SNES vs. 32X Doom

[sheath]

Hoo boy, if it can do that, Doom's a cinch!

I can only imagine he was referring to a hypothetical FMV game, which just goes to show how popular that genre was at the time. But yeah, the implications of White's statement go well beyond that. Just not quite as far as Sony claiming you could jack into the PS2 with the same interface as in The Matrix.

[Cloud121]

I call shenanigans on that. There are plenty of games that play music while pushing far more complicated 3D graphics than Doom does. A more likely reason is that Atari was pressuring them to release the game as fast as possible and they just didn't have time to figure out how to do it properly.

Funny you say that, as the Jaguar port was done my none other than John Carmack himself.


As for the 3DO port. On paper, it's easily the best port. Notice I said "on paper". It's problem is that it was just too ambitious for it's hardware, and thus the frame rate suffers. The enemies could be viewed from all angles. They added some at least one new monster. And if I recall correctly, it used all the original levels. Not the stripped down ones Carmack had to use for the Jag port, and majority of future ports were based on.

[tom]

John likes the Jaguar version.

But I guess the SNES version of DOOM is not bad, it being a slow 8/16 hybrid console.

[Pr3tty F1y]

My personal preference is the SNES version of DOOM compared to the 32x version.

The SNES' SPC700 definitely pumps out higher quality music than the Genesis/Megadrive FM synth (and arguably better than the PC MIDI implementation of the day); however, it is quite clear that the sound FX would often be delayed. Listening to both the MIDI and SPC rips of the game music should clear up any conception that the music on the SNES "drags" (which, from what I hear, it does not). The SNES' sound processor was essentially self contained so the slowness of the game engine itself would not have an effect on the music nearly as it does with the sound effects. For comparison, I think the SNES version of The Demons from Adrian's Pen and Intermission are vastly superior to the PC MIDI (and yes, I know Demons from Adrian's pen was used on the "wrong" level in the SNES version, but for me, it atmosphere better).

And granted that the SNES version is quite pixelated and tends to chug, I still consider it playable. Nonetheless, to reiterate what others have said before, the SNES was more colorful, had more accurate geometry, and had more levels than the 32X. The use of the shoulder buttons to strafe was quite nice as well. Despite the limitations of the SNES, it was definitely much more polished than the 32X version.

Could the 32X have pumped out a version that was clearly better than the SNES? Most definitely, looking at the fantastic use of color and processing horsepower displayed in some of the more quality titles. Unfortunately, it was a crude rush job and that is what really taints it for me. The developers settled for ugly and bland graphics backed up by the soundtrack that didn't even attempt to use the strengths of the FM synth sound hardware.

Truthfully, I find the SNES version of DOOM the most graphically impressive game on the system. It's DOOM and running on late-80s era 16-bit hardware with an additional RISC processor that was built for a price-point, not computational throughput. Does it have its flaws? Most definitely, but it is something amazing that was put together on a system with relatively meager resources, even with the add-on chip.