good anyway, but that's not the point of this conversation). Does anybody else recall reading about this, and do you know of any other examples besides said two games, or is my memory just playing tricks on me?

And, as an aside, for those of you that collect Genesis/Megadrive, does it bother you that the carts vary in appearance/size like that? I've got quite a few EA carts, and it's always bugged me how they don't mesh with Sega's aesthetically (granted, Sega made a few weird-shaped ones too, like Sonic & Knuckles and Virtua Racing, but still . . .) Are Megadrive cartidges varied like that in other countries too (I only have North American ones in my collection)?

 

[FilthyRear]

Those EA carts were fucking horrible if you lost the case. They were too big and that fucking disgusting yellow tab was just awful to look at. And their games mostly sucked anyway.

Accolade had different carts, too. Double Dragon and Zero Tolerance come to mind.

 

[Tripredacus]

When I was a kid, I thought that yellow tab meant something.

 

[Liquid Snake]

never collect EA/Accolade carts, just too fugly and I'm not into sports/western games at that time.

 

[FilthyRear]

When I was a kid, I thought that yellow tab meant something.

It meant your weekend was ruined because you made a bad choice at Blockbuster.

 

[GohanX]

I do remember magazines stating that memory chips were cheaper on the Genesis than the SNES, and that's why several games were larger on Genesis.

 

[ki_atsushi]

Publishers did indeed cut corners to save costs all the time. Look at Doom for example. I think the SNES port only had 15 levels iirc, they cut more than a third to fit the game into a 16-meg chip instead of just doing a damn 32 like they knew they should.

Of course that version sucks ass for so many other reasons, but that was what most disappointed my 15 year old self.

 

[ki_atsushi]

Oh yeah, I think the reason stuff was cheaper on the genesis was because they used normal eproms, whereas Nintendo has mask roms with custom pinouts. I'm sure they were more expensive to produce.

 

[Tw3ek]

Publishers did indeed cut corners to save costs all the time. Look at Doom for example. I think the SNES port only had 15 levels iirc, they cut more than a third to fit the game into a 16-meg chip instead of just doing a damn 32 like they knew they should.

Of course that version sucks ass for so many other reasons, but that was what most disappointed my 15 year old self.

I actually was quite impressed with SFC/SNES Doom for what it was, especially given how much more power you could get out of a PC.

 

[GohanX]

It was the 32x port that was missing 1/3 of the game. I'm pretty sure the snes one had most of the levels, but a lot of animation was cut.

 

[Tw3ek]

It was the 32x port that was missing 1/3 of the game. I'm pretty sure the snes one had most of the levels, but a lot of animation was cut.

The Saturn port suffers from the animation issue too. Very choppy.

 

[FilthyRear]

The Saturn port suffers from the animation issue too. Very choppy.

I dunno who needs to be held responsible for that shit port, but I blame Rage software. The screenshots on the back of the case were lifted from the PC version of Final Doom's packaging. It flat out lies about having multiplayer support and the amount of levels it has.

It was the 32x port that was missing 1/3 of the game. I'm pretty sure the snes one had most of the levels, but a lot of animation was cut.

The SNES version had (mostly) all the PC levels. You could tell when you're playing it that its pushing the system pretty far.

I have the strat guide for the SNES version, and the maps are pretty similar to the PC version.

 

[ki_atsushi]

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Super_NES

I'm sorry, I was indeed thinking about the 32x version's 15 levels. However the SNES version was missing some too. Looks like 1 level in episode 1, 2 in episode 2, and 1 in episode 3 were cut.

 

[FilthyRear]

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Super_NES

I'm sorry, I was indeed thinking about the 32x version's 15 levels. However the SNES version was missing some too. Looks like 1 level in episode 1, 2 in episode 2, and 1 in episode 3 were cut.

Huh... no shit. Nice pickup on my fumble. Fixed.

I'd still take the 32x version over the saturn version.

 

[ki_atsushi]

I LOVED the 32x version. It didn't have half of the wall textures it should have, but it ran so smooooth. I was jealous of my neighbor having a 32x growing up, but that was the only game worth owning on it.

Saturn Doom's frame rate is atrocious, but they improved it on the Japanese version which came out later than the US version.

 

[ki_atsushi]

And one last thing about Doom (lol), neither the SNES nor 32x version had all of the enemy sprites, so they were always running directly at you no matter what. Cut down on the fun because they couldn't fight each other anymore.

 

[Danthor]

Saturn Doom's frame rate is atrocious

You're not wrong, but man. The 3DO version. That's the champion version of awful framerate.

 

[Tw3ek]

I dunno who needs to be held responsible for that shit port, but I blame Rage software. The screenshots on the back of the case were lifted from the PC version of Final Doom's packaging. It flat out lies about having multiplayer support and the amount of levels it has.

The blame for that one lies with Carmack. The Sega Saturn would have required that Doom use a hardware acceleration function, but Carmack insisted that it be coded the same way as the PC version. As a result, they had to cut out some frames of animation and the result was that choppy mess.

 

[shadowkn55]

A lot of frames were cut out of street fighter titles to make them fit. The walking forward and backwards animations are the same. In the arcade version, they have separate frames of animations for each motion.

 

[SpamYouToDeath]

I do remember magazines stating that memory chips were cheaper on the Genesis than the SNES, and that's why several games were larger on Genesis.

That doesn't seem right to me - if anything, the SNES should have been cheaper because the data bus on the cartridge was only 8 bits wide (so no need to get 16-bit ROMs or double-up on 8-bit ROMs). Does anyone have experience with how ROM prices used to be? I'd assume most of the cost of mask ROM was for the actual memory matrix, and not the external bus, anyway.

EDIT: Or Nintendo could have been jacking up prices, because they enforced a monopoly with their lock-out chips.

The blame for that one lies with Carmack. The Sega Saturn would have required that Doom use a hardware acceleration function, but Carmack insisted that it be coded the same way as the PC version. As a result, they had to cut out some frames of animation and the result was that choppy mess.

To be fair, Saturn's hardware rasterizer looked like garbage for 3D scenes. I can think of a few compromises that would have been better than rendering a single span at a time, though. (Maybe send out 8-column stripes or something, rather than individual columns, so you'd get a speed-up without too much distortion.)

 

[HeavyMachineGoob]

Publishers did indeed cut corners to save costs all the time. Look at Doom for example. I think the SNES port only had 15 levels iirc, they cut more than a third to fit the game into a 16-meg chip instead of just doing a damn 32 like they knew they should.

Of course that version sucks ass for so many other reasons, but that was what most disappointed my 15 year old self.

The SuperFX chip added quite a bit of cost. There's a reason why most SuperFX games are 8Mbit, you know.

The other reason is the SuperFX "GSU-1" version was cheaper, keeping the ROM limit at 8Mbit. The later GSU-2 which Doom used can do 16Mbit. I don't think there was ever a 24Mbit or 32Mbit SuperFX game.

 

[ki_atsushi]

You're right, even Yoshi's Island was only 16meg... interesting!

P.S. - I always hated how Subzero was just a palette swap of Scorpion on the home ports of MK1. Dat stupid arm swirl....

 

[snes_collector]

I've been reading through old Super Play issues over the past few months, and they talk quite a bit about the different MBITs the carts had and the cost difference of the different sizes. Just yesterday I was reading in a issue with a developer of Super Turrican and how they had to compress the game into a 4 MBIT cart. Definitely interesting stuff

 

[FilthyRear]

You're right, even Yoshi's Island was only 16meg... interesting!

P.S. - I always hated how Subzero was just a palette swap of Scorpion on the home ports of MK1. Dat stupid arm swirl....

Didnt the SNES version have the different stances for Sub-Zero and Scorpion? I know that the Genesis version had 1 stance for all 3 characters - bothered the hell out of me.

 

[ki_atsushi]

It's been so long and the SNES was the version I played the least because of lack of blood, so you very well may be right.