Topic: SNES vs Genesis....who really won?

Sonic 2 is the only bad one. The whole rhythm of it is not right. Special Stages are good but the whole way Sonic is supposed to be played doesn't apply to 2. (The best classic one is CD).

Sonic 2 is not very good and the worst part about it is the Special Stages. Sonic 2 competes with CD for worst out of 1, 2, CD, 3&K where 3&K is the best.

I hope you all learned from this important lesson.

I still contend that the Advance Trilogy was more enjoyable.

I love the Genesis/Mega Drive, but the SNES is still my all time favorite game console and it won the console war without a doubt. Just looking at the sales numbers... The Genesis sold around 40 million and the SNES sold over 49 million. So just on sales figures alone, the SNES won.

Sega ended up losing focus and going in too many directions, ie. you saw the add-ons like the Sega-CD and 32X. Nintendo found creative ways to enhance their games without expensive add-on hardware. Star Fox with it's Super FX chip and Donkey Kong Country with it's pre-rendered graphics are the best examples of that.

Honestly, I think the SNES had the better library of games as well. Sooo many great genre defining classics.

CD is definitely better than 3&K. (Especially trying to get the proper ending its perfectly designed).

Sonic 2 - Special Stages are actually fun to play and not just a drag. (1 and 3&K the special stages are awful - CD they are ok but not as good as 2).

Well let's see. Nintendo is still in the hardware business, whereas Sega threw in the towel over 10 years ago. Does that answer your question?

The funny thing is that while the SNES won the generation at the end, the Genesis still manages to find its way to store shelves in some form even today. Be it collections for modern systems, games on download services, or modern versions of the hardware that are still sold on store shelves along side the Playstation, Xbox, Wii U, and 3DS.

Which leads me to my point, Sega has done a much better job of keeping the Genesis in the public eye then Nintendo has with the SNES. The Genesis keeps coming back in some form, and the games never tend to vanish. The SNES gets put on the Virtual console, but even that's limited to the Wii and Wii U. Nintendo's never put the games back out on collections.

The SNES won the war, but the Genesis refuses to die. Somewhere in a retail store there is something with the brand of the Sega Genesis be it a collection, a handheld, or a modern console that can play the old games.

It should.

After initially losing to the SNES, Sega fought hard to claw at some market share and made a long series of poorly informed, short-sighted, and ultimately self-destructive decisions. The late 90s were a series of one failure after another, to the point where even with the Dreamcast selling very well in a short period of time, the money was gone and Sega dropped hardware.

If that's not losing a console war, I don't know what is.

In my eyes, the SNES won then, but the Genesis wins now. Love the Genesis way more as an adult

I consider the effects and fallout very much a part of the war. Sega's failures after the Genesis are directly related to obtaining a smaller market share in 4th Gen.

Their plan to release the Saturn early to beat the Playstation to the market backfired hugely. They didn't even tell retailers, and as a result, the Saturn launch software lineup was arguably the weakest of all time and many stores dropped support for both the games and merchandise. I believe that Sega's decision to dump its new console in the middle of summer with no games is a direct result of the dwindling sales of the Genesis and the looming competition from Sony.

At the same point, the SNES was still releasing some of its best games. I really don't think that if strong, high selling games like Donkey Kong Country, Yoshi's Island, Final Fantasy III, Killer Instinct, and Chrono Trigger were released on the Genesis so late in its life cycle that Sega would have pulled support and rushed out the successor. The last game to sell 2 million copies on Genesis was MKII in 1993. SNES was still doing it in 1996 with DKC3 and Super Mario RPG.

So my argument is that the SNES "won" because of stronger hardware sales, stronger software sales, longer life cycle, and Sega's subsequent self-destruction.

SNES ultimately did better. I never even knew anyone who argued about Nintendo vs. Sega. By the time that sort of discussion reached me, it was already PlayStation vs, Nintendo, instead of Sega. All I had was an NES at the time, and I thought Sega Genesis was better than NES, at least. I used to play Sega games at my neighbor's house all the time.

Totally disagree...for the Genesis originals.

Sonic 1 - Strong core gameplay, but somewhat simplistic level design falls a bit in quality during the second half.

Sonic 2 - Strong improvements in momentum based gameplay, amazing flow throughout, and the best level design in the 2D series

Sonic 3/Knuckles - Core gameplay is still strong, but the level design became overly long, large, and complicated.....lacked a bit of focus.

That and if Sega of Japan and Sega of America weren't having an internal war with each other. Also, the biggest factor, BERNIE STOLLAR.

I agree that Sonic 2 had the best level design, but I still liked CD and Sonic 3 & K more overall.

To be honest, I think it's very difficult to pinpoint SEGA's woes on one or even a few incidents. Starting with the Mega CD, they had a very rough few years of making bad decisions, being overshadowed by Sony, the failed merger between SEGA and Bandai, as well as the death of one of SEGA of Japan's biggest financial backers being a pretty big factor

Also, in regards to the huge amount of Genesis/Mega Drive official clone systems and game compilations, that's probably more due to SEGA needing to make money from it's past, rather than being a good caretaker of their IP. Nintendo would be too stubborn/proud to license another company to release clone hardware, especially when it's far easier and more profitable to make their games available on Virtual Console.

Ya. I got Sonic CD, Sonic Racing, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 + Knuckles for PC right before Sega Dreamcast came out. They were already trying to migrate to PC before they were out of hardware.

Sega was coming from gaming and going a bit into audio media and almost DVD with the Dreamcast. If they wouldn't have tried to push media and compete with Sony, they probably would have been better off.

There was no way to compete with Sony in the audio department, back in the '90s, and Sega tried to go head on with what Sony was offering. I think cartridges both hindered AND helped Nintendo stay away from the Sony audio market. Even if cartridges hurt Nintendo, I still think it helped keep them alive compared to Sega also trying to push CDs.

Is it though ? Sega is profitable right now. (Not just being bailed out by Sammy).

Its funny how Sega tried to revolutionize CD's as the future of gaming when it failed for them and Nintendo tried using Disks but that failed for them as well. But its ok for Sony to say that CD's are the future of gaming and that the Playstation sold well because of it having more memory......something which SEGA did with the Genesis?

This puzzles me now and makes me wonder if the CD is suppose to be introduced at the right period or if that someone could do it better......which SEGA has done that but......how then it would come to the point that CD's were the future in gaming? Nintendo earlier experimented on them and they failed to do it right so they left it. Sega did it but it was expensive. Sony did it and it worked because Disks were.......cheap? Why were cd's expensive back then is what bothers me? Its like whatever one does fails because of it being too young but the other one does it because it was........possible?

Clearly the Genesis won. Let's see the SNES try and do this.

Also, the superior Genesis was only recently hacked and made the national news. The Genesis was way ahead of it's time.