[POLL] SUPER NINTENDO VS. SEGA GENESIS

I could never appreciate the Genesis growing up. The SNES had beautiful graphics and a sound chip that gave life to some fantastic music and sound effects. The Genesis felt like it lagged behind and, whenever I'd play my friend's Genesis, I felt like the graphics felt more drab and muddy while the music and sound always made me think of my old NES. The games felt more empty and devoid of life/personality than SNES games, too. At least that's the best way I feel I can describe it.

The Genesis had some cool games, though. I'll always love Shining Force 2 and Vectorman, but that was really it. I was never interested in Phantasy Star and Sonic was always kind of ho-hum to me, so I was never really impressed with Sega's library of titles.

Oh, I wasn't trying to imply that it was better. I feel like it was utilized better, though. In a lot of Genesis games I played, the music just sounded like... noise.

Sega Genesis did have the better sound chip: the incredible Yamaha YM2612.

SO HOT

Genesis had some cool tracks like this:



But SNES has this:



Ergo SNES takes all the cake for me.

Genesis games tended to have a lot less slowdown, so if you're looking for high-speed action games, that's where you'll be. Shoot 'em Ups are especially prevalent on the system compared to SNES. The less said about Super R-Type's slowdown the better...

Of course, SNES was graphically superior in a number of ways. Higher color output is the most obvious. Sprite rotations and scaling were possible on the Genesis, but the developers would have to program that themselves, rather than it being part of the SDK - or so I've heard. The Genesis was also incapable of true semi-transparencies, opting for either flickering or manual pallet swaps to achieve the effect.

Sound capabilities are the real apples-and-oranges comparison here. The SNES used samples, which obviously allowed for a wide range of acoustic sounds, but severely lacked in high and low frequencies, giving everything a muffled sound. For ambient or orchestral soundtracks common in RPGs and Adventure games this was to its benefit, but there's just no way you could do the likes of Alien Soldier, Streets of Rage, or Thunder Force on the SNES. (If you don't believe me, check out Thunder Spirits SNES ost... its no TF3 or 4) Of course, on the flip side, such ear-rapey things like Sonic Spinball's Options music would be tough to match on a SNES. The SNES did have one extra trick up its sleeve, though, which was a basic reverb effect. Also, for obvious reasons, voice samples were much better on SNES than the Genesis' 8-Bit DAC.

In the case of multi-platform games, or at least "sister" games (such as the two Sparkster games), I can't help but notice that the Genesis tends to get the shaft in some way. There's also the issue of the Genesis not natively having a six-button controller.

I guess one last thing is that I don't think Genesis cartridges could have as much in the way of proprietary hardware like the Super FX chip.

And that's all I can really think of right now!

(Also: The majority of votes are for the SNES on an RPG-centric website -- why am I not the tiniest bit surprised!)

In terms of the specs of these systems, the Super Nintendo is far superior. It's palette supported much more colors by comparison, and it's sound hardware allowed for much smoother sounding tracks rather than the electronic farts its competitor produced.

Other than that, I kind of rank the two systems on an even level in every other aspect. The good genesis games got around their limitations very well, and as turkeyDawg stated, fast-paced action games ran really smoothly on the Genesis. Similarly, the SNES had about an equal share of enjoyable games, and some of the games made for that system were pretty ground-breaking, like Donkey Kong Country and the Final Fantasy 6, helping the industry move forward.

author=RyaReisender
I dunno that Super Metroid soundtrack sounds pretty boring to me (I just skipped through some songs, but they were all calm, maybe I missed something good?).

Super Metroid was ahead of its time, using several music themes and ambient sounds that focus on supporting atmosphere and action. A few tracks still combine high melody quality and atmosphere enhancement, like the Lower Brinstar theme. Most of the tracks do sound boring on their own, but one can better appreciate the soundtrack once they've played the game.

Having owned both systems, I must say that the Sega: Genesis was superior in every way. Super Nintendo may have had the more numerous and better RPGs, but that was the software company's ability to work with the materials available. Genesis was perfectly capable of handling all of Squaresoft's work, and had it ever been allowed to, would have done it better. Every single time there was a game out for both Genesis and SNES, the Genesis version was always better. Earthworm Jim, Aladdin (I still play this! I have it on ROM, now. For a game only intended to milk a franchise, the developers made a damned good product. Plays just as good on SNES, but the graphics aren't as good.), The Lion King (this was REALLY bad on SNES when compared with Genesis, Simba was distinctly more heavily pixelated, versus the clear definition of the Genesis and the control was like you were trying to drag Simba through mud.), Mortal Kombat, Jurassic Park (For all the work SNES put into this port, they may as well have just put it on the old NES. Genesis version is only one worth your time.), Toejam & Earl, Tazmania, Star Trek: The Next Generation (The difference is night and day between these two versions. The SNES sound is barely recognizable as Star Trek, whereas on the Genesis, you immediately know what you're hearing)...honestly, it's like all of the originals were on Genesis and SNES was bad bootleg.

Now, my favorite games tend to be Super Nintendo, but let me point out that the only games I play on SNES are games that I can't find on Genesis, and that makes the decision for me.