by Mod_Man_Extreme Sun Aug 22, 2010 3:15 am
The SNES has far more colors, and why wouldn't it? After all the machine came out several years later and after a much more lengthy R&D cycle than the Genesis which beat it to market by a substantial margin. That having been said the SNES suffers from frequent slowdown and has been the culprit of many a "Frame-rate headache" due to it's frequent dips in speed thanks to the much slower CPU than that of the Genesis. As it stands the SNES is at it's very best performance point is typically a machine for slower paced games and text-heavy RPG's instead of fast and hard hitting action titles with lots of stuff onscreen.
The Genesis may have had less colors, but the faster CPU and larger amount of RAM allowed for it to display more onscreen at one time and deliver faster and frankly more rewarding gameplay in the arcade style which was THE genre to be at that time. Yes, it's not going to look as fancy as the SNES at times, but the Genesis was at it's core the last of the old guard of game consoles. Built out of mostly off the shelf parts which would make for a powerful machine that was cost effective to build yet powerful enough to impress and garner staying power for the lifetime of it's generation.
In the end there really isn't a fair way to decide between the two. While they may be machines from the same generation of consoles internally they're completely different beasts from rival eras.
That all having been said I chose the Genesis for the same reasons others have mentioned. I prefer a sharp stylistic game/graphics/picture with lots of details, crazy, awesome, funky blends of colors and the faster arcade-like gameplay over the slow more docile approach taken in the majority of SNES titles.
P.S.-Because it's already come up, I prefer the Genny for sound mainly because I'm a synthesizer nut. I love the sound of that YM2612+PSG Live and in action over the SNES's overly digital and artificial sounding pre-written sample based synthesis.
Also, while there are some amazing compositions and at times awesome music the SNES's SPC chip sound is NOT video game music. The SPC chip was actually designed for use inside of receivers and set-top boxes for the decoding and playback, or DSP/effects handling of incoming audio, NOT to make music. The only reason Nintendo used it was based on the fact that there was a production deadline and Kutaragi/Sony's contract offered them a large supply of slightly modified SPC's for use in the SNES immediately, and in time to save face for the SNES's Japanese launch. Not to mention the horrible aftereffects of making music with the SPC resulting in a dull constant echo present in the audio of nearly all games on the SNES.
Like I said before though, while there are a lot of great tunes on the SNES the large majority of them ended up sounding stale, artificial and outdated long before the system's retirement/demise thanks to the usage of sound hardware that was far outside of it's designed territory.
My Consoles:Genesis - Nomad - SegaCD - GameGear - Sega Saturn - Dreamcast - NES - SNES - N64 - Gamecube - Wii - Playstation - PSone & LCD - PS2 - PS3 - Xbox - 3DS
Niode wrote:Send him a dodgy cheque. Make it out to Scammy McScammerson.
Check out my sale thread below, NeoGeo MVS carts & Arcade gear wanted!:viewtopic.php?f=22&t=11366