Graphics: Turbo vs. Genesis - ye old debate

[handygrafx]

SuperGrafx could not have been the PC-FX in 1989 or even 1990. that would not be possible or practical.

what the SuperGrafx should have been, IMO, is something more like  a "Super X68000" in a console, with a faster clocked 68000.  without the floppy disc drives,  with more colors on screen (4096) the same palette (65,536)  the addition of true hardware scaling & rotation.  maybe more sprites (say 256 16x16).    something roughly as powerful as Sega's highend boards with Super-Scaler technology.   a real leap above the PC-Engine, something with more power than the SNES,  more or less on par with the NEO-GEO, though more reasonably priced with games costing no more than $90.      also the "Super CD-ROM" should've been a CD-ROM for this SuperGrafx.  the regular PC-Engine would use CD-ROM2  system card 1.0 2.0, 3.0 etc but leave Super-CD-ROM exclusive to SuperGrafx. even if only say 50 or 40 or so SuperGrafx  SHu-Cards and SCDs came out, if the quality of the games remained very high, it would've been so much more worthwhile.

that sounds like something Fujitsu did with their marty but didn't succeed either, even with a typical PCE soft lineup (> some very great shooter, RPGs, mah jong, erotic [and more..], div. mixed genres etc..

but i see your point. NEC had the great chance to create a following successor to th PCE because its already big popularity at that time as a game manufacturer, but didn't choose the right time. 1990 was too early, coz the PCE was still on its top, and when they came up with the PC-FX, the 32-Bit Polygon era was just a little step ahead.

yup.  I was proposing a SuperGrafx that had all of the abilities of the X68000 plus somewhat beyond since it X68000 was out in 1987, while the SuperGrafx could've been held until early to mid 1990. I was thinking of a machine a bit less powerful than the NEO-GEO yet almost as powerful and actually stronger in the areas of scaling & rotation -- like the SNES when combined with DSP accelerator chips. Though not SuperFX chip or anything else with polygon capabilities or anything close to PC-FX.   basicly nothing more than what we read in those old EGM news clips.
*16-bit CPU
*more power than MegaDrive or Super Famicom
*scaling & rotation
*better sound than PCE

[Joe Redifer]

Screw that.  Here's how the SuperGrafx should have been:

SPECS:
1024 Bit CPU with 9,000 15THz cores
12 TB main RAM
128 GB Video RAM
16 quintillion colors with up to 47 quadrillion on screen at once (more with programming tricks)
Max resolution:  300,000 x 168,750 (16:9 aspect)
16 million independent backgrounds (all simultaneous)
900,002 sprites per scanline, up to a total of 16 million onscreen at once
Sprite size 1x1 to 100,000x100,000
Scaling, rotation, morphing, transparency, on all backgrounds and sprites
Mode 7 AND Mode 8... up to Mode 32.
128-Bit Z-80+Alpha CPU with 32,768 512Ghz cores to control sound
12,000 PSG sound channels, 65,535 ADPCM sound channels with 64KHz 32-bit sampling, 6 FM sound channels and 1 white noise channel

INPUT/OUTPUT
AV connectors built in:
-RF (channels 3, 4, or 5.  No other system offers this many channel choices)
-Composite video RCA connector
-S-Video connector
-Component RCA connectors
-VGA connector
-HDMI version 9.3 connectors
-Stereo sound RCA jacks
-Headphone jack with slider volume control for maximum enjoyment
-TOS-Link optical out
-Coaxial digital out

CONTROLLERS:
-7 button design plus START, SELECT and 9 way d-pad (1 more direction than any other competing system)
-Controllers can be merged (like Voltron) if any game requires more buttons.
-Up to 600 controllers can be connected at once with the optional SuperTap.

MEDIA:
-8 megabit HuCard.

[ccovell]

Screw that.  Here's how the SuperGrafx should have been:

SPECS:
1024 Bit CPU with 9,000 15THz cores
...

CONTROLLERS:
-7 button design plus START, SELECT and 9 way d-pad (1 more direction than any other competing system)
-Controllers can be merged (like Voltron) if any game requires more buttons.
-Up to 600 controllers can be connected at once with the optional SuperTap.

What, no synaptic link?

[NecroPhile]

Screw that.  Here's how the SuperGrafx should have been:

Insert lots of stuff here.

You forgot that the controller's cord length would be stretched to a full 50 centimeters, and where's the Blast Processing^TM v2.0?

[Ceti Alpha]

and where's the Blast ProcessingTM v2.0?

hehe. I guess Sega would have conceded and joined the NEC developing team. 

[Joe Redifer]

Be realistic, guys.  The SuperGrafx couldn't have everything!  Sega Genesis would still be better than the SuperGrafx due to the high quality and intense power of Blast Processing™.

[Ceti Alpha]

Sega Genesis would still be better than the SuperGrafx due to the high quality and intense power of Blast Processing™.

Bwwwahahaha!! 

Funny. But the TG-16 didn't need blast processing because its "wee" 8-Bit CPU destroyed the competition.   

[spenoza]

The PCE had Bust Processing, for all those hentai CD games. I betcha Sega didn't have that!

[Keranu]

It is a known fact that Blodia had a special chip installed in it's HuCard that supported Blast Processing™.

[awack]

I think they should have just taken the pc engine, added a second bg layer, reduce the colors it could put on screen at once to 64, gave it a sound chip that produced music which sounded like two tin cans being rub together and released a bunch of hockey, football, basketball and baseball games for it and nothing but FMV games for the cd side of things.....this would have sold like hotcakes in the US

[Tatsujin]

yeah..here some ohter facts maybe some of you guys didn't know yet.

http://nfggames.com/games/pce/

[ccovell]

LOL @ awack's response!

Yeah, since he mentioned the Genesis sports games in here, I'll chime in and say this is why I love the Turbo in the first place despite the Genesis' technical superiority.  Back in the day, the Turbografx was well-represented in the game genres that I particularly loved: platformers, action games, shooters, arcade conversions.  It was also very Japanese and that quality shone through.

The Genesis, on the other hand, was laden with 2 things I loathed back in the day: horrible US-developed games with drab graphics and croaky sound, and sports games.  Sometimes both in the same title.

I'd take my bright, cute graphically-enhanced versions of my NES favourites any day.

[CrackTiger]

I got into the TurboGrafx-16 for various reasons at first. But it was the Turbo & PCE RPGs that made it my favorite early on.

[Joe Redifer]

I love the Genesis but still hate most of the western-developed stuff and most of the sports games as well.  But they did what sold.  Sonic 2 was probably the best western-developed game.

[ccovell]

I would say it's more a case of a master Japanese director filming on location in America.   

[Joe Redifer]

Yeah, with half the crew being American.  I'm still not sure why they decided the game needed to be made like that.  Was Sonic 1 too Japanese?  I sure didn't think so.

[Keranu]

American power.

[Joe Redifer]

GENESIS DOES!

[Kitsunexus]

GENESIS DOES!

OMFG SUPER THUNDER BLADE!

[nat]

Gotta love those intense blocky 3D graphics!

[Joe Redifer]

Hell yeah!  Only the Genesis is powerful enough to change the number of windows (and possibly floors) on each building as it approaches.

[spenoza]

It is not, however, powerful enough to display grass. Rapidly changing buildings, yes, but not grass. I bet the Turbo can display grass.

[Keranu]

Hell yeah!  Only the Genesis is powerful enough to change the number of windows (and possibly floors) on each building as it approaches.

Hahaha, I didn't even notice that!

[Joe Redifer]

I bet the Turbo can display grass.

Well the Genesis might not be able to display grass, but... but...  JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!  *runs away*

[Kitsunexus]

My grass is a solid-nuclear green block, so it looks good to me.

[WoodyXP]

GENESIS DOES!

Another Sega game that I thought was done better on the PCE.  And Thunderblad is a POS anyways
so that's not saying too much. 

[esteban]

LOL @ awack's response!

Yeah, since he mentioned the Genesis sports games in here, I'll chime in and say this is why I love the Turbo in the first place despite the Genesis' technical superiority.  Back in the day, the Turbografx was well-represented in the game genres that I particularly loved: platformers, action games, shooters, arcade conversions.  It was also very Japanese and that quality shone through.

The Genesis, on the other hand, was laden with 2 things I loathed back in the day: horrible US-developed games with drab graphics and croaky sound, and sports games.  Sometimes both in the same title.

I'd take my bright, cute graphically-enhanced versions of my NES favourites any day.

Hahahhaa. Yes, awack's response was the funniest thing in this thread

Put me in with Chris and Joe on this issue: I wasn't playing the Genesis for the sports games. I don't think all of the western-developed games for Genesis were bad, but many of them had a lot to be desired. That said, you have to admit that Genesis got a bunch of neat ports  (Star Control, King's Bounty, etc.) that make it a lot easier to dismiss the crappy stuff.

Anyway, whatever happened to loving these consoles? Why do I feel ashamed to admit that I love SNES here at pcefx?

[Ceti Alpha]

Anyway, whatever happened to loving these consoles? Why do I feel ashamed to admit that I love SNES here at pcefx? Smile

hehe. How can you not love the SNES?!  It's no Turbografx, but I'm biased. Basically I would rate the Turbografx and the SNES equally. Preference is up to the individual. The Turbo has charm and little to no slowdown. The SNES has the Nintendo charm, but has slowdown. However, it does have scaling and rotation hardware built into the machine.

[Keranu]

That said, you have to admit that Genesis got a bunch of neat ports  (Star Control, King's Bounty, etc.) that make it a lot easier to dismiss the crappy stuff.

YES, KING'S BOUNTY PRAISE! One of my favorite games!

[spenoza]

Gee, I always thought I was strange for not having as much fondness for the SNES. The TG-16/PCE has always been my first gaming love and is tied with the Sega Saturn as my most ardent gaming love.

Ardent may not be the most appropriate word in this context...

[nat]

The SNES sounds so great on paper, but the reality seems pretty lacking.

The CPU is slow as shit, so games of my favorite genre (shooters) are constantly dragging. I enjoy the Thunder Force III SNES port, but it slows down at the drop of a hat. Same with Super R-Type. For me this is a big deal. Mode 7 can kiss my ass-- I'm not sure it was put to good use more than once or twice. Most of the time it was used as a gimmick that slowed down the framerate. The high color count is nice, but really, most games don't look any more colorful than Turbo/PCE games. And I prefer the Turbo's color palette.

The sound is probably the biggest disappointed. While the SNES has a sound chip technically superior to both the Genesis and Turbo, I find most of the music all sounds so generic and same-y. Another forum member put it nicely when he said the SNES's music is kind of in a funny limbo between "real" music and chip music.

[Joe Redifer]

I like the SNES for great games like Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger and a couple dozen others.  But the system just seems so slow and muffled to me that it is hard to get behind it as a whole.  It's like playing games in thick pea soup with lots of colors.

Lost: joeredifer .com/reviews/supermetroid3.jpg

The SNES the best graphics!

[nat]

I just bought Chrono Trigger the other day. I haven't done much with it yet.

[TurboXray]

I like the SNES for great games like Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger and a couple dozen others.  But the system just seems so slow and muffled to me that it is hard to get behind it as a whole.  It's like playing games in thick pea soup with lots of colors.

joeredifer .com/reviews/supermetroid3.jpg

The SNES the best graphics!

I never understood why the hell they scaled the BG to the point of atari-ness and beyond. I mean really, it just a BG layer. Just fade at the point where is doesn't look like ass or something.

 Also, pea soup is nasty.

[spenoza]

Split pea soup kicks ass, you pea soup nay-sayers!

And yes, Mode 7 was cool in theory, but in reality when things scaled they didn't get more detailed, just blockier.

[Ceti Alpha]

It's like playing games in thick pea soup with lots of colors.

hehe. Well said. 

Whatever I say about the SNES is based on memory from over 10 years ago and Youtube,  but games like Star Fox kicked ass.  In fact, Star Fox blew me away.  I think the muddy sound really played well in that game. But yeah, for shmups the slowdown was pretty terrible. Super R-Type is definitely a prime example of that as Nat mentioned before.

[Kitsunexus]

Star Fox had shit sound, but awesome arrangement. It's too bad they lost the liscensing to the SNES music, because except for the "Star Fox Theme" all the other music sucks.

Especially SNES Corneria and Meteor. Those songs kick so much ass and Nintendo was a damn fool to let them slip by.

[Tablet]

Didn't the star fox cartridge have extra chips in it so it could pull off the polygons, i'm sure i heard that somewhere....

[Joe Redifer]

I have heard scarce rumors of a similar nature, but more in-depth scientific research is necessary before the truth can be revealed.

[_Paul]

Didn't the star fox cartridge have extra chips in it so it could pull off the polygons, i'm sure i heard that somewhere....

Yes, it was the cause of the Great Potato Shortage of 1993.

[CrackTiger]

Put me in with Chris and Joe on this issue: I wasn't playing the Genesis for the sports games. I don't think all of the western-developed games for Genesis were bad, but many of them had a lot to be desired. That said, you have to admit that Genesis got a bunch of neat ports  (Star Control, King's Bounty, etc.) that make it a lot easier to dismiss the crappy stuff.

What first attracted me to the TurboGrafx-16 as a Genesis owner, was the 'original'/console games like Neutopia and Dungeon Explorer. I've always loved arcade games and it was cool to have faithful home ports of some, but I wanted some great SMS/NES games with next gen aesthetics. I liked stuff like Revenge of Shinobi, PSII, Sword of Vermillion and Last Battle more than GnG, Golden Axe and Strider.

I had a passing interest in the TG-16 from what little I'd seen of it, I really liked some of the colorful grafx. One day an aquantence of mine (real game nerd) invited me over to see his new TG-16 in action. He was playing Neutopia and Dungeon Explorer mainly that night. I didn't pay DE much attention, since it looked like a Gauntlet rip-off and I hated Gauntlet. Neutopia looked cool, but again I kinda brushed it off probably from console-bias of being a Genesis player.

But in the weeks that followed I started thinking about those games and couldn't get them out of mind. I quickly realized that they were exactly what I wanted (long questy 16-bit games). I got a TG-16 that X-Mas/Birthday and not long afterwards I found an ad in the newspaper in which that guy was selling both Neutopia and Dungeon Explorer.

Although I'd ocassionally sell and later buy new Genesis & SNES systems over the years, the TG-16/PCE is the one console I've always hung onto from that time onward.

[Tatsujin]

dammit. just played altered beast on the PCE today and this game is a real bitch! even couldn't pass stage one. this game really sucks big dicks in hell. what an awful gameplay. after three tries you like to smash your whole pce set on the next wall. fortunately i just tried twice.

have to say that the MD port is light years better than that crap here!

[Keranu]

But in the weeks that followed I started thinking about those games and couldn't get them out of mind.

Haha, I love this line.

[Ceti Alpha]

Yes, the TG-16 is insipid. It seeps into the mind and doesn't go away. 

[CrackTiger]

dammit. just played altered beast on the PCE today and this game is a real bitch! even couldn't pass stage one. this game really sucks big dicks in hell. what an awful gameplay. after three tries you like to smash your whole pce set on the next wall. fortunately i just tried twice.

have to say that the MD port is light years better than that crap here!

One version is ridiculously hard and the other is supposed to be fairly easy.

I'm guessing that you're playing the hard one(HuCard?).

[Keranu]

I've only played the HuCard one and yeah it's a bitch to play! The main problem is with the jumping since you have to press UP to jump and the jumping itself in Altered Beast is very rough, so it makes really hard to perform jump kicks and such.

[WoodyXP]

I enjoyed both formats of Altered Beast on PCE.  My only gripes are that you only get like 2 continues and on the CD version the gameplay pauses
two or three times in a stage to load data(usually around mid-way and before & after boss)... kills the flow of the game.

[Joe Redifer]

Altered Beast on CD offers two difficulty levels: Normal and Hard.  The HuCard doesn't offer either of those difficulties.  It is stuck on "Bleeding Anus" difficulty.  I broke a controller while playing it.  You can beat the CD version with any system card as long as you never turn in to a beast.  That means you have to meet up with Neff 3 times before he will fight you.

[Turbo D]

You can fight him as a human? I never knew that 

[nat]

I had no idea the cart version was harder than the CD. I always thought the CD version was identical to the cart but with some generous load times thrown in for good measure.

I only own the cart and it's not that hard! I've never beat it though. I can make it to stage 4.

I wonder how they made the game easier for the CD? I can't really see anything making it easier unless they rewrote the control code.

I actually like the game. The graphics are nice and crisp and the songs sound nice on the Turbo's sound chip.