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Angry Video Game Nerd
- Thread starter demi
- Start date
While the CPU for the Genesis was twice the speed of the Snes it really has nothing to do with how fast you can make a sprite move on the screen or how fast the background scrolls. There's plenty of games on the Snes that have the same "speed" of sonic running around.
Sega exploited a number and turned it into a marketing campaign, they didn't really prove that they could do something that the SNES couldn't do other than have a Clangy sounding Yamaha YM2612 that all your old arcade and computer games sounded like and I guess uh.. Blood in Mortal Kombat 1
Fox Mulder
Member
Why didn't the snes ever get EA's Road Rash?
Because EA hated Nintendo at the time
Actually if I recall EA was trying to make Road Rash for Snes but it just never happened. EA also had a LOT more success on the Genesis than they ever did on the SNES.
Still. Would have been awesome to see a snes Road Rash. Hell would be awesome to see a current gen Road Rash
bodyboarder
Member
Having never seen any of his videos before, that was pretty good. Any of his other videos I really should watch?
This is nothing like his normal videos. This was far more about information and less about theatrics and comedy. If you like this video, there's no guarantee you'll like his 'old' AVGN stuff.
Actually, I thought Nintendo's "Play it Loud" ad campaign was in direct response to Sega.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIpM_WHQPfw&eurl=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMQAbQ1hJZw
Sure it's a response. It's pretty much the typical 90's X-TREME advertising. However it's not mud slinging negative advertising. Nintendo kinda just did what it did, throw Nintendo Power at the kids and let them live in a world where Nintendo only existed. Worked for them for a good while.
I mean really the two fighting over scraps were Sega and NEC at the time. NEC would give you Fat Johnny Turbo battling "Feka" over shitty CD Rom attatchments and Sega was the kid at school that ate paper to get attention. At least in Sega's case it worked to an extent.
I mean I recall reading in Steven Kent's First Quarter book that rappers were doing the "Sega Scream" at each other backstage
. I mean for Eff's sake my roomate still yells the Sega Scream randomly but I think it's just cause he's got asperger's or something.Cut out the middleman
It really was a hack of Speedy Gonzales.no, but i'd rather play Thunderforce III/IV, Alien Soldier, Revenge of Shinobi, Shinobi III, etc. over virtually any SNES game.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Perhaps I should have clarified, the games could not have been done on the SNES...without a significant amount of slowdown.
krae_man said:
Oh you.
But funnily enough, I have actually seen people use this hack in serious arguments. The 16-bit Wars will never end
There are reviews of his that are very similar style though. There's almost no AVGN schtick from what I can recall in his system reviews, for example. Watch these Bodyboarder if you want calm informative AVGN: Sega CD, Sega 32x, Jaguar, Virtual Boy, Double Vision, Swordquest, Nintendo Power, Castlevania series.
Watch these to try out angry AVGN: TMNT, Battletoads, Silver Surfer, Super Pitfall, Dragon's Lair
Watch these to try out skit-heavy AVGN: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Rob Robot
For a combination of anger and skit, try out Ninja Gaiden. My personal favorite of them all.
By that same measurement we can also say there's a kajillion and one Snes games that could not have been done on the Genesis...without a signifcant amount of graphical/sound degradation in addition inability to produce hardware effects like mode 7 without janky software tricks.
Also, raw CPU power is meaningless and extremely misleading. A lot of processing can be offloaded to the SNES's PPU. Not to mention that Nintendo purposely chose to use that CPU knowing that they couldn't predict the future. What do I mean by that? From the get go the SNES was created to use DSP in their carts. It allowed more options. Pilotwings used it, so it wasn't done in the way of a "band-aid" like say Sega's SVD chip they used in Virtua Racing for Genesis. Day one Nintendo knew that they wouldn't have to rely on the CPU alone to handle everything. So to stack CPU's side by side is very misleading and in the end what do you really have? HEY! Look guys! This is one thing we have that is a BIGGER NUMBER than the competition, that means something right? Hell no, they couldn't even sell it like that, they had to come up with a buzzword like "Blast Processing"
You can't specifically do Sonic on the Super Nintendo. Sonic is a very processor-intensive game by design, and in fact Sonic 3 and Knuckles had to be recoded and optimized to hell and back to avoid the lag that plagued the first two games when several objects were on screen.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Exactly. Both systems had their strengths and weaknesses and both had libraries filled with games that played to the strengths of their respective console.
Okay, I agree. Sonic the Hedgehog for Genesis could not specifically be done on the SNES.
Then we agree
But, sorry, its nagging at me, you have to admit, the concept of "Blast Processing" and not really explaining what it was or did was a pretty silly trick that worked, but a silly trick regardless.
And no I'm not downplaying the Genesis's DMA vs SNES nor the CPU speed. It's a legitimate metric, if that's all you care about.
Thankfully you and I really don't because if we did then we'd do the math and get a Jaguar ;D
Sonic music hangs with the very best SNES music.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Then we agree
But, sorry, its nagging at me, you have to admit, the concept of "Blast Processing" and not really explaining what it was or did was a pretty silly trick that worked, but a silly trick regardless.
And no I'm not downplaying the Genesis's DMA vs SNES nor the CPU speed. It's a legitimate metric, if that's all you care about.
Thankfully you and I really don't because if we did then we'd do the math and get a Jaguar ;D
Oh, the 'Blast Processing' thing was just plain goofiness. It was smart to utilize that in their marketing obviously, but looking back on it, definitely goofy.
Sega of America were marketing geniuses. They knew exactly what kind of language to use in their advertising in order to lure gamers away from the Nintendo camp. But not only that, but to lure non-gamers in as well.
Criminal Upper
Banned
Yeah, as bad the SNES vs Genesis was, it was NOTHING compared to the childish mud-slinging that was PSX vs Saturn.
InfiniteNine
Rolling Girl
I actually completely missed that since I didn't even know the Saturn existed until about 3 years ago. That is probably more of a failing on Sega's part though.
Criminal Upper
Banned
Well, no, I meant the mud-slinging between the companies, not the play-ground fights. No one I knew had a saturn either.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Saturn was my main console from 1995 to 1998.
Not being a big fan of Nintendo's lack of games or Sony's disdain towards 2D games, I didn't really have much choice.
But I have no regrets, I just wish Sega would have made more of an effort at bringing over more games from Japan. Instead of emphasizing the strengths of the Saturn and it's lush library of awesome 2D games, they seemed to try to beat the PSX at it's own game with crappier versions of primitive 3D games like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Bleh.
Not being a big fan of Nintendo's lack of games or Sony's disdain towards 2D games, I didn't really have much choice.
But I have no regrets, I just wish Sega would have made more of an effort at bringing over more games from Japan. Instead of emphasizing the strengths of the Saturn and it's lush library of awesome 2D games, they seemed to try to beat the PSX at it's own game with crappier versions of primitive 3D games like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Bleh.
EmCeeGramr
Member
why is there no gif of him turning into a 90s sega skeleton
I was in high school for that gen, nobody talked about Saturn. My best friend had a Saturn but he was a weirdo. Actually, you know I never really dealt with that console war because come to think of it, N64 and PSX was like my 11th and 12th grade years and honestly yeah. I didn't follow it much. I had an N64 but then left it to my brother and my dorm-mate had a ps1 and played nothing but ff7 and mgs1. That's right, I had a PC then
I'm kinda interested in the console warz for that gen, what was it like? How bad was the mudslinging really? What was the comparison between games?
SonicMegaDrive
Member
The biggest example I can think of was "Fly, plaything, fly" in that Nights: Into Dreams promo.
Haha what?
::Googles it:: Bahahaha.
So like... What was Sony's reaction?
"Still 299."
InfiniteNine
Rolling Girl
Oh wow that is hilarious.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Sega was a gnat to Sony. Their reaction was probably thunderous laughter followed by prolonged periods of not giving a shit.
EmCeeGramr
Member
if they had emphasized 2d games in 1995 they would have died even more quickly
EmCeeGramr
Member
I've always admired them portraying Sony as the conniving brains and Sega as the dumb brainless muscle.
Oh I remember getting that in the mail, it was bad. Yeah I pretty much dropped out of console gaming until uh... Disgaea? 3D mario while neat was not the future I was looking for. , PCs filled that void nicely. But yeah Disgaea drug me back into this mess.
Well considering Sony almost made off with co-opting Nintendo's entire platform with the Nintendo Playstation's licensing agreement, it's not hard to wonder why they'd think that
Or it could just be coincidence
SonicMegaDrive
Member
They would have carved a larger niche for themsleves among the hardcore gaming community, though. The problem with the Saturn was, it simply wasn't designed to handle extensive amounts of 3D in mind. So they were left with a console that could handle 2D extremely well, but 3D worse than both of it's competitors. I understand the need to offer a comparable gaming experience as it's competition, but they should not have left it's fans hanging high and dry.
Naturally, most of us had the good insight to modify our consoles and use those colorful ads in the back of GameFan magazine to take full advantage of our $400 console
But it was pretty lame that we had to go to such lengths.
That's primarily why Sega is no longer in the console game to this day, they burned their fans one time too many.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Whoa. I have that Mario toy in it's original box. Sweet.
EmCeeGramr
Member
They would have carved a larger niche for themsleves among the hardcore gaming community, though. The problem with the Saturn was, it simply wasn't designed to handle extensive amounts of 3D in mind. So they were left with a console that could handle 2D extremely well, but 3D worse than both of it's competitors. I understand the need to offer a comparable gaming experience as it's competition, but they should not have left it's fans hanging high and dry.
Naturally, most of us had the good insight to modify our consoles and take advantage of the ads in the back of GameFan magazine to take full advantage of our $400 console
But it was pretty lame that we had to go to such lengths.
That's primarily why Sega is no longer in the console game to this day, they burned their fans one time too many.
Focusing on their hardcore niche is the strategy that lead to the Saturn and Dreamcast ending up how they did. Sega was too focused on being the cool hardcore gamer's darling with arcade-perfect ports and bizarre niche games. They continuously lost their grips on the sports and mainstream action genres that made them big in the first place.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
Actually, Sega(talking strictly about Sega of America) didn't really try to focus on their hardcore fanbase very much at all. A huge bulk of the Saturn's great library of games was left in Japan. Sega of America was trying to persuade people to buy a Saturn instead of a Playstation by claiming that their console offered a similar gaming experience.
SoA tried to pretend the Saturn was another Sega Genesis, which it wasn't. Like you said, most of the good games for it were Japanese arcade-styled games, and by that point the arcade experience just wasn't attractive to the increasingly casual gamer.
I don't think SoA wanted to deal with the Saturn at all. If they had their way, I think they would have honestly preferred to keep the Genesis alive through the 32X add-on.
MrCunningham
Member
yeah this is true. The Saturn became the TurboGrafx 16 of that generation. I owned a Saturn back then too, and I love it. But there was no denying that Sony won over the entire gaming industry in that period.
...And rightfully so. They made hardware that hit a sweet spot with developers, publishers and consumers. The Sega Saturn was a clusterfuck from a hardware point of view.... most third party developers generally disliked the machine because it was too convoluted for its own good when it came to creating 3D games. The Nintendo 64 had decent hardware but Nintendo really limited the third party support by sticking with cartridges instead of going with optical media. Publishers generally veered away from wanting to produce cartridges because they were just to much money to produce. A CD cost pennies to press in comparison.
This is true. SOA didn't try to advertise to the hardcore gamer at all. They were still working under the assumption that their Genesis marketing campaign would still be effective. Which it didn't, since they didn't have many killer app titles that they could use to sell to the mass consumer. Like they did with the Genesis.
But you could also say that the Saturn helped create the "hard core gamer" as there was a whole sub market of gamers who ended up importing games from Japan and buying cartridges that would bypass region lockout.
Even during the Dreamcast era, Sega (of America) never tried to market the machine to the 'Hardcore' gamer. They were still trying to win back the mainstream crowd. They did do a lot of things right with the Dreamcast that they failed to do with the Saturn. But by that point, Playstation was already embedded into everyone's brains to make any large dent in the industry.
I also remember Nintendo Power bashing the hell out of FF7 when that came out for the PSX. Talk about bitter.
bodyboarder
Member
Fair enough, thanks. I'll have a look at a few and take it from there.
alfredofroylan
Member
For those who know their Spanish, here's part of a 1993 promo VHS from Nintendo comparing tech stats between the SNES and Mega Drive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtcQxt-2Ts4&t=6m40s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtcQxt-2Ts4&t=6m40s
SonicMegaDrive
Member
haha, that was great. Kinda disappointed he didn't stretch it into 3 parts. So much more he could talk about.
alfredofroylan
Member
I remember the tune that was used at the end of the video but I can't remember wich game used it. Somebody knows?
SonicMegaDrive
Member
I have a feeling James isn't familiar enough with the PS1 to make any kind of proper judgment.
He has said that he underestimated the PS1 at the time and jumped in late. Don't think his collection of PS1 games is as spectacular either.
Oh well.