5 Consoles That Had Key Features Removed Before Release

In this video I tell the story of 5 different consoles that had one or more key features removed before they went to retail.
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#RetroGaming #Sega #Nintendo

[@plushquasar653]

I always wonder how things would be different if N64 used CDs and didn’t have the texture limitations.

[@AngryCalvin]

Would have been mind blowing at the time. Also FMV which gave Saturn and PlayStation the advantage. Final Fantasy VII could have been possible. N64 was a great party console but not for serious gamers which would have been different with CD-Rom support.

[@hazy33]

Always hated the N64s water colour painting left out in the rain look.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Good description of it!

[@cliffjumper1984]

Been getting deep into your channel in the past few days. Love ideas of what ifs that you post.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Really glad you're enjoying them, these are my favourite videos to make!

[@wadmodderschalton5763]

You should do a video on the story of the unreleased addons planned to utilize the NES Expansion Slot.

[@retropalooza]

I didn't know they had a rastan on their console. I must play it

[@joejacobsonwales]

I bought an N64 and soon regretted it, I ended up swapping it for a PS1 with loads of games.

[@retropalooza]

The amico cut every single thing before launch

[@ressljs]

I wonder about the idea to add a 3D processor to the Jaguar CD. It was pretty well documented that the Jaguar and it's five processors were already difficult to program for. I figure throwing in one more would just make it even harder.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Yeah, you have a very good point!

[@dreamcaster4754]

Great video! You've made me go listen to Sega FM music on KZbin now!

[@rpgspree]

With Sega's weak North America marketing campaign, I doubt FM synth would have improved the Master System sales all that much. The N64 was certainly kneecapped in many regards. I have the feeling that the many downgrades were singularly due to their steadfast instance on ROM carts over CD. Making use of those advanced features needed far more data than could be reasonably squeezed into old fashioned carts. Rather than shelling out for all of that underutilized hardware, the design was probably hacked down to what could actually be used by games with so little data to work with. Even then, it still looked fairly bad by late 90s standards. BTW, I'd come across some interesting tidbits about the Atari 7800 that would have fit this video. The Maria chip was originally planned to have both video and audio hardware. However, as the video specs grew with each revision, they'd ran out of space on the die to fit both. They decided to move sound functions to a separate chip to accommodate the proposed video design upgrades. Reworking the rest of the system to add a sound chip wasn't feasible, so they settled on using a cart-based solution to compliment sound from the old 2600 chip. The later 2600 Jr single-chip version would have helped in that regard, but that's an alternate history altogether. The proposed Minnie carted-based sound ship would have had a 3 voice PSG that supported "2 arbitrary 64-byte waveforms stored in on-chip ROM, which could differ per-game". The standard triangle, square, and sawtooth waveforms would be generated by the sound-sample synth hardware. This simplified the design and was supposed make it cheap enough to include in every cart. Meanwhile, Tramiel took over Atari and scrapped it with everything else from the 7800 to focus on home computers. After he decided to return to the video game market and managed to settle the legal disputes with the design firm contracted for the 7800, he opted to use the old POKEY chip instead. I'm sure using Atari's own chip was cheaper upfront than shelling out more to produce Minnie, its much higher costs for publishers left few takers. Atari's other boneheaded decisions basically doomed the 7800, but like Master System's FM chip, it's still interesting to ponder what could have been.

[@TheLairdsLair]

I thought the planned 7800 sound chip for cartridges was called Gumby? Then there were also plans to use the doomed Amy chip too. I was lucky enough to interview GCC's Steve Golson as well as Atari's Michael Katz a few years back and some of their stories were amazing, they definitely dropped the ball with the 7800.

[@rpgspree]

​@@TheLairdsLair According to the design docs found online, the planned Gumby based chip was called "MiniGumby" or Minnie for short. The docs used both names. I can't be more specific because YT seems to hate me, but the details can be found on google by looking for 7800 Minnie. From what I understand, things were on course until Tramiel got involved, but the guys from GCC would know far more about the details of what went down.

[@rpgspree]

@@TheLairdsLair I didn't know about AMY. Looks like an interesting chip. Apparently a prototype had been found. I doubt anyone wants to risk wiring it up just to find out what it sounds like. It doesn't seem to have been reverse engineered...yet. It probably would have been pricey for cart based solution, but much more bang for the buck than POKEY. It might have had a few more takers, but I think most devs would have passed on it as well. Getting them to foot the bill for a chip that they'd expected to be included in the console was a hard ask. It either needed to be _cheap_ or have other features that would have been hard to pass on. Better sound sadly wouldn't rank all that high as a priority for most devs.

[@marccaselle8108]

I just wished the Atari 7800 had the pokey chip for music and sound for the system instead of whatever the sound chip was for the 2600. It's jarring playing a 7800 game with better graphics but Atari 2600 sound. It's too bad only ballblazer and commando used the pokey chips in those games for sound and music.

[@seblav9386]

The Atari Jaguar when it was new. I rent one and after one hour, bang, the console stopped to function. Broken 😂 The guy at the video games story was angry after me. Damn, not my fault 🤣 I had no problems with others consoles.

[@seblav9386]

The console was so lightweight, already in my head "it seem cheap" 😂

[@dragokills6990]

I always thought the N64 sucked, perhaps this is why!

[@geoffreymclaughlin7412]

😱 Promo-SM!!!

[@popixel]

Starting off right away FM sound. I’m glad that was removed, I don’t like the way it sounds. With that said, had I grown up with it I probably would have liked it, but now when I play SMS I can’t stand using FM.