71
votes
What causes that "organic fade to black" effect in classic video games?
@user253751 and @WimC are correct, this fade is achieved by drawing a semi-transparent rectangle over the screen, but using a transparency mode where the rectangle's color is subtracted from the color ...
- 801
43
votes
Accepted
Why did Nintendo 64 (1996) memory cards require a battery inside them to retain data whereas the PlayStation (1994) ones did not?
Most likely different acrchitecture comes from idea how memory cards will/should be used and what are the available interfaces to access them.
The PS memory cards do have flash memory, but the bus to ...
- 24.2k
37
votes
Accepted
Why do 3D models on the PlayStation 1 “wobble” so much?
The transform applied to project geometry from 3d to the 2d coordinates necessary for drawing on a screen is called a perspective projection. It involves calculating 1/z and multiplying x and y by ...
- 33.8k
32
votes
Accepted
How did SNES render more accurate perspective than PS1?
The SNES hardware doesn’t implement perspective, it implements affine transforms of the background layer. Affine transforms aren’t sufficient for perspective.
Perspective is implemented by changing ...
- 110k
32
votes
Were CD-ROM-based games able to "hide" audio tracks inside the "data track"?
The various CD specifications dictate how specific types of tracks can be laid out on disc, but they don’t say that all audio must come from an audio CD track.
There are other considerations however, ...
- 110k
31
votes
Was "One-Winged Angel" an actual CD track, or generated by the PlayStation's sound chip with a few samples (SFX) added on top?
suppose it's possible that the PlayStation audio format does have the required instruments, and then they added the few repeated audio samples on top of that in the game engine
There are no ...
- 4,380
23
votes
Would it be technically possible to make a "Satiator" for the PlayStation?
Per the developers of PSIO, the answer is no:
Exactly why is [the internal modification] required?
There are two signals that PSIO needs in order to function that are not present on the expansion ...
- 33.8k
22
votes
Accepted
Why did the PlayStation 2 implement backward compatibility that way?
Probably because it was the only way to get 100% compatibility with the old software library, which was required while most PS2 titles weren't developed yet. No one wants to buy a machine without ...
- 10.2k
22
votes
Why did old consoles have special RAM dedicated for a specific task?
It's not limited to just consoles. Average PC in similar era than PS1 made the same distinction with several specialized memory areas for same reason.
For example in a PC the CPU has memory it can use ...
- 24.2k
22
votes
Why did old consoles have special RAM dedicated for a specific task?
The most peculiar example of RAM dedicated to a single task was the Spanish version of the Amstrad CPC464, the CPC 472. This machine an extra 64kx1 DRAM chip which was not connected to anything. Its ...
- 6,425
21
votes
How much PlayStation 1 hardware in the PS2?
Calling it an emulation might be selling it under value. There is way more upward compatibility included than just software.
Essentially the PS2 contains a full PS1 subsystem sans the GPU. It might be ...
- 195k
19
votes
Accepted
What happens when PS1's "Fearful Harmony" is triggered?
Just a disclaimer: Most of this is based on observation and assumptions from experience and should be taken with a grain of salt.
From what I've seen with this glitch, the audio being played is ...
- 306
18
votes
What causes that "organic fade to black" effect in classic video games?
This effect happens when the luminosity curve of the image is adjusted like so:
This is called gamma correction and is a fairly common feature of graphics processing software and GPUs. My research ...
- 14.5k
18
votes
Accepted
Did any PS1 games use 640x480?
You don’t need two buffers at 640x480 because television is interlaced — each field is only 640x240; if you can render at 60Hz then you can always draw the next field while the current is being output ...
- 33.8k
17
votes
Were CD-ROM-based games able to "hide" audio tracks inside the "data track"?
You can't direct a CD player to play audio directly from a data track, because the formats are different. You can read CD-quality audio from the data track and play it through the speakers, but that ...
- 8,240
16
votes
Accepted
Where did Sony's 3D graphics hardware in the PS1 originate?
I'd be likely to endorse the verdict that Ken Kutaragi designed it alone.
Kutaragi designed the SPC700, the sound processor used in the SNES. Like any other moderately advanced sound processor, it is ...
- 33.8k
14
votes
Why did Sony allegedly not want developers to take advantage of the full power of their PlayStation?
The following answer is only my personal point of view
I don't believe that Sony created a C library that was slow on purpose. They created a C library so developers use high-level interface which ...
- 10.2k
13
votes
What causes that "organic fade to black" effect in classic video games?
There can't be a simple answer, as there are many ways to reach that effect depending on console/hardware used.
Using some 'overlay' needs incredible computing power and is usually tied to rather ...
- 195k
12
votes
Was "One-Winged Angel" an actual CD track, or generated by the PlayStation's sound chip with a few samples (SFX) added on top?
It's a PSF (Portable Sound Format, see Wikipedia) music file, the PlayStation equivalent of the Amiga's module (.mod) format, where sound samples and replay data sequences are stored inside one file, ...
- 121
12
votes
Why does my PlayStation RGB video cable cause the picture to be all orange-y unless pressure is applied?
The fact that another cable type works fine doesn't rule out damage to the PlayStation itself. The relevant signal lines are only used for RGB output, so testing with a composite (non-RGB) cable ...
- 5,651
11
votes
Accepted
Do 3d consoles run OpenGL?
The first generation of consoles use proprietary APIs; I can speak directly as to the PS1.
In the PS1's case there's a vector coprocessor for performing 3d transformations and one is subsequently ...
- 33.8k
10
votes
Why does the GUI for the built-in PlayStation CD player look so weird in the latest AVGN episode?
Different BIOS versions have different built-in user interfaces for managing the memory card and playing audio CDs.
There doesn't seem to be any consistency in dates or regions to indicate one style ...
- 101
10
votes
Why do NPC party members often "get stuck" when following the player?
Firstly, on the "difficulty" of programming a teleport routine:
Teleporting an NPC when it gets stuck is actually a relatively straight-forward task to achieve. Identifying when an NPC has ...
- 7,849
10
votes
Why do PlayStation 1 CD-based video games (nearly?) always have to reload the entire level each time you start over?
Because the PS1 has a very small amount of RAM, and sophisticated games, especially those on linear tracks like Crash Bandicoot, would load new data from the disc continually as the player traversed ...
- 10.8k
10
votes
Accepted
Why was it possible to play NTSC PlayStation games in black & white on a PAL console & TV?
For the first question of why does a NTSC game disc can be started on a PAL console, there is no other explanation that the hardware is capable of running in both PAL and NTSC mode. So the game ...
- 24.2k
9
votes
Accepted
Why were the PlayStation 2 CPU and GPU initially separate chips?
The initial versions of the CPU and GPU above were over 200 mm², which is quite large. Conjecture: making them initially a single chip would have resulted in substantially diminished yield.
Being ...
- 195k
8
votes
Why were the Cell SPEs unable to operate without instruction from the PPE?
What "prevents" it is the same thing that prevents graphics cards on modern PCs from running independently: there's simply no benefit to adding what would be needed to make them independent computers, ...
- 23k
8
votes
How common was it for people who owned a PlayStation back in the day to never actually buy games, but only play demo discs?
Sony claims that it sold 102.4 million PlayStations. The best reported number I can find is that a total of 962 million games were sold. So that's an average of about 9.4 games per machine sold, with ...
- 33.8k
8
votes
Accepted
What ended the Sony console partnerships with Sega and Nintendo?
There was a relationship between Sony and Nintendo starting in 1988 and into the early 1990s as someone in Sony was looking to get into the video game business after seeing how successful the Famicom ...
- 15.1k
8
votes
Accepted
What's with the name "EmotionEngine"?
There's a pretty nifty article linked from the Wikipedia article on the Emotion Engine that discusses the details in the "Emotion Is the Difference" section on page 2:
But much of the EE’s compute ...
- 1,510
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible