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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Which generation does the Genesis belong to? Gen 3 or 4.

OTBWY on 31 October 2019

During the early 90s, Nintendo and Sega were in steady competition. But whether anyone preferred the NES library of games or the Sega Genesis games was a matter of opinion. However, the debate among fans and Sega's marketing campaign came down to one simple fact: The Genesis was 16-bit, while the NES was only 8.

This started a trend I like to call "The Bit Wars." Nobody ever talked about bits before then, and nobody ever talked about bits since, and what are bits anyway?! Nobody knew, they're just bits! Try explaining that to your parents. "Ooh, I want a Super Nintendo for Christmas!" "Don't you already have a Nintendo?" "Yeah, but this one's 16-bit!" "What's that?" "Er... I dunno!" Other than it meaning the graphics were better, that's all we cared about. But the Bit Wars brought our sense of gaming down to numbers. People began to care more about the graphics and less about the actual gameplay. It was to the point that some consoles even used the number of bits in their name, like the TurboGrafx-16 and the Nintendo 64.

But in 1993, one console came along to remind us that bits aren't everything. It was the Atari Jaguar, and it was announced as the first 64-bit game system. We were like "Damn! 64?! That's like, four times the bits!" Even the official advertising slogan said "Do the math."

This caused a lot of debate amongst gamers whether or not it really was 64-bit. It's a topic that usually overshadows the Jaguar itself, but it's something we just need to get out of the way.

Well, we do know that Atari was originally planning a 32-bit system called the Panther, but decided to skip it and leap ahead. The Jaguar still used a 32-bit graphic processing unit, but through a combination of other processors somehow added up to 64. It's technical and confusing. But the point is the Jaguar was a rare species, not built like most game consoles. That made it harder to program games on it and as a result, many games didn't utilize its full capabilities, whatever they could've been.



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Landale_Star on 31 October 2019
OTBWY said:

During the early 90s, Nintendo and Sega were in steady competition. But whether anyone preferred the NES library of games or the Sega Genesis games was a matter of opinion. However, the debate among fans and Sega's marketing campaign came down to one simple fact: The Genesis was 16-bit, while the NES was only 8.

This started a trend I like to call "The Bit Wars." Nobody ever talked about bits before then, and nobody ever talked about bits since, and what are bits anyway?! Nobody knew, they're just bits! Try explaining that to your parents. "Ooh, I want a Super Nintendo for Christmas!" "Don't you already have a Nintendo?" "Yeah, but this one's 16-bit!" "What's that?" "Er... I dunno!" Other than it meaning the graphics were better, that's all we cared about. But the Bit Wars brought our sense of gaming down to numbers. People began to care more about the graphics and less about the actual gameplay. It was to the point that some consoles even used the number of bits in their name, like the TurboGrafx-16 and the Nintendo 64.

But in 1993, one console came along to remind us that bits aren't everything. It was the Atari Jaguar, and it was announced as the first 64-bit game system. We were like "Damn! 64?! That's like, four times the bits!" Even the official advertising slogan said "Do the math."

This caused a lot of debate amongst gamers whether or not it really was 64-bit. It's a topic that usually overshadows the Jaguar itself, but it's something we just need to get out of the way.

Well, we do know that Atari was originally planning a 32-bit system called the Panther, but decided to skip it and leap ahead. The Jaguar still used a 32-bit graphic processing unit, but through a combination of other processors somehow added up to 64. It's technical and confusing. But the point is the Jaguar was a rare species, not built like most game consoles. That made it harder to program games on it and as a result, many games didn't utilize its full capabilities, whatever they could've been.

Nice AVGN quote, are you going to do the full video?



OTBWY on 31 October 2019
Landale_Star said:
OTBWY said:

During the early 90s, Nintendo and Sega were in steady competition. But whether anyone preferred the NES library of games or the Sega Genesis games was a matter of opinion. However, the debate among fans and Sega's marketing campaign came down to one simple fact: The Genesis was 16-bit, while the NES was only 8.

This started a trend I like to call "The Bit Wars." Nobody ever talked about bits before then, and nobody ever talked about bits since, and what are bits anyway?! Nobody knew, they're just bits! Try explaining that to your parents. "Ooh, I want a Super Nintendo for Christmas!" "Don't you already have a Nintendo?" "Yeah, but this one's 16-bit!" "What's that?" "Er... I dunno!" Other than it meaning the graphics were better, that's all we cared about. But the Bit Wars brought our sense of gaming down to numbers. People began to care more about the graphics and less about the actual gameplay. It was to the point that some consoles even used the number of bits in their name, like the TurboGrafx-16 and the Nintendo 64.

But in 1993, one console came along to remind us that bits aren't everything. It was the Atari Jaguar, and it was announced as the first 64-bit game system. We were like "Damn! 64?! That's like, four times the bits!" Even the official advertising slogan said "Do the math."

This caused a lot of debate amongst gamers whether or not it really was 64-bit. It's a topic that usually overshadows the Jaguar itself, but it's something we just need to get out of the way.

Well, we do know that Atari was originally planning a 32-bit system called the Panther, but decided to skip it and leap ahead. The Jaguar still used a 32-bit graphic processing unit, but through a combination of other processors somehow added up to 64. It's technical and confusing. But the point is the Jaguar was a rare species, not built like most game consoles. That made it harder to program games on it and as a result, many games didn't utilize its full capabilities, whatever they could've been.

Nice AVGN quote, are you going to do the full video?

Nah just the relevant parts :D



Pemalite on 01 November 2019
OTBWY said:

During the early 90s, Nintendo and Sega were in steady competition. But whether anyone preferred the NES library of games or the Sega Genesis games was a matter of opinion. However, the debate among fans and Sega's marketing campaign came down to one simple fact: The Genesis was 16-bit, while the NES was only 8.

This started a trend I like to call "The Bit Wars." Nobody ever talked about bits before then, and nobody ever talked about bits since, and what are bits anyway?! Nobody knew, they're just bits! Try explaining that to your parents. "Ooh, I want a Super Nintendo for Christmas!" "Don't you already have a Nintendo?" "Yeah, but this one's 16-bit!" "What's that?" "Er... I dunno!" Other than it meaning the graphics were better, that's all we cared about. But the Bit Wars brought our sense of gaming down to numbers. People began to care more about the graphics and less about the actual gameplay. It was to the point that some consoles even used the number of bits in their name, like the TurboGrafx-16 and the Nintendo 64.

But in 1993, one console came along to remind us that bits aren't everything. It was the Atari Jaguar, and it was announced as the first 64-bit game system. We were like "Damn! 64?! That's like, four times the bits!" Even the official advertising slogan said "Do the math."

This caused a lot of debate amongst gamers whether or not it really was 64-bit. It's a topic that usually overshadows the Jaguar itself, but it's something we just need to get out of the way.

Well, we do know that Atari was originally planning a 32-bit system called the Panther, but decided to skip it and leap ahead. The Jaguar still used a 32-bit graphic processing unit, but through a combination of other processors somehow added up to 64. It's technical and confusing. But the point is the Jaguar was a rare species, not built like most game consoles. That made it harder to program games on it and as a result, many games didn't utilize its full capabilities, whatever they could've been.

The Jaguar was a 32bit system as the CPU used 32bit instructions.



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OTBWY on 01 November 2019
Pemalite said:
OTBWY said:

During the early 90s, Nintendo and Sega were in steady competition. But whether anyone preferred the NES library of games or the Sega Genesis games was a matter of opinion. However, the debate among fans and Sega's marketing campaign came down to one simple fact: The Genesis was 16-bit, while the NES was only 8.

This started a trend I like to call "The Bit Wars." Nobody ever talked about bits before then, and nobody ever talked about bits since, and what are bits anyway?! Nobody knew, they're just bits! Try explaining that to your parents. "Ooh, I want a Super Nintendo for Christmas!" "Don't you already have a Nintendo?" "Yeah, but this one's 16-bit!" "What's that?" "Er... I dunno!" Other than it meaning the graphics were better, that's all we cared about. But the Bit Wars brought our sense of gaming down to numbers. People began to care more about the graphics and less about the actual gameplay. It was to the point that some consoles even used the number of bits in their name, like the TurboGrafx-16 and the Nintendo 64.

But in 1993, one console came along to remind us that bits aren't everything. It was the Atari Jaguar, and it was announced as the first 64-bit game system. We were like "Damn! 64?! That's like, four times the bits!" Even the official advertising slogan said "Do the math."

This caused a lot of debate amongst gamers whether or not it really was 64-bit. It's a topic that usually overshadows the Jaguar itself, but it's something we just need to get out of the way.

Well, we do know that Atari was originally planning a 32-bit system called the Panther, but decided to skip it and leap ahead. The Jaguar still used a 32-bit graphic processing unit, but through a combination of other processors somehow added up to 64. It's technical and confusing. But the point is the Jaguar was a rare species, not built like most game consoles. That made it harder to program games on it and as a result, many games didn't utilize its full capabilities, whatever they could've been.

The Jaguar was a 32bit system as the CPU used 32bit instructions.

They said "do the math" though some combination of bits that added up to 64 bits. The math community remained skeptical. 



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The_Liquid_Laser on 01 November 2019
Shadow1980 said:
In terms of power and release timing, it is clearly a Gen 4 console. It vastly outclasses the NES in every conceivable way in terms of hardware. Its first release (Japan in 1989) was six years after the NES's first release (in Japan in 1983). It spent nearly all of its life in direct competition with the SNES and TurboGrafx-16.

Every post-crash generation was fairly discrete, with each system clearly belonging to a specific generation. It wasn't until the unusual launch timing of the Switch that people started to question how systems ought to be classified generationally.

Incidentally, there actually was some debate about what generations pre-crash systems belonged to. While most people today generally classify all pre-Crash of '83 cartridge-based systems as Second Generation, it wasn't unusual in the past for people to classify very-early 80s systems like the Intellivision, ColecoVision, and Atari 5200 as belonging to a generation separate from the Atari 2600 and other late 70s consoles. But considering they all existed contemporaneously with each other, were comparable in terms of power and game libraries, and all were effectively killed off by the Crash of '83, most people today consider them all as belonging to the same generation.

The Atari 5200 and Colecovision were released about 5 years after the Atari 2600 launch and they were clearly a step above graphically.  At the time, they were called "third wave", and that basically the means they thought of them as third generation.  For the people who remember this era, the real debate is about whether or not the crash negates these consoles as a new generation.  They definitely tried to be, but they didn't sell like the Atari 2600.



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Dulfite on 01 November 2019

I have a solution to all this categorizing mess.
We simply have two eras. Before Switch and After Switch.

All consoles released prior to Switch, including Xbone and piss4, are BS.
All consoles after Switch are AS.

/Sarcasm



d21lewis on 01 November 2019

Back in those days, a 4-5 year console life span was normal. In fact, I don't even know how that was even considered an argument. There were console brands that only lasted less than a couple of years without a successor. That has nothing to do with which generation they are a part of.



Chicho on 01 November 2019

Next thread: What generation was the Virtuyal Boy?



DonFerrari on 05 November 2019
Chicho said:

Next thread: What generation was the Virtuyal Boy?

Since it have VR and portability we don`t have any HH that compete with it, so it is gen 9 or 10 depending on when some company launches some VR HH to compete against VB.



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