the myth of the sega cd

[Guntz]

Back in the day this wasn't much of an issue at all. For some, maybe, but most people were perfectly happy with the graphical capabilities of the console.

Allow me to give you an example of why 64 colors helped to kill the Genesis in the US.




Take a close look at those two videos. They are both largely populated with pre-rended CG graphics. One (SNES) is displayed in (probably) 256 colors. The other (Genesis) is displayed in less than 64 colors.

Now, back in the day, magazines and the general public went apeshit (pun intended) over the SNES's amazing graphics. CG rendering usually looks ugly, but those 256 colors in DKC really helped to make those graphics more appealing to the average, graphics obsessed consumer. Toy Story on the other hand, just looks ugly. The lack of color makes the game a lot less amazing than DKC, even though it is also pre-rendered.

When DKC came out, it sold millions upon millions of copies. Toy Story, Vectorman and other such games on Genesis, looked bad by comparison.

As you can plainly see, the lack of colors in the Genesis was one of the largest contributors to the death of the system. Not only did the SNES use the lack of colors against the Genesis, but the 32X was originally developed to address those color limitations, which ALSO played a part in the death of the Genesis!

How could you? How could you?
I love my 32X...

Hey, I like the 32X too. It has some fun games on it and the console looks cool. I don't mind having the 32X... But I wouldn't have minded a successful Sega either.

[Barone]

Allow me to give you an example of why 64 colors helped to kill the Genesis in the US.
Take a close look at those two videos. They are both largely populated with pre-rended CG graphics. One (SNES) is displayed in (probably) 256 colors. The other (Genesis) is displayed in less than 64 colors.

Now, back in the day, magazines and the general public went apeshit (pun intended) over the SNES's amazing graphics. CG rendering usually looks ugly, but those 256 colors in DKC really helped to make those graphics more appealing to the average, graphics obsessed consumer. Toy Story on the other hand, just looks ugly. The lack of color makes the game a lot less amazing than DKC, even though it is also pre-rendered.

When DKC came out, it sold millions upon millions of copies. Toy Story, Vectorman and other such games on Genesis, looked bad by comparison.

As you can plainly see, the lack of colors in the Genesis was one of the largest contributors to the death of the system. Not only did the SNES use the lack of colors against the Genesis, but the 32X was originally developed to address those color limitations, which ALSO played a part in the death of the Genesis!

DKC with 256 colors on screen? Kidding me? The in game screens are usually 100-ish colors stuff, no 256 shit at all.
Also, the max on screen color count was never the main problem of the Genesis. And to say that this is a major cause for the death (!?) of the system in the US is to be very naive IMO.
Also, graphics aren't only about numbers of colors on screen. DKC backgrounds are just plain static for the most part, to begin with... The major hype about the game's graphics back then was its pre-rendered CG models and not the number of on screen colors. Also, I never read a magazine bad mouthing Toy Story on the Genesis and using DKC superior color counting as an argument...

As for your typical SNES game; regular tile modes of 15 colors and 8 subpalettes. Same for sprites. A theoretical color count of (15*8)+(15*8)+1 = 241 colors. You won't quite reach that because of redundant colors, but with the SNES huge master palette - you'll get there more often than with the Genesis/TG16 master palette size. You're looking at 80-120 color range for SNES games. This is because they aren't trying to specifically make EACH screen shot a color count fest. The actual color usage is usually much wider that what you see onscreen, because games are usually richly dynamic in nature. Add in some color window overlay effects, and the count goes up.

I feel like a broken record for keep saying this but.. 50-60 colors on the SNES is not the same as 50-60 colors on the Genesis. It's all about the subpalettes people. I guess the general public will just never understand. Simple 'color counts' are what matter to them, even if completely incorrect.

Hell yeah!

[Black_Tiger]

Take a close look at those two videos. They are both largely populated with pre-rended CG graphics. One (SNES) is displayed in (probably) 256 colors. The other (Genesis) is displayed in less than 64 colors.

Now, back in the day, magazines and the general public went apeshit (pun intended) over the SNES's amazing graphics. CG rendering usually looks ugly, but those 256 colors in DKC really helped to make those graphics more appealing to the average, graphics obsessed consumer. Toy Story on the other hand, just looks ugly. The lack of color makes the game a lot less amazing than DKC, even though it is also pre-rendered.

When DKC came out, it sold millions upon millions of copies. Toy Story, Vectorman and other such games on Genesis, looked bad by comparison.

As you can plainly see, the lack of colors in the Genesis was one of the largest contributors to the death of the system. Not only did the SNES use the lack of colors against the Genesis, but the 32X was originally developed to address those color limitations, which ALSO played a part in the death of the Genesis!

That's not how color display works for these consoles. Even the actual on-screen color counts aren't directly comparable, because the true color bottlenecks manifest in different way. Although Genesis games sometimes approach the limit for on-screen color because of how much developers had to push it to get good shading/detail, the most SNES games display at once without transparency is 100 - 150 colors. Bitd, being a video game nerd who played everything and bought all the magazines, I thought that graphic quality was a huge deal and wondered why casual players would just choose SNES over Genesis if they played so many shared titles. I found that regular people couldn't appreciate the base graphic quality in games (RF on Genesis helped) and were more impressed by gimmicky effects that caught their eye. What the Sega-CD added to the Genesis was perfect for North American tastes. Japan would have been happy with a bare-bones CD-ROM and more detailed graphics (greater variety of tiles/sprites) in larger games.

[Team Andromeda]

Um, the expansion port WAS originally intended for a floppy drive.

An expansion port can be used t for a lot of add-ons . I was on about Game delivery and I don't think SEGA were looking into the Disk Drive being format for the Mega Drive ; The format was already well established and SEGA could have well used it for the MD if they really wanted too

Well this is what Sega gave us and it looked like this game may have been pushing the SCD kinda far or was just a shitty programming job

I think it was lack of having decent controls in the game and pretty poor passing system that let the game down, far more than the game engine - Which at the time was doing some really impressive things at time for a 16 bit console.

Allow me to give you an example of why 64 colors helped to kill the Genesis in the US

Hardly and the Genesis outsold the Snes for long periods. To me it wasn't the lack of colours on screen, but the limited colour pallet that hurt the MD graphics - Not that really held back sales

[StarMist]

Allow me to give you an example of why 64 colors helped to kill the Genesis in the US.
{{ removed the colour counting }}
Now, back in the day, magazines and the general public went apeshit (pun intended) over the SNES's amazing graphics. CG rendering usually looks ugly, but those 256 colors in DKC really helped to make those graphics more appealing to the average, graphics obsessed consumer. Toy Story on the other hand, just looks ugly. The lack of color makes the game a lot less amazing than DKC, even though it is also pre-rendered.

Toy Story does look terrible, thank you. DKC was well tuned for magazine photos: the contrast between the playing field, the sprites, and the backgrounds is high, plus the colour usage is skilful throughout. Enemies are big and bright; the barrels' big red lettering or white stripes pop out. Most of the better SNES games had similar advantages over MD games, whereas the MD games might have more animation, moving parts, or detail, but those are all things lost in small, dark magazine photos. DKC's simplicity also helped it come off better in stills; it was very easy to make one image display something different to the next, such as a pic with Rambi, another with Squawks, one with burning barrels, and so on. Vectorman, as good a game as it is, was thematically weak and being action oriented rather more of a mess to present. You could photo him in his various modes but for anybody with an inkling how the game played that was almost an admission how repetitive it was.

When DKC came out, it sold millions upon millions of copies. Toy Story, Vectorman and other such games on Genesis, looked bad by comparison.

How many other such games on MD are there? Still this is true of the two above, that was a losing proposition for Sega--especially since having Vectorman compared to DKC completely buries the individual merits of its utterly different gameplay.

As you can plainly see, the lack of colors in the Genesis was one of the largest contributors to the death of the system.

No, the MD would've died a lot quicker if it mattered that much. It favoured the SNES in undecided consumers' eyes due to multiplatform games' looking worse, but generally its exclusives like Sonic, Golden Axe, SoR, etc balanced that out. It hurt the CD a ton though.

[sheath]

Based on my comparisons the difference between Genesis and SNES color detail isn't that huge in most games. The Genesis being limited to four palettes typically meant that the palettes would be chosen specifically for the main character sprite(s) and the background tiles would have to use those palettes plus one or two more. So the end result meant that the backgrounds would suffer from lower colors than a SNES counterpart would, but the sprites would look roughly the same. As Tom pointed out most of the SNES modes used 15 color sprites as well, so the greater number of palettes available benefited other sprites and backgrounds. Toy Story on Genesis versus SNES actually shows this better than a lot of games would, as do the Street Fighter games and Mortal Kombat 2 and 3. All of that is just to get around to say that if Donkey Kong Country's main attraction was the pre-rendered sprites, the Kongs themselves would have looked just as good on the Genesis and the backgrounds would have had to be stylized for two 15-color palettes.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Well there is this pirate game if you want an idea of what DKC might have looked like on the Genesis:

[zetastrike]

That Toy Story video doesn't look much worse than DKC to me. It all looks like plastic and rubber. Pre rendered stuff has it's charm, but the games all look pretty similar across platforms. Toy Story looks like Sonic 3D looks like DKC looks like Clockwork Knight. I don't get why people (TA) still cite DKC as some example of graphical excellence.

[Team Andromeda]

That Toy Story video doesn't look much worse than DKC to me. It all looks like plastic and rubber. Pre rendered stuff has it's charm, but the games all look pretty similar across platforms. Toy Story looks like Sonic 3D looks like DKC looks like Clockwork Knight. I don't get why people (TA) still cite DKC as some example of graphical excellence.

They all look great and I don't think DKC looks the best Snes game - To me the best looking Snes games was the humble F-Zero and Yoshi Island . F-Zero screen shots in Mean Machines was the reason why I begged my mum and gran to pay loads on import

[Drakon]

They all look great and I don't think DKC looks the best Snes game - To me the best looking Snes games was the humble F-Zero and Yoshi Island . F-Zero screen shots in Mean Machines was the reason why I begged my mum and gran to pay loads on import

The genesis limited pallette always did bother me. It's probably the weakest part of the console. However most of the best genesis games make good use of the limit so all's good.

[GohanX]

Yup, you nailed it. When I look at Sonic or Castlevania Bloodlines, I think, "Man, this looks great!" I don't think, "Man, this would look so much better if it had more colors!"

Ports, on the other hand, often looked bad since they weren't optimized.

[Team Andromeda]

Yup, you nailed it. When I look at Sonic or Castlevania Bloodlines, I think, "Man, this looks great!" I don't think, "Man, this would look so much better if it had more colors!"

Ports, on the other hand, often looked bad since they weren't optimized.

Sonic 1 looked so colourful and impressive it didn't matter . I thought Bloodlines looked and sounded average at best on the MD - I wished Konami made it for the Mega CD and went to town with the CD audio and the Mega CD sprite effects

[Armoured Priest]

Yup, you nailed it. When I look at Sonic or Castlevania Bloodlines, I think, "Man, this looks great!" I don't think, "Man, this would look so much better if it had more colors!"

Ports, on the other hand, often looked bad since they weren't optimized.

Yeah, I remember the first I saw Sonic 1. I thought it looked really good. Really good art direction and color use. I still think it holds up really well. I also feel that Revenge of Shinobi (this is the game, along with ThunderForce 2, are the games that made me want a Genesis) also still holds up well visually, and the game is even earlier.

[Black_Tiger]

Based on my comparisons the difference between Genesis and SNES color detail isn't that huge in most games. The Genesis being limited to four palettes typically meant that the palettes would be chosen specifically for the main character sprite(s) and the background tiles would have to use those palettes plus one or two more. So the end result meant that the backgrounds would suffer from lower colors than a SNES counterpart would, but the sprites would look roughly the same. As Tom pointed out most of the SNES modes used 15 color sprites as well, so the greater number of palettes available benefited other sprites and backgrounds. Toy Story on Genesis versus SNES actually shows this better than a lot of games would, as do the Street Fighter games and Mortal Kombat 2 and 3. All of that is just to get around to say that if Donkey Kong Country's main attraction was the pre-rendered sprites, the Kongs themselves would have looked just as good on the Genesis and the backgrounds would have had to be stylized for two 15-color palettes.

It's not the number of colors for any one section that is the bottleneck or end result of the Genesis' color restrictions. CPS1 uses 15 colors per sprite, but obviously looks much different than Genesis games. What you see made out of sprites and the literal number of sprites is also much different. Home port SFII characters were made out of something like 8 sprites each. Anyway, Genesis games, whether ports or tailored for the hardware, usually have to share colors between tiles and sprites (see Sonic 2's Sonic & Tails' colors colored bgs). But even if priority is given to the sprites, you can only have 2 uniquely colored sprites. So for street fighting games, unless you have alternating palettes for every possible character/background combination, then the entire sprite color limit is maxed by the two characters. For the types of games that Genesis fans like to count as normal or it often seems as "every" game (sidescrollers with lots of sprites), you can't have 16-bit quality colored sprites unless they are all using only one of two possible color schemes.

Unless there are only two types of colors for sprites in the DKC games, then a Genesis version would look noticeably different. It could still look good enough, but you'd wind up with either that kind of washed out look or gaudy random clashing look for the sprite layer. The only alternative in Genesis games to cut down the amount of shading/detail in half or to a quarter or something. Again, it would look noticeably different.

It's a much bigger loss when it comes to non-repetitive backgrounds. Tiled backgrounds can pack in a higher concentration of color and detail, but making everything out of one of two color schemes is extremely limiting. If the tile and sprite layers could each use any of a palette of 30 colors for each sprite/tile, it would be dramatically different. If all that mattered is that there is no more than 60 colors on screen at any given time, then it would be an even greater leap in quality and Genesis games would look as colorful as SNES games. But the actual Genesis color abilities are at a low enough level that the games have unique developmental challenges/complications that the other consoles do not.

[Kamahl]

Yeah I tried to explain that on one of the many Hardware, dunno which.