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MajorRawne

Could the Genesis/Megadrive have done Super Mario World?

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I've been wondering about the capabilities of the Mega Drive (Genesis) versus the SNES. Could Sega have created a Sonic version of SMW, with tons of levels, tons of enemies and possibly even a built-in save function?

The games on Genesis typically seem to involve more "zoomed in" landscapes with taller sprites, whereas SNES games sometimes seem more "zoomed out" with smaller sprites, packing more onto the screen. I'm not sure if the Sega could handle SMW-style visuals?

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The Genesis had a faster CPU so it could push around more things and bigger sprites at a high pace. SNES had more RAM to store sprites and other info though.

That's why Genesis had fast games with limited sprites per level, like Sonic. And SNES had more complex levels/gameplay, more RPGs and strategy games etc.

Super Mario World would be possible with a more limited texture-set per level, worse animations (less frames) etc.

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It would look like shit graphically but it's possible. There's even a homebrew port of Wolf 3D for the Genesis which is basically the same motif. Looks like shit but it works.

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Thanks gents. I'm aware there's a video floating around with SMW ported to the Genesis but the sounds and music are horrible, which is strange. There are lots of Youtube videos where SNES music is played using Genesis sound fonts and they all sound better IMO. Ironically, for the supposedly "superior-sounding" SNES, I've yet to hear a Genesis tune played using SNES sound fonts that doesn't sound like crap.

I always felt the SNES and Genesis targeted different audiences. Nintendo are utterly reliant on Mario, but they had some amazingly good games like Starwing, Sim City, Axelay. But its music sounded like it had been recorded in a cave and the overall sound of SNES games was pretty samey. And they over-relied on that "mode 7" stuff or whatever it's actually called. It's like JJ Abrams Trek and lens flare.

Sega was much more arcadey, it perfectly captured the masculine, tearaway, super-confident feel of the 1980s. The games were pretty shallow, less emphasis on RPG elements, but I always felt Genesis games had the better soundtracks (Sonic, Thunderforce 3 and 4, Decap Attack, Splatterhouse 2 to name the ones I can remember).

I can understand why people seem to prefer Nintendo to Sega (to a point). Arguably the NES and SNES offered a far more polished and professional feel. But the Master System and Genesis were more entertaining, offering more colourful games with memorable soundtracks. I don't see why Nintendo was so dominant.

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Well, if all the art assets were the same you'd actually have a way wider of a viewing area. Technically speaking, the SNES had more RAM, but SMW isn't exactly a technical marvel. It's actually a pretty unoptimized game and has a lot of left over levels referencing modes and registers that no longer work and uses a prototype version of Nintendo's sound driver used across (?) their SNES games, leading me to believe that it was developed at the same time the SNES console itself was.

It's silly to think that the animations would be any worse, SMW in itself is a rather simple game, enemies have very few animations, levels use the same few static tiles. Green Hill Zone's GFX set easily dwarfs any of SMW's, and the CPU is more than apt for speedy decompression of graphics and on-the-fly loading of uncompressed sprite tiles.

Levels have a max size of 13,824 tiles across 32 screens, though I highly doubt any maps get reach even half this amount. Albeit using a far more efficient 'chunk' system, Sonic levels as a whole are far larger than any in SMW.

Although you wouldn't have access to Mode 7, you could still take advantage of the 68k's speed and handle all the boss rotations in software, as with games like Castlevania: Bloodlines or Contra Hard Corps.

The one thing you would lose is Layer 3 effects like fog, mashers, or the scrolling water in Yoshi's Island 3. Although you may be able to simulate the former two using sprites, you would have to be careful or risk heavy scanline flickering. For the latter, you could use a Sonic-esq water table. Other minor Layer 3 effects like fish or rocks could be recreated using sprites without much issue due to their small size.

The one thing that would kick your ass though is colors. Your stuck with 4 palettes of 16 colors each, unless of course you do something crazy like load palettes on the fly as certain objects appear on screen, but Your Mileage May Vary. Even then, it's a pretty huge loss compared to the original, but with some cleverness and care it could be worked around.

Sound would obviously be entirely different. It's Sample Synthesis -> FM, it'd be interesting to see the results, really.

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MajorRawne said:

Ironically, for the supposedly "superior-sounding" SNES, I've yet to hear a Genesis tune played using SNES sound fonts that doesn't sound like crap.

The main advantage of SNES is the simple fact that SOUND FONTS HOLY SHIT. The result really depends on your samples and what you do with them. Genesis has these metal screeches - it's pretty hard to get something that would sound even remotely natural, but I suspect that it also removes a lot of hassle and gives you less room to fuck up.

Certain crossplatform games sound worse on SNES because the developers didn't use the system's strenghts to their advantage, highlighting its shortcomings (such as low sample quality). For example, Warlock sounds pretty dull. It also looks pretty dull, so I prefer the Genesis version. On the other hand, I didn't enjoy music in the Genesis version of Doom Troopers very much after playing the SNES version.

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i tend to have greater respect for good-sounding Genesis music than good-sounding SNES music. honestly all of the Super Mario games on the SNES had generally pretty boring music (excluding Yoshi's Island which had pretty terrific music) while the Sonic games fared better. well, the ones developed by Sonic Team themselves that is. i don't have many favorite games on the Genesis itself though.

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I don't see why not: technically it's just a platform game with parallax scrolling, nothing really out of the league of the Genesis.

Both platforms were excellent at what was the most popular genre at the time -2D platformers-, and both were "armed to the teeth" with hardware which could handle the most significant aspects -scrolling, sprites, etc. - of that genre.

The Genesis's design was much closer to "classic" 16-bit arcade machines of the 80s, and in fact IMO it has a better selection of classic arcade games, and more support from "big names" like TAITO, NAMCO, etc..

If OTOH one wants memorable console-exclusive franchises, then the SNES was obviously a better choice because Nintendo. The SNES hardware was also a kind of a wildcat: whereas the Genesis was quite "conservative" (68000 + Z80, FM sound, very similar to a lot of the 80s 16-bit arcade machines), the SNES used a more "dirty" and unique design, and custom chips which could do way more than simple arcade games.

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The only problem would be the sound and the limited color pallet. Not that it matters, a port is a port. Mario World uses 3 major buttons, the L and R are to pan the screen. I'm sure button combinations and directions could make up for any controller shortcomings.

Anything is possible. SNES had several different resolutions as did Genesis. All it takes is someone willing to program it and the time needed. Maps could be possible. Riding dinosaurs, swimming, hopping on enemies and brick bashing. Its just that Nintendo had a few years head start. I feel like Sega always hung themselves on the details rather than the fun.

Someone else has probably mentioned every game has been ported between the two systems in bootleg awful fashion.

While some like to hang their hat on Genesis has a better processor, the key is not wasting the processor that the SNES has with redundant or unnecessary programming. A few games manage to beat any sort of slowdown issue SNES is thought to have.

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SMW does utilize a few of the SNES' custom graphics features, such as when Bowser flies at the screen. Now, regardless of what many of the N-faithful may tell you, real-time scaling can be done on the MD, it's just handled by the main CPU rather than a dedicated hardware playfield layer (the aforementioned Mode 7). Check out the final boss of The Lawnmower Man for one of the best examples of this (outside of Road Rash, at least :P). While rotation is completely off the table on the MD, a number of games released later in the system's run do make use of a nifty scroll offset trick which allows the MD to "tilt" the playfield (Castlevania: Bloodlines, Contra: Hard Corps, Vectorman and pretty much anything made by Treasure).

So, while the MD could handle the majority of SMW without issue, some things would need to be redone to take account of the hardware limitations.

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The Genesis had a higher horizontal resolution than the SNES, which made dithering much more effective, especially in composite. The 64 color limit and lack of blending is worked around in many games due to this.

The faster CPU really did make a difference in complex and intense gameplay. Look at the sheer number of objects and the way everything moves in a game like Gunstar Heroes. If that game had been on the SNES, it'd probably more resemble the simplified Game Gear version in terms of gameplay.

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One of the best examples I can think of in that regard is the SNES game Thunder Spirits, basically a port of Thunder Force AC. It was basically Thunder Force III (a Mega Drive game) with a few extra levels bolted on, yet on the objectively superior SNES the game would slow down horrendously if the player so much as held down the fire button with no enemies on screen. A piss-poor port, possibly, but that always stuck with me.

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Graphically the Sega Genesis was inferior. It literally could not handle as many colors as the SNES which kind of degrades the importance of the "faster" cpu portion of the Genesis. It would be able to run a Super Mario World clone but it would have been a graphically downgraded versions.

Super Mario World isnt even an actual example of the actual graphical ability of the Super Nintendo. There are a lot of games on that system which make any Genesis game look like something from an (theoretical) irrelevant older era.

To me the genesis could be described, in terms from our current day life, as having a 4ghz Quad core computer with a graphics card from 2002... plain idiotic.

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Are you saying that graphics are more important than gameplay?

scalliano said:

the objectively superior SNES

You mean "objectively superior Genesis". Motorola 68k chips were godlike.

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Bucket said:

Are you saying that graphics are more important than gameplay?


Gameplay comes first for me and Mario has more than Sonic. Sega usually has flash style and attitude.

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Bucket said:

Are you saying that graphics are more important than gameplay?


Absolutely not, but most SNES games had both. ;)
Also, i am not afraid to state for myself that decent graphics always improve the accessibility of a game with gameplay which interests me.

Bucket said:

You mean "objectively superior Genesis". Motorola 68k chips were godlike.


You can not focus on that one chip just because some programmers liked it more, it is a gaming system which you judge by its games, legacy, overal quality, sales numbers... the entire package relevant to the end consumer.

So yes :
- Both had a 16 bit cpu, SNES was a bit slower
- Genesis had less colors
- some programmers liked the motorola its quirks
- some programmers liked the nintendo its quirks

The SNES obliterated the genesis in terms of content, quality, gameplay, graphical quality, popularity, and legacy trough its published titles. Next to sonic nobody ever seems to mention the genesis... at all... while the SNES is constantly mentioned because of its RPG titles, action titles, platformers, and so on.

On top of that, one has to note, that in the U.S. the genesis targeted an hyper active and pro-active audience of kids with public nintendo bashing in its commercials and flashy action without much content... while the genesis wasnt able to touch nintendo at all in its home country (Japan).

Purely in term of visuals, gameplay, content, legacy, and mentions because of multiple games the SNES was objectively superior as both systems cancel each other out in terms of technical shortcomings.

And a funy note ; the end user his experience is more important than the programmer his or her whine when it comes to marketing, and popularity.

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I miss the days when consoles were different and you could get different games of the same name depending on their technology. Now you just get the same game on all consoles. How does that help sell the same game on two different consoles?

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FireFish said:

*stuff


The Mega Drive had a much larger following in Europe, where marketing ploys such as the memetic "blast processing" were more or less unheard of (I read it once in a Sonic Spinball preview, never to hear it again until I got an internet connection in 2001). Also, to dismiss the system's legacy as nothing beyond Sonic is both unfair and inaccurate. Let's look at some examples:

Streets of Rage (better than Final Fight, sorry, it just is)
Gunstar Heroes
Thunder Force II-IV
the original Rocket Knight
Comix Zone
Contra: HardCorps (arguably the best version of Contra ever)

... and that's just for starters. As US-centric as much of the Internet may be, there's plenty of love out there for games like these, none of which saw the light of day on a Nintendo system (pre-Wii, at least).

Fact is, to be this good takes AGES ;)

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Wasn't Final Fight Capcom? What about Golden Axe? Where does that fare?

Final Fight gets dull and cheap by the end. A lot of fighting games do and they don't have the decency to get the fuck out of the building like a shmup does. Double Dragon 1 & 2 for the NES at least switch up the formula.

I think Contra: Alien Wars is better, but I am pretty partial to it.

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scalliano said:

...


The Mega Drive (genesis) had a lot of titles and provided some memories to some players, and for them personaly and subjectively it seems unfair, unless they have some common sense. There is a huge difference between listing the games while those games arent more than a private litle hobby interest and personal memory, or oblivious to the world beyond a tiny hardcore fan-group in terms of an accountable legacy.

The problem with this all is people being so partial to their own personal thoughtline that they ignore everything else and keep fooling themselves over and over again.

Yes the genesis has a legacy in terms of its console, everything does in its own way. but most of those never even came close to the status of many games on the SNES (donkey kong country, super mario world, super metroid, final fantasy, star-fox etc.)... next to (literally) sonic. But you have to be 30+ to have seen the best days of the genesis, because the PSX was already there in 1995, and the PS2 in 2000 and they where mainly being played on by the kids and teens whom are now in their end 20's.

Purely from an objective standpoint Sega was out-done by a console with better image quality and a slightly slower 16bit cpu and its titles, and some impressive add-on chips making star-fox possible... But that does not mean that the Mega Drive was bad, worthless, or irrelevant. It has its place, it made some kids happy,it was a thing with its own public, and is a part of gaming history. There are some great games on the Mega Drive (genesis) with great gameplay. But that fact always trigers Sega players whom cant accept it.

b.t.w. ;
I am not from the U.S., nor do i natively write or speak english (for that matter), and the internet is a global ordeal. Every country has its own thousands of hosts, pages, and content in their language. (again, for all that matters.).

Spoiler

- Sonic 1 to 3
- shinobi 3
- streets of rage 3 (bare knuckle 3 in japan)

hehehe.

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FireFish said:

You can not focus on that one chip just because some programmers liked it more, it is a gaming system which you judge by its games, legacy, overal quality, sales numbers... the entire package relevant to the end consumer.

When talking about the "objective quality" of a computing machine, yes, I will focus on the computing power it has. The 68000 was the same chip powering legendary PCs like the Amiga and early Macs. It didn't have "quirks", it had desktop-quality power. Later Genesis games that fully harnessed its power are indicative of that. The SNES was not "a bit slower", it was HALF the output speed. It was also custom-built, which makes more of a one-trick pony than a workhorse.

Meanwhile, 90% of your argument is of SUBJECTIVE opinion, i.e. popularity. Sales numbers do not suggest quality. If you disagree, I'm looking forward to your next thread where you argue that One Direction are better musicians than Steely Dan.

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I believe it could have been ported mostly unscathed. Even right down to the colors, since the earliest Nintendo games on the SNES used a special mode which cut the color amount in half on all tiles to conserve space (only the more limited master palette remains an issue if you want to get nitpicky). The parts of the game which utilize the hardware-accelerated features would be the main issue, but they could probably be tackled just less efficiently, since you could do it manually in software instead.

The thing about comparing these two systems is that there's a lot of misconceptions and misleading data out there. And people are often far too quick to dismiss the faster CPU as just being good for faster gameplay with more sprites on the screen with no slowdown. In practice it really is a great equalizer as the machine just becomes all around more flexible for coders, and it also has specific feature sets for calculations which the SNES CPU lacks, so not only is it faster but can also do certain things way more efficiently whereas you'd have to do them in more roundabout ways otherwise (it's also this specifically which makes the physics in the Sonic games possible which were quite advanced for their time, and just can't be done in fluid real time on the SNES). One of the most common applications for this stuff yielding in an actual graphical advantage would be art compression algorithms, enabling things like more animation frames, more variety in level art, or in the case of games like Earthworm Jim an entire extra level.

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Bucket said:

When talking about the "objective quality" of a computing machine, yes, I will focus on the computing power it has. The 68000 was the same chip powering legendary PCs like the Amiga and early Macs. It didn't have "quirks", it had desktop-quality power. Later Genesis games that fully harnessed its power are indicative of that. The SNES was not "a bit slower", it was HALF the output speed. It was also custom-built, which makes more of a one-trick pony than a workhorse.

Meanwhile, 90% of your argument is of SUBJECTIVE opinion, i.e. popularity. Sales numbers do not suggest quality. If you disagree, I'm looking forward to your next thread where you argue that One Direction are better musicians than Steely Dan.


The objective quality purely based upon the chipset requires one to look at the entire machine its motherboard... especially with a console like that, which also including its color system. it is highly subjective to only focus on one part and base yourself entirely on that. The objective look on quality of the entire concept also requires one to look at the end user, and the titles released on the console.

Unless you want to be one of these guys ; My car is superior, it has Michelin tires. im yer objective feller. ;)

And the genesis is NOT an Amiga and is NOT a Mac. It is irrelevant to state Mac was great... so is everything with the same CPU. If you want a "workhorse" buy a PC (which includes apple material) and not a gaming console. Gaming consoles need to entertain, function, be fun to use, live a long life and are of high quality when they do all of those.

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The Megadrive/Genesis had all around better and more flexible architecture than the SNES. The 68k and Z80 coprocessor are tried-and-true CPUs with a high level of communication and control between them and all other parts of the system, and can really be used any way you wish. Sonic 2's sound driver runs entirely on the Z80, for example, freeing up the 68k to do whatever.

Another interesting thing is that the YM2612 can actually stream 8-bit PCM audio of up to 22 kHz, something the SNES can't do despite its sample-based design due to the SPC having only 64 kB of ram.

The SNES has a lot of potentially powerful dedicated hardware, but too little power in the wrong places holds it back. It's almost like the N64 in that way, with its infamous texture bus.

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I found this



Without seeing the cartridge you may chose not to believe its on a Genesis. It could just be on a PC and click bait.

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Jaxxoon R said:

The Megadrive/Genesis had all around better and more flexible architecture than the SNES. The 68k and Z80 coprocessor are tried-and-true CPUs with a high level of communication and control between them and all other parts of the system, and can really be used any way you wish. Sonic 2's sound driver runs entirely on the Z80, for example, freeing up the 68k to do whatever.

Another interesting thing is that the YM2612 can actually stream 8-bit PCM audio of up to 22 kHz, something the SNES can't do despite its sample-based design due to the SPC having only 64 kB of ram.

The SNES has a lot of potentially powerful dedicated hardware, but too little power in the wrong places holds it back. It's almost like the N64 in that way, with its infamous texture bus.



The Mega Drive was being held back by its inferior image quality and less popular titles with a lot less content (overal as a whole). For me it is easy to accept the fact that it had better processing hardware while ignoring the image quality.

They are both high quality gaming systems with another way of doing things. Most people prefer a solid gameplay experience where everything is of top quality, while having nice content before empty action and a "fast" cpu of which the user barely notices anything in terms of gameplay in most of the SNES V.S. the Genesis games, while the later looks like its has a CGA color space and the former VGA.

It is a gaming system, a carefuly crafted system of which its main goal is to run quality games with quality content... you wont get far with "fast superior cpu's" running empty action, bland content, and ugly images just because the pogrammers liked it.

You do not purely rate them acording to their hardware in terms of carefully crafted consoles, or nobody would have ever bought a WII or an XBOX 360.

Also, There would be litle of interest (or progress) happening around technology if everybody blandly uses the same chips and systems just because they are easy or the programmers like them.

And the joke of it all ;
You have to downgrade SNES games to run them on the Mega Drive.
You have to downgrade Mega Drive games to run them on the SNES.

Spoiler

Playing games purely for the hardware underneath them while digesting medicore to low quality games was kind of a "degrading" (or joke) way of looking at the genesis situation at the time wasnt it ?

Edit ;
fixed a weird naming mistake, nobody seemed to have noticed... (it 6am... yawn)

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