Best graphic of the 16 bit era..

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Originally Posted by evilevoix

Any home released console that is within the 16BIT era. That said if you want to boot the AES go with the cd system. But the AES is a well marketed ( considering) and was available at Babages next to sega/Nintendo stuff. Back then Babages sold computer stuff, got a sound blaster and a 56k modem! I used to pull a Neo Geo game off the shelf and ask my dad to buy it for me. It was $250 and told me to "Get the hell out of here!!!".

Always a laugh. That being said it was 100% a home console. I remember dome kid walking in the store one day just buying a game like it was nothing, never been as envious in my life.

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Tell me, could you buy Mark of the Wolves for Neo-Geo at Babbages upon release? Or whatever it's 1999 equivalent would be? Or any retail store in the US for that matter?

If the answer is no, then that further drives the point home that at some point, Neo Geo games don't qualify as 16-bit anymore, even they run on "16-bit" hardware. Look at it this way, a Neo Geo game has to have been at the very least released during the lifetime of actual 16-bit home consoles, and maybe even be ported to those systems. When Metal Slug came out in 1996, the 16-bit market was dead and the 32-bit generation was already well underway. Metal Slug was ported to the Saturn and was available on Neo Geo CD. That means Metal Slug was a 5th generation arcade game.

Yes, it's cool that such an old piece of hardware could be capable of playing such new games, but that isn't a reason to compare Mark of the Wolves to a primitive port of Street Fighter 2 on the SNES. It just doesn't make sense.

Besides, the Neo Geo's capability of running such high end games is really quite simple. The system's huge cartridge bus, allowing for a very high ceiling of ROM space, added onto the system's basic hardware features, equals games like Mark of the Wolves and Last Blade 2. Much like any cartridge system, the ROM space, compression, bank switching and other data management tricks amplify the system's basic and advanced hardware features. A late game like Ristar on the Genesis is honestly quite impressive compared to Space Harrier II, an early release. The reason Ristar is so much more advanced is due to more ROM space and better use of the Genesis hardware. Both Space Harrier II and Ristar run on the same exact hardware.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Is the Neo-Geo really a 16-bit system? I was marketed as a 24-bit system by SNK, with a 68000 @ 12Mhz and a Z80A co-processor.

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Yes, it's 16-bit. If it wasn't, then the Genesis would also be 24-bit, seeing how it also has a 68000 and a Z80.

Fun fact: Early models and revisions of the Neo Geo (arcade and home) hardware used a regular Z80 instead of the Z80A. Those units today are known to suffer prematurely failing Z80 chips, because SNK would clock Z80 up to the speed of the Z80A.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

Yes, it's 16-bit. If it wasn't, then the Genesis would also be 24-bit, seeing how it also has a 68000 and a Z80.

Fun fact: Early models and revisions of the Neo Geo (arcade and home) hardware used a regular Z80 instead of the Z80A. Those units today are known to suffer prematurely failing Z80 chips, because SNK would clock Z80 up to the speed of the Z80A.

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The Z80 served a different purpose for the Genesis though. It was a part of the sound hardware.

It's the exact same situation in the Neo Geo. The Z80 drives the YM2610. I don't recall any evidence of the Z80 being used for game code or graphics.

Something else interesting, is the 68000 in the Neo Geo cannot access the CHA board on the cartridge bus. In other words, no easy polygons on Neo Geo.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

It's the exact same situation in the Neo Geo. The Z80 drives the YM2610. I don't recall any evidence of the Z80 being used for game code or graphics.

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Yeah, I just noticed that on the wiki page.

Does it share the same memory address as the Motorola 68000, or does it have it's own 8-bit memory address?

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Originally Posted by Guntz

Yes, it's 16-bit. If it wasn't, then the Genesis would also be 24-bit, seeing how it also has a 68000 and a Z80.

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The main CPU in the Genesis is 32-bit. Genesis games shouldn't even count in this thread.
The TG-16's main CPU is 8-bit, so those games shouldn't count either.
The SNES only has a main BUS width of 8-bits, so that system shouldn't count here either.

The only games in this thread should be Intellivision games, as that was a true 16-bit system.

http://www.scottdecker.com/video_gam...y_screen_4.jpg
Beautiful... just fucking beautiful

No need to go and pull that kind of card. You simply asked if the Neo-Geo was 24-bit and I explained that it isn't...

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Originally Posted by Guntz

No need to go and pull that kind of card. You simply asked if the Neo-Geo was 24-bit and I explained that it isn't...

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I know, man. I wasn't meaning to poke fun at you at all. I just used your quote for an excuse to bring up the Intellivision and it's 16-bit goodness!

Whoops, I confused you with gamevet. As for his question, I don't know if the Z80 shares memory address as the 68k, the Neo Geo hardware isn't documented well in a programming sense. There's enough technical information that repairs for most any kind of hardware problem can be made though! Neo Geo MVS boards are pretty fun to diagnose and fix.

I do think you're right. We should only count games that came out until 1995(6?).

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Originally Posted by Breetai

That's exactly the point! Do you really think that is what the OP meant to happen?



I guess debating semantics is more fun that posting photos of cool looking games in the 16-bit era (which are... which sorts of games?).

I asked how can Mark of the Wolves be considered from the 16-bit era. A response:

My response: it came out in 1999 on the Dreamcast and Neo Geo. It's not a 16-bit era game. It's a 6th generation game.

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So wasn't all this "Bit" stuff just BS to begin with, being made up by Sega as part of marketing for the Genesis?

Would explain why they don't bother with it anymore. The industry kept it up with "32-bit", which has a neat ring to it, and a few claiming "64-bit" which i think was BS all-around. No way was Jaguar & N64 twice as powerful as the other two systems.

I remember some were trying to say "128-bit" with stuff like the PS2 but....*crickets chirping*....that never caught on and since then the "Bit" distinction has fallen into disuse.

I remember reading articles about the DC where it was toting the 128-bit spec.

At the time the media was insane about doubling the "bittness" of the system for each subsequent generation. If the Dreamcast didn't happen to have any claim to 128-bit (the FPU does) it would have been panned even harder than it eventually was for being "underpowered". More interesting to me than that is how the Dreamcast, and only the Dreamcast, was held up as some sort of 60FPS revolution. Any game that had a variable framerate or sub 60FPS was given a lower graphics and overall score, especially on IGN.

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Originally Posted by Saturn Fan

So wasn't all this "Bit" stuff just BS to begin with, being made up by Sega as part of marketing for the Genesis?

Would explain why they don't bother with it anymore. The industry kept it up with "32-bit", which has a neat ring to it, and a few claiming "64-bit" which i think was BS all-around. No way was Jaguar & N64 twice as powerful as the other two systems.

I remember some were trying to say "128-bit" with stuff like the PS2 but....*crickets chirping*....that never caught on and since then the "Bit" distinction has fallen into disuse.

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The N64 was 64 bit though. It has nothing to do with twice as powerful, the CPU is simply capable of 64-bit operations. The Dreamcast I remember hearing as 128-bit, but I'm not sure how much merit that has. If I remember correctly the CPU is 64-bit with a 64-bit bus but the FPU is capable of 128-bit operations or something like that.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

If I remember correctly the CPU is 64-bit with a 64-bit bus but the FPU is capable of 128-bit operations or something like that.

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Sounds about right.

When I attended electronics applications classes, the address bus was always the point of reference.


According to this article, the SH-4 in the DC is internally a 32-bit processor, but its address bus is 64-bit.

http://www.segatech.com/technical/cpu/index.html