NES vs 7800

[kenfused]

But the CV moves fast enough for the "flicker/alternating" trick to work.

:

[supercat]

Since "stacking" (look at the enemy soldiers in Front Line) cannot be used in the Pac-Man games, in order to have a 2-color ghost you will need 2 sprites.

 

Depends how clever you are. Since the ghost's eyes are black and white, and all the places in which the ghosts move have a white foreground and black background, one could draw the ghosts' eyes on the background layer without needing to use sprites for them.

[Shannon]

I can't stand Zelda or Mario games...now tell me the NES had better games? I'd rather play Gauntlet Hang-On and R-type than most NES games. In fact I only have 2 NES games..Galaxian+Galaga Cart and Donkey Kong because they are both arcade perfect...(but then again so was Donkey Kong by Ocean software on the C64 for 1/6 the price)

Donkey Kong for the NES arcade perfect.....

[tisaperfectdayelise]

I can't stand Zelda or Mario games...now tell me the NES had better games? I'd rather play Gauntlet Hang-On and R-type than most NES games. In fact I only have 2 NES games..Galaxian+Galaga Cart and Donkey Kong because they are both arcade perfect...(but then again so was Donkey Kong by Ocean software on the C64 for 1/6 the price)

Donkey Kong for the NES arcade perfect.....

 

That's what she said......

[Vigo]

I can't stand Zelda or Mario games...now tell me the NES had better games? I'd rather play Gauntlet Hang-On and R-type than most NES games. In fact I only have 2 NES games..Galaxian+Galaga Cart and Donkey Kong because they are both arcade perfect...(but then again so was Donkey Kong by Ocean software on the C64 for 1/6 the price)

Donkey Kong for the NES arcade perfect.....

 

That's what she said......

 

But not what Shannon meant...

 

Donkey Kong on the NES lacks 1 level, so it's by far not arcade perfect.

[gdement]

A 3.58 Mhz Z80 is outperformed by a 1.78Mhz 6502 in almost all cases.

I guess that's debatable, but I don't know enough about the Z80 to argue it myself. Stuff I've read in the past has suggested that a Z80 is faster when running at twice the clock speed. In particular I remember reading a debate in some forum/newsgroup/whatever where advocates programmed equivalent routines for each CPU, and it ended up that the Z80 @ 2x clock usually won.

But if it's in the realm of debate then maybe they're close enough not to matter either way.

[supercat]

I guess that's debatable, but I don't know enough about the Z80 to argue it myself. Stuff I've read in the past has suggested that a Z80 is faster when running at twice the clock speed. In particular I remember reading a debate in some forum/newsgroup/whatever where advocates programmed equivalent routines for each CPU, and it ended up that the Z80 @ 2x clock usually won.

 

Examples can be worked out in which either machine will win by a considerable margin. The Z80 has a number of internal registers; register-accumulator operations with the accumulator as destination take four cycles and both register-immediate and accumulator-immediate operations take seven. By comparison, on the 6502, zeropage-accumulator operations take three cycles, accumulator-immediate operations take two, and zeropage-immediate operations must go through registers (thus taking five cycles). Thus, for applications that can be handled mostly in registers, the Z80 comes out ahead.

 

On the other hand, the 6502's memory addressing is much more flexible than the Z80's. Although the Z80 is much faster at incrementing a pointer in a register (6 cycles) than the 6502 is at incrementing one in memory (twelve cycles), the 6502 can perform address computations upon pointers stored in memory without having to modify them first using indirect-indexed mode. Many instructions on the Z80 have a very restricted set of addressing modes. Even just loading the contents of memory location $1234 into the E register requires 16 or 17 cycles and trashing another registers, e.g.

; 16 cycles, trashing D
 ld de,(1234h)
; 17 cycles, trashing A
 ld a,(1234h)
 ld e,a
; 17 cycles, trashing HL
 ld hl,1234h
 ld e,(hl)

By comparison, an absolute-mode load on the 6502 would take 4 cycles--a quarter of what the Z80 requires.

 

Also, in applications that require using lots of memory pointers, the 6502 can really blow the Z80 away. The BTP2 music player in Stella's Stocking requires 46 cycles per scan line. Even if one is nice enough to page-align everything and keep code in RAM, the Z80 would be horribly outclassed:

; A typical Z80 routine, equivalent to the BTP2 player.  Note that this is one of four routines that must be used on a rotating basis.
 ld hl,(patch1+1)
 ld a,(hl)
patch1:
 ld hl,voice0
 add a,(hl)
 out (audv0),a
 inc h
 ld a,(hl)
 ld (patch0+1),a
 ld hl,(patch2+1)
 ld a,(hl)
 ld hl,(patch3+1)
 add a,(hl)
 out (audv1),a
; 16+7+10+7+11 + 4+7+13 + 16+7+16+7+11
;		  51			+	24	 + 57
; Total 132 cycles (as compared with 46)

Hmm... not quite as bad as I thought, since I shaved off a few cycles since the last time I looked at the concept. Still, I think the 6502 is the clear winner for that code.

[toptenmaterial]

would it be possible to make an accurate comparision of 7800 vs NES games using an emulator on my PC?

[ZylonBane]

First post, and he bumps a nearly two-year-old thread with a question that a two-year-old could answer. We got a real winner here.

[Metal Ghost]

First post, and he bumps a nearly two-year-old thread with a question that a two-year-old could answer. We got a real winner here.

 

Now in all fairness, it shows proper use of the search function, and it's a valid question.

 

I don't think you could really accurately use an emulator for comparison purposes, though I think some more educated on the subjuect would really have to chime in.

[toptenmaterial]

thank you metal ghost. i regretfully no longer own my old systems so emulation would be the path for me. but what i am curious about is whether or not an emulator could have the same control feel (in execution not the joystick itself).

[Rex Dart]

what i am curious about is whether or not an emulator could have the same control feel (in execution not the joystick itself).

 

 

That's what emulators do...

[toptenmaterial]

hey why are people on this board so disrespectful? what the point of asking questions or discussing any of this if every retort is a dis? I'm an Atari fan, not a computer engineer and you guys are dicks!

[Underball]

hey why are people on this board so disrespectful? what the point of asking questions or discussing any of this if every retort is a dis? I'm an Atari fan, not a computer engineer and you guys are dicks!

Two things:

 

1. Welcome to the internet. You might want to bring a sense of humor with you.

 

2. Zylonbane is a straight up troll. don't mind him.

[toptenmaterial]

sorry for my outburst. I am curious about comperative emulation. I have played Castlevania on both the PC and Sega Dreamcast, though the Dreamcast version looked great, the controls were abominable. Can all things be equal in emulation?

[ZylonBane]

2. Zylonbane is a straight up troll. don't mind him.

And you're a drooling moron. So there's that.

[PAC MAN FEVER]

ball-blazer is terrible on the nes and the game is quiet impressive for the 7800

[Atarifever]

2. Zylonbane is a straight up troll. don't mind him.

And you're a drooling moron. So there's that.

It is my theory that Zylonbane is actually just an alternate avatar for someone more sensible. When the sensible person wants to tool it up he puts on his evil robot undies and posts as Zylonbane. It's like the incredible hulk, only totally lame.

[toptenmaterial]

2. Zylonbane is a straight up troll. don't mind him.

And you're a drooling moron. So there's that.

It is my theory that Zylonbane is actually just an alternate avatar for someone more sensible. When the sensible person wants to tool it up he puts on his evil robot undies and posts as Zylonbane. It's like the incredible hulk, only totally lame.

you're playing simon's quest? ever beaten it without the code?

[Underball]

2. Zylonbane is a straight up troll. don't mind him.

And you're a drooling moron. So there's that.

It is my theory that Zylonbane is actually just an alternate avatar for someone more sensible. When the sensible person wants to tool it up he puts on his evil robot undies and posts as Zylonbane. It's like the incredible hulk, only totally lame.

This would actually make sense, provided he's not just another user, but actually an AA mod here in disguise. I really can't believe he gets away with 1/4 of the bullshit insults and bullying he spews her, unless he's some mod's alter-ego.

[jd_1138]

2. Zylonbane is a straight up troll. don't mind him.

And you're a drooling moron. So there's that.

It is my theory that Zylonbane is actually just an alternate avatar for someone more sensible. When the sensible person wants to tool it up he puts on his evil robot undies and posts as Zylonbane. It's like the incredible hulk, only totally lame.

This would actually make sense, provided he's not just another user, but actually an AA mod here in disguise. I really can't believe he gets away with 1/4 of the bullshit insults and bullying he spews her, unless he's some mod's alter-ego.

 

It's sad that someone would come on here and bully a new member, who's asking a valid question. We need all the members we can get -- for the classic gaming hobby and this website. He might be one of these internet tough guys, who get their kicks by acting like d-bags.

[toptenmaterial]

now this might be applicable... when nintendo released their classic NES series on the gba, flicker and slowdown were NOT corrected, e.g. the dungeons in zelda when they had lots of enemies. based on my limited experience I would say that comparisons between classic consoles can be accurately done with good emulation.

[Underball]

The thing is, I really wouldn't care about his cracks, provided the mods here would allow people to respond in kind with the same level of abuse that he puts out. Problem is, they don't allow that. I've been put on moderator preview here for far less egregious posting than zylonbane and a few others are allowed to dish out. It's like this board is an NBA game, the mods are NBA refs, and Zylonbane is LeBron James. Dude gets away with crap no one else can.

[Phredreeke]

now this might be applicable... when nintendo released their classic NES series on the gba, flicker and slowdown were NOT corrected, e.g. the dungeons in zelda when they had lots of enemies. based on my limited experience I would say that comparisons between classic consoles can be accurately done with good emulation.

 

Depends on how accurate the emulation is. Even then it's not as much a comparison between consoles as a comparison between two different games/different versions of the same game.

[4Ks]

The thing is, I really wouldn't care about his cracks, provided the mods here would allow people to respond in kind with the same level of abuse that he puts out. Problem is, they don't allow that. I've been put on moderator preview here for far less egregious posting than zylonbane and a few others are allowed to dish out. It's like this board is an NBA game, the mods are NBA refs, and Zylonbane is LeBron James. Dude gets away with crap no one else can.

 

Because what ZylonBane says is often true (if sarcastic and a bit snarky), wheras what you say is often nothing but cold, hard insults.