Reigniting the Old Console War: SNES vs. Genesis

Am I the only person here who had Sega Channel? Talk about an industry changer. That was Xbox Live 10 years early. Sega's ideas always seemed to be just a little bit too far ahead of the available tech but they left a huge print on the industry

Ralphis said:

Am I the only person here who had Sega Channel? Talk about an industry changer. That was Xbox Live 10 years early. Sega's ideas always seemed to be just a little bit too far ahead of the available tech but they left a huge print on the industry

I wanted it, buddy of mine had it, but the cable company where I was living at the time didn't offer it.

Supposedly, in addition to preempting Xbox Live/other digital distribution, it was really influential in getting better quality cable infrastructure, which had the side effect of making cable internet more feasible.

geo said:

I'm pretty confident that people have proven Mario to run faster.

Then they're full of shit. I just looked up the speeds for both.

The Genesis Sonic games define one pixel to be 256 subpixels. Sonic's normal maximum running speed in the Genesis games is 1536 subpixels per frame (6 pixels). Rolling on slopes allows Sonic to exceed that and reach 4096 subpixels per frame (16 pixels); likewise, sequels introduced the Spin Dash and Super Peel-Out, both of which allow him to reach 3072 subpixels per frame (12 pixels). There's also speed shoes, which doubles acceleration and top speed values (still maxing out at 3072 subpixels, and AFAIK having no effects on the Spin Dash/Peel-Out). For the sake of argument, I'll say the slowest of those, the 256 subpixel/6 pixel figure, is the only one that matters. (TASVideos)

Super Mario World also uses subpixels, but because it's doing much less trigonometry, doesn't use nearly as many; it only uses 16 subpixels per pixel. Mario's max running speed in Super Mario World (assuming you've held down Y and moved forward on a flat surface for an extended period of time) oscillates between 47-49 subpixels per frame (2.9375-3.0625 pixels). His fastest movement is actually during flight, at 51 subpixels per frame (3.1875 pixels). (TASVideos)

Now, I'll be a little fair here. The SNES is incapable of rendering an image at 320x224, which is what most Genesis games (including all the Sonic games) run at, and instead runs at 256x224. However, it occupies the exact same area on one's TV set. So, if you stretch the image 1.25x horizontally, you'll transform the SNES's 256 pixels wide into an equivalent one 320 pixels wide. If you do that, Mario's running speed is the equivalent of 3.671875-3.828125 pixels, and his flying maxes out at 3.984375 pixels.

3.984375 < 6. Ergo, Sonic is the faster of the two.

For the helluvit, Doom guy runs 16-18 units per tic (thread). At 35 tics a second, that's 560-630 units per second. Convert that to the standard 60 frames per second that both Sonic and Super Mario World were developed for, and that's 9.333...-10.5 units a frame.

Assuming one unit is a pixel, Doom guy is faster than either of them (assuming Sonic isn't using any of the techniques mentioned above to reach 12 pixels a frame - and even then, Doom guy could presumably propel himself with a rocket to compensate).

(God, I can't believe I seriously wrote all this up. But then, I also can't believe somebody actually asserted Mario was faster...)

EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that it might actually be SMB1 that's in question. Even then, I must concede that I haven't factored in the heights of the respective characters to convert this into a real-world measurement for an apples-to-apples comparison, so bear that in mind as well.

For what it's worth, Mario never felt slower and I thought the hype surrounding Sonic's speed was kind of dumb because of that. I really liked the Sonic games, but for their level design, art, and different take on platforming, not (exclusively) their speed.

Doomguy and Dhalsim win the speed contest because they can teleport. That looks like an interesting site to learn programming quirks. Like why are they using "subpixels" instead of decimal numbers? To optimize computer time in all cases where an integer is good enough? I'd like to know how road rash 2 screens are drawn (the grass is shaded in stripes which match the yellow lines in the road vertically, then you have to think about how to do hills in front of hills and scale stuff that's further away etc) and lots of other stuff. Learning street fighter is just hit and defense rectangles was interesting because it seemed deeper than that.

I remember holding down all 3 buttons in sonic (1?) while the beginning demos played would cause the demo sonic to mess up and behave weird like falling in lava and stuff.

Ralphis said:

Am I the only person here who had Sega Channel? Talk about an industry changer. That was Xbox Live 10 years early. Sega's ideas always seemed to be just a little bit too far ahead of the available tech but they left a huge print on the industry

I have read about it and that was really was ahead of its time, nintendo had satellaview which enabled multiplayer with other players around Japan.

Waffenak said:

I have read about it and that was really was ahead of its time, nintendo had satellaview which enabled multiplayer with other players around Japan.

Even before that, I'm talking 1982-93 when pre-NES consoles such as "Colecovision" and "Intellivision" ruled the market, there were similar experimental services which allowed downloadable games to be played for a monthly fee -it was even "broadband" as it used the Cable TV infrastructure, rather than a dial-up modem: PlayCable. Now how's that for truly "live" arcade action? *grin*

I recall I found a lot more enjoyment out of the Mario games than the sonic games.

Ralphis said:

Am I the only person here who had Sega Channel? Talk about an industry changer. That was Xbox Live 10 years early. Sega's ideas always seemed to be just a little bit too far ahead of the available tech but they left a huge print on the industry

PS Plus. Free games every week when you subscribe. You weren't the only one to have Sega Channel. I had a few friends that had it.

(God, I can't believe I seriously wrote all this up. But then, I also can't believe somebody actually asserted Mario was faster...)

You need to justify your avatar's franchise. I'm happy someone took the bait.

This thread inspired me to start playing SNES roms again. I've also just installed, and configured a Playstation emulator.

While you guys argue about the speed of Mario vs. Sonic...

Samus can move so fast that the screen starts appearing to scroll backward. How's that for "blast processing"? There's more to system speed than the MHz of your main CPU. The SNES' dedicated powerful GPU unit takes care of 99% of graphics processing, and its professional grade sound chip does all sound, rarely involving the CPU except to upload patches and programs into its internal memory. SNES also has multiple hardware DMA channels that allow blazing transfer of data through the system's different memory spaces.

The speed of a game on all of the platforms depends on the skill of its authors at exploiting what they had available to them. Not on a 4 MHz difference between CPUs. I mean really, buying into that idea that 7 MHz vs 3 MHz is what makes Sonic run a few pixels faster than Mario is being completely duped as a consumer. Mario is slower in Super Mario World because that's how the game is designed. If he ran like Sonic you'd fucking die every 5 seconds because unlike in Sonic, where the environment is the main obstacle, enemies are fucking trolls and will murder you.

The MHz difference obviously isn't what makes Sonic run faster than Mario (that's just some arbitrary value chosen by the game designers), but it is what makes shmups on Genesis have less slowdown than SNES ones. Although yeah, that depends a lot on the skill of the programmer, as well.

So what we've established.... Character speed = console greatness and well Doomguy runs pretty fast, Genesis doesn't have a Doom port. Therefore SNES > Genesis.

Just to keep picking a fight.... As for the slowdown issue, SNES can handle more sprites even if it has half the processing power. Genesis has less resolution and a smaller screen size. Smaller resolution and smaller size, more speed. Less sprites, less slowdown. You can cover a ping pong table better than you can a tennis court. Congrats Genesis, you can go faster, because you can do less. Why did it need twice the processor when it does half of what SNES does?

We can compare via console sales too. SNES = 97 million consoles sold (supposedly) including Super Famicom vs Genesis + Mega Drive's 41 million consoles sold (supposedly). Perhaps the data was written by some Nintendo fanboy, but whatever. I guess sales don't mean one is better than the other, but people do put their money where their mouth is.

Quasar said:

While you guys argue about the speed of Mario vs. Sonic...

I literally don't care one bit about who runs the fastest, I don't even really care about Sonic TBH. But if you want to compare speed using TASed videos, here's one with Sonic where through normal movement the camera can't keep up (the right screen has a hack to keep it always centered on Sonic).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPN9fv8CAgw#t=190

And that's not even counting ejection glitches like at 4:50. But then Mario can build up ludicrous speeds in Mario 64, and so can a lot of other characters I'm not thinking of.

I liked this thread better when it wasn't so angry. I guess that's the Internet for you, people gonna get mad about video games.

When I tried to play Sonic games, I came to conclusion that achieving their trademark speeds is too trial-and-error for me. When you play for the first time, it goes pretty much like this:

1. You're trying to advance carefully.
2. Unsatisfied, you're trying to gain some speed. After all, it's the most advertised feature.
3. You bump into a wall and think: "Okay, I'll do better next time."
4. You bump into an enemy and think: "Okay, I'll do better next time."
5. You bump into spikes.
6. You fall into a pit.
7. You bump into another wall. After that, there are two possibilities.
8a. You invest your time in something else.
8b. You carefully study every level and finally gain the ability to play Sonic "right".

Unfortunately, I wasn't ready for 8b.

I had similar experience with another dynamic platformer called Demolition Man, except it was much worse. Everything about this game suggests that it was designed to be very fast-paced: music, animations, and of course player speed. There's only one problem: the camera. When you run forward, you're almost touching the edge of the screen => you can't see what's ahead of you => you have to proceed very slowly until you know every nook and cranny on every level.

The result is the same: your first playthrough is going to be much slower than designers wanted it to be.

Errant Signal - Sonic and Speed

A nice video about Sonic, and to an extend Sega vs. Nintendo in general.

But if you've ever played the original Sonic games, it's pretty clear after the first Zone that they're not about speed, not really. Yes, Sonic possessed the capability to move really quickly, and in a few areas you could really build up speed. But outside of the first Zone, where building up speed is easy, and a few spring-loaded segments like the chemical plant pipes, it isn't emphasized. [...] Just because sonic can move fast, it doesn't mean that the games are about moving fast.

Da Werecat said:

When you run forward, you're almost touching the edge of the screen => you can't see what's ahead of you => you have to proceed very slowly until you know every nook and cranny on every level.

The result is the same: your first playthrough is going to be much slower than designers wanted it to be.

There are some spots with multiple loops where its designed to blaze through fast in a ball on the first attempt though. I was thinking about what makes certain games fun earlier while playing micromachines on genesis (the one with spider). That game would probably be pointlessly easy if you could somehow see the entire track like on a grid of monitors each showing a portion or something. But the limited camera rectangle gives you only so much warning before an obstacle comes, and since the tracks aren't randomly generated it is kind of a memory game. Its funnest when your memory is tricked perhaps like confusing one sand dunes track with another sand dunes track. Punchout also tricks your memory by having the enemy throw a signal for one attack, but sometimes a similar but slightly different faked signal which results in a different attack.
It all comes down to the games. For genesis I play street fighters/ road rashes almost exclusively. Something like golden axe 2 can be fun like once every couple years but has little replay value. For snes I'd be playing super punchout and mario kart probably (stupid shoulder buttons means no street fighter). I actually like the secret "no no no" code for sonic spheres better than the actual sonic games because there's like a million fun challenging maps (but I hate writing down the codes/ I'd rather it just warp you to a random one each time or something). Also I liked mario 3, and probably mario 2, better than super mario world. Super metroid didn't interest me some reason. And some snes rpgs like final fantasy if I remember try too hard, like I prefer a blocky obvious grid like zelda 1 nes rather than all these mazy paths of overly graphical environments. And for many rpgs, when you analyze the actual gameplay its quite simple/tedious/unfun/skillless/ or trial error time consuming. I guess the actual fun comes from feeling like you're making progress in something that takes multiple days/weeks to finish.

geo said:

So what we've established.... Character speed = console greatness and well Doomguy runs pretty fast, Genesis doesn't have a Doom port. Therefore SNES > Genesis.

Just to keep picking a fight.... As for the slowdown issue, SNES can handle more sprites even if it has half the processing power. Genesis has less resolution and a smaller screen size. Smaller resolution and smaller size, more speed. Less sprites, less slowdown. You can cover a ping pong table better than you can a tennis court. Congrats Genesis, you can go faster, because you can do less. Why did it need twice the processor when it does half of what SNES does?

We can compare via console sales too. SNES = 97 million consoles sold (supposedly) including Super Famicom vs Genesis + Mega Drive's 41 million consoles sold (supposedly). Perhaps the data was written by some Nintendo fanboy, but whatever. I guess sales don't mean one is better than the other, but people do put their money where their mouth is.

I thought you said you were out of this conversation? :P

I for one am not denying the SNES was the technically superior system, but let us not forget that the SNES version of Doom was £60 new and shite, even with the privilege of an uncapped SuperFX 2 chip.

As for screen resolution, the only games I can think of that used the SNES' highest pixel ratio were the DKC games (correct me if I'm wrong here). Most games ran at 256x224 compared to the MD's 320x224 (though some MD games also ran at 256x224, such as the godawful G-LOC), so yeah, while it did have higher resolution, it was a luxury, and there was still more slowdown on average.

Eh, you've still got a lot wrong here.

geo said:

So what we've established.... Character speed = console greatness and well Doomguy runs pretty fast, Genesis doesn't have a Doom port. Therefore SNES > Genesis.

Nobody asserted character speed = character greatness. That lengthy tirade was to dispell the (also incorrect) assertion you made that Mario was faster than Sonic. That's it.

geo said:

Just to keep picking a fight.... As for the slowdown issue, SNES can handle more sprites even if it has half the processing power. Genesis has less resolution and a smaller screen size. Smaller resolution and smaller size, more speed. Less sprites, less slowdown. You can cover a ping pong table better than you can a tennis court. Congrats Genesis, you can go faster, because you can do less. Why did it need twice the processor when it does half of what SNES does?

The SNES can do 128 sprites (citation), while the Genesis can only do 80 (citation). Okay, so there's something new to me (although I had to look it up myself; it'd be nice if you would back up any of your claims instead of making me do the legwork).

However, anyone who's spent a couple of minutes in an emulator and played with the screenshot tool can disprove your resolution claim. The SNES renders at 256x224, the Genesis 320x224. The Genesis can stoop to the 256x224 resolution if you really need it to; some games do, in fact, use this resolution (Street Fighter 2, for instance).

That said, both can technically go higher. The SNES can do so at a larger resolution, 512x448:



...but almost no games do, and for a simple reason: the modes that support this (Modes 5 and 6) are horribly strict on palette usage. All graphics on that layer are limited to one shared 16-color palette. Mode 5 allows for a second, 4-color layer; Mode 6 does not, but allows each individual tile to scroll (whatever that entails). The game above, RPM Racing, is an example of this (sprites have their own separate layer AFAIK and are unaffected by the color restrictions). Other games that did use the high-resolution layer generally only used them for text in menus, as such (more common in Japan, where small marks in kanji needed differentiating, and a higher resolution helped tremendously).

The Genesis, meanwhile:



320x448. I'm not sure if 640x448 is possible. I'm not sure what the restrictions on this resolution are, and to be certain, very few games use it (Sonic 2's kind of the only example I can think of); however, the limitation the SNES has of 16 colors certainly isn't one of them. Obviously, this image is squished vertically, as anyone who's played Sonic 2 in 2P can tell you.

geo said:

We can compare via console sales too. SNES = 97 million consoles sold (supposedly) including Super Famicom vs Genesis + Mega Drive's 41 million consoles sold (supposedly). Perhaps the data was written by some Nintendo fanboy, but whatever. I guess sales don't mean one is better than the other, but people do put their money where their mouth is.

Not the figures I'm seeing; 49.1 million SNES-es and Super Famicoms, somewhere between 29 million and 40 million Geneses and Mega Drives (IGN, Nintendo (archived), all the citations at this note in this Wikipedia article).

Regionally is more interesting; reusing that archived Nintendo link, SNES sold "over 20 million" in the USA. This New York Times article cites 20 million Geneses in America. In absence of exact figures, it seems that, in America at least, the final figures were very much neck-and-neck.

Anyway, long and short of this is, I'm not here to tell you the Genesis is the better console. It very much objectively isn't. I said as much back on Page 1. I'm just asking you stop coming up with inaccurate facts to back up your assertion, trying to make the Genesis look like utter garbage when it really wasn't. There are plenty of legitimate facts you could use instead; again, spelled most of them out on page 1.

Sonic 2 split screen is actually running at that res? I actually didn't know that. I always wondered why it flickered on my old tube TV.

Although, if we're talking about slowdown ... :P

Look. Only one of the two had Toejam and Earl, simply the greatest Roguelike that ever existed. There is a clear winner here.

scalliano said:

I thought you said you were out of this conversation? :P

Good point :-) I guess because my trolldom got a rise out of some Sonic mark I kept going, but really arguing over the Internet is pretty petty. It accomplishes nothing. We should be trying to cure cancer with our researching abilities, not discussing which 20 year old console was better.

Dark Sonic said:

However, anyone who's spent a couple of minutes in an emulator and played with the screenshot tool can disprove your resolution claim. The SNES renders at 256x224, the Genesis 320x224. The Genesis can stoop to the 256x224 resolution if you really need it to; some games do, in fact, use this resolution (Street Fighter 2, for instance).

Emulator? We're talking systems. Anyone that's spent time off emulators would know... Genesis does : 256x224, 320x224, 320x448 Nintendo does : 256x224, 256x448, 512x224, 512x448

Its cool though. We can keep talking specs and minor details or how much Genesis sold in Europe compared to how well SNES sold in the world.

Anyway, everyone has their own opinion.

Now that we are all older, and wiser, we can objectively deliberate on the technical attribute on both systems. But back in the day, for a lot of kids, here's an example of a major selling point:

Mortal Kombat (Genisis) Blood > Mortal Kombat (SNES) no blood

As someone else mentioned earlier, socially, sega was for the cool kids, and snes was for the nerds. Even though, I was a big snes fan, I did want to be a proud owner of both systems. However, I was only able to convince my family to get me a Game Gear.

One time I bought a used game gear and a lot of like 200 games, and they were all terrible clones and crap so I just sold it almost immediately. Maybe there just weren't any gems in that lot. But gameboy/color (before touchscreen pen bullcrap etc) had a lot of good games, kind of like an extension of the nintendo library, and you could play them on tv with snes & 'gameboy player' or something but I never got that. Going through a library like that, targeting all the gems you missed out on, at used prices today is way better than bothering with the newfangled big brother xbox one system etc. Or, uh, just get an emulator but I still haven't bothered with that because I'm oddly habitual and fear any small deviation from my usual pathetic autistic routine.

Kontra Kommando said:

However, I was only able to convince my family to get me a Game Gear.

This just reminded me that the Nomad existed. Another one of my friends had one, I wanted one so bad back then. "Yeah, you play your little Game Boy, I've got a Sega in my (grossly enlarged) pocket!"

Edit

scalliano said:

Sonic 2 split screen is actually running at that res? I actually didn't know that. I always wondered why it flickered on my old tube TV.

Although, if we're talking about slowdown ... :P

I'm almost certain it doesn't. I'm not an expert on the Genesis/MD, but that's probably an interlaced mode, hence flicker. Only 240 (224 NTSC) lines would be shown at once. The emulator is probably combining frames. Even the N64 couldn't output 480p (and whatever the equivalent you guys use in PAL land is) at a reasonable framerate.

I was really excited to get the magnifier for the game gear. I felt the same kind of elation when I hooked my TV up to HD years later.

Jurassic Park was pretty good for it, I remember. I also had sonic pin ball, and Alien 3. But probably the best game I had for it was Slider, aka Skweek in Japan.

Genesis had Comix Zone, Sonic series, Gunstar Heroes, Shining Force series, Contra Hard Corps, Streets of Rage, and Golden Axe.

SNES exclusives could never beat the Genesis exclusives. And almost every game that got ported on both consoles got superior ports on the Genesis. (except few games such as Alien 3 and Sunset Riders)

Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

And almost every game that got ported on both consoles got superior ports on the Genesis. (except few games such as Alien 3 and Sunset Riders)

Rock 'n' Roll Racing, Smash TV, Mortal Kombat II and 3, Street Racer. What?

Although I'm in a small-as-fuck minority that loved Alien 3 on the Megasis/Genedrive it seems.

Jayextee said:

Rock 'n' Roll Racing, Smash TV, Mortal Kombat II and 3, Street Racer. What?

Although I'm in a small-as-fuck minority that loved Alien 3 on the Megasis/Genedrive it seems.

And in the other hand, you have Aladin, and Adventures of Batman and Robin.

Well, if the Genesis Alien 3 had some better design decisions, such as not making Ripley get knocked back and lay down on the ground for 5 seconds after every hit, it would have been a much better game. It's much faster paced than the SNES Alien 3.

What about early adopters of the Sega Genesis/MD? Don't forget that it got a 2-years headstart over SNES, and if you wanted a true 16-bit console at home between 1988 and 1990, that was it. I mean, cmon, who could afford a Neo Geo or bothered with stuff like the PC Engine/Turbografx?

When both consoles were available, of course it would be a different thing. Very differently designed, very different gaming backgrounds (Genesis: more arcade titles and ports, SNES: more Nintendo-exclusive franchises, which also happened to be good).