Intellivision vs PC Engine

[mkg]

Intellivision is 16-bit CPU and PC Engine is 8-bit CPU

huh?

[Deleted]

Apr 11, 2015 15:03:07 GMT -5 mkg said:

Intellivision is 16-bit CPU and PC Engine is 8-bit CPU

Well ...

	Intellivision	PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16
CPU	CP1610 ( 16-bit ) @ 0.89 MHz	HuC6280 ( 8-bit ) @ 7.16 MHz
GPU	AY-3-8900-1 ( STIC )	HuC6260 ( 16-bit ) + HuC6270 ( 16-bit )
Resolution	160 x 96	256 x 224 *¹
Colors	16 *²	512

*¹ It has higher resolution modes, but 256 x 224 is the common resolution.
*² You can only use 1 color per sprite & 2 colors per tile.

[Deleted]

We're also comparing two different generations in video game hardware. The PCE had a graphics coprocessor that did most of the heavy lifting.

[mekanaizer]

Apart from the CP1600 been a good CPU to learn Assembly from. The INTV is more of a striped down version of the CP1600 when you see instructions take up to 10 cycles and more compared to the CP1600, missing instructions present in much older CPU's and in the CP1600, etc...

That said, the INTV can been or is a good entry point to learn low level programming from. But the winner in the 'easy to learn' department I most say, it's the DreamCast's VMU with it's little POTATO CPU . Not pointing CHIP8's due to it's "virtual" nature.

[blabla]

The only thing the Intellivision can do and the NEC PC Engine can't is the fact the Intelliviison can scale sprites up to 2x horizontally and up to 8x vertically,
something the PC Engine can't do without using multiple sprites.
For everything else however, the NEC PC-Engine is much superior.
The PC Engine has 16 palettes, each with 16 colors. In that aspect, it is much superior to the Megadrive or even the SNES.
However, there are only 512 colors to choose from and there's only one background available : that background can't have more than 16 colors.
(Unless you use some trickery of course)
8k of RAM is really not enough for a 16-bit game.
It reminds me of the Colecovision, which had 1kb of RAM but 16kb of VRAM !