see colon said:
when comparing the snes to anything i think it is important to realize that there were several carts that included "special" hardware. before the fx and fx2, there was dsp and dsp2, and capcom had the c4. games like mario kart, pilot wings, rockman/megaman x3 and x4 all used this additional hardware. the snes hardware by itself was less powerfull than i think some people realize, but alot of clever programing and a bit of additional hardware in the carts helped paint a prettier picture in peoples minds.
See Colon is very much right on, IMO. the SNES by itself, it really weak compared to NeoGeo, dispite the fact that SNES has some hardware effects the NeoGeo doesnt have. even in many of the games that made SNES stand out, it was thanks to additional processing chips in the carts to boost SNES's gutted capabilities. NeoGeo carts had no such extra processors in them as far as I'm aware. when you concider that the much much weaker Megadrive/Genesis could give the SNES a run for its money and realize that NeoGeo was like 4-5 times more powerful than Genesis (sprite processing)... it would be silly to think that SNES was anywhere near the power of NeoGeo. SNES conversions of NeoGeo games often did pretty well, but still with very very significant reductions.
even if we gave these SNES conversions an equal amount of ROM / cart size, they still couldnt be reproduced NeoGeo-perfect because of the huge difference in processing power. only if SNES had been everything it should have been, going by the 1989 spec, would it have come close to NeoGeo in processing speed. even then, there would have been still a 3x difference in sprite capability because even the original SNES spec had 128 sprites. the NeoGeo is more powerful than the SNES, Genesis and TurboGrafx combined. with that said, NeoGeo was not the most powerful home gaming platform of its era. the FM Towns was.
I agree with just about everything - except the comment about the Genesis being much weaker than the SNES.
It's the other way around.
The SNES sucked. Pure and simple. Here's why:
1) It was slow - some of the games seemed to LOAD for not damn reason. Some games were SO damn slow period - Batman anyone? Never mind the FX chips, unless you want to compare them to the Sega SVP chip. The SNES wasn't capable of any damn 3D. Hell, I think the only real 3D the SNES did on it's own was with the Tri-Force at the title screen of The Legend of Zelda - and if you look closely the damn thing slows down when doing it. And what about when the FX chips WERE used, what was the name of that stupid childish 3D off road racing game? The one with the stupid 2D eyes on the cars? Anyway, I remember that dumb game slowing down for no damn reason too. Star Fox? That game would slow down too, and the objects were made out of like 12 triangles!! The Genesis did Race Driving on it's own. The Genesis did 3D many times, and it's games always featured many more special effects - like color cycling and multi-jointed sprites, parallax and horizontal / vertical scrolls. Not to mention that Genesis games always featured better animation. The Genesis did things the SNES could never dream of - like FMV (Red Zone) - and amazing 3D first person shooters!! The SNES need an FX chip to do a first person shooter and it was horrible anyway. So what if the system could do more colors - it wasn't THAT many because toward the end of it's life the Genesis was actually able to hold and modify it's video output for more colors - and doing it didn't slow the system down. Ecco the Dolphin is proof of that. And I won't even mention the Genesis's isometric 3D capabilities.
2) The sound system was a joke. Yes, it was - the damn thing could not even reproduce any bass. It was horrible, and sounded WAY to damn synth. Only a few songs here and there really sounded good. The Genesis always had meatier sound - the sound effects were always better - and the system was actually capable of bass. When coded correctly, the Genesis outshined the SNES when it comes to sound - hands down. The Genesis was capable better reproducing a wide variety of instruments and music genres. Everything from Techno, to Funk to happy go lucky Japanese tunes, the Genesis did it all. On SNES however, all the instruments sounded the same.
3) The games: The SNES had its great titles but it was left in the dust. Everyone knows that all the COOL games were on Genesis. Sonic was better than Mario - Flashback was better on Genesis than on SNES - Contra was better on Genesis than on SNES - Vector Man was more fun than Donkey Kong - Aladdin was better on Genesis than on SNES - Mickey Mania was better on Genesis than on SNES - Mega Turricane was better on Genesis than Super Turricane on SNES - Phantasy Star was better than Final Fantasy - Sports games were better on Genesis than on SNES - 2D side scroll shooters were better on Genesis than on SNES - Overhead shooters were better on Genesis than on SNES. Fighting games were better on Genesis than on SNES.
Damn - EVERYTHING was better on Genesis than SNES. I could go on forever.
The SNES sucked - it was for dumb casual gamers who didn't know any better. SNES was for little kids and girls - the Genesis was for Men, and for boys who wanted to be men.
I don't know about you guys, but at my School, you got your @ss kicked for owning a SNES. The damn thing even had purple power and reset buttons - I sign of things to come I guess.
The only thing worse than the SNES, was the N64 - and now the GameCube is trying to match them.
Face it.
Just Face it.