Genesis vs TurboGrafx Parallax. How do they compare?

[Iron Lizard]

I don’t have a duo. I have a TG16 with a broken CD unit . Those pics are colorful for sure. I can’t comment on any RPG’s except Zelda 64 and Chrono Trigger as these are the only two games I have seen at length.

Grr, I know the pain of having a broken CD as well. Damn things.

[awack]

Also worth pointing out is that emulators do not emulate the color of the PCE correctly, it's 9bit but there's some kind of color conversion done, Tom did a post about it some time ago

I actually tried to simulate that the best i could, which is why the colors look slightly pale or washed out for LOX2.

My shot is on the right, look at the sand and notice less color saturation.

SK3 looks better :P.

Its pretty subjective, like i said the overhead parts look better in SD3, but no doudt for me the Boss fights look better in LOX2...SD3 has beeter fx though while LOX2 has nice looking cutscenes.

[TmEE]

SK3 looks better :P.
That's not to say LOX2 doesn't look awesome. In fact I'll retract what I said before about Final Fantasy 6, the boss fights in LoX2 are just way too good looking.
Also worth pointing out is that emulators do not emulate the color of the PCE correctly, it's 9bit but there's some kind of color conversion done, Tom did a post about it some time ago:

Left - Emulator
Right - Real Hardware

He needs the black level to be right though... when you fix the brightness it will be much more closer to the emulator shot, though still slightly more paler. Its like comparing 2 sound files except one is louder... to compare you fix loudness of both... and in current case loudness = black level / brightness

[Kamahl]

Yes but there are clearly differences in saturation, it's not just brightness. Plus black is pretty black on the second shot too.

[sheath]

I see different black levels on each of my LCDs for those shots. On my laptop at full brightness I can see all three sky gradients in both shots and the left shot looks to have the best black level. This is why emulation introduces so many varied opinions about games, the target output is even more inconsistent than real hardware and SDTVs were.

[awack]

We also have also have to remember that not all NEC consoles have the same out put, DUORs have a slightly paler look than say a TG16.


This isnt a fair comparison, because im not showing the boss fights, which are the best looking parts in LOX2, but what the hell, its an intersesting comparison.


shadowgate

[Kamahl]

This thread was supposed to be about parallax... it's turning into the old thread

[Black_Tiger]

I can’t comment on any RPG’s except Zelda 64 and Chrono Trigger as these are the only two games I have seen at length.

Then you've missed out on some of the best graphics of the generation, especially when it comes to PCE and SFC. This illustrates how having 'access to all the games' doesn't mean much when it comes to being an authority on them. All you can say about the PCE library is that you aren't familiar enough with it to judge. Which has been clear to the rest of us all along.

[evilevoix]

This thread was supposed to be about parallax... it's turning into the old thread

EXACTLY THANK YOU!

[awack]

This thread was supposed to be about parallax... it's turning into the old thread

Genesis wins! what about genesis vs snes when comes to parallax scrolling, lets not go there

I don’t have a duo. I have a TG16 with a broken CD unit

I have to admit that im biased towards the pce when it comes to animation, detail and color(on actual system) but the other reason i like these kinda of threads is to let paople know about some of the better games on the consoles being talked about, so hopefully you can either get your TGCD fixed or get a DUOR and try out some of the games you havent played yet.

[Kamahl]

Genesis wins! what about genesis vs snes when comes to parallax scrolling, lets not go there

The SNES wins XD.

[evilevoix]

I have to admit that im biased towards the pce when it comes to animation, detail and color(on actual system) but the other reason i like these kinda of threads is to let paople know about some of the better games on the consoles being talked about, so hopefully you can either get your TGCD fixed or get a DUOR and try out some of the games you havent played yet.

I have them all, U.S. and Japanese all the way up to the Arcade format, I do not have those.

[kool kitty89]

There's no denying NEC's retarded management and marketing, but the lack of a second background layer does cause a bad first impression (assuming, like me, the first game you saw was bonk or keith courage and not gate of thunder).

Huh? How could they pack-in Gate of Thunder in 1989? (or as a hucard at all?)

Blazing Lasers or Legendary Axe probably would have been the best of the launch titles to pack-in.

They also could/should have bumped the price down to $150 at launch. (probably would still have been close to or better than Sega's margins given NEC's manufacturing advantages and the cheaper hardware in general)

They probably could have pushed a 1988 US launch, but the library was a bit sparse at that point. (they probably should have started building up their US marketing/distribution/licensing infrastructure in 1988 though, possibly starting to build up for Europe as well)

(EDIT: Just remembered it's probably doing a horizontal mirror on the tiles... so it's only half, still... VERY CLEVER)

Ah, yes, there's a lot done in that game that could conserve bandwidth and VRAM space through mirroring.

Afaik, doing the scanline sacrifice gives the MD almost twice the normal update time, bringing it to PCE levels except you have plenty of time for the processor (unlike the PCE where updating at the MAX would mean the processor isn't used for anything else)

It depends how many scanlines you cut. Normally (in NTSC), you have 224 lines in active display and 262 lines per frame leaving 36 lines for DMA (2 are reserved for sync iirc). PAL has 312 lines per frame by comparison.
For each vblank DMA line used, you get approximately 166 bytes in H32 (256 wide) and 207 bytes in H40 (320 wide). So each additional line you clip gives that much more DMA.

To exactly double the DMA time/bandwidth from 224 lines in NTSC, you'd need to clip to 186 lines. (or 184 for convenience of aligning to 8x8 tile cells) Clipping to 200 or 192 lines is more common, but I think some of CORE's games on the MCD are close to 184 lines.

To achieve the same bandwidth (not per frame, but per second) in 50 Hz PAL, you'd only need to clip to 224 lines. (technically it would be very slightly less bandwidth, but almost identical to 184 lines in 60 Hz)

How would have NEC dominated the North American market? When compare systems and their hold on the market one must look at the entire history of its library and its accomplishments. Launch titles could make or break the unit, the MD and the SNES made huge splashes and separated themselves from the rest of the market. I never saw anything like this with the PCE with the notable exception of Bonk. Most people on this site have argued that the system wasn’t limited at all it was the marketing and development team. IIRC I knew exactly what a TG16 was, saw commercials all the time for it, and bought the double unit with birthday money. I don’t think Marketing was an issue so that is a victory for management, what is left is the games. You guys showed me some amazing looking games that came out for the system in 1995, well past the prime of the “16-BIT” generation. Would it be fair to state that the hardware and the software generally represented a short fall in the market on a step by step basis, meaning that launch title for the TG16 Vs Launch for the MD and then later the SNES all the way through the systems lives and their ultimate deaths?

Yes, but history would have changed:
The PCE/TG-16 would have gotten many, many, many more games and from western developers.

If NEC really threw their weight around, they could have ended up depriving Sega and Nintendo from many of the 3rd party collaborative efforts seen at the time. (probably buying out some developers entirely, like Sony)

Lower hardware prices, MUCH more and better software, MUCH more and better advertising, etc.




Hardware is always a factor, but rarely the deciding factor on its own. (especially in the US market) The NES and PS2 were hardly the best hardware wise on the market, or the Wii for that matter, or GB, etc. (at least from a performance standpoint the GB wasn't, but it has other hardware advantages)
In that sense though, the PCE hardware did have advantages of low-cost and efficient/flexible design. (granted, NEC squandered its expansion capabilities)

Comparing the PCE with the SNES is a bit like comparing the PSX to the N64 in some respects.

[Chilly Willy]

Just a note: the PCE doesn't do mirroring on background cells, only on sprites. The lower 12 bits of a cell name is the index of the cell, and the upper 4 bits (total of 16 bits) is the palette number.

[TmEE]

and SMS can flip BG tiles but cannot flip sprites :P