> okay - for those of you that have some knowledge of Sega's SYSTEM 16 A/B boards
> from ~1986 (just the basic single-cpu ones) and Capcom's CPS board from 1988,
> how do the two architectures compare?
>
> we can look at the paper-specs and can see that on paper, the CPS is newer, and
> in some respects, more powerful.
>
> SEGA SYSTEM 16 A/B
> Main CPU: MC68000 10 MHz
> Secondary CPU: Z80
> Video Resolution: 320 x 224
> Colors: 4096 on-screen out of 32,768 (?)
> Sprites: 128 sprites (16x16 or 8x8 ?)
> Background Layers: 2
> Effects: hardware sprite zooming/scaling, translucent shadows
>
> CAPCOM CPS
> Main CPU: MC68000 - 10 MHz
> Secondary CPU: Z80 - 4 MHz
> Video Resolution: 384 x 224
> Colors: 2048 on-screen out of 65,536
> Sprites: 256 sprites (16x16 or 8x8?)
> Background Layers: 3
> Effects: ???? no zooming/scaling?
>
> but how do these architectures compare in practice? I know that paper specs
> don't always reveal the realworld in-game capabilities. although some things
> are obvious.
>
> the newer CPS board has higher resolution, a larger color pallete (although both
> are large enough) seemingly more sprites on screen, and one more background
> layer than System 16.
>
> the older System 16 board seems to have a few advantages over the CPS - more
> colors on screen at once, dispite a smaller pallete, and hardware
> zooming/scaling.
>
> I'm sure that the differences in the color capabilities between the two are
> actually very small if non existant. the CPS could probably use upto 4096 colors
> if programmed to, like System 16 has. and System 16's color pallete of 32768
> probably isnt really much worse than CPS's 65536 color pallete.
>
> where things get interesting is in sprites (128 vs 256) parallax background
> layers ( 2 vs 3) and effects like scaling (some vs none?)
>
>
> also, I wanted to throw this out there. what if CPS games like Forgotten Worlds,
> Ghouls N Ghosts, Strider, Final Fight, Street Fighter 2, etc were
> converted/ported "down" to the System 16 board?

Ported *down*? System16 can do scaling, end of argument! My board is better than your board :-P
;-)

> we've seen how CPS conversions
> turned out on the Megadrive/Genesis, which is conciderably less powerful than
> System 16, not to mention the much smaller rom sizes. now if we 'upgrade' from
> the newer Megadrive/Genesis (1988) to the older System16 (~1986) in hardware
> and give System16 conversions/ports of CPS games the same rom size as the CPS
> versions, how would things turn out? I'd imagine pretty close to the CPS
> versions in most cases. they'd be slightly lower resolution. but I am sure the
> System 16 could be programmed to do an additional parallex background layer
> (like Genesis/MD often was) for games like Street Fighter 2 that seems to use
> CPS's 3 layers quiet well.
>
> overall there is probably a larger difference between MD/Genesis and CPS or
> System16, than there is between System16 and CPS, agree?
>


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