Super Nintendo Love/Hate Relationship

[Thenewguy]

Pop N Twinbee - Pretty game, but is this aimed at 9 year olds or something?, coasted through the game literally without paying attention to anything that was going on, painfully easy, so easy that you just feel like you're going through the motions most of the time, Detana is massively superior IMO

Paradius - Da is great, others are plagued with slowdown as soon as you reach maximum power

Bio Metal - Zero level design, fly around in front of a wallpaper whilst enemies attack in a "throw everything but the kitchen sink" manner, weapon system is pretty good, but that's about it.

Gradius III - uninspired rehash of Gradius II, with nonstop slowdown as the only new addition.

Phalanx - I actually find this one pretty playable, kinda' has a Thunder Force + dystopian future vibe to it.

Super R-Type - butchered version of R-Type II, with screwed up level design and uninspired additions, missing checkpoints, constant slowdown.

R-Type III - Very good

Super Aleste - Very Good

Axelay - I like it, some of the effects are questionable, but I think overrall the art design is very nice, I like the level layouts, and the weapon set-up, boss fights are also very cool.

Aero Fighters - Terrible sound, but very solid game, overpriced though.

Macross - its decent, but levels feel like they go on forever, and the environments are uninspired, very much a "more of the same" shooter.

UN Squadron - its OK, I miss the 2-player co-op of the arcade game though, and I think they buggered up the gameplay somewhat by removing the on-the-spot respawns. Really, I don't get how people can call this better than the arcade version, even if they'd retained the 2-player co-op I still think this would've been inferior, if they'd retained co-op and changed it back to on-the-spot respawns, and got rid of the cooling system then I would be inclined to have called it better than the arcade version.

[negative chill]

Honestly the Genesis runs polygons on par with the SuperFX chip on it's own if you ask me. With the SVP chip it runs circles around both Super FX chips.

Without Chips:

Honestly, the first time I saw one of those up on youtube, I seriously thought that the polygons were pre-rendered ala "Alone In The Dark" stye. I really did not think that the Genesis was capable of that without the aid of the 32x. I had seen Hard Drivin' and thought that if Polygons were attempted on the hardware that they would have been just as sluggish and unresponsive

But I guess I shouldn't base my opinion on one particularly bad example, huh? ;3

[zetastrike]

I always liked Gradius 3 better that any other shooter I played on the SNES. Almost everything was there, but the slowdown keeps it from being on par with the top tier shooters of the Genesis and PCE. It's still one of the only SNES soundtracks that I really enjoy. It would have been nice if Konami made it for the SCD.

[tomaitheous]

Honestly the Genesis runs polygons on par with the SuperFX chip on it's own if you ask me. With the SVP chip it runs circles around both Super FX chips.

Without Chips:





With Chips:

Without chips it's pretty close to what the SNES does with Starfox and the SFX chip.

On par? Not quite. As cool as Star Cruiser and ResQ are for doing polygons without the aid of addon chips, they aren't in the same league as Star Fox. Star Cruiser is slow/choppy frame rate (much slower than starfox) and not to mention kind of ugly looking. ResQ doesn't even have as much going on screen polygon wise as as starfox (and starfox is sparse already to begin with). The bullets in ResQ aren't even polys. They aren't on par with the first Super FX chip, let alone SuperFX 2 chip with runs at twice the internal speed (21mhz VS 10.5mhz. Starfox 2 has some texture mapped polys too as well as more polys). VR is pretty good, but then again it's an addon chip. I think the Super FX 2 chip beats out the SVP in VR, but that doesn't mean anything. Either side could have consistently upgraded their chips.

But at the end of the day, I'd rather play starfox over any of those games. And I'm not even a starfox fan.

[negative chill]

thenewguy, you NEED to play Space Megaforce

[Thunderblaze16]

thenewguy, you NEED to play Space Megaforce

Space Megaforce = Super Aleste

[Drakon]

I played lttp, chrono trigger, and ff6 all when they were new. LTTP is my favourite after chrono trigger, ff6, and super metroid, but those games are just too good to beat.

And that's where I differ from you and most SNES fans. A Link to The Past hooked me at the perfect age, and I've literally grown up and experienced my adolescent years playing that particular title so much. I own both Chrono Trigger and FFVI, which are incredible games in their own right. But as a Zelda fanboi, the choice is clear!

I love SNES.

The sega svp chip would have gotten more fame if better games had been made for it.

[NeoZeedeater]

More like if more games were made for it at all. There's nothing wrong with the quality of Genesis Virtua Racing.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

On par? Not quite. As cool as Star Cruiser and ResQ are for doing polygons without the aid of addon chips, they aren't in the same league as Star Fox. Star Cruiser is slow/choppy frame rate (much slower than starfox) and not to mention kind of ugly looking. ResQ doesn't even have as much going on screen polygon wise as as starfox (and starfox is sparse already to begin with). The bullets in ResQ aren't even polys. They aren't on par with the first Super FX chip, let alone SuperFX 2 chip with runs at twice the internal speed (21mhz VS 10.5mhz. Starfox 2 has some texture mapped polys too as well as more polys). VR is pretty good, but then again it's an addon chip. I think the Super FX 2 chip beats out the SVP in VR, but that doesn't mean anything. Either side could have consistently upgraded their chips.

But at the end of the day, I'd rather play starfox over any of those games. And I'm not even a starfox fan.

I didn't say it was on par with the Super FX 2 chip. But I do feel it's pretty close to what you see come out of Super FX 1 games. Most of the Super FX games I've played don't really have great frame rates either. While the Super FX is more powerful, I think you could probably get a decent Starfox clone running on the Genesis if it's tailored for it.

I do think that what you see out of VR on the Genesis looks to be on par with what you see from Super FX 2 games though.

[j_factor]

More like if more games were made for it at all. There's nothing wrong with the quality of Genesis Virtua Racing.

I don't know, doesn't the SVP chip restrict games to 16 colors? Virtua Racing sure isn't colorful. Perhaps a hypothetical second SVP game could have a layer of SVP graphics and a layer of regular Genesis graphics, but I'm not sure if that's possible.

[Curryman123]

I'm not forgetting them. All of the Parodius games are better on Saturn or Playstation. Gradius III has horrible slowdown that really detracts from the game; thankfully, they made that PS2 version. Biometal is rubbish and has a shitty soundtrack. Cotton 100% is not nearly as good as the original, and is also on Playstation though I don't really care much either way. I didn't care for the Macross game, it doesn't really go anywhere and the music and sound effects are really repetitive and irritating. Flying Hero is just boring, and has lame graphics and sound.

Bio-Metal isn't rubbish. The gameplay is very creative in this game. It's not just a straight forward shooter, you have to master the shield and use it strategically to survive.
You should spend more time with it. I thought it was shit at first, but I quickly realized how solid the game actually was.

PS2 version of gradius III is the brutally hard and unbalanced arcade version, and I think the snes version is far superior because they fixed lot of the problems which negatively affected the arcade version, and made it more playable and fun.

Also, the Snes parodius Da! has a extra level. Gokujyou Parodius on the Snes has bunch of extra characters which are not there in the arcade and saturn version. Chatting Parodius or Parodius 4 is virutally identical to the Snes version with 1 extra level (I think) and a new design for the school girl boss.

[Curryman123]

Bio Metal - Zero level design, fly around in front of a wallpaper whilst enemies attack in a "throw everything but the kitchen sink" manner, weapon system is pretty good, but that's about it.

I am guessing you haven't played the later levels.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

I don't know, doesn't the SVP chip restrict games to 16 colors? Virtua Racing sure isn't colorful. Perhaps a hypothetical second SVP game could have a layer of SVP graphics and a layer of regular Genesis graphics, but I'm not sure if that's possible.

Last I checked Virtua Racing hovers around 40-50 on screen colors.

[NostalgicMachine]

PS2 version of gradius III is the brutally hard and unbalanced arcade version, and I think the snes version is far superior because they fixed lot of the problems which negatively affected the arcade version, and made it more playable and fun.

This 100%.

[The Coop]

PS2 version of gradius III is the brutally hard and unbalanced arcade version, and I think the snes version is far superior because they fixed lot of the problems which negatively affected the arcade version, and made it more playable and fun.

I've always felt the SNES version was a slowdown-riddled, too easy version of the arcade game. And considering you can unlock a number of the previously SNES-only features in the PS2 port, that makes it the superior version IMHO thanks to little/no slowdown, extra goodies, and the harder difficulty.