Random: Finally, Sonic The Hedgehog Spins Onto The Super Nintendo

"but of course we did get a reasonable port on the Game Boy Advance eventually."

...That was satire, right?

Everything the Mega Drive could do the SNES could do better from a technical standpoint, however that does not make the SNES better than the MD. The games are what matter, and both are equally as great in those regards.

@EmmatheBest I thought the same, but clicking the hyperlink takes you to Sonic Advance... so I’m assuming the writer thinks that was the port. Which is incorrect, but that game was definitely at least reasonable.

@Noid That's not actually true.

Although the SNES was generally a much more capable machine with a lot of effects "for free" (things like mode 7) and a much bigger colour pallet, the Mega Drive had a much faster processor. There were games on the Mega Drive that would have been a slide show on the SNES.

The SNES processor being so slow is possibly why the "Super CD" never launched.

Sonic Advance a port of Sonic the Hedgehog? Not in this timeline.

@Noid

That’s false. The Genesis has a faster processor than the SNES. The Genesis sound chip also did electronic/techno style music better than the SNES.

The SNES was technically superior in most ways, but not all.

Neat! I have been wanting to see things like this. Way back when Jurassic Park came to the Genesis and the SNES, I wanted the Genesis version for my SNES. I always wondered what the SNES could've done with that version. Seeing this has me hoping one day I will see that eventually.

Eww. Gb advance port of Sonic the Hedgehog was what Satan would be playing if he played games

The sound chip and graphical capabilities of the SNES dumped on the Megadrive from a very great height. Just compare Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Or Castlevanias. Or Streetfighters. Or Mortal Kombats. Or....

I was a Sega and Nintendo person, but more of a Sega boy, until the Dreamcast killed them.

@Lordplops and look at all that slowdown in Super Ghouls and Ghosts, not to mention the Megadrive version was a very early release and its Castlevania looks just as good. Look at games such as Sonic 2 and 3 or Aladdin, I don't think there's anything on SNES significantly better than those. SNES had some advantages as well it should given it was more modern hardware but I've never felt the gap was that big if at all

Looks impressive. I guess the SNES had blast processing after all. lol

To be honest, I never thought Sonic was doing anything the SNES couldn't do anyway. But, to also be fair to Genesis, there are times where it's absolutely doing stuff the SNES totally struggles with, like having say 2 players and up to 6 enemies on screen in Streets of Rage 1/2 without any slowdown, or pushing loads of enemies and explosions and plenty of line-scrolling parallax and stuff on screen in say Thunder Force IV without almost zero slowdown. Although, having said that, Rendering Ranger on SNES begs to prove a point in the run 'n' gun and shmup regard--seriously.

sega kids are not to be trusted.

To deny the mega drive had a beautiful library is just petty.

@Noid the Mega Drive had a superior resolution as well as it’s vastly superior clock speed.

@Noid This is not actually true at all, and I say that as a hardcore SNES fan. Ignoring add-on chips for a second, the much faster CPU on the Genesis allowed it to push far more sprites and particles on screen without slowdown in a bunch of games that would simply stutter or slow down to a crawl on SNES if it tried similarly. I mean look at how much shumps like Gradius III and Super R-Type slow down on the SNES and then compare that to the powerhouse that is Thunder Force IV. Or look at the sheer amount of characters on screen at times in the Streets of Rage games, I've seen them show 2 players and up to 6 enemies with no slowdown, and then compare that to SNES beat em ups, where the almost all of them struggle to push more than 2 players and 3 enemies. And look at the slowdown in a game like Ghouls 'n Ghosts on SNES compared to the smooth and fluid experience that is the game on Genesis. The SNES wins in many ways technically, but the Genesis holds its own in a few important areas too. Once you take the add-on chips into account though (from the DSP and SA1 to the Super FX/FX2), which were in a crap load of games on SNES and really only one game on Genesis used an add-on chip that I'm aware of (Virtua Racing), well then the SNES really does start to pull ahead.

@Lordplops In many ways the SNES did better the Genesis graphically, but I've recently spent more time with both versions of those very games you mention and I can honestly say I prefer the Genesis versions in both cases (Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Castlevania). They just feel much smoother and more responsive to actually play, compared to the SNES versions that I personally find sluggish and clunky. And that means, at least regarding those two particular games, the Genesis actually wins. It seems, to me at least, that the Genesis' much faster processor really does count for something, and often something that isn't quite as instantly tangible as the surface visuals. It's definitely a much better system than I gave it credit for back in the day, but now it's gets my proper respect. Ultimately, I'd still pick the SNES every single time (the library of games just beats Sega's overall by quite some margin imo. And I just prefer the general look of SNES games too. Plus I find the stock SNES controller vastly superior to both the default 3-button pad and 6-button pads on Genesis), but the Genesis absolutely deserves any praise it gets.

I was never jealous. We were strictly a Nintendo household up until the point we finally got a Sega Genesis While I certainly had l wanted one and had played it at friends homes enough to know I wanted it, I was perfectly content with my NES, then Gameboy and ultimately Super Nintendo.

I also don't seem to recall, at least in my neighborhood or school, much or if any debate on what was better. Probably because most of us were in a situation where we were lucky to have any kind of gaming console. So we were appreciative of what we had. As I said above, we ultimately got a Genesis in our house (through questionable means, lol) and for me, both systems had their plusses and minuses and if possible, was best to have both if you could afford to

Edit: I didn't play many multiplatform games on both just because if you got one on one, that was it. But I did manage to play MKII and Street Fighter 2 on both systems eventually and for some reason, the Genesis versions of both were the better versions gameplay wise. They didn't look as pretty as the Super Nintendo versions. But they felt faster and more responsive. At least that's how I remembered them.

I LIKE that music on SNES. I always loved the Sonic Soundtrack, but wow, on the SNES it hits so much more. That's cool!

@UmbreonsPapa You have to remember the article writers on this site do tend to come from the UK.. And over here in the UK Sega was much more dominant here than Nintendo, probably a large part of that was Nintendo stuff is expensive

Thus a lot of these article writers probably would have fond memories of Sega anyway, I was born in 1990 so we were already entering the 3d console era by the time I started seriously getting into gaming

But the Sega Mega Drive was still the first thing I can remember playing, and it was because in the UK basically everyone had one, and it was less common for someone to have a Nintendo console, some did but nothing compared to Sega MD where everyone their neighbors and their friends would have one

Sega had a very big presence here, more so then nintendo

I had a snes when I was younger, but following a purchase of the megadrive mini I finally picked up a megadrive mark 1 which I really love. The megadrive has a great library of games which can be appreciated in its own right.

@Averagewriter Beyond Oasis, Phantasy Star III, Phantasy Star IV, Monster World IV, Landstalker, Thunder Force 3, Shinobi, Sonic the Hedgehog 1,2,3, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Dynamite Heddy, Gunstar Heroes, Streets of Rage 2, ToeJam & Earl, Comix Zone, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Desert Strike, Rocket Knight Adventures, Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, Columns III.. and more?

Not sure what point you were trying to prove, both consoles had a great library

That was a very interesting analysis. I like how it showed that it's not a simple matter of one system being "better" than another making this a trivial thing to do. It showed that both systems had advantages and disadvantages. This is not a perfect conversion of stage 1-3 as there were changes made and development frustrations that were stated. It is a really good demo, though. Very impressive work. And the music on the SNES turned out very nice as well.

@Markiemania95 - Oh how blissfully ignorant the writer must be then, thinking the Advance games were the only Sonic games on GBA...

@Noid not true. The genesis had a way faster cpu than SNES and a wider resolution. The snes was overall more powerful but it could not do everything that the genesis could do.

I'm not sure that we need anymore consoles with yet another sonic game. Sonic is still fun after all these years but it's literally on every single console you could think of. We need games like GTA(all of the top down versions). We need Jackal, desert strike, operation wolf, and any remake of previous Mario games.

Any Genesis game will technically work on Super NES, the real question is will they play any good cause ports are usually awful compare to the original. Even NES games being ported Genesis had some very awful sounds or gameplay issues and Genesis games ported to SNES tend to have slowdown whereas SNES games ported to PS1 had load time issues and CGi cutscenes which hampers the experience.

Back in the day I was not a huge Genesis fan. There were a few great games on it, loved the Streets of Rage series, Shinobi III, Gunstar Heroes and Eternal Champions, but most of the more popular games didn't do it for me. They were either too hard or just annoying. I wasn't really a fan of Sonic, Vectorman or other 'exclusives' and a lot of the games had really terrible synthesized sounds.

I didn't get into the tech specs of them at all. I just felt SNES games seemed more alive, better developed, certainly more colorful. And of course they were the home of Square games like Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger. Nothing on Genesis could touch those.

There was never a reasonable GBA port of Sonic 1.

There was that abomination of a Sonic 1 GBA port, released on the same day as Sonic 2006 no less. Did you get confused with that horrid thing?

@Averagewriter Each to their own, certaintly have to admit I'm less into RPGs and less into stuff like Zelda and more into those twitchy arcadey type games, shooters, and platformers

@EmmatheBest Sonic Advance is pretty good!

@Noid The Super Nintendo had a far more impressive games library.

@Doktor-Mandrake Not even diehard Phantasy Star fans like Phantasy Star III. It was terrible!

@Averagewriter While I agree with you about A Link To The Past, I could argue that a game like Sonic 3 had tons of atmosphere, far more then any SNES platformer.

They are different genres, but Angel Island getting set on fire adds alot of atmosphere to the game. It has alot of cool set prices that make the game stand out

You're right, the SNES has several games with great atmosphere such as A Link To The Past and Super Metroid.

But the Genesis had games like that as well.

@retro_player_77 Have you not read all the above?

Many many games on the Megadrive would never be possible on the stock SNES due to its CPU limitations and the narrower resolution.

These were the MD's strengths which the SNES could only partially overcome through the use of custom chips. The res issue couldn't be overcome, so SNES versions would usually appear zoomed in losing large areas of the playfield from view. Watch the DF video above and you'll see the difference.

A great example of the improvement in SNES system performance with the use of a custom chip can be seen in the recent SA-1 implementation of Gradius III. It turns the previous slideshow into a very very fluid performer.

Its a shame that Sega didn't use more custom chips in their cartridges. I'd have loved a super scaler chip for home ports of all those mid 80's to early 90's arcade classics

@Averagewriter have you tried Story of Thor / Beyond Oasis?

@Averagewriter I felt like Ecco the Dolphin had its own atmosphere of sorts, but that was a really weird game that's certainly not for everybody.

But in general, I get what you're saying. Mega Drive was always all about the arcadey kind of games.

When I think of the general idea of a "Mega Drive game", I generally think of a sidescrolling platformer with lives, continues, no saving, and lots of cheat codes. And if not a platformer, then something else that doesn't require a save function, like pinball or racing or fighting.

And even sidescrolling games that weren't technically true platformers, such as Comix Zone or Gunstar Heroes, were still set up the same way. They all felt like Mega Drive games in the way they were structured.

Mega Drive games that could actually save your progress were definitely in the minority, compared to Super NES where being able to save your game was the norm.

I was like, there was a Sonic The Hedgehog port on GBA how did I miss this? 🤨

@Fandabidozi

It's called Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis and it is widely considered one of the worst games in the Sonic library, one of the worst GBA games, and one of the worst port jobs around. It's really terrible on all fronts.

Why not give it a try for fun? It's certainly an experience.

Even less widely-known about is the GBA version of Sonic Spinball. It's not horrendous or unplayable, but they only put one music track in it.

@Caryslan Sonic 3 far more atmosphere then any SNES platform game? I can hear my Demoncrest and Super Metroid cartridges cry! (don't get me wrong Sonic 3 is amazing except for Hydro city... Hydro city can go!)

@carlos82 A good example of the difference in sound and graphic quality are games like Jungle book and Lion king, The colors and music and voice samples are a lot better on the SNES but it being a megadrive developed game originally the Snes game is cropped on the sides due to the SNES lower screen resolution and some ugly gameplay issues also arose.
Looking at excusive games, they both were really strong and SNES had a lot of great RPG's while MD had more arcade oriented games to offer (schmups mostly).

The youtube channel Consolewars
( https://www.youtube.com/c/ConsoleWars/videos ) compares a lot of games that were equal or the same on SNES & MD.
It's a silly channel and some might find it a bit cringe and goofy but to me that's part of the charm because it is self aware enough about it.

@X68000 That doesn't mean it won't work, a dedicated dev could still make a version that utilize the console strength over the original heck sometimes even make it better. The only issue is that it will always get compare to the original on rather if it's superior or not.

Master system was my first (hand-me-down) console, and Sonic was the first game I ever completed. Next was the SNES, followed by Super Mario World and Super Metroid. Then I eventually got my first brand new console, an N64.

There was no jealousy. I just loved it all, the way I do now.

@EarthboundBenjy
I’m just looking at the top games of 2006 and I didn’t buy any except Animal Crossing on DS. I was heavy into World of Warcraft at that point and wasn’t playing (or doing) much else. The more things change...

Genesis had a memory bottleneck, back when Sega was claiming “blast processing”, Nintendo paid a third party company to do testing and the SNES processed information 88% faster regardless of the Genesis CPU

@stevep
Is 88% faster not the same as 12% slower? 😅

@stevep that sounds very dubious......have you got a link to this?

@Richnj A true gamer will own more than just 1 brand gaming system. Period.

@Alucard83 what a silly comment. So dedicating yourself to PC gaming for twenty years makes you an also-ran? I think not. Period.

Back in those days, I was a SEGA player, but there really wasn't ever any doubt in my mind about the SNES providing the better on-screen end result. Proper transparency and many more colors.

A few Genesis games pulled some crazy magic, that the SNES couldn't have done, but the vast majority of games just looked (and sounded) noticably better on SNES.

@Noid From a technical standpoint that is not true. Both systems had areas that beat out the other.

The Sega Mega Drive could handle more sprites on screen, parallax scrolling etc without slowdown and had more visible screen space due to its higher resolution - this is a big win.

SNES could do more colours of course, mode 7 but in essence many games really required additional processors built into carts.

@impurekind That's spot on. I'll add Konami's Super Contra v Hard Corps.

Super Contra is action packed with slowdown, Hard Corps is Super Contra on speed. Tonnes more action, faster and no to very little slowdown.

@stevep yeap 'Nintendo hired...' and you know what - the SNES was still slower lol.

Looks better!

Me? I was in the not alive camp.

@StuTwo that was literally the only thing the Genesis had over the SNES! That's like the friend of James talking about his calcium milk, because that was literally the only thing his milk had over that of James. Plus, given that the processor is only part of the story, the fact that the SNES had upgrades through the FX chip meant we saw POLYGONS in an SNES game! FEAKING POLYGONS THAT WOULDN'T BE THE NORM UNTIL N64/PS/Saturn!! Here's his video showing how Genesis only had the faster processor, the NES dominated the rest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_MOqHyCUEc

@RushDawg So, a Sony produced sound chip that gave realistic sounds sounded worse than steel drums?

@hotgamer77 I know - I had a SNES you don't need to sell me on it!

I don't think there's much doubt that SNES games almost always looked nicer than Mega Drive games. There were so many built in effects (like transparency and the many layers of parallax scrolling) and they were easier for the devs to access and make use of. Most importantly it could generate far more colours on screen and it could put far more colours on screen at the same time. That's what I always remember being the biggest thing as a child at the time.

The processor speed was clearly a problem for the SNES though - especially when you look at anything that was ported from the arcade or even from other formats.

@X68000 no, that was reported in the 90s... but you can read details in other places on why the SNES CPU processed faster. “This means the Sega could handle around 900,000 instructions per second, maximum. The SNES could compute around 1.7 Million instructions per second, despite it’s lower clock speed.”

https://hackaday.com/2015/11/06/winning-the-console-wars-an-in-depth-architectural-study/

I have a Genesis, I don’t have a real SNES anymore, just the mini, so o do appreciate Genesis games but let’s be real here. SNES games are always better than the Genesis versions

Since when was Sonic on GBA "reasonable"?! That was a terrible port!

@Doktor-Mandrake You're seriously using "Altered Beast" and "Michael Jackson's Moonwalker" as examples of the Genesis's best exclusives? Don't get me wrong, the Genesis does indeed have a ton of great exclusives, but those two decent at best games aren't among them.

@EarthboundBenjy No, most SNES don't allow you to save, either. It's just that the most common games in the 16-bit era to use a save function with an expensive extra ROM chip included (and not just a pseudo-save password system) were RPGs purely out of necessity, and most of the good RPGs at the time were on the SNES.

@BulbasaurusRex

I guess I was thinking about the first-party games more than anything. Even among the non-RPGs, you have Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario World / All-Stars, Kirby DL3 and Super Star, Yoshi's Island, Super Metroid...

Yeah, it's true that many of the third-party games like Megaman X and Castlevania 4 don't save. And If you look outside of the most popular games, you'll find a ton of games that don't save such as Plok or whatever.

But when it comes to Mega Drive, pretty much the only non-RPG I can think of that can save is Sonic 3.

@hotgamer77

That’s not what I said. I said the Genesis sound chip was better than the SNES sound chip when it came to techno music; not a better sound chip overall.

Way to totally ignore my comment about the faster Genesis CPU.

The SNES was better then the Genesis in most, but not all technical categories. This isn’t new information.

@X68000 ..Graphically the SNES was superior to the Genny /MD ,and so was the sound /music chip .About the only thing the Genny had going for it was it’s clock speed ..

@RushDawg ..I disagree ,the sound /music chip on the Snes was superior to the Genesis ,MK 1 comes to mind as I write this ..