Do 32X games have more color than Genesis games ? Really ?

[WCP]

Ok, hear me out on this...

I know from a technical standpoint that the 32X could produce way more color than the Sega Genesis, but I'm not talking about statistics on paper. I'm talking about actual reality. I honestly don't see any more color on 32X games than Genesis games. At least, not enough to be obvious. I play all these systems on RGB monitors, and the Super Nintendo and TurboGrafx-16 seem more colorful to me than the 32X.

Not that 32X games look horrible or anything like that, but they just look like any other Genesis game to me, from a standpoint of color. I think the 32X had a palette of over 32,000 colors to choose from, but I'm not sure how many it could put on the screen at the same time. I know the Genesis could only put 64 colors on the screen at the same time, and it was a huge limiting factor for the Genesis, despite great looking games like Gunstar Heroes that seemed to have tons of color.

Maybe I'm on my own island with this, and everybody thinks the 32X is just as colorful as SNES, if not more so. I know the original 32X marketing would try to insinuate that, but I'm just not sure that it was ever actual reality.

[ccovell]

The 32X's video is simply a 256/32768-colour framebuffer that can superimpose the Genesis' video over/under(?) it. So what you are seeing most often are some of the Gen's BGs and sprites being scrolled around with the 32x layer in there somewhere. Some notable exceptions would be Space Harrier, Kolibri, etc, which don't look like they use the Gen's layers much if at all.

[Ozzy_98]

Sure are a lot of NEC avatars in this 32x thread.

When you hook up your 32x, run the video from the gens rather than dumping it into the 32x, and you can see just the genesis stuff that has all their limitations imposed.

[WCP]

I'm not really interested in the technical breakdown of exactly how the 32X is working, my original question is more just along the lines of... "Do you think the 32X is really providing a big boost of color over the Genesis ?


If you look at the 32X packaging, I remember it really tooting it's horn in regards to 32,000 colors or something like that, but the point that I'm trying to make is that I'm not really noticing all those colors, and was just wondering if it's just me, or do other people also think that maybe we didn't really get the kind of color that Sega was promising, in regards to the 32X.


The Atari Jaguar, also made extraordinary claims in regards to the colors it could put on screen, but anybody that has played Dino Dudes on a RGB monitor knows that the Jaguar really was throwing a ton of color on screen (at least in that games backgrounds). Some parts of Trevor McFurr in Crescent Galaxy are extremely colorful as well.

I guess Kolibri on 32X might have had the most color, but it didn't really seem to be to the level of the SNES or even maybe the TG-16.

All of this is just my personal opinion, and I was just trying to get a sense of.... am I on my own island with this particular opinion, or does anybody else also wonder about all this supposed color that we never really got with the 32X?

[8-Bit Archeology]

I would say yes, I think it has more color. Only because of Mortal Kombat 2. Not because I saw more colors from a standpoint of wow they have a bigger box of crayola, it is mainly because everything that had color was more blended. The different shades of blue on sub zero looked smoother than than of the genesis version. Its all just smoother textures. Not really a vibrant thing. Thats my take at least.

I do want to see a side by side, so now I have to borrow a genesis copy.

[The Adventurer]

It's definitely more of a 'larger color pallet per sprite' which makes for better color blending. Also, 16 bit vs 32 bit, isn't that 256 colors vs millions of colors in general?

[Az]

When you hook up your 32x, run the video from the gens rather than dumping it into the 32x, and you can see just the genesis stuff that has all their limitations imposed.

This. A lot of games used the 32x for the only for the sprites and the Genesis for the entire background (Knuckles, MK2) so the vast majority of what you're viewing on screen is what could have been done on a Genesis anyway. I always found it ironic that one of the ugliest (and shittiest) games, Motocross Championship, didn't use the Genesis for anything.