Yuzo Koshiro is making new MD shmup.

[Bassa-Bassa]

When you make the cart sizes extremely large your basically getting a Neo Geo experience.

I don't know the exact ins and outs on Neogeo vs MD hardware comparisons, but the one thing i've learnt over recent years is that storage is what you were really paying for on Neo Geo.

Even SNES game that are better on SNES vs MD were due to the cart sizes. Sunset riders and TMNT had bigger carts on SNES than their MD/Genesis counterparts.

One thing from the game video showin is the palette is very blue, but there isn't much I wouldn't expect there from the MD/Genesis if the cart size has jumped from normal size to Neo Geo sizes.

You can't get over Mega Drive's on-screen sprites/on-screen colors/available colors/audio channels limitations just by increasing ROM size. The only thing that the Sega machine had really in common with NG hardware was on-screen resolution.

[Sumez]

When you make the cart sizes extremely large your basically getting a Neo Geo experience.

Not entirely. MegaDrive has a much bigger bottleneck in terms of video RAM. You can only fit so much sprite and background graphic data, and transfering it takes a bit of time as well, even using DMA, which limits how large you can make smooth animations. I'm not sure exactly how the Neo Geo hardware works, but I imagine it has some graphics addresses mapped directly from the cartridge space to the video chip - similar to how the NES works - which means a more powerful cartridge has the ability to overcome many of the limitations of the system's own processing hardware.

Of course, the MegaDrive also has a notably more limited palette, which often informed the look of its games.

Even SNES game that are better on SNES vs MD were due to the cart sizes. Sunset riders and TMNT had bigger carts on SNES than their MD/Genesis counterparts.

"Better" of course is subjective, but in terms of technical capabilites, the cart isn't really a deciding factor here. Even if those games were bigger on SNES, they would also be equally more expensive to print, regardless of the target platform. AFAIK the types of ROM ICs used were largely the same.

The SNES has quite a massive advantage over the MegaDrive in its video hardware, which is capable of much more background layers, more colorful palettes, color math, HDMA (automatic per-scanline register writes), and various other special effects. This usually informs the technical difference between the two platforms to a much bigger degree than any other factor (including the CPU, despite whatever information voices on the internet with no knowledge of the subject matter might try to forward to you).

One thing from the game video showin is the palette is very blue, but there isn't much I wouldn't expect there from the MD/Genesis if the cart size has jumped from normal size to Neo Geo sizes.

This is reiterating, I guess. But the cartridge size has no effect on palettes, that's a hard limitation in the console's design.
Cartridge size purely dictates how much data you can put into the game. That might sound very basic, but it of course allows for more variation in backgrounds, as well as more dedicated scenes with unique visuals, which is definitely some of the primary aspects that affect "how good" people typically think a game looks. Even with 4 color palettes, a game can look absolutely vivid if few things are visibly repeated.

[neorichieb1971]

When you make the cart sizes extremely large your basically getting a Neo Geo experience.

Not entirely. MegaDrive has a much bigger bottleneck in terms of video RAM. You can only fit so much sprite and background graphic data, and transfering it takes a bit of time as well, even using DMA, which limits how large you can make smooth animations. I'm not sure exactly how the Neo Geo hardware works, but I imagine it has some graphics addresses mapped directly from the cartridge space to the video chip - similar to how the NES works - which means a more powerful cartridge has the ability to overcome many of the limitations of the system's own processing hardware.

Of course, the MegaDrive also has a notably more limited palette, which often informed the look of its games.

Even SNES game that are better on SNES vs MD were due to the cart sizes. Sunset riders and TMNT had bigger carts on SNES than their MD/Genesis counterparts.

"Better" of course is subjective, but in terms of technical capabilites, the cart isn't really a deciding factor here. Even if those games were bigger on SNES, they would also be equally more expensive to print, regardless of the target platform. AFAIK the types of ROM ICs used were largely the same.

The SNES has quite a massive advantage over the MegaDrive in its video hardware, which is capable of much more background layers, more colorful palettes, color math, HDMA (automatic per-scanline register writes), and various other special effects. This usually informs the technical difference between the two platforms to a much bigger degree than any other factor (including the CPU, despite whatever information voices on the internet with no knowledge of the subject matter might try to forward to you).

One thing from the game video showin is the palette is very blue, but there isn't much I wouldn't expect there from the MD/Genesis if the cart size has jumped from normal size to Neo Geo sizes.

This is reiterating, I guess. But the cartridge size has no effect on palettes, that's a hard limitation in the console's design.
Cartridge size purely dictates how much data you can put into the game. That might sound very basic, but it of course allows for more variation in backgrounds, as well as more dedicated scenes with unique visuals, which is definitely some of the primary aspects that affect "how good" people typically think a game looks. Even with 4 color palettes, a game can look absolutely vivid if few things are visibly repeated.

I agree. However my point was a very blanket way of saying you can make MD/Genesis games look more like Neo Geo games with a much bigger ROM. This video of this game would have been prohibited through expense back in the day due to the cost of the ROM's. Although Street Fighter MD/Genesis used a 40MB (megabit) cartridge most games on MD/Genesis maxed out at 32MB. I do believe that Konami being an avid supporter of Nintendo made the Nintendo product far superior on most of their games. I can't find a reference but I have read multiple times that the SNES ROM's of TMNT and Sunset Riders were bigger on the SNES. The gameplay experience was vastly different due to the MD/Genesis having a smaller ROM to work with.

For the record I think this game looks quite amazing for a MD/Genesis game. The main sprite of the ship seems a bit big with the option attached to it. The music seems a bit beepy, but its still good.

[spmbx]

That would be mbyte not Mbit. SF2 MD was 40mbit.

[neorichieb1971]

That would be mbyte not Mbit. SF2 MD was 40mbit.

Corrected sir.

[MintyTheCat]

When you make the cart sizes extremely large your basically getting a Neo Geo experience.

I don't know the exact ins and outs on Neogeo vs MD hardware comparisons, but the one thing i've learnt over recent years is that storage is what you were really paying for on Neo Geo.

Even SNES game that are better on SNES vs MD were due to the cart sizes. Sunset riders and TMNT had bigger carts on SNES than their MD/Genesis counterparts.

One thing from the game video showin is the palette is very blue, but there isn't much I wouldn't expect there from the MD/Genesis if the cart size has jumped from normal size to Neo Geo sizes.

You can't get over Mega Drive's on-screen sprites/on-screen colors/available colors/audio channels limitations just by increasing ROM size. The only thing that the Sega machine had really in common with NG hardware was on-screen resolution.

Word!

[MintyTheCat]

When you make the cart sizes extremely large your basically getting a Neo Geo experience.

Not entirely. MegaDrive has a much bigger bottleneck in terms of video RAM. You can only fit so much sprite and background graphic data, and transfering it takes a bit of time as well, even using DMA, which limits how large you can make smooth animations. I'm not sure exactly how the Neo Geo hardware works, but I imagine it has some graphics addresses mapped directly from the cartridge space to the video chip - similar to how the NES works - which means a more powerful cartridge has the ability to overcome many of the limitations of the system's own processing hardware.

Of course, the MegaDrive also has a notably more limited palette, which often informed the look of its games.

Even SNES game that are better on SNES vs MD were due to the cart sizes. Sunset riders and TMNT had bigger carts on SNES than their MD/Genesis counterparts.

"Better" of course is subjective, but in terms of technical capabilites, the cart isn't really a deciding factor here. Even if those games were bigger on SNES, they would also be equally more expensive to print, regardless of the target platform. AFAIK the types of ROM ICs used were largely the same.

The SNES has quite a massive advantage over the MegaDrive in its video hardware, which is capable of much more background layers, more colorful palettes, color math, HDMA (automatic per-scanline register writes), and various other special effects. This usually informs the technical difference between the two platforms to a much bigger degree than any other factor (including the CPU, despite whatever information voices on the internet with no knowledge of the subject matter might try to forward to you).

One thing from the game video showin is the palette is very blue, but there isn't much I wouldn't expect there from the MD/Genesis if the cart size has jumped from normal size to Neo Geo sizes.

This is reiterating, I guess. But the cartridge size has no effect on palettes, that's a hard limitation in the console's design.
Cartridge size purely dictates how much data you can put into the game. That might sound very basic, but it of course allows for more variation in backgrounds, as well as more dedicated scenes with unique visuals, which is definitely some of the primary aspects that affect "how good" people typically think a game looks. Even with 4 color palettes, a game can look absolutely vivid if few things are visibly repeated.

I agree. However my point was a very blanket way of saying you can make MD/Genesis games look more like Neo Geo games with a much bigger ROM. This video of this game would have been prohibited through expense back in the day due to the cost of the ROM's. Although Street Fighter MD/Genesis used a 40MB (megabit) cartridge most games on MD/Genesis maxed out at 32MB. I do believe that Konami being an avid supporter of Nintendo made the Nintendo product far superior on most of their games. I can't find a reference but I have read multiple times that the SNES ROM's of TMNT and Sunset Riders were bigger on the SNES. The gameplay experience was vastly different due to the MD/Genesis having a smaller ROM to work with.

For the record I think this game looks quite amazing for a MD/Genesis game. The main sprite of the ship seems a bit big with the option attached to it. The music seems a bit beepy, but its still good.

Wrong : the NeoGeo is technically head and shoulders beyond the Megadrive.

Things that you can perform on the NG are simply not possible on the MD.

My advice: look at the technicals of the Megadrive and then compare that to the PC Engine, the famicom, the Super famicom and then reconsider your statement.

Subjective "oh I feel" etc. have very little to do with the technical capacities of a given console.

Just considering the sprite engine and capacity of the NG along with the availability of on-screen colours at once from a much larger colour palette puts the NG literally in a different league to the MD.

If anything, the sprite engine in the NG reminds me at times more of what you find in the Amiga.

As a few have pointed out: it is indeed the bottleneck in the MD when dealing with the VDP and when performing DMA which depends greatly on when a DMA is performed in the scan cycle.

Hope that helps direct you a little as to the technical aspects in comparison.

EDIT:

We actually have technical literature from when the NG and MD were being actively developed for by commercial developers that might help gain some insight into how the machines function.

As I recall, there was some decapping projects that may have uncapped the MD's VDP as I recall a few years back. I know that they managed to decap a YM2612 - the FM Synthesis OPL IC used in the Megadrive. The YM2610 - as used in the NG, I am not sure if any decapping has been done as yet.

Pretty much a lot of the mystery over what the hardware does, how it does it, etc. are resolved through decapping and when the IC's logic is replicated.

For an excellent book on this sort of process I heartily recommend this chap's book:

http://www.zxdesign.info/book/

I met the author many yeas ago and he was kind enough to sign my copy

EDIT 2:

The other big difference is that with the NG having direct, memory-mapped access to way more memory - which means assets - graphic, sprite, etc. this means that essentially there isn't that much need to be all to clever with encoding and practically no need to compress data.

There's a really good example in Thunderforce III on the MD that I remember looking at years back whereby the end of level boss' data is decompressed as the level plays out. I forget which level it was - have to look at my session notes from 10+ years ago

The developers had to be smart back then as memory really was expensive. That changed sometime in the upper 90s.
As an aside, E2PROM was a massive change and a godsend when it became more affordable and less need to UV and erase EPROMs all the time

[Bassa-Bassa]

[DietSoap]

Neo-Geo was really on a different level that gen, but I actually think the Mega Drive was the all around best piece of kit after it despite releasing 2 years earlier than the snes.

Even SNES game that are better on SNES vs MD were due to the cart sizes. Sunset riders and TMNT had bigger carts on SNES than their MD/Genesis counterparts.

I'm guessing you're already seen this, but just in case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHR2DhfFhT4&
MD has a really incredible version of the game now.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

With the upcoming MD/SG Earthion stg release, how will it be released physically? As both a SE & LE bundled set perhaps?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[BrianC]

Even SNES game that are better on SNES vs MD were due to the cart sizes. Sunset riders and TMNT had bigger carts on SNES than their MD/Genesis counterparts.

Hyperstone Heist MD and Turtles in Time SNES used the same cart size and Hyperstone Heist does some things better.

[Sengoku Strider]

Isn't Hyperstone missing a bunch of content?

[BrianC]

Isn't Hyperstone missing a bunch of content?

Yes, but not as much as it seems since it combines multiple levels into one level and has an exclusive level and boss. But it still has the exact same cart size, possibly due to extra animations and AI. The missing content is why it's assumed the cart size is different, but both use a 1MB cart.

[DietSoap]

Hyperstone Heist is a combination of the first TMNT bmup and TiT (heh) iirc rather than a straight port of one or the other.

[Lander]

I know that they managed to decap a YM2612 - the FM Synthesis OPL IC used in the Megadrive.

I remember seeing the diagram for that when digging around for info on its inner workings a while back - nukeykt's C reimplementation has a nice clean SVG of it as reference material.
Fascinating, though still quite arcane - one of these days I'd like to dig through the code and really understand how each piece works, maybe port it to a more expressive language that can model components as easily-understood semantic constructs instead of being beholden to C's turing machine roots.

There's a really good example in Thunderforce III on the MD that I remember looking at years back whereby the end of level boss' data is decompressed as the level plays out. I forget which level it was - have to look at my session notes from 10+ years ago

That's super cool, I love hearing about advanced techniques like that. It's easy to fall into the trap of assuming that old codebases must have been primitive, given the wealth of software engineering progress that's happened this century, but it makes sense that the really impressive old stuff would have had to punch well above its weight to achieve the results it did.

[Lemnear]

New trailer w00t w00t:
https://x.com/yuzokoshiro/status/181393 ... -4X4A&s=19

the use of graphics is simply.. brilliant...!

[Arino]

I wonder when it will be for sale.

[SuperDeadite]

Arcade Version Location Test footage:

https://youtu.be/oya0aCFiaTI?si=PK0vpD9vfvE2DZN-

[Despatche]

The SNES has quite a massive advantage over the MegaDrive in its video hardware, which is capable of much more background layers, more colorful palettes, color math, HDMA (automatic per-scanline register writes), and various other special effects. This usually informs the technical difference between the two platforms to a much bigger degree than any other factor (including the CPU, despite whatever information voices on the internet with no knowledge of the subject matter might try to forward to you).

No. This misinformation must stop.

The SFC does four things: colors, more elaborate hardware scaling than usual, sample-based sound, and more buttons. Its color ability doesn't really weigh as much as weird SFC worshippers would like to believe, and they are utterly crushed under the weight of the PC Engine's color ability anyway. That hardware scaling was not used nearly as often as it was, largely being seen as a gimmick even to this day. That sample-based sound was relatively primitive and is only talked about positively as part of boring console war nonsense. The only genuine advantage the SFC brought to the table was more buttons as a default, especially shoulder buttons. Everything else was achieved by cheat-level per-cart chips, just like with the FC, something that's always funny to see people try to deny even in an era where things like the SA-1 hacks exist. In particular, the Mega Drive's entire DMA toolkit is considerably better than the SFC's at everything that is not "a higher raw number of colors most of the time", I have no idea what you're getting at there.

The Mega Drive also used a truly higher resolution for the vast majority of its games. More detail, better adherence to the 4:3 standard. It can even run at this higher resolution better than the SFC could run at its standard resolution! Dipping into the standard resolution on the Mega Drive was primarily used for specific game-to-game cases like the Sonic CD title screen and special stages (which it may not have even needed), or Fire Mustang being a port of a game that used the standard resolution. In particular, there is one area in which the SFC will lose forever: it is so much harder to do anything on the SFC, and it's not the fun kind of hard. Why do you think so many SFC games have such a huge problem with slowdown? It's because the damned thing barely works, that's why! You make an attempt to be correct when you state that the Mega Drive's CPU is not particularly special, but it's clear you're just talking about "blast processing" or whatever and not at all about the Mega Drive actually being fairly well-designed hardware all around. Last but not least, the Mega Drive can do all sorts of weird tricks, on top of everything else it can do, and without the need for any chip or add-on. Nobody really knows about this because hardly any developer used said tricks, they weren't techniques that were valued much back then. It's the fact that this is possible that's important, because this is about raw power. (This is why Red Zone is so insane.)

The truth is that the Super Famicom is objectively weaker than the PC Engine and the Mega Drive, just like how the PlayStation is objectively weaker than the Saturn and the N64, and just like how the PlayStation 2 is just barely better than the Dreamcast while being objectively weaker than the GameCube and the Xbox. (This is why the PS3 and PS4 are so funny.) Obviously, success is random and never indicative of anything. (All reports seem to indicate the Mega Drive made Sega way more money in the end, though.) The problem here is that the SFC was coming out years after any competition. Imagine the Dreamcast coming out in 2002 or something like that. The only reason the SFC was particularly successful is because it was the direct followup to one of the most successful (and not just in sales) video game consoles of all time. (Despite being designed as such, the N64 was generally not deemed that successor by the public; that torch passed to the PlayStation instead.)

And if you really want me to pretend to be on-topic in a thread that threatened to devolve into that age old pointless Mega Drive/Neo Geo comparison, this is all why there is this fancy new Mega Drive shmup called Earthion in development, as opposed to a SFC one. The Mega Drive will always allow you to do more for less. People try desperately to care about the SFC in spite of itself, it's not a great homebrew platform outside of the appeal of doing a Mario hack or whatever. Something like Thunder Force IV or Alien Soldier would take an astronomically larger effort on the SFC in all respects (but especially sound), it would not look as good, and you would need to resort to things like FastROM (stop and think about why FastROM is not default) or the SA-1 to get it to run particularly well. Meanwhile, people think it's funny to keep throwing that "G-Zero" project around as some kind of QED, without really understanding that this launch title is all the SFC has, or even that you could absolutely just use the Mega-CD at that point and call it a day...

...or even that it's really impressive that the base Mega Drive (which, again, is two years older) can come very close to replicating that very specific kind of output anyway, despite not being made for it at all...

[Sumez]

The SFC does four things: colors, more elaborate hardware scaling than usual, sample-based sound, and more buttons. Its color ability doesn't really weigh as much as weird SFC worshippers would like to believe, and they are utterly crushed under the weight of the PC Engine's color ability anyway. That hardware scaling was not used nearly as often as it was, largely being seen as a gimmick even to this day. That sample-based sound was relatively primitive and is only talked about positively as part of boring console war nonsense. The only genuine advantage the SFC brought to the table was more buttons as a default, especially shoulder buttons.

Dude. I know you're hellbent responding to my posts just to be contrary, but you clearly aren't very well informed on this subject.
I don't know why I bother typing out a response, but I hope you're at least willing to learn something.

I'm talking from practical experience programming for both platforms, I know well what I'm talking about, and you're massively underselling the SNES video hardware. I'm not interested in a console war between the two platforms like you are championing, as I love both of them. I'm just stating the objective differences between them.
The MegaDrive uses a very basic off-the-shelf VDP chip, with the typical core features. What it's capable of is mostly just in the numbers. How many colors in the palette, how much video RAM can you dedicate to sprites (which is one other core advantage it has over the SNES), etc. It's not a bad thing at all, and it's similar to how most arcade PCBs were designed. The SNES video chip is just a completely different beast altogether.

It has a *TON* of different practical abilities, many of which create a very obvious distinction between the two platforms. Sure it has Mode 7 scaling, but like you said it requires dedicating the entire background layer to this, which in many use-cases makes it mostly a gimmick feature (but at the same time, I'm sure most of the games that used Mode 7 in a more subtle and less gimmicky way, you probably didn't even notice were using Mode 7)
Its real strength is in everything else it does however. You have to be in serious denial to look at the VAST array of hardware registers available on the PPU and say that the only thing it has going for it is a higher color depth. Offset-per-tile, subscreen rendering, window masking and color math, just to mention a few, alongside all the more conventional rendering parameters of course. These are all things that have come to inform people's generel perception of what "16 bit graphics" look like.

Where it all comes together however is in the ability to modify all those settings on a per-scanline setting using HDMA, which can affect anything from palette changes or masking offsets, to straight up changing background modes and VRAM allocations from one scanline to the next. The abilities it puts in the hands of the programmer is massive, and I think most actual games on the platform showcase only a tiny fraction of what someone really creative could do (as is true for a lot of hardware really). What's really cool is how versatile it is.
On the MegaDrive something similar would have to rely on IRQs and timed code, and of course you have a lot fewer potential variables to tweak. The real counterpart on the MegaDrive would be the ability to DMA into VRAM during screen rendering, which is incredibly powerful, and I'm not gonna understate that either. Though that's not so much a feature of its video hardware as it's a tool for the programmer to get really creative however, basically trying to achieve in software what the hardware doesn't do for it. And a few games do play around a lot with this to great effect, even if I can't think of examples where it does anything the SNES couldn't replicate in other ways. The potential is definitely there.

Everything else was achieved by cheat-level per-cart chips, just like with the FC, something that's always funny to see people try to deny even in an era where things like the SA-1 hacks exist. In particular, the Mega Drive's entire DMA toolkit is considerably better than the SFC's at everything that is not "a higher raw number of colors most of the time", I have no idea what you're getting at there.

SNES cartridge technology isn't comparable to the NES ones, which were mapped directly to PPU memory, thus allowing them to switch out entire blocks of video data on a per-cycle basis. Unfortunately, such power isn't available on the SNES, or MegaDrive, or most other video game platforms due to how they are designed. Though I'd be amazed to see how people would have found ways to utilize that had it been possible.
The SNES on-cart chips were most commonly used to handle data compression, or work as a basic co-processor, in fact the SA-1 was often just used to handle copy protection (don't come telling me Kirby really needed a co-processor to handle its game logic lol). The only examples I'm aware of where such a co-processor actually made any notable difference for a SNES game, were the few 3D games (Mario Kart, Pilotwings, ...) which use a DSP-1 for vector calculations, or the SuperFX's ability to process graphics in software. I'd consider those SuperFX games moreso than SNES games. You also don't judge the MegaDrive based on its need for a co-processor for Virtua Racing.
Many of the SNES's most impressive looking games use no on-board technology at all.

It can even run at this higher resolution better than the SFC could run at its standard resolution!

You're just saying random words now. What does "running it better" mean? The resolutions used on both platforms is consistent, anything else would be really odd. It's a hardware feature, so there's no "performance" metrics to look at. It either renders the resolution that you want or it doesn't. It's not like how rendering a 3D game at a higher resolution puts a higher performance load on your pixel shader calculations or whatever..

it is so much harder to do anything on the SFC, and it's not the fun kind of hard.

Another common misconception. What did you try to do on the SFC that you find not-fun hard?
There's a big barrier of entry due to how much initialization is required just to make the graphics chip display anything (which again is due to how versatile it is), and for that reason I'd recommend any budding homebrewer to get their hands dirty on the NES first. That said, it's mostly a question of finding some useful initialization routines and a good dev environment, and contemporary devs would have cool devkits handling all of that.
Nowadays you'd also often see people recommend MegaDrive programming over SNES for the simple reason that you can find much better C compilers for the former, while the latter pretty much requires assembly programming. But that's also a problem of people seeing "assembly" as a bit of a scare-word when it really shouldn't be. Nearly all contemporary MegaDrive games were made in assembly anyway.
I'll say, 68k assembly *IS* incredibly nice and neat to work with, but I also have a personal love for how the 6502 family handles certain things, it's less straight forward but it's incredibly elegant. It's definitely not "hard", especially not when you get 16-bit index registers compared to the 6502's 8-bit ones which severely limited how you'd design larger data structures.

Why do you think so many SFC games have such a huge problem with slowdown? It's because the damned thing barely works, that's why!

Shitty devs? Tough deadlines? People not caring? Castlevania Bloodlines is full of slowdown as well, but I'd never blame the MegaDrive for that.

Actually a few people have put a lot of research was put into this, and I'm not gonna draw any conclusions without holding the facts myself. But there really aren't that many games suffering from slowdown, it's mostly a few notable usual suspects such as Super Ghouls n Ghosts or Gradius 3, released in the launch window of the system, giving an impression that early dev systems might have been designed differently. That's just speculation though. One guy on a forum I used to frequent actually looked into Super Ghouls n Ghosts, and noticed that pretty much all the slowdown comes from the odd way it buffers sprite data, essentially copying it into multiple different buffers using different data structures before DMA'ing it into object memory. That definitely reeks of a hotfix patch applied late in development when something unexpectedly changed.
Again, though, still just speculation.

If you ask me, without looking into the actual code of slow games I'd imagine a really large part of some games's slowdown comes from the dumb way two bits of sprite data are placed in a separate table, sharing their bits between three other sprites, which makes altering those bits stupidly slow whenever it needs to be handled dynamically, for every sprite on every frame. There are ways to handle it, but they require clever programming tricks, or you could try to ignore the issue by designing your game in a way that you have multiple groups of sprite data designed so that most of them never need to modify those bits.
This is, at least from a progreamming perspective, really stupid design. But it's an obscure aspect that most people probably don't understand the implications of, so its easier to latch on to the misinformation that the SNES CPU is "too slow". Ask any experienced SNES dev and they'll be cursing the "high table".

The truth is that the Super Famicom is objectively weaker than the PC Engine and the Mega Drive

If you know anything about the hardware of any of those consoles, you know using weird absolutist statements like "it's weaker than" makes completely zero sense in this context. It's the kind of speech only useful in marketing, similar to boasting of "16 bit" or "64 bit" consoles.
Like I started out stating in the post that you quoted, the most notable, and ultimately relevant, differences between these consoles comes from their features, and not something that can be measured in possessing more or less "power". And as for anything that *can*, the difference between them is close to negligible. Anyone with actual insight into the hardware all three platforms would agree.

it's not a great homebrew platform outside of the appeal of doing a Mario hack or whatever. Something like Thunder Force IV or Alien Soldier would take an astronomically larger effort on the SFC in all respects

I'd try to go on responding constructively, but you keep just making things up. There is absolutely no basis for any of the above statements.

and you would need to resort to things like FastROM (stop and think about why FastROM is not default)

I know exactly why FastROM isn't default, and I'd be happy to tell you, but now I'm really curious to hear what your theory is XD

[Despatche]

I know you're hellbent responding to my posts just to be contrary

If you actually believe this, then nothing else you have to say is interesting. I'd love to say that I stopped reading here, but I'm too much of a glutton for punishment and skimmed over your drivel. It's really creepy how wrong you are about so much, and I'm not even talking about these two awful posts of yours. Sorting through your endless nonsense is not worth anyone's time. Great example: how are you going to sit here and make some grand statement about the SFC having "quite a massive advantage" that is "to a much bigger degree" (these are your words!) than literally anything else about the comparison, then start going on about "absolutist statements" and "marketing" speak when I dare to declare the same damned thing?

Similarly, I don't "judge" Virtua Racing because it's a singular game (though it almost wasn't, and in a much more interesting way than any SFC chip). It exists to prove a point, that Sega didn't need to cheat like that. This point is made all the funnier by Deluxe releasing very shortly afterward, then multiplied by the equally funny fact that you cannot actually play the original Virtua Racing through a 32X. Don't you dare try to diminish the importance of the SFC cheat chips with some nonsense about usage (something you're actually willing to be honest about otherwise), a pointless comparison that is not interesting at all, and some weird attack on what is essentially a harmless vanity project (three words that may very well describe the Mega Drive as a whole).

It would also be nice if you stopped trying to pretend that you're secretly some skilled homebrew dev. I certainly would never do anything of the sort. Sorry, but nobody's gonna make Thunder Force IV or Alien Soldier for the SFC any time soon. Devs took one crack at that with Thunder Spirits and decided to never try that again. For better or worse, SFC development remains primarily for SMW hacks (which I am almost glad that Mario Maker did not completely kill), that's just how it is.

[Necronom]

Arcade Version Location Test footage:

https://youtu.be/oya0aCFiaTI?si=PK0vpD9vfvE2DZN-

Interesting. So there will be an Exa version next year, next to the MD version and current-gen consoles. That would be a first...and hopefully not last.

[DietSoap]

The SNES has quite a massive advantage over the MegaDrive in its video hardware, which is capable of much more background layers, more colorful palettes, color math, HDMA (automatic per-scanline register writes), and various other special effects. This usually informs the technical difference between the two platforms to a much bigger degree than any other factor (including the CPU, despite whatever information voices on the internet with no knowledge of the subject matter might try to forward to you).

No. This misinformation must stop.

The SFC does four things: colors, more elaborate hardware scaling than usual, sample-based sound, and more buttons. Its color ability doesn't really weigh as much as weird SFC worshippers would like to believe, and they are utterly crushed under the weight of the PC Engine's color ability anyway. That hardware scaling was not used nearly as often as it was, largely being seen as a gimmick even to this day. That sample-based sound was relatively primitive and is only talked about positively as part of boring console war nonsense. The only genuine advantage the SFC brought to the table was more buttons as a default, especially shoulder buttons. Everything else was achieved by cheat-level per-cart chips, just like with the FC, something that's always funny to see people try to deny even in an era where things like the SA-1 hacks exist. In particular, the Mega Drive's entire DMA toolkit is considerably better than the SFC's at everything that is not "a higher raw number of colors most of the time", I have no idea what you're getting at there.

The Mega Drive also used a truly higher resolution for the vast majority of its games. More detail, better adherence to the 4:3 standard. It can even run at this higher resolution better than the SFC could run at its standard resolution! Dipping into the standard resolution on the Mega Drive was primarily used for specific game-to-game cases like the Sonic CD title screen and special stages (which it may not have even needed), or Fire Mustang being a port of a game that used the standard resolution. In particular, there is one area in which the SFC will lose forever: it is so much harder to do anything on the SFC, and it's not the fun kind of hard. Why do you think so many SFC games have such a huge problem with slowdown? It's because the damned thing barely works, that's why! You make an attempt to be correct when you state that the Mega Drive's CPU is not particularly special, but it's clear you're just talking about "blast processing" or whatever and not at all about the Mega Drive actually being fairly well-designed hardware all around. Last but not least, the Mega Drive can do all sorts of weird tricks, on top of everything else it can do, and without the need for any chip or add-on. Nobody really knows about this because hardly any developer used said tricks, they weren't techniques that were valued much back then. It's the fact that this is possible that's important, because this is about raw power. (This is why Red Zone is so insane.)

The truth is that the Super Famicom is objectively weaker than the PC Engine and the Mega Drive, just like how the PlayStation is objectively weaker than the Saturn and the N64, and just like how the PlayStation 2 is just barely better than the Dreamcast while being objectively weaker than the GameCube and the Xbox. (This is why the PS3 and PS4 are so funny.) Obviously, success is random and never indicative of anything. (All reports seem to indicate the Mega Drive made Sega way more money in the end, though.) The problem here is that the SFC was coming out years after any competition. Imagine the Dreamcast coming out in 2002 or something like that. The only reason the SFC was particularly successful is because it was the direct followup to one of the most successful (and not just in sales) video game consoles of all time. (Despite being designed as such, the N64 was generally not deemed that successor by the public; that torch passed to the PlayStation instead.)

And if you really want me to pretend to be on-topic in a thread that threatened to devolve into that age old pointless Mega Drive/Neo Geo comparison, this is all why there is this fancy new Mega Drive shmup called Earthion in development, as opposed to a SFC one. The Mega Drive will always allow you to do more for less. People try desperately to care about the SFC in spite of itself, it's not a great homebrew platform outside of the appeal of doing a Mario hack or whatever. Something like Thunder Force IV or Alien Soldier would take an astronomically larger effort on the SFC in all respects (but especially sound), it would not look as good, and you would need to resort to things like FastROM (stop and think about why FastROM is not default) or the SA-1 to get it to run particularly well. Meanwhile, people think it's funny to keep throwing that "G-Zero" project around as some kind of QED, without really understanding that this launch title is all the SFC has, or even that you could absolutely just use the Mega-CD at that point and call it a day...

...or even that it's really impressive that the base Mega Drive (which, again, is two years older) can come very close to replicating that very specific kind of output anyway, despite not being made for it at all...

I never thought I'd see the day I read a Despatche post I actually like.

[Despatche]

Harsh words, man.

Now that I think about it, it's illuminating Sumez skipped over the PlayStation bit. Usually when I try to say that the PS1 kinda sucks, I get the Sonic fans screaming at me about how the Saturn's 3D was "last minute" as if that means literally anything, and I get the N64 haters screaming about the RDRAM (why is it always about the RDRAM) and the controller (the "I need three arms" jokes got old by 1996). At this point, I'm surprised people even bother to acknowledge that the Saturn or the N64 even exist.

People can be annoying about the PS2 as well, but not nearly as much. Society seems to get that the PS2 kinda sucks? Sure, they'll whine about DVDs all day, but they tend to concede that the GameCube is a better box (which is always a dangerous situation with all the Nintendo anti-fans loafing around), and nobody dares to question the Xbox (despite everything). I'm not about to let people start saying that the PS2 is some kind of "underdog" though.

Anyway, Earthion's more important. I'm not so sure about doing an exA version around the same time as the "regular" version. Either the regular version isn't going to be that great, or the exA version isn't going to be worth it. I can't imagine exA is very happy about so much of their output being ports, but everything seems to suggest that's part of the point of exA... I'm just glad I don't run an arcade, so I don't have to worry about this.

[Necronom]

Either the regular version isn't going to be that great, or the exA version isn't going to be worth it. I can't imagine exA is very happy about so much of their output being ports, but everything seems to suggest that's part of the point of exA... I'm just glad I don't run an arcade, so I don't have to worry about this.

Why can't both versions - actually it will be more than two, considering consoles - turn out great?
Let's not confuse things - Earthion is being made first and foremost as a Mega Drive game for collectors and MD-enthusiasts. From the presentations so far, it seems that to Yuzo Koshiro this is a very personal project that they really want to nail properly. That is also the reason why they delayed it. Imo this is not the usual exA deal where Exa gets the updated definitive version. I expect all other versions after the original MD-cartridge to be simply ports with very little "extras". Otherwise the original concept doesn't make much sense.
Btw, exA would not exist if games had to be developed exclusively for their system.

[FunktionJCB]

Why can't both versions - actually it will be more than two, considering consoles - turn out great?

I'm sure the game will be fine, but exA's thing is all about exclusivity, and having extra/"better" stuff than the home versions, so you just know certain improvements, and/or content, will be exA exclusive.

Which, frankly, majorly sucks. I was unaware there was an exA version until now, so I was not expecting different versions, where one will surely have stuff that the others won't get.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Why can't both versions - actually it will be more than two, considering consoles - turn out great?

I'm sure the game will be fine, but exA's thing is all about exclusivity, and having extra/"better" stuff than the home versions, so you just know certain improvements, and/or content, will be exA exclusive.

Which, frankly, majorly sucks. I was unaware there was an exA version until now, so I was not expecting different versions, where one will surely have stuff that the others won't get.

Yep, that's Exa-Arcadia's exact recipe/formula for exclusivity with stg titles developed/released for it. It is what it is.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Sengoku Strider]

If you actually believe this, then nothing else you have to say is interesting. I'd love to say that I stopped reading here, but I'm too much of a glutton for punishment and skimmed over your drivel. It's really creepy how wrong you are about so much, and I'm not even talking about these two awful posts of yours. Sorting through your endless nonsense is not worth anyone's time.

These posts work a lot better if I read them in Skeletor's voice.

[Johnpv]

I know you're hellbent responding to my posts just to be contrary

If you actually believe this, then nothing else you have to say is interesting. I'd love to say that I stopped reading here, but I'm too much of a glutton for punishment and skimmed over your drivel. It's really creepy how wrong you are about so much, and I'm not even talking about these two awful posts of yours. Sorting through your endless nonsense is not worth anyone's time.

So what I got out of this is that you don't actually know what you're talking about and instead of trying to present counter facts you're just going "Fake news!".

[Lander]

Right you are, Ken