SNES or Genesis

(Copy/Paste from other thread similar to this)

SNES was my first ever console when my parents bought it for me many years ago. I love the system but my Dad also got me a Sega Genesis play with and my 2 sisters love the Genesis more so then the SNES.

Now when Sega enter the console market, that was the true console war, not like what we have today, it was a fierce battle between Nintendo vs Sega and a good war we had back then. Granted, I was kinda too young to understand it all but one things for sure, I didn't like picking a side and I always kept it real cause I love those systems both. Sonic games was the most fun game I played on it.

Voted: SNES

To avoid any fan boyish conflicts and taking in consideration that all systems have games I like I make it easy for me, I purchase all.

Wel now we can have al of them on one pc via emulators but its still fun to go "VS mode" sometimes and let systems battle it out. I'm tired of the current gen VS so this is more fun for me lol.

SNES.

Genesis,no doubt.

@undefined:

Can't argue with Sega Genesis' Blast Processor, right?! LMAO ? Kidding, of course!

Though thanks to that, we got Sonic the Hedgehog. Other than that, my money is on SNES! More memorable games on it and it has my favorite games in the world like Super Metroid.

Where's the option for both?

I didn't have an SNES, just the Genesis, though I liked the SNES. I loved my NES a lot, but when it came time for my next console it apparently didn't generate any brand loyalty in me, I went for "something different". I don't think I went for the Genesis with any certain games in mind or anything. My only regret was that the Super Star Wars series went to SNES and I couldn't play them, or any Star Wars game that I can recall, until Rebel Assault came to Sega CD but it wasn't anything to get excited about. As with all Sega CD games. I did go back to Nintendo for the N64 and even though I had an XBOX I picked up a GameCube basically just to get the Rogue Squadron games as the N64 game was one of my favorite games ever.

SNES.. the only Sega consoles i ever owned growing up were a Game Gear and Dreamcast

I had both of them and consider both of them to be among the top 5 greatest consoles of all time. I feel that I would have missed out on a lot if I didn't have both of them, but if I have to choose which one I preferred, I definitely preferred the SNES. Sega did a lot of great things that generation and I respect the hell out of them for it, but ultimately the SNES was still the more powerful console, had the better controller, and had the better game library.

@raugutcon: I can't decide looking back I always wanted a snes but I'm so glad we did get a genesis 1st. My main problem with sega at the time I was and still am a HUGE mario fan. To that's the only advantage Nintendo has over sega.

SNES by a mile. Not to say there weren't good games on the Genesis, but there were many more on the SNES.

Same thing I said in the other thread, I like the SNES, but the Genesis is the G.O.A.T. There's just way more games on it that I love.

snes.

snes.

Genesis. The SNES is a great system, and had a lot of things going for it (including more games with save feature), but I loved a lot of the content on Genesis and loved its audio. It's definitely not a one-or-the-other thing for me, if you can't tell by my avatar. But my heart is with the Genesis

Genesis. Always SEGA. Miss those days. Though I do have an SNES as well.

Mario World, A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country

I don't think there is a genesis game better than any of the above games.

Very close, but slight edge to the Mega Drive.

Sega Genesis.

The only Nintendo systems that i owned growing up were the Gameboy handhelds. When it came to consoles it was always SEGA

Genesis is much cheaper, so if you're on a budget, I say Genesis.

I always had sega systems as a kid, my brother would get Nintendo systems so we always had the best of both worlds.

The SNES is better in every important area.

I have just ordered one of these for my set of keys, so does this count as my vote for the Genesis? :P

I had both (and loved both) as a kid. But for me, the SNES edges out the Genesis - it just had the better library, overall. And I think the stuff Nintendo did with mode 7 was pretty significant (I remember being blown away when I first played Super Mario Kart as a kid - at the time, it kind of felt like a next-generation title honestly).

I honestly have come to love both...still Genesis wins for me overall

blast processing and all

SNES all the way!

The Genesis was my first console. It wasn't until much later that I got a SNES. Surprisingly though I chose SNES as my favorite.

It was Genesis then and Genesis now. I really want to get into SNES more....but the games are just so expensive today. However the Genesis counterparts of games are much less expensive. I just bought a super retro trio (Because NES/SNES consoles are expensive as well) to play NES/SNES but I'm still buying Genesis titles because of the prices of old carts for Nintendo are just to costly.

I know some people will say "Just use an emulator" but that just doesn't have the same feel as a console.

genesis for me.

spent soo much time as a kid playing sonic1/2, nhl 93/94, fifa 93, golden axe, and of course mortal kombat

great times

only ever played snes games on my wii or emulator (gasp!)

Megadrive/Genesis for me. I had both but mainly stuck to the Megadrive as I preferred the games. I have only appreciated the snes games as I got older.

I have a model 1 and 2 Megadrive, along with 32x and mega cd 2 and enjoy the games on these now.

Toejam and Earl are fantastic system sellers for me.

I recently picked up an Everdrive which has meant I can play some of the more expensive titles.

I always had SNES and loved it. Then my best friend and next door neighbor had a garage sale selling Sega Genesis for $12. I bought that and it came with Sonic and I think Beavis and Butt-head. What a great deal.

SNES wins

As a kid I loved the SNES more and my genesis was basically a sonic and vector man machine.

Now I find myself playing the genesis more, probably due to it being less familiar. Really enjoying the games it has to offer.

If I had to choose one it would probably go to the SNES because of things like LTTP, super metroid, and imo superior versions of mega man and castlevania.

Even though I never owned a Genesis, there are a lot more games on the Super Nintendo that appeal to me but by default, the SNES is my favorite system of all time so that gets my vote. With games like Chrono Trigger, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country 2, Final Fantasy VI, Mega Man X, Super Metroid, Super Castlevania IV, Illusion of Gaia, and much more, this system is literally the best since it has a perfect blend of strong first party and third party support.

SNES, easily.

@bowserjr123: a lot of these games such as Chrono Trigger never made the U.K. Which is why is stuck with Megadrive. I don't think any of the final fantasy games did until vii on the psone, I may have enjoyed the snes more if the uk got these games.

It's only in more recent years that I could play these as importing in the 90's was too expensive.

Yeah to be honest, I didn't play a lot of classics until later since I only got a SNES about 10 years ago. You should play the acclaimed SNES JRPGs ASAP, they still hold up very well today.

@bowserjr123: I have played several over the last few years. I am a big FF fan and have pretty much played all the main series. Also played CT on the ds which is a great version.

I now have a Megadrive, 32X, Mega cd, 3do and Xbox so catching up on some of the Sega ones - will look to get a snes next year but can play the games on emulation via psp in the mean time.

@magnum0ik: Nice, I have Chrono Trigger on the DS as well and I love FF IV and VI. I finished Terranigma recently too, that was another great JRPG.

I'm sure you'll be pretty busy with all that catching up on those systems, I'm catching up on some GameCube and PlayStation classics next after I finish Super Return of the Jedi.

Genesis for me. I did have both growing up but SEGA for me defined my gaming childhood. I remember all my friends telling me to pick up the new Mario game and play it and I eventually did and enjoyed it, but SEGA created this crazy wacky atmosphere on the Genesis with the game they made for it. +It had better versions of multiplats SOMETIMES like Aladdin which most experts agree was better on SEGA's system or the first Mortal Kombat for having blood and other features while Nintendo censored it and kept some things out.

Both were great systems, but I got more into Genesis exclusives. I liked Sonic much more than Mario back then and I also liked games like Landstalker or Crusador of the Centy more than Zelda.

Snes : Dk country series, Super Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario World, Star Fox, Chrono Trigger, FF 6.

Genesis : Sonic series, Streets Of rage 2.

Snes Wins.

I was a bigger fan of the Dreamcast as a console, but there's no doubt that the Genesis had the greatest 2D games, with or without the SEGA CD and 32X.

SNES

Genesis, I was 20yrs old and it was the first console I ever brought with my own money.

To this day I still play Sonic 1+2 and Streets of Rage 2 on my PS3.

Earthworm Jim, Aladdin and NHL all took up WAY too much of my time.

SNES here, but it wasn’t my favorite console. It was slow to launch games, the quality was questionable, and the carts were expensive (up until Nintendo cancelled the damn thing, Mario All Stars was still selling at full price and was never on sale).

My fondest memories were Super Mario World, Mario Kart, Sim City, Stunt Track FX, Uniracers, F-Zero, Super OffRoad, and that’s about it.

I bought an SNES in Christmas 1992, following the release of Street Fighter II.

Prior to that, I had a NES and a Master System, and they both paled in comparison to Sega Genesis. I used to drool over the graphics of Genesis games; Altered Beast and Golden Axe were fine, and Castle of Illusion, QuackShot, and Sonic the Hedgehog were just amazing.

But then Street Fighter II became a hit in the Arcades by the end of 1991, and everybody (including me) had to buy an SNES when it got a release in 1992. Street Fighter II, with its 16 Mb of technical perfection, seemed to suddenly have blown all Genesis library away. And more great games were being released for the SNES. TMNT 4 was a great conversion from Arcades, and I had been a great fan of the Konami TMNT games since the original in 1989 (The Hyperstone Heist for Genesis would only come out later). The SNES version was finally up to the Arcade, something which the NES could never achieve. And then Capcom released The Magical Quest by the end of 1992, and the excellent gameplay rivaled Castle of Illusion. The animations seemed to be better in Castle of Illusion, the sprites more Disney-like and the music was more recognizable, but Magical Quest made up with great use of colors, and groundbreaking backgrounds. Other great games came out, such as Hook and Batman Returns (at a time when games based on movies were good). And 1992 also saw the release of Super Mario Kart, which was incredibly fun to play.

Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 1992, which was better than the original and a fantastic, colorful and fun game. But I was willing to let it go. Sega also put out other interesting stuff at the time, such as Ecco the Dolphin. But the SNES, led by the all-powerful Street Fighter II, had the upper hand. As a child, I was not aware at the time, but Nintendo was giving Sega a run for its money after the release of the SNES in the U.S.

The dispute continued well into 1993. Nintendo released Starfox at the beginning of the year, and the Super FX looked promising. I expected Super FX to be released in more games, but it seldom did. And then Sega gave its own punches. For me, it became clear at Summer CES 1993 that the console wars was probably at its peak. Most major games were released for both the Genesis and the SNES. But the Genesis seemed to have the better exclusives.

Everybody knew at this point that both consoles would get a new Street Fighter II version, one which would enable playing with the bosses. The SNES got Street Fighter II Turbo in mid-1993, with 20 Mb. But the Genesis would get Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition, with 24 Mb, later the year. And people got wondered: what additional content was put in the Genesis cart to justify the additional 4 Mb? And why it was "special"? Later, it became clear to me that the Genesis version had additional animation on the backgrounds, but I am not sure if that alone would justify the extra memory.

Genesis also got Mortal Kombat with real blood, while the SNES version did not have any. And to be frank, at the time, Mortal Kombat only became a hit because of the blood. Speaking of fighting games, Genesis was the only one to get Eternal Champions, also a 24 Mb cart.

Then the Genesis got a jaw-dropping version of Aladdin by Virgin, with cartoonish animations. The SNES version by Capcom was a very good platform, with great gameplay and brilliant backgrounds, but there was simply no contest for the revolutionary Genesis game.

And Nintendo got its second Super FX game, Stunt Race FX, which looked OK but not a great improvement from Starfox. Sega showcased Virtua Racing for the Genesis, with its own chip, the SVP, which promised to blow the Super FX away.

What else did Nintendo had to offer? Not much. Super Mario All-Stars, a repackaging of old NES Mario games, was not really something brand new. Sega seemed to have won the battle.

In the following years, however, Sega seemed to have gone downhill. It probably focused on the development of 32X and Saturn, and the Genesis really seemed to have reached its peak at 1993-1994. There were more games, but hardly any exclusives. Most were also released for the SNES. Super Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat II, Lion King, Earthworm Jim, just name it.

Nintendo, on the other hand, gave the SNES an extra life while it was working on its Project Reality, which would only turn into Nintendo 64 later in 1996. The SNES got more exclusives. And then Nintendo released Donkey Kong Country, which was just basically seen as a glimpse of the 64-bit Silicon Graphics power ported to the SNES. Nothing in the 16-bit world had ever been like it. And it got two great sequels. Sega gave a few punches, especially during the peak of the wars, but Nintendo won in the long run.

As for my personal experience, well, some 25 years later, and out of the heat of the wars, I am happy that I bought an SNES instead of a Genesis. People might have complained that the SNES had a weaker processor. It might, perhaps, even though I have serious doubt whether it was really slower, as the SNES and Genesis had processors with different architectures. The SNES had more slowdowns, that is for sure. But the SNES got better graphics, better colors, and better sound. The Genesis may had a 6-button controller which was great, but used in only a few games.

And, more importantly, looking back, the SNES games were better in general. Super Mario World, the very first game, blew everything away. The gameplay was just wonderful. Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country series, they were all just great. Sonic games were good too, but they were simply not a contest to Mario World, even though it seemed so back in 1991. Sure, Genesis has Aladdin, Castle of Illusion, and Streets of Rage. But games such as Eternal Champions, Ecco the Dolphin, and Virtua Racing seemed to have aged badly. Not to mention Golden Axe and Altered Beast and (huh) Last Battle.

Time makes a difference, and it is clear to me now that Nintendo made superior games, and third party games were better on the SNES overall. Today, graphics and sounds in both SNES and Genesis are crap (even though the SNES still looks better), but gameplay makes all the difference. There are few 16-bit games that I still enjoy playing, and most of them are on the SNES.

@skaertus:

Why isn’t Nintendo releasing all their old SNES game again? Why is there no Nintendo Ages Collection? (Although probably for the best - they weren’t the highest quality.)

Because Mega Drive ip’s are legendary. Sonic, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Toejam and Earl, Ecco, Shining Force, Road Rash, Afterburner, NHL, Madden, Thunderforce 4, Story of Thor (if you’re into that).

People don’t go back and play SNES games, they go back and play Genesis games. SNES owners then are playing Genesis games now. Likewise, young people are picking up the old SMD games but not so much the old SNES games. People look to 16 bit games for gameplay but the SNES just couldn’t cut it when it came to responsive and exciting games.

The cpu isn’t as fast.

You can’t compare sports games, scrolling shooter games, golf games (rendering times), platform games. Anything with a lot of activity and movement on screen. Even Strider ad likely Altered Beast it couldn’t handle due to the limit to on screen action.

There may be very few flight simulators on the SNES for a good reason. Who wants to rewrite their entire game for a bloody Ricoh chip clocked at 3.58Mhz. That chip does go above 10Mhz, but nooo. Nintendo had to cut corners.

Arguably, the Western Design, Richo-designed 8/16-bit cpu, @3.58Mhz (max) could be potentially as fast as the SMD’s (Sega Mega Drive) Motorola 16/32-bit 68000 @7.4Mhz due to the more advanced instruction set used in the S-CPU.

But the internal bus of the S-CPU is only 16-bits whilst the 68000’s is 32-bits, making internal operations twice as efficient also with double the external bus direct-memory-access bandwidth from 8-bit on the SNES to 16-bit on the SMD for graphics and sound.

The Motorola instruction set was familiar to programmers due to the it’s ubiquity, and the efficient and familiar hardware design of the SMD made programming more straight forward than the independant components and dual PPU’s of the SNES, especially for arcade ports.

Sega was only able to include the frankly OP cpu for 1989 because of a deal with Motorola, giving them to Sega for 1/8 cost if they managed to ship enough units.

But really it’s the internal memory speed that lets the SNES down.

The video and sound for the SNES uses a DMA controller located within the S-CPU.

This means loading sound and video interrupts operations on the cpu, limiting cpu bandwidth for game code as well as transfer of other data from the cartridge into main memory.

The Genesis has it’s DMA controller within the VDP (video display processor) which is clocked at 13.4Mhz. The DMA transfer rate is clocked to the speed of the processor which contains it, so RAM, in this case, the speed data can move into audio or video memory from the ROM or RAM, is locked to the speed of the DMA clock cycle.

The SNES DMA unit is located within the main CPU, running at up to 3.58Mhz, so that is the speed of the RAM on the SNES.

The Genesis offers 320x224 to the SNES’s 256x224. Thats 14,336 more pixels for the play-area. This is more or less 4x3 aspect. SNES uses just over square aspect. Also, with DMA ‘blast-processing’, the Genesis could increase on screen colours to 512, which is comparable to the SNES’s maximum on screen colour count. Whilst the SMD cannot match the SNES’s 15-bit colour depth, it can display up to 4096 colours with scanline interrupts (?) using blast processing (aka fast DMA) to the SNES’s maximum of 2723 for a static image.

Genesis has better video and sound output hardware and connections. What was going on with the Multi-Out? I don’t know. SNES has a fuzzy image output.

The sound is so muffled, it gets really annoying on SNES. Half watching the Earthworm Jim comparison the other day I was startled when the Genesis music came on from the SNES, it was like the sound had just jumped out from the water!

Why is there so much Mega Drive music on youtube but not SNES music? Why is it sometimes even used in trailers for SNES videos on youtube? Because it defines that era completely.

The SNES PCM sound chips only offered reverb and echo effects. The rest was up to you to create an instrument to fit within the 65KB of ram the SNES S-SMP@2Mhz had to work with. The Yamaha @7Mhz on the SMD was used in arcade cabinets and had 4 operators per channel to create sounds for 6 channels, it is very versatile. Outputting at 56Khz to the 32Khz SNES output, listening to Genesis music on your big stereo sounds great, if you like chip tune anyway. You can’t deny the power of the bass. As any instrument cannot be blamed for bad music the same goes for sound chips, but the SNES has a very severe limit when it comes to audio fidelity and range.

SNES adds co-processors to the cartridges (increasing prices further) to make up for the inadequate cpu, sometimes, using the same model such as in Super Mario RPG but clocked much higher at 10.7Mhz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips#SA1

Sure, Genesis has Aladdin, Castle of Illusion, and Streets of Rage. But games such as Eternal Champions, Ecco the Dolphin, and Virtua Racing seemed to have aged badly. Not to mention Golden Axe and Altered Beast and (huh) Last Battle.

Starfox hasn’t aged well whilst Virtua Racing really has. Go play Virtua Racing on Genesis. Do yourself a favour and just do it. It’s more fun than any other version, including the arcade. There’s just something about it, I couldn’t put it down for ages.

It mostly comes down to direct experience. Take my next door neighbour. He also had a Mega Drive, maybe a year later than me. But he seemed content to allow his mum, his mum to pick out his games. She went out and bought him the console and just asked the guy in the shop what to buy then dunked a pile of games and a Mega Drive on his lap one day for christmas or something.

But he was playing completely different games to me. I was playing Desert Strike and he was playing Last Battle. Yes he liked all those old skool movie games like Altered Beast. He had the Menacer, which was stupid (apart from T2 The Arcade).

But in the end, he was a bit simple. He once fell into a 3 inch deep water at the swimming baths and knocked himself unconscious or so I heard. But if you met him you would believe that. But everyone has their tastes. I just allow for journalism to help inform my decisions and awareness of what's on offer whilst he didn’t see the need.

The Street Fighter thing I don’t understand. Everyone knew it would come out on Mega Drive and everyone could see it was a bit slow on SNES but it ran ok and had more colours and it did look very nice. But really how are so many people ditching Mega Drives for one game because they can’t wait a few more months?

The Mortal Kombat thing is also really silly. Because the next thing to happen is everyone goes out and buys Mega Drives now instead of SNES’s because SNES doesn’t have blood. FFS. BOTH original versions had a code needed to unlock blood (I think).

But in the end you need to find the baseline of a library. This is my theory. What is the most average game on any platform’s library? Take 300 Mahjong games on SNES. They are all the same. This won’t affect the baseline. They are all rated 5/10 for instance. Take a 1/10 game and your score lowers below 5. So the number of the games cannot affect the baseline average score…

If you remove allowances for hardware capabilities, apart from resolution as SNES only has a lower resolution, then you have frame rates, sprites on screen, parallax backgrounds, colours on screen, sound fidelity/complexity and controller responsiveness as a basics for grading criteria.

Mega Drive wins that score so hard.

People need to get real There are hardly even any good SNES games. I looked in the top 100 and why does Rock ’n’ Roll racing keeps coming up in top 100’s for SNES when a better version of the game never gets a mention for the Mega Drive?

Because the Mega Drive baseline average game quality is at least 3 points above the SNES out of 10.

I have watched all libraries videos through twice. This is only an indication. But this means I know what is on offer more than anyone who hasn’t done that. There are ALOT of jrpg’s because they can move slowly and you can use lots of pretty high colour backgrounds and mode 7 twirling things! Giant pixels! In your face!

PS. Mario World is the most overrated game of all time, Mario Kart is shallow and quickly tiring, Star Wars games are crap, Starfox is like controlling a spaceship made out of wobbly cardboard and runs at 5fps. Donkey Kong Country is too simple and has a very limited colour palette. Collecting spinning things for no reason was a generation earlier, Rare.

Donkey Kong Country - 1994
Decap Attack - 1991

Mega Drive has better racing games in Super Hang On, Lotus Challenge, Outrunners, Virtua Racing, Road Rash, Super Monaco GT.

When people refer to the 16-bit era they name check SNES first and mention Mario. Then when they show footage, they show Sonic and play Genesis music in the background.

A survey at the time in a sample of 18 year old boys put 80% preferring Sonic over Super Mario World after playing both for the first time.

Sonic the Hedgehog is probably the greatest game ever made, on the greatest console.

But Sega really shot themselves in the foot with their negative marketing campaign. 'Blast processing' is too vague and doesn't really tell the customer anything and just made them look weak and encourage sarcastic comment like 'oh well it had 'blast processing' *titter titter*. IE, Sega are full of sh*t.

But they really didn't need to brag when anyone can see it's faster. If only benchmarks were invented back then, it would have made Sega's job so much easier.

Thunderforce IV - you wish SNES owners.

TLDR: Get your facts right Nintedoe's.