Comments 1

Re: Video: Fan Manages to Port F-Zero to the Mega Drive

Stef

If it's true that the SNES appears superior over the genesis on almost aspect on the paper, in reality if you starting to get deeper in the technicals details you will discover how much the specs are overrated for the SNES and that the Sega Genesis is superior in many aspects.
Here is some examples :

  • max resolution : 512x448 (SNES) vs 320x448 (Genesis)
    Reality: 99% of SNES game use 256x224 where 90% of genesis game uses 320x224
  • 4 scrolling plan (SNES) vs 2 scrolling plans (Genesis)
    Reality: in same colors and scrolling conditions the SNES is limited to 2 scrolling plans as is the Genesis.
  • 128 sprites (SNES) vs 80 sprites (Genesis)
    Reality, the slow SNES cpu would never allow to handle as much sprites, in reality you rarely goes over 40 sprites on screen while on genesis you can get close reach the 80 limit, thanks to the better CPU !
  • max sprite size: 64x64 (SNES) vs 32x32 (Genesis)
    Actually the SNES video processor does allow 64x64 sprite but you never use them for many reason (VRAM bandwidth, sprite scanline limit) so it's totally useless... in reality the Genesis has the edge here because it allow to display sprites of any size between 8x8 to 32x32 (in step of 8 pixels) where the SNES only allow to use 2 sprites size at same time and using square sprite only.

And that is, without speaking of the awful memory organization of the SNES and the crawling over dated CPU. The Genesis 68000 is so much powerful... that's the reason we can have software rendered mode 7.
The reals advantages of the SNES is the more modern graphic chip allowing more colors on screen and hardware effects as mode 7, transparency... also the sample based sound chip allowing sort of orchestral musics but except this I sincerely think the Genesis is better on almost every others aspects (better design, better sprites and scrolling capabilities, more flexible sound system and far better CPU).