🚀 go-pugleaf

On 26 Apr 1996 00:44:51 GMT, wl...@csulb.edu (William Lane) wrote:

>	I just have a quick question for the console-crowd:
>many of the games I'm gettin for my PC these days have memory
>requirements like 8MB's minimum, 16MB recommended, yet I hear
>consoles have only something like 4MB or RAM? How can consoles
>run games like Mechwarrior w/only 4MB of memory? DOS doesn't use
>up THAT much memory!

Depends on the game.  Doom for example, didn't have any arch-viles in
the PSX version because there likely wasn't enough memory to allow for
the ressurection of characters and it had fewer overall textures as
well.  TopGun on the PSX, while  being a somewhat-simplistic
simulation on the PC, is basically an Afterburner-clone shoot-em-up on
the PSX.

It's not the same as a PC having 2 megs of memory (which is what these
consoles really have, 2 megs for main, 1.5 for video, 512k for sound)
as many graphic routines are in ROM's, there's a very minimal OS, most
(99%)  games are in low-res (320*224/240), and programmers simply work
harder.  But it does restrict the type of game you can get, which is
why they are usually tailored for arcade-style experiences.  One PSX
user was boasting that Duke was coming to the PSX (eventually-
whatever that means), you will bet it will have quite a few features
missing from the PC version- no matter how good the programmers are,
There simply isn't enough ram to duplicate all the texures and
animation in Duke, which is plenty.  The PSX is a fine machine, but
neither console nor PC can completely replace each other at this
point.