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SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown!

ST Dragon - Feb 17, 2005

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		ST Dragon		Feb 17, 2005
			SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown! OK. Which was the best console? I say the SNES. SNES ===== Had the best graphics of the 3 as it could produce the most colours on screen (256) & the best scaling & rotation effects. Also had best music produced by the cool sony spc700 sound chip set. But had the slowest CPU (only 3.6MHZ) of the 3 consoles resulting in heavy slowdowns in some games, especially in Thunder Spirits, where as Thunder Force III on the Genesis was perfect. Rocket Night Adventures 2 on the SNES was as fast if not faster than the Genesis version though. Some games on the SNES looked absolutely stunning compared to the Genesis & PCE. (Mortal Kombat, Donkey Kong Country, Axelay, etc...) PCE ==== Not a true 16bit console as it had two 8-Bit CPUs at 3.6MHZ each & a 16-Bit GPU. Technically had the 2nd best graphics as it could produce 256 colours on screen, but had a lower colour palette (512 colours) compared to the SNES 32000 colour palette, thus games didn't look as "Live" & "crisp" as they did on the SNES. Not many games on the PCE utilized all 256 colours though. Few that I think they did were: Street Fighter II, Strip Fighter II, Parodius, After Burner & maybe even Magical Chase & Twin Bee, but not counting SuperGrafX games. Probably the two 8-bit CPUs & the 8K Main RAM was bottle necking the system. Also Because of it's low Main RAM only 8K! Games were not as detailed as on the Genesis & SNES, sprites had less frames & less background layers. The music was the worse of the 3 consoles as it could only produce 6 stereo channels. Genesis ====== Was the fastest of the 3 as it had a 68000 CPU at 7.6MHZ Had the worse graphics of the 3 consoles. Being able to produce only 64 colours on screen out of 512 colour palette, this was the systems âAchillesâ Heelâ Games were fairly detailed though with quite a few frames of animation for the sprites & backgrounds. Music was better than PCE but could not touch the SNES music. Most games that were released on all 3 consoles generally looked quite worse on the Genesis compared to the PCE & SNES. (example Street Fighter II) Also how many games on the PCE (Not SuperGrafX & DUO) actually utilized all 256 colours on screen? The only ones I think they did are: Street Fighter II Strip Fighter II Parodius After Burner & maybe even Magical Chase & Detana Twin Bee. But I'm not sure...?

		lordofduct		Feb 17, 2005
			SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown! this is SEGAXTREME... you dare ask the question. Come on'! Of course I'd say the genny, reasons for me: PCE: ummm, ok, I was young. I think I was the only kid in town who even knew what this thing was. I only played a few games for it and I wasn't wowed in any way. I hardly even noticed the more colors then the genny. Poor library and lack of wow power for me makes this my least favorite. I still don't own one for this reason. (as I own a lot of systems from the 80's and 90's... including the VIS) SNES: This was the archrival against genny in my school. I remember there were clans of Nintendo supporters and Genny supporters. We would debate, fight, dodge ball to the death on which console was best. My debate was easy, SEGA in house games! no gay Marios. And all the colors made the SNES look so kiddy... way to bright. It wowed me a few times with games like F-ZERO, Donkey Kong, Mario Kart, FF3... but nothing enough to make me really want one at the time for my own. I was content with playing it at my friends. Still even today having my own SNES, I hardly play it as a majority of games on it just blew butt chunks. I do go to it for some good ol' Kirby Golf though. I LOVE KIRBY GOLF! Genny: OWNZ YOU ALL! This was my precious... I received it when I was 8 for my birthday. I gamed on my NES up until this, and really wasn't a big gamer. I would rather play out in the woods or something. I got my Genny and it was ON! My mother couldn't peel me out of my room. I was hooked to SEGA from then on, a devoted follower. I had heard of SEGA before this at my neighbors with the SMS, I liked it but it was the Genny who swallowed me whole. Oh, and the color thing.

		ST Dragon		Feb 17, 2005
			SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown! More colours don't mean "kiddy" games. One can easily notice that in Doom Troopers, Ninja Warriors, Mortal Kombat etc... If they're compared on the 2 systems, they're day by night in the graphics department. The 2nd level Mecha Boss in Axelay, is probably the coolest boss ever seen on a shmup. You never get anything animated so well on a Genesis. Sonic 2 is better & cooler than Mario World, but Yoshi's Island looks more like 32bit game. Genesis has Sonic 1 & 2, Thunder Force III, Gynoug & Gaiares which rule though.

		Mask of Destiny		Feb 17, 2005
			SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown! The PCEngine only has one CPU at 7.6MHz. I don't know where all this business about it having 2 comes from. Also about the colors thing. As for which one had the fastest CPU, it's largely a matter of what you are doing. The 6502 takes substantially less time to execute one instruction than the 68000, but it generally gets less done in one instruction. The speed of the SNES CPU is partly dependent on whether it's a Hi-ROM or Lo-ROM games. I believe Lo-ROM games can't run the CPU any faster than ~1.7MHz or something like that. That may be why some games seem to have more speed problems than others (though the type of game is important too, Rocket Knight Adventures tends not to have a ridiculous number of objects on the screen at once like some shooters). The PCEngine can display 512 (though I'd imagine it loses some colors to transparency like the Genesis does) (256 for sprites and 256 for the background) colors simultaneousy, but it only has 512 colors to choose from just like the Genesis, (except in Shadow/Hilight mode in which case the Genesis has 1536 colors to choose from). The PCEngine video hardware is also rather primitive compared to the Genesis (fewer sprites, only one background plane) in most regards apart from colors. Fighting games wouldn't really suffer from the lack of a second background plane, but platformers with a lot of parallax would. The whole bitness thing is a sham. The SNES had a 16-bit procesor with an 8-bit data bus, the Genesis has a 32-bit processor with a 16-bit data bus. Both are "16-bit" consoles. The PC-Engine belongs in the 16-bit generation regardless of whether or not it has a 16-bit processor. I personally think the Genesis has more headroom to really push the envelope for the ambitious developer though. Just look at Vectorman. If you're clever in how you use Shadow/Hilight mode and raster effects you can really get a a lot out of the Genesis. On the music front, the extent of the SNES advantage largely depends on how you feel about FM music. I've grown kind of fond of it (perhaps it's nostalgia) at least for video game music anyway so for me the SNES doesn't gain much ground here. Genesis is my personal favorite because I like the software library better than that of the PCEngine and it has a nice CD addon that gives me a cheap way to develop for it unlike the SNES and I can dump my cartridges without any exotic hardware (just a simple cable). It also has a flat memory space (unlike the segmented memory space of the SNES or the bankswitched like the PCEngine) which makes programming for it a bit easier.

		it290		Feb 17, 2005
			SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown! Y'know, I want to say Genesis, but the PC Engine is just so rad. It's the ultimate fusion of late 80's technology and mid 80's sensibility.

		schi0249		Feb 17, 2005
			SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown! No offense to SX; but my personal favorite (best for me) was the SNES. Of course, I didn't get a Genny until after the Saturn came out. But to this day, the SNES has a better supply of great RPG's. Also, I prefer the Mario World games over Sonic. As for PCE, only played a handful of games through emulation. I don't know a single person with one; though I want a Duo just for Ys.

		joe81		Feb 17, 2005
			SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown! i always liked the genny better never owned a snes but i did borrow my sisters for a long time. only games i liked on the snes was rpgs earthbound was one of my fav rpgs. The genny is my fav of them all purely because i owned it for the majority of my childhood and still have it to this day including shining force 1 but the bat in it died years ago.

		Scared0o0Rabbit		Feb 17, 2005
			SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown! Actually, snes is my favorite too. As for cpu speed, it's teh same deal with pc's, a faster 'clock speed' doesn't mean the cpu is actually any 'faster'.

ExCyber

Feb 18, 2005

SNES, Genesis & PCE Showdown!

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by Mask of Destiny+Thu, 2005-02-17 @ 11:01 AM-->QUOTE(Mask of Destiny @ Thu, 2005-02-17 @ 11:01 AM)The speed of the SNES CPU is partly dependent on whether it's a Hi-ROM or Lo-ROM games. I believe Lo-ROM games can't run the CPU any faster than ~1.7MHz or something like that.



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The whole bitness thing is a sham. The SNES had a 16-bit procesor with an 8-bit data bus, the Genesis has a 32-bit processor with a 16-bit data bus. Both are "16-bit" consoles. The PC-Engine belongs in the 16-bit generation regardless of whether or not it has a 16-bit processor.



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It's not a matter of HiROM vs. LoROM, but what is typically called FastROM vs. SlowROM. Basically, "SlowROM" is 200ns ROM, and "FastROM" is 120ns ROM (I think the actual timing constraint on FastROM is closer to 140ns to allow for address decoding). "SlowROM" speed is often specified as 2.68MHz, but I would expect that the slowdown is from wait states (which the 65xx family is designed to easily accept) rather than actually changing the CPU clock based on memory constraints (which would be ugly). Memory mapping does play into this since there is a range of ROM banks that (IIRC) unconditionally operates at the slower speed, but it's a separate issue from HiROM vs. LoROM; LoROM is just a simple hack that makes the ROM banks map sanely for banks that are split between registers and cart ROM.

As for the bitness thing being a sham, this cannot possibly be stressed enough, but I don't think the truth that the number doesn't mean anything will ever be as popular as the lie that makes people think that they know what they're talking about.