>While HuCards would be nice for the TE
>(any company that does PCB work should be able to do a Hu without much
>trouble) why do you want to make them? Games on CD, SCD and ACD are much
>more cheaply replicated as compared to Hus. 1,000 CDs in jewel boxes with
>four page front inserts are $2300. Bump that up to 5,000 CDs and you're
>talking $5500. Doing Hu replication is going to cost more than that.
I don't mean to put words in anybody's mouth here, but there are a few
reasons why a developer might prefer HuCards to CD's. I have given this
much thought over the past few years, BTW...
(1) The tools aren't ready for CDROM creation yet. But they are getting to
be quite reasonable for HuCards.
(2) TurboExpress/TG-16 usage. While most people have a CD-capable machine,
not everybody does. And there isn't a portable CDROM version of the machine.
(3) They are harder to pirate, at least as tangible goods.
(4) Small-run CDROMs aren't so cheap. While 1,000 pieces may cost $2300
including packaging, that's $23 each if you only sell 100 copies. Well,
this may be a bit extreme as an example... but a HuCard could possibly be
done a little cheaper for small-scale projects (and I am quite certain that
you won't be able to sell 5,000 copies). CD-R's may be a cheaper vehicle
for small-market sales, but there is considerable variability in their
tolerances, and the older CD/CDROM players (like the Turbo) are very
sensitive to this. I doubt that anybody would want to pay for a CD-R of
something unless it's a rare prototype (and authentic at that).
(5) There is an arguable copyright issue regarding the CD bootstrap code -
at least outside of the USA's legal jurisdiction. The CD boot card
compares the contents of one sector on the disc against a "key" in its own
memory. If it doesn't match, it won't run the disc. Unfortunately, this
"key" information includes several copyright and ownership notices. I am
fairly certain that this type of key system was ruled illegal in some Sega
case (Sega vs. Accolade maybe ?), but this ruling only applies to the USA -
it may still be arguable outside the USA. To make a case for developing
games for an old system like this, you can't think about only one country.
(Mind you, with the collapse of NEC Home Electronics in the USA and Japan,
nobody is likely to pursue this...)
Having said all that, I think there are compelling reasons to prefer CDROM
development (specifically Super CDROM's) over HuCards, and I would prefer
to spend my time doing that, **once the tools are available**....
- Dave