Looking back today Full Motion Video games on the Sega CD are quite painful to play. Not just because most are rather horrible, and I like the genre so that is saying something, but because of the video quality. Some titles were uglier than others and this was one of the sticking points for gamers. In general, the video quality, the one thing that FMV games needed to be right, is simply not good. Many would say this is due to the developers being new to the Full Motion Video genre, or CD-ROM based development in general.
What if I told you it was something else entirely?
According to YouTube member Matteusbeus (you will be seeing that name a bit in the near future), the Sega Genesis was capable of better Full Motion Video than the Sega CD was. For proof, he uploaded a BIN file containing footage from a recent Star Wars movie. The use of a newer movie like this was probably to silence critics that are just waiting to scream “fake”.
As you can see, the video is quite smooth and very detailed, if a little dark. The point is, it is smooth and fairly clean. This is on par with what gamers saw later in the life of the Sega CD, even better in many instances. One trick that was used in Sega CD releases to get the video quality up was to limit colors on screen, making the video area quite small, or just degrading via compression as much as possible.
Why was this though?
Well, Matteusbeus states it is because of the limited transfer bus between the Sega CD and the Sega Genesis. There simply was not enough bandwidth to get good quality video off of the Sega CD in a manner conducive to what FMV games required. Yep. Sega screwed over gamers due to not thinking ahead enough. Now, this could be because of cost saving measures or it could be because the needs of the CD-ROM platform were just far and above what they were expected to be. Either way, the blame lays at the feet of Sega on this one.
Would a bigger transfer bus have allowed for better looking Full Motion Video games? Yes. Would that have made them more appealing to the masses and maybe prolonged the life of the Sega CD, and Sega Genesis by default? Probably not. The FMV genre was just too limited in scope based on what developers were willing to do. Rather than going with quick action or mystery and horror genres, developers were too focused on giving gamers as close to interactive television as possible. Something current technology may be able to pull off but certainly not back in the day.
Source: YouTube
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I was never really a fan of FMV games. I always though they should have used the greater capacity of the CD for bigger games. Massive RPGs, 2D platformers with many more levels, etc.
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Sega eventually came around with the Sega CD but it was too late when they released Sonic CD. That game could have been done, other than music, on the Genesis but they kept it on the CD attachment. It showed what Sega could do if they wanted - Sonic with tons of levels, which is what gamers wanted.
It is a shame that more companies didn't take advantage of that additional storage. I mean, many did but it was just for intros and outros or better music. Where were the improved animations, more levels, etc? I understand they were limited by that transfer bus but that didn't effect EVERYTHING they could have done as content was loaded into the RAM first (though again, Sega screwed gamers by skimping here as well).
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I pray they really do the necessary to get things in order.... Is really really very annoying.
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I'm sorry @cyprianj but I don't quite follow what you're saying? Anyway, some great points in this post. I remember the true 'console war' days when developers just wanted to impress rather then engage people in great gameplay.
It's arguable that the first great console game was Grand Theft Auto 3. That's when gameplay started appearing front and centre.
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