Genesis vs TurboGrafx Parallax. How do they compare?

[Thenewguy]

Of course, NEC didn't even attempt to push into that market in spite of it being close to ideal in a number of areas, especially in terms of directly catering to their Japanese market model. (with the exception of being more price sensitive and unlikely to latch on to the CD peripheral)
The extremely small form factor of the PCE probably would have been a major selling point in Europe (in spite of the single controller port . . . though modifying it to at least have 2 would have been significant).

The biggest problems in my opinion would be the CD add-on, and the software library.

I don't see many people in Britain buying the add-on, definitely not in numbers, that sort of thing is unpopular around here, they would've had to have put more support behind Hu-cards.

The software would've had to have branched out into more areas, especially sports, however, it would've been in a very good position if released here ~1989, because Shmups and general arcade ports were very popular during that time, if it had become entrenched during that period then British software houses would've started supporting it by the early 90s (when scrolling shmups rapidly started to fall out of favour) solving that problem with little effort.

I've run into many British magazine articles about the PC-Engine now, they are universally positive, all the magazines like it more than the NES, Master System, and initially Mega Drive too, reader letters also often mention the system to ask when its coming out. I'm not sure if you've been reading the Euro info thread, but Phantar seems to think that opinion was positive for the PC-Engine in Germany too.

[Barone]

Although on the Genesis you could do dynamic tiles (like the PCE does) to get a third one, I think it's done in Sonic 3.
Dynamic tiles on the SNES would be suicide.

I am not familiar with the SNES hardware so much. Why would this be suicide?

The SNES is limited to updating VRAM during Vblank (like the MD), except it has much less bandwidth than the MD. It can do the least updates of all 3 systems (PCE being the best since although it's not as fast as the MD, it can do it during active display).
If you waste it doing dynamic tiles, you won't be animating sprites a lot.

I understand this is a super old claim and I don't even know what's Kamahl's stance on the subject nowadays, but one game which negates this whole argument is Saturday Night Slam Masters. Especially on its 4P mode.

You have a lot going on in terms of sprite animation and tons of dynamic tiles (all the crowd, the cameraman and even the ring ropes animation are done with tiles). The animation is not the most fluid or fastest in the wrold and only 184 (out of 224) lines of the screen are updated in-game but, all in all, I think it's impressive as fuck and certainly one of the most (if not *the* most) impressive game on the SNES in terms of animation.

[Sik]

Well, since that was brought up I may as well chime in :v

How much you can transfer is not a big issue: MD has about the same bandwidth at the equivalent resolution, and you really want to avoid accessing video memory in active scan at all costs, so that puts it on the same level as the SNES. The big issue is that the SNES limits sprite graphics to 16KB, while the MD can use any of its 64KB for them. This means that if you decide to give priority to sprites over background detail, the MD lets you do that, while the SNES will have you screwed.

This is probably one of the biggest issues with sprites on the SNES. Most games spend more on background graphics anyway, but for those cases that don't, the SNES falls short pretty hard.

EDIT: OK I was replying mostly to the new post rather than the quotes, but if we talk strictly about dynamic tiles for background use, SNES is about on par with the MD, because of what I mentioned that you'd want to avoid loading graphics outside vblank at all costs anyway.

[Kamahl]

My stance on dynamic tiles on the SNES has changed, you can do them just fine (depending on how crazy you go and how crazy the rest of the game is). If you are just loading them into VRAM from the get go then obviously there is no difference between the 3.

But for the rest there's no opinion to change since they are hard numbers.

The PCE can do the most updates if you have the full screen showing, the MD pulls ahead if you cut part of the screen out. The SNES is behind both but, of course, if you cut quite a bit of the screen it also gets a nice boost allowing games like Saturday Night Slam Masters to happen.

[EPSYLON EAGLE]

Can the Snes use animated tiles to simulate one background layer how the Genesis do in Sonic 3?

[Black_Tiger]

Can the Snes use animated tiles to simulate one background layer how the Genesis do in Sonic 3?

Yes, pretty much any console can. Lots of NES and SMS games do.

[Sik]

Yeah SNES can.

The tricky stuff is with the NES and Neo Geo, because they take the video memory from the cartridge instead of being internal. If the cartridge uses RAM or lots of bank switching, the method works, but if it just uses a small fixed chunk of ROM then it can't. So for those systems, the answer is "it depends" (on the cartridge!).

EDIT: here's the loads of bank switching variant (go to 17:41). It's doing both the scrolling clouds and the wind animation in general. And yes, something equivalent should be feasible on Mega Drive, SNES and PCE too if you have enough bandwidth to spare.

[evilevoix]

Wow back from the dead. These are my favorite types of threads

[Flygon]

The NES had some fairly ridiculous mappers going on. You can have some fairly insane stuff going on. Even more absurd with modern technology.

The base hardware is rather weak. Nintendo machines always had very rigorous use of cartridge expansions. They just only started being advertised and touted on the SNES.