Graphics: Turbo vs. Genesis - ye old debate

[Ceti Alpha]

If anyone thinks the Turbo could replicate, say, Gunstar Heroes without any loss whatsoever then they are fooling themselves.  That being said, anyone who thinks the Genesis could replicate , say, Air Zonk exactly would also be a fool.

The MD couldn't handle Sapphire, but the Sega CD could (with the requisite color loss, of course).  I'd like to see the Arcade Card handle Batman Returns or Soul Star.  Or Super Castlevania IV.  Can't be done.  But really, who cares?

Well, you could very well be right. But I think the Turbo could have improved in some features of the game, like the voices. As you say, each system has its own specialties.

[Joe Redifer]

They do, but I think the Genesis is capable of the better voice.  There's a discussion along with examples somewhere around here (the Turbo still has great voice).  If the Turbo wasn't the Turbo, it wouldn't be as cool!

[awack]

What we have here is empirical evidence vs theoretical or faith based evidence as far as what one system can or can not do, for Gunstar Heroes or Alien Soldier and the arcade card, well, there are no Treasure developed platform shooters on the pc engine, we only have system specs to go by, but we have direct evidence of how ACD games such as Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury 2, Fatal Fury Special, (World heroes2/World heroes) Strider and Maduo Monogatari turned out on each system.

As for Sapphire on the sega cd, again if we look at all the missing detail and animation of Art of Fighting(sega cd), i would say no.

With all the Mode 7 and transparencies, a direct port of Super Castlevania IV could not be done on the pc engine, but what about a remake, well, who knows, but we do know how a remake of Dracula X would turn out on the snes, going back to the Gunstar Heroes/Alien Soldier question, its interesting to note that Rondo when using Maria is a much faster game than SCIV, Bloodlines or Dracula X.

All said and done, we also have to take into consideration the competence of the developer, the experience with a particular system and how much effort is put into it.

[quoth09]

I don't think Turbo would have handled a game like Gunstar Heroes or Alien Soldier even with that Arcade Card Duo.

Likely not, but who cares NINTEGA.

The 68000 is gonna set your ass on fire.

GET LOST. NO ONE WANTS YOU HERE. EVER.

[oldskool]

reality is most here are kids and are not from the 16 bit generation or are just uneducated to the facts  the fact is the turbografx is more powerful than snes or sega back in the 80s not many understood the technical aspects of game consoles so they just judged power based on bits today we know ram clock speed etc are more important mips stands for machine instructions per second the turbo has higher mips than the genesis all of you speaking on resolution are painfully wrong the fact is that the turbografx 16 could get resolutions of 512- thats more than snes sega neogeo ps1 even n64 and dont say it wasnt used infact both sherlock holmes games on the turbo used it the turbos 8 bit cpu was faster than segas 16 and yes paralex scrolling was possible on the turbo just more taxing infact games like gates of thunder used more paralex than sega did what gamres released on both systems look better on the sega i ask you? only 1 golden axe and it was ported by a third party streetfighter 2 the most powerful game at the time is rated better on turbo than snes or sega more colorful sharper clearer sound cadash on turbo 4 players on sega 2 on turbo better graphics shinobi the sega game actually is rated higher on pc engine all the valis games exile etc almost all games released on all 3 systems are better looking and sounding on turbo and lets not forget its the oldest of the 3 colors mattered most in the 2d era like neogeo turbo could put up big colors the sega coundnt plus turbos 2 16 bit graphics chips could go beyond the sega or snes in mips as i stated thats why dracula x couldnt be made on sega cd  turbo shooters on sega cd have slowdown too

Do you really, truly, undeniably, with certainty know what you are talking about?

[nectarsis]

He must, his name says it all 

[NecroPhile]

whoever taught you english should be fired.

..... he said while failing to follow the rules of capitalization? 

Do you really, truly, undeniably, with certainty know what you are talking about?

Obviously not, else he would've read the 20 pages of discussion and seen that those points had already been covered, nor would he attempt to prove the Turbo's prowess by comparing resolution, especially considering that he's wrong.  I'm not an expert, but 512x240 is not greater than 512x478 (SNES) or 640x480 (PS1 and N64).  Even if he were correct, the awesomeness factor of the TG-16 most certainly doesn't hinge upon Sherlock Holmes so who gives a shit?

[Joe Redifer]

I don't think Turbo would have handled a game like Gunstar Heroes or Alien Soldier even with that Arcade Card Duo.

Likely not, but who cares NINTEGA.

The 68000 is gonna set your ass on fire.

GET LOST. NO ONE WANTS YOU HERE. EVER.

Be nice.

[guyjin]

..... he said while failing to follow the rules of capitalization? 

Yeah, I'm a hypocrite. must be my Clinton-era upbringing.

[oldskool]

And MIPS = "Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages", machines instructions per second?  LOL.

Also, MIPS initially was a 32 bit architecture, since when was the Turbografx 32 bits?  Sure would be nice!
Another definition of MIPS = "Millions of Instructions Per Second" - which is more commonly used.

Do some research before jabbering your fingers...

MIPS Architecture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_architecture

MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second)
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid80_gci214097,00.html

[Alt-PyschoNintega]

I don't think Turbo would have handled a game like Gunstar Heroes or Alien Soldier even with that Arcade Card Duo.

Likely not, but who cares NINTEGA.

The 68000 is gonna set your ass on fire.

GET LOST. NO ONE WANTS YOU HERE. EVER.

Be nice.

Thank you Redifer.

[awack]

Another definition of MIPS = "Millions of Instructions Per Second" - which is more commonly used.

I,m guessing thats the definition he is using, I'm kinda pulling these numbers outmybutt, but for the Genesis it is .8 MIPS and 1.5 MIPS for the PCE.

For resolution, i would put the Genesis 1st since more of its games use a higher(medium) resolution than the pce or snes, the Pce would be 2nd, more of its games use the higher (medium) resolution than i initially thought, it also has the high (512) resolution and the ability to switch between different resolutions on the fly, like in Art of Fighting. I put the snes dead last, because i don't know of single game that uses the higher resolutions.

[TurboXray]

I,m guessing thats the definition he is using, I'm kinda pulling these numbers outmybutt, but for the Genesis it is .8 MIPS and 1.5 MIPS for the PCE.

The average PCE game runs about MIPS is 1.8. There are a lot of 2 cycle instructions that make up that higher number. The MAX MIPS is 3.58. It'll never reach that high, but it can go higher than 1.8 depending on the code. IIRC, an emulator author clocked Genesis games running at 0.8+ MIPS. Most sites like clock/8 for 68k MIPS, but it's closer to clock/9.

 The two processors are drastically different. So you can see that the MIPS rating doesn't show the true performance. If you coded the 68k like you would a 6280, it would run pretty slow - and vice versa (less so). The 68k is not fast per se and has slower memory fetch cycles, but it has more powerful addressing and register modes. It's easy to code for and has instructions that get more done in less overall cycles.

 I can't mention any details at the moment(I can later on), but I've seen the code for Art of Fighting port on the PCE. Funny that they translated quite a bit 68k code line for line by hand to the 6280 (you could see 68k line commented on the side). That might give some idea of the strength of the 6280

 Personally, I'd say the Genesis strength is in its sprite size configurability. Its greater than the SNES. In what I mean is, that you can really optimize a sprite sizes to reduce flicker. Streets of Rage 3 is thee most perfect example. That character art is optimized to the pixel, per row. Well, that and the AI keeps the 'stand by' characters out of the mother flickering way ;)

 It's the number of sub-palettes that's embarrassing on the Genesis (4). Even the NES had more sub-palettes ( 8 ). Sega has no excuse. The SNES has 16(8+8) and the PCE has 32(16+16). Since all three 16bit systems have 16 color tiles, it's the sub-palettes that really matter for colors on screen since these are tile base systems.

[spenoza]

What seems clear to be is the completely different approaches taken by all 3 systems. The SNES is heavily dependent upon its specialized chips to the point that the CPU is anemic at times. The Genesis seems to be all about managing sprites with a flexible, efficient CPU, with the primary weakness being color palettes and inconsistent hardware build quality. The PCE, on the other hand, reveals itself as the earliest design of the three as probably the most general system. The PCE seems to be the most like the NES in many ways, and as such seems to be an extension of that philosophy. Just make a robust general system that can do lots of stuff and leave it to the programmers to sort stuff out.

[Lord Thag]

The popularity and awesomeness of a console has never, and I mean never, been tied to it's system specs. For example, look at the most popular/successful system of each era:

Original Era:

The 2600 is the most popular and successful console of the era by a huge margin, and it is vastly outclassed by the Intellivision and Colecovision.

8-Bit Era

The NES stomps the Master System, even though it is slightly less capable.

16-bit Era

A close match (in the US) with the Geny and SNES, though the Geny is somewhat inferior to the SNES

32-bit Era

Playstation wins over the far superior N64 by a mile, and topples the Big N from it's perch.

Last Gen

PS2 trounces the competition, and is the most inferior technically of the three.

Current Gen

The Wii. A console that could have been released ten years ago, and it's beating ALL the next gen stuff. The most capable console, the PS3 sinks like a lead brick.

At the end of the day, it's THE GAMES, not the capabilities of the system, that win. It's never been about capability. It's about accessability, affordability, and library size. The TG-16 and the Geny are very close technically. The Geny did well here, and the TG/PCE did well in Japan. Both systems have excellent games, though I personally favor the TG/PCE. If a system has fun games, regardless of the 'wow' factor, it will do well. Wii Sports anyone?

People want affordable fun. The system with the most affordable fun wins. Everytime. 

[Keranu]

Interesting point, Lord Thag! I'm surprised I never thought of that before.

Come to think of it, it can be applied even more to handhelds:

Gameboy destroyed all competition for an entire decade, despite being in black and white! Lynx was the first to step up against it and was far more technologically imrpessive, but didn't have a chance. Turbo Express, Game Gear (though did well enough on it's own), Nomad, Neo Geo Pocket, Game.com; none of them could stop it.

Gameboy Color beat out Neo Geo Pocket Color by a long shot, though I'm not sure if the NGPC was any more powerful (I always thought it was personally).

By the time of Gameboy Advance, I guess other companies realized there wasn't much of a chance of taking away the crown from the Gameboy series. So uhh, I guess you could say N-Gage here? Wonderswan Color maybe?

Nintendo DS is constantly breaking sales records, despite being known for being less powerful than PSP.

[Tatsujin]

wonderswan color was much more a gameboy color competitor than to the GBA.

nintendo just always had the success on their side. the name, the image, the prestigious software developers and a just as possible compact as well easy to handle hardware at the time. technology was always secondary in the handheld biz.

[Tatsujin]

Playstation wins over the far superior N64 by a mile, and topples the Big N from it's perch.

[Joe Redifer]

I absolutely agree that the specifications of a system don't really matter as long as the games are good.  But the public doesn't always seem to think so.  If they did, we'd still be playing 16-bit era consoles.  I chose 16-bit era because that generation had some of the most playable games and the technology allowed it to do more things vs Atari2600 technology or even NES technology.  Saturn and Playstation allowed for 3D gameplay, but it is debatable whether that really adds anything.  I guess it does, since certain games could not exist without 3D.  But then again, we stepped up to Xbox 360, etc from normal Xbox, etc, didn't we?  The new consoles don't really offer any new gameplay compared to the previous generation, so people must want the graphics!  Then there's the Wii...

[CrackTiger]

They do, but I think the Genesis is capable of the better voice.  There's a discussion along with examples somewhere around here (the Turbo still has great voice).  If the Turbo wasn't the Turbo, it wouldn't be as cool!

The Genesis and TG-16 are both capable of samples clear enough that it doesn't matter what difference there may be technically. The Genesis has a better variety of voice samples in published games, but I still think that the PCE Lunar voice sample sound as good as or better than anything on Genesis or SNES.

Although it went underused, sample sounds (quality + channels) are one of the biggest strengths the TG-16 has over Genesis and arguably the SNES (quality-wise). The Genesis's single sample channel is the only major weakness other than the palette restrictions. If the Genesis had the same 512 master palette, but sub-palettes more like the SNES and the ability to do even just 2 - 4 samples at a time, most people would probably have thought that the Genesis was the most powerful system of the 16-bit era and the SNES' gimmicks wouldn't have been enough to sway opinions (even if EGM were to still call the SNES teh best(!) for the rest of its lifespan).

[Joe Redifer]

I do wish there were more HuCards that took better advantage of sampled sounds.  I am forever grateful that the thing didn't have a reverb chip, though. 

[Lord Thag]

Playstation wins over the far superior N64 by a mile, and topples the Big N from it's perch

Technically speaking, I mean. 

I agree, I hate the N64, but it did 3D WAY better than the PS1.

[Joe Redifer]

Yes and no.  I would concede that it can move more polygons, but it was also way more foggy.  Granted the PS1 was hyper-grainy so I guess I really don't have much to go on here.

[spenoza]

Most of the technical information I've read indicated that the Playstation could display more polygons than the N64. The N64 probably had a more powerful CPU overall, but it was also damned hard to code for. And the 4 KB texture limitations on the N64 also hamstrung developers.

I think it's safe to say the PS1 was the complete opposite of the PS2 in that it was relatively easy to program for and followed a VERY traditional 3D paradigm. And in that sense the N64 was almost more a harbinger of the PS2 than the PS1 was.

What PCE games used polygonal graphics? Didn't Gunboat?

[nat]

Yeah, Gunboat does and so does Falcon. Sapphire. There is one scene in Legend of Xanadu with a rotating three dimensional diamond, and I've never been able to tell whether that is made from polygons or not.

[NecroPhile]

At the end of the day, it's THE GAMES, not the capabilities of the system, that win. It's never been about capability. It's about accessability, affordability, and library size.

Agreed, though it doesn't seem applicable to the current gen systems; the 360 is easier to find, cheaper, and has a much larger library.  In this case, I think it is the capabilities of the system (specifically the motion sensing gimmick) coupled with good marketing and a hatred for shoddy build quality and all things MS.

Sapphire.

Those were all pre-rendered sprites, though, weren't they?  Faceball pumps 'em out real-time, just like a PS3!

[nat]

Were they all? I thought the primitive ones were "real." But, what do I know?!

[Tatsujin]

yeah..i thought those blue rotating primitive ships were rendered in real time, since you also can't see any color-compressions on those as you can see it on the bigger, more poligonal sprites. but, what do I know?!

[ParanoiaDragon]

Yes and no.  I would concede that it can move more polygons, but it was also way more foggy.  Granted the PS1 was hyper-grainy so I guess I really don't have much to go on here.

The graphics on N64 were always boring & lifeless to me with a lack of detail, with the PS1's gfx being choppier but more detailed.

[Keranu]

Sapphire's polygons were pre-rendered, as far as I know. They probably just drew them that way to fool people into thinking that they were running real time. There's been debate here before whether the ships in Silpheed for Sega CD were pre-rendered or not.

[geise]

In Silpheed all the background stuff going on was prerendered.  Your ship and the other stuff you were shooting was real time.

[Joe Redifer]

Actually in Silpheed the enemies are prerendered sprites.

[ccovell]

Actually in Silpheed the enemies are prerendered sprites.

Have you even played Silpheed CD?  There's a polygon test right there in the options menu.  The sprites, at least, are generated real-time.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Actually in Silpheed the enemies are prerendered sprites.

Have you even played Silpheed CD?  There's a polygon test right there in the options menu.  The sprites, at least, are generated real-time.

Aww you beated me to it.


In terms of this debate.   I honestly aint reading 20932409234 pages of it.... but heres my two cents.

They both kick ass.

hard.

They are also so amazingly similar to each other that its scary at times.  Lunar totally would have been equally sweet on a PCE SCD.

And then there were some times were PCE outclasses it, like Shadow of the Beast.  The genesis cartridge sucks compared to the super CD.

same with exile....

but for the most part, they both get my thumbs up and 

[TurboXray]

Actually in Silpheed the enemies are prerendered sprites.

Have you even played Silpheed CD?  There's a polygon test right there in the options menu.  The sprites, at least, are generated real-time.

In the test option, but in game they are rendered to a set of frames to be uses as simple 2D animation. It isn't rendered realtime, it's cache frames (usually interleaved). 2D sprites is moved along a fixed axis and cycles through the frame cache every 4-5 frames - yet still 'sliding'. You get multiple enemies because the ones behind the main one(or two) are accessing cached the same cached frames as well. Sometime they are even mirrored.

Sapphire's polygons were pre-rendered, as far as I know.

They are. You can see them with a sprite editor in the ISO. To be honest, there's no reason to waste resource rendering a polygon ship/enemy when you can have them as pre-rendered frames and practically access them for free.

[Keranu]

Actually in Silpheed the enemies are prerendered sprites.

Have you even played Silpheed CD?  There's a polygon test right there in the options menu.  The sprites, at least, are generated real-time.

So did After Burner II for PCE .

[Joe Redifer]

Notice how much slower the polygon test in the Silpheed option screen is compared to the movement in the actual gameplay where there are many, many enemies onscreen at once.  Common sense right there demands that something is amiss. Anyway, the enemies are sprites during gameplay, not polygons.  Look into the data for yourself and you'll see. 

[ccovell]

I stand multiply corrected.  All in the name of knowledge.

[geise]

Regardless it's amazing what the devs were able to achieve back in the day with such limited hardware.  It really was a special time for games.

[TurboXray]

Regardless it's amazing what the devs were able to achieve back in the day with such limited hardware.  It really was a special time for games.

Quoted for truth

[Joe Redifer]

Yes, I was convinced that the backgrounds were polygons back then.  There was no graininess to them.  I was like "OMG SESEGA CD SOOO POWERFUL!!!!"

[Tatsujin]

not 100%ly. correct for the PCE CD-Rom, but the MEGA-CD would have been capable for much more i believe, but they never really pushed that add-on, packed with a lot more hardware inside than the loose MD just had. i bought a lot of MEGA-CD games recently and i have to say now, that they not really did a great job on the most of the games, regarded what the hardware would have been capable of. not so for the PCE CD-Rom, as we all know just too well. even there was "no" addition hardware packed in.

[TurboXray]

Some US (well really Euro guys) really pushed the system. Well, they really pushed the ASIC. In Batman, the driving parts supposedly hits the chips threshold for bandwidth.

[CrackTiger]

not 100%ly. correct for the PCE CD-Rom, but the MEGA-CD would have been capable for much more i believe, but they never really pushed that add-on, packed with a lot more hardware inside than the loose MD just had. i bought a lot of MEGA-CD games recently and i have to say now, that they not really did a great job on the most of the games, regarded what the hardware would have been capable of. not so for the PCE CD-Rom, as we all know just too well. even there was "no" addition hardware packed in.

I think that both the Genesis and Sega-CD were pushed really far, especially compared to the PC Engine (CD or Hu), even though the Sega/Mega-CD doesn't have nearly as many games. From what I understand, like some other consoles the Sega-CD hardware wasn't designed very well to utilize everything under the hood. Kinda like if you opened up your PC Engine and crazy glued in a Pentium 4 chip and closed it up. There may be some powerful components inside, but that doesn't mean that it's the sum of its parts.

But even judging many Sega-CD games by the hardware's tech specs, I think that some of the most technically impressive 16-bit console games are all Sega-CD titles. These games alone utilize their hardware better than most PCE CD games do. Plus the cinemas in Popful Mail and Lunar EB and all the FMV crap make good use of the CD-ROM format.

We should've seen way more PCE CD games with fully animated cinemas that take up a good portion of the screen, especially for the Arcade Card. And only one japanese developer ever tried fmv. Imagine what could be done after several attempts with the Arcade Card. Not enough PC Engine games pushed or worked around the limits like lining up sprites to maximize the number on screen without hitting horizontal limits. As impressive as the handful of games are that made good use of animated tiles for background layers, they're way in the minority, there's no reason for it given the limitless storage space and so much more could've been done.

There are also few games that pushed the level of detail/shading/color and none do more than dent the hardware's potential. Non-sprite heavy games like RPG's could've made good use of higher resolutions, again especially with the CD space and larger system cards. And the amount of space for ADPCM samples is the same for CD2 games as it is for ACD games, so why hasn't every PCE CD game ever released not been loaded with sampled sfx?

[_Paul]

I always felt that Japanese developers never fully pushed the machines as often as they should have. I was always surprised after seeing some new graphical effect or hearing some great sound that others would not try to replicate them. Why were there not sampled drums in every game, for example? Why was there not parallax scrolling everywhere? Of course I didn't realise then that some programmers could actually be lazy/rubbish.

[TurboXray]

I always felt that Japanese developers never fully pushed the machines as often as they should have. I was always surprised after seeing some new graphical effect or hearing some great sound that others would not try to replicate them. Why were there not sampled drums in every game, for example? Why was there not parallax scrolling everywhere? Of course I didn't realise then that some programmers could actually be lazy/rubbish.

Japanese developers in general aren't hardware pushers like the Euro crew were. Euro coders really went above and beyond for their systems, my god. And US coders? Meh...

[Tatsujin]

what you can see on a Rendering Ranger. Mani pushed the SFC to it's sheer max, even he wasn't such familiar with the hard than may be major developer as konami etc. and even more impressive, he did it all on his own!

but when it comes to classic 8-/16-bit shooter, in 99% of the cases the japanese always had the nose ahead!

[Alt-PyschoNintega]

what you can see on a Rendering Ranger. Mani pushed the SFC to it's sheer max, even he wasn't such familiar with the hard than may be major developer as konami etc. and even more impressive, he did it all on his own!

but when it comes to classic 8-/16-bit shooter, in 99% of the cases the japanese always had the nose ahead!

Don't forget fighting games too. Western stuff like Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct are IMO pretty bad.

[spenoza]

At least with the Sega Genesis, US coders were capable of quite a bit. Look at Sega's STI division in the US. They did some very good work with the Genesis. Now, there were so few US and EU coders for the PCE/TG-16 it's probably hard to compare.

What TG-16 developers were US and EU, anyway?

[guyjin]

psygnosis?