Super Nintendo is balls for action games?

[monel]

I saw articles on at least one adapter that was supposed to run NES games on the SF, don't think it came out then but that was probably what Nintendo intended too although that was a 3rd party one.

The Super Famicom screens looked so colourful when it came out, made my Megadrive look old. But the MD games strength was probably seeing them in motion.

[Leon Retro]

The Super Famicom screens looked so colourful when it came out, made my Megadrive look old. But the MD games strength was probably seeing them in motion.

The SFC definitely has clear strengths in the visual and audio departments -- and there are plenty of games that show this off to great effect. The architecture has a few issues, but talented devs managed to overcome them to a good degree. It's just a fact that many early games suffer from notoriously bad slowdown.

It seems to me that lots of devs preferred the Mega Drive's architecture with its 7.6 MHz 680000. But the MD is also a system where there's a huge gulf between the best and worst games. Some MD games have terrible audio; some have absolutely sensational audio. Some games really suffer from the fairly limited colour palette and amount of colours on screen, but many look beautiful despite the inadequacies.

All sorts of retro consoles -- PCE, MD, SNES, Neo Geo etc.. -- demanded an intricate understanding of the architecture and low level coding to maximise performance. The SNES is simply a system where this approach is vitally important.

I always say a system should be judged by its best games. All retro systems have truly dire games that in no way take proper advantage of the hardware -- but you also have an elite groups of games that really show off how capable the hardware actually is. Talented devs did wonders with all sorts of retro machines -- from the Mega Drive, to the PC Engine and SNES. It's just a sad fact that some coders/devs weren't so talented, so all retro systems have a huge amount of dross plaguing their libraries.

[Hirst]

The best old console games tend to be exclusives to their system, because they've been built around the strengths of the system to the point where any alternative port will be either inferior or nothing like the original.

The MD audio depends very much on the skill of the person doing it and whether they had access to (or made their own) good sound drivers. In the early days it wasn't uncommon for some games to more-or-less only use the PSG chip they'd included for Master System compatibility. Problem is that a "solution" was found in the GEMS sound driver which allowed very simple (and usually poor) conversions from MIDI instruments. This became the norm for a lot of Western developers and is why a lot of the games sound awful.

[Leon Retro]

The best old console games tend to be exclusives to their system, because they've been built around the strengths of the system to the point where any alternative port will be either inferior or nothing like the original.

Yeah, that tends to be the case. When a dev focuses on getting the most out of one system, with no consideration for ports, you often get a technical showcase.

Problem is that a "solution" was found in the GEMS sound driver which allowed very simple (and usually poor) conversions from MIDI instruments. This became the norm for a lot of Western developers and is why a lot of the games sound awful.

A lot of American games have audio that's like fingernails on a blackboard. Then you have plenty of Japanese MD games that really show off the machine's audio capabilities.

[DeathAdder]

Haven't seen Leon Retro on here for ages. Does he no longer post?

[Sketcz]

20th December last year.

[QualityChimp]

Haven't seen Leon Retro on here for ages. Does he no longer post?

I don't think he does, no.

I'm not sure why.

I'll make something up though: He ran away to the circus to be a unicyclist.