Which "16bit" console(computer) was most powerful?
- Thread starter schmuck
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Define most powerful.
schmuck said:
Some games on SNES were beautiful. So were some on Genesis. There was a thread abotu this not too long ago, i think it was the (very funny) Saturn thread DM opened last week.
PC-Engine was never released (properly) in Europe, so i wouldn't know about that since i have never seen one in action. Haven't seen one at all.
I read that thread..so i thought it would be fitting to have a proper "16bit" thread. This is a console forum afterall! 
Personally i think the best looking games on each system are about equal(exept pcengine), the differance comes with the average games and ports then ill rank the diffrent systems like this snes>genesis>pcengine-amiga, but thats abit unfair since the older the system is the more shovel ports from older systems it has..
Personally i think the best looking games on each system are about equal(exept pcengine), the differance comes with the average games and ports then ill rank the diffrent systems like this snes>genesis>pcengine-amiga, but thats abit unfair since the older the system is the more shovel ports from older systems it has..
Well obviously NeoGeo would trump all those machines 90 times over and back, from the height of it's price point for both the console and the games too.
Amiga was by far the most powerful. Maybe the others had better sprites and hardware support for arcade gaming, but I never saw anything run on a Megadrive or SNES that the Amiga couldn't generally handle (parallex, 50/60 fps, etc.) plus the Amiga could be pushed to achieve some pretty impressive 3D such as Psygnosis' futuristic vehical combat game (I forget the name!). Plus it could handle true multitasking as a computer with incredible stability and was put to great use raytracing CGs and working as a professional machine. As devs got to grips with it's quirky hardware they managed to squeeze extra effects such as by hacking around with the simple Copper (a processor with only 3 instruction IIRC).
And it had the greatest variety of games on probably any platform in history. Many new ideas like Populous, Lemmings, Dungeon Master, et al, appeared initially on Amiga. Consoles OTOH had beat-'em-ups, platformers and Outrun-esque racers.
And it had the greatest variety of games on probably any platform in history. Many new ideas like Populous, Lemmings, Dungeon Master, et al, appeared initially on Amiga. Consoles OTOH had beat-'em-ups, platformers and Outrun-esque racers.
Amiga, and other machines based on the 68k CPU weren't entirely 16-bit, as the thing has a 32-bit instruction set and registers. The custom chips were though (as far as data buses, memories etc are concerned anyway). I suppose they're MOSTLY 16-bit anyway.
Dunno bout the FM Towns tho, but I think that one was built on an i386 chip... If it's a 68k too, it would certainly be the most powerful one of that generation. It was arcade quality in its hardware. Again, for its time, and besides, it was more like a computer than a console anyway. It had mouse and keyboard, expansion slots, disk drive as I recall, and came in a tower chassis.
I'd say Neo-Geo was the badassest home console tho, SNES was better in some respects (sound mainly and a few aspects of graphics; transparent sprites for example). However, anyone who's seen some of the flagship titles on neo-geo would easily agree it was the badassest piece of kit.
Dunno bout the FM Towns tho, but I think that one was built on an i386 chip... If it's a 68k too, it would certainly be the most powerful one of that generation. It was arcade quality in its hardware. Again, for its time, and besides, it was more like a computer than a console anyway. It had mouse and keyboard, expansion slots, disk drive as I recall, and came in a tower chassis.
I'd say Neo-Geo was the badassest home console tho, SNES was better in some respects (sound mainly and a few aspects of graphics; transparent sprites for example). However, anyone who's seen some of the flagship titles on neo-geo would easily agree it was the badassest piece of kit.
Shifty Geezer said:
I think the A500/600 were the 16-bit Amigas. And they couldnt handle as large colour palletes as the consoles and could not do mode-7 like effects. Have a look at the Amiga ports of Street Fighter II and MK for referance.
The A1200 to 4000(32bit) with AGA chipset, were more closer to 3DO and Jaguar gen hardware.
overclocked
Veteran
Donkeykong on Snes looked awesome, Toystory on Genesis was in that leauge.
Also i remember VirtuaRacing on Genesis.
Also i remember VirtuaRacing on Genesis.
With "16bit" i ment generation rather than instructions.
I rather take amigas 32 colors out of 4k somthing plus copper trickery than genesis 64 out of 512. Amiga games generally look cleaner than genesis. And amiga could scale sprites, in intros atleast..look at brian the lion logo(?9 and the intro to lionheart(?).
Its also highly unfair to the amiga to use usgolds crappy conversions as a referance.
I rather take amigas 32 colors out of 4k somthing plus copper trickery than genesis 64 out of 512. Amiga games generally look cleaner than genesis. And amiga could scale sprites, in intros atleast..look at brian the lion logo(?9 and the intro to lionheart(?).
Its also highly unfair to the amiga to use usgolds crappy conversions as a referance.
schmuck said:
Only vertically without using the CPU, and vertically actually needed CPU too as you had to build custom copperlists (or do it via CPU interrupt) to fiddle with the video registers on a line-by-line basis. It wasn't a real hardware feature, instead it was a hack, like border removal on the C64 or Atari ST, etc.
Speaking of which, I never saw anyone trying to remove the (friggin huge) borders on the SNES.
I've workd on most of those platforms, with the exception of PC engine.
It really depends what your looking for.
In terms of hardware features (scrolling and sprites) SNES is hard to beat.
In terms of CPU speed Atari ST (which you didn't mention) was somewhat faster than the Genesis or Amiga.
The Amiga/ST had one big advantage over Genesis/SNES, that was significant RAM, so a lot of the graphics could stay compressed on disk, and you weren't Hamstrung by the limited VRAM.
I did a number of Amiga to Genesis conversions, and the hardest part was always how to deal with the playfield, Amiga games routinely used >200K for the background tiles, getting that into the 64K of VRAM on a Genesis always meant significant compromises.
It really depends what your looking for.
In terms of hardware features (scrolling and sprites) SNES is hard to beat.
In terms of CPU speed Atari ST (which you didn't mention) was somewhat faster than the Genesis or Amiga.
The Amiga/ST had one big advantage over Genesis/SNES, that was significant RAM, so a lot of the graphics could stay compressed on disk, and you weren't Hamstrung by the limited VRAM.
I did a number of Amiga to Genesis conversions, and the hardest part was always how to deal with the playfield, Amiga games routinely used >200K for the background tiles, getting that into the 64K of VRAM on a Genesis always meant significant compromises.
Megadrive1988
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Amiga was probably the most powerful becuase of its custom chipset and amount of memory.
SNES had more hardware features like scrolling, scaling, rotation, transparency etc.
PCEngine shouldn't count since it's an 8-bit machine. (i love the PCE and the whole PCE family don't get me wrong).
if NeoGeo was included it would be the most powerful in terms of sprites, colors and overall speed. it could count because it's a "16-bit" system
FM-Towns / FM Towns Marty would be the most powerful if it was included. FM Towns is 32-bit (16 MHz 386, later a 486 CPU) with the most powerful custom chipset. 1024 sprites. thats triple what NeoGeo can do. 16M colors
if you include FM Towns then you must include CD32 which was a modified Amiga 1200 (or 1400) with AGA graphics. i forget the technical performance of CD32. I think it was 14 MHz 68020 or 68EC020 something. 244,262 colors.
overall the FM Towns / FM Towns Marty is the most powerful of these systems. Amiga is probably the most powerful of the ones you listed
SNES had more hardware features like scrolling, scaling, rotation, transparency etc.
PCEngine shouldn't count since it's an 8-bit machine. (i love the PCE and the whole PCE family don't get me wrong).
if NeoGeo was included it would be the most powerful in terms of sprites, colors and overall speed. it could count because it's a "16-bit" system
FM-Towns / FM Towns Marty would be the most powerful if it was included. FM Towns is 32-bit (16 MHz 386, later a 486 CPU) with the most powerful custom chipset. 1024 sprites. thats triple what NeoGeo can do. 16M colors
if you include FM Towns then you must include CD32 which was a modified Amiga 1200 (or 1400) with AGA graphics. i forget the technical performance of CD32. I think it was 14 MHz 68020 or 68EC020 something. 244,262 colors.
overall the FM Towns / FM Towns Marty is the most powerful of these systems. Amiga is probably the most powerful of the ones you listed
PC-Engine is the least "16-bit" of the gang, being an 8-bitter essentially. One could say the graphics chip was 16-bit generation material, though.
SNES wasn't much of a 16-bitter either. The 65816 has nothing on the m68k, and it was clocked at 3.5MHz to boot... It did have the largest palette and best graphics features of the generation (sans Neo Geo) though.
Amiga had a great spec. Amazing tech for 1985 (the Amiga didn't really evolve since then. Blame the germans...), and it held up very well compared to later machines. The low number of hardware sprites and background planes made it much weaker than Megadrive and SNES in quite a number of cases.
Megadrive games often came out looking very bland due to the 512 color palette. But with careful art direction one could overcome the blandness. Think Sonic...
So... My choice is the Sharp X68000. It's basically an Amiga with a SNES graphics chip. Best of both worlds! For sentimental reasons I probably have to go with Amiga, though... It's a shame it never got to evolve properly.
SNES wasn't much of a 16-bitter either. The 65816 has nothing on the m68k, and it was clocked at 3.5MHz to boot... It did have the largest palette and best graphics features of the generation (sans Neo Geo) though.
Amiga had a great spec. Amazing tech for 1985 (the Amiga didn't really evolve since then. Blame the germans...), and it held up very well compared to later machines. The low number of hardware sprites and background planes made it much weaker than Megadrive and SNES in quite a number of cases.
Megadrive games often came out looking very bland due to the 512 color palette. But with careful art direction one could overcome the blandness. Think Sonic...
So... My choice is the Sharp X68000. It's basically an Amiga with a SNES graphics chip. Best of both worlds! For sentimental reasons I probably have to go with Amiga, though... It's a shame it never got to evolve properly.
Well, I think I saw one or two games properly optimized for PAL. The rest just ran NTSC code straight off...Guden Oden said:Speaking of which, I never saw anyone trying to remove the (friggin huge) borders on the SNES.
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