How bout this: Compare the Tg-16 and Genesis in power

[Rangers]

Anybody?

I just started looking up the old system on wiki the other day.

I remember when I was a kid watching my friends play Ulima, IV I think it was. I told them I wanted a NES. They scoffed at the graphics of that machine. So I remember when I looked at dungeon explorer on tg-16, I thought they wouldn't scoff at this! It looked every bit as good as that PC.

Anyways anecdote aside, Wiki was claiming Tg-16 was not near as powerful as Genesis because it was an 8 bit CPU.

Another anecdote was once I was in the video store, this place rented Tg-16, this guy asked the clerk why they rented it, saying something about "it's not even true 16-bit" as he left. The female clerk had no idea nor care what he was talking about. But I always think back to it as an example of how format tech wars are nothing new. Even back then it was "Tg-16? Hah! That lame machine isn't even 16-bit!" from Sega fans.

But anyways yeah, I was just wondering if Tg-16 was grossly undepowered to Genesis. I dont remember too well, TG-16 didn't have a ton of games.

Ahh, remember Keith Courage in Alpha Zones? One of the interesting things I ran across was the fact that, although not a good game, Altered Beast the Genny pack in made Keith Courage look like childs play graphically, and a big reason why Genesis "won".

 

[DeadlyNinja]

It's pretty safe to say the the Turbo was no match for the Genesis in the CPU department, but graphically, the system was better than that of the Genesis. The Turbo was capable of displaying 256 colors only screen like the SNES. Just take a look at game on all three platforms for comparison. Street Fighter 2 looks the best on SNES, followed by the Turbo, then the Genesis. The Genesis suffered due to the lack of colors.

 

[ERP]

It' pretty cut and dried the Genesis hardware was better.
But if you start factoring in the Turbo Duo and the Super CD, then it's not quite as simple.

Castlevania on the SuperCD is still my all time favorite Castlevania.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

As far as I know, the CD doesn't actually add anything to the Turbo other than more storage. The CD on the Genesis was even faster than the Genesis. The Sega CD ran at 12 Mhz compare to 8 Mhz on the Genesis.

 

[greg3d]

As far as I know, the CD doesn't actually add anything to the Turbo other than more storage. The CD on the Genesis was even faster than the Genesis. The Sega CD ran at 12 Mhz compare to 8 Mhz on the Genesis.

The CD attachments offered more RAM.

I remember playing some very nice games on TG-16 back then.I'm pretty sure the best TG CD games were more impressive than the best Genesis CD games.

Quoting Wikipedia:

While the standard CD-ROM² and Super CD-ROM² had RAM for data storage which was accessed directly, the Arcade CD-ROM² cards accessed the RAM in a slightly different way.

Both the Pro and Duo versions of the Arcade Card worked in the same way. Just as with the Super CD-ROM², up to 256 KiB of the RAM was able to be accessed directly by the CPU. The other 2048 KiB was accessed indirectly by transferring data to the other 256 KiB of RAM on the fly. This was done rather seamlessly, so that even though the CPU could only use up to 256 KiB of RAM at once, data could be swapped to and from the other 2048 KiB of RAM at any time. This technique of swapping data from RAM to RAM was much faster than loading the data directly from the CD into RAM, and offered developers a significant advantage over the previous System Card formats, as is evidenced by the many conversions of well-animated Neo Geo fighting games to the Arcade CD-ROM².

 

[Squeak]

The PC Engine had higher res graphics and it could also handle large sprites with much more ease.
But it didn't have the wonderful sound chip of the MegaDrive (it had a good PSG chip) and it's ability to shove around large amounts of graphics blocks wasn't as great. The MD could do parallax and multiway scrolling much better than PC Engine.
The 68000 is speedier than the 65C02, but not by as much as one might think. The 65C02 was the probably the best commercial 8 bit CPU ever.

 

[Hector]

The Nes processor was a 6502 with an APU integrated on it,wasn't it?

I never had the chance to play any TG game

I think there was a trick to display more than 64 colors on screen in the Sega Genesis. There was a game (scroll shooter) about robots that did it.

 

[Rangers]

The Nes processor was a 6502 with an APU integrated on it,wasn't it?

I never had the chance to play any TG game

I think there was a trick to display more than 64 colors on screen in the Sega Genesis. There was a game (scroll shooter) about robots that did it.

If I remember, it didn't really look any better for some reason though. I think it was just remixing the same 64 into more or something, so it didn't really give you a improvement.

It's funny when SNES came out, all the hullaballu about why it was technically superior to Genesis centered around Mode 7 "scaling and rotation". Yet as time went on the actual advantages turned out to be the superior color pallete and excellent sound capabilities. In real games mode 7 was an afterthought.

 

[Megadrive1988]

while the Megadrive/Genesis was overall, more powerful than the PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16 (MD = 1988, PCE = 1987) because of the 68000 CPU, it was appalling that Sega designed a VDP that only allowed 64 colors to be displayed on screen at once, without resorting to software tricks. Hudson's chipset was a year older but allowed far more colors on screen, 256 at least, if not 482, even though both machines had the same amount of total colors to choose from (512).

Genesis could handle more total sprites (80), more sprites per line, had two fields/layers of parallax scrolling capability, yet I think Sega should've given a more standard 128 sprite capability as Sega's System 16 arcade board, the Sharp X68000 computer and other machines had.

IMO Sega should've taken the System 16B board (1986 tech) with all of its color capability, hardware scaling, shrunk that down into a console for 1989. in terms of colors, sprites and scaling, such a system would've completely surpassed the TG16 in every way, and better competed with the SNES. I don't think using System 16 as the basis for Genesis would've been not-feasible by 1989. We're NOT talking about Sega's high-end multi-68000 'Super Scaler' family of boards, were talking about a lower-cost arcade board. think Namco's PS1-based System 11 in reverse. going from arcade to home with a low-cost but powerful board.

Also, I think Sega should've use 8, 16, 24, and 32 megabit carts (in the first few years, later using more) in place of 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12 and 16 megabit carts they used in the first couple years. I'd like to think ROM cost could've been kept within reason. NEO-GEO games started in the 40-60 megabit range for $200. more megabits per dollar (remember the ads). so I think Sega could've done better there-- allowing for 100% accurate System 16 arcade ports and reasonably close Capcom CPS (and other 16-bit arcade) translations, without the huge loss in detail.


the Genesis as it was, was a good machine, but could've been better given SEGA's background in arcades. I would not have expected a NEO-GEO, but something that was on par with SEGA's not-too-expensive System 16.



i.e. Golden Axe just for comparison

System 16 vs Genesis

while Sega did a very good job of translating a ~24 megabit game on more powerful hardware down to the Genesis with only 4 megabits, I can't help but to think how great it would've been to have a System 16 based console at home.

The Sega CD could've added 2 more 68000s as well as full scaling & rotation capabilities (it had this but could've been stronger) so that Sega's highend Super Scaler games could be ported home perfectly. no FMV games, just arcade games and lots of huge well-animated RPG and action/sports games.

ah well.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Also, I think Sega should've use 8, 16, 24, and 32 megabit carts (in the first few years, later using more) in place of 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12 and 16 megabit carts they used in the first couple years. I'd like to think ROM cost could've been kept within reason. NEO-GEO games started in the 40-60 megabit range for $200. more megabits per dollar (remember the ads). so I think Sega could've done better there-- allowing for 100% accurate System 16 arcade ports and reasonably close Capcom CPS (and other 16-bit arcade) translations, without the huge loss in detail.

That's crazy! Sega charged like 89 bucks for Phantasy Star IV on the Sega Genesis and that game was 24 megs. I mean, to make a game above 16 megs (or even 8) back in 1989 would have probably cost just as much as PS4 did back in 1995. I think you underestimated the price of rom back in those days. If they were so inexpensive, Konami could have also made Turtles In Time for the SNES with 32 megs to include the full song opening along with tons more animation. Even when we had 32 meg games during the late 16 bit days, they were still relatively rare due to the cost of making a game that big.

 

[Tagrineth]

Was Genesis capable of trickery akin to SNES's to display a gazillion colours at once?

I know SNES is technically limited to 256 colours but you can trick it into changing pallettes...

 

[Rangers]

Was Genesis capable of trickery akin to SNES's to display a gazillion colours at once?

I know SNES is technically limited to 256 colours but you can trick it into changing pallettes...

Personally, I'd like to see a screenshot where the Genny was displaying these excess colors.

I remember this trick, but it never actually looked any better than 64 colors to me. So I'm somehow thinking the trickery didn't really work.

 

[Megadrive1988]

That's crazy! Sega charged like 89 bucks for Phantasy Star IV on the Sega Genesis and that game was 24 megs.

no, they charged $99 bucks for Phantasy Star IV. but Super Street Fighter II was 40 megs yet cost less (don't know how much but it sure as hell wasn't $100).
the high price of PSIV was probably because of all the money and development time put into it. PSIV's development was like 1990 (III was out that spring) to late 1993 (Dec 93 in Japan).

I mean, to make a game above 16 megs (or even 8) back in 1989 would have probably cost just as much as PS4 did back in 1995.

maybe, maybe not. mass production should've kept things down, although I am not an economist. NEO-GEO games should've cost $1000 or more in 1990/1991 going by that, then. but they didn't.

I think you underestimated the price of rom back in those days.

probably, but what I am saying is, SEGA could've used larger roms and still kept the price reasonable. the early NEO-GEO games cost 4x times as much, yet had more than 4 times the rom space of Genesis games of the time. if SNK could do better cost-per-megabit, why couldn't Sega?

 

[Squeak]

Consoles shouldn't have used cartridges at all in that period of time. They should have used high capacity, high speed magnetic discs. The games would be distributed via vending machines just like the Famicom disc system, only with enhanced security.

 

[function]

probably, but what I am saying is, SEGA could've used larger roms and still kept the price reasonable. the early NEO-GEO games cost 4x times as much, yet had more than 4 times the rom space of Genesis games of the time. if SNK could do better cost-per-megabit, why couldn't Sega?

Cost per megabit isn't an accurate reflection of all of the realities of bringing games to market. It also doesn't reflect issues realted to developing games for an arcade fomrat against a home format.

 

[22psi]

Easy Genesis wins due to "Blast Processing!"

 

[Tagrineth]

Personally, I'd like to see a screenshot where the Genny was displaying these excess colors.

I remember this trick, but it never actually looked any better than 64 colors to me. So I'm somehow thinking the trickery didn't really work.

Oh no I'm talking about SNES being able to do that. There's one graphics demo in particular that shows the entire 65K colour pallette all at once on one screen.

I'm wondering if Genesis can do something similar; I've never heard whether it can or not, but I'd imagine if it hasn't been done by now then it either can't do it or it's prohibitively slow.

 

[Capeta]

The CD-ROM unit for the TG-16 also added 2 channels of ADPCM in addition to the already mentioned memory increase. The TG-16 console by comparison only had 6 channels of PSG sound generation even though those could be used for sampled sound but low quality. The ADPCM allowed higher quality sampled sound generation.

 

[hey69]

Was Genesis capable of trickery akin to SNES's to display a gazillion colours at once?

I know SNES is technically limited to 256 colours but you can trick it into changing pallettes...

I think it had. just like the Amiga had the HAM mode for 4096 colors ..(not the same but you get the point)