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           |  |E G A  C.D  vs    __|U P E R  N.E.S

  So here it is the battle of the giants, Nintendo and Sega have been
 waging war in the console market for years now, with Nintendo always
 having the upper hand.  Sega looked all set to change this around in
 the British market at least, with the launch of the Mega CD.  Ninte-
 ndo however had different ideas and decided to bring forward the 
 launch of the Super NES.  This launch is all set for spring, with 
 Super NES's in the shops, possibly as early as February.  Sega dont
 plan to launch the Mega CD offically till summer next year.  Now
 heres the question (?) on everyones lips; Do you buy a Super NES,
 or wait for the Mega CD? it's not an easy choice, so heres a guide
 to whats hot and whats not about the two Machines.

 MEGA-CD (Lame Sega Product)
 ---------------------------

  The Mega CD is a compact unit that sits happily underneath the Genesis
 It's very similar in styling to the Genesis and once in place looks 
 dead sexy.  The internal gubbins are a mass of smart custom chips and
 processor doobries.  The Mega CD uses a Motorola 68,000 chip, like the
 one you would find inside an Amiga, St.  This chip runs at 12.5 Mhz
 which is bloody fast, especially when used in tandem with the Genesis's
 own 68,000.  This is all very well, but a CD-ROM really needs one thing 
 a RAM cache! whats a RAm cache? Well, when a CD unit sends Graphics and 
 Sound to the host machine, it needs to hold alot on information in Memory
 If it cant do that, then you get a very irrating lag while the machine
 accesses the Compact Disc.  This was a big problem with the PC Engine CD
 Unit, the waiting time can get quite aggravating.  Fortunatly, the Mega
 CD has a large RAM cache and can handle 6 Megabits of info a time, this
 is more than enough space for pause free gaming.  As far as sound goes
 the Mega CD is a big improvement over the Genesis/Megadrive.  It has an
 extra 8 Channels of PCM sounds and they are well up to quality of a decent
 keyboard.  These can be played at the same time as the Megadrives chip
 and can also be used with live CD tracks so musically, you can go far 
 wrong.  The extra processing power built into the new unit, means that the
 Megadrive can now perform the kind of Scaling and rotation tricks that 
 the Famicom is Famous for (even though the SNES only has a 3.5 processor
 the Megadive+Co is so shit).  All in All abit of a smart kit.

  The Mega CD has been widely heralded in the land of the rising sun, as
 the machine that will bring CD-ROM into the home.  There are already a 
 couple of CD-ROM standards in Japan, the most successful of which is the
 Sharp FM Towns.  This computer basically a souped up PC, with smart GFX
 and a built in CD unit.  The thing the FM Towns is most notourios for
 is the number of games featuring scantily clad women.  It's widely 
 expected that this kind of dodgy software will appear on the Mega CD,
 although Sega's strict quality controls should filter the worst of it
 out.  The Mega CD was released in Japan last December and basically sold 
 out as soon as it hit the shops.  Sega cleverly released limited numbers, 
 so selling out completely isnt quite as impressive as it sounds.  The 
 demand though is easily out-stripping supply even now.  In the UK, when
 the machine was launched, grey importers like Advanced Consoles Etc
 were snowed down with oreders.  In fact, when we picked up our Mega CD
 there was nearly a riot because it was the last one in stock!

  After months of sneak previews and much speculation, we finally got 
 hold of a Mega CD! The machine arrived only days after its release
 in Japan.  The excitment in the room was unbearable, problem was, when we
 first got it, we had no software.  When you turn the machine On, you are
 presented with a really sexy demo.  This shows the Mega CD logo floating
 in the sky, it starts turning, spinning and swooping around the screen.
 Its all impressive when you discover its not a polygon, its a sprite.
 This gives just a peek at the machines true potential.  The music that
 plays during the demo is groovy, but hardly mind-blowing.
  Not only is the Mega CD a smart piece of video gaming technology, its
 also a bloody good CD player.  Instead of the usual array of buttons
 and dials, all you do is slot in a normal CD and press Start on your
 control pad.  The screen then changes from demo to options.  These 
 allow you to play any track on your CD at random, or if you like, in 
 a preprogrammed order.  There are tons of useful options and if youre 
 into music youll love it.  You can for example, loop small sections of
 any track, useful for sampling chords or instrument sounds.  There are
 a wealth of options and the sound quality is quite remarkable.  Using
 the audio ports and connecting the Mega CD to speakers, the sound
 quality is easily as good as a decent CD player.  Put through a good
 stereo system with amplifiers and the unit becomes a formidable bit
 of Hi-Fi equipment.

  Well, theres no doubt about it.  The Mega CD is a dead hard piece of
 kit.  Problem is, the first few games dont take advantage of it.  There
 are few Japanesse RPG's available already, most with un-translatable 
 names.  The RPG's all follow the gauntlet inspired top-down perspective
 with alot of spellcasting and wandering around.  The one advantage of
 CD brings to this type of game is in the lengthy graphical intros.
 You get treated to highly impressive cartoon sequences throughout and 
 the accompanying music is quite awesome.  Weve only seen two arcade
 style games so far.  The first, Heavy Nova is a cross between a SEMUP
 and a BEMUP, its a horizontal scroller, very playable and very fast 
 again, this game features Huge cartoon intros and smart music, but
 graphically it doesnot do anything we have not seen before.  Sol Feace
 is the second of the arcade games and its a good horizontal scroller.
 This a real dissapointment as far as graphics are concerned, this is no
 better than say Thunderforce or gaiares.  Soon to appear on the Mega CD
 will be G-LOC and RABMOBILE for starters and maybe even SONIC 2.

  The Mega CD has had its offically launch in the UK set for Summer 1992.
 This is resonably fast and well get it around the same time as America.
 The machine will cost around 300 quid which is abit expenisve thats 
 import and offical will be around 250 (Kiss my ass Sega lamers!).  The
 Mega CD imports only work on the Scart machines (LAME!) at the moment
 but the console boys are hard at work converting them to PAL machines
 which should be finished Soon.


 THE SUPER NES/FAMICOM (Greatest machine of all time)
 ----------------------------------------------------

  The Super NES is a very strange machine indeed! Although its a 16Bit
 machine, the cental processor is not a 16 Bit at all.  It is in fact 
 an Eight bit chip, a 65C816 to be precise but a deeply confused one.  
 It runs as fast as a 16 Bit chip and thinks it is one, but aint.  Kind
 of like a volvo with a ferrari engine...its not much to look at but it
 does'nt half shift (Yeahhhhh).  The Super NES main attributes are its
 brilliant custom chips.  These are used to create some stunning effects.
 The color palette is an enormous 32,768 and the machine can display
 256 of these at once.  You can take a whole screen very quickly or a
 small area and expand or reduce it in size very quickly.  This effect
 has been seen before in the arcades like Afterburner, G-Loc.  The SNES
 can also rotate screens in real time, much the way Namco's assault
 arcade machine does.  The chips are powerful enough to combine these
 effects and clever programming to produce stunning results (Eat that Sega)
 The most impressive about the SNES though, is the sound chip, this uses
 12 channel digital PCM sounds, better quality than most mid-range 
 keyboards.  These sounds can be played in true stereo and the effects are
 jaw dropping.  Trumpiets, pianos, guitars, all can be reproduced 
 faithfully through the SNES.  You can easily link up your SNES to a HiFi
 and hear the sound through decent speakers, its well worth doing.  In
 real terms, its much more a powerful machine then Segas Megadrive (HAHA).

  The SNES obviously excels in anything that involves Color and Sound,
 especailly using Scaling and rotation hardware.  Where it falls down
 a little is on its sprite handling.  The SNES is capable of displaying 
 tons of sprites, but the speed suffers when more than 128 are on screen
 at once.  Much has been made of this problem in the computer press, but
 the megadrive also suffers from this too, although not to the same 
 extent.  Where this problem arises most is in fast shootemups with tons
 of sprites on screen at once.  You'd be less likely to notice say, a
 beatemup or a driving game.  There are ways round this, with special 
 programming and tight use of hardware, but its not as big problem as
 you'd think.

  After wearing our special investigator trousers for months, we dis-
 covered something about the SNES that will make you fill your pants 
 with sheer bed wetting anticipation.  This makes the CD-ROM look 
 pathetic and it will change the face of SNES gameing forever! What is it?
 We're not telling! Ha! Are we evil or what? All we can say is this, when
 it appears and you own a Famicom, you'll be even happier than a big bag
 of happy things.  Is it Hardware? Is it Software? Were not telling, but
 look out in future issues for more newz its a biggie!

  The initial batch of Famicom games upon its release in Japan was 
 specatular.  The one to buy the machine though, was Super Mario World
 This is/was the forth installment of the Mario series and is still
 the best platform game ever.  The games, unusually for a console included
 a couple of strange strategy games like, Populous, Sim-City.  These went
 down a treat in Japan and shifted untold numbers of famicoms.  Its 
 highly likely that the first batch of games will be the same as the 
 first lot of Japanesse games.  Look out in the future for thses great
 titles, STREETFIGHTER II, and rumoursa about MARIO 5 and to top that off
 it may be on CD-ROM!.

  The SNES went on sale in the U.S last year and was greeted with great
 interest, but it did not do to good in sales terms as expected.  There
 were two main reasons for this firstly, the Megadrive had already got a 
 firm foothold in the market and secondly, NES owners were quite happy
 with their old machine.  Software support was fine, with alot of great
 titles released for the machine, but many stores had problems getting
 enough copies.  After some teething troubles and alot of speculation,
 the SNES is now going great guns.

  Nintendo have had alot of political turmoil with their CD-ROM system.
 This should have been availble now, but development changes put paid
 to that.  The Nintendo CD ROM was to be developed with SONY, but the
 deal fell through early last year.  However, the unit was nearly 
 finished and SONY still have the legal right to release the machine.
 It will probably appear in japan in the next few months, its to be 
 called the Sony playStation.  It will be entirely compactible with
 Famicom cartridges, but with the addition of a CD-ROM drive.  Early
 peeks at the machine reveal it to be a sleek black unit, similar in
 appearance to the Megadrive unit.  Sadly though, there will be little 
 in the way of Nintendo support the CD unit, with most developers 
 opting to use Nintendos system instead.  This new system has been 
 designed by PHILIPS and looks set to beat even the Mega CD, at least
 in terms of Spec.  It should be ready soon and there will be an inter-
 esting three way competition between Sega, Sony, Nintendo.

  Its up to you.  If youre dead wealthy and have the two get em both, if
 not ask yourself these questions;

 How much do you have to spend?
 How important is a CD-ROM?
 
  Both the SNES and the Mega CD are brilliant machines and both have their
 strong points.  The Mega CD remember, is an add on and not a stand alone
 unit.  The SNES is due for release very soon.  Add all these points up
 and decide for yourself, but remember, you heard it here first.

 My Views ( {Mr.SCARFACE} of CRYSTAL )
 -------------------------------------

  Well why pay 250-300 pound for a unit which was made to do the same
 type of things which a SNES already does??.  The SNES will be about
 150 pounds in a couple of months maximum with a free 40+ pound cart
 Mario Worlds so for 150 pounds you can have everything thats in the 
 Mega CD vertually apart from the fast 12.5 Mhz but the SNES is fucking
 fast enough now and soon the slow down problem will be now more.
  Remeber everything what Sega has made falls and gets forgotten about
 look at the poor master System (Dead!?!?!) but look at the NES still
 going quite strong Nintendo always make systems which rule and you
 enjoy playing! look at the basic Gameboy shit colors briliant addiction
 check out Mario on that!.  Well its up to you i have both FAMICOM,
 MEGADRIVE, but i will have got rid of the Megadrive soon due to it 
 being lame! same as the Mega-Cd! (Once the novelty wears off) Nintendo
 products always seem to keep ya going ya never get bored of em hmmm 
 well like i say get what ya wont but Sega is Shit! haha.

 CREDITS
 -------

 Text File : {Mr.SCARFACE} of CRYSTAL!
      Idea : {Mr.SCARFACE} of CRYSTAL!
    Review : Computer & Video Games Magazine
  Machines : Ace-Consoles / C+VG

 DEDICATIONS+MSG'S
 -----------------

 Executioner : Hope the copiers come along Soon mate! 500+ rule ha!
       Zigor : Wheres the price lists ?? hehe!
    Lonestar : Keep up the good Console game support!
    Protocol : Keep those Tips coming! (For SNES though he!)
   Megadrive : Hope the conf goes well !! i cant call much now! boo hoo
      Hybrid : Ult Dream is kicking some ass Console wise!

   >>>> HAPPY CONSOLE 92 TO ALL WHO LOVE THERE MACHINES <<<<

 >> TO ORDER YOURE COPIER FOR MEGADRIVE,SNES,PC.ENGINE <<
           >> SEE EXECUTIONER ON ULT DREAM <<

