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The 1991 "X-Box"
Jim Hall writes "Back in college (1991), I wondered why no one had bothered to make a DOS-based game console.
One day, in the back of a notebook, I made some notes about how you might go about creating a DOS-based game console. (I even called it an "X-Box", but really the "X" was there because I didn't know what else to call it. Microsoft's current "XBox" console is completely different, and I don't claim any rights to the "X-Box" name.)
I've posted some scans of my notes, and a discussion about how you would create a DOS-based game console."
My thoughts exactly. The author is either misinformed, has an extremely bad memory, or is making it up. As for which I believe to be true, well, those papers look a little too well preserved to have been created in 1991 IMHO (how many of you keep doodlings you made 12 years ago?).
:(
CD-ROM drives in 1991 were OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive, as were sound cards. Flash ROM? In 1991? Affordable? Please...
An EGA card that can also output NTSC video (whether s-video or composite) would have been unheard of, namely because there wouldn't have been any point: EGA cards could do 640x200, but only in black & white (1-bit color). They could do up to 16 colors (4-bit color) in a different video mode, but only at 320x200. Yeah, that's right, 320x200, not 320x240. Oops, did somebody just get caught?
And the Voodoo 3 3000 was most certainly NOT available in 1995! Perhaps some cards based on the Voodoo 1 chipset, but the Voodoo 3 chipset wouldn't hit the scene until the late '90s.
The 286 had multitasking and protected mode, just like the 386. The real problem with it (as opposed to the "problem" the author states) was that, being a 16-bit machine (although the address space had been increased to 24-bit), it still had to use segments to be able to access all of its address space, and to handle programs with more than 64K of code and data.
As for the 286 being the first Intel processor that was backwardly compatible: no. No no no no no. The 8086 was "backward" compatible with the 8088 (in fact, they were exactly the same, except for the 8088 sacrificed some speed to cut down motherboard costs by only having 8 data lines instead of the 8086's 16, but made up for it (which is where the slowness comes in) by doing two reads in succession), the 80186 (yes, there was a 186, but it sold very poorly) was backwardly compatible with the 8088 and 8086, etc.
As for the SNES, both it and the Genesis probably had about equal market penetration. The SNES had better RPGs IIRC, but the Genesis had better sidescrolling action & platform games thanks to its faster processor. Yeah, the SNES had Mario, but the Genesis had Sonic The Hedgehog, Jurassic Park (the Genesis version of Jurassic Park was light years better than all the other versions and even had better graphics too; not coincidentally, the Genesis version was made by a different company than the one that did all the other versions), Vectorman, etc. "The SNES had the biggest, baddest games of its day." Not quite. When it first came out, most of the games sucked. Even for games where the same company made both a Genesis and an SNES version, the Genesis version was usually better. Take a look at Earthworm Jim if you don't believe me. It wasn't until games like StarFox and Donkey Kong Country came out that the SNES started to reach critical mass, but even then it always carried Nintendo's "kiddie" reputation thanks to the boatloads of games with cutesy characters (Mario, Yoshi, Kirby, etc.) that Nintendo churned out. Genesis remained the hardcore gamer's platform of choice for many years.
I'd like to think that this guy is just badly misinformed or looking at the past through a set of (highly revisionist) rose-colored glasses, but my honest oppinion is that he made this up. I could understand calling it System X, Console X, etc., but X Box? Howww conveeeenient...