What are 10 Things You Would Like to Change about the Genesis?

[TmEE]

320x240 works fine in 60Hz, it's just that the Genesis wasn't designed for that resolution. It was designed to leave all overscan blank to cheat and steal some processing time. Even 320 pixels wide leaves a border on both sides. For the Genesis not to have any borders in NTSC, it'd have to be 360x240.

The real width is about 360, but horizontal extra means nearly nothing, and that extra is so short compared to real line of nothingness.


Thanks for the words ACDC I feel soooo good

[Joe Redifer]

but horizontal extra means nearly nothing

Same with the vertical extra, hence the 224 spec.

[retrospiel]

Totally agree 100%, but still...
7. Have the sega saturn pad - best controller EVER. PERIOD.

[Grounder]

1. 4098 colours in total
2. 256 on screen
3. better quality controllers
4. no region-lockout
5. 50/60 Hz switch as standard
6. better sound-hardware
7. Master System compatibility without rip-off-adaptor
8. No, or a better CD-add-on
9. 4 controller ports
10.Call it Genesis in all regions

Same reasons.

[AMAZINGJECKLBOY]

Blue LED instead of a red one

thinking about it this wouldnt be too hard to pull off
in fact i think i might do this once i get a bit better with electronics

thanks for a kickass inspiring idea

[Mordan]

1) small memory to record highscores
2) multi-tap support from the start for up to 16 players
3) 50/60 switch, no regions
4) more good 32X games,
5) more good mega CD games.
6) less Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter arrogance.
7) sturdier clips for manual and cart. The best case are the later cases.
8) earphone jack on model 2
9) color coded art covers
10) continued support

[dragonboy]

What's all this about 60hz/50hz? Weren't NTSC and PAL TV's permanately set on those framerates until HDTVs came out?

[Mordan]

never tried it for the lack of it.
but people in France played PAL Sonic 1 in 60 with a switched PAL MD

[TmEE]

99% of European TVs support both 50 and 60... not so sure about 60Hz region TVs....

[Rusty Venture]

Regular US TV's only do 60hz. I'm sure there were/are specialty TV's that would do both.

[j_factor]

never tried it for the lack of it.
but people in France played PAL Sonic 1 in 60 with a switched PAL MD

People in France had SECAM...

[A Black Falcon]

These have been mentioned, but are my choices...

1. More colors on screen at once -- at least 256. Pair this with a somewhat larger color palette.
2. Ship the system with the 6-button controller originally, not the 3-button controller.
3. Scaling and rotation chips
4. No adapter needed for SMS compatibility (or include it in the box -- this might be the better solution, and would work reasonably well)
5. No 32X; instead merge the Saturn and 32X projects (and rework history to get rid of Sega's massive infighting problems that helped cripple the company) to form one console better than either of them. The Sega CD would still have been released of course. The idea to put even better scaling chips in the SCD is perhaps a good one, depending on price (versus the ones that were included in the 1992 system)
6. Only one multitap standard, not two different mutually incompatible ones.
7. Only one lightgun, not two (or three?) different mutually incompatible ones. Or at least have one standard so all lightgun games work with all guns.
8. Better sound chip -- SNES sound is so much better... maybe two years earlier they couldn't have matched it, but they could have done better than they did.
9. No region locking (though 50hz only games would still be unplayable on NTSC TVs -- US TVs do NOT support 50hz.)
10. Four controller ports (the N64 didn't invent it, the Atari 5200 had had four... it would have been great to see a 16-bit system with four controller ports built in.)

I won't ask for memory cards or shoulder buttons because neither of those things existed yet in 1989, really, and asking Sega to invent them both is probably asking too much.

Some things that have been mentioned that would be bad ideas:
-50/60hz switch in US models -- would be completely useless for essentially all TVs sold here. It would be nice for European systems though, of course.
-get rid of RF out -- very few people had composite support in their TVs or VCRs in 1989. Getting rid of RF out, or including anything other than an RFU in the box, would be incredibly stupid. Maybe just make the stereo AV cables easier to find, and include them with the system instead of an RFU by the early '90s, like the SNES... but not initially.

[Zebbe]

8. Better sound chip -- SNES sound is so much better... maybe two years earlier they couldn't have matched it, but they could have done better than they did.

Please give examples of soundchips to use instead.

[TmEE]

4. No adapter needed for SMS compatibility (or include it in the box -- this might be the better solution, and would work reasonably well)

I can't really imagine MD with 2 cartslots... it would look rather ugly... and using same cartslot for both carts is impossible (possible, but with MD side SEVERALY limited, so say goodbye to arcade ports).


YM2612 is one awesome chip... what is really required is better sound tools.
GEMS should have never been used in so many games... Every SNES lover can list all GEMS games and say MD sounds poor but none of the GOOD sounding games, and when you let them listen these good games they refuse to admit that the game sounds good (or better than average SNES game).
I would have loved to have a FM chip with 8 ch of sound and 6 operators per channel, but its too much to ask...

[nissling]

Nothing, it's already perfect. And I mean Model 1.