Advantages of SNES hardware vs. Genesis hardware

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Originally Posted by sheath

My 100Khz top range was from a discussion I lost over at spritesmind while asking if there was any way to use an oscillator to compare the audio outputs between platforms. My bookmarks are failing me once again, but the comparison was absolutely apples to oranges and somebody said that Genesis FM could hit above 100Khz. I was only mentioning that to show that "CD Quality" is in fact subjective and wildly variable when it comes to chip tunes.

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It's not subjective. It's pretty darn clear:

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The Red Book specifies the physical parameters and properties of the CD, the optical "stylus" parameters, deviations and error rate, modulation system (eight-to-fourteen modulation, EFM) and error correction facility (cross-interleaved Reed–Solomon coding, CIRC), and the eight subcode channels. These parameters are common to all compact discs and used by all logical formats, such as CD-ROM. The standard also specifies the form of digital audio encoding: 2-channel signed 16-bit Linear PCM sampled at 44,100 Hz. Although rarely used, the specification allows for discs to be mastered with a form of emphasis.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc_Digital_Audio

So basically to have CD quality audio you need to have 2 channels of 16-bit Linear PCM sampled at 44.1 kHz. If the audio isn't up to those specs, its not CD Audio. So even if the Genesis hits 100kHz in FM synth, it still wouldn't be CD quality audio as it's not 16-bit LPCM. Don't get me wrong here, it would probably be great quality FM synth, but it wouldn't be CD Audio is all I'm saying.

Uh huh, yup, and how would you set up a test to see if the average listener could tell the difference? See? Subjective.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Uh huh, yup, and how would you set up a test to see if the average listener could tell the difference? See? Subjective.

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And there's people out there who will say that PC-Engine audio is the same as NES audio and that they can't hear a difference. So I guess the difference there is subjective too by your definition of the word?

Not to mention that 8-bit 4OP FM Synth even at that high of a frequency would still be 8-bit 4OP FM Synth. It has a very distinct sound to it, no one would ever mistake it for CD Audio unless it's a CD soundtrack of an FM Synth game sound track.

Here, can you tell the difference?:

FM:


CD Audio:


Subjectivity doesn't really have anything to do with the technical differences between two things or being able to tell the differences between two things. It has to do with one's opinion being based on their feelings or personal tastes. So in this case whether someone prefers FM Synth or CD Audio is subjective. If you would have said this I would completely agree with you. But you didn't, you said CD Quality Audio is subjective. What people deem as CD Quality Audio is not subjective. CD Audio is a set in stone standard that's clearly defined. It's not subject to debate or people's personal tastes.

I'm too tired to be able to digest any of that information right now. But:

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

On a related note, here's a demo with mono ADPCM at 20 kHz and 33.5 kHz with 10-bit output on the PCE engine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdWYOHPV6Uw

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Very impressive. But they had to sacrifice channels and stereo to make that happen?

While the YM sample rate is ~53KHz, for PCM playback you cannot get better than half that without siginificant loss in quality. The 68K and Z0 can both push beyound 100KHz into the chip, but that does not mean all of it exits the chip.
I do not know if the PCE suffers from same kind of stuff, there's should also be access related limits...

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Very impressive. But they had to sacrifice channels and stereo to make that happen?

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It uses up 2 channels (for mono), tons of CPU power and lots of ROM space. Not something you'd do in a game. Still, those basic MOD players koolkitty posted could be massively improved.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

FM:

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Although it is does sound a lot like the FM based soundtracks of earlier SF2 games I am fairly certain that SSF2 uses PCM (like SNES or PCE), not FM. The Mega Drive port is the only rendition of the game's soundtrack in FM (and sounds better than the PCM variants in my humble opinion, the weak part in SSF2 MD are the voices).



- Pay attention to the music and try to ignore the voices.

99% sure anniversary edition uses actual FM.

Also SSF2 genesis sounds like crap. The original sounds so much better, and I'm not even talking about the voices.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

Although it is does sound a lot like the FM based soundtracks of earlier SF2 games I am fairly certain that SSF2 uses PCM (like SNES or PCE), not FM. The Mega Drive port is the only rendition of the game's soundtrack in FM (and sounds better than the PCM variants in my humble opinion, the weak part in SSF2 MD are the voices).



- Pay attention to the music and try to ignore the voices.

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The Anniversary edition pulls the CPS1 renditions for the New Challengers fighters from the Sharp X68000 port of Super Street Fighter 2, which without an external MIDI device uses a YM2151 to play FM renditions.

Here's the CPS2 version that uses PCM:

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

The Anniversary edition pulls the CPS1 renditions for the New Challengers fighters from the Sharp X68000 port of Super Street Fighter 2, which without an external MIDI device uses a YM2151 to play FM renditions.

Here's the CPS2 version that uses PCM:

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I stand corrected. I guess I just saw the title and immediately thought "PCM!".

And SSF2 on MD sounds awesome.

Considering that the Sharp X68000 port does substantially better FM Renditions with similar hardware I'd say there's really no excuse for the Genesis versions to sound so flat and poor.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

And SSF2 on MD sounds awesome.

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I suppose i'm just annoyed at how lazy it is, it certainly doesn't sound terrible but... The instruments are generic, the drums are some of the worst on the system, and it has scratchy metallic sounds from time to time. They simultaneously decreased the quality of the music (ignoring quality of compositions) and the quality of the voices! How did that happen!?

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Originally Posted by sheath

The PCEngine can do ADPCM decoding from the CPU? I thought we had established in another thread that the Saturn's 68000 derivative Sound CPU was incapable of ADPCM. I must have missed something.

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See here:


The second one in the video is 33khz too. And that's at ~50% cpu resource. If the 6280 can do it, so can the 68k.

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Originally Posted by TmEE

While the YM sample rate is ~53KHz, for PCM playback you cannot get better than half that without siginificant loss in quality. The 68K and Z0 can both push beyound 100KHz into the chip, but that does not mean all of it exits the chip.
I do not know if the PCE suffers from same kind of stuff, there's should also be access related limits...

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I haven't tested at 3.58mhz, for obvious reasons - but in DDA mode - the channel buffer (the byte written) is read out at 3.58mhz from what has been tested. Not particularly impressive, since the channel 32byte buffer can be read out at that speed - it just redirects the read to the write buffer rather than the internal channel buffer. I've done 224khz tests, IIRC.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

It uses up 2 channels (for mono), tons of CPU power and lots of ROM space. Not something you'd do in a game. Still, those basic MOD players koolkitty posted could be massively improved.

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For other consoles it seems that ROM space is what prevents you from having such high quality sound. But for the PCE, CPU resources is also a factor?

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

I suppose i'm just annoyed at how lazy it is, it certainly doesn't sound terrible but... The instruments are generic, the drums are some of the worst on the system, and it has scratchy metallic sounds from time to time. They simultaneously decreased the quality of the music (ignoring quality of compositions) and the quality of the voices! How did that happen!?

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I always thought the voices were a little bit less garbled than SCE managed. I have noticed that they don't have any samples playing in the music in SSF2 like they did for SCE, I figured that was why the voices are less garbled. Are the sample rates or bitness of the samples lower than in SCE's?

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

See here:


The second one in the video is 33khz too. And that's at ~50% cpu resource. If the 6280 can do it, so can the 68k.

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Gah, I never read the freaking comment on that one, I listen to this song all the time too. ;)

Stumbled across this thread on Neogaf, thought I'd share it with you guys:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=704806

It has a lot of typical Genesis hate going on in it.

It also has a lot of people defending the genesis even if they don't ultimately choose it.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Stumbled across this thread on Neogaf, thought I'd share it with you guys:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=704806

It has a lot of typical Genesis hate going on in it.

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Kids always forget that the SNES is over two years newer.

They're trying to argue that the SNES is tied to the Genesis for shooters. Do you hear us trying to argue that the Genesis has more JRPGs? live with facts.

If you ever need reinforcement, the Genesis army lives here.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

They're trying to argue that the SNES is tied to the Genesis for shooters.

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Severe brain damage is the only explanation for such words. There's people like that in the world, gotta live with it. Even if you just compare the best shooters of the SNES vs the best shooters of the genesis, the genesis still wins.

People always wonder how I can prefer the Genesis, over that other console that is so highly praised.

Lets see how the SNES stacks up against the three favourite genres:

Platformers: gets an A+.

Racing: eh, satisfactory.

Shooters: not a chance.

I could pick a random obscure Genesis shooter, and still prefer over any shooters on the SNES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzrpKjnaEL4

Epic boss battle music starts at 0:20.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

It uses up 2 channels (for mono), tons of CPU power and lots of ROM space. Not something you'd do in a game. Still, those basic MOD players koolkitty posted could be massively improved.

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Yeah, those MOD players are more of an example of what should have been easily possible pretty early in the system's life . . . especially had it been marketed/supported better (or at all) in North America, Europe, etc . . . especially thinking about potential 3rd party European support.

That and my general point about sound and RAM on the CD/Super CD still stands. (that ADPCM chip is so limited in practical use -and a ton of the samples don't even sound very good; it really seems like a waste, especially on the original CD where a solid 128 kB of program RAM would have really helped) That and the other thing about a DMA engine or simple blitter being a far more useful addition too. (and freeing more CPU time for stuff like PCM ;))

But that's a topic for another thread . . . if we ever do a PCE/NEC console tech thread. (and I don't mean like those rambling, nonsensical -but hillarious- TG-16 vs SNES vs MD ones we had a couple years ago :p )

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

I suppose i'm just annoyed at how lazy it is, it certainly doesn't sound terrible but... The instruments are generic, the drums are some of the worst on the system, and it has scratchy metallic sounds from time to time. They simultaneously decreased the quality of the music (ignoring quality of compositions) and the quality of the voices! How did that happen!?

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Ugh . . . it's mediocre. Many of the arrangements and instruments are OK (or even good), but the horrible FM percussion combined with some major volume/balance issues really ruin it. (some instruments are WAY too quiet or too loud)

And the voices yeah . . . same shitty sound engine and ~4 kHz samples of 1993, except now they seem to be pre-filtered to be super muffled (hell, maybe they are better than 4 kHz, but you sure can tell by the sound), and the same horrible uneven playback issues and 68000-Z80 conflicts (sounds better when 68k is halted, and otherwise sounds bad regardless of being in-game or not -games with major DMA contention issues sound better in sound test than in-game).

They could afford to invest in a full 5 MB of ROM for the MD game, but not in a decent sound programmer . . . or allot even a modest amount of that for decent drum samples and better SFX/speech? (not to mention how that 5 MB doesn't really compare that impressively to the SNES's 4 MB given the MD's capacity for streaming compressed graphics, especially for what should have been a refined, late-gen production -and we're not taking a "chipped" SNES game either, and there aren't major loading times, so the 128 kB work RAM likely isn't being used for decompression buffer space either)

Hell, with 5 MB and reasonable optimization on the MD, they probably could have even afforded to use the MD's higher resolution in H40 too. (or at least consider it, among other trade-offs)


Games 1/5 the size of it and 3-5 years older were literally wiping the floor with it sound wise for music with good sampled percussion and/or SFX/speech.

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

See here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdWYOHPV6Uw

The second one in the video is 33khz too. And that's at ~50% cpu resource. If the 6280 can do it, so can the 68k.

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This is getting off topic, but I wonder how much less overhead it would take for a compression format totally optimized around 8-bit math . . . decoded using 8-bit math to 8-bit resolution with additional optimziation (and limiting/clamping to avoid overflow or need for clamping when decoding) on the encoding end. IIRC that's more or less the way Stef's 4-bit DPCM format is simplemented on the MD (maybe SMPS too), and given the 8-bit output, 4-bit DPCM shouldn't really fair bad compared to ADPCM. (actually it should be easier to optimize on the encoding end in some respects)

For that matter, Tiido's TADPCM format should be easier to optimize for this sort of decoding too, given it uses explicit delta values in DPCM like fashion, but replaced it in every block of 12 samples. (and actual deltas are 2-bits, not 4 -defined as +/- 1x or .5x of an 8-bit value provided for that block iirc)

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

For other consoles it seems that ROM space is what prevents you from having such high quality sound. But for the PCE, CPU resources is also a factor?

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The PCE has it easier than the MD, programming wise. On the MD, the Z80 is used for software PCM playback and there's a lot of little issues that end up as a net big headache for programmers in many situations, with the net result being that a ton of games (most of which without attention to detail on sound programming) had poor quality PCM playback algorithms or sometimes OK (but not great) ones that butt up against some of the other major pitfalls.
You end up with uneven, distorted playback that's garbled and worse sounding than should be the case (ie worse than the raw PCM samples themselves).

Some games are purely limited by sample quality though (both in terms of bitrate and preprocessing/encoding), and games using the GEMS sound engine is probably some of the easier examples of this. In that case, it seems there's quite a few games (late gen ones at that) that are using 4-bit PCM (linear PCM) to save space since GEMS only supports 8-bit and 4-bit LPCM and I assume 4-bit samples were felt to be superior to 8-bit ones at 1/2 the sample rate. The results there is even, less muffled playback with a "crunchy" sound to it due to the low resolution. (I'm pretty sure this is what's going on in Mortal Kombat 3, and some samples in Aladdin and Earthwom Jim 1 and 2, among others)

But back to PCE: in this case you've got pretty straightforward CPU driven PCM playback with some neat workarounds to help boost things further. You've got a fairly fast main CPU without any bus conflcits, an interval timer with interrupts for the CPU, and direct DAC ports on the sound chip (albeit only 5-bit resolution in normal configuration); you've also got a CPU with relatively fast/low latency interrupt handling. The timer inerrupts use any integer divisible of 6.99 kHz (7 kHz for short), and the simplest examples use 4-bit or 5-bit (packed) linear PCM . . . 5-bit packed is somewhat of a pain to decode, but doable (unpacked would be a huge waste -8 bits with only 5 used-, and if the overhead of 5-bit isn't worth it, 4-bit is better). By pairing 2 channels and setting the volumes to line up properly, you get 10-bit resolution useful for 8-bit PCM, multi channel mixing, or ADPCM (etc) decoding.

Some games use RLE compression on 4-bit samples too, but that doesn't work all that well and I'm pretty sure the preprocessing used to favor RLE compression leads to some weird artifacts. (in any case, this would only apply for REALLY low bitrate samples, well below that of typical MD games -at typical rates, uncompressed 4-bit LPCM would be fine)

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Kids always forget that the SNES is over two years newer.

They're trying to argue that the SNES is tied to the Genesis for shooters. Do you hear us trying to argue that the Genesis has more JRPGs? live with facts.

If you ever need reinforcement, the Genesis army lives here.

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In PAL regions, the MD had more JRPGs than the SNES. :p

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

In PAL regions, the MD had more JRPGs than the SNES. :p

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Nope. Even if numbers would proof you correct (which I highly doubt), you'd be comparing Fatal Labyrinth vs Terranigma.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

Ugh . . . it's mediocre. Many of the arrangements and instruments are OK (or even good), but the horrible FM percussion combined with some major volume/balance issues really ruin it. (some instruments are WAY too quiet or too loud)

And the voices yeah . . . same shitty sound engine and ~4 kHz samples of 1993, except now they seem to be pre-filtered to be super muffled (hell, maybe they are better than 4 kHz, but you sure can tell by the sound), and the same horrible uneven playback issues and 68000-Z80 conflicts (sounds better when 68k is halted, and otherwise sounds bad regardless of being in-game or not -games with major DMA contention issues sound better in sound test than in-game).

They could afford to invest in a full 5 MB of ROM for the MD game, but not in a decent sound programmer . . . or allot even a modest amount of that for decent drum samples and better SFX/speech? (not to mention how that 5 MB doesn't really compare that impressively to the SNES's 4 MB given the MD's capacity for streaming compressed graphics, especially for what should have been a refined, late-gen production -and we're not taking a "chipped" SNES game either, and there aren't major loading times, so the 128 kB work RAM likely isn't being used for decompression buffer space either)

Hell, with 5 MB and reasonable optimization on the MD, they probably could have even afforded to use the MD's higher resolution in H40 too. (or at least consider it, among other trade-offs)


Games 1/5 the size of it and 3-5 years older were literally wiping the floor with it sound wise for music with good sampled percussion and/or SFX/speech.

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My guess is that SSF2 on MD uses that extra room for the voice samples. SNES supports ADPCM so there's some really powerful compression (for the time) to save tons of space on cartridge + better overall sound quality on top of that. Among other things this is the result of those decent decompression and playback capabilities of the SNES' sound chip, again saving on cartridge space in comparison to something of similar quality without those capabilities on the hardware side.

Squeezing in lots of speech samples into a tiny cartridge clearly is one of the SNES' advantages in comparison to the MD. Well and that it was somewhat idiot proof to pull off, it seems. At least even the best Japanese devs struggled with that on MD.

Again, I think the music in SSF2 on MD is excellent. If that same music was used in a shooter people would praise it for its excellence. But as it is, buried in those awful bottom of the barrel low fi voice samples, it gets tons of flag.

This game's music definitely is Capcom's finest work on MD.



The other problem you mentioned (256x224 vs 320x224) surely was a decision for economical reasons. They obviously worked with the original SF2 SNES resources for all console ports as all three mainstream consoles at the time supported this resolution. Redoing everything from scratch in 320x224 just for MD probably would have meant to increase the cost dramatically and likely would have delayed the game for roughly another year.

So yeah, while it would have been nice to have a more dedicated port in that regard, it would have been very stupid for Capcom not to do it the way they did.

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Originally Posted by Christuserloeser

My guess is that SSF2 on MD uses that extra room for the voice samples. SNES supports ADPCM so there's some really powerful compression (for the time) to save tons of space on cartridge + better overall sound quality on top of that. Among other things this is the result of those decent decompression and playback capabilities of the SNES' sound chip, again saving on cartridge space in comparison to something of similar quality without those capabilities on the hardware side.

Squeezing in lots of speech samples into a tiny cartridge clearly is one of the SNES' advantages in comparison to the MD. Well and that it was somewhat idiot proof to pull off, it seems. At least even the best Japanese devs struggled with that on MD.

Again, I think the music in SSF2 on MD is excellent. If that same music was used in a shooter people would praise it for its excellence. But as it is, buried in those awful bottom of the barrel low fi voice samples, it gets tons of flag.

This game's music definitely is Capcom's finest work on MD.



The other problem you mentioned (256x224 vs 320x224) surely was a decision for economical reasons. They obviously worked with the original SF2 SNES resources for all console ports as all three mainstream consoles at the time supported this resolution. Redoing everything from scratch in 320x224 just for MD probably would have meant to increase the cost dramatically and likely would have delayed the game for roughly another year.

So yeah, while it would have been nice to have a more dedicated port in that regard, it would have been very stupid for Capcom not to do it the way they did.

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I don't know how much space is saved for samples between the two ports, since the SNES also has to use additional samples for all the music and any sound in general.

Games don't take up the same space on different consoles. Aside from that, the MD SSFII also has additional graphics.

The good thing about the music in MD SSFII is that it is consistent. SFIISCE had some great sound and composition for parts of most tracks, but most bgms have something wrong with them. It's too bad they didn't fully polish it off.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Kids always forget that the SNES is over two years newer.

They're trying to argue that the SNES is tied to the Genesis for shooters.

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Are these the same ' kids' that forget that the Mega Drive came out after the PC-Eng, that the Master System came out way after the NES, The DC after the N64 or the XBox way after the PS2 yet all those consoles seem to be compared with each other ' even on here some times .

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Do you hear us trying to argue that the Genesis has more JRPGs? live with facts

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Who cares about numbers ? . I care far more about quality and on that score the Mega CD is the system to own for RPG's and racers imo

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Lets see how the SNES stacks up against the three favourite genres:

Platformers: gets an A+.

Racing: eh, satisfactory.

Shooters: not a chance

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Are those your fav genre's ? To me while the Snes will never compare to the Mega Drive for shooters (well bar 3D shooter) and sports games , The Mega Drive will never compare to the Snes for Platform games or Adventure games . Mario IV, Castlevania, and Super Metroid, Legend of the Mystical Ninja were perfection in my eye's

Honestly I'd say the Genesis has just as many good platformers as the SNES. The only thing it's really missing is some kind of response to Metroid.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Honestly I'd say the Genesis has just as many good platformers as the SNES. The only thing it's really missing is some kind of response to Metroid.

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The Mega Drive got the better number of good platform games for sure , but imo Mario IV and Super Metroid are total platform perfection . Imo the only game that's ever came close to Mario IV perfect gameplay and level design is Exhumed on the Saturn ; Both games are for me, examples for level design utter perfection

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Honestly I'd say the Genesis has just as many good platformers as the SNES. The only thing it's really missing is some kind of response to Metroid.

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Monster World IV > Super Metroid

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

The Mega Drive got the better number of good platform games for sure , but imo Mario IV and Super Metroid are total platform perfection . Imo the only game that's ever came close to Mario IV perfect gameplay and level design is Exhumed on the Saturn ; Both games are for me, examples for level design utter perfection

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Super Mario World is dull and boring. The Sonic games beat it in every category. The levels are simple, flat, straight lines with little to no exploration. I've never once completed the game simply because I've gotten bored with it after the first castle.

Here's your average Sonic Level:

http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/8083/s11ghz1.png

And here's your average SMW level:

http://www.mariomayhem.com/downloads...27sIsland1.png

There's no comparison.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Super Mario World is dull and boring. The Sonic games beat it in every category. The levels are simple, flat, straight lines with little to no exploration. I've never once completed the game simply because I've gotten bored with it after the first castle.

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I'm Sorry Sonic is simple and easy with zero depth and all show, much like Donkey Kong on the Snes take away the graphics and they're not up to much . Castle Of Illusion and Quackshot are much much better platform games and even there aren't a patch on Mario IV or Yoshi Story imo

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Monster World IV > Super Metroid

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Nice game and I'm a big fan of MW IV but it's no Super Metroid

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Are these the same ' kids' that forget that the Mega Drive came out after the PC-Eng, that the Master System came out way after the NES, The DC after the N64 or the XBox way after the PS2 yet all those consoles seem to be compared with each other ' even on here some times .

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"The SNES has way nicer colours and sound. Why did Sega release a console with such mediocre hardware?"

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Who cares about numbers ? . I care far more about quality and on that score the Mega CD is the system to own for RPG's and racers imo

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Mega-CD racers? show me

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Are those your fav genre's ? To me while the Snes will never compare to the Mega Drive for shooters (well bar 3D shooter) and sports games , The Mega Drive will never compare to the Snes for Platform games or Adventure games . Mario IV, Castlevania, and Super Metroid, Legend of the Mystical Ninja were perfection in my eye's

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Adventure games, okay thats a Genesis weak spot, but for platformers I'd say they're tied.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I'm Sorry Sonic is simple and easy with zero depth and all show, much like Donkey Kong on the Snes take away the graphics and they're not up to much . Castle Of Illusion and Quackshot are much much better platform games and even there aren't a patch on Mario IV or Yoshi Story imo

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Did you even look at the levels I showed you? The Mario level is more all show with no depth. It's just one single path with no exploration. Sonic levels are huge by comparison with tons of routes to explore and interesting obstacles to figure out with much more unique and interesting boss battles.

Mario World can be beaten in about 10 minutes for crying out loud:



That's not tool assisted, it's in real time on a real SNES.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Mega-CD racers? show me

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Barone proved here that Formula 1 Beyond the Limit is an accurate F1 sim for the year and time it represents. Then there is Jaguar XJ220, which is quite good and lengthy. I prefer the more Arcade Road Blasters approach of Batman Returns, and BC Racers is best on Sega CD. Road Rash CD isn't faster than the Genesis games, but accurately represents the tracks from the 3DO, Saturn and PS1 game and plays quite well. Adventures of Batman & Robin is good for a solid self flogging.

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Originally Posted by azonicrider

Adventure games, okay thats a Genesis weak spot, but for platformers I'd say they're tied.

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Light Crusader, Crusader of Centy, Beyond Oasis, and Land Stalker are outside keying your car.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Light Crusader, Crusader of Centy, Beyond Oasis, and Land Stalker are outside keying your car.

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King Colossus too, the Ecco games, the Monster World games, and Popful Mail if we count the Sega CD too.

I agree the SNES beats the genesis when it comes to adventure/action rpg games (super metroid is one of the most perfect games ever made), but calling it a weak spot? Far from it, the genesis is pretty strong at them actually, much better than at regular RPGs.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Honestly I'd say the Genesis has just as many good platformers as the SNES. The only thing it's really missing is some kind of response to Metroid.

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one of the main homebrew groups should make a Metroidvania

There are actually plenty of RPGs, but there really isn't an analog for metroid.

I was absolutely dieing for a Genesis version of Zillion back in the day. Screw trends and dead licenses, Zillion is awesome!

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

Monster World IV > Super Metroid

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Yes, I totally agree with this! If Monster World IV had received a proper US release, SNES fans would lose a bragging point with Super Metroid; Monster World IV is a fantastic action/adventure/RPG game with a deeply-rooted franchise history. Not knocking Super Metroid, in fact knocking SOA for not localizing this wonderful 10/10 title.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Super Mario World is dull and boring. The Sonic games beat it in every category. The levels are simple, flat, straight lines with little to no exploration. I've never once completed the game simply because I've gotten bored with it after the first castle.

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Hit the nail right on the head. I used to think Super Mario games utilized a random level map generator and the game was to see how long I could play it before quitting of boredom. I used to really enjoy watching my cousin play Super Mario World though.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Light Crusader, Crusader of Centy, Beyond Oasis, and Land Stalker are outside keying your car.

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I will never get tired of saying how much I treasure Crusader of Centy; only fault in it is it's limited release and consequently exponentially increasing price tag.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Barone proved here that Formula 1 Beyond the Limit is an accurate F1 sim for the year and time it represents. Then there is Jaguar XJ220, which is quite good and lengthy. I prefer the more Arcade Road Blasters approach of Batman Returns, and BC Racers is best on Sega CD. Road Rash CD isn't faster than the Genesis games, but accurately represents the tracks from the 3DO, Saturn and PS1 game and plays quite well. Adventures of Batman & Robin is good for a solid self flogging.




Light Crusader, Crusader of Centy, Beyond Oasis, and Land Stalker are outside keying your car.

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I ride a Moped

I think you just don't really play adventure/RPGs on the Genesis, yes theres some fun ones, but theres better consoles for those games. Saturn.

Chakan should be considered the closest answer to Super Metroid IMO.

Have you actually played that game ? I mean it looks nice on screenshots and maybe on YT but that's about it. The game is plagued with tons of problems that make it a chore to play - which is too bad because I'd really prefer this game to be fun as I really love the concept and art design.

Yes its hard as balls, but I got strange taste. I think Zelda II is the best Zelda game.

Its a polarizing game.