How many Video9000 cartridges were sold? (Not the Sunrise GFX9000/Tecnobytes Powergraph V9990 cards, I'm talking about the Video9000 with superimposer capabilities)
At least we have OpenMSX support for it. (Video9000) I had much fun playing with 3-plane background using SC5 and P1 dual-plane modes superimposed last week. I know I still can select sprite priority over the first plane of P1 mode, but it made a difference the 3-plane parallax scrolling.
For development on openMSX I think the Video9000 support is handy due to the programmatical video source switching. Gfx9000 games should instruct the Video9000 appropriately for those few lucky owners and just in case the hardware (or some compatible superimpose-only subset) ever becomes available again.
However it should not be relied upon to create 3-plane graphics and such, it will effectively make it an emulator-only game as the actual hardware is very rare, and the vast majority of Gfx9000 owners are left in the cold while there is so little software for it already.
True, Grauw. One cannot simply make a game for just 25 Video9000 out there or emulator only. (any gameplay that would have gameplay to interact V99x8 elements will suffer)
BUT, you can make a game that would benefit of an superimposed V9990 on top of V99x8 graphic, (extended background parallax scrolling, or even an score menu - it won't hurt having your highscore on another screen) but isn't unplayable without it (instead of a nice 3rd layer, "plain GFX9000" users will see a solid color... it doesn't even have to be black, you can set any color to transparent on V9990).
@Manuel, OpenMSX do support superimposing V9990 on top of V99x8 (and maybe TMS9918! haven't tested thou). Seems it's not full support because AFAIK the only input to the Video9000 is the MSX VDP output, rendering the input selection bits on Video9000 control port meaningless. (and again AFAIK, the half-tone bits too)
I'm telling this based on the tests I made, the ones I reported back on this thread.
Do anyone here have the contact of any Sunrise member involved with Video9000 project? Yes, I'm going to ask for schematics and documentation... I'm sure it won't hurt asking.
Anyway, if any Video9000 owner don't mind sharing some pictures with me it will certainly help.
