Which "16bit" console(computer) was most powerful?

[Reznor007]

SuperNES video features werebetter in many ways than NeoGeo's. The main thing Neo had was hardware sprite scaling(no hardware rotation). SNES had hardware scaling/rotation for backgrounds, and could using SuperFX it could do sprite scaling/rotation. SNES also had true transparencies, while Neogeo had to resort to flicker to do blends.

Most of what made Neogeo look better than SNES was the much more powerful CPU, and the huge ROM carts. The last few Neo games used 64MB of graphics chips alone, while the biggest SNES ROM ever was only 6MB(for graphics, program, and sounds).

 

[Guden Oden]

Well, I think I saw one or two games properly optimized for PAL. The rest just ran NTSC code straight off...

Was the SNES video chip even capable of generating a PAL video playfield (ie ~256 video lines of graphics)? I don't think so, I've never seen full-frame gfx on the SNES, not even in demos (though I never saw that many SNES demos).

Curiously, all the old NES games had full-frame graphics in PAL format, I don't know how they did it as most titles were designed for NTSC and thus should lead to borders at the top and/or bottom of the screen, but it didn't. Obviously it doesn't matter much in vertically scrolling games (think Ice Climber here! ), but single-screen games had full-frame GFX also (Balloon Fight, f.ex), and even side-scrollers (Super Mario Bros). Very interesting.

 

[VNZ]

Was the SNES video chip even capable of generating a PAL video playfield (ie ~256 video lines of graphics)? I don't think so, I've never seen full-frame gfx on the SNES, not even in demos (though I never saw that many SNES demos).

Yep, there's a bit that switches between 224 and 239 lines. Double that for interlaced display, a bit that got used even less...

Curiously, all the old NES games had full-frame graphics in PAL format, I don't know how they did it as most titles were designed for NTSC and thus should lead to borders at the top and/or bottom of the screen, but it didn't. Obviously it doesn't matter much in vertically scrolling games (think Ice Climber here! ), but single-screen games had full-frame GFX also (Balloon Fight, f.ex), and even side-scrollers (Super Mario Bros). Very interesting.

Yes, sort of -- I've never got my hands dirty with the NES (I've seen some real nice work done on it in more recent years though), but it would seem the NES had a standard vertical resolution of 240 lines. Since you didn't have any HDMA-tables to calculate -- the main reason not to show the extra PAL-lines on SNES -- I suppose it was much easier to open up the "borders" and display something there.

 

[Magnum PI]

Re: Wich "16bit" console(computer) was most powerf

How would you rank the following consoles? Wich was most powerful!

amiga500

the amiga500 wasn't a console.

 

[cthellis42]

Just to confuse things further, what happens if you add the Atari ST's of that timeframe to the mix?

the amiga500 wasn't a console.

We do direct console comparisons way too often. Time to add in some others!

 

[Megadrive1988]

I forgot about the X68000. 1987 was its release year. X68000 was basicly a Genesis on steroids. far superior to the Amiga but that's no fault of the Amiga since Amiga was 1984 technology released in 1985. the X68000 is probably the most powerful 16-bit home platform other than the NeoGeo. the X68000 lacks a few of the hardware effects of SNES, but makes up for it with speed, memory, and other strengths. 256 8x8 sprites or 128 16x16 sprites. 1-2 MB main memory. 512k VRAM. 65,536 color pallete (like NeoGeo) although only 256 colors on screen (like SNES). the 'Cynthia' sprite processor was awesome. yes, the X68000's custom chips are named too, like Amiga's. the X68000 is basicly the best of the Genesis, PC-Engine and SNES combined.

 

[London Geezer]

I forgot about the X68000. 1987 was its release year. X68000 was basicly a Genesis on steroids. far superior to the Amiga but that's no fault of the Amiga since Amiga was 1984 technology released in 1985. the X68000 is probably the most powerful 16-bit home platform other than the NeoGeo. the X68000 lacks a few of the hardware effects of SNES, but makes up for it with speed, memory, and other strengths. 256 8x8 sprites or 128 16x16 sprites. 1-2 MB main memory. 512k VRAM. 65,536 color pallete (like NeoGeo) although only 256 colors on screen (like SNES). the 'Cynthia' sprite processor was awesome. yes, the X68000's custom chips are named too, like Amiga's. the X68000 is basicly the best of the Genesis, PC-Engine and SNES combined.

Cynthia??? That's THE drag queen name...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Just to confuse things further, what happens if you add the Atari ST's of that timeframe to the mix?

Well the ST was outclassed by the A500 (being an 'economy' version of the same tech IIRC) so it can't be top of the heap.

As far as Amiga going under, it seems to be entirely Commodore's fault. I can't helpo but wonder what a delightful machine would have evolved had the Amiga seen the same rate of progress as the PC...

 

[Crazyace]

.... although only 256 colors on screen (like SNES).

You could get more than 256 colours on the SNES via several different methods ( raster line effects, or even combining the transparency options with different playfiled )

Although I like the Amiga, it's actual H/W sprites were pretty crap.. ( in some ways a step down from the C64 ) - It's saving grace was the high res screen and larger ram, a reflection of it's price.

I'd have to give the SNES my vote overall, from a technical sense... A faster processor wasn't quite as important when the graphics chip did so much.

 

[Guden Oden]

You could get more than 256 colours on the SNES via several different methods ( raster line effects, or even combining the transparency options with different playfiled )

Transparencies would only give different shades of the same color tho - sort of like the halfbrite videomode of the Amiga. And raster jiggling to change color registers on SNES sound like it would be both a hog on the CPU and slow at the same time. 256 real colors seem to be more than adequate for the SNES.

Although I like the Amiga, it's actual H/W sprites were pretty crap.. ( in some ways a step down from the C64 )

What about them were worse than the C64 then? All I can think of was the v/h doubling that could be toggled on the VIC, but that just created a horrible blocky mess on-screen. Sprites were already low-res horizontally if you wanted multicolor anyway, "hi-res" sprites (320*200 screen-sized pixels) were only monochromatic...

It's saving grace was the high res screen and larger ram

And the blitter, I'd say. Quite powerful for its time, and certainly unique compared to most pieces of hardware at the time. The Mega ST/STe blitter came years later and was reportedly slower than using the CPU to copy the data (though that could be BS, I dunno), and as the ST lacked "fastram" the CPU would stall when the blitter worked.

Yep, there's a bit that switches between 224 and 239 lines.

You know any game that used it? Or demo for that matter; I hear the ZSNES emu had a new release just days ago!

I've never got my hands dirty with the NES (I've seen some real nice work done on it in more recent years though), but it would seem the NES had a standard vertical resolution of 240 lines.

Yup, that it certainly did. At least in PAL incarnation - I dunno bout NTSC. I don't think you can fit that many lines in one NTSC field... Anyway, what nice work have you seen? I'm always interested in cool stuffs for that old breadbox.

SuperNES video features werebetter in many ways than NeoGeo's. The main thing Neo had was hardware sprite scaling(no hardware rotation). SNES had hardware scaling/rotation for backgrounds, and could using SuperFX it could do sprite scaling/rotation.

Not better in many ways. Better in a few ways, yes (background and sprite transparency and hires modes is pretty much all, but hardly any titles used hires). Neo-Geo DOES have sprite rotation, and as its sprites are MUCH better (never saw any flicker in a N-G game) one can make a rotating playfield with sprites, though I believe it does feature that too.

And SuperFX was slow as hell, it's no replacement for true hardware sprites...

 

[Reznor007]

No, Neogeo did not have hardware rotation. Any time you see rotating sprites is was either CPU based, or many sprites in sequence. And while Neo rarely had unintentional sprite flicker, it did slow down alot(Metal Slug series).

And SuperFX was good for sprites, look at Yoshi's Island.

NTSC NES res was 256x240, same as PAL AFAIK.

 

[BigGamer X]

I had the snes, genesis, and neo geo. The Neo-Geo simply made games that were head and shoulders above genesis or snes in terms of sprites, colors, sound, ect. Did you ever see the scaling of characters in Art of Fighting on the neo geo, then see the same game on the snes? The Neo Geo could scale sprites with nowhere near the pixelization of the snes. (I used that example because both consoles had that game, but this was apparent in many other games as well.) When it came down to it, neither of these machines could do 3d any real justice anyways, and the neo geo owned on the 2d front by far.

 

[Megadrive1988]

SuperNES video features werebetter in many ways than NeoGeo's. The main thing Neo had was hardware sprite scaling(no hardware rotation). SNES had hardware scaling/rotation for backgrounds, and could using SuperFX it could do sprite scaling/rotation. SNES also had true transparencies, while Neogeo had to resort to flicker to do blends.

Most of what made Neogeo look better than SNES was the much more powerful CPU, and the huge ROM carts. The last few Neo games used 64MB of graphics chips alone, while the biggest SNES ROM ever was only 6MB(for graphics, program, and sounds).

don't forget NeoGeo could put up 380 sprites compared to SNES's 128. and NeoGeo's better color capability 4096/65536 compared to 256/32768

 

[Reznor007]

I had the snes, genesis, and neo geo. The Neo-Geo simply made games that were head and shoulders above genesis or snes in terms of sprites, colors, sound, ect. Did you ever see the scaling of characters in Art of Fighting on the neo geo, then see the same game on the snes? The Neo Geo could scale sprites with nowhere near the pixelization of the snes. (I used that example because both consoles had that game, but this was apparent in many other games as well.) When it came down to it, neither of these machines could do 3d any real justice anyways, and the neo geo owned on the 2d front by far.

Of course, AOF was over 2x the size of the largest SNES ROM Not to mention SNK sucks at ports anyway.

Personally I think SNES sound is much better than Neogeo sound, and yes, I have both a SNES and a Neogeo(MVS version).

 

[Reznor007]

SuperNES video features werebetter in many ways than NeoGeo's. The main thing Neo had was hardware sprite scaling(no hardware rotation). SNES had hardware scaling/rotation for backgrounds, and could using SuperFX it could do sprite scaling/rotation. SNES also had true transparencies, while Neogeo had to resort to flicker to do blends.

Most of what made Neogeo look better than SNES was the much more powerful CPU, and the huge ROM carts. The last few Neo games used 64MB of graphics chips alone, while the biggest SNES ROM ever was only 6MB(for graphics, program, and sounds).

don't forget NeoGeo could put up 380 sprites compared to SNES's 128. and NeoGeo's better color capability 4096/65536 compared to 256/32768

Neogeo can show 380 sprites, but the system starts to bog down far sooner than that.

I would say that SNES could pull of most Neogeo games just fine if you were to use the same amount of ROM space.

 

[Nightz]

I had the snes, genesis, and neo geo. The Neo-Geo simply made games that were head and shoulders above genesis or snes in terms of sprites, colors, sound, ect. Did you ever see the scaling of characters in Art of Fighting on the neo geo, then see the same game on the snes? The Neo Geo could scale sprites with nowhere near the pixelization of the snes.

I think the SNES/Genesis would fare better if their cartridges were just as large. Art of Fighting on the Snes was a 16megabits, the original Neo cart was well over 100 megs.

So cuts would have been made on the Snes game - less animations, smaller sprites, less detailed backrounds and lower res bitmaps. On a cartridge system the quality of graphics is dependant on the size of the cartridge. Im sure the Snes was capable of the "zoom in, zoom out" graphics popular on Neo Geo games.

 

[Tim Murray]

can I throw in CD32? cause you need to be AWLD SKOOL!

 

[-tkf-]

The Amiga with it's 3 custom chips and a lightning fast 7.14 mhz 68000 wasn't always the machine with the best looking games.

One of my friends back then had all the consoles (imported of course) and their strenghts were diverse to say the least. If we take the FX(?) chip into play which apperead on the Starfox game for the SNES i woiuld say that the SNES was the console with the most game power.

One thing that often was the case with Amiga games, were very impressive looking games with exceptionally shitty gameplay. Psygnosis were one of the best when it came to that

The Xenon series produced some of the most impressive graphics and it was fun to play, the Bitmap Brothers, truely the Amigas best friends.

As time went by the Amiga spawned new models, but sadly the momentum was lost early on, my A1000 is still the best machine of them all, considering the time and money. My A4000 was the most powerfull of the all but Doom had come and showed a big weakness in the Amiga bitplanes, a weakness that never really was solved.

http://amiga.nvg.org/amiga/amigafaq/AmigaFAQ_16.html

 

[Crazyace]

You could get more than 256 colours on the SNES via several different methods ( raster line effects, or even combining the transparency options with different playfiled )

Transparencies would only give different shades of the same color tho - sort of like the halfbrite videomode of the Amiga. And raster jiggling to change color registers on SNES sound like it would be both a hog on the CPU and slow at the same time. 256 real colors seem to be more than adequate for the SNES.

It's been a long time since I coded for SNES , but if you set up graphics mode
5 ( BG0 256 colour and BG1 16 colour ) and set direct colour mode for BG0, and additive mode ( BG0 is main screen and BG1 is sub screen ) you can set the pallette for BG1 to provide 4 extra bits of colour info, giving a 4096 colour screen. ( Sprites can then use the other colour entries as normal )

Since there are 8 pallettes, ( as well as the use of BG0 pallette entries to provide extra bits for direct colour ) it should be possible to get more than 4096 colours without any HDMA trickery

The real limitation is the memory though...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

can I throw in CD32? cause you need to be AWLD SKOOL!

CD32 was 32 bit, being an A1200 with CD-drive. I guess for the Amiga A500 console you'd have to think CDTV, in which case doesn't Philips CD-i count too?

@ -tkf- : If you're allowed to add extra hardware to the base model for comparison for the most powerful (FX chip on SNES), surely the A500 wins out as you could add faster processor, more RAM, HD, etc.? And what wsa that Genesis addition I know nothing about? How did that fair? In terms of the basic model, the A500 could handle 3D vectors (Elite, Virus) where the others couldn't AFAIK.

What's this 'most powerful' quantity we're measuring by? Maybe there's should be subcategories...

Most powerful sprites
Most powerful 3D
Most powerful Audio
Generally most powerful system on balance
etc.