Games better on Genesis/SNES?

[PSony]

Thunder Force III (Genesis) is better than Thunder Spirits (SNES)

On the SNES version, autofire is disabled by default. When enabled, the game suffers immense slowdown.

On Genesis, autofire is enabled by default and doesn't have slowdown.

[Olls]

Thunder Force III (Genesis) is better than Thunder Spirits (SNES)

On the SNES version, autofire is disabled by default. When enabled, the game suffers immense slowdown.

On Genesis, autofire is enabled by default and doesn't have slowdown.

It would be best if you used the template the TS made, so he can copy your post right in.

[Brianvgplayer]

How do the SNES and Genesis Williams Arcade Greatest Hits compare?

I checked Ms. Pac-Man again and the differences aren't as cut and dry as I thought. Speed actually seems similar on lower difficulties (though the booster still seems slower on SNES), but Genesis is definitely faster on Crazy mode. AI seems closer to arcade on SNES and the sound is definitely closer. As said before, Genesis version doesn't like the 6 button controller unless the mode button is held down at startup.

[kool kitty89]

They had the status bar because they needed to run the game in 320 horizontal mode so they had 16 more sprites to use (the 256 mode only has 64 sprites vs. 80 for 320). The status bar is there because it would have been to bothersome to redraw everything to fit in 320x224 resolution, I guess.

Really, it doesn't seem like that sprite intensive of a game. (especially using Gens to separate the layers and see what's done with sprites)

Hell, for the map screen, they multiplex 1 8x8 sprite for all the enemies. (hence the bad flicker)

They wouldn't have to redraw anything to do full-screen, but they would need to modify the scrolling algorithm used. As it is, if you disable layer B, you get some garbage tiles in that boarder area when scrolling to the right, but scrolling left if perfectly fine. (interesting to note that some of the BG is also done with layer B overlaid on layer A, none for parallax as far as I see, but probably to conserve tile data -ie overlay certain tiles that would otherwise require more unique tiles to be used, possibly with poorer color optimization)

If they'd just tweaked the scrolling routine a bit, they could have allowed the status bar to be toggled on and off to give a full screen that was 25% wider than the SNES's.
As it is, the MD version DOES have a wider field of vision than the SNES version with the status icons not obscuring the top of the screen. (so a full, clean 256x224 window)


Again, you PAL users got a bonus of the higher res by not having the graphics horribly stretched like the SNES version. (they're still a little too wide, but actually better than the SNES in NTSC in that respect -assuming the graphics were drawn with square pixels originally, which certainly seems to be the case -for Genesis in NTSC, you get too tall graphics instead, but still closer to square than the SNES, though you also get worse composite video artifacts in that mode -especially bad rainbow banding on dithering except with the Samsung KA2195D)

I don't think it has anything to do with that. Maybe the SNES used its third or fourth background layer for it, something the Mega Drive doesn't have.

MD uses layer B for the status bar (and a few BG deails) as I said above. It should have been simple to toggle it on and off.
Hell, they also could have made the black transparent instead and had the map/icons overlaid onto layer A just like the added BG details. (it probably would have looked less cramped with the icons moved back to the SNES area though and just the map on the right with the ability to hide it)

Yeah, at the very least the Genesis version could have used the Shadow/Highlight mode to have the map display on. I haven't seen the Genesis version, but if we're talking about a menu bar with a black background the developer just used the hardware Window Plane instead of Sprites. It was supposedly impossible to make pixels transparent to Plane A in the window plane. This is why many Genesis games have solid color backgrounds behind the menus.

Highlight would be a no-go as that's for sprites only, and you'd waste a lot of sprite bandwidth having that on-screen.
You could use shadow (but that's only 1 shade), or flicker transparency, or dithering.

If you did use shadow, it would probably be in place of the ark purple/bluish background of the map and have the white outlines non-translucent. (and the same flickering sprite as is used already)

That, or they could have just used a solid, non-transparent map that could be hidden. (so placed in a similar area, just without the boarder)
Flicker translucency would be the same, except you'd need to update the tilemap/names table every frame to toggle in the map and then replace it with transparent tiles the next frame. (it would probably look fine in NTSC, probably worse in PAL -it would look like the flickering shields in the sonic games)

Dithering would probably be a bad idea for NTSC due to the rainbow mand artifacting. (then again, the map is dark like most of the BGs, so contrast could stay low enough to avoid that -the white lines on the map would probably artifact either way)

Again, a lot of options would open up if the scrolling routine was fixed.

How do the SNES and Genesis Williams Arcade Greatest Hits compare?

There's pretty much identical except you need the 6 button pad for decent control in robotron. (or you need dual controllers/joysticks like the 5200/A8/7800 port)





Edit: added examples from gens showing left and right scrolling, with and without layer B enabled.

[Zebbe]

Really, it doesn't seem like that sprite intensive of a game. (especially using Gens to separate the layers and see what's done with sprites)

Hell, for the map screen, they multiplex 1 8x8 sprite for all the enemies. (hence the bad flicker)

They wouldn't have to redraw anything to do full-screen, but they would need to modify the scrolling algorithm used. As it is, if you disable layer B, you get some garbage tiles in that boarder area when scrolling to the right, but scrolling left if perfectly fine. (interesting to note that some of the BG is also done with layer B overlaid on layer A, none for parallax as far as I see, but probably to conserve tile data -ie overlay certain tiles that would otherwise require more unique tiles to be used, possibly with poorer color optimization)

If they'd just tweaked the scrolling routine a bit, they could have allowed the status bar to be toggled on and off to give a full screen that was 25% wider than the SNES's.
As it is, the MD version DOES have a wider field of vision than the SNES version with the status icons not obscuring the top of the screen. (so a full, clean 256x224 window)

Again, you PAL users got a bonus of the higher res by not having the graphics horribly stretched like the SNES version. (they're still a little too wide, but actually better than the SNES in NTSC in that respect -assuming the graphics were drawn with square pixels originally, which certainly seems to be the case -for Genesis in NTSC, you get too tall graphics instead, but still closer to square than the SNES, though you also get worse composite video artifacts in that mode -especially bad rainbow banding on dithering except with the Samsung KA2195D)

MD uses layer B for the status bar (and a few BG deails) as I said above. It should have been simple to toggle it on and off.
Hell, they also could have made the black transparent instead and had the map/icons overlaid onto layer A just like the added BG details. (it probably would have looked less cramped with the icons moved back to the SNES area though and just the map on the right with the ability to hide it)

Hmmm... Maybe you are right. But I guess going with the status bar removed and the map overlaid on the field would have been too troublesome to program when they just seemlingly aimed for a straight, quick port. I always thought the game had a lot of sprites, such as enemies and weapons, but I guess you are right about that too if you checked it in Gens .

[kool kitty89]

Hmmm... Maybe you are right. But I guess going with the status bar removed and the map overlaid on the field would have been too troublesome to program when they just seemlingly aimed for a straight, quick port. I always thought the game had a lot of sprites, such as enemies and weapons, but I guess you are right about that too if you checked it in Gens .

I also added pics above.
Maybe there's enough sprites for it to matter, or maybe it's more of an issue in the later levels, but the early levels don't seem to have very many on-screen at all.

Then again, I can't tell how many sprites are actually single sprites . . . the only reason to use multiple sprite cells would be for different palettes in different cells though, unless they were lazy and didn't change the sprite cell size from the SNES to take advantage of the extremely flexible MD sprite engine. Tn that case, the map is probably using a 16x16 sprite where an 8x8 one would have worked due to the SNES's lack of anything smaller than 16x16.

MD sprite size options are really nice (any combination of 8, 16, 24, 32 wide/tall for each sprite) while the SNES has more limited options (16, 32, 64 wide/tall iirc) and can only use 2 on-screen at once. (still a lot better than the X68000's fixed 16x16 size, same 128 sprite limit and 32 sprite/512 pixel per line limit as the SNES too)



Hmm, though if the SNES version of NAMN used any single sprite larger than 32x32 at any point, they'd have to change it for the MD version, so there could be more incentive for sprite optimization in general. (the game might not use anything later than 32x32 though)




Also, that reasoning I made earlier on the use of the overlapping BG tiles doesn't make sense. The way the tiles are used doesn't make them overlap. It looks like most/all of the layer B BG components are able to scroll on top of enemy/player/etc sprites, but I'd have thought they'd simply use tile priority to manage that on 1 layer. (plenty of games do it that way iirc)
Hmm, actually, I'd think it would be tough to scroll the BG portions of layer B through the boarder portion. (somehow they made the game window part of layer B scroll "behind" the status bar/boarder portion of layer B)








Edit:

Also, the music isn't bad at all for gems, though the SNES music is pretty simple to begin with. (a lot of simple FM sounding instruments to make things easier)
A well optimized conversion to the MD (probably even using GEMS -with custom patches and such as advanced composers used) would have sounded better than the SNES version.

[old_skoolin_jim]

Out of this World is better on SNES. I thought the controls on the Sega version seemed "lagged". Plus, I seem to remember the music is suppose to be better on the SNES .... I just remember not being able to time my jumps in the Genny version.

The graphics & sound are definitely better on SNES, but I actually prefer playing the genesis version due to its faster speed and drastically-reduced loading times.
I'll also throw my hat in the ring on EA Sports' NHL and Madden games:
Madden: Better on the SNES by far. Better visuals (including proper scaling), better music & sound effects, all in all a better game, '93 through '98.
NHL: I prefer them on the Genesis (again), due to their faster speed. Playing NHL '96 on SNES and then on the Genny (as I used to do with a friend of mine), it's so apparent.

[HappehLemons]

If you're going to make a claim to one game being better please use the proper format so I simply add it to the list

Thanks!

[Rolf&Nei]

The SNES Lion King box problem is definite, making an already clumsy game nearly unplayable--for its age target at least; the hippopotami tails in particular are a crapshoot to clutch.

Alien3: Genesis.
*Genesis*
|Pro| Short, uncommonly realistic jumps. Intense atmosphere and music. Effective graphics. Fun. 15 levels plus 4 guardian stages.
|Con| Unlike the flick; more of an Alien/Aliens mash. But video games are always unfaithful.
*SNES*
|Pro| The layout, which allows you to enter background doors, gives a fleeting impression of film semblance.
|Con| The levels actually don't correspond to even the feel of the flick. The jumps are huge and silly, the play clumsy, the music nil, and the graphics lifeless. No idea how many levels, but once it passes the banner screen it's become too long.

[Drixxel]

Mortal Kombat - Genesis
*SNES*
|Cons| Attacks feel slightly delayed, sweat instead of blood, several fatalities censored, no uppercut move

There's definitely an uppercut in SNES Mortal Kombat, both the familiar duck + punch and the uppercut fatality in The Pit. I agree with the ruling whole heartedly but this shouldn't be listed in the cons of the SNES port.

HappehLemons, as far as comparing Genesis/SNES titles where the two are completely different games, would you prefer that one be named superior to the other or simply an "N/A" assigned to that field with a note made about the writer's preference, as with the Aladdin comparison?

[HappehLemons]

There's definitely an uppercut in SNES Mortal Kombat, both the familiar duck + punch and the uppercut fatality in The Pit. I agree with the ruling whole heartedly but this shouldn't be listed in the cons of the SNES port.

HappehLemons, as far as comparing Genesis/SNES titles where the two are completely different games, would you prefer that one be named superior to the other or simply an "N/A" assigned to that field with a note made about the writer's preference, as with the Aladdin comparison?

I like to use N/A just to make it clear that they're no comparable in the traditional sense (of this list at least), but I do like naming one superior over the other because heck, why not spice things up a bit and name one better. I mean isn't that why people are reading this list in the first place

But I generally do try to keep my opinions out of it and go for the game that is widely accepted as better for whatever reason, and not just go with "because I like this game better".