SONIC GENERATIONS also for PC!!!


fusion_power

Advanced Member
Joined
Dec 25, 2005
Messages
13,221
Location
germany
Website
Visit site
Yes, that's right, not only the Consoles will be blessed with this ame but also the PC is not forgotten by SEGA:


http://www.sonicstadium.org/2011/10/sega-finally-announces-sonic-generations-for-pc-download-new-screenshots/


SEGA did some PC ports in the Past which I really honor, Nintendo never did such things afaik.


Sonic Generations is a 3D Game but it also contains classical side View remakes of old Sonic Games including famous Stages like Chemical Plant from Sonic 2 including the great Music. :) It seems that you use the Classic Sonic in the old 2D perspective and the new modern Sonic in the 3D Perspective well known from Sonic Adventure & Co.


Game supports Stereoscopic 3D Mode.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HsKwNWYowwY?feature=oembed

I already love it. :)
 
Nintendo has nothing to gain from porting to PCs.


PC games are a lot more difficult to develop because you have to take into account different hardware configurations, operating systems, drivers for tons of different graphics cards, etc. It's a nightmare. Developing for something they designed, with hardware that won't change, is much easier and allows them to explore the limitations of the device. PC games also have to compete with other programs for their resources. The most console games have to compete with is a hypervisor.


Long story short, it ain't happening.


That said, I'll probably get it for the 3DS when it gets a hardware revision and is worth buying.
 
Nintendo never releases software outside of its own Hardware, for obvious reasons. Not unless it was made by a third party (Interplay did Mario's Game Gallery, ToolWorks did Mario Teaches Typing, Mario is Missing and a few others.)


I'm really looking forward to this one. I've been a Sonic fan since Adventure 2: Battle, but haven't bought a console title since Heroes and only came back for Colo(u)rs (Which, BTW, was a REALLY good, but short game.) The console version is looking to be REALLY good, but the 3DS version.... is looking to be garbage (It seems the 3DS version was a last-minute decision...not to mention the fact that DIMPS is developing it, who have been known for making less-than-stellar portable Sonic titles in the past.)


It would probably be appropriate to post this here:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/QIUDxOtTatQ?feature=oembed

P.S. A PC version was recently confirmed, looks like it might be a Steam title.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Nintendo has nothing to gain from porting to PCs.


PC games are a lot more difficult to develop because you have to take into account different hardware configurations, operating systems, drivers for tons of different graphics cards, etc. It's a nightmare. Developing for something they designed, with hardware that won't change, is much easier and allows them to explore the limitations of the device. PC games also have to compete with other programs for their resources. The most console games have to compete with is a hypervisor.


Long story short, it ain't happening.
Then it is even more impressive that SEGA still goes the whole way and port it to the PC. :)


@Mygames19: yes, it is a Steamworks Download Game AFAIK.
 
Nintendo has nothing to gain from porting to PCs.


PC games are a lot more difficult to develop because you have to take into account different hardware configurations, operating systems, drivers for tons of different graphics cards, etc. It's a nightmare. Developing for something they designed, with hardware that won't change, is much easier and allows them to explore the limitations of the device. PC games also have to compete with other programs for their resources. The most console games have to compete with is a hypervisor.

This is often spouted nonsense, made all the more ludicrous by Dolphin emulator claiming to be able to not only allow for playing Wii games but also enhance and upscale them to HD resolutions despite their small team having to do the unthinkable drama-queen-evil of having to use standardized APIs to operate on the horrible evil [drama queen] impossibly complicated results of the absolute _evil_ of open hardware.  Save us from the evils of APIs and development tools so that programmers must spend excessive time hand coding things that lovably _quirky_ hardware of console systems.  Save us Steve Jobs from having to think or use a UI newer then the 70s, so that

https://www.youtube.com/embed/j5Xq4C6mnZc?feature=oembed would then go on to create several IPs based around side scrollers exploring various approaches to gameplay approaches.  Admittedly most only remember Duke Nukem at this point and associate him more with Duke Nukem 3D then his side-scroller origins.  During this period the US and Europe were getting Super Mario Bros 3 respectively, although to be fair Japan and America would be getting Super Mario World in this same time period.  That incidentally would be the last home console based Mario 2D platformer until the recent Wii game.

For those who care Starfox and the SuperFX chip came from Argonaut software and Nintendo's attempts to port their 1988 game Starglider II to a console (NES & SNES) that without the blatant extra tinkering simply didn't have power to run at comparable speeds, which finally resulted in a product in 1993.  All said it shows what an utter kludge the SNES was in 3D, unlike it's area of strength in creating very complex 2D composites and good sound.  Argonaut software incidentally were also very hardware agnostic in their game releases, despite what some might think multiplatform releases was never a particularly novel concept.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Business is definitely a big part of it, but how exactly are those valid technological barriers made moot with so-called standard libraries? Each graphics card supports a different version of OpenGL, there's no guarantee what library Nintendo currently uses on their hardware (so a library port may be in order as well), and there's still the issue of drivers. If you were a developer, would you rather have a firmware with a guaranteed-to-work-great set of built-in drivers, or an OS with drivers that may vary in quality for any number of different hardware configurations? Also note that some applications running on that OS may interfere with the game, too. More variables means more testing, period. More testing is more man-hours spent _not_ developing the game. More time spent not making games hurts Nintendo's bottom line. Unlike MS and Sony, Nintendo is primarily a game developer. Making games for other systems would be self-sabotage and a very poor move; technically and fiscally.


To get closer to the topic, Sega has less to lose by porting to as many platforms as possible, as long as it's reasonably easy to port. If they use "standard" libraries from the start, then there're obviously no issues. Their money comes from game sales, so their product must be spread far in order for it to rake in cash.
 
Reality:


1) Game Developers are not kernel or OS developers, there's no purpose to your pretending they are.


2) Actually look into native running of old software on Windows sometime.  You can go pretty far back with the overwhelming majority of games, and most of those that are issues revolve around DOS (Windows 95/98) verse NT kernel (XP & foreward) and x86 commands that have been locked down for security reasons that some old games used.  Despite the fact the games were obviously not "designed" with hardware from the Future in mind.  You're overstating things that these days are usually handled by the hardware vendor's driver teams.

If you were a developer, would you rather have a firmware with a guaranteed-to-work-great set of built-in drivers, or an OS with drivers that may vary in quality for any number of different hardware configurations?
3) Proprietary systems are not immune to software issues, even in the relatively simple 8-bit era there were bugs in high profile titles.
but how exactly are those valid technological barriers made moot with so-called standard libraries?
Did I say anything about SDL?  Are you refering to my mention of APIs, which are basically kernel interfaces? Or SDKs, which Console manufacturers need to know quite a bit about as they need to make them unless they're going to force game developers to have to go low level to make things work?

Each graphics card supports a different version of OpenGL
This is outright nonsense.  The only time it's kind of valid is if you're going into proprietary system weirdness where for various reasons they've decided to deviate from the Khronos Group, which in turn only leads to a situation where development tools that take advantage of that have to be developed, etc.  With relatively open systems pure Khronos Group OpenGL is used which is backwards compatible through the entire version line.

there's no guarantee what library Nintendo currently uses on their hardware (so a library port may be in order as well), and there's still the issue of drivers. [...] Also note that some applications running on that OS may interfere with the game, too. More variables means more testing, period. More testing is more man-hours spent _not_ developing the game. More time spent not making games hurts Nintendo's bottom line. Unlike MS and Sony, Nintendo is primarily a game developer. Making games for other systems would be self-sabotage and a very poor move; technically and fiscally.
I can't say I've seen a game developer that is particularly accommodating when their game code runs afoul a firewall or antivirus suite, which is rather rare to begin with.


?  I take it you're unaware that through it's product history Nintendo has used fancy multiprocessor configurations involving heavily modified Intel 8080 derivatives [NES/Gameboy], a heavily modified 16-bit CMOS 6502 derivative [sNES] later modified to use a RISC 3D accelerator (SuperFX) and other plug in chips, a SGI custom solution Sega turned down involving a MIPS derivative [N64], PowerPC designs with ATI graphics [GameCube/Wii], and ARM [(ARM7)GBA, (ARM7+ARM9)DS, (ARM7+ARM9)DSi, (ARM11x2)3DS].  Note Nintendo and associated 3rd parties have something of a history porting older titles to newer hardware.  Also note Nintendo has throughout its history released PC software, so it's not like they don't know how to do it there's just no business reason to do so with their frontline titles.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
And that's one more reason why I love SEGA, They have not forgotten that the PC still exists. :) In Japan, there are alot of "console like" games for the PC, I guess the most of them never make their way out of Japan. So many potenial (Homebrew/Indie) Software for us... ^^
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top