Shareware on consoles

[664890c89b760icemann]

This thread was split off from System Shock Demo Shareware (Download)
I loved shareware. Best way to see what a game is like to make that choice on whether to get it or not. So many games that I bought due to them. You'd often get a boatload of them on magazine coverdisks. Consoles did the same thing during the ps1 - ps2 era.

[664890c89bb66JDoran]

I loved shareware. Best way to see what a game is like to make that choice on whether to get it or not. So many games that I bought due to them. You'd often get a boatload of them on magazine coverdisks. Consoles did the same thing during the ps1 - ps2 era.

Not all consoles, sadly. We N64 owners didn't get to play game demos, as a demo-filled cartridge would probably inflate the cost of the accompanying magazine to £20 or more.

[664890c89becfRocketMan]

Doom Shareware. 

Nuff said 

[664890c89c28cSimulationUnit]

Not all consoles, sadly. We N64 owners didn't get to play game demos, as a demo-filled cartridge would probably inflate the cost of the accompanying magazine to £20 or more.

I think the estimate to put FF7 on 64 was over 1k in rom chips.

[664890c89c575JDoran]

I think the estimate to put FF7 on 64 was over 1k in rom chips.

Does that mean one thousand megabytes (or 1,024 MB)? Surely that doesn't include the savings they'd get by not repeatedly storing the redundant data that was repeated on all of the CDs, properly compressing the audio data to make it take up much less space but still sound much the same, compressing or reducing the duplication of other data, etc?

Resident Evil 2 was ported to the N64 as a 64MB cartridge, and included everything the PSX version did (plus it added proper 3D controls as an option, instead of just tank-controls, and wow! that is really great!!!), so huge space savings are possible. But FF7 on the N64 would probably be impossible, unless Nintendo could somehow get (far) more than 64MB on one cartridge, or were willing to put two or more cartridges into the game's box. And then somehow manage to get N64 gamers to pay even more than they had to pay for other games...

[664890c89c9d8SimulationUnit]

Does that mean one thousand megabytes (or 1,024 MB)? Surely that doesn't include the savings they'd get by not repeatedly storing the redundant data that was repeated on all of the CDs, properly compressing the audio data to make it take up much less space but still sound much the same, compressing or reducing the duplication of other data, etc?

Resident Evil 2 was ported to the N64 as a 64MB cartridge, and included everything the PSX version did (plus it added proper 3D controls as an option, instead of just tank-controls, and wow! that is really great!!!), so huge space savings are possible. But FF7 on the N64 would probably be impossible, unless Nintendo could somehow get (far) more than 64MB on one cartridge, or were willing to put two or more cartridges into the game's box. And then somehow manage to get N64 gamers to pay even more than they had to pay for other games...

I got the estimate of cost of an advertisement claiming it would cost some absurd amount of money to put on 64 based on an estimate that didn't include aggressive compression that would fuck the FMVs into shit. It did the rounds on forums back in the day and I'll try to track it down for ya but I remember it being at least as high as 1k USD being arrived at by taking the cost of each 64 megabyte cart and dividing the total capacity of 3 CDs across them to reach the number. FF7 would've required 33 64DD discs to run.

Resident Evil 2 had trimmed/merged cutscenes and compressed two discs to 512mb cartridge and the result with cutscenes and audio was subpar, the actual game itself is pretty good looking though. It's lots of fun to beat Resident Evil on Saturn, Resident Evil 2 on 64 then 3 + Veronica on Dreamcast, I've done it a few times.