as far as I've explored PCE library for myself, I think one edge NEC took with PCE in Japan as opposed to TGX in US was targeting nieches in japan such as sexually more suggestive title or graphically more violent ones. There is also lots of anime tie in games of passable to great quality, but one anecdote is some companies being thankful for being officially available on PCE while having to resort to dodging copyright and release unofficially on Famicom Disk System before. In west, sega was already pushing the "risque" market of US and trying to push it more with system that had no legs yet would been self destructive for sure. But in japan, aside PC's that NEC also was handling in big way in Japan, PCE was most "adult" gaming platform it feels like to me.
Cool video one minor correction though, Adventure Island is an adaption of the arcade game Wonder Boy, the SG-1000 games is also called Wonder Boy. Wonder Boy was first, adventure island followed on other platforms.
With how poor those games perform, I'd bet that poor little CPU is directly driving that LCD without any special graphics hardware. The gameboy had pretty good hardware dedicated to drawing and scrolling tiles of pixels, which frees up a lot of time for the CPU to handle game logic and input.
I loved Sonic Spinball, it was a game my father got my for my 8th birthday. I find people that criticize this game often don't know how to play it. And the music was awesome.
At the end, the Games sell a Console. But the Problem is: to find enough Studios to want to make Games for your System, it need to sell first. The Game Cube is more powerfull than the PS2. but PS2 sold better, because of the success of the PS1, which lead to even more Games. This is always the case. Even a Wii U would be a success, if there would be more Games. Which most of them are Nintendo only, or Ports (a wonder, that a Series like Splatoon survived, but one Game alone can not save a Console) And the Switch says it all. A Console everyone said it's to expensive on release, yet the System still sell without major price drops (exept for revisions) If we use the idea many ppl want: "Sega should make another console", will only "MAYBE" work, if Sega make alle there published Games exclusive, but then they have to deal with Hardware Power, similar to the PS5 now. Or they try somehing gimmiky, but this can easy fail. (again, see Wii U ) or win (Wii, Switch ect.)
The reason why they went after him & the four others was just because there were too few Famiclones being widely sold in the North America market. However just like a leviathan once they cut off the head many more grew. Also more normal people started hearing about Famiclones so it had a Streisand Effect, and more people now wanted it. Nintendo did try that again when they went after Amazon & some sellers soon after the NES/SNES Mini came out (though a tad more low key), but it caused even more people to get into it. So now there are 1000's of them in so many varieties as well as multiple brick & mortar stores (mostly discount chains) as well as online retailers such as Alliexpress, Wish, TEMU, etc. that law enforcement dose not have enough man power to take them down for now. Most likely it'll happen again & again with the same outcome each time just a small handful will go down, and hundreds of new players will come rushing in. The more Nintendo makes a huge stink out in the public eye the more people will flock to these things causing the exact opposite effect. Atari & Sega played it smart by licensing the games (cheaply) to others, and just getting what money they can without the massive legal hissy fits.
Nintendo rarely wins on hardware, they win on software (i.e. games). Nintendo has the largest amount of iconic IP including Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Donkey Kong, and Pokemon (among others).
*whispers* The Lynx predated the GameBoy. And the Game Gear had been in development since before the GB dropped. Also the passive LCD on those old handhelds would mean the flickering on the shmups would be invisible. .... It also meant that anything that moved looked basically unreadable. An old Ashens review of the Supervision had him playing Crystball on real hardware and filming the screen, and the ball just *disappeared* when it was in motion.
Sorry, but I heard *"Sewer Vision"* when you first said it. I thought "Wait, what? Someone made a game console with that name? That sounds like a joke." Weird how I never heard of this _Super Vision_ handheld before, and I've been into retro-gaming since 2003 as a 12 year old, so...
They didn't have any game developers from Japan. And it also looks like they didn't have the same level of hardware expertise or R & D as Nintendo or the other companies. Long story short, the hardware was worse, the games were already lousy and suffered moreso. Compare this with the Bandai WonderSwan and they are leagues apart.
Any word on whether the cruddy scrolling, low framerate and flickering was from a less capable PPU than the Gameboy's, or if devs just didn't learn how to use it properly?
I actually knew someone with a SuperVision. The kids of a friend of my mom's each had one. I remember it being ok, and was curious where they got them. So they told me it was a game stall in a indoor swapmeet. So. I went there to see it, price, games etc. They didnt have anymore instock, so i forgot about it and bought StarFox for the Snes instead. 😂
My wife bought me this system for my birthday last year. Sadly I like playing it on the Analogue Pocket better - no missing lines, no low res screen - but I still love that she did it!
Games on the Supervision often seemed to suffer from low frame rates and even flickering. Was the hardware on the Supervision inferior to the Game Boy or was the problem poor developers? I have to suspect a bit of both, also by the time the Supervision was released there was already many experienced developers for the Game Boy that could really get the most out of the hardware.
I remember the GameBoy seeming neat. But never more than a gimmick. It never came down in price really. I remember they never lowered the price probably until 1999 and the GBC came out at which point, couldn't you get a PSP? Handhelds are such a weird concept. I have no idea how anyone played a game on the GameBoy. I reckon it's worth more like $40. Nintendo made no profit on the og GB fun fact.
