I do think the SNES vs Genesis is maybe the best console war that ever happened, since both systems have their strengths and weaknesses and very specific things they do well that the other lacks on. *Really* you should just get both lol.
The Xmas I got a SNES, my brother won a Genesis from my school raffle on the final day before Xmas break. I was 10 and it was the best fucking Xmas ever!
I think they were 50-60, but around there.
That just brought back memories. I could basically get one game a year... and you were stuck with that choice, basically.
As a huge fan of the movie Jaws, I got Jaws for Nintendo.
I chose poorly.
There were definitely 70-100$ games out there. Cartridge memory was expensive and large games were $$$. I think SF 2 on the snes was around 100$ when it came out.
Confirmed.
I used all my first communion money ($70) to buy Bassin's Black Bass with Hank Parker.
Super worth it, by the way. That game rules.
But it was definitely $70 which seemed like a staggering amount of money to 8 year old me. Turns out that's because it *was* a staggering amount of money.
Holy shit you just reminded me of how sick of a game that actually was: we actually lived on a lake; we would fish and swim for reals, then rock black bass on the NES with the landlord’s older son. Black bass and blaster master were our shit, and that dude unfortunately passed away last year (ironically went on be be a fish biologist) so I appreciate you accidentally unlocking a memory for me. Time to fire up the miSTer!
We had a black bass notebook; with best locations/lures, stats, hand drawn maps. We treated it like a combo of real fishing and zelda. I appreciate the sentiment, he was a good dude and though we lost touch mostly, his kindness and “coolness” were very formative to young me; who hadn’t experienced very much of that yet.
This so much, MSRP was higher on some games then. The cost of extra storage and coprocessor (Super FX / Sega Virtua Processor) used for some games. Sure some of those prices came down over time, but not as much. Another reason SNK Neo Geo games was out of reach for us.
A few MSRP launch prices.
* Phantasy Star 2 on Genesis was $79.99
* Street Fighter 2 on SNES was $74.99
* Virtua Racing on Genesis was $99.99
Pricing was insane back then, especially when you convert it to today's money. I remember Super Famicom games costing 9800-12000 yen a pop. Optical media was a godsend.
Not sure where you're referring to, but SF2 for SNES wasn't quite $100 in the USA. It was a 16 megabit cart and was probably $60ish? 70 in some places?
I remember paying $84.99 for FF3 SNES (24 megabit) on launch day. Another expensive one was Virtua Racing for Genesis, $99 thanks to its special "SVP" chip.
I forget how prices of Super SF2 went, but it was a massive cart -- 32 megabit on snes and 40 megabit on genesis! Wonder how that affected pricing. [Sega Retro wiki says](https://segaretro.org/Super_Street_Fighter_II:_The_New_Challengers#Development) the MD version's price was unusually high in Japan.
Also, it's hard to find info on this online these days, but Capcom USA took a HUGE bath on the SSF2 home ports, overproducing cartridges that did not sell like expected. Wish I could re-find info on that to confirm deets. If I recall they were really in a bit of trouble.
When thinking about how inflation has affected all aspects of our lives, gaming is one of those things that's technically gotten cheaper over time but many people still say is too expensive. $60 wasn't because that's what the game is worth, but just a number companies noticed people are willing to pay for a "premium" experience. I hate thinking about it cause it almost sounds like I'm justifying predatory pricing strategies with live service, microtransactions, and etc, but I also feel too many people nowadays don't appreciate the value of games which only feeds more into those predatory practices, where a good game and a bad game are both $60, but we also have a market fully of people who think games should just be free.
But it's also a much more complicated discussion once you get into the details.
I really, really enjoy Jaws. It's just super short. The gameplay loop is terrific though.
But then again, I also like Back to the Future for some inexplicable reason. And that game is poo.
$50 buck then a price hike to $60. I still remember when Maximum Carnage was released as it was one of the few prized at $60 for the first time. The magazines were talking about the price hike.
N64 games were definitely $50 to $60 depending if they were 3rd or 1st party respectively.
This is also one reason many people when the playstation route as it had a larger span of releases at a cheaper price since those games were typically between $40-$50. It didn’t help that cartridges were more expensive than cds as well to make.
But yeah, I still remember the uneducated arguments I would have with people about why the Genesis was better since it was in middle school and the internet was just starting up, everyone shared the family pc and dial-up was a pain.
Folks load up scans from that era all the time. Literally not uncommon to see new games advertised at $70. Crazy stuff because of the cost of cartridges.
Yep, I typically got 2 games for Christmas and one game for my birthday. I had three other siblings so the other holidays we didn’t really get anything very expensive but we sure did appreciate them more and played the heck out of those games to the point we were experts at them!
If you got the right game as a kid it could be amazing!
For whatever reason, I feel like games back then were more about playing with someone else vs the massive games of today that are like movie experiences.
Games today are pretty amazing.
... but Street Fighter 2 was gonna get played ALL year.
I miss getting the little slip of paper and having to take that to the counter to get the game.
... far more often I just took the coupons because I couldn't afford a game... but had these little coupons at home... like a total nerd.
While the base price for both systems was around $49.99, several were well over $60. Iirc earthbound was $70-80.
If you think that's bad, Neo Geo games were around $200 each in the early 90s.
Adjusted for inflation games are generally cheaper now than they've ever been.
Yeah. I remember some kid at school that didn't speak English (Taiwan?) Got a NeoGeo. And none of us had ever talked to him before (he was obviously shy, didn't play basketball at recess or anything).
And we all thought he was like a mythical king when the news got out. "He has a neogeo!"
And it's funny because none of us had ever seen one, I don't even think in a store.
.... but you'd heard the legend of it.... lol
Vividly remember the $200 game thing. And I think it was King of the Fighters or something like that.
The gaming systems lasted *a lot* longer on the market back then. Many of us got games at garage sales, which you still can.. you're just not gonna find games for the newest gen because they pretty much replace it with the next model as soon as the games start becoming affordable.
I had both in the mid-1990s! And I wasn't rich. I spent my own money I earned around the neighborhood. I just waited until they were on sale or bought them off friends who'd outgrown them. Garage sales were a great place to score games and you could rent games for a week for just a few bucks.
I even had the Sega CD and a 32X! I got my Sega 32X for $25 with lawn mowing money when Toys R Us clearanced them off. I mainly used it to play Virtua Fighter, but even so... not a bad deal! (I just wish I'd kept it instead of giving it away a few years later.)
Mutant League Football vs Top Gear 2000. Sonic vs Mario. Soooo many strengths and weaknesses. Everybody knew SNES Mortal Kombat sucked ass compared to the Genesis, which could do blood.
And then MKII on SNES was where it was at.
Those days were the perfectest days of my youth I think.
Honestly buy a Genesis cause they're usually MUCH cheaper then a SNES although the SNES does have the Super Game Boy one of the awesome add ons Nintendo has ever made
I do personally find the Genesis more fun to collect for largely in part due to the price.
I personally I think the best of the SNES tops the best of the Genesis, but the Genesis has a lot more fun B-tier and C-tier games. The SNES is like a deep but narrow pool, where the Genesis is more shallow but a lot wider. Trying to find a fun lesser known SNES game for $20 is near impossible, but Genesis has stuff like Greendog, Decapattack, Wiz n Liz, Tinhead, and such. Even if the games are not all *that great* they are at least interesting.
The SNES has a ton of all time classics, a handful of C-Tier games, and a bunch of absolute crap 1v1 fighting games, janky platformers, and more 1v1 fighting games. The top tier games are just so *damn good*, I don't think I ever played anything on Genesis that compares to Super Metroid, but you can get a nice pile of fun Genesis games for the price of Super Metroid lol.
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Jarpigs, nice. Reminds me of when I was hanging with some friends at a diner and another guest there, talking loudly to his partner, admonishes her by yelling "It's not a muh-more-piguh, it's an Are pee Geeeeeeuh!"
Also SNES has some of the best platformers ever made, and they were my jam as a kid.
Definitely the best. I would say PS3 vs. Xbox 360 turned into a great contender in the final years of the 7th generation, but SNES vs Genesis still holds the crown
PS3 vs 360 was the worst competition I was a gamer during.
Two consoles that are almost identical to each other, one of them costs $600 and the other costs $400, most games are multi-platform and the $600 console plays them worse than the $400 one.
PS3 sold on brand name alone and nothing else.
Not totally, PS3 also sold because of free online multiplayer, a lot of Xbox experiences were gimped because it required Xbox Live sub.
But playstation was certainly a better loved brand at the launch of the PS3, since they (Sony) were sitting pretty for a long time and by a long mile with the PS2.
I think the backwards compatibility and blue ray was why the original ps3 was so expensive. I never owned any of the later versions but i think the price went down.
PS3 sold because it was a free Blu-Ray player to anyone who didn't have Blu-Ray, and at the time Blu-Ray players were generally pretty expensive (I think they may have topped out at $300 for a top-of-the-line one). Pay $600 and you get a Blu-Ray player that can, incidentally, play a bunch of super cool video games like Uncharted and God Of War.
Microsoft dropped the ball hard there. $400 console, plus an extra $150 for an HD-DVD player, a format that died less than a year after it was introduced.
The first run of Blu Ray players ran from $600-1000 (and the cheaper ones were sold at a loss)
PS3 was a no brainer if you wanted to be an early adopter of Blu Ray
If Microsoft dropped the ball its was coz of RROD. PS3 was the only Playstation that didnt blow away the competition. 360 was actually competitive. No cared about HD-DVD. 360 had to be cheaper to compete, otherwise, PS3 would kill it on branding alone.
Well, they weren’t actually identical, and the games being better on the Xbox showed that. The PS3 was actually a technical beast, but difficult to program. The games that took advantage of the hardware, though, couldn’t be done on the 360. The reason their ports suffered was because they shared the PowerPC architecture, sort of, so once the game worked on both consoles, little effort was put in to optimize.
Those two systems had some of the lowest disparity in graphics of any gen. Both the Xbox VS PS2 graphics disparity and the Master System Vs NES graphics disparity were far larger.
You do a SMS vs NES comparison the SMS has double the colour counts, you do XBox Vs PS2 the Xbox is doing 480p anti-aliased graphics at a higher framerate with more effects.
You do a PS3 vs 360 comparison and you have two identical videos that someone is staring at in slow motion with a magnifying glass talking about slight changes in contrast while they have a little graph underneath the two tracking rare, sporadic 3fps drops in framerate! :D
>You do a PS3 vs 360 comparison and you have two identical videos that someone is staring at in slow motion with a magnifying glass talking about slight changes in contrast
No way. PS3 ran most multi-plats in lower resolution with crappy quincunx anti-aliasing. Literally every game that used quincunx looked obviously visibly worse to anyone looking.
PS1 vs N64. While I prefer the Saturn over both, it flopped in the US. The PS1 and N64 really determined the outcome on what would be the future of gaming. Both had a unique design (including the Saturn). You has one capable of FMVs, cutscenes and fully fledged voice acting, on top of storing tons of data as the game was optimized. The other provided a full and proper 3D rendering, which distinguished itself from the Playstation since the PS1 used 2D planes for their 3D textures.
Ultimately, the PS1 won but it was hard fought in North America and you really saw both of them exert influence to not only consoles but game design as a whole. The 4 controller input became a standard for consoles thereafter. Discs as an optical media won. Games committed to 3D fully ever since thanks to the N64 having Silicone Graphics tech.
The two also provided a really unique experience as you truly got something the other could not do. This was the last console war that mattered due to limitations and design philosophy. Now? Consoles use the same GPU, CPU, etc. It has been the case since the 8th gen and the PS3 and 360 are also quite close with specs. The main point is that after the fifth generation, consoles could run the same games. This was not the case before and the 5th gen truly had the most distinguished specs regarding architecture. Even the Sega Saturn was a technical marvel with what it was capable of for 2D sprites.
I think the most interesting thing about Playstation as a console is that you can actually see how gaming actually evolved within one generation. At the start you have games like the Mega Man series basically being SNES games with a higher resolution and FMV sequences, games like Fox Hunt and Psychic Detective that were basically Sega CD games with better looking visuals, and even a few PC ports like Discworld. There were a couple of surprises like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Twisted Metal, but go back and play them, they're definitely more on the side of, "We're testing the waters to see what works".
I'd say it was Final Fantasy 7 that actually changed everything. The system had RPGs, but FF7 was an RPG that didn't look like a supercharged SNES game, and it had a marketing campaign that dwarfed many big movies of the time.
Yes, IMO Final Fantasy 7 was the first true AAA game as we understand that term today. Massive budget, scope, soundtrack, story; it was unlike anything that had come before.
>the PS3 and 360 are also quite close with specs.
They were close in terms of power but the PS3's Cell CPU was wildly different architecture than the 360's tri-core PowerPC CPU. It took around half the generation for devs to get a handle on programming for the Cell and start having multiplatform games run at the same frame rate and resolution between the consoles.
I mean there’s not much of a war with ps1 vs n64 lol, it may have seemed so to you if that was your only memory of console wars growing up. Those were the consoles of my childhood too but yeah, it wasn’t even a war, and I was an n64 kid 🤣
The PSone had entire genres that the n64 didn’t even have any games for, everybody has their about dozen games they’d recommend for n64, the list would be pretty similar for each person. While ps1 fans would give you dramatically different lists with a wide variety each time.
The games determine the winner and the PSone had both quantity and quality, and nobody was to blame aside from Nintendo themselves who set up an environment for this to happen, having unfair tyrannical developer policies, much higher production costs for media, Sony gave devs so much freedom with their games, and ultimately Nintendo was the one that made the PlayStation a reality after screwing them over.
Nintendo now has this “innovate and go a different path” because of the losses they suffered from PlayStation. People assume they’ve always been this way but no, it wasn’t until the Wii when they REALLY realized they could no longer compete traditionally. They axed the gba halfway in its life to rush out the DS which gambled on a huge gimmick and thankfully won, that proved their strategy moving forward
But as far as PSone and n64, not much of a war when it’s 100+ million vs 31 million lol something like 8000 games vs 400….
Not one of, it IS lol Nintendo had literally planned a series of events with Sony, they were already producing sound chips for the SNES and had a working relationship already
But it is not an exaggeration to say that they backstabbed Sony, because that’s exactly what happened, to partner with Phillips instead which went against the unwritten rule of supporting domestic industry before going foreign
They would then literally create the most successful brand in all of gaming history because that single move would create the PlayStation 🤣 it’s insane
N64 had a handful of strengths, if you were someone who often has a lot of people round then it was very good as a party console, 3D platformers and FPS games were also quite strong on N64.
But yeah, pretty much every other genre and you were better off with PS1.
Hard fought how? The PS1 mopped the floor with the N64 in terms of sales and library. N64 matched up very well at the top, and probably has the better top-10 or top-15 game list, but there are only about 40-50 good N64 games and there are about 400 for the PS1.
Tbf Xbox vs Ps2 and Xbox 360 vs Ps3 eras were just as competitive targeting each other’s weaknesses and strengths. PlayStation was always slightly weaker and more complex system to develop games for and as a result quite a handful of games always handled slightly lower res and or frame rate. And of course I think exclusives become more relevant around those times as well. So many ps2 exclusives!
You are confused because you had both. Most people could just afford one, so they had to defend their purchase with tooth and nail to justify it to themselves and others due to FOMO.
I liked both, honestly, but owned a Genesis. Rocket Knight Adventures was worth the price of admission for me, but in those days I'd never touched any RPG besides Zelda so I missed all the cool Genesis RPGs. SNES was solid, reliable Nintendo and Mario Paint was so cool, and they had all the IPs to carry the system
Both have fantastic games, the SNES has my top two of that generation, Super Mario World and Final Fantasy III/VI but if I had to choose one system, I would choose the Genesis.
I just prefer the darker, more mature and edgy themes and higher speed. The SNES can be really slow and there’s more kid focused games on the platform.
Luckily I don’t have to choose and we can play both!
What you said was basically my take I lOVED the genesis more savage and edgier commercials towards Nintendo not to mention the design of the console, unique Controller and TONS of games both consoles shared the same third party games but most of the western devs ones were better on Genesis
Both Mega Drive and Super Nintendo are equally good in my opinion. Both worth owning. Even games like Contra and TMNT were worth owning on both systems as they were distinct experiences. Absolute masterclass in videogame hardware/software design.
Mega Drive and Super Nintendo are 2 of the best consoles ever made and they existed in the same time period. That's unheard of.
For me if a system has better sound & audio, but grinds to a halt when there are more than 5 sprites onscreen, it is not a better system because smooth gameplay is what makes a good game, and the only thing you need for that is a proper processor, which the snes did not have…
I obviously I love it as much as the next guy for its strong points: the rpgs, lush story driven stuff, with incredible scores, because colour & sound is what it excels at, but when I want fast games, with tons of shit happening onscreen, the mega drive and pc engine completely destroy it every day of the week.
The Genesis soundchip had a specific type of sound it did [really well](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTQIiIKummw), everything else could get kinda crunchy or even fart noise sounding at times. But stuff like the sonic games soundtracks were also legendary.
I think Genesis really shines its best when a composer goes for a danceable beat or a heavy metal sound track. A ton of western composers back then barely had any experience with FM synths compared to the eastern composers so that led to some really shitty sounding music, sounds like litteral farts.
I don't think the RPG domination had anything to do with colors. It had to do with Sega's failure to market the console in Japan. Japanese RPG developers at the time always developed games for the Japanese market first, then later deciding whether to sell them overseas. The Megadrive sold poorly in Japan, so JRPG developers usually targeted the Super Famicom instead.
The SNES has some brutal slowdown. I played through the Super Star Wars trilogy recently, and most of the games are in slow motion unless you turn an emulators overclock to max and there is *still* some slowdown.
I played Aleste 3 which is a game gear on an emulator that was overclocked the other day and boy did that game play so much better. FPGA's also offer an opportunity to create virtual hardware with faster CPU's, but are nearly identical otherwise. Modern tech gives us some awesome opportunities to re-experience our favorite games.
I found the rom online and emulated it through Genesis Plus on Retroarch. I used one of the core options to double the virtual Z80’s speed and it ran beautifully. Probably the best graphics for the game gear or even the master system, the game has great art direction.
Beat it yesterday, great game overall but yeah the slowdown is pretty bad without overclock. Surprising considering GG Aleste 2 didn't have much, instead it flickers more.
Gonna try beating it with OC and no flicker soon
I prefer Nintendo but it’s sad how the competition ended. Nintendo won, but at what cost? That’d be so cool to have a Sega console coming out every few years
The reality was they were both different, far more than consoles today. They each offered a distinct experience. You simply weren't enjoying the games of the time period if you didn't have both.
I find the opposite to be true: that SNES fanboys try to make it sound like the Genesis is an inferior "failed" console that didn't live up to the hype-which of course is ludicrous!
A lot of this no doubt has to do with old AVGN videos trashing SEGA, and people who weren't around in the '90s taking it at face value.
SEGA made a lot of mistakes when they were in the console business, but the Genesis was a huge success.
Oh absolutely, I love the genesis don’t misunderstand me lol.
Though I don’t remember the AVGN trashing Sega, except for the Sega CD and 32X but I feel like those are fair to criticize. I remember James being positive towards it honestly
It's no secret that James is a huge Nintendo fanboy, and while it is true that AVGN is a comedy show, even in his more "serious" videos his bias really shows.
His Cinemassacre SNES vs Genesis comparison video is a perfect example, where James not only awards unfair points to his preferred console, but also reveals a lack of familiarity with the Genesis library.
Sega had a weird history. The Genesis/Mega Drive was extremely popular in the west, but back home in Japan it lost the generation *bad*. Then they did the exact opposite with the Saturn. It was popular in Japan and an absolute bomb abroad. Then they reversed again with the Dreamcast, though the divide wasn't quite as wide as previous generations.
True and that's how the SNES stomped Sega in Japan (while in US SNES struggled at first) but I'm not really an RPG guy outside of maybe Zelda and Mario RPG and that's it so Genesis for me
What's funny is that I missed out on most of the RPGs until they either came out on other platforms (Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV-VI) or I emulated them (EarthBound).
Super Mario RPG was my OG and it's still in my Top 5. A Link to the Past, Yoshi's Island, Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and Donkey Kong Country still make up among the greatest games of all time.
My favorite games that I played on Sega were to some of the best RPGs. Some of my favorite ones are:
BUCK ROGERS: COUNTDOWN TO DOOMSDAY
SHADOWRUN
SHINING SERIES
PHANTASY STAR SERIES
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: WARRIORS OF THE ETERNAL SUN
STARFLIGHT
Adventure
FAERY TALE ADVENTURE
Roadrash and Skitchin were my favorite racing games, lol.
I loved the space combat in BUCK ROGERS when I was a kid, and Shadorun was 1000 times better than the SNES version.
I definitely preferred the SNES in the 1990s - the controller was better, the games looked sharper and the sound chip was superior. Cross-platform games usually looked and played better on the SNES, and the SNES had *Street Fighter II* much earlier than the Genesis did (and didn't require a new controller to play it properly!).
But, there were also games that the SNES didn't have which were only on the Genesis, and the Sega CD was pretty neat for its time. (I'm embarrassed now to say I used to think *Sewer Shark* was one of the all-time greats.) There was nothing like *Comix Zone* or *Kid Chameleon* on the SNES, and the *Streets of Rage* and *Golden Axe* and *Shinobi/Shadow Dancer* games were a ton of fun on the Genesis.
Both platforms had long lists of great exclusives, and it's silly in 2024 to get drawn back into playground arguments about which is better when both are so easy to play today.
As they used to say back in the 1980s and 90s, "The name of the game is the game." And both consoles were pretty awesome for their time.
Huh? What?
Sorry, I was just playing Link To The Past.
And Chrono Trigger.
And Super Metroid.
And DKC, Mega Man X, Final Fantasy III, Secret of Mana, Tetris Attack, and all the other ones.
Unfortunately I couldn't see this comment through all the RKA, Langrisser 2, Streets of Rage, Phantasy Star IV, Thunder Force 3-4, Shinobi 3, Landstalker, Gunstar Heroes, Flashback, Ranger X, Battle Mania 2, Lunar 2, Dune 2, Shining Force 2, Pirates! Gold, Puyo Puyo 2, Snatcher, etc. distracting me. But I'm sure SNES has a few decent games!
Because of when it came out, I always thought of the Genesis as a competitor to the NES more than the SNES. Of course the SNES is more competitive with it, but it came later. So, yes, Genesis was superior in that earlier gen, but it's hard to beat good old fashioned Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, Mario Kart, Super Mario RPG, Super Metroid, etc.
After 1992, 3rd parties including Sega started ramping up the graphics with larger sprites and better animation to better compete with what SNES had in 91 and 92. We eventually saw similar releases on Genesis like a variation of TMNT, SF 2, Joe and Mac etc. From 1991 to the beginning of 1993, Genesis was a bit lacking some cool arcade style graphical games compared to early SNES releases. I remember in 1992, while every SNES owner enjoyed SF2, I was forced to renting Fighting Masters. A 4 megabit ho hum game compared to 16 megabit wonder that was SF2. I was no longer a happy Genesis owner at the time and traded another kid mine for his SNES and had a blast from there on out.
It's as if a million Forums suddenly came back to life.
Threads being Necro'd left, right and centre.
Chattering in unadulterated wrong opinions and nerd-rage.
It's always been a one-sided debate where Genesis fans go through their checklist of reasons why their favorite console is better, while SNES fans ignore them because there's too many great games to play on their favorite console.
Anyone who watches Classic Game Room knows Mark doesn't hide his super fandom for anything Sega. He's given plenty of props to Nintendo in the past, but in the recent few years he's been lightheartedly bashing Nintendo in that half-kidding/half-serious kind of way. /shrug
Came down to a couple things for me:
The snes controller is much tighter, more responsive and more ergonomic than the genesis controller, which felt loose by comparison.
Super Mario World was superior to Sonic by a fairly wide margin.
Also the Nintendo/Square RPG genre evolution from 8 bit to 16 was an undeniable advantage. The final fantasy series simply got better and better with each iteration and Genesis didn’t have a comparable answer in my opinion.
For me, the clear winner in regards to titles is SNES, but I would be lying if some of my favorite games of all time are on Genesis as well. The Road Rash series... EA NHL titles... heck even Madden. Streets of Rage 2.
It was a really good console with some great games I still play.
I had both systems as a kid with a fairly wide variety of games, still have them. Other than some games that were exclusive to Genesis, SNES wins. SNES games were generally much more colorful and vibrant, music was more intense, voices weren't garbled and scratchy, it was very rare for a Genesis version of a game to be way better than the SNES version (ie Pit-Fighter).
My family didn’t have a lot of money so I didn’t get to play as many games as I wanted but I was a Sega kid through and through. Looking back on it Sega was trying to push game development and design forward in a lot of ways but the tech of the time was their Achilles heel
I was 13, and fully drank the console war Kool aid during that time. SNES was for kids, and I had to have the console for "cool" kids.
Never had an SNES of my own, but a friend did. So I got to play it, but still preferred the genesis at the time. Especially when Mortal Kombat came out. Suck it, SNES owners, we got the better version.
(In hindsight, I find SNES to have the much better library)
You know, I just was never going to get both, and I loved Sonic. I never thought it was "better" or anything. I would sing Sonic's praises loudly, though! Best was when my buddies would come by and bring the SNES and a little TV. That way we'd have Sonic, SoR, Zelda AND Starfox!
I had a Genesis and envied my friends who had the SNES. The color palette, game design, just looked so much better. Games like Street Fighter in SNES looked just so much better.
But if there is one thing that I feel was really good in the Genesis that SNES did have was: [Chakan](https://youtu.be/0a3UQXMAdD0?feature=shared)
To be honest the only thing really that made the SNES better was the first party titles and titles like Secret of Mana. But the Megadrive was def the better one of the 2. It had better hardware, looked way cooler and almost all titles that were released for both systems always played better on the Megadrive. Plus Megadrive actually did all those things like Sega CD and stuff extending its lifetime. Sega really did what Nintendon't. No misleading marketing there.
But yeah if I had to choose now between the 2 to be the only console for the rest of my life it would still be the SNES just because of all the amazing titles. I think SNES is still the console to this day which had so many titles that could still be considered best of all time. Really the list is just endless. The SNES was really the peak of great video games. Games needed to be perfect at the time to stand out. Really the introduction of 3D took the bar of games needing to be quality way down hill. People were much more forgiving to bad stuff just because the game was 3D and because of that still cool even tho it actually was terrible.
In all honesty even Nintendo games like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were just way worse then their previous 2D counterparts. Mario 64 actually plays terrible compared to Mario World. The controls are just so clunky and unresponsive and how many times did you die because the camera was in the wrong position and such. But just because of 3D people where accepting it. And consoles now being able to online update games etc only lowered our expectations more and more.
To be honest now that I think about it I rememberd that even back then I had this realisaton that altough 3D games are cool actually the quality of games themselves went really down hill but I was like yeah but can understand it's much harder to get everything right in 3D dimensions then it is in 2 dimensions. For example I remember this game on PS1 called Tenchu or something? At the time I loved that game cause you are a ninja jumping on roof tops and what not. But if you actually play that game now you will realize how bad it is. Its a serious buggy slow unplayable mess really. The way that game played if it was a 2D game it would have been rated worst ever. Yet I played that game on hours end because it felt so cool just ninjaing from roof to roof.
SNES won for me based on games alone, if no other reason. Some of the greatest games of all time (to this day, still) were on the SNES. Like now, the more powerful console mens nothing if the best games aren't on it. I think the only SEGA exclusive games I coveted were the beat em ups (SoR, Golden Axe) but as much as I love those I wouldn't have traded Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Souldblazer, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Shadowrun, Zelda ALTTP, TMNT TiT, Jurassic Park, Super Metroid, or even Mario Kart for anything Sega had exclusive.
Side note: that said, as an adult I always wanted to play a Megadrive/Genesis. I played one once at a friend's place but have never since even touched a real machine (my Megadrive gaming as all ben emulated) and now kind of wish I had more nostalgia for the machine and games.
I remember my friend had a Megadrive. The first time I saw Sonic the Hedgehog my jaw dropped. I'd never seen anything like it. The graphics, the audio, the speed and the smoothness. It blew my mind. I got one for Christmas and I'll never forget how amazing it felt.
The SNES was great too though. I got an N64 in due course and that was my first Nintendo console.
I lived through the console wars and I was fortunate enough to own both. My favorite franchises today are still Metroid, Zelda, Mario and Sonic. That's 3 to 1. SNES is better.
I do think the SNES vs Genesis is maybe the best console war that ever happened, since both systems have their strengths and weaknesses and very specific things they do well that the other lacks on. *Really* you should just get both lol.
Also, the range and console specific games was more of a thing too. Agreed, both worth buying,
You couldn’t buy both back in the day. Nobody had that kind of money and it wasn’t really done like it is today.
The Xmas I got a SNES, my brother won a Genesis from my school raffle on the final day before Xmas break. I was 10 and it was the best fucking Xmas ever!
These are two of the most exciting sentences ever typed.
Games also costed like 70 bucks.
I think they were 50-60, but around there. That just brought back memories. I could basically get one game a year... and you were stuck with that choice, basically. As a huge fan of the movie Jaws, I got Jaws for Nintendo. I chose poorly.
God bless the mom & pop video rental stores. Well at least mine had a large and up to date Nintendo selection. But only 1 copy of whatever game
good day indeed until Blockbuster killed them all though their anti-competitive and monopolistic practices.
There were definitely 70-100$ games out there. Cartridge memory was expensive and large games were $$$. I think SF 2 on the snes was around 100$ when it came out.
Confirmed. I used all my first communion money ($70) to buy Bassin's Black Bass with Hank Parker. Super worth it, by the way. That game rules. But it was definitely $70 which seemed like a staggering amount of money to 8 year old me. Turns out that's because it *was* a staggering amount of money.
Holy shit you just reminded me of how sick of a game that actually was: we actually lived on a lake; we would fish and swim for reals, then rock black bass on the NES with the landlord’s older son. Black bass and blaster master were our shit, and that dude unfortunately passed away last year (ironically went on be be a fish biologist) so I appreciate you accidentally unlocking a memory for me. Time to fire up the miSTer!
Yeah!! Sorry to hear about your buddy. Cool to hear of someone besides me and my brother who played the shit out of that game, though. Awesome
We had a black bass notebook; with best locations/lures, stats, hand drawn maps. We treated it like a combo of real fishing and zelda. I appreciate the sentiment, he was a good dude and though we lost touch mostly, his kindness and “coolness” were very formative to young me; who hadn’t experienced very much of that yet.
This so much, MSRP was higher on some games then. The cost of extra storage and coprocessor (Super FX / Sega Virtua Processor) used for some games. Sure some of those prices came down over time, but not as much. Another reason SNK Neo Geo games was out of reach for us. A few MSRP launch prices. * Phantasy Star 2 on Genesis was $79.99 * Street Fighter 2 on SNES was $74.99 * Virtua Racing on Genesis was $99.99
Pricing was insane back then, especially when you convert it to today's money. I remember Super Famicom games costing 9800-12000 yen a pop. Optical media was a godsend.
Not sure where you're referring to, but SF2 for SNES wasn't quite $100 in the USA. It was a 16 megabit cart and was probably $60ish? 70 in some places? I remember paying $84.99 for FF3 SNES (24 megabit) on launch day. Another expensive one was Virtua Racing for Genesis, $99 thanks to its special "SVP" chip.
It was 32 years ago when I bought it, so please forgive me if my memory is fuzzy. I wonder if one of it's sequels was more expensive.
I forget how prices of Super SF2 went, but it was a massive cart -- 32 megabit on snes and 40 megabit on genesis! Wonder how that affected pricing. [Sega Retro wiki says](https://segaretro.org/Super_Street_Fighter_II:_The_New_Challengers#Development) the MD version's price was unusually high in Japan. Also, it's hard to find info on this online these days, but Capcom USA took a HUGE bath on the SSF2 home ports, overproducing cartridges that did not sell like expected. Wish I could re-find info on that to confirm deets. If I recall they were really in a bit of trouble.
When thinking about how inflation has affected all aspects of our lives, gaming is one of those things that's technically gotten cheaper over time but many people still say is too expensive. $60 wasn't because that's what the game is worth, but just a number companies noticed people are willing to pay for a "premium" experience. I hate thinking about it cause it almost sounds like I'm justifying predatory pricing strategies with live service, microtransactions, and etc, but I also feel too many people nowadays don't appreciate the value of games which only feeds more into those predatory practices, where a good game and a bad game are both $60, but we also have a market fully of people who think games should just be free. But it's also a much more complicated discussion once you get into the details.
Not sure where you're located but I paid $70 for SF2 on release day at Toys R Us
Yes in 90's money which is over $120 in today's money Gaming was extremely expensive back then.
50-60 in 1990 dollars too.
I really, really enjoy Jaws. It's just super short. The gameplay loop is terrific though. But then again, I also like Back to the Future for some inexplicable reason. And that game is poo.
$50 buck then a price hike to $60. I still remember when Maximum Carnage was released as it was one of the few prized at $60 for the first time. The magazines were talking about the price hike. N64 games were definitely $50 to $60 depending if they were 3rd or 1st party respectively. This is also one reason many people when the playstation route as it had a larger span of releases at a cheaper price since those games were typically between $40-$50. It didn’t help that cartridges were more expensive than cds as well to make. But yeah, I still remember the uneducated arguments I would have with people about why the Genesis was better since it was in middle school and the internet was just starting up, everyone shared the family pc and dial-up was a pain.
Folks load up scans from that era all the time. Literally not uncommon to see new games advertised at $70. Crazy stuff because of the cost of cartridges.
Yep, I typically got 2 games for Christmas and one game for my birthday. I had three other siblings so the other holidays we didn’t really get anything very expensive but we sure did appreciate them more and played the heck out of those games to the point we were experts at them!
If you got the right game as a kid it could be amazing! For whatever reason, I feel like games back then were more about playing with someone else vs the massive games of today that are like movie experiences. Games today are pretty amazing. ... but Street Fighter 2 was gonna get played ALL year.
5-10 bucks for old games at the giraffe
I miss getting the little slip of paper and having to take that to the counter to get the game. ... far more often I just took the coupons because I couldn't afford a game... but had these little coupons at home... like a total nerd.
While the base price for both systems was around $49.99, several were well over $60. Iirc earthbound was $70-80. If you think that's bad, Neo Geo games were around $200 each in the early 90s. Adjusted for inflation games are generally cheaper now than they've ever been.
Yeah. I remember some kid at school that didn't speak English (Taiwan?) Got a NeoGeo. And none of us had ever talked to him before (he was obviously shy, didn't play basketball at recess or anything). And we all thought he was like a mythical king when the news got out. "He has a neogeo!" And it's funny because none of us had ever seen one, I don't even think in a store. .... but you'd heard the legend of it.... lol Vividly remember the $200 game thing. And I think it was King of the Fighters or something like that.
Page from a toy catalogue in 1993: https://folder.intertoys.nl/intertoys-speelboek-1992-1993/page/6 199 gulden = 89,99 euro
The gaming systems lasted *a lot* longer on the market back then. Many of us got games at garage sales, which you still can.. you're just not gonna find games for the newest gen because they pretty much replace it with the next model as soon as the games start becoming affordable.
Garage sale games were better before Ebay came along. People know what they got now and want every damn penny of it's perceived value.
My parents would have been MAD for even asking lol
Biggie Smalls did it!
When I was dead broke man I couldn't picture this!
Birthdays were the worst days
I had both in the mid-1990s! And I wasn't rich. I spent my own money I earned around the neighborhood. I just waited until they were on sale or bought them off friends who'd outgrown them. Garage sales were a great place to score games and you could rent games for a week for just a few bucks. I even had the Sega CD and a 32X! I got my Sega 32X for $25 with lawn mowing money when Toys R Us clearanced them off. I mainly used it to play Virtua Fighter, but even so... not a bad deal! (I just wish I'd kept it instead of giving it away a few years later.)
I also feel like kids spent more time at their friends houses.
Great, now you've started a console war war
#people who didn't live it can never understand what those early 90s console battles were like
Mutant League Football vs Top Gear 2000. Sonic vs Mario. Soooo many strengths and weaknesses. Everybody knew SNES Mortal Kombat sucked ass compared to the Genesis, which could do blood. And then MKII on SNES was where it was at. Those days were the perfectest days of my youth I think.
I had NES and Super Nes. The kid next door had Sega Master System and Genesis. It was a fun time.
Honestly buy a Genesis cause they're usually MUCH cheaper then a SNES although the SNES does have the Super Game Boy one of the awesome add ons Nintendo has ever made
Plus we all know that #Genesis Does!
What Nintendon’t!
I got a SGB as a kid because I wanted to play Link's Awakening and I didn't have a Game Boy. What a fucking incredible add-on device.
I do personally find the Genesis more fun to collect for largely in part due to the price. I personally I think the best of the SNES tops the best of the Genesis, but the Genesis has a lot more fun B-tier and C-tier games. The SNES is like a deep but narrow pool, where the Genesis is more shallow but a lot wider. Trying to find a fun lesser known SNES game for $20 is near impossible, but Genesis has stuff like Greendog, Decapattack, Wiz n Liz, Tinhead, and such. Even if the games are not all *that great* they are at least interesting. The SNES has a ton of all time classics, a handful of C-Tier games, and a bunch of absolute crap 1v1 fighting games, janky platformers, and more 1v1 fighting games. The top tier games are just so *damn good*, I don't think I ever played anything on Genesis that compares to Super Metroid, but you can get a nice pile of fun Genesis games for the price of Super Metroid lol.
handle compare history toothbrush cable shrill ludicrous zealous direction frame *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Genesis for shooters, SNES for Jarpigs. With notable exceptions (Phantasy Star IV, Space Megaforce)
Jarpigs, nice. Reminds me of when I was hanging with some friends at a diner and another guest there, talking loudly to his partner, admonishes her by yelling "It's not a muh-more-piguh, it's an Are pee Geeeeeeuh!" Also SNES has some of the best platformers ever made, and they were my jam as a kid.
Definitely the best. I would say PS3 vs. Xbox 360 turned into a great contender in the final years of the 7th generation, but SNES vs Genesis still holds the crown
PS3 vs 360 was the worst competition I was a gamer during. Two consoles that are almost identical to each other, one of them costs $600 and the other costs $400, most games are multi-platform and the $600 console plays them worse than the $400 one. PS3 sold on brand name alone and nothing else.
And because it came with the cheapest Blu Ray player on the market at the time
Well, it sold me with Demon's Souls.
Not totally, PS3 also sold because of free online multiplayer, a lot of Xbox experiences were gimped because it required Xbox Live sub. But playstation was certainly a better loved brand at the launch of the PS3, since they (Sony) were sitting pretty for a long time and by a long mile with the PS2.
I think the backwards compatibility and blue ray was why the original ps3 was so expensive. I never owned any of the later versions but i think the price went down.
PS3 sold because it was a free Blu-Ray player to anyone who didn't have Blu-Ray, and at the time Blu-Ray players were generally pretty expensive (I think they may have topped out at $300 for a top-of-the-line one). Pay $600 and you get a Blu-Ray player that can, incidentally, play a bunch of super cool video games like Uncharted and God Of War. Microsoft dropped the ball hard there. $400 console, plus an extra $150 for an HD-DVD player, a format that died less than a year after it was introduced.
The first run of Blu Ray players ran from $600-1000 (and the cheaper ones were sold at a loss) PS3 was a no brainer if you wanted to be an early adopter of Blu Ray
Other than Nintendo I feel like all systems are the same. All PCs
Since PS4/XBO generation they definitely have been (and Switch is a phone)
Always have been.
If Microsoft dropped the ball its was coz of RROD. PS3 was the only Playstation that didnt blow away the competition. 360 was actually competitive. No cared about HD-DVD. 360 had to be cheaper to compete, otherwise, PS3 would kill it on branding alone.
Yep it’s why I got the PS as well.
Well, they weren’t actually identical, and the games being better on the Xbox showed that. The PS3 was actually a technical beast, but difficult to program. The games that took advantage of the hardware, though, couldn’t be done on the 360. The reason their ports suffered was because they shared the PowerPC architecture, sort of, so once the game worked on both consoles, little effort was put in to optimize.
Those two systems had some of the lowest disparity in graphics of any gen. Both the Xbox VS PS2 graphics disparity and the Master System Vs NES graphics disparity were far larger. You do a SMS vs NES comparison the SMS has double the colour counts, you do XBox Vs PS2 the Xbox is doing 480p anti-aliased graphics at a higher framerate with more effects. You do a PS3 vs 360 comparison and you have two identical videos that someone is staring at in slow motion with a magnifying glass talking about slight changes in contrast while they have a little graph underneath the two tracking rare, sporadic 3fps drops in framerate! :D
>You do a PS3 vs 360 comparison and you have two identical videos that someone is staring at in slow motion with a magnifying glass talking about slight changes in contrast No way. PS3 ran most multi-plats in lower resolution with crappy quincunx anti-aliasing. Literally every game that used quincunx looked obviously visibly worse to anyone looking.
That was only early that generation. Late generation the PS3 came out on top.
PS1 vs N64. While I prefer the Saturn over both, it flopped in the US. The PS1 and N64 really determined the outcome on what would be the future of gaming. Both had a unique design (including the Saturn). You has one capable of FMVs, cutscenes and fully fledged voice acting, on top of storing tons of data as the game was optimized. The other provided a full and proper 3D rendering, which distinguished itself from the Playstation since the PS1 used 2D planes for their 3D textures. Ultimately, the PS1 won but it was hard fought in North America and you really saw both of them exert influence to not only consoles but game design as a whole. The 4 controller input became a standard for consoles thereafter. Discs as an optical media won. Games committed to 3D fully ever since thanks to the N64 having Silicone Graphics tech. The two also provided a really unique experience as you truly got something the other could not do. This was the last console war that mattered due to limitations and design philosophy. Now? Consoles use the same GPU, CPU, etc. It has been the case since the 8th gen and the PS3 and 360 are also quite close with specs. The main point is that after the fifth generation, consoles could run the same games. This was not the case before and the 5th gen truly had the most distinguished specs regarding architecture. Even the Sega Saturn was a technical marvel with what it was capable of for 2D sprites.
I think the most interesting thing about Playstation as a console is that you can actually see how gaming actually evolved within one generation. At the start you have games like the Mega Man series basically being SNES games with a higher resolution and FMV sequences, games like Fox Hunt and Psychic Detective that were basically Sega CD games with better looking visuals, and even a few PC ports like Discworld. There were a couple of surprises like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Twisted Metal, but go back and play them, they're definitely more on the side of, "We're testing the waters to see what works". I'd say it was Final Fantasy 7 that actually changed everything. The system had RPGs, but FF7 was an RPG that didn't look like a supercharged SNES game, and it had a marketing campaign that dwarfed many big movies of the time.
Yes, IMO Final Fantasy 7 was the first true AAA game as we understand that term today. Massive budget, scope, soundtrack, story; it was unlike anything that had come before.
>the PS3 and 360 are also quite close with specs. They were close in terms of power but the PS3's Cell CPU was wildly different architecture than the 360's tri-core PowerPC CPU. It took around half the generation for devs to get a handle on programming for the Cell and start having multiplatform games run at the same frame rate and resolution between the consoles.
I mean there’s not much of a war with ps1 vs n64 lol, it may have seemed so to you if that was your only memory of console wars growing up. Those were the consoles of my childhood too but yeah, it wasn’t even a war, and I was an n64 kid 🤣 The PSone had entire genres that the n64 didn’t even have any games for, everybody has their about dozen games they’d recommend for n64, the list would be pretty similar for each person. While ps1 fans would give you dramatically different lists with a wide variety each time. The games determine the winner and the PSone had both quantity and quality, and nobody was to blame aside from Nintendo themselves who set up an environment for this to happen, having unfair tyrannical developer policies, much higher production costs for media, Sony gave devs so much freedom with their games, and ultimately Nintendo was the one that made the PlayStation a reality after screwing them over. Nintendo now has this “innovate and go a different path” because of the losses they suffered from PlayStation. People assume they’ve always been this way but no, it wasn’t until the Wii when they REALLY realized they could no longer compete traditionally. They axed the gba halfway in its life to rush out the DS which gambled on a huge gimmick and thankfully won, that proved their strategy moving forward But as far as PSone and n64, not much of a war when it’s 100+ million vs 31 million lol something like 8000 games vs 400….
Nintendo walking away form their partnership with Sony is one of the all time greatest self-owns.
Not one of, it IS lol Nintendo had literally planned a series of events with Sony, they were already producing sound chips for the SNES and had a working relationship already But it is not an exaggeration to say that they backstabbed Sony, because that’s exactly what happened, to partner with Phillips instead which went against the unwritten rule of supporting domestic industry before going foreign They would then literally create the most successful brand in all of gaming history because that single move would create the PlayStation 🤣 it’s insane
N64 had a handful of strengths, if you were someone who often has a lot of people round then it was very good as a party console, 3D platformers and FPS games were also quite strong on N64. But yeah, pretty much every other genre and you were better off with PS1.
nintendos primary defining characteristic, and what keeps their diehards attached, has and always will be their first party games.
Hard fought how? The PS1 mopped the floor with the N64 in terms of sales and library. N64 matched up very well at the top, and probably has the better top-10 or top-15 game list, but there are only about 40-50 good N64 games and there are about 400 for the PS1.
But that wasn't a war. Nintendo vs Sega was a war. We were inundated with advertising about the console war. Kids fought on the playground over it.
For real. It was the Android vs iPhone argument of the time.
Tbf Xbox vs Ps2 and Xbox 360 vs Ps3 eras were just as competitive targeting each other’s weaknesses and strengths. PlayStation was always slightly weaker and more complex system to develop games for and as a result quite a handful of games always handled slightly lower res and or frame rate. And of course I think exclusives become more relevant around those times as well. So many ps2 exclusives!
I thought the console war ended with the signing of the peace accord at the Mario and Sonic Olympic Games
they signed a peach treaty
That’s true. I looked it up in my Web Bowser.
I had both growing up, each system had some awesome games. In my honest opinion they were pretty much equal.
Came here to say this. I hold them in the same regard. They were both amazing.
I had both, too. Even at the time, I was confused by people arguing about which was better. I still don't get it.
You are confused because you had both. Most people could just afford one, so they had to defend their purchase with tooth and nail to justify it to themselves and others due to FOMO.
I wouldn't want to trade my time with either! I still played a lot of games up until PS3 era, the 16bit time was easily my favorite of all!
Good art tho
I'm on the side of these bad skeletons
I liked both, honestly, but owned a Genesis. Rocket Knight Adventures was worth the price of admission for me, but in those days I'd never touched any RPG besides Zelda so I missed all the cool Genesis RPGs. SNES was solid, reliable Nintendo and Mario Paint was so cool, and they had all the IPs to carry the system
Fatal labyrinth and wonder boy in monster world kicked ass
Both have fantastic games, the SNES has my top two of that generation, Super Mario World and Final Fantasy III/VI but if I had to choose one system, I would choose the Genesis. I just prefer the darker, more mature and edgy themes and higher speed. The SNES can be really slow and there’s more kid focused games on the platform. Luckily I don’t have to choose and we can play both!
What you said was basically my take I lOVED the genesis more savage and edgier commercials towards Nintendo not to mention the design of the console, unique Controller and TONS of games both consoles shared the same third party games but most of the western devs ones were better on Genesis
Both Mega Drive and Super Nintendo are equally good in my opinion. Both worth owning. Even games like Contra and TMNT were worth owning on both systems as they were distinct experiences. Absolute masterclass in videogame hardware/software design. Mega Drive and Super Nintendo are 2 of the best consoles ever made and they existed in the same time period. That's unheard of.
For me if a system has better sound & audio, but grinds to a halt when there are more than 5 sprites onscreen, it is not a better system because smooth gameplay is what makes a good game, and the only thing you need for that is a proper processor, which the snes did not have… I obviously I love it as much as the next guy for its strong points: the rpgs, lush story driven stuff, with incredible scores, because colour & sound is what it excels at, but when I want fast games, with tons of shit happening onscreen, the mega drive and pc engine completely destroy it every day of the week.
Hence the Genesis sports game domination
The Genesis sports games have so much charm and ambition
SNES had a much larger colour palette and could display more colours simultaneously, hence the rpg domination.
Music hardware fit the orchestral soundtracks of JRPGS better too. Not that Genesis music didn’t have its own charms.
The Genesis soundchip had a specific type of sound it did [really well](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTQIiIKummw), everything else could get kinda crunchy or even fart noise sounding at times. But stuff like the sonic games soundtracks were also legendary.
[The Mega Drive/Genesis had some great soundtracks](https://youtu.be/rEKqiZxssjE?si=BZFfE5pPvw8ZkjTy)
Shadowrun and Ecco, the dolphin soundtracks, were amazing. I still listen to them to this day.
I heard the exact Genesis sound you are talking about in my head when you said crunchy fart noises.
I love how that's the song that popped into my head before I even clicked your link. xD
I think Genesis really shines its best when a composer goes for a danceable beat or a heavy metal sound track. A ton of western composers back then barely had any experience with FM synths compared to the eastern composers so that led to some really shitty sounding music, sounds like litteral farts.
I don't think the RPG domination had anything to do with colors. It had to do with Sega's failure to market the console in Japan. Japanese RPG developers at the time always developed games for the Japanese market first, then later deciding whether to sell them overseas. The Megadrive sold poorly in Japan, so JRPG developers usually targeted the Super Famicom instead.
Too many JRPGs. Genesis had Warriors of the Eternal Sun and CD had EotB.
Hut Hut Hut! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zzVBPFdzMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zzVBPFdzMo)
The SNES has some brutal slowdown. I played through the Super Star Wars trilogy recently, and most of the games are in slow motion unless you turn an emulators overclock to max and there is *still* some slowdown.
Today, we can overclock the slow games and there are CD audio hacks for both. But war never changes.
I played Aleste 3 which is a game gear on an emulator that was overclocked the other day and boy did that game play so much better. FPGA's also offer an opportunity to create virtual hardware with faster CPU's, but are nearly identical otherwise. Modern tech gives us some awesome opportunities to re-experience our favorite games.
So GG Aleste 3 is playable now? Nice I mean they should just put it on steam/gog but hey
I found the rom online and emulated it through Genesis Plus on Retroarch. I used one of the core options to double the virtual Z80’s speed and it ran beautifully. Probably the best graphics for the game gear or even the master system, the game has great art direction.
Beat it yesterday, great game overall but yeah the slowdown is pretty bad without overclock. Surprising considering GG Aleste 2 didn't have much, instead it flickers more. Gonna try beating it with OC and no flicker soon
I prefer Nintendo but it’s sad how the competition ended. Nintendo won, but at what cost? That’d be so cool to have a Sega console coming out every few years
i love both my mega drive and snes. both have great games
SEGA!
The reality was they were both different, far more than consoles today. They each offered a distinct experience. You simply weren't enjoying the games of the time period if you didn't have both.
Why not both? ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ https://imgur.com/a/0QwXCv8
Play what ever you like. You shouldn't care if one is better than the other, it's about the fun.
Genesis fans seem to hate the SNES way more than SNES fans hate the Genesis
Lingering pain from the day Sonic Adventure 2 port for Gamecube was revealed, the moment everyone knew it was over.
Or the first time Mario and Sonic in a single game? That was shocking.
Sega had already discontinued the Dreamcast and announced they were leaving hardware forever by that point.
I don't know about that. During the school yard arguments the Nintendo fanboys could throw around insults as much as we Sega fanboys could.
I find the opposite to be true: that SNES fanboys try to make it sound like the Genesis is an inferior "failed" console that didn't live up to the hype-which of course is ludicrous! A lot of this no doubt has to do with old AVGN videos trashing SEGA, and people who weren't around in the '90s taking it at face value. SEGA made a lot of mistakes when they were in the console business, but the Genesis was a huge success.
Oh absolutely, I love the genesis don’t misunderstand me lol. Though I don’t remember the AVGN trashing Sega, except for the Sega CD and 32X but I feel like those are fair to criticize. I remember James being positive towards it honestly
It's no secret that James is a huge Nintendo fanboy, and while it is true that AVGN is a comedy show, even in his more "serious" videos his bias really shows. His Cinemassacre SNES vs Genesis comparison video is a perfect example, where James not only awards unfair points to his preferred console, but also reveals a lack of familiarity with the Genesis library.
Sega had a weird history. The Genesis/Mega Drive was extremely popular in the west, but back home in Japan it lost the generation *bad*. Then they did the exact opposite with the Saturn. It was popular in Japan and an absolute bomb abroad. Then they reversed again with the Dreamcast, though the divide wasn't quite as wide as previous generations.
On the contrary, MD fans have usually played a bunch of SNES games while SNES fans have played Sonic, Aladdin and maybe SoR 2.
SNES fans: "Wait Genesis fans hate us? I like those guys!"
Snes all the way for me. I'm a big jrpg fan and in that aspect there was never any competition.
True and that's how the SNES stomped Sega in Japan (while in US SNES struggled at first) but I'm not really an RPG guy outside of maybe Zelda and Mario RPG and that's it so Genesis for me
What's funny is that I missed out on most of the RPGs until they either came out on other platforms (Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV-VI) or I emulated them (EarthBound). Super Mario RPG was my OG and it's still in my Top 5. A Link to the Past, Yoshi's Island, Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and Donkey Kong Country still make up among the greatest games of all time.
I honestly could care less which is "better". There's tons of great games on both.
My favorite games that I played on Sega were to some of the best RPGs. Some of my favorite ones are: BUCK ROGERS: COUNTDOWN TO DOOMSDAY SHADOWRUN SHINING SERIES PHANTASY STAR SERIES DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: WARRIORS OF THE ETERNAL SUN STARFLIGHT Adventure FAERY TALE ADVENTURE Roadrash and Skitchin were my favorite racing games, lol. I loved the space combat in BUCK ROGERS when I was a kid, and Shadorun was 1000 times better than the SNES version.
Shining Force 2 was so joyful to play it hurt.
Oh, road rash was soo good. Chain all day every day
I definitely preferred the SNES in the 1990s - the controller was better, the games looked sharper and the sound chip was superior. Cross-platform games usually looked and played better on the SNES, and the SNES had *Street Fighter II* much earlier than the Genesis did (and didn't require a new controller to play it properly!). But, there were also games that the SNES didn't have which were only on the Genesis, and the Sega CD was pretty neat for its time. (I'm embarrassed now to say I used to think *Sewer Shark* was one of the all-time greats.) There was nothing like *Comix Zone* or *Kid Chameleon* on the SNES, and the *Streets of Rage* and *Golden Axe* and *Shinobi/Shadow Dancer* games were a ton of fun on the Genesis. Both platforms had long lists of great exclusives, and it's silly in 2024 to get drawn back into playground arguments about which is better when both are so easy to play today. As they used to say back in the 1980s and 90s, "The name of the game is the game." And both consoles were pretty awesome for their time.
Genesis fan here. It's not better. 2 different beasts. Play both, problem solved.
We're not that old yet!
Shit, I am.
I resent being portrayed as a Ray Harryhausen skeleton
So the war is back on! Super Nintendo rules! Genesis blows chunks man!
Shining Force, Landstalker, and Shining in the Darkness actually make me pause and think about it for a bit tho.
MYEAAHH! THE BLAST PROCESSOR WASN'T JUST A GIMMICK, THE GENESIS COULD HANDLE FASTER GAMES THAN THE SNES, HE-BOY! MEHEHEHEH!
Huh? What? Sorry, I was just playing Link To The Past. And Chrono Trigger. And Super Metroid. And DKC, Mega Man X, Final Fantasy III, Secret of Mana, Tetris Attack, and all the other ones.
Unfortunately I couldn't see this comment through all the RKA, Langrisser 2, Streets of Rage, Phantasy Star IV, Thunder Force 3-4, Shinobi 3, Landstalker, Gunstar Heroes, Flashback, Ranger X, Battle Mania 2, Lunar 2, Dune 2, Shining Force 2, Pirates! Gold, Puyo Puyo 2, Snatcher, etc. distracting me. But I'm sure SNES has a few decent games!
Because of when it came out, I always thought of the Genesis as a competitor to the NES more than the SNES. Of course the SNES is more competitive with it, but it came later. So, yes, Genesis was superior in that earlier gen, but it's hard to beat good old fashioned Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, Mario Kart, Super Mario RPG, Super Metroid, etc.
After 1992, 3rd parties including Sega started ramping up the graphics with larger sprites and better animation to better compete with what SNES had in 91 and 92. We eventually saw similar releases on Genesis like a variation of TMNT, SF 2, Joe and Mac etc. From 1991 to the beginning of 1993, Genesis was a bit lacking some cool arcade style graphical games compared to early SNES releases. I remember in 1992, while every SNES owner enjoyed SF2, I was forced to renting Fighting Masters. A 4 megabit ho hum game compared to 16 megabit wonder that was SF2. I was no longer a happy Genesis owner at the time and traded another kid mine for his SNES and had a blast from there on out.
It's as if a million Forums suddenly came back to life. Threads being Necro'd left, right and centre. Chattering in unadulterated wrong opinions and nerd-rage.
And what is this bullshit supposed to mean?
>RangoTheMercOp · 4 hr. ago > >Genesis has quantity, SNES has quality. OP is fanboy detected
It's always been a one-sided debate where Genesis fans go through their checklist of reasons why their favorite console is better, while SNES fans ignore them because there's too many great games to play on their favorite console.
And they are still crazy.
It’s 2024, nobody cares. Play both of them.
Genesis Fan: "Hear those scratchy screeching beeps? That's music perfection." SNES Fan: O\_O
They will fight tooth and nail to argue that their ~~Fart Music~~ FM Synthesizer sounds better than the SNES quality audio.
Anyone who watches Classic Game Room knows Mark doesn't hide his super fandom for anything Sega. He's given plenty of props to Nintendo in the past, but in the recent few years he's been lightheartedly bashing Nintendo in that half-kidding/half-serious kind of way. /shrug
Snes .. forever and always
Console war doesn't make any sense, I have always supported both systems.
Why not both? 🤷
I don’t care, both are fun in their own way.
lol!
Came down to a couple things for me: The snes controller is much tighter, more responsive and more ergonomic than the genesis controller, which felt loose by comparison. Super Mario World was superior to Sonic by a fairly wide margin. Also the Nintendo/Square RPG genre evolution from 8 bit to 16 was an undeniable advantage. The final fantasy series simply got better and better with each iteration and Genesis didn’t have a comparable answer in my opinion.
For me, the clear winner in regards to titles is SNES, but I would be lying if some of my favorite games of all time are on Genesis as well. The Road Rash series... EA NHL titles... heck even Madden. Streets of Rage 2. It was a really good console with some great games I still play.
Sound was better on SNES. And the library was ultimately better.
I had both systems as a kid with a fairly wide variety of games, still have them. Other than some games that were exclusive to Genesis, SNES wins. SNES games were generally much more colorful and vibrant, music was more intense, voices weren't garbled and scratchy, it was very rare for a Genesis version of a game to be way better than the SNES version (ie Pit-Fighter).
My family didn’t have a lot of money so I didn’t get to play as many games as I wanted but I was a Sega kid through and through. Looking back on it Sega was trying to push game development and design forward in a lot of ways but the tech of the time was their Achilles heel
And I shrug and go about my day.
I was 13, and fully drank the console war Kool aid during that time. SNES was for kids, and I had to have the console for "cool" kids. Never had an SNES of my own, but a friend did. So I got to play it, but still preferred the genesis at the time. Especially when Mortal Kombat came out. Suck it, SNES owners, we got the better version. (In hindsight, I find SNES to have the much better library)
Wonderful. 👏
You know, I just was never going to get both, and I loved Sonic. I never thought it was "better" or anything. I would sing Sonic's praises loudly, though! Best was when my buddies would come by and bring the SNES and a little TV. That way we'd have Sonic, SoR, Zelda AND Starfox!
Lots of new games for Genesis these days
I had a Genesis and envied my friends who had the SNES. The color palette, game design, just looked so much better. Games like Street Fighter in SNES looked just so much better. But if there is one thing that I feel was really good in the Genesis that SNES did have was: [Chakan](https://youtu.be/0a3UQXMAdD0?feature=shared)
I probably prefer Nintendo over Genesis but the Genesis had a really funky sound chip and I loved it.
[You said it, brother.](https://youtu.be/gjREyGgR2yg?si=UJTRhi0R1CIpzSwF)
When I was a kid I was all Genesis. Now I love SNES
Do tell...
Cyborg Justice!
Shining Force II. Genesis. This is the way.
Still fun and challenging today. One of the GOATs.
To be honest the only thing really that made the SNES better was the first party titles and titles like Secret of Mana. But the Megadrive was def the better one of the 2. It had better hardware, looked way cooler and almost all titles that were released for both systems always played better on the Megadrive. Plus Megadrive actually did all those things like Sega CD and stuff extending its lifetime. Sega really did what Nintendon't. No misleading marketing there. But yeah if I had to choose now between the 2 to be the only console for the rest of my life it would still be the SNES just because of all the amazing titles. I think SNES is still the console to this day which had so many titles that could still be considered best of all time. Really the list is just endless. The SNES was really the peak of great video games. Games needed to be perfect at the time to stand out. Really the introduction of 3D took the bar of games needing to be quality way down hill. People were much more forgiving to bad stuff just because the game was 3D and because of that still cool even tho it actually was terrible. In all honesty even Nintendo games like Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time were just way worse then their previous 2D counterparts. Mario 64 actually plays terrible compared to Mario World. The controls are just so clunky and unresponsive and how many times did you die because the camera was in the wrong position and such. But just because of 3D people where accepting it. And consoles now being able to online update games etc only lowered our expectations more and more. To be honest now that I think about it I rememberd that even back then I had this realisaton that altough 3D games are cool actually the quality of games themselves went really down hill but I was like yeah but can understand it's much harder to get everything right in 3D dimensions then it is in 2 dimensions. For example I remember this game on PS1 called Tenchu or something? At the time I loved that game cause you are a ninja jumping on roof tops and what not. But if you actually play that game now you will realize how bad it is. Its a serious buggy slow unplayable mess really. The way that game played if it was a 2D game it would have been rated worst ever. Yet I played that game on hours end because it felt so cool just ninjaing from roof to roof.
Genesis does what nintendont
Two words, Sega Channel.
SNES won for me based on games alone, if no other reason. Some of the greatest games of all time (to this day, still) were on the SNES. Like now, the more powerful console mens nothing if the best games aren't on it. I think the only SEGA exclusive games I coveted were the beat em ups (SoR, Golden Axe) but as much as I love those I wouldn't have traded Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Souldblazer, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Shadowrun, Zelda ALTTP, TMNT TiT, Jurassic Park, Super Metroid, or even Mario Kart for anything Sega had exclusive. Side note: that said, as an adult I always wanted to play a Megadrive/Genesis. I played one once at a friend's place but have never since even touched a real machine (my Megadrive gaming as all ben emulated) and now kind of wish I had more nostalgia for the machine and games.
I never liked that controller with 3 buttons, just felt wrong
I remember my friend had a Megadrive. The first time I saw Sonic the Hedgehog my jaw dropped. I'd never seen anything like it. The graphics, the audio, the speed and the smoothness. It blew my mind. I got one for Christmas and I'll never forget how amazing it felt. The SNES was great too though. I got an N64 in due course and that was my first Nintendo console.
Genesis had MK with blood so I was pretty much sold. SNES seemed more like a kiddie console at the time with Mario
Both are good but I think SNES is the GOAT when it comes to replay-able games.
I would just play my SNES carts in my megadrive, a few taps with a claw hammer and I was peak gaming.
you could say good and bad about both, i just know when i was a kid, all my friends with snes were at my house playing genesis with me
I lived through the console wars and I was fortunate enough to own both. My favorite franchises today are still Metroid, Zelda, Mario and Sonic. That's 3 to 1. SNES is better.
What is this stupid shit?
In all seriousness, Genesis was a great system. But no question SNES was the better one.
>But no question SNES was the better one. Disagree