WAR!

[super_dos_man]

screw 32 bit consoles. if you hate me for saying that please don't hurt me

 

just give your opinion on the best for each era listed

[Dusk2600]

had to say nintendo across the board. although i didnt want 2

[ZylonBane]

Where's the "Who started the dumbest poll this week?" section?

[sega saturn x]

Where's the "Who started the dumbest poll this week?" section?

Why do you even bother posting? You never have anything constructive to say.

[Room 34]

Sometimes you have to break things down before you can rebuild them.

[Crazy Climber]

Where's the "Who started the dumbest poll this week?" section?

Why do you even bother posting? You never have anything constructive to say.

Burn

[Lord Thag]

Where's the "Who started the dumbest poll this week?" section?

 

It's right under the 'most needlessly sarcastic reply' of the week poll

 

 

In my book, I like Atari as the best 8-bit. I play it WAY more than the NES

 

The Genesis wins the 16-bit, as I like more geny games than snes (which admittedly had some awesome square titles)

 

64 bit, I don't much care.

[Mr_8bit_16bit]

Neat thread idea tying all three of these eras together! I think if you were gonna do war though, you should do total war and go ahead and include 32bit, pre-crash, and current gen. I may make a thread that takes your wonderful idea and expounds upon it. I don't know what Zylon Bane's talking about.

 

I'll elaborate on my choices, which incidentally mirror yours. I'll start with the one I have the most to say about: The 16-bit era:

 

********************************************************************************

 

I know most of this I've already said on previous threads, but they go back over a year so I figure I'm clear to repeat myself:

 

Back in the day, I was actually adamantly pro-SNES for it's better graphics and sound. And for games like Mario, Zelda, Contra, Castlevania, FZero, Mario Kart etc etc etc. Come 93, I did get a Genesis and liked it, but it failed to change my persuasion...in fact, it cemented it (although I could give up the "I hate Sega Genesis" mantra now that I was playing on both sides and it was no longer my mortal enemy. )

 

But looking back, I have changed my aleigences. While it could perhaps be argued that the more of the absolute creme de la creme, top of the mountain, quintessential games of the 16-bit era graced the SNES than the Genesis, the wholesale number of excellent games in my opinon was much higher on the Genesis. It seems that apart from the elites, the SNES games were more ho-hum than the Genesis games.

 

And the SNES sound system was a double edged sword. When it did well, it did very well. But when it did crappy it just sounded cheesy. The same could be said about the Genesis, I suppose. But the Gensis not only didn't aim as high, but it's sound scheme had sort of a mystique to it. It had it's own character to it. It had personality. The SNES's simply attempted to replecate reality...sometimes well, sometimes not.

 

And the graphics difference isn't cut and dry either. Sure, the SNES had way more colors than the Genesis (256 vs 64 simultaneous and 32,768 total vs 512 total or in other words, 4x the simultanous colors and a whopping 64x the total available colors...one more way to look at it, the SNES could simultaneously produce half of the Genesis' total pallette...now, whether it actually did or not is another question.)

 

But there's the resolution issue. I was gullible as a teenager. So much so, that I would dismiss what I saw with my own two eyes as wrong just because I had read a spec that said it was the other way. The SNES spec sheet says it can do 512x448 resolution wheras the Genesis could only do, like 320x260 or something like that. What I hadn't realized is that the SNES routinely only ran at half resolution to keep the processor load lower.

 

It had actually appeared to me that the Genesis games looked higher resolution in places with soft or no colors, or on things like Sonic's character sprite or Altered Beast. But since the spec sheet said what it did, I dismissed it as a trick of the eye. Anyway, since learning the truth about the SNES resolution, I have since become accutely aware of the resolution difference.

 

And so, the graphics advantage is circumstantial.

 

In instances where multiple, beautiful, clean and clear colors are a bigger advantage than higher resolution, the SNES wins. But in instances where colors are pale or not there, of extremely high levels of detail are essential, the Genesis actually wins. Now, everything the SNES did, it did cleaner than the Genesis. And the SNES color management was perfect whereas the Genesis in the name of backwards compatiblilty inherited the same color management nightmares and oft blurry picture of the Mastersystem.

 

So, high color instances are detrimental to the Genesis because many of the details are lost in the colors, and the colors had a tendancy to pixelate on the genesis, especially when there was a bright color with a bright contrasting color behind it. Also, if there is an advantage to be had to the lower resolution, it took fewer pixels to make a larger character on the SNES.

 

I suppose the high color, larger character, crystal clear, unpixelated or distored colors, perfect picture of the SNES won more battles than the Higher resolution, higher detail picture of the Genesis did....but the victory is not total. While it's true, if they had tried to do Contra III on the Gensis, it wouldn't have looked nearly as good, and both the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat games looked better on the SNES, the SNES would've done an embarrasing job trying to tackle resoultion happy Altered Beast or even Sonic.

 

And actually, the more I play, the more bothered I become by the SNES's resolution. Especially since they made the graphics hardware capable of double that.

 

Sure, I would have to concede that despite it's warts, and the sometimes literal, sometimes philosophical advantages of the competition, all in all, the SNES -is- better hardware all around, yet at the end of the day, hardware must ultimately take a back seat to software, and to that end, Gensis gets the Gold....sorry Mario.

 

Anyway, that's my take on the SNES vs Genesis.

 

********************************************************************************

 

Now, the 8-bit era:

 

********************************************************************************

 

Sure, in terms of 2D side scrolling sprite and bitmap based graphics, the Mastersystem ruled all. It actually nipped at the heels of the TG 16 (which should've been in this competition in the 16-bit, BTW) It had the largest characters, the highest characters, the highest amount of detail and (I believe) the highest resolution.

 

But it had horrible color management, a fairly blurry picture, and typically had a more sluggish pace than the NES. Also, for what it's worth at this low level, the NES had the better sound hardware. The two were not all that dissimilar, it's just the NES could do more at once.

 

The NES had smaller characters, less colors, and less detail than the SMS, and more flicker, but it had a much cleaner, clearer picture and a faster, smoother pace. Less than 50% of the time to be sure, but sometimes the alure of crispness and clarity outweighed all the goodies the SMS had on the other side of the dirty lens.

 

How does the Atari 7800 fare? Well, we were just debating this in another thread, and my thought is regardless of whether it was a graphics chip issue or a jack tremiel chip issue, the 7800 just consistently came in below (often way below) either of the other two in terms of graphics. Now, to be fair, in very processor intensive cases, like Ball Blazer, the 7800 is king of the hill, but those types of games that utilize those facets of the hardware were few and far between and oft were not all that great of games.

 

So, the 7800 sits at a distant "hey, wait for me, guys!" third in terms of hardware and software..in fact, were it not for the backwards compatibility with the venerable 2600 (which shares a processor with the NES, surprisingly) the 7800 would likely have been no more than a blip on the history of video games.

 

In terms of hardware, I have to begrudgingly acknowledge that the Mastersystem is aptly named, but once again, software is the deciding factor and in that respect, it's a no-contest.

 

Despite the mountain of crap that the NES had to endure, it had a mountain of gold too. A mountain not even approaching being rivaled by anyone from it's generation, and arguably, any generation. So as far behind the SMS the 7800 is, the SMS is behind the NES in the same measure.

 

And that's the 8-bit for you.

 

********************************************************************************

 

I don't have very much to say about the 64 bit systems, but the thing that strikes me right away is that the Jaguar is anything but 64-bit. They could legally call it 64 bit by some odd technicality loophole that really was a stretch anyhow.

 

More often than not it performed more like a 16-bit system.

 

You'll have to forgive me, I'm not as familiar with Jaguar hardware as say SNES and Genesis, but wasn't the CPU of the Jaguar actually 8-bit? Or I think I remember now. I heard that they got the 64-bit from the fact that there were 8 8-bit CPUs running in concord, like how the saturn had two 32-bit CPUs, but just as with the saturn and 32+32=32, the jaguar was 8+8+8+8+8+8+8+8=8.

 

***Please correct me if I'm wrong on that hardware analysis..I really need to study up on the Jag and I don't want to come off as Mr. Know it All.***

 

But in any case. The N64 made a big mistake sticking with cartridges. It didn't have enough memory and thus many of the textures were smudgy, and blurry, and there was way too much fog all the time. Plus, as a whole, I don't think the software on the 64 was nearly as good as Nintendo's previous two systems...

 

The N64 was the only system I actually got on release day (two days before, to be exact) and I have found it to be somewhat of a disappointment in terms of both hardware and software....that being said, it just totally kicks the crap out of the jaguar at every single angle....okay, okay, the cosmetic design of the jaguar cartridges were cooler than that of the N64, and as worthless as the Jaguar's disc drive was, even the most crappy hardware is better than vaporware, which the N64DD was...at least stateside.

 

Nevertheless....the N64 as big a let down as the N64 was, it is still, unquestionably, undoubtably the resounding king of 64-bit.

 

********************************************************************************

Edited July 18, 2006 by Mr_8bit_16bit

[JB]

I don't have very much to say about the 64 bit systems, but the thing that strikes me right away is that the Jaguar is anything but 64-bit. They could legally call it 64 bit by some odd technicality loophole that really was a stretch anyhow.

 

More often than not it performed more like a 16-bit system.

 

You'll have to forgive me, I'm not as familiar with Jaguar hardware as say SNES and Genesis, but wasn't the CPU of the Jaguar actually 8-bit? Or I think I remember now. I heard that they got the 64-bit from the fact that there were 8 8-bit CPUs running in concord, like how the saturn had two 32-bit CPUs, but just as with the saturn and 32+32=32, the jaguar was 8+8+8+8+8+8+8+8=8.

 

***Please correct me if I'm wrong on that hardware analysis..I really need to study up on the Jag and I don't want to come off as Mr. Know it All.***

 

As the hardware trivia guy:

The Jag is a mess. It's a giant pile of processors.

There's a 16-bit 68000(just like the Genesis. This processor is in control during the BIOS boot sequence. It also serves as the main processor in a large amount of software released, just because the 68k was the most familiar part of the system).

A pair of 32-bit processors(one of which was designated as the CPU, though it was no more central than any other part).

And a pair of 64-bit processors(intended as graphics hardware, though they could be used for other purposes. Similar to modern PC video cards can do physics calculations or run Frogger in PixelShader, tangentally.).

All of this was connected together with a 64-bit memory bus.

 

 

As far as legally speaking goes...

No one on Earth would file a lawsuit for bittage claims, because they were all pulling numbers out of their butts and no one wanted to open that Pandora's box.

 

Some examples from various eras:

The N64 had a processor capable of running 64-bit instructions, but it was used in 32-bit mode almost exclusively because it was far faster in that mode.

 

The TurboGrafX/PCEngine used an 8-bit CPU. If I recall, it used 2 of them, and NEC added 8+8 to get 16.

 

The Dreamcast had a 128-bit graphics chip, but that was it.

 

The 99/4a had a 16-bit CPU and TI pushed it as the first 16-bit machine, but it was attached to an 8-bit motherboard by a large pile of logic, making this distinction somewhat meaningless. Especially as the 8088 used in the IBM PC was a 16-bit processor with an 8-bit external bus, which placed the overall system in EXACTLY the same class as the 4a.

 

 

But in any case. The N64 made a big mistake sticking with cartridges. It didn't have enough memory and thus many of the textures were smudgy, and blurry, and there was way too much fog all the time. Plus, as a whole, I don't think the software on the 64 was nearly as good as Nintendo's previous two systems...

The blur was actually caused by texture filtering, which was intended to make them look BETTER.

Of course, whether it works or not depends greatly on what you're doing. Sometimes you WANT the raw pixel look of the PS(but generally never it's serious texture alignment errors). Other times you just don't want the blur of the N64.

Fortunately, texture filtering's gotten a lot better since then.

 

Visible blurring on an actual texture means it was stored with those details drawn onto it. That's more space, not less(increased color depth required, if nothing else).

 

Also worth noting that the PS1 was perpetually RAM starved, and highly restricted in texture use because of it.

 

 

If I had to bet, fog was likely an attempt to increase poly counts in the scene. Less draw distance = more detail in the area that IS drawn. Fog hides the resulting pop-in.

 

Since Nintendo was pushing their system as a PS killer, they wanted to make sure games looked more detailed.

Or it could've just been developers abusing a feature that wasn't available on the competition.

 

 

 

And from what I've heard, the REAL reason Nintendo didn't go CD was that they had a particularly bad contract with Sony, who supplied the SNES sound hardware.

 

Seems Sony slipped a clause in there that said they got publication rights for any Nintendo CDs, which Nintendo likely assumed would be soundtracks. CD-ROM wasn't a viable gaming format when they made the deal, so they didn't think much about it until they tried to do the SNESCD expansion and it spun around and bit them in the butt. They bailed on the SNESCD as it became obvious Sony intended to publish ANY game if the developer was willing to pay the license fee and Nintendo would have zero control over their system's library.

 

Assuming the contract hadn't expired(which is really the only way I see that the system makes sense)*, the N64 skipped CDs because Sony would've had publication rights. There was no way they were letting a competitor decide what software wound up on their system.

 

 

*Nintendo knew ROM was easy enough to pirate, as they'd been fighting piracy since he creation of the FamiCom. The plethora of controlled optical media systems proves that you can lock developers out with a pure software solution, to say nothing of Atari's own lockout on the 7800. So justification for proprietary media failed on both angles.

Access time, while a concern, certainly didn't over-ride dirt-cheap media, especially not for the perpetually profit-concious Nintendo.

 

 

 

None of which makes the N64 any better. I'm not very impressed with it either.

It just puts some light on the issues exhibited.

 

The N64 was the only system I actually got on release day (two days before, to be exact) ...

Ouch.

 

 

 

 

 

You said basically everything I would want to say about the Genesis/SNES war.

 

Though I think the Genny's speed makes the hardware issue less cut&dried.

IMO, which hardware was genuinely better depended on what you were trying to do.

Edited July 18, 2006 by JB

[Foxsolo2000]

Where's the "Who started the dumbest poll this week?" section?

Why do you even bother posting? You never have anything constructive to say.

 

Yeah ZB get a life or a personality transplant I said Sega for the 16 Bit and Nintendo for the last two. I know the argument that the SNES was technically superior to the mega Drive/Genesis but I just loved the system. As for the 64 Bit I wanted to say Atari but in all essence the Nintendo 64 was just miles better and in the 8-bit although I had both I had to favour the NES simply for Mario

[thomasholzer]

Its all about...have you used both/all, let's say for about a year, to compare? Otherwise how do you know? How can you vote, if you're only a SNES user (and never even owned a Genesis), for example?

Edited July 18, 2006 by thomasholzer

[Video]

I posted Nintendo all the way across the board.

 

8 Bit, well, Atari 2600, while it was in production through the entire NES Lifetime, was never intended to be competition with the Nintendo. It's a precrash machine, and Nintendo a Post Crash Machine. You could say the same for the 7800 even, had it been released rather than shelved, it would have been released during the game crash. (of course, it could have been the reason that the market came out of the crash instead of Nintendo, who knows?) The fact that the 2600 had a good selection of new games up till 91 or so, just proved it was a great system.

 

Still, the NES is the clear winner.

 

16 bit. Yeah, I'm aware that pretty much anybody will say that the Genesis had better hardware, blah, blah, blah. But the fact of the matter, the exclusive games were more interesing to me (and still are) on the SNES. And the games that were released on both systems, were generally better on the SNES.

 

I remember hearing somewhere that the SNES had a high res mode, but for the most part, games were still 320x240 on there just like the genesis.

 

Genesis has it's high points. Sonic probably wouldn't have been as fast on the SNES, but then again, Mario wouldn't have been as pretty or sound as good on the Genesis. Hardware, just depends on what you think is more important.

 

And 64 bit. Well, the Jaguar, was actually competeing with 16 bit consoles, and extremely early, and pretty much schitty 32 hardware. In fact, most people consider the era the 64 in, to be the 32 bit era. For real, why not list Saturn, or the PSX, these are the true competitors to the N64, though even still, I would have still voted Nintendo.

 

The Saturn was a way more powerful sprite system, than the other two, but at this time, 3D was the big thing. While the Saturn could keep up, and to my knowledge, actually had better hardware, it was a pain to program for, and ultimately died.

 

As for the PSX and N 64, the biggest thing that I"ve heard people diss the 64 for, was the fact it did about half the polys of the PSX....however. When the PSX listed 300,000 poly capacity, that is for naked polys, while the N 64's listed 150,000 was for textured polys. The end result, was that the PSX actually pushed around the same poly count once they had textures, and they had to use ram that would have been used to push more polys to achieve that. Add to that, the fact that the PSX had poor poly texturing hardware, probably due to them not thinking of texturing the polys, that the PSX can't actually draw a streight line, and often ends up with a wavy look to the game. And all of a sudden, the N64's anti alised screens often looked better than the PSX games.

 

Not to say the PSX couldn't do good, just look at Need for Speed, and Spyro, which were great games, and you see the system can have strong points. But over all, teh 64 still was better IMO. Lots of people will say the 64's major flaw was carts. Truthfully, That was a bonus for me. The true flaw with the 64 for me, was actually the flimsy stick. Of course, third party useualy fixed that. This is probably the first system where third party companys useualy made as good, or better of controller than the hardware company did.

[Mr_8bit_16bit]

Though I think the Genny's speed makes the hardware issue less cut&dried.

IMO, which hardware was genuinely better depended on what you were trying to do.

 

Sure. Both have circumstancial superiority. As I had elaborated on using graphics and sound as the examples. But if I were to have to choose one or the other and say that when all the pros and cons are weighed and all the talleys counted and all the considerations made, if I were to say which one ultimately was the superior hardware, then by a slim margin, I would have to say SNES..

 

Now I do understand what you're saying. I understand that you're saying it's too circumstancial and you can't decide a one ultimate victor. But I urge you to consider it. I'll bet you end up being pulled one way or the other.

 

I certainly never meant to imply it was a cut and dry decision, nor an easy one. I almost went the other way. But it was the fact that the graphics were better more than 50% of the time, and the sound was always superior accademically and usually superior philosophically. I think the intensity of the SNES slowdown phenomenon was overplayed and exagerated, and the claim that Genesis had no slowdown is false. The slowdown never really bothered me. And regardless of which system could do it faster, many a time, a cross platform game would play at about the same speed on both units and usually looked and sounded better SNES side. (I call Earthworm Jim 2 to the stand, your honor.)

 

I guess the deciding factor is that despite a slower processor and a more lopsided architecture that through the weakness of one component can't even harness the full force of another component. This nightmare in a box still manages to outshine the competition approx 70-85% of the time. That's why it gets my vote. If not the little engine that could, the 65816 is at the very least, the little engine that somehow managed to anyway.

 

You would still contend that the overall merits of the system are circumstancial, but that's self contradictory. There's no room for circumstantial in overall. Overall is the summation of all the black numbers and all the red numbers. It's all things considered. It's all circumstantial's weighed in and compared.

 

If you can determine for yourself which one you believe is the overall champion, I would be very very curious to hear your answer.

[Crazy Climber]

I voted the big 'N' for all three. I have to admit I thought pretty hard between the Genesis and SNES but overall I just like Nintendo better. Polls aside though the Atari 2600 is hands down my favorite system ever.

[JB]

I remember hearing somewhere that the SNES had a high res mode, but for the most part, games were still 320x240 on there just like the genesis.

SNES runs almost exclusively in 256*224.

NOT just like the Genesis, which normally ran at 320*224.

 

 

As a sidenote, the 224 is an odd inheritence from the NES.

While NTSC specs 240 visible lines per field(for a total of 480 visible lines), NES programmers realized that the first and last 8 lines of a field usually weren't visible on a real television, so they often ignored them(causing garbage on the top and bottom edge of the screen if they WEREN'T cropped to 8 lines).

 

The SNES and Genesis were both designed around that assumption, and thus only draw 224 lines per field(game consoles seem to dislike the NTSC concept of a 2-field frame, and ignore the second field).

Both systems are capable of going into an interlaced "high-res" mode that enables the drawing of 448 lines(and in the SNES' case, a similar doubling of horizontal resolution occurs), though it's rarely used on either platform.

 

 

 

As always, the resolution advantage of the Genesis is usually offset by the great color depth of the SNES.

You can use the extra colors to anti-alias, or to create more intricate shading on an object. Both are good ways to fake a higher resolution.

 

And once transparency effects come into play... the SNES had them, Genesis didn't. Checkerboard transparency is just nasty.

 

Genesis has it's high points. Sonic probably wouldn't have been as fast on the SNES, but then again, Mario wouldn't have been as pretty or sound as good on the Genesis. Hardware, just depends on what you think is more important.

Indeed, which is why I say the superior system depends on what you're doing with it.

 

If you don't have a speed problem on the SNES, then it's far more advanced AV hardware makes it clearly the better platform.

 

But it's easy to trip over slowdown on the SNES if you have a lot onscreen. Gradius 3 manages to do it at points merely by scrolling the level. The Genesis harder to bring to it's knees, so you can sling more stuff around.

...

I think this had a lot to do with it's reputation as a sports system, actually. It's FAR easier to get 2 complete teams on the field on the Genny, so sports games tended to be Genesis-exclusive and those that were multiplatform were generally better on Sega(an inversion of the norm).

 

 

As for the PSX and N 64, the biggest thing that I"ve heard people diss the 64 for, was the fact it did about half the polys of the PSX....however. When the PSX listed 300,000 poly capacity, that is for naked polys, while the N 64's listed 150,000 was for textured polys.

Textured and shaded, no less.

The PS wasn't even doing lighting effects on that 300k. It was 300k StarFox polys.

 

 

 

 

 

Though I think the Genny's speed makes the hardware issue less cut&dried.

IMO, which hardware was genuinely better depended on what you were trying to do.

 

Sure. Both have circumstancial superiority. As I had elaborated on using graphics and sound as the examples. But if I were to have to choose one or the other and say that when all the pros and cons are weighed and all the talleys counted and all the considerations made, if I were to say which one ultimately was the superior hardware, then by a slim margin, I would have to say SNES..

 

Now I do understand what you're saying. I understand that you're saying it's too circumstancial and you can't decide a one ultimate victor. But I urge you to consider it. I'll bet you end up being pulled one way or the other.

I've tried, and I just can't.

Which system I prefer varies greatly with what games I'm in the mood for.

 

I think the intensity of the SNES slowdown phenomenon was overplayed and exagerated, and the claim that Genesis had no slowdown is false.

I've never said it doesn't have slowdown, just that it takes more action to set it off.

 

SNES slowdown isn't as visible as it could be, because the kind of games that set off slowdown fits rarely appear on the SNES.

Developers generally took great pains to limit the number of active objects onscreen, and it restricted what genres they could approach.

And that's what bothers me about it. The SNES library is hurt by a lack of fast action titles.

 

The slowdown never really bothered me. And regardless of which system could do it faster, many a time, a cross platform game would play at about the same speed on both units and usually looked and sounded better SNES side. (I call Earthworm Jim 2 to the stand, your honor.)

Multi-platform games are typically designed from the start to be possible on all platforms.

That means you keep them within the bounds of the weaker system's CPU.

 

You would still contend that the overall merits of the system are circumstancial, but that's self contradictory. There's no room for circumstantial in overall. Overall is the summation of all the black numbers and all the red numbers. It's all things considered. It's all circumstantial's weighed in and compared.

 

If you can determine for yourself which one you believe is the overall champion, I would be very very curious to hear your answer.

Like I said, it depends too much on what I'm in the mood for to give one the nod.

 

When I want to kick back and play an action-adventure or RPG title, the SNES is the winner.

But when I want a nice good shoot-'em-dead blastfest, well... Genesis does what Nintendon't.

 

 

Once upon a time, I DID call the SNES the clear winner. And it's still a strong contender. But it's seriously lacking in a genre I find very attractive, which makes it very hard to still call it such.

But the Genesis lacks Metroid, Megaman, and Mario.

 

 

 

If the SNES had a serious shooter presence instead of a dozen games, mostly unplayable, I might still give it the crown. But as things stand, I really can't pick one.

[+Psionic]

I can't believe more people voted for the 7800 than the Master System, that's sad. Oh well, this is AtariAge I suppose...

[jetset]

40 votes so far. Not such a dumb poll after all apparently.

[Mr_8bit_16bit]

JB, I actually was going to beat you to the punch on correcting that resolution issue, but my browser crashed and then people came over...so, kudos.

 

What I found interesting is the resolution difference between SG and SN vertical resolution is a ratio of 1.25 (320/256) This difference ratio is not all that dissimilar from the difference ratio between EDTV originally in 16:9 (852x480p) and EDTV originally in 4:3 (640x480p) which is 1.33xxxxxxxxx. (852/640) I've noticed on some multiplatform games, a lot of times, the characters seem slimmer in the Genesis version (more vertical lines on screen, same vertical lines in character) as if they were originally intended for 16:9 but it automatically compresses the image to fit 4:3. Now, I realize that that wasn't the thought process, but that concept can be applied retroactively and in reverse. I speculate that if you take those games with the scrunched characters and put them on a 16:9 TV in normal view mode (in other words it auto stretches 4:3 to 16:9. and then compare it to the SNES version on a similar sized 4:3 TV, I'd imagine the characters would look pretty similar.

 

What value that has, I guess I don't know, but I just notices the ratios, did some math to verify and came out pretty close (I actually theorized that they would come out the same.) I just thought it was interesting to note.

 

Anyway, JB: I can understand not being able to decide which one is the ultimate. Fortunately, we don't have to decide which is best in order to play them. If you want to remain neutral on the hardware thing, I can dig it. But I do have a semantics disagreement: as I said in my previous post. You can't say which is better overall depends on the context because overall includes all contexts. You can say which is better in certain contexts and worse in others, and then say the best overall is indeterminate. But to say the best overall in certain contexts is self contradicting.

 

Okay, I'll quit splitting hairs with you now.

[JB]

But I do have a semantics disagreement: as I said in my previous post. You can't say which is better overall depends on the context because overall includes all contexts. You can say which is better in certain contexts and worse in others, and then say the best overall is indeterminate. But to say the best overall in certain contexts is self contradicting.

 

Okay, I'll quit splitting hairs with you now.

Fair enough.

 

But it could matter.

If, for example, I was a role-playing nut that didn't give a crap about action games, the SNES would be better overall.

Let's be honest, no one bought a Genesis for it's rich and varied RPG collection unless they were seriously misinformed.

 

And if I were a die-hard sports game fan... I'd probably be buying a 360 for Madden '06 and laughing at the silly idea of playing a game on hardware rapidly approaching 2 decades old.

[Mr_8bit_16bit]

That role-playing nut would not be being very objective about his hardware analysis. He would see how well the systems handled his favorite thing, choose that system and then not give appropriate weight to the other aspects of that hardware. His analysis would be biased and not really comprehensive.

 

I know that you're torn between RPGs and Shooters. And I guess I'd be willing to agree that the SNES beats the competition in the former and the Genesis beats the competition in the latter. And the reason you can't choose is because you can't decide which of the two genres you ultimately prefer (I assume) and you're gonna favor the platform that best does your preferred genre. But that too, is being a little subjective.

 

I encourage you to emotionally detach yourself and give all genres equal weight. Then go back to the architecture of the two systems, analyze, and give equal weight to all factors, and then you may yet be able to decide. Even though I prefer the Genesis all around because of it's software, I still believe the SNES hardware is superior all things considered.

 

Anyway, if I can "re-semantics-ize" what you're saying: You're essentially saying: "Genesis better at X, SNES better at Y, overall winner inderminate."

 

That I can live with.

 

Re:Xbox 360: You mean the way we used to laugh at the Atari2600 sports games 10yrs ago? You know, we don't laugh at them anymore...or at least not as hard. Antiquity eventually becomes virtue. Just like how a 20 year old car is just an old car with no honor, but a 25+yr old car is a classic, and an honored thing. That 20yr old car will become a classic in 5yrs and it'll become honorable too. It'll suddenly go from being contemptible to being desired and revered...it seems that video games work kinda the same way...first we're amazed by them, then non-plussed. Then we ridicule them, and then finally embrace them, and embrace them for the very things we once ridiculed them for. I know you meant that as a joke, but it got me thinking. Which is a dangerous thing.

[ZylonBane]

40 votes so far. Not such a dumb poll after all apparently.

Right. Because dumb things are never popular.

[jetset]

40 votes so far. Not such a dumb poll after all apparently.

Right. Because dumb things are never popular.

 

Brought you here (at least) twice.

[JB]

That role-playing nut would not be being very objective about his hardware analysis. He would see how well the systems handled his favorite thing, choose that system and then not give appropriate weight to the other aspects of that hardware. His analysis would be biased and not really comprehensive.

Was it inteded to be an objective hardware analysis, though?

Best system tends to involve a lot more than technical superiority.

 

I know that you're torn between RPGs and Shooters. And I guess I'd be willing to agree that the SNES beats the competition in the former and the Genesis beats the competition in the latter. And the reason you can't choose is because you can't decide which of the two genres you ultimately prefer (I assume) and you're gonna favor the platform that best does your preferred genre. But that too, is being a little subjective.

It's a bit broader than that.

But more or less.

 

I encourage you to emotionally detach yourself and give all genres equal weight. Then go back to the architecture of the two systems, analyze, and give equal weight to all factors, and then you may yet be able to decide. Even though I prefer the Genesis all around because of it's software, I still believe the SNES hardware is superior all things considered.

I want to stuff a spare SNES and Genny in a blender, and see what comes out.

 

 

If I had to pick a system based on total hardware merit, I think the Genesis is a better game system, just because it can do more.

I like the SNES' support hardware, and it's capable of some beautiful stuff when treated right, but the CPU limits it too much.

Heck, Sega did "mode 7" effects in software several times, and often more effectively than the SNES. SNES mode 7, while a good idea, was horribly limited in the situations it could be applied in, since it couldn't be used along with background layers.

 

 

Check out the final battle of Mario World for a good example of the problems associated with mode 7. Your status bar and the sky both disappear for the boss fight, because any scanline Koopa's clown car can enter can't have background layers active to draw them on.

 

It's also a good example of cheating around the limitations.

If you ever wondered why the propeller on the clown car retracts before it rotates or zooms into the screen, it's because the propeller isn't actually PART of the clown car.

The clown car is, obviously, a mode 7 object. The propeller, though, is a standard sprite attached to the bottom of the car.

Since it's not part of the mode 7 object, it can't be scaled or rotated and has to be removed before either effect is applied. Hence the animation where it folds up and retracts. BUT that also lets Koopa stomp the castle roof without the clown car entering a scanline with background layers, since the propeller is tall enough to elevate him above the raised bricks.

So the propeller's sole purpose in life is to work around the mode 7 limitations and let Koopa stomp on you.

 

 

 

Anyway, if I can "re-semantics-ize" what you're saying: You're essentially saying: "Genesis better at X, SNES better at Y, overall winner inderminate."

 

That I can live with.

Pretty much.

It's one of the few battles in the system war that I don't think had a real winner.

 

Re:Xbox 360: You mean the way we used to laugh at the Atari2600 sports games 10yrs ago? You know, we don't laugh at them anymore...or at least not as hard.

I laugh VERY hard at 2600 Baseball. The pitches you can throw in that thing are just too absurd to NOT laugh.

 

 

Antiquity eventually becomes virtue. Just like how a 20 year old car is just an old car with no honor, but a 25+yr old car is a classic, and an honored thing. That 20yr old car will become a classic in 5yrs and it'll become honorable too. It'll suddenly go from being contemptible to being desired and revered...it seems that video games work kinda the same way...first we're amazed by them, then non-plussed. Then we ridicule them, and then finally embrace them, and embrace them for the very things we once ridiculed them for.

Sports games are one genre that seems to be exempt from nostalgia, though.

Tecmo Bowl is the only exception I can think of.

 

I know you meant that as a joke, but it got me thinking. Which is a dangerous thing.

Heh.

I know how that is.

[The_Laird]

16-bit Megadrive (Genesis) hands down for me, especially for its arcade conversions it had far more than the SNES and could do the same games much faster with no flicker.

 

64-bit Jaguar. No contest for me the N64 may have been "better" but just didn't have the charm or appeal of Atari's last console.

 

8-bit Went with Atari because:

1. They had more than one 8-bit console - 2600, 7800 and the XE

2. So had more games in total, more classics and a longer life.

3. I'm an Atari fanboy

[Collector]

first of all, atari may have had 8-bit systems in the sense of chips and such, but i don't recall ever seeing an 8-bit game with as good of quality as the NES or SMS, so I picked NES for that.

 

16-bit would be SNES only because i own more games for that than for the Genesis so i don't know really what is good for the Genesis and Neo Geo was not a choice anywhere so I couldn't pick that.

 

64-bit. Again, chip wise and spec wise, the Jaguar somehow was 64-bit, but in the sense of gaming quality, the games are truely not much better than something a Snes or Megadrive or Neo Geo couldn't handle so I chose N64