The Neo Geo was just a glorified Genesis.

[sheath]

In this case the automobile comparison would be more appropriate if there was a car that only used jet fuel and there was a consumer car that used regular fuel while having ~50% the same components under the hood.

[Guntz]

I find the argument here rather silly. More silly than fictitious histories to spin around our favorite game companies. Just go buy an MVS and make yourself a Supergun or something and sit it right next to the Genesis. Sure the universe might implode in on itself (that's why I have my Neo sitting away from the Genesis), but at least it'd be an implosion of pure awesome.

[Chilly Willy]

If my Aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. If the Genesis had a better sound processor and more colors it would look better than the SNES. The Neo Geo could move massive amount of memory and sprites and scaling and color and so on. The huge carts are just as huge of a benefit of a much larger budget. It's like arguing a Ferrari is faster because it has a V8 while a Toyota Camry only has 4 cylinders. As to that I would say DUH. Both will get you to the store but man who wouldn't take that Ferrari. A much smaller Rom game could still take advantage of the Neo's hardware in a way that the Sega Genesis could never.

Sorry, but you're crazy. The comparison is between a Camaro and a Corvette - put a 12 cylinder in both and the average person won't notice the difference... and the other way around, put a 2 cylinder in both and the only difference is one costs more than the other. A tiny cart won't make magic just because it's in a NeoGeo, and the MD can make magic nearly indistinguishable from the NeoGeo if you had no rom constraints.

[The Sports Guy]

I just read the title and have to strongly disagree with it. The NeoGeo was the gamer snob's gaming console, it was of course arcade powerful. I think the problems (besides the obvious, price) lied with the fact that even though the system had arcade power, you weren't seeing games being ported to it that were any good in the arcades! What if there was a Street Fighter II port for Neo Geo? A few good arcade ports (and were not talking good to us hardcore gamers, we're talking good so the neighbor kid's mom gets the game for the kid) would have made this system a lot more attractive to me.

[StarMist]

If my Aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. If the Genesis had a better sound processor and more colors it would look better than the SNES. The Neo Geo could move massive amount of memory and sprites and scaling and color and so on. The huge carts are just as huge of a benefit of a much larger budget. It's like arguing a Ferrari is faster because it has a V8 while a Toyota Camry only has 4 cylinders. As to that I would say DUH. Both will get you to the store but man who wouldn't take that Ferrari. A much smaller Rom game could still take advantage of the Neo's hardware in a way that the Sega Genesis could never.

Sorry, but you're crazy. The comparison is between a Camaro and a Corvette - put a 12 cylinder in both and the average person won't notice the difference... and the other way around, put a 2 cylinder in both and the only difference is one costs more than the other. A tiny cart won't make magic just because it's in a NeoGeo, and the MD can make magic nearly indistinguishable from the NeoGeo if you had no rom constraints.

I interpret evilvoix's "much smaller ROM" as something like half or a quarter the standard NG size rather than 16 MEGs or whatever the MD's mean came out to be.
But the constraints are the point. Otherwise it's not a Genesis. The Genny would've been heartpopping sweet had it come out with the 32X under its hood, but it didn't, hence the NG has its deserved measure of glory over the Genesis as well as the SNES and TG16.

[Joe Redifer]

There is no doubt that the Neo Geo is more powerful than the gaming consoles of the time (for a few years, anyway), but it was not the end-all, be-all of consoles that some of its fans would have you believe. It is what it is and its fans do everything they can so the system keeps its "value" (re: they want the prices to remain high so that they can remain "elite"). If Krikzz came along with a Neo Geo Everdrive the hardcore fans would set him on fire (and I'd buy one). The Neo Geo has some of the ugliest fans around as far as attitude is concerned. Not saying we're too pretty here at Sega-16.

[The Coop]

Speak for yourself, Joe. I'm fucking gorgeous, and humble as hell.

[kool kitty89]

It's hard to say about the 32X vs the Neo Geo. The 32X clearly has the advantage in anything 3D. I often wonder if the Neo Geo could even do a game like Space Harrier with it's constantly changing floor. We never saw too much variety in the Neo Geo. Neo Geo games rarely put more than 100-200 colors onscreen at once. I doubt any went over 500 much less 1000. If there is an example, please let me know. The 32X could theoretically do 32,000 onscreen at once, but only on static or near-static screens. The games themselves were generally limited to 256 colors and very few even got that high. The 32X sound is something that's definitely interesting. It's not limited to just 2 channels, but depending on how you write the software you can have a ton of channels. All of the sound in After Burner is done by the 32X, I believe... except maybe some beeping noise. Lots of sound going on there. Pretty much all of the graphics are being done by the 32X as well. Most programmers just made Genesis games and let the 32X sloppily handle the sprites.

There's a few highcolor 32x games, including Blackthrone. (I'd originally thought it was 256 colors -and, indeed, most scenes only show <256 colors at once, but it's definitely using direct 15-bit color, and several scenes show stuff in the 300-400 colors range)

Actually. "a few" may be incorrect, since Blackthorne seems to be the only example with in-game graphics at highcolor. (save for tech demos)

The Neo Geo hardware isn't similar at all to the Genesis. They share processors, but so did the Amiga, the Atari-ST, the Macintosh, etc... It means nothing. The Neo Geo hardware is much, much more powerful.

Much more powerful, but also much less practical (and technically weaker) int he role the Genesis was used in. The Neo Geo's set-up made games far less cost effective . . . even with the massive PCB costs (and multiple ROM chips) aside, games of similar ROM sizes would still have disadvantages on the Neo Geo over the MD, like how all graphics would need to be uncompressed (vs the MD, where the CPU has access to ROM and VRAM -and the VDP can DMA from CPU RAM, so you could decompress graphics into RAM between levels and/or on the fly).

Then there's the sound hardware: the MD has the PSG plus the 6 YM2612 channels (and potential flexibility of software mixed PCM -though the Z80 in the NG could potentially be used to play PCM via the PSG channels a la ST), and for average console ROM sizes of the time, the use of the ADPCM channels would be pretty constrained (especially since all but 1 is fixed at 18.5 kHz).

That's not to say that some modifications couldn't have made the system far more directly competitive as a realistic (if still very high-end) home console . . . like adding a modest (say 128k) DRAM bank to load graphics into (accessible to the CPU), and a YM2608 replacing the 2610. (probably dropping the Z80 entirely too)
But that's a separate topic.


Edit: I also forgot the issue of using sprites for everything . . . you have to use relatively large objects to make the most of sprite bandwidth, so designing efficiently tiled (re-used) graphics becomes more difficult still (especially if uncompressed in ROM -with RAM, you could software copy texture cells into larger sprites). You don't have the nice 8x8 tile cells to work with like the MD (or other consoles or arcade boards), and using 8x8 sprites (or even 16x16) would eat up the sprite limit really fast (not the pixel limit, but the sprites on-screen and per-line).
Plus the added memory for sprite tables (in VRAM) and palette look-up data. (for games making significant use of the large CLUT)

TIA, ANTIC, CTIA and Denise were all designed by Jay Miner, so it's not surprising
They all have unlimited sprite heights.

I don't think any of the Atari 8-bit chips were designed by Miner, though I believe he did some concept work for the early incarnations of that chipset before he left Atari Inc. George McLeod did most of the design work on the A8 chipset iirc.

In any case, the 2600's TIA obviously influenced the A8 chip design -and Miner certainly designed TIA.

I wouldn't really call the Atari-ST a followup to the C64. Swapped isn't the right word, more like took the 16bit platform. It was originally going to be Atari's.

There's the interesting issue of the Amiga chipset at Atari Inc (pre-Atari Corp, mind you) where Atari had secured a licence for the chipset as a console and computer (console in '84, computer allowed to 128k in 1985 and unlimited in 1986), but Amiga weaseled out of the deal at the last minute (June of 1984) by outright lying to Atari Inc management and claiming that the LSI chips were non-functional and followed that up with a refund check of Atari's investment (which was not part of their contract, but in the mess at Atari at the time, the check was cached by a hapless employee and the contract went dead). Atari Corp later used that dead contract and sued (quite successfully) Commodore/Amiga over the issue. (actually launched as a counter-suit to the CBM suit over the ST design being stolen tech)

Also note that Atari Inc had several of their own in-house next-gen hardware designs (fully prototyped but shelved) like the Gaza and Sierra 68000 projects and associated rainbow/silver/gold graphics chipsets (plus the AMY sound chip) thanks to the Advanced Technology division of AInc . . . of course that never went beyond prototype stages due to Atari's management problems and the liquidation in '84. (had it not been for the liquidation, it's quite possible that those shelved projects may have been repositioned in place of the Amiga chipset -and without the restrictions of the Amiga contract)
Atari Inc also had designed a Unix-derived OS with "Snowcap" GUI for the planned 68000 platforms. (also intended for the Amiga project iirc)


And the ST really isn't a followup to the C64 at all (at least technically -from a Tramiel business standpoint, sure) . . . the engineers involved with the ST had had nexed to nothing to do with the C64's design (especially Shiraz Shivji). The MOS engineers who did the VIC and C64 hardware had left CBM prior Tramiel forming TTL. (actually long before that time iirc)

Jay Miner also really had an obsession with vertical gradients. In every system designed by him you see a ton of vertical gradients.

You also see a fair amount of that in the Atari ST . . . and the reason you see it so much in the VCS and A8 compared to contemporaries is mainly due to the palette catering to such. (same for the 7800 -plus the 7800 and A8 used DLIs to do that rather than requiring software timing a la VCS . . . the lack of hardware timing for such in the NES and SMS is probably the main reason you don't see such raster effects there -in spite of the palettes catering relatively well to that, especially the NES and especially with the added 3-bit color control for the palette -if the NES had supported raster interrupts, I'll bet you'd have seen a ton of such color effects in NES games )

I'd give the game programmers on the VCS the most credit for popularizing that graphical technique.

[Team Andromeda]

I don't know how good the audio circuitry is in the NeoGeo CD. It would be interesting for someone with both to compare the output of the same audio CD to see which has the least noise and distortion

I have both and output of the Neo CD is right up there with the Mega CD , its hard to hear any difference at all

The NeoGeo was the gamer snob's gaming console, it was of course arcade powerful. I think the problems (besides the obvious, price) lied with the fact that even though the system had arcade power, you weren't seeing games being ported to it that were any good in the arcades! What if there was a Street Fighter II port for Neo Geo? A few good arcade ports (and were not talking good to us hardcore gamers, we're talking good so the neighbor kid's mom gets the game for the kid) would have made this system a lot more attractive to me.

No not really and I really don't know what you're on about with no good games . It had plenty of great games on the system, some of the very best VS fighters - The likes of Last Blade are every bit as good as SF II imo and you had a great range of shooters in the likes of Last Resort (so good its hurts) Plustar, Viewpoint then you had some all time classics like Neo Turf Masters, BasbeBall Stars II, Wind Jammers, Soccer Brawl (one of the best 2 players games around) Metal Slug series , Neo Drift Out and a host of other classics.

Much more powerful, but also much less practical (and technically weaker) int he role the Genesis was used in. The Neo Geo's set-up made games far less cost effective . . . even with the massive PCB costs (and multiple ROM chips) aside, games of similar ROM sizes would still have disadvantages on the Neo Geo over the MD, like how all graphics would need to be uncompressed (vs the MD, where the CPU has access to ROM and VRAM -and the VDP can DMA from CPU RAM, so you could decompress graphics into RAM between levels and/or on the fly).

Why do you do this ? The Neo Geo was never meant to be a rival to the MD or the SNES one look at it's price tag and its HUGE joytsick told anyone that. It was nothing more than a way for people to play SNK Arcade games in their home. Capcom did much the same with their home version of CP-II too.

[Kamahl]

I don't think any of the Atari 8-bit chips were designed by Miner, though I believe he did some concept work for the early incarnations of that chipset before he left Atari Inc. George McLeod did most of the design work on the A8 chipset iirc.

In any case, the 2600's TIA obviously influenced the A8 chip design -and Miner certainly designed TIA.

Yes, but he made the basis of the chip, so the general idea was his.

And the ST really isn't a followup to the C64 at all (at least technically -from a Tramiel business standpoint, sure) . . . the engineers involved with the ST had had nexed to nothing to do with the C64's design (especially Shiraz Shivji). The MOS engineers who did the VIC and C64 hardware had left CBM prior Tramiel forming TTL. (actually long before that time iirc)

Where did that come from? I was just explaning that chilly's "swapped platforms" didn't make much sense.

You also see a fair amount of that in the Atari ST . . . and the reason you see it so much in the VCS and A8 compared to contemporaries is mainly due to the palette catering to such. (same for the 7800 -plus the 7800 and A8 used DLIs to do that rather than requiring software timing a la VCS . . . the lack of hardware timing for such in the NES and SMS is probably the main reason you don't see such raster effects there -in spite of the palettes catering relatively well to that, especially the NES and especially with the added 3-bit color control for the palette -if the NES had supported raster interrupts, I'll bet you'd have seen a ton of such color effects in NES games )

I'd give the game programmers on the VCS the most credit for popularizing that graphical technique.

Not so much the palette but the lack of color (the ST palette is as bad as the genesis). They compensated for the lack of color by changing it when they could (every scanline)

[evilevoix]

Sorry, but you're crazy. The comparison is between a Camaro and a Corvette - put a 12 cylinder in both and the average person won't notice the difference... and the other way around, put a 2 cylinder in both and the only difference is one costs more than the other. A tiny cart won't make magic just because it's in a NeoGeo, and the MD can make magic nearly indistinguishable from the NeoGeo if you had no rom constraints.

It can still do effects and colors and sounds the MD can't, that's all I am saying. IF you had no rom constraints. I again point out that there wasn't and that is the strength. It's like arguing with an airplane that it couldn't fly without wings, duh. And BTW if the Vette had a 2 cylinder 50 HP engine, it would still handle much much better then that Camaro and yes go faster as it is lighter. So the platform wins.

I just read the title and have to strongly disagree with it. The NeoGeo was the gamer snob's gaming console, it was of course arcade powerful. I think the problems (besides the obvious, price) lied with the fact that even though the system had arcade power, you weren't seeing games being ported to it that were any good in the arcades! What if there was a Street Fighter II port for Neo Geo? A few good arcade ports (and were not talking good to us hardcore gamers, we're talking good so the neighbor kid's mom gets the game for the kid) would have made this system a lot more attractive to me.

SNK-Capcom =Sega-Nintendo. We weren't expecting Mario on the MD any time soon the same applies here. However there was a Street Fighter game released on the Neo Geo in the Early 2000's, it's OK at best.

I interpret evilvoix's "much smaller ROM" as something like half or a quarter the standard NG size rather than 16 MEGs or whatever the MD's mean came out to be.
But the constraints are the point. Otherwise it's not a Genesis. The Genny would've been heartpopping sweet had it come out with the 32X under its hood, but it didn't, hence the NG has its deserved measure of glory over the Genesis as well as the SNES and TG16.

YUP.....It's assets were it's glory.

There is no doubt that the Neo Geo is more powerful than the gaming consoles of the time (for a few years, anyway), but it was not the end-all, be-all of consoles that some of its fans would have you believe. It is what it is and its fans do everything they can so the system keeps its "value" (re: they want the prices to remain high so that they can remain "elite"). If Krikzz came along with a Neo Geo Everdrive the hardcore fans would set him on fire (and I'd buy one). The Neo Geo has some of the ugliest fans around as far as attitude is concerned. Not saying we're too pretty here at Sega-16.

It's price was it's only constraint. Remember the Arcade was it's bread and butter, the home market was a literal afterthought and niche' at best. There is something almost as good as an Ever Drive for the Neo. The super 120-1 cart and the many many versions of it. I have it, covers a good chunk of the Neo Library. Roms as well. The stuff is priced as it is far more rare than a Sonic 2 Cart.

The Neo Geo was never meant to be a rival to the MD or the SNES one look at it's price tag and its HUGE joytsick told anyone that. It was nothing more than a way for people to play SNK Arcade games in their home. Capcom did much the same with their home version of CP-II too.

This….


…and I am surprised that no one knew the market place of the Neo Geo or its original design characteristics. Anyone who remembers the Arcade craze of the 80’s-90’s remembers how coveted floor space was. When you walked into an arcade the best machine was front and center with kids standing all around watching game play. The Neo Geo was ingenious in that it had 2-4-6 games on one machine. Not only that they were all arcade friendly in design so the machine became a staple in all arcades. Before you had to switch the arcade board or completely revamp that cab or replace it entirely. The Neo Geo was designed so that changing a game was a simple as changing a Mini Marque and a cart, maybe a moves list but it all came in a little box. Everything else was just gravy, the AES was gravy. It was a quality Arcade machine with extreme versatility and many many updates to existing titles with easy cart replacements. Hell Metal Slug X was made to fix Metal Slug 2 because everyone complained. The god damn system had its own AMUSEMENT PARKS!!!!!!!!
http://snk.wikia.com/wiki/Neo_Geo_Land

And there was a NeoGeoWorld theme park that still exists today as an Arcade and still has some of the old rides.



Neo Geo OWNS

[Black_Tiger]

It can still do effects and colors and sounds the MD can't, that's all I am saying.

The SNES can do resolutions and effects and colors and sounds the Neo Geo can't. The MD can do resolutions and effects and sounds and the Neo Geo can't. The PCE can do resolutions and sounds the Neo Geo can't.

But the Neo Geo hardware is still much more powerful and when it comes to traditional 2D games and can produce higher quality graphics.

[Team Andromeda]

The SNES can do resolutions and effects and colors and sounds the Neo Geo can't. The MD can do resolutions and effects and sounds and the Neo Geo can't. The PCE can do resolutions and sounds the Neo Geo can't

Granted if the Snes were to have had a decent CPU it was more than a match for the Neo Geo in some area's . But the Neo Geo did more sprites, did more colour, did hardware scaling and far better sound than the either the PCE or Mega Drive.

It can still do effects and colors and sounds the MD can't, that's all I am saying.

Spot on . Some people will take the love of the Mega Drive too far I feel


But in the end it was pointless to compare the Neo to the Mega Drive , one was made for the mass market the other was not . Its like comparing Ferrari to Ford

[evilevoix]

The SNES can do resolutions and effects and colors and sounds the Neo Geo can't. The MD can do resolutions and effects and sounds and the Neo Geo can't. The PCE can do resolutions and sounds the Neo Geo can't.

But the Neo Geo hardware is still much more powerful and when it comes to traditional 2D games and can produce higher quality graphics.

Yeah, maybe, but Neo Geo had it's own ferris wheel and bitches!

totalview.jpgc2ngwg.jpgferriswheel.jpgmainentranceC.jpg

[Chilly Willy]

Jay Miner is widely recognized as having worked on the A8 chipset... maybe not alone, but as the head of the dev team. As it says on wikipedia,

He moved to Atari in the late 1970s. One of his first successes was to combine an entire breadboard of components into a single chip, known as the TIA. The TIA was the display hardware for the Atari 2600, which would go on to sell millions. After working on the TIA he headed up the design of the follow-on chip set that would go on to be the basis of the Atari 8-bit family of home computers, known as ANTIC and CTIA.

I haven't seen anything anywhere else that contradicts that.