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

[Guden Oden]

you can set the pallette for BG1 to provide 4 extra bits of colour info, giving a 4096 colour screen.

Real, UNIQUE colors, ie not just darker/lighter shades of the same color? If so, that sounds like a way neat trick that I don't think I ever saw anyone use!

without any HDMA trickery

Realistically, how many color regs could you realistically change with HDMA anyway? As I recall from reading emulator specs lists, there aren't that many DMA "slots" per scanline, and doesn't HDMA only work outside the graphics area of the screen? That would mean you couldn't get more than 256 colors per line (assuming no other trickery), though you could change at least some of those 256 colors on a per-line basis...

I don't remember seeing any game that used this extensively though, prolly because it isn't that useful. There was some fog-type stuff in the horizontal scrolling sections of Axelay that seemed to be done with raster fiddling, but it was much more common in Amiga games where you had more power to do raster stuff as well as fewer color registers to begin with...

Biggest problem with SNES tho, even bigger than slowdowns, was the god-DAMNED sprite flicker problem. Very few games managed lots of sprites without also having extensive flickering...

 

[-tkf-]

@ -tkf- : If you're allowed to add extra hardware to the base model for comparison for the most powerful (FX chip on SNES), .

Yeah, i get what you are saying, except hardly any games would use extra hardware on the Amiga, except ram expansions (1mb instead of 512kbyte) while the FX chip was onboard with the game

 

[VNZ]

Biggest problem with SNES tho, even bigger than slowdowns, was the god-DAMNED sprite flicker problem. Very few games managed lots of sprites without also having extensive flickering...

The SNES even had a register designed to create sprite flickering!
It rotates the sprite priority list, to flicker the sprites instead of just blanking the ones at in the highest "slot", when there's more than 32 per scanline.

 

[BigGamer X]

For all that bring up the argument about snes and gen. having smaller carts then neo being the reason neo geo was better, well that's part of the specs too! You can't very well say "if xbox had 1GB of ram and a 160 GB Hdd it could do that game too!" anymore than you can say "snes would kick neo's butt with 200Mb carts!". Another point, Neo carts had 2 lines of connectors and were much larger, so it could always have stayed ahead in the cart size race anyways. And tech specs aside, you can easily see that Neo Geo juggled more sprites and colors than the other consoles. All I can say is Magician Lord. Try to show another 16 bit console game that even approached that!

 

[ChryZ]

Dang, I am very close to unpacking my SNES for some Axelay

 

[leechan25]

For all that bring up the argument about snes and gen. having smaller carts then neo being the reason neo geo was better, well that's part of the specs too! You can't very well say "if xbox had 1GB of ram and a 160 GB Hdd it could do that game too!" anymore than you can say "snes would kick neo's butt with 200Mb carts!". Another point, Neo carts had 2 lines of connectors and were much larger, so it could always have stayed ahead in the cart size race anyways. And tech specs aside, you can easily see that Neo Geo juggled more sprites and colors than the other consoles. All I can say is Magician Lord. Try to show another 16 bit console game that even approached that!

That's right! No 16 bit game could touch that will it came out. Magician Lord, hmm... I could have bought a Neo Geo if I knew in advance how many money I was going to spend on that game.

 

[Reznor007]

For all that bring up the argument about snes and gen. having smaller carts then neo being the reason neo geo was better, well that's part of the specs too! You can't very well say "if xbox had 1GB of ram and a 160 GB Hdd it could do that game too!" anymore than you can say "snes would kick neo's butt with 200Mb carts!". Another point, Neo carts had 2 lines of connectors and were much larger, so it could always have stayed ahead in the cart size race anyways. And tech specs aside, you can easily see that Neo Geo juggled more sprites and colors than the other consoles. All I can say is Magician Lord. Try to show another 16 bit console game that even approached that!

Saying that it could be done just with a larger cart is completely different from adding RAM or something. People could have made a 100MB SNES cart, but the cost would have been too high. Neogeo carts cost $75+ at launch, and the final Neogeo game, Samurai Shodown 5 Special, sold for $375 or so.

As for Magicial Lord...it's a launch Neogeo game that barely looks better than the average Genesis game. Donkey Kong Country uses just as much or more color, and has MUCH smoother animation.

http://www.mameworld.net/maws/img/shots/snap/maglord.png

VS.

http://www.consoleclassix.com/info_img/Donkey_Kong_Country_SNES_ScreenShot1.jpg

 

[BigGamer X]

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid152/p333e9669e58b84081b6b991b96f781c3/f5a76044.jpg

Magician Lord, a LAUNCH title, shows more colors than any SNES title. My point on cart size is still valid. You are comparing basically an Arcade machine to a home console. That's like comparing a PC to a home console today. The PC basically always wins because cost is much less of an obstacle in the quest for more power. MS, and Sony need to make money, your PC you can upgrade as much as you want. Neo Geo was an arcade machine first, home console second.

And it still has a 12mhz CPU along with custom chips that had more color and sprite power than the snes ever had. That Donkey Kong game had FAR more money thrown at it than any Neo Geo game. Rare was more than likely a more capable developer compared to those making Neo games as well. Now if they could have made Donkey Kong Country on the Neo Geo with that budget, it would have blown away the SNES version.

 

[Reznor007]

Saying that if devs had more money that Neogeo games would look better is the same thing as saying that SNES could look as good with larger carts. Even if both things had happened, the underlying hardware is still the same. I still say with equal amounts of data, SNES could do pretty much every Neogeo game(at a lower resolution though).

 

[Megadrive1988]

massive cart size alone did not make NeoGeo games have more color or sprites than SNES games. it was more to do with hardware power. of course, larger cart size is needed also for more colors and more data overall.

Magician Lord has more color and prettier graphics than just about any SNES game and certainly compared to any Genesis game. where magician lord falls down is in animation. but that's not the fault of the NeoGeo, its because ML was a firstgen NeoGeo game which was probably started in 1989, before its 1990 release.

probably the only way SNES could have competed with the NeoGeo is if SNES was based on the original uncut specifications which is said to have included a 10MHz 68000 and better graphics co-processor(s) with better scaling & rotation. that or with the 32-bit 21MHz 'Nintendo Disc' CD-ROM addon.

the few hardwired hardware effects the SNES did have over the NeoGeo is nowhere near enough to overcome the large differences in CPU, Graphics and Audio horsepower the NeoGeo has over the SNES. not even counting the much larger cart size of NeoGeo games.

with that said, I would have been very interested to see how Namco's 16-bit console compared to NeoGeo, as well as the unreleased true 16-bit NEC system which was scrapped or scaled down into the SuperGrafx.

 

[Crazyace]

If you want to bring 'unreleased' 16 bit consoles into the fray... then maybe the atari panther ( or the Konix / Flare 1 ) may have been more powerfull than the neogeo..
also, although it was only a handheld.. the atari lynx really did shine in terms of what it could do with sprites/blitting

 

[Reznor007]

massive cart size alone did not make NeoGeo games have more color or sprites than SNES games. it was more to do with hardware power. of course, larger cart size is needed also for more colors and more data overall.

Magician Lord has more color and prettier graphics than just about any SNES game and certainly compared to any Genesis game. where magician lord falls down is in animation. but that's not the fault of the NeoGeo, its because ML was a firstgen NeoGeo game which was probably started in 1989, before its 1990 release.

probably the only way SNES could have competed with the NeoGeo is if SNES was based on the original uncut specifications which is said to have included a 10MHz 68000 and better graphics co-processor(s) with better scaling & rotation. that or with the 32-bit 21MHz 'Nintendo Disc' CD-ROM addon.

the few hardwired hardware effects the SNES did have over the NeoGeo is nowhere near enough to overcome the large differences in CPU, Graphics and Audio horsepower the NeoGeo has over the SNES. not even counting the much larger cart size of NeoGeo games.

with that said, I would have been very interested to see how Namco's 16-bit console compared to NeoGeo, as well as the unreleased true 16-bit NEC system which was scrapped or scaled down into the SuperGrafx.

I don't understand why people say Neogeo was so much more powerful than SNES though. I own a NG and SNES and I don't think it looks better really. Especially not M Lord. I would say they are on the same level, with a slight nod in favor of NG because of the slightly higher resolution and up to 15x the ROM size.

The one graphics feature I will really say NG is better at is the sprite scaling(like the effects in Sengoku), but you could throw a SuperFX into a SNES cart and be fine(Yoshi's Island shows this).

 

[Bohdy]

Very odd point of view you have there, Reznor. To me (and most ppl I would presume) even the average Neo Geo games were hands-down FAR more impressive than any Snes game. More colours, much sharper, and much more dramatic effects. The large scale sprite scales/shifts especially looked worlds better than the lame old SNES Mode7. No contest IMHO.

The Genesis games on the other had (just from a layman point of view) were for the most part not even in the same league as the SNES ones, but rather seemed like a mid-point between the Nes and Snes graphically.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Very odd point of view you have there, Reznor. To me (and most ppl I would presume) even the average Neo Geo games were hands-down FAR more impressive than any Snes game. More colours, much sharper, and much more dramatic effects. The large scale sprite scales/shifts especially looked worlds better than the lame old SNES Mode7. No contest IMHO.

I'm with ya on the NeoGeo to SNES comparison.

 

[Reznor007]

Very odd point of view you have there, Reznor. To me (and most ppl I would presume) even the average Neo Geo games were hands-down FAR more impressive than any Snes game. More colours, much sharper, and much more dramatic effects. The large scale sprite scales/shifts especially looked worlds better than the lame old SNES Mode7. No contest IMHO.

The Genesis games on the other had (just from a layman point of view) were for the most part not even in the same league as the SNES ones, but rather seemed like a mid-point between the Nes and Snes graphically.

It may not be the most common opinion of the systems, but it's coming from someone that owns both. Spec wise the NG looks far superior, but in actual use I don't think it would be impossible for SNES to do the same stuff.

Color wise, while NG can technically show 4096, it seems that many games don't even come close to it, especially the games from the first 2-3 years. As I said before, I think the biggest differences come down to ROM size(could be done on SNES though), sprite scaling(can be done via SuperFX) and resolution(no real workaround on SNES but it's only 64 pixels wider). SNES does have a 512x448 interlaced mode, but I think there was only 1-2 games that used it for actual gameplay screens, most used it for menus only since it's slower.

EDIT-As a related note, emulators list NG as 4096 colors displayable, but show SNES as 32768 displayable. As mentioned before, it was possible to show all colors on SNES.

 

[Nightz]

I dont know what the full specs for the FX chip were, but I believe it was clocked at over 20MHZ.

I'm sure the combination of a SuperFX2 and 300meg cart could deliver graphics comparable to the Neo.

Remember they were able to get Doom, (thought to be impossible) running on the Snes. With graphics (leterboxed) comparable to to running it on a low 386.

 

[Guden Oden]

You're not serious! Doom on SNES wasn't *anything* close to what a 386 could do (even a low-end 16MHz box). Put them side by side and you'll see. Even if you switch PC Doom into lo-res it still looks one hell of a lot better than the stupid SNES version and it runs like four times faster FPS-wise even on a slow PC.

Saying with a FX chip, SNES could do neogeo sprite scaling and using Yoshi's Fvckin' Island as proof is beyond idiocy. YI shows ONE or A FEW sprites scaling to a not particulary large size. Neo-Geo can do arbitrary scaling of an arbitrary amount of sprites (up to max 380), there's no comparison!

FX chip was a lame kludge of a solution, the chip itself was feckin' slow, and the interface to the SNES just as bad. SNES *CAN'T* do Neo-Geo graphics even if you give it a bajillion gigabyte cartridge AND a FX chip, it doesn't have the sprite-pushing hardware to show lots of objects on-screen without flicker, and it doesn't have the CPU to move the sprites without slow-down.

 

[Megadrive1988]

You're not serious! Doom on SNES wasn't *anything* close to what a 386 could do (even a low-end 16MHz box). Put them side by side and you'll see. Even if you switch PC Doom into lo-res it still looks one hell of a lot better than the stupid SNES version and it runs like four times faster FPS-wise even on a slow PC.

Saying with a FX chip, SNES could do neogeo sprite scaling and using Yoshi's Fvckin' Island as proof is beyond idiocy. YI shows ONE or A FEW sprites scaling to a not particulary large size. Neo-Geo can do arbitrary scaling of an arbitrary amount of sprites (up to max 380), there's no comparison!

FX chip was a lame kludge of a solution, the chip itself was feckin' slow, and the interface to the SNES just as bad. SNES *CAN'T* do Neo-Geo graphics even if you give it a bajillion gigabyte cartridge AND a FX chip, it doesn't have the sprite-pushing hardware to show lots of objects on-screen without flicker, and it doesn't have the CPU to move the sprites without slow-down.

well said

 

[schmuck]

The Genesis games on the other had (just from a layman point of view) were for the most part not even in the same league as the SNES ones, but rather seemed like a mid-point between the Nes and Snes graphically.

From my layman pow the genesis could definatly hold up to the snes, and its definatly in the same league. Check out Aladin, thunderforce 4, gunstarheroes, alien soldier etc.

 

[hey69]

if it only had a better color palette and the sound of the amiga.