| bonzobanana said:
Too difficult to call as the Megadrive had some strong advantages over super nintendo. For a start it had a 16bit 68000 processor and a Z80A processor which was mainly used for sound but could be used for normal programming. It was higher resolution too. Snes had a weak 8/16bit processor which was also fully 6502 compatible for NES games (but then Nintendo never bought out the cartridge adapter for NES games). The advantage of the super nintendo was its graphics chip with mode 7 and sound chip. It's unlikely the super nintendo could do the fast effortless scrolling of sonic games and visually the megadrive couldn't do everything the super nintendo could do like mode 7. There are many games available for both super nintendo and megadrive that play much better on megadrive. The real advantage to super nintendo was the sfx chip in later cartridges which included a simple risc processor. This took the super nintendo in power terms somewhere between megadrive and 32x power. |
Good post! It was a fascinating time as they both had different advantages which when utilized really made them stand out. I think the SNES had far superior sprite rotation capabilities thanks to Mode 7 etc, which meant much bigger on screen bosses etc in games. However Mega Drive was definitely far better for bullet hell games etc. Personally I preferred the SNES. But I was brought up on Nintendo consoles.
The funny thing with the Super FX chip was, that was actually from a British company which Nintendo really screwed over in the 90s.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-04-born-slippy-the-making-of-star-fox
RIP Dad 25/11/51 - 13/12/13. You will be missed but never forgotten.
